The Great Detectives Present Yours Truly Johnny Dollar (Old Time Radio)

Love Adam’s detective podcast and his thoughtful commentary. In this age of Ai, Adam is thoroughly human and humane. God bless Adam

So happy to be introduced to Johnny Dollar through this podcast. Thank you 🙏

I enjoy the shows but have to be quick to mute the voice of host Adam Graham. His voice reminds me of nails on a chalkboard. Can’t stand it. It can really ruin the show knowing I have to listen to him talk and talk before the show and then blather on once the show is over.

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.