Revolution in the Echo Chamber

Leslie Grace McMurtry

Description

Revolution in the Echo Chamber is a sociohistorical analysis of British and US radio and audio drama from 1919 to the present day. This volume examines the aesthetic, cultural and technical elements of audio drama along with its context within the literary canon. In addition to the form and development of aural drama, Leslie Grace McMurtry provides an exploration of mental imagery generation in relation to its reception and production. Building on historical analysis, Revolution in the Echo Chamber provides contemporary perspective, drawing on trends from the current audio drama environment to analyse how people listen to audio drama, including podcast drama, today – and how they might listen in the future.

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction – Why Bother with Audio Drama?

Chapter 1: Audio drama in the context of the literary canon

Chapter 2: Audio drama and listening

Chapter 3: Audio drama techniques and effects

Section 2 – History (1919–2010)

Chapter 4: British radio drama (1919–60)

Chapter 5: US radio drama (1919–60)

Chapter 6: Why US audio drama died and British audio drama survived

Chapter 7: The ascendance of the background medium: Drama on American and British radio, 1960–2010 

Section 3 – Audio Drama Today

Chapter 8: Current British audio drama

Chapter 9: Current US audio drama

Section 4 – The Future of Audio Drama

Chapter 10: Listening now

Chapter 11: The post-Serial world and listeners of the future

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Social Science
• COMPUTERS
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Señal de audio
• Reference
• General officer
• Design
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Radio
• Audio

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789380439
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2019 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2019 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2019 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Production manager: Naomi Curston
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-982-8
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-044-6
ePUb ISBN: 978-1-78938-043-9
Printed and bound by Gomer, UK.
In memory of Nigel Jenkins (1949–2014) and Laurence Raw (1959–2018)
To listeners of audio drama everywhere
Radio ‘turns the psyche and society into a single echo chamber’.
– Marshall McLuhan (1964)
Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why Bother with Audio Drama?
Section I: Audio Drama in Context
Chapter 1: Audio Drama in the Context of the Literary Canon
How to treat radio drama
Radio drama as high and low art
A deluge of dirt?
Against the Storm (1939–42)
The Country and the City and The Archers in Middle England
The radio western
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Audio Drama and Listening
Listening is centripetal
One and many
Modes of listening
Understanding listening
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Audio Drama Techniques and Effects
How is audio drama made?
The role of the actor in audio drama
The role of the director and producer in audio drama
Creating a soundscape
The architecture of time
Previously unheard worlds
Painting a picture
Dialect
Heightened language
Audiopositioning
When we might like earlids
Sex and violence on air
Conclusion
Section II: History (1919–2010)
Chapter 4: British Radio Drama (1919–60)
The birth of broadcasting (1895–1918)
The British Broadcasting Company (1922–26)
The BBC: Ambition and control (1927–39)
Europe at war (1939–45)
Post-war content (1945–55)
The 1950s: The Golden Age of British radio drama
Conclusion
Chapter 5: US Radio Drama (1919–60)
Spies, detectives, crime-fighters and victims
Tinkering (1901–20)
The Radio Act of 1927 (1920–27)
Early advertising (1927–30)
The Columbia Workshop and art vs. commodity (1935–40)
Genre and audience (1940–55)
Post-war radio trends (1945–55)
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Why US Audio Drama Died and British Audio Drama Survived
Commercial advertising and control in the United States
US network executives shape policy
Censorship and TV
The BBC and US radio policy
Let’s pretend: Was there any US radio drama 1948–58 that could have saved the genre?
Chapter 7: The Ascendance of the Background Medium: Drama on US and British Radio (1960–2010)
Radio drama in Britain (1960–2010)
Radio drama in the United States (1960–2010)
Conclusion
Section III: Audio Drama Today
Chapter 8: Current British Audio Drama
Structure and strands
BBC radio drama, body of work: Statistics
BBC radio drama: Range of work
Range of work: Anecdotal evidence
Audiences
iPlayer
The gamechanger and Life and Fate
Alternatives to the BBC
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Current US Audio Drama
A tyranny of choice
Serial
What does public service broadcasting mean in the United States?
Audiobooks
Performatory OTR recreations
Satellite audio drama
Audio drama podcasts
Conclusion
Section IV: The Future of Audio Drama
Chapter 10: Listening Now
Shrimp sale at the Crab Crib: Advertising in podcasting paradise?
Serial’s sophomore slump
Serial’s audience: Those who don’t listen
Conclusion
Chapter 11: The Post- Serial World and Listeners of the Future
Throw us your pennies and we’ll make you a kingdom
A rewrite of US communications legislation
Where do we go from here?
Audio drama in the political landscape
Conclusion: We’re Listening
Appendices
Appendix 1 – Methodology: Statistics on BBC Radio Drama
Appendix 2 – British winners of the Prix Italia and Prix Europa in Radio Drama since
Appendix 3 – Panel of experts for Radio Times survey
Appendix 4 – Audio drama awards
References
Index
Acknowledgements

