Has anyone ever listened to an old radio show that seemed VERY familiar? I've listened to a tremendous amount of OTR over the decades and it's so obvious that writers took many of the plots, especially with the classic radio shows, and transferred them over to TV. For instance "The Twilight Zone" used many plots directly from Suspense. "I Love Lucy", especially in the first few seasons, used plots directly from "My favorite Husband" with only slight changes.

Jack Benny and Burns and Allen did that. Burns and Allen even used the same story for two different episodes of their TV show (they get locked out of their house).

I can think of two episodes of Dragnet that they reused from the radio show to the original black and white episodes from the 1950s to the color episodes of the 1960s

The Jack Benny writers recycled their Christmas script several times, changing what Jack was going to get Don for Christmas.

12/08/1946: Jack buys shoelaces, keeps exchanging Plastic and Metal Tips for each other.
12/21/1947: Mel remembers last year and goes nuts when Jack talks about exchanging something, but nothing is actually exchanged.
12/19/1948: Jack buys a wallet, but keeps changing the card. Finally, he exchanges the wallet itself. This one was later re-made for Jack's television show.
1949: No installment.
12/17/1950: Mel remembers the shoelace incident, but not the wallet. Jack buys golf tees, and threatens to exchange wooden for celluloid, but as in 1947, Mel goes nuts before anything is actually exchanged.
12/02/1951: Jack buys cuff links, and keeps changing the engraving. Finally changes the links themselves (similar to 1948).
12/14/1952: Jack buys a gopher trap, and keeps exchanging between the lethal and non-lethal models.
12/13/1953: Jack buys dates, and keeps exchanging between ones with nuts and ones without.
12/05/1954: Jack buys paints, and keeps exchanging between oil and water colors. Mel escapes early, so Jack drives his wife, Bea Benaderet crazy instead.

The wallet on TV: https://archive.org/details/Jack-Benny- ... s-Shopping
OThe wallet on radio: http://antiqueradios.com/shows/index.ph ... 9%20Season

I must add that, even more than radio shows transferred over to TV with the same titles and actors, I was making a point of OTR plots used on TV shows with completely different titles and actors. Basically plagiarism, although there would be enough tweaking to make it seem original.

I Love Lucy on television and My Favorite Husband on radio are connected. Although there was another television show made called My Favorite Husband based on the early radio programs, I Love Lucy was developed for Lucille Ball who was one of the stars of the radio program.

one of my favorites of all time is a radio show called Gramby's Green Acres, later on it morphed in to the sitcom Green Acres.

If you watch TV for very long you will find that ALL of the shows have been done before. All they are doing is changing location, cast, time period etc.

After all there are only 7 stories to tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

That's very true, especially with classic comedy shows. They always repeated the same plots with basically the same outcomes. I have seen shows though, especially ones from the '50's and '60's, where I'd swear the writers got hold of radio transcriptions for ideas. They are just too close in details to an original radio show. Only nowadays, with the Net and all the material available, could this ever be uncovered.

TVs Gunsmoke used a number of the radio scripts

Heck, near as I can tell anytime they needed a bad guy on the Radio Gunsmoke, John Dehner played the role. Practically every episode.

"We believe in lettin' 'em die where they fall, Marshall".

I remember many of the Suspense and Intersanctum scripts were used on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show. I liked them all though, even if they were repeated over and over again.

I know this thread is old now, but I am still uncovering show plots that have been used on later TV shows. I would love to know if writers got their hands on old radio transcription recordings. It would've been a very clever way to come-up with plots, especially on very successful shows like Amos and Andy, Suspense, etc. I've gone through hundreds of these radio shows at this point and am catching almost exact plots repeated on TV. The writers would've felt that no one would be able to or care about hearing the old radio shows again.