Radio programs

I listened to the “Unsolved Mysteries - The Writing on The Wall.” I was also able to listen to some commercials including Alka Seltzer, Lucky Beer, and Ovaltine. It was very enlightening listening to these programs. I felt like I was literally being taken back in time. The voice and static were so stereotypical of radio programming.
The unsolved mystery consisted of a lot of music at the beginning and towards the end. The music helped set the tone for the story. It was kind of a creepy tune. I felt that the music lasted a little too long though. At the beginning when the music was playing I was starting to wonder if maybe there wasn’t going to be talking and that I was supposed to imply the story from the music alone. Fortunately, that was not the case. The story was hard to follow because many of the voices sounded so similar it was hard to keep the characters straight. I wondered if this was a common problem for that era. Did they have to try to get very different voices to play parts? It’s also possible that the people of that day had a better ear for the different voices since that’s all they had to go off of. These days we have other visual cues to go off of when we are watching a television show. We get both the voice and the sight of the character. We most likely rely more on the looks of the actor to distinguish them from another. An example would be that we recognize an actress like Demi Moore by her photo or a video of her on TV. If we were to hear her talk on the radio, we would have to be told who was talking since we would not be able to set her apart from any other woman by voice alone. I wonder if the people of that day knew the different actors by voice alone, even the most “normal” sounding voices.
The commercials held a lot of the same qualities the television commercials of today have. The radio commercials seem to be more focused on having a catchy jingle which is kind of great. It is why I chose the Alka Seltzer commercial to listen to. The “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz” is pretty iconic.