Via Jeff Adams at Sound Stages Radio:

Sounds for Soldiers, the project by audio theater producers all over the world to send 10,000 MP3 CD’s to men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to inch upward on the Pepsi Refresh project.

To remind everyone, that’s a grant Pepsi pays out to worthy causes IF they are voted in the top-ten of their category in an online poll. Everyone can vote once a day, either on the Pepsi Refresh site or by texting the number 101175 to the text number 73774.

Early in the week, we were at 184th. Then we jumped to 87th. Yesterday, we were 79th, and today we’ve climbed to 75th. That means were heading in the right direction, but going pretty slowly. The voting continues until August 31st.

Remember, this is not a “I’ll get there next week and vote,” thing – it’s a “I’ll go their EVERY DAY and vote thing.” Do it at breakfast, do it at dinner, do it as you sit down to surf the web in the evening, just do it! And the other thing? Tell your friends. Forward this message to your email list. Let everyone know.

This idea was originally put forth by veterans who told us men and women serving in forward areas depend on iPods to relax in the middle of the impossibility of combat. That’s the idea, helping the people who are helping us in a very small way.

Now you can donate from your own pocket at http://www.sounds4soldiers.org, but if you don’t want to give money, just vote daily in the Pepsi refresh project. Thanks for your time.

This is a very worthy cause, so cast your votes now!

To follow up on our coverage of BBC announcing the end of the Friday play, today it was reported that the BBC has made a commitment to keeping radio drama free from cuts for the near future.

The Stage News quotes BBC head of radio drama Alison Hindell as saying:

We are still the biggest broadcaster of radio drama in the world by miles and make hundreds and hundreds of titles – a claim that Hollywood can’t make. We now have to say, let’s guard that stronghold. And part of my job is to protect that.

So, not as dire a prediction as some fans felt after the Friday Play disappeared, but still not quite the moment to break out the champagne.

Still, as Roger Gregg pointed out last we chatted, radio drama’s only sustainable way to survive (at least on broadcast radio) is to adapt to new listening habits and become accessible to the iPod generation.

One podcast at a time

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!

What can I say, I’m giddy beyond words.

My own audio drama group, FinalRune Productions, was featured in the Wall Street Journal on February 25, 2010.

The article, entitled “Return With Us to the Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear—Via the Internet,” heavily focused on FinalRune’s signature field recording style and director Fred Greenhalgh’s passion for reviving audio drama in an age of the iPod.

I’ll let the article speak for itself, and wait, there’s more… great video!!!

Radio Drama Revival wants to offer huge congratulations to Yuri Rasovsky and Roger Gregg for achieving nominations for two separate, yet equally big awards.

Yuri Rasovsky’s The Maltese Falcon was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album, an enormous accomplishment for an audio drama.

And jeez, if you haven’t listened to The Maltese Falcon yet, do! I raved about it in a review I did a few months ago because it deserved it, and much more. It’s one of the best audio mysteries you’ll hear.

While the actual award went to Michael J. Fox’s, Always Looking Up, let’s congratulate Yuri again for bringing audio drama to a major awards night.

Our compatriot across the sea, Roger Gregg, has been nominted for his country’s Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Sound Design for his work in Barrabbas Theatre’s Johnny Patterson: The Singing Irish Clown.

While this doesn’t honor his radio drama work directly, his sound design is, of course, a direct byproduct of his excellent work in audio drama and the nomination is a huge honor.

Not being from Ireland, I asked Roger what these awards were about. He simply put, “in Ireland these are THE Awards. The only ones that matter when it comes to professional theatre.”

Congratulations again Roger and Yuri, it’s a great day for audio drama when two of our own get the recognition they deserve!