Radio Dramas for our Radio Show!

Since this week’s assignment page calls for us to brainstorm some ideas for our radio show project later in the semester, I propose we do something with radio dramas!

Radio dramas are dramatized, acoustic performances. Since there is no visual component, radio dramas depends on whatever dialogue, music, and sound effects we use to help listeners imagine the characters and story. Radio dramas became very popular starting in the 1920s, but began to lose ground with the advent of television in the 1950s. Now days we have television, internet streaming sources, and free internet radio that make these programs seem as if they are non-existent since many of us forego listening to them in our fast-paced digital lives.

I personally love radio dramas, because they can make your mind visualize things in a way television and movies cannot. Essentially you are only given the dialogue and sound effects to work with, while your mind does the rest of the work! I still listen to radio dramas today, mainly the Big Finish radio dramas they create in association with the BBC. I’m a pretty big Doctor Who fan, and there are so many radio dramas out there connected to Doctor Who I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to them all!

However, the idea I propose for this assignment would be to reimagine an old radio drama. You can find quite a few old radio dramas on Internet Archive’s Old Time Radio and I have also discovered Generic Radio Workshop has an entire library full of vintage radio scripts.

We could either use one of these scripts (giving credit and respecting copyright, of course) and recreate the show in our own image, or take inspiration and try to make one ourselves. I personally like the idea of turning one of the characters in Bob Ross, or someone like Bob Ross (i.e. mannerism, the way he talks, or even using audio from his show) to include in the program! The best part is that these radio dramas can be from any genre! Some of the more popular dramas include science fiction (including the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast), crime-noir, mystery, procedural shows (crime solving or court proceedings), and many, many more! I would suggest anyone looking through this to take a look at Internet Archive and look up some dramas to better understand the genre.

I would absolutely love to recreate a radio drama with our modern sound equipment and engineering. I think it would be really cool and could easily produce a 20-30 broadcast all on its own!