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…

Hey, FCC. Let XM and Sirius dominate the entire satellite spectrum and I can enjoy a bunch of commercial… err… resistant programming for the low-low price of $6.99. That’s a whole handful of a la carte offerings for the price of two cups of coffee a month, right? Not a bad deal at all. Especially if I don’t have to hear Jolly Johnson screaming to me about used cars for the millionth time in a row. But forbid them their wishes, and we’ll be forced to suffer through $12.99 until the end of time!

Despite my cynicism, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about the Sirius/XM merger. On one hand, I don’t really see anyone else coming in and jumping in the satellite band, so why care? It’s so ultra-expensive its impossible to imagine any “homegrown” media outlets taking to outer space, and besides, internet radio offers a great viable… oh, right. We’re trying to eradicate that, too.

What does alarm me, in a very personal way, is the recent decision to cut XM’s Sonic Theater over the weekends. I’ve been very close to buying an XM radio JUST to hear Sonic Theater, and now I hear 28% of its programming has been slashed. That includes dedicated ZBS stuff, and Joe Bevilacqua’s Comedy-O-Rama show. Luckily, the weekday lineup still holds such gems as Harlequin Romance Radio.

Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what the powers-that-be are trying to do other than help further the RIAA’s agenda and eliminate any chance of hearing something… I don’t know… different? With all of the amazing technology offered by the web, all we can seem to figure out is how to limit our options as much as possible, shush up the voice of emerging artists, and homogenize ourselves back into the same bland trash you hear on the 6 or so type of stations penetrating our brains from coast to coast.

Anyone want to chime in?

It’s easy to let political issues sort of simmer in the back burner while imminent daily things take over your life, and so it’s been with the Save Net Radio movement, which you’d think I’d be on the forefront of, until this morning, when I saw that WMPG had posted a bold warning that the Copyright Ruling Board’s fee hikes threaten to shut down their streaming service.

Suddenly, the apathy melted. Even in the greater Portland area, WMPG can have a shaky signal and the ability to offer a version streamed online helps hundreds if not thousands tune regularly into the station. This is also the way that I tune into the station a lot, since my FM radio at home stinks, and is also how I get to listen to my beloved WWOZ. After Katrina, I sobbed into many shots of bourbon while listening to the sweet sounds of New Orleans croon from my home thousands of miles away. I also stymied my sense of missing the party during Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, when I could raise a glass from the privacy of my home yet still hear the pulse of the Crescent City.

I can’t quantify the loss I’d feel if that signal went silent, but it’d be a big one.

Likewise, though this issue doesn’t effect podcasting (yet!), I know this is how a lot of you hear the show, especially those who want to hear the live version, as rough-hewn and stumbling as it can sometimes be. And even though I don’t tend to listen to internet-only stations, I totally respect what the small-time webcasters have done for the millions of listeners out there, and the diversity of material they’re offering to the world. Taking this all away for the sake of pennies for the media monopolies is a nightmarish thought. We have to defend the places that haven’t yet turned into terrestrial commercial radio!

And so, as the deadline for the fee rollback looms — that’s THIS Sunday, July 15!!! — I urge you, yes you, to immediately contact all of your representatives and beg for them to stand up against the Copyright Ruling Board’s rate hikes by supporting the Internet Radio Equality Act. Even timid ol’ me found contacting Senator Collins, Senator Snowe, and Rep. Tom Allen a pretty painless experience… in fact, the person at Tom Allen’s office actually seemed interested and made me feel like my voice was heard and important. Pretty cool.

Thanks to Save Net Radio, WMPG, and the cool jazz of WWOZ for waking me up to this… And hey, ol’ NPR for their mighty efforts to get these fees revoked as well.

Well, my wild dreams that radio drama might for a moment have an opportunity to be in the public consciousness is squashed as ten utterly non-audio theaterly inclined finalists make it to the upcoming rounds of the Public Radio Talent Quest. That said, all the finalists have spectacular, curiously intriguing “hostiness” profiles and best of luck to them in their ambitions to get their original voices on public radio. I’ll certainly stayed tuned to see the outcome, which I hope achieves the dream of more diverse, maybe even “public” varieties of voices on the radio.

Congrats, everyone!

A point of contention that comes up more than I’d like to while running a pretty unconfrontational radio show is the fine line of decency. While no one’s baring breasts or wagging genitilia about in any of these radio shows, the cryptic FCC rules constitute any reference to sexual or excretory functions as indecent, a pretty vague and encompassing rule that made me hesitant about the moans and groans in Tales from Williamsville, the orgy sound effects in Fall of the Hero, and even the “pissing rain” in Drizzle. Further, the upcoming program featuring Ollin’s Afterhell may have “son of a whore” bleeped out and the mysterious iron fist of the FCC keeps me from featuring an episode I’d prefer to air if I wasn’t hesitant about some very mild sensual subject matter.

