ZBS and other audio shows…

Cafe Society
1

Lately I’ve been revisiting the Jack Flanders series of adventure/fantasy audio put out by ZBS.

(Bonus points to you if you know what ZBS is before reading my post!)

ZBS Media is a production company for audio shows. Not books-on-tape, but drama, comedy, mystery, fantasy shows native to radio.

You don’t hear many of these any more. Once upon a time, they were all around. I remember fondly as a child, being driven home on Friday or Saturday nights from wherever it was the family had gone, listening to reruns of The Shadow on the radio. When I got my own stereo as a teenager, I searched for shows like this, finally finding a PBS station broadcasting The Empire Strikes Back as a radio production. Later, this same channel played Fourth Tower of Inverness, by ZBS.

I don’t hear these on the radio these days, but you can order them over the internet, and I’ve been getting CD’s to listen to. Any other fans of the obscure Jack Flanders’ series out there? How about other audio drama?

2

I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but This American Life on PRI is kind of like that. It uses all kinds of different types of radio entertainment; short stories, drama, essays, human interest, and news. You can hear almost all of the archived shows on the website in RealAudio.

3

BBC Radio 7 in the UK broadcasts radio serials like this. They do webcast but I’m not sure that the programming would be to American tastes.

Here’s the link anyway:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/index.shtml