Old’s cool-Podcasts are just the new form of radio play
Prompt: Podcasts are just new the form of radio play
In the week leading up to this task, we were given a handful of radio plays to listen to as the set reading. My engagement with all these different radio plays inspired me to try and make my own short comedy radio play and see if I could successfully work within that space. The whole process got me thinking about the medium a bit more and its history of the radio play. as Natale, (2016) puts it “ [understanding] the history of how ‘new media’ become ‘old media’ is first and foremost a history of how individuals and groups came to consider them as such.
I didn’t have to look very far, since the next class that we had after I had made my radio play was on radio plays and the history of them. Initially, I had thought of radio and radio plays as an outdated medium and that the release of the television had enticed audiences to forget about radio in favor for the newer medium (Patterson, 2016). Patterson (2016) goes on to say that “as creative radio became associated with the past…audience response surrounding creative audio changed”. I think this is very apparent when it comes to both the U.S and Australia where radio play popularity dipped dramatically with the end of what is referred to as the ‘golden age’ of radio.
But, as I found out through the set readings, guest speaker, and my own research was that creative audio has had a very extensive history with the BBC after the ‘golden age’ and that radio plays were/ are still in production to this day (Patterson, 2016). British comedy duo The mighty Boosh (who are a big influence to me creatively) started in radio since the scripts that they were producing were framed as massive, epic adventures that television executives thought would cost too much to make (The mighty Boosh: a history 2005). I would argue the low cost of audio production has played a key role in the revival of creative audio around the world, as Cook (1999) states “radio drama production is much more cost effective than television, film, and theater and reaches a much higher audience in direct proportion to its costs”.
With that in mind, I would argue that podcasting is the modern form of the radio play. Bottomley (2015) goes even further stating that “there is very little about podcasting that is truly new when the full range of radio’s history and forms are taken into account” and that the resurgence of creative audio is just borrowing from old time radio techniques (Bottomley, 2015). The low barrier to entry and low cost of production has inspired a wave of new creative audio of all genres and as a direct result created podcasting networks like Radiotopia, Gilmlet media, Earwolf, Nerdist and Maximum fun (Bottomley, 2015), mirroring the old days of radio broadcast networks in the modern day.
In my opinion, podcasting is just the continuation of old time radio, “that creative radio never died, but rather has been continually produced and aesthetically remade and reconfigured within several cycles of new post network radio cultures (Patterson, 2016).
References
Patterson, E 2016, Radio redux: The persistence of sound work in the post-network era, Madison, Proquest dissertations publishing.
Cook, T, 1999, British radio drama: a cultural case history, viewed 25 of May 2017
<http://www.irdp.co.uk/britad.htm>
The mighty Boosh: a history, 2005, DVD, Baby cow productions, London, England, directed by David Lambit
Bottomley, A 2015, Podcasting: welcome to Nightvale and the revival of radio drama, journal of radio & audio media, 22:2 179-189
Natale, S, 2016, Unveiling the Biographies of Media: On the Role of Narratives, Anecdotes, and Storytelling in the Construction of New Media’s Histories, Wiley online Library