The big (and troubling) news in the radio drama world this week is the announcement by BBC Radio 4 that they’re going to be ending their Friday play.

BBC cites budget woes as the reason for the cut, and radio drama fans in Britain and beyond are concerned not only about the loss of this beloved time slot, but of the implications of the move for the future radio drama (at least as a terrestrial radio broadcast!).

This flies in the face, of course, as what most people perceive of as a revival of audio drama in America.

If you haven’t seen the Wall Street Journal article that highlights yours truly, do so now – In ‘Mind Movies,’ the Word Picture Continues to Appeal to Eager Ears – WSJ.com.

While it’s not terribly fair to weigh what the BBC does vs. what we independent producers are up to (you’re talking about a multi-million dollar publicly-funded operating budget and five-figure an hour production costs vs. that of a shoestring) it does seem that there’s a growing, not a shrinking, audience for radio drama.

So what gives?

It’s the Economy, Stupid

Of course the story of arts funding everywhere is that the economy has wrecked everything.

Public arts budgets have been in trouble since arts budgets were created. That’s certainly an American truism and I expect it’s similar in Britain.

There also seems to be a numbers game thing going on with the BBC 4 Radio Play. So says the Guardian’s TV & radio blog:

Radio 4, however argues that the audience itself is limited – that at a peak of 350,000 listeners, the Friday Play attracts the smallest audience of the station’s drama output. And that its budget is also limited: cost-cutting plans means that money has to be saved across its output, and drama is no exception, losing 4% of its current budget. Some Friday-evening drama has been “excellent”, R4′s station controller, Mark Damazer, tells me. “But it’s not cheap.”

“But it’s not cheap.” Ahhh, that’s the rub…

Looking at numbers points to the fundamental problem with radio drama from a “reach the masses” programming angle.

Generally speaking, this is ART we’re talking about here, which is always going to have a smaller audience than pop TV or the news. While I’m still angling for the breakthrough audio drama hit (Stephen King, anyone?) the reality is that radio drama is not set up to compete for the masses. The power of the radio drama experience is measured in quality, not quantity.

That’s why radio drama has adapted so beautifully to the web. The number of distribution channels is basically infinite, as is the space to put it.

It costs no extra bandwidth for tens of thousands of hours of audio drama to exist alongside 1970s Norwegian death metal. It does, however, cost a lot of money to have audio drama exist on a terrestrial radio station where there is a finite amount of time in the day and a finite amount of channels to play it on.

This distribution problem is, of course, secondary to the problem of the cost of making it in the first place.

Say your job is to fill X amount of hours in the day, and you have Y dollars to do that. Of course if you can fill those hours for fewer dollars it seems like a good move, particularly if you can increase listeners to Z at the same time. This is how the argument based on numbers works.

Roger Gregg spoke about this rather elegantly (if a tad bitterly) when I spoke with him in Ireland last year, I’d encourage to review that interview again: Talking with Roger Gregg, Radio Wizard. (UPDATE: Roger added some of his own comments to this discussion)

Roger reports a similar story of woe in Ireland where some difficult, and painful, cuts have been made lately in the arts. And don’t even get me started about America.

This is, of course, why BBC is a charter, not a for-profit body. By virtue of being a public entity, they are able to invest time and money in pursuing arts created for public good, rather than popularity and filling airtime for the cheapest $$$.

So does this cut in programming represent a compromise for quantity, over quality?

What BBC Radio 4 Has to Say

BBC Radio 4 has a lot to say about the cut – they’re not exactly happy about it either, and have this to say in their own defense:

Drama on BBC Radio 4 is in rude health. The network continues to be the biggest commissioner of original dramas in the UK with 650 hours of drama and readings this year alone. Recent plays illustrate the breadth and ambition of our output: David Hare’s Murder in Samarkand, starring David Tennant; Lenny Henry’s Othello; and the entire le Carré Smiley series, featuring Simon Russell Beale. We continue to attract the best writers and performers to work on the network.

