The Columbia Workshop, a sustaining program (ie: no commercials or sponsor), was was created in 1936 by the Columbia Broadcasting System (now CBS) as a prestige program and a laboratory for the best that the audio medium had to offer. Needless to say, there is no equivalent being broadcast today.
As a workshop, the doors were thrown open to new playwrights (Norman Corwin made his auspicious debut here in 1938 with "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas", as well as established authors interested in experimenting with the medium (Archibald MacLeish's "The Fall of The City") . There was an emphasis on high production values and creative sound patterns. Not everything was a success. Listening today, some programs are electric, others dated. But in its day it was something to talk about.
Broadcasts became sporadic during and after World War II. A new version returned for one season in 1956 as The CBS Radio Workshop. In case you wondered, yes, it was this that inspired the name for our radio production company, the Generic Radio Workshop.
Click on a script title below to view it:
| Jul 18 1936 | A Comedy of Danger / The Finger of God |
| Aug 02 1936 | Cartwheel |
| Aug 16 1936 | Case History |
| Dec 19 1936 | The Gods of the Mountain |
| May 11 1937 | The Fall of the City |
| Jul 04 1937 | Mr. Sycamore |
| Sep 26 1937 | Alice in Wonderland, Part 1 |
| Oct 03 1937 | Alice in Wonderland, Part 2 |
| Mar 26 1938 | J. Smith and Wife |
| Apr 16 1938 | The Terrible Meek |
| Oct 27 1938 | Air Raid |
| Dec 01 1938 | The Giant's Stair |
| Dec 25 1938 | The Plot to Overthrow Christmas |
| Jan 30 1939 | Now Playing Tomorrow |
| Feb 20 1939 | Nine Prisoners |
| Jul 20 1940 | Carmilla |
| Jun 08 1941 | Odyssey of Runyon Jones |
| Jun 07 1942 | The Little One |
| Jun 20 1944 | American Trilogy: Walt Whitman |
| May 19 1946 | The Trial |
| Jun 16 1946 | Sometime Every Summertime |
| Aug 25 1957 | Sweet Cherries in Charleston |
