Walter Cronkite's the 60 Greatest Old-Time Radio Show

Beautifully packaged, excellent sampler of what was best in early radio programs. The booklet is a good history and description of each program. Highly recommend this product. You can finally hear the entire Mercury Theater's Halloween program directed by Orson Welles (the program that sent a million East coast people running out of their homes!) What a treat. All the ones you'd expect are there....Abbott and Costello, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, plus special programs following victory in Europe.

Old Radio was Great

If you appreciate old radio, this is perfect. It made a great gift. I had forgotten how good radio could be. It is a lost art these days - that of creating images via verbal communication.

When radio was Great!

Unfortunately too many of the programs were represented by their Christmas holliday programs. Usually these were sweet syrupy things, not at all like the normal programs were on a day to day basis. Also "War of the World" is presented AGAIN. Once you've heard it, you've heard it. I must have heard it a dozen times---something else would have been good.
It's amazing to listen to most programs, though, Live orchestras, live sound effects (mostly). Too bad radio was overshadowed by TV in the late 40s. It swiftly destroyed it. Technically the radio programs were presemted better than the early drams on TV. Viewers put up with a lot juist to see the actors. Greatest Old Time Radio isn't bad, but it could be better.

My Opinion of Cronkite's Old Time Radio Selections

I purchased this collection because it contained two radio programs I owned as a teenager: Escape Theater's "Leinengen vs the Ants" & "Three Skeleton Key". It turns out I got much more of a treasure than I could have realized. Classic comedy such as the Jack Benny Show, Fibber McGee & Molly, the Chase & Sanborn Hour, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Lum & Abner's touching Christmas special. There's also great adventure series, such as Suspense, Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, the Inner Sanctum, Arch Oboler's Lights Out, and yes, Escape.
And I've enjoyed hour after hour of other programs in this collection.
The only drawbacks I have found? I see no selections from "The Haunting Hour". And the two Escape programs are somewhat different versions than the ones I was looking for. Leinengen vs the Ants for instance, was not the East Coast version with the more wholesome organ work I was looking for. But it was almost identical in other aspects. And Three Skeleton Key was the version starring Vincent Price. The one I wanted was starring Elliot Reid with William Conrad & Harry Bartel (Bartel is on both) Since then I found the versions of these I was looking for on Ebay & Google.
That said, this collection is well worth the price and if you're thinking of buying it for yourself, you won't regret doing so.