When radio became big across America in the late 1920s, there were those who worried it would kill pulp magazines. The magazines quickly adapted though and the two mediums complemented each other. In one case, radio even created one of the biggest selling Pulps. The Shadow began as nothing more than a narrator’s voice and an evil laugh by Orson Welles. The voice was fleshed out into a fantastic character and that hero became Street and Smith’s top title, selling out every two weeks. Other radio shows such as Suspense and X-Minus 1 adapted stories from magazines.
No, it wasn’t radio that killed the Pulps. It was three other media enemies that came about in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The first of these was the paperback. For the soldiers fighting in World War II and Korea, the smaller size made more sense than larger magazines, and after the war was over, well, people just kept reading them.
Rest the rest:
https://www.michaelmay.online/2015/01/four-color-sci-fi-science-fiction.html
