Radio Plays

What is a Radio Play?Radio Play: ALSO audio drama, audio play, radio drama, radio theater is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance (voices) broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD or now more commonly known as the podcast. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: “It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension.”

Back in the 1920’sThey did not have TV, they did not have iPod’s or movie theatres this was their entertainment! It was a huge deal! Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, and in some countries, has never regained large audiences. Why do you think Radio lost its appeal?

Types of Radio PlaysComedy, Dramatic, Soap Operas, Mystery, Western, Fairy Tale. War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast causes panicOn Sunday, October 30, 1938, millions of radio listeners were shocked when radio news alerts announced the arrival of Martians. They panicked when they learned of the Martians' ferocious and seemingly unstoppable attack on Earth. Many ran out of their homes screaming while others packed up their cars and fled.Though what the radio listeners heard was a portion of Orson Welles' adaptation of the well-known book, War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, many of the listeners believed what they heard on the radio was real.

Radio Play’s TodayRadio drama has a minimal presence on terrestrial radio in the United States as well as Canada. Much of American radio drama is restricted to rebroadcasts or podcasts of programs from previous decades. However, other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama. In the United Kingdom, for example, the BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new radio plays each yearWho has listened to a radio play before or podcasts?What makes them interesting?