Category: Media

Giving Prof. Guralnick the benefit of fair doubt, I believe her goal in writing the book is to expand the audience for radio drama by proving its link to stage drama, to discuss playwrights who are best known for their stage work, rather than playwrights who write specifically for radio. I cannot argue against her choice of material. What I will argue is that the approach probably confirms more biases than it dispels.

Artists like Norman Corwin strove toward an idea of radio as an artist’s studio with radio drama as a natural product of the process. Yet as so often typical in American culture, singular artistic visions hardly merit a mention in histories of radio. The idea of an artist’s studio went largely ignored, because the goal of OTR was not to produce art but rather to produce consumers.

While many people are certainly satisfied with the absence of a canon for radio drama, the lack of one has dismal consequences.

At first glance it would appear the BBC have made progress after the failure of the Giles Cooper Awards. Award-winning material, especially of such high caliber, should be made available to the public so that they can revisit it. The Beeb have at least re-broadcast most of the plays, and they have made a couple available for purchase. However, the issue of access to all the plays remains inelegantly unresolved.

As my colleague Fred Greenhalgh at Radio Drama Revival notes, “October is huge in audio drama.” Why? Halloween, of course. Halloween means horror stories. Radio drama has a long and rich tradition of horror tales. Here is a beginner’s guide to some favorites.