I did like the way GK put it. TV fits on that little screen. You can get a bigger TV, but it still ends at the edges of the screen. Radio drama, or whatever, does not have those physical limitations. It extends outward to the limits of your imagination. Or something to that effect.
Now, if we can just train people to exercise their imaginations, rather than being spoon-fed images.
Eventually they stopped the original productions, and then, KNX, at least–the station that aired them in L.A.–changed to just playing really old productions of various radio shows.
This would support kanobi 65’s point that, while there is an audience, it’s not enough to support the cost of new productions. KNX dropped that drama hour about 15 years ago, but it might have continued had they had something more current. While they had a few good programs (like The Third Man), in the end they mostly were playing just about anything, and a lot of it was–in my opinion–just not very good, regardless of the age.
There is a certain audience who will listen to just about any old-timey radio–the nostalgia audience. It doesn’t matter how bad it is: they just listen to it because it’s old time radio. Some non-commercial stations have special broadcast for them, but that audience couldn’t sustain new productions, I believe.
Similar to a book on tape, it’s probably easier to listen to them in the car/bus/train.
We have a “Readers’ Theater”, where the cast will set up five or six microphones at an old folks’ home to record their versions of old radio dramas. And the residents get to relive their salad days.
Great idea, though I wonder how hard it is to edit out Ol’ Man Jablonski’s snoring.
Right. Never say never, given that community radio exists and some OTR fan could take a notion to perform some new scripts in the booth at a college radio station in the back end of nowhere, but anything people listen to will be like Welcome To Night Vale or Wolf 359 or The Truth or any of the others from this list or this list or this list or this list or any other lists you might find. Seriously: The death of a medium (radio) does not mean the death of a genre or a form.
When I was a lad, CBS Radio Mystery Theater ran at 11pm. Because it had a theme that fit the late-evening broadcast. Which was good, because I was in bed by then. Works pretty well to be lying in bed in the dark, listening to stories designed to give you bad dreams. The one that sticks in my mind was the executive who had a heart condition, so the doctor prescribed a cat (to teach him how to relax).
As a kid, I fondly remember traveling with the family at night. And listening to radio dramas in the Pontiac Chieftan. But this before color TV.
As and adult I enjoyed Tres Patinas a pre-Castro Cuban theater. It is a hoot!
But, like others have said, there are so many sources today that can provide entertainment. But, if you had a good script and an exclusive it could work.
BBC4 is a digital TV channel. Radio 4 is the BBC’s speech/news radio channel (and AFAIK they don’t mind overseas audiences accessing it on the internet, unlike their TV channels).
PS: maybe not entirely relevant here, but radio drama has been considered a serious and significant art form in Germany for quite a while:
https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/med/20746648.html
There’s also Radio 4 Extra (Radio 7 as was), which broadcasts nothing but old radio dramas/comedies.
What significant distinction are we making between “radio drama” and “podcast?”
It’s not clear to me whether the OP was asking about specifically drama that was broadcast on the radio, or whether (s)he was asking about audio drama no matter how it was made available.
^That
You might find some old timers that would get into it, but the rest of America is hooked into ultra high definition visual effects. I can’t imagine them listening to a story and creating the images in their minds, I really can’t.
Spent many a night in our cabin in the northern Minnesota woods listening to CBSRMT. We didn’t have electricity there so reading books by lamplight or listening to a battery powered radio were our entertainment. It was fantastic.
Which explains why nobody listens to people read books.
Nope.
Nobody.
Absolutely nobody listens to what Audible produces.
(Why do I bother? You aren’t going to get my sarcasm.)
Obviously there’s no market for broadcasting audio dramas over the radio. That’s not going to work, because Americans don’t listen to the radio anymore except in their cars while driving to work. That market is dead, dead, dead.
But Americans listen to a metric shitload of long-form audio, in the form of audiobooks and podcasts.
So what the OP wants already exists.
CBC did it as recently as 2011. Between three hundred and six hundred thousand listeners a week on radio and online.
It is not just that we are used to high definition visual effects, we are used to on demand entertainment.
The pictures are better on radio.
I also remember listening to it when I was a teen. I can still remember the opening of every show: “The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents… (sound of creaking door closing). Hello, I am E.G. Marshall…”
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!