The Nightfall Radio Program

Background

Throughout The Golden Age of Radio era, supernatural suspense thrillers were a popular staple over Radio--indeed, over early Television as well. While several were originated and produced by independent programming syndicators, the majority of the more enduring supernatural thrillers and suspense dramas originated from key stations of one of the larger networks--occasionally larger affiliate stations within a network's chain. Some of the more popular of the genre were as follows:

• 1931 The Witch's Tale
• 1932 The Witch of Endor
• 1932 The Witching Hour
• 1936 Hermit's Cave
• 1936 Dr. Satan
• 1936 Lights Out!
• 1941 Dark Fantasy
• 1941 Inner Sanctum
• 1942 The Whistler
• 1943 Mysterious Traveler
• 1944 Creeps By Night
• 1944 Strange Dr. Weird
• 1944 The BBC's Appointment with Fear
• 1945 The Haunting Hour
• 1945 Sealed Book
• 1945 Stay Tuned for Terror
• 1946 Hall of Fantasy
• 1947 Diary of Fate
• 1947 Quiet Please
• 1947 The Unexpected
• 1948 Cabin B-13
• 1950 Detour
• 1950 Satan's Waitin'
• 1952 Obsession
• 1953 Nightmare
• 1953 Stroke of Fate
• 1964 Theater Five

Though by no means all-inclusive, this brief list reflects a representative mix of some of the more popular and enduring supernatural dramas from the Golden Age. Supernatural dramas were also a recurring favorite among the various Radio dramas that postdated Radio's Golden Age. The BBC and the CBC in particular aired several popular supernatural thrillers right on through the 20th Century.

A Revival of Golden Age Radio Drama

With the passing of the Golden Age of Radio and its rich legacy of fine drama, comedy and variety, the 1980s saw a resurgence in Golden Age Radio Revival dramas, both in the U.S. and internationally. The BBC had continued to produce all manner of fine Radio drama continuously throughout the second half of the 20th Century, as did Canada's CBC, South Africa, and Australia.

But in the U.S. it was Television that dominated the second half of the 20th Century. However, on the heels of the growing commercialization of American Television and persistent criticisms of Television's vast wasteland, several National Public Radio stations, independent stations, and FM-only stations began finding and airing Radio Revival dramas and comedies to a new-found audience. CBS took a chance on Himan Brown's CBS Radio Mystery Theater and found a late night audience that persisted for eight years between 1974 and 1982. During the same period, CBS aired the General Mills Radio Adventure Theater targeted to weekend juvenile audiences. That series proved so popular that CBS aired the entire series in rebroadcasts--minus sponsor--for another full run. As late as 1986, independent drama groups were still mounting highly enjoyable supernatural and psychological fare such as Cape Cod Mystery Theatre (1984-1986).

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for it's part began airing a fascinating range of classic, mystery, comedy, documentary, and supernatural drama throughout the 1970s to 1990s to a steadily expanding audience--both in Canada and throughout the northern portions of the U.S.

The CBC's extensive Radio offerings were a combination of organic dramas and comedies showcasing Canada's own great actors, writers and production talent, as well as several popular transcribed, syndicated features from throughout the British Empire and the United States. Indeed many of America's most beloved, popular, versatile and award-winning character actors, musicians, and comedians were Canadian citizens who'd honed their craft in all manner of original Canadian Radio drama productions:

1946-1962 Rawhide
1954 The Queen's Men
1960s The Song History of Canada
1960s Theatre 10:30
1962 Democracy in America
1963 Canadian Short Stories
1963 Sunshine Sketches of Little Town
1963 The Radio-Canada Playhouse
1964 Famous Canadian Trials
1964 Foothill Fables
1964 Tales of the Red Men
1964 The Ordeal of New France
1965 As Time Goes By
1965 The Kraken Wakes
1969 Studio Sixty-Nine
1970 The Rum Runners
1971 In the Mood
1971 The Whiteoaks of Jalna
1972 Inside From the Outside
1973 Kaleidoscope
1974 Travels with Aunt Jane
1975 Royal Canadian Air Farce
1979 Ideas
1980 60 Minutes with A Bullet
1980-1989 The Weird World of Jeff Green
1980 Nightfall
1981 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
1982 Johnny Chase, Secret Agent of Space
1982 Scales of Justice
1982 Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe
1983 The Canadians
1983 The Second Holmes
1984-1990 Vanishing Point
1986 Thrice-Told Tales
1987 Escape Routes
1987 The Dispossessed
1988 Stories of J.G.Ballard
1992 Midnight Cab
1992 Dracula
1993 The Unopened Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
1994 Flynn
1995 Mystery Classics
1996 Becker
1996 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1997 Clean Sweep
1998 Bailey's Way
1998 Peggy Delaney
1998 Dirk Galaxy, Space Detective

