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This story was published in Radio Recall, the journal of the Metropolitan Washington Old-Time Radio Club, published six times per year.
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RADIO’S FIRST DRAMA SHOW
(Adapted from the Internet observations of Elizabeth McLeod, OTR historian and author)
(From Radio Recall, December 2007)
The WGY Players began the first regularly-scheduled series of radio dramas over WGY, Schenectady in September 1922. This was an anthology program presenting adaptations of stage plays, enacted by a group of actors from community theatre groups in tha area and supervised by Edward Smith.
The first American drama to be written specifically for radio was probably When Love Wakes by Fred Smith, program director of WLW Cincinnati, and first broadcast in April 1924.
The first dramatized program to feature continuing characters was Sam 'n' Henry by Correll and Gosden, beginning over WGN, Chicago on 1/12/26. The program was primarily a drama with comic leavening, not straight comedy.
The first network dramatic program was probably Famous Characters in Literature, a weekly half-hour anthology program heard on the Red Network during 1926, before the formation of NBC.
The first network dramatic program to feature continuing characters was Real Folks by George Frame Brown, beginning in August 1928 -- a weekly half hour revolving around the residents of the small town of "Thompkinsville," and centered on the general store run by the town's mayor, Matt Thompkins. The series was a thinly-veiled reworking of Luke Higgins' Main Street Stories, a series Brown presented as a local feature on WOR, Newark in 1927-28.
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