What happens
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello host their comedy program on NBC and ABC, broadcast from Hollywood in May 1948. The pair open the show with a series of comic sketches, including a nephew's rambling tale about his Uncle Mike and a bickering exchange between Abbott and Costello over a traffic ticket. Susan Miller, the show's singing star, appears as Costello's girlfriend, and the two trade jokes about their dates. Later the partners set out to conduct a radio ratings poll, knocking on doors around town to ask neighbors whether they are tuned in to the program. The episode is built around their playful arguments and mounting schemes to prove that people are listening.
Hollywood, California, in the late 1940s, including Hollywood Boulevard, a police station, and neighborhood streets where the pair go door to door.
Characters: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Susan Miller, Joe Kirk, Elvia Allman, Connie Haines
Listen for: Abbott and Costello's rapid-fire exchanges, Costello's malapropisms, and the running joke about how many listeners the show really has when they take their radio poll.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.