The Zero Hour

2025-08-10 Categories: The Zero Hour, zh, The ZeroHour, OTR, Mystery, Adventure, Suspense

The Zero Hour (also called Hollywood Radio Theater) was an American radio drama anthology that ran in 1973–74 and was hosted by Rod Serling. It delivered mystery, adventure and suspense and lasted for two seasons.

The show first aired in syndication on September 3, 1973, and Mutual Broadcasting System picked it up in December. At the start it ran as five-part dramas — one segment Monday through Friday, with each segment (including commercials) about 30 minutes and the story wrapping up on Friday. Mutual’s affiliates could run those episodes whenever they wanted in their schedules.

In 1974 the format shifted: the show still ran five days a week, but each day was a complete 30-minute story, and the same lead actor would appear in all five programs that week. That change ran from late April 1974 until the series ended in July 1974.

Producer J. M. Kholos, a Los Angeles ad man, bought the radio rights to a number of suspense novels (Tony Hillerman’s The Blessing Way among them) and adapted them for the series — sometimes under different titles. For example, the five-part “Desperate Witness” was actually Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock. Kholos also brought in big-name talent to anchor the episodes: John Astin, Edgar Bergen, Joseph Campanella, Richard Crenna, John Dehner, Howard Duff, Keenan Wynn, Richard Deacon, Patty Duke, Nina Foch, George Maharis, Susan Oliver, Brock Peters and Lurene Tuttle, to name a few.

The opening theme was by Ferrante & Teicher. Don Hills produced the series for StudioHouse (the same company that did the Salvation Army’s Heartbeat Theatre). If you count each part of the original five-part shows as an episode, the series totaled 130 episodes. Mutual pulled the plug because the initial serialized weekly format and weak promotion didn’t draw a big audience; the final new episode aired on July 26, 1974, though many affiliates kept running repeats for months. Director Elliott Lewis later said they relied too much on big names to sell the show and didn’t do the actual selling: “They wanted as much name value as possible to help with sales. They forgot they had to sell it. Everybody sat in the office and waited for someone to call them up and buy the show.”

Highbridge Audio released six of the five-part stories on cassette: “Desperate Witness,” “Face Of The Foe,” “But I Wouldn’t Want To Die There,” “Wife Of The Red-Haired Man,” “The Heir Hunters,” and “If Two Of Them Are Dead.”

Stylistically, the series echoed classic old-time radio anthology shows like The Mysterious Traveler and The Whistler. Episodes were introduced by E. G. Marshall, who added pithy commentary throughout. Unlike some earlier hosts, Marshall was portrayed as fully human — a very insightful, erudite narrator whose observations pulled listeners into the macabre, a role a bit like “The Man in Black” from Suspense.

The Zero Hour

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