Well, I may still not be able to get away with women groaning, but thanks to a New York Court ruling, we may have more opportunities to swear in times of great exultation. In this monumental and absurd ruling, the Vice President and President themselves were cited as examples of why occasionally dropping the F bomb is appropriate in a fleeting context.

While this doesn’t even begin to touch the Puritanical body-loathing at the heart of the FCC’s ban on expressions dealing with sex and shitting, the move is a good slap in the face for the FCC, even if it bolsters the ability of television writers to compensate for flagging scripts with dirty language. Raise a bottle for free speech!

It was pretty cool to stumble across this article in the Guardian Arts Blog which talks about the future of the audio theater, and features some of my opinions on the sad yet hopeful state of affairs (yes, me, quoted in a real newspaper!). I think one of the toughest things radio drama is facing right now is people not realizing its existence. So articles like this that raise awareness are incredibly appreciated!

There’s also an interesting discussion of devices to put “visual’ in the radio… which while they sound interesting, I can’t help but wonder, isn’t the joy of radio is that the only visuals are the ones in your mind?

Anyways, a really great article overall and worth a read, and maybe a comment?

Taking off the radio drama hat for a second, this morning I was writing an article for my company’s Internet Marketing Blog on Building Community for your Blog (yeah, it’s the job that actually pays).  A couple of interesting things crossed my mind while writing on this subject and especially about building up liberal linking habits.

The importance of linking to other authors first hit me while working on the supporting materials for Day of the Dead.  One of my essays — the New Orleans one, I think — received a whole slew of red ink from my instructors after they read probably three to four pages of scholarship with limited citations.  Having spent five years in university, you’d think I’d have taken care of this poor habit (in my defense, it was a draft), but the tricky part with this essay is that I was writing from common knowledge.  Or, at least what I thought was common knowledge (based on chatting with any number of locals in French Quarter dive bars for the past couple years).

While most of what I wrote turned out to be close to true, it was still important to be able to validate my assertions beyond just “I told you so.”  This probably induces a “Well duh” from you, but the point is that linking to other websites is the equivalent technique in Internet terms.  Besides providing evidence that you’ve read about the subject (or at least spent a few minutes Googling it), links make it easier for people to sniff out your trail and follow it to distant reaches of the Internet.  And since a lot of these radio drama sites aren’t terribly, er, optimized for maximum search engine performance, linking is ever so much more important for us to keep interested listeners tuned in to the great diversity of producers that are actually out there.

So, inasmuch as I can, I hope to link here to all of the dramatists whose work I find inspiring, and words I find insightful.

Stumbled across an interesting BusinessWeek analyzing the monetization of podcasting and why it may be trickier for indie podcasters to make a buck where others, such as a-list bloggers, have succeeded.  To be honest, it’s a pretty amazing that anyone can make enough money off a website to quit their job, though I’m certainly not going to turn my nose up at the phenomenon!  I think it definitely points to the power of the direct producer -> audience relationship that the new social media has allowed, and the good old fashioned ingenuity of those savvy enough to come up with ways to take advantage of an extremely accessible audience.  But don’t worry, AdSense will never come to Radio Drama Revival!

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I’ve grown a big fan of the Lit Between the Ears blog written by William Spear of Two Plus Plus Productions. He continually has a high level of discussion about audio work, both the ars poetica and the cultural/economic/political climate that affects how our work is received by the outside world. His “Three Questions” series has interviewed a huge range of voices of authority on radio drama, and I’m happy to say that I’ll be the next!

Make sure you take a look at the Three Questions Interview that’ll be up March 20.

Quoth the New York Times:

Under the ruling released on March 2, Web broadcasters must pay each time a listener hears a song, at a rate that began at 0.08 cent in 2006 (the ruling applies retroactively) and rises to 0.19 cent in 2010. Besides increasing the charge for each song, the ruling established a $500 minimum payment for each Web channel — making it difficult for companies like RealNetworks and Pandora to offer as many different kinds of music as they do now.

“We would have to provide less choice and less diverse programming,” said Robert Kimball, senior vice president for business and legal affairs at RealNetworks. (my emphasis)

Yes, folks, less choice and less diverse programming, thank goodness the Government’s got our backs. So now that we have one or two different terrestrial radio companies, and two — err, one — satellite radio company, we should make such we nip this tricky little Internet radio thing in the bud before it completely destroys the ability of record companies to make a profit. This is a ruling I really hope gets overturned.

In fact, for once NPR and I agree on something. The royalties to be incurred are absurd, and the justification for their existence is an all too familiar story of the record companies doing everything they can to destroy the natural course of music for the sake of profit. Face it, RIAA — music should be, and wants to be freely accessible to everyone. If the bands you produce are any good, they’ll make their money in other ways. And hey, maybe if you were on board with the internet radio stations, you’d actually promote interesting new music and attract new audiences and rake in the bucks with subscription services…

Well, at least what I’m playing isn’t subject to royalties. Play on, everyone!