The Great Detectives Present Yours Truly Johnny Dollar (Old Time Radio) - Podcast Rankings and reviews

A great podcast. I subscribe to several podcasts that focus on ‘old time radio’ but none compares to the various offering featuring Adam Graham as the host. He carefully curates all episodes and gives such great insights and information for each show. If I had to listen to only 1 podcaster, it would be Adam Graham. You will not be disappointed. Thank you.

I have been listening to this show for almost as long as it has been available. I love the episodes, the history. I really like Adam’s commentary. He gives great back ground and framing to the episodes. Just like everyone, I have favorite shows and less favorite shows, but I appreciate what I learn from each. It’s part of the entertainment value for me. The nasty critiques of Adam’s voice are like nails on a chalkboard to me. Give me a break. I chose this podcast because of what he adds. If I only wanted the old time radio episodes without his input, I would just go elsewhere. Great job Adam!

Listened for years. It’s my escape. Love listing to a time my grandmother often spoke of. I feel like I’m there in a small way. Thank you Adam for bringing this great content week after week in great quality.

I stumbled upon Adam’s podcast by mistake this past year and realized how few of YTJD episodes I had actually heard. I started listening to the broadcasts from 2016 and finally caught up to present day. Listening to these episodes from a bygone era reminds me of stories my grandmother used to share and makes me appreciate them all the more. Adam’s commentary took me a little while to get used to, but now I absolutely love the knowledge he has and shares. The audio quality isn’t always perfect, but each and every preserved episode is a treasure from the past.

The content is excellent, these are radio shows that were played (generally) in the 1950s. Sound quality of the episodes is usually great - on rare occasions they will sound a bit scratchy but the host is at the mercy of recordings made 70ish years ago so I have no issue with it. Sometimes (if we are lucky) there will be commercials that aired at the time of original broadcast. Those are fun to listen to…I don’t mind them at all.
The stories are framed with modern day narrative that puts the show into context and adds further insight into what was going on in the world at the time. I like this too. All of this adds up to potentially a five star podcast.

When I write reviews I need some way to separate the ‘five stars’ from the ‘four stars’, etc. Shows that air modern day commercials will lose a star. Seems fair to me…commercials are not bad in and of themselves but a show with commercials is ‘less than perfect’ so they always lose a star.

The /audio quality/ of the “modern narrative” is just okay or at the very least, annoying. There are constant ‘skip noises’ where it seems like audio has been cut and spliced together, even in mid sentence. The volume changes slightly, or pauses between words are longer or shorter than normal, etc. The commentary is only a few minutes long- seriously, isn’t it possible to re-record until you get it in one take?

Finally, back to the commercials. There are A LOT of commercials. I listen to many podcasts is this one has far, far more than any other I know. Then there are Patreon shout outs, and the Priceline ad read, and on an on. Thankfully you can fast forward through them easily enough but it means you need to be near your device to do so. Finally, it seems a bit…bold…to play so many commercials on 1950s content that you got for free, but whatever.

All adds up to two stars. I would prefer 2.5 stars but I’m not allowed to give halfs. Old time radio shows are available elsewhere online 24/7 for free with no commercials but you DO miss out on Adam’s framing narrative. I still subscribe, I just keep my phone handy to fast forward through all the ads.