The National Lampoon Radio Hour

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The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a comedy radio show which was created, produced and initially written by people from National Lampoon magazine. The show ran weekly, for a little over a year, from November 17th 1973 to December 28th 1974. Originally an hour in length, after 13 weeks it was cut down to half-an-hour due to the difficulty of putting together the very considerable amount of material required for a one hour show.

The show was created by Michael O'Donoghue and producer/engineer Bob Tischler. When O'Donoghue left, later producers included Sean Kelly, Brian McConnachie and John Belushi.

Performers on the show included Belushi himself, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis, who was one of the co-writers for the National Lampoon movie Animal House. The radio show was recorded in a studio which was specially built by National Lampoon in the same building where the magazine was produced. The musical theme for the show was co-written and performed by Bob Hoban and Nate Herman.

The show was broadcast nationally on 600 different radio stations, but the stations picking it up were free to air it at any time they chose. It proved difficult to get enough advertising to support the show: national sponsors seemed reluctant to take on the show, probably because of the controversial nature of much of its material.

When the show folded, several of the performers and writers moved on to Saturday Night Live. Michael O'Donoghue was head writer for the first two seasons of Saturday Night Live, and this may explain why some of the radio show material, such as "What if Ed Sullivan Were Tortured?", was subsequently re-purposed for television.

Among the other writers and performers on the show were Anne Beatts, Richard Belzer, Christopher Cerf, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joe Flaherty, Christopher Guest who did many of the show's musical parodies, Ed Subitzky, Douglas Kenney and Bruce McCall.

One example of the sometimes shocking humor of the Radio Hour is a sketch which featured a game show entitled "Land a Million". In this parody, a housewife is left alone in an airborne Boeing 747 containing $1 million in cash and a ton of TNT. She must answer questions about literature in order to receive tips on how to land the plane safely. Unfortunately her knowledge of literature is not extensive enough to answer all of the questions correctly.

[edit] Albums

National Lampoon released 5 albums that were created entirely with, or partly with, material from the Radio Hour:

  • The Missing White House Tapes (1974)
  • Gold Turkey, National Lampoon Radio Hour, Greatest Hits (1975)
  • That's Not Funny, That's Sick! (1977)
  • Greatest Hits of the National Lampoon (1978)
  • National Lampoon's White Album (1979).


Gold Turkey was also subsequently issued as a CD.


In 1996 Rhino Records released a multi-CD/tape box set, The Best of the National Lampoon Radio Hour, which borrowed one of the magazine's classic covers ("Buy this box or we'll shoot this dog"). The set includes many of the best sketches, and has extensive liner notes detailing the history of the show.

[edit] References

  • Lots of information at [1]