They were at their peak popularity naturally when radio was the number one platform of broadcasting in the first half of the 20th century. Most famously Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds which caused a big controversy as many listeners were led to believe they were hearing a real broadcast of an alien invasion.
Even if they have long seized dominance as the popular medium, they’re still produced in many countries. And I recently saw a news segment saying due to the consequences of Covid on theatre and stage performance there is very likely going to be a resurgence in dramas being made for audio.
I enjoy listening to old stuff that is archived online but also some newly produced plays (mainly mystery genre or sci-fi).
And there are some podcasts where amateur/ordinary people like you and me get together to create their own series for listening maybe once a month or so.
I am not a fan of audiobooks for the reason that it tends to go in one ear and out the other. Reading the text of the book and absorbing it visually matters to me. But when it comes to stories being broadcast over the airwaves with actors and actresses taking the role of characters then I can listen to it very happily when out for a long distance drive for example.
Your timing is impeccable! Thanks for the link it’s exactly what I’ve been searching for today on hoopla and Libby ( online public library catalogs).
I’m listening to a dramatization of The Hobbit, which is very engaging and fun to listen to with different actors and sound effects.
Yes, I discovered them thru my Audible subscription (my first was Off With Their Heads). I’m a little surprised they haven’t surged in popularity this year with film & television production shut down, and then resumed with many complex restrictions.
I guess it’s been covered, but a middle ground between audiobooks and plays is the full-cast recording, also called a dramatization.
Even ordinary books come to life like that… I have some Dick Francis and a G.K. Chesterton that are fun.
(So I often search for “radio dramas” and “full-cast” or "dramatization. And ‘OTR’ for old detective shows… and “The Shadow”, my personal favorite)
Oh, and I have an app that’ll save just the audio from a YouTube file, and sometimes a play will have distinct enough voices to work like that. Especially if it’s a play that’s well-known enough (some Shakespeare and Goldsmith, and Mamet… oh, and Waiting for Godot, of course)
Over the summer I completed a wonderful sci-fi production from the BBC in the 1950s called Journey Into Space. It’s divided into three parts: Operation Luna, The Red Planet and World In Peril. Captain Jet Morgan leads his crew to accomplish the first ever lunar landing only for things to go awry. And then take a wild turn. It’s science fiction/adventure/psychological thriller all in one and the production values to create the scenery through great voice acting, musical interludes, and sound effects was excellent. I would highly recommend it to anyone. The character development as they sink deeper into the story is phenomenal. It was the last British radio program to attract a larger audience than what was on television and 60 years later I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I also have just finished a much quicker series called The Deca Tapes which is only eight episodes longer but also outstanding to listen to. This is another science fiction theme with a locked room murder mystery twist. And what I especially like about this production is each episode is told from the point of view in diary form of one of the ten people who find themselves in a mysterious location with a specific set of instructions and a specific role which they have no recollection of how they got there, why they are there, and for who they are with.