On D-Day, one of America’s most famous reporters, Front Page Farrell, was not involved in the war coverage at all… But, of course, Dave Farrell was fictional.

Still, his June 7, 1944, episode above has hints of America’s mood on the day the troops landed at Omaha Beach, even if the script was written far in advance, with no knowledge of the war developments.

I’ve heard very few episodes of “Front Page Farrell,” a daily soap opera about romantic couple David and Sally Farrell, and mentioned the program briefly in an overview page on journalist characters in soap operas. (Coincidentally, one of those earlier episodes, from 1942, was about the possibility of David leaving his job to go to war, and former-reporter Sally going back to newspaper work! I wish I knew how that “to be continued” story concluded, days or weeks later.)

Daytime soaps aren’t as widely available in digital archives as “prime time” evening comedies and dramatic series. But this June 7, 1944, episode is caught up in archived recordings of NBC’s coverage of the invasion day, D-Day, and D-plus-one, 2:50 a.m. Eastern War Time June 6 to 6:00 p.m. the next day… The 106 quarter-hour and half-hour recordings would make fascinating listening, with their 79th anniversary approaching.

The NBC network’s full broadcast day of invasion news and more routine radio fare apparently was issued as a Radio Archives CD set and is now available at the Internet Archive, which I’ve linked to for this Front Page Farrell report… although it includes no “journalism practice” to discuss here.