British Radio Drama, 1945-1963 reveals the quality and range of the avant-garde radio broadcasts from the 'golden age' of British radio drama. Turning away from the cautious and conservative programming that emerged in the UK immediately after World War II, young generations of radio producers looked to French theatre, introducing writers such as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco to British radio audiences. This 'theatre of the absurd' triggered a renaissance of writing and production featuring the work of Giles Cooper, Rhys Adrian and Harold Pinter, as well as the launch of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Based on primary archival research and interviews with former BBC staff, Hugh Chignell places this high-point in the BBC's history in the broader context of British post-war culture, as norms of morality and behavior were re-negotiated in the shadow of the Cold War, while at once establishing the internationalism of post-war radio and theatre.

"British Radio Drama, 1945-1963 reveals the quality and range of the avant-garde radio broadcasts from the 'golden age' of British radio drama. Turning away from the cautious and conservative programming that emerged in the UK immediately after World War II, young generations of radio producers looked to French theatre, introducing writers such as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco to British radio audiences. This 'theatre of the absurd' triggered a renaissance of writing and production featuring the work of Giles Cooper, Rhys Adrian and Harold Pinter, as well as the launch of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop"--

This collection offers an in-depth study of music’s narrative functions in radio drama, whether original or adapted, alongside speech and sound. It features a range of historical perspectives as well as case studies from Australia, Europe and North America, highlighting broadcasting institutions such as the BBC, RAI, ABC, WDR and SWR, from early radio to the medium’s postwar golden age and contemporary productions. Not limited to classical or popular music, the chapters also pay attention to electronic varieties and musical uses of language, in addition to intermedial exchanges with other art forms such as theatre, opera and film. In doing so, the present volume sits at the crossroads of various disciplines: musicology, narratology, history, literary, media, sound and radio studies.

Writing Audio Drama is a comprehensive and intelligent guide to writing sound drama for broadcasting and online production. The book uses new and original research on the history of writing radio plays in the UK and USA to explore how this has informed and developed the art form for more than 100 years. Audio drama in the context of podcasting is now experiencing a global and exponential expansion. Through analysis of examples of past and present writing, the author explains how to originate and craft drama which can explore deeply psychological and intimate themes and achieve emotional, truthful, entertaining, and thought-provoking impact. Practical analysis of the key factors required to write successful audio drama is covered in chapters focusing on audio play beginnings and openings, sound story dialogue, sustaining the sound story, plotting for sound drama and the best ways of ending audio plays. Each chapter is supported by extensive companion online resources expanding and supporting the writers and subjects discussed and explored, and extensive information on how to access online many exemplar and model sound dramas referenced in the chapters. This textbook will be an important resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules and courses on radio drama, theatre and media drama, audio theatre, audio drama, scriptwriting, media writing.

The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting provides a concise yet in-depth overview of the development of radio as a creative and cultural form, from early broadcasting to the digital present. Organized around major aspects of radio's social and political impact - on the arts, on news and documentary, on community, nation, identity, and culture - it draws on contributors from interdisciplinary backgrounds and many nationalities to explore the world of sound-based communication across a century of practice. Links are provided to illustrative sound clips in many chapters, along with chapter-by-chapter audiographies offering digital links to enable further listening.

The first in-depth history of the iconic radio and TV network that has shaped our past and present. Doctor Who; tennis from Wimbledon; the Beatles and the Stones; the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales: for one hundred years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been the preeminent broadcaster in the UK and around the world, a constant source of information, comfort, and entertainment through both war and peace, feast and famine. The BBC has broadcast to over two hundred countries and in more than forty languages. Its history is a broad cultural panorama of the twentieth century itself, often, although not always, delivered in a mellifluous Oxford accent. With special access to the BBC’s archives, historian David Hendy presents a dazzling portrait of a unique institution whose cultural influence is greater than any other media organization. Mixing politics, espionage, the arts, social change, and everyday life, The BBC is a vivid social history of the organization that has provided both background commentary and screen-grabbing headlines—woven so deeply into the culture and politics of the past century that almost none of us has been left untouched by it.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio presents exciting new research on radio and audio, including broadcasting and podcasting. Since the birth of radio studies as a distinct subject in the 1990s, it has matured into a second wave of inquiry and scholarship. As broadcast radio has partly given way to podcasting and as community initiatives have pioneered more diverse and innovative approaches so scholars have embarked on new areas of inquiry. Divided into seven sections, the Handbook covers: - Communities - Entertainment - Democracy - Emotions - Listening - Studying Radio - Futures The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio is designed to offer academics, researchers and practitioners an international, comprehensive collection of original essays written by a combination of well-established experts, new scholars and industry practitioners. Each section begins with an introduction by Hugh Chignell and Kathryn McDonald, putting into context each contribution, mapping the discipline and capturing new directions of radio research, while providing an invaluable resource for radio studies.