Our First Year is Just the Beginning

390 Days, 134 posts, 52 episodes, and nearly 30 hours of audio later, Radio Drama Revival! is proud to announce some sort of anniversary… either this week, last week, or some time in between.  It doesn’t really matter.  All I know is that what started out as a dream quickly became a reality, and even more quickly grew to become something way beyond what I imagined.

I don’t think I’ve ever told the story, but basically I got the idea of starting this show because I wanted to get a definite place to air my own work.  The folks at WMPG were very generous with getting me good air times when I was just starting out, but I still wanted a definite time to carve out for audio theater, and at the same time, figured there was probably plenty of good stuff out there I could air when I didn’t have any of my own work.  And wow, have I found some!

In one short year, in only one short half hour, a lot’s happened on the show:

• We’ve had sci-fi by Dry Smoke and Whispers, Great Northern Audio Theater, Icebox Radio Theatre, Imagination X, Dreamseed, Crazy Dog Audio Theater, and a wacky live one all our own!
• Debuts of everything by FinalRune — Drizzle, Tales from Williamsville, Fall of the Hero and Dark Passenger.  And hey, how ’bout Day of the Dead?
• Exclusive interviews with Roger Gregg, the people behind Wormwood, Mort Castle, Joe Bevilacqua, Joe Medina, Marc Rose and Geral McQuinn, Doug Bost and Jeff Ward, Xander Davis, Jeffrey Adams, Brian Price, Jack Hosley, Lucus Keppel, Craig Wichman and Jay Stern, Gregg Taylor and Scott Hickey.  And many more to come!
• First-hand coverage of the National Audio Theater Festival
• Horror for Halloween — classics like Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, modern stuff, and an exhilirating triple-feature special with HP Lovecraft, Joe R. Lansdale and myself — enough of you downloaded that one to shut the server down!
• … Not to mention sweet Christmas tales, crime capers and something naughty AND nice.
• An attempt to win the Public Radio Quest
• A handful of reviews
• Quicksilver Radio Theatre!  How ’bout Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln’s Last Days?
• Spooky stories from Central Audio Theater, tales from the Afterhell, malevolent ghost stories, and a “Reality Check” thanks to Tee Morris and WanderRadio
• Something like 7000 visitors, about that many downloads, and almost 200 weekly listeners.  Thanks y’all!

Now, despite what’s at least in my opinion a pretty decent track record, by all accounts 2008 looks to totally eclipse what’s happened so far.  Great new audio theater’s coming out every day, and I’m just as excited to air brilliant new work by Roger Gregg as to showcase lesser known /up and coming audio dramatists.  And maybe even produce some more of our content!

The biggest objective, both on this website and www.finalrune.com, is to help cultivate community and discussion for radio drama… encompassing both the craft as well as the fun part — stories!  To that end, I hope to recruit some good guest writers to help me get our rather anemic reviews area rolling as well as provide more coverage on news of interest to audio fiends.  Interested?  Send me an email and we can talk!

Mostly, to 2009 and beyond, I want to keep spreading the word about this amazing format which is reaching new listeners and exploring new territory thanks to the digital technology and the internet.  THANK YOU for listening, and I hope you keep doing it… and if you’re out there, hearing the podcasts, and you like the show… why not comment on an episode?

For now and forever, as I like to say, keep your mind and your ears open.