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

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!

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.

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!

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.

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…

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?

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.

Congrats, everyone!

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!

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?

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.

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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For all my podcast listeners, I will of course be adding it post-facto, but if you’re in the Portland, Maine area or close to a computer you can listen to the live show at 1PM EST. Stream by clicking the link above, or tune in at 90.9/104.1 FM.

It all starts as an ordinary day at the station, with Stephanie Sample in the studio to talk about her latest adventures. But, a rocket ship crashing outside with exiled space DJs makes things a whole lot weirder. A land where all the media has been consolidated in the hands of an evil empire, where proponents of free speech are imprisoned and have to flee for their lives to distant galaxies?what planet are these guys from?

A whole lot of laughs, and hopefully a few bucks for the station. And hey, call in to pledge your support for Radio Stories, and let people know I have an audience! I’ve got a big pile of double-CD sets of my FinalRune Productions audio stories for anyone who donates more than $30.

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

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!

Well, it seems MPBN is setting an ultimatum with the humble Farmer after some more objectionable political opines went out on the air. The problem with stating your opinion, I guess, is that it may be misconstrued as the station’s opinion despite the fact that the opinion is wrapped in humor. And as we all know, MPBN, and all of public radio, is entirely politically neutral.

I don’t want to get too much into the specifics, as I’m not a journalist and have to take this story at face value, but I’ve long been lukewarm as to the operation of so-called “public” radio as it’s mostly a pipeline for national programming, classical music, and a whole lot of literati banter. The network does anything but reflect the diversity and local culture, and this attack, however well-warranted, against one of their few shows that features true local flavor, is unfortunate.

I guess we shouldn’t expect a station that takes government bucks to welcome lively political opinions, though the other question raised is why the national political programming from NPR seems to be subjected to a different set of standards (as they have plenty of political humor, much of it at Bush’s expense). I also wonder why an organization that receives over 75% of its revenue from local listeners has such a small amount of local programming. Does all of Maine really donate to MPBN so they can listen to another edition of Car Talk?

With on-demand programming growing in versatility, radio remaining and increasingly becoming expensive, and an increase in the number of NPR products available on satellite radio, I begin to wonder what the future of our rather sad public media is.

So how do you add video to an audio endeavor without destroying it? This was pretty much at the heart of the live show and an issue Ira still obviously struggles with, though his clear enthuasism for his work and this experiment is contagious. The event itself took place in Boston’s Opera House, a beautiful, ornately adorned building with echoes of European cathedrals and classical theaters — a setting more “high art” than edgy. Boston’s literati was in full force, with a collegiate crowd sporting Harvard blazers, gray-haired poetry professors, 20-something socialites, and a stunning variety of well dressed people in between.

The format of the live show was the same as any of Ira’s regular shows, with a special “act” exclusively for us at the live show. The theme of the night, “What I Learned from Television,” was supported by a cast of TAL regulars, including Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Goldstein, and Dan Savage.

Sarah Vowell started by deconstructing the use of pilgrims and Thanksgiving in television. While her nasally voice might turn off some, it’s unique hers and she delivers her writing with a bone dry wit that is electrifying, grim and terrible. Who knew that there was a short-lived series that made fun of the whole premise of Thanksgiving? We’ve all seen the Indians and turkeys, but maybe not thought too hard about this societal construct. There followed a gut-laughing treatise of the awkward friendship of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, and a closing narrative of the portrayals of homo and heterosexual relationships on the boob tube.? All readers were solid, though not the back-and-forth explorational interviews that make the radio show so compelling.
Between acts Ira stopped in for some editorializing and commentary on the television program. He was neither embarassed to admit his love for the OC or his esteem for modern television writing. Quite honestly, this is what we came for, and Ira delivered with class, wit, and measured levels of self-deprecating humor. The Showtime show looks great, and the candid conversation between Glass and director Chris Wilcha revealed some interesting perspectives on one of my favorite subjects, the artistic difference of audio and video+audio. I don’t really want to give anything away, but the show has a slight surrealist edge that lends itself well to the unbearably real stories This American Life is so famous for (check out the trailer for a taste).

Tied together with a live band (Mates of State) that fit the mood appropriately, “What I Learned from Television” was a great way to spend an evening with ample parts humor, artistic discussion, and social commentary. Though I still don’t own a TV, nor would I ever pay for cable, I’m excited for the Showtime efforts and hope the show makes it onto YouTube!

I was actually just sitting on the fence about buying an XM radio — solely for Sonic Theater.? Now I’m not so sure.? Our fate, as media listeners, falls now in the hands of the FCC.? May God have mercy on all of us.