… There has been some publicity recently about the decommissioning of the Friday Play. Let me fill in the background. We used to commission 32 fresh plays a year for 9pm on Fridays. The other 20 weeks were repeats of earlier Friday plays. But while our aim is always to offer original drama of the highest quality, we work to a budget and sometimes have to make difficult decisions about where to invest. Rather than spread the budget more thinly over all our drama strands I decided to decommission a single strand – the Friday Play. This will enable us to maintain investment in the quality of the hundreds of plays we broadcast elsewhere across the network. The Friday Play was reduced to 12 new plays last year, before being decommissioned this year.”

This from the BBC Radio 4 Blog

So, death of a time slot, and not a medium? Also promising, on Feb 26 it was reported that BBC Cymru Wales is to Double Network Radio Drama Production – so it’s not time to ring the death bell for radio drama on the BBC.

However, the cut of such a popular program (if you are to believe the amazing response from listeners – see the new 400+ member strong Speak up for Radio Drama now! Facebook Group to see what I mean) is an ominous omen for the future of radio drama on what has traditionally been one of its strongest bastions – the BBC.

The Future of Audio Drama

Alright, so folks, what IS the future of audio drama – on BBC 4 and otherwise?

We obviously spend a LOT of effort on this show focusing on modern independent groups – including Britain’s own, extremely unique, and talented Wireless Theatre Company – and these groups are going to persist no matter what happens on major broadcasters.

Of course, what makes this story different is that the BBC puts out a fundamentally different product – real budget and national distribution, from a revered institution.

So let’s hope that the BBC is serious when they say “Radio 4 remains absolutely committed to original drama” – because there’s no better medium for debuting original, challenging works of art, and no better producers out there than the BBC.

UPDATE: BBC has reaffirmed their commitment to radio drama – meaning, no more cuts… for now

James Kicklighter sent me a link to a new video out with himself, Edith Ivey, Berry Stolch and Jonathan Pope live from the Macon Film Festival.

Hear about the background of the film, what it was like making it, and of course, some delicious tidbits about the golden age of radio!

Do check out James Kicklighter’s site for more information about Theater of the Mind and his projects, and recall our conversation with him a few months ago about turning memories of radio into film!

Now this is fun!

Radio Drama Revival is now being syndicated on Red House Art Radio.

Red Radio bills itself as “an innovative project of the Red House Art Center and is Central New York’s first listener-generated arts and ideas Internet radio station. Red House Art Radio [Red Radio] explores audio as an art-form and communication platform.”

Sounds good. And they are into radio drama, too! It goes on:

Red Radio is not conventional broadcast radio nor is it like any other Internet radio station. Instead, Red Radio is a cutting-edge communication medium that unites local and global artists, musicians, philosophers, leaders and commentators on one stage.

For the moment, it seems you’ll just be able to get the Radio Drama Revival podcast on their website in addition, of course, to this main feed. However, in the future it looks like they are going to be offering a streaming online radio station with a whole slew of interesting content.

As broadcast models continue to evolve and change, this is an exciting model to follow, and of course RDR is excited to draw in more listeners from wherever they come.

Paul Potts writes a great article on What is a Podcast — from an aesthetic/production/creative sense. In addition to espousing just about everything about podcasts that I love, too, he has also some great things to say about radio drama.

And I love what he says about professionalism (as much as I try to make a “polished” show!):

The podcast world is vast, and contains multitudes. “Polish” is code for “make it sound like everyone else does, or we will look down on you.” “Professional” is code for “people without a lot of money need not apply.” Oh, and also “people who want to record something important and true to them, but that won’t fit into a recording studio, or sound just like NPR, need not apply.” Really? I love some of what goes down on NPR, but it ought to be obvious that there is an NPR “style,” and expecting everyone to conform to it is just as bad as expecting everyone to conform to the commercial FM radio style.

Needless to say, I’ve got another feed in my iGoogle and another podcast in MediaMonkey. Thanks Paul!