While the above list represents only a fraction of Canada's rich Radio legacy of the second half of the 20th Century, it does contain several CBC programs that remain highly prized by American vintage Radio collectors--if not internationally as well.

The CBC debuts a popular supernatural drama series

Drawing upon the talent of its entire coast to coast network, the CBC debuted Nightfall in the Spring of 1980. Executive-produced by either Bill Howell or Don Kowalchuk for it's entire run, CBC's Nightfall also employed the production talent of its regional production facilities:

• CBC Toronto
• CBC Halifax
• CBC Vancouver
• CBC St. Johns
• CBC Calgary
• CBC Montreal

On the writing side, over its 101 unique scripts Nightfall adapted the work of Edgar Alan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Honoré de Balzac, Sir Walter Scott, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and some of Canada and Great Britain's greatest emerging fiction writers. According to Neil Marsh and the dedicated fans of The Nightfall Project, Nightfall was the brainchild of Executive Producer Bill Howell and CBC Head of Radio Drama Susan Douglas Rubes. Howell, one of the CBC's most prolific content producers and Rubes, an actress hired by the CBC to revitalize the CBC's dramatic content, conceived of Nightfall as a natural showcase for CBC's deep bench of Drama talent as much as a cutting edge supernatural drama anthology. The result was one of the CBC's most popular and enduring dramatic features over its rich history. Nightfall more than exceeded Howell and Rubes' expectations and launched renewed interest in the CBC's dramatic offerings that began a period of twenty years of Canada's finest Radio Drama content.

Nightfall was followed by the CBC's Vanishing Point dramatic fiction anthology and its remarkable Mystery Project series that introduced thirty-nine new dramatic features between 1992 and 2002. It's no exaggeration to say that Nightfall successfully reinvigorated the CBC's drama content offerings to a degree never before experienced in the history of the CBC. In that respect alone, Nightfall continues to be one of the most influential dramatic offerings in CBC history. Indeed, Nightfall's popularity almost immediately caught the attention of northern tier National Public Radio stations resulting in a thirty-nine episode American showcase of Nightfall under the NPR Playhouse series of 1981 to 1982.

Initially conceived as a thirteen-week cycle of dramatic presentations from Canada's CBC and Great Britain's BBC, NPR Playhouse's second season offered:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [BBC] on Mondays
• The Lord of the Rings [BBC], hosted by Tammy Grimes, on Tuesdays and Thursdays
• Nightfall [CBC] on Fridays

NPR Playhouse's Nightfall offerings were so well received that NPR Playhouse continued airing Nightfall for another twenty-six episodes.

A sparkling mix of bold new talent and traditional formulae

Bill Howell and the CBC wisely chose to adhere to the most popular formulae that had resulted in the often wildly popular supernatural, horror, psychological, and suspense dramas that emerged during Radio's Golden Age. Reported a huge fan of American Radio thrillers and detective drama himself, it's clear that Bill Howell's respect for the dramatic formulae of his southern cousins impacted many of his production choices over the following fifteen years with the CBC. Even more ironic, Bill Howell began providing Canadian audiences the very high caliber drama content that American Radio fans had continued clamoring for--in vain--to the present day.

The all too often unsung heros of many of the U.S.-originated thrillers of the 1930s to 1960s had been its sound engineers and sound effects artists. Bill Howell also wisely chose to not only showcase CBC's own remarkably talented sound engineers during Nightfall, but clearly directed and supervised the series from as much a sound engineering standpoint as from the series' dramatic perspectives.

Canada had beaten the U.S. to the punch with stereo broadcasts of most of its programming and the stereo broadcasts of Nightfall truly showcased the series' marvelous sound engineering. Indeed it's one of the reasons we began collecting Canadian Radio Drama in the first place.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]