1953 The Hobbit (Canadian Radio)

Date: 1953
Language: English
Reader: Unknown
Organisation: Canadian Radio Stations
Duration: Unknown
Unabridged: Yes
Country: Canada
Licenced: No (See below)

There were a series of brief narrated extracts broadcast on Canadian radio stations. At present details as to who the narrator was, which stations broadcast them, how many extracts there were and when exactly they were broadcast are unknown. Canadian regional station logs or local newspaper radio schedules from 1953 may hold the precise broadcast date buried in local archives.

Thomas Nelson & Sons (Canada) Ltd were the Canadian publishers of Tolkien and overseas distribution partners like this often handled localized publicity, permissions, and minor extract requests for local radio stations without consulting London especially for brief read extracts rather than a full dramatic script or multi-episode adaptation. Thomas Nelson likely treated it internally as a routine literary reading permission rather than a formal sub-licensing contract requiring a signed agreement from Tolkien or Allen & Unwin.

Reading short excerpts over the airwaves was often viewed by regional publishers as free promotional publicity for the book rather than a commercial audio performance. However, doing so without author or primary publisher consent breached Allen & Unwin’s strict protocol regarding dramatic and performance rights. Incidents like this prompted Allen & Unwin to tighten their grip on Tolkien’s media rights.

The existence of these broadcasts are only known today through subsequent internal correspondence and publisher memos between Allen & Unwin and Thomas Nelson, where the incident was cited when tightening international broadcast rights ahead of publication of The Lord of the Rings.