Well, the death toll for diversity has already been sounding for some time, but it still didn’t make it great news to hear that the XM and Sirius merger has been approved. I can’t applaud either company for making an exceptional effort at redefining the radio medium, but given that satellite seems destined to be “FM without commercials” I suppose the way things have gone is the only inevitable path.

Let’s just hope that Sonic Theater makes the transition and that there remains a place for full-cast audio production… but I’m not holding my breath.

Well, blind-sided I am again with the holiday season, and as I scamper to get some great Christmas stories in the line-up, I figured I’d take the time to highlight some of my favorite listening of this past year, as well as the stuff that’s a sure-win for any audio fan on your list. And hey, even if they don’t love audio yet, give them some love! They may turn into fans yet…

The first place to start with is ZBS. While it’s a damn shame that Lodestone shut down, ZBS is almost undebatably the most diverse and interesting contemporary audio theater catalog out there. You of course have the marvelous work of Tom Lopez aka Meatball Fulton, with such classic series as Jack Flanders and Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe and searing new work by Crazy Dog Audio Theatre and Great Northern Audio Theatre.

I just recently finished the two classics Moon over Morocco and The Fourth Tower of Inverness, which are as well deserving of canonical audio theater status as the works of Orson Welles, Norman Corwin and scratchy recordings of Lights Out and The Shadow. And speaking of the classics, The 60 Greatest Old-Time Radio Shows of the 20th Century selected by Walter Cronkite as recommended by Tony Palermo, is as good an introduction to what OTR is about than any your likely to find (and once you’re hooked, check out Noirdame.com for some really juicy stuff).

Back-tracking to ZBS for a moment, I was very exciting to see that they have Crazy Dog’s latest, The Stuff of Myth and The Salmon of Black Pool. I recently had the chance to hear both care of Roger Gregg himself and was completely blown away, especially with the latter… just don’t listen to them too quickly and spoil your chance to hear them on this show!

Now a great stocking stuffer is a subscription to Audiofile Magazine, produced locally in Portland, Maine and amazingly supportive of audio drama arts, especially the work of William Dufris (who has several great audio horror collections).

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the work of Dry Smoke and Whispers, who you’ve heard several times on the show. Their fantastic stories take the gritty splendor of the detective story and sprawl it across a galactic empire both exotic and familiar. Treat your fantasy or sci-fi junky with one of their beautifully packaged CD collections and prepare yourself for a thank you card that comes with chocolate.

Another gift that might break some medium boundaries is the BBC’s fine adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. While purists will still have their stones to throw, it’s a heck of a lot truer to the text than that Peter Jackson thing and has some really great “visual” moments… making it the perfect gift for someone who’s yet to learn how to use their ears! In general, the BBC has more audio drama collections to purchase than I know where to start with and certainly has got something for anyone.

Also take a listen to Blackstone Audiobooks, who have impeccably fine taste and produce the likes of Yuri Rasovsky — famous for his great adaptations of classic texts. Quicksilver, I’d love to throw you guys a link to follow up this claim, but I believe they’re yet to make it on the web!

As a closing note, don’t forget the profound gift that is an audio player (and far be it from me to get into comparing audio players and picking out ear buds), especially to someone who knows how to use their iPodder… and why’s that?

• Wormwood
• Decoder Ring Theatre
• Dick Dynamo
• Dream Realm Enterprises
• Darker Projects
• Afterhell
• Doug Bost
• Central Audio Theatre
• The Wireless Theatre Company
• Eye of the Storm
• Second Shift
• Dreamseed
• Wander Radio
• Podiobooks
• Shadow Falls
• Icebox Radio Theater
• and of course… Radio Drama Revival
• Not to mention the dozen or so I’ve inevitably forgotten… to whom I apologize and will add on this never ending list of diverse and compelling audio producers, experienced and newcomers alike, who make this whole internet thing so exciting for us audiophiles

Hopefully this is enough to get you started!? And hey, pick up a thing or two for me while you’re at it…