‘On the other hand, if I want to intrigue my interlocutor, I say, I write and produce cultural programs for public radio.’ This works unless the questioner is in professional sports or commercial broadcasting, or a Republican. I never tell them outright that I make radio plays because the quizzical looks I get depress me. Lately, ‘I make audiobooks’ often leads to further pleasant chat.
– Yuri Rasovsky, ‘What exactly does a producer do?’
This book had a long gestation period. I would like to thank the following for their guidance and help throughout the process of bringing it to birth. Many thanks to my supervisors, David Britton and Richard Robinson, for their help during the period this project was conceived as my Ph.D. thesis. I am also indebted to Alan Bilton and Laurence Raw. Thanks are also necessary to those at the BBC who answered my questions: Alison Hindell, Caroline Raphael and Sharon Terry. As I spent a substantial amount of time in the British Library, St Pancras, thanks to all the staff there and particularly Ian Rawes and the Listening and Viewing Services. I am grateful to those who allowed me to interview them for the book: Kip Allen, Rick Huff, Linda López-McAlister, Wil Moore, John Pilkington and Fiona Thraille. Further thanks go to the organisers of In the Dark, Dorota Babilas, Alec Badenoch, Rick Coste, Kevin Curran, Andrew Dubber, Isabel Ermida, Nele Haise, Donna Halpern, Mary Traynor, Neil Jones, Leonard Kuffert, Denis Lachapelle, Jason Loviglio, Jamie Medhurst, Janne Nielsen, Andrew Ó’Baoill, Robert Ready, Seán Street, Heidi Svømmekjær and Hans-Ulrich Wagner. For ideas, inspiration, and critique, I am especially indebted to Hugh Chignell, Danielle Hancock, Nora Patterson, Alison Plant, Emma Rodero, Jennifer Stoever, Jack J. Ward and Frederick Greenhalgh. Special thanks to Mr Greenhalgh for permission to use his photos. As I completed this book as a lecturer at the University of Salford, I am grateful to my colleagues on the BA in Television and Radio for their insights and support. I also want to thank the staff at Intellect for their professionalism and their patience while developing this book, including Tim Mitchell, Jelena Stanovnik, Alex Szumlas and especially Naomi Curston.
A number of people had to put up with me during the eight or so years of this book’s conception and development. I would like to thank Aya Vandenbuscche and Juha Niesniemi for their contributions. I am also indebted to my better half, Jamie Beckwith, who read drafts of this book in its every iteration (though I’ve not yet converted him to a podcast-listener). My family’s unwavering support was invaluable to me, so big thanks to Christina Young, Illene Renfro, Sally Renfro and Lura Renfro. And last but never least, to my parents, Carol Renfro and Larry McMurtry, who have always believed in me.
Introduction

Why Bother with Audio Drama?
Radio-drama is in fact such an extraordinarily personal and private matter that it may be difficult to avoid appearing egotistical in writing about it.
– Lance Sieveking (1934)
‘W hy bother with audio drama?’ In a world that seems so predisposed towards the visual, sound is often relegated to second-best. 1 As several sound theorists have pointed out, in Aristotle’s parable of the cave of ignorance, it is the light not the sound that leads the lost person to safety. Paradoxically, sound is often felt to be so omnipresent as to be insignificant background noise. Jo Ann Tacchi has described radio’s central yet invisible position as being as ubiquitous as brushing your teeth (1997: 106). Furthermore, sound studies are underdeveloped compared to other media studies (Attali 2013: 25). Hugh Chignell’s Key Concepts in Radio Studies in 2009 was the first book to have the words ‘radio studies’ in the title, a signal of increasing scholarly interest in radio generally. Yet radio remains underresearched (Crook 1999a: 3), including radio drama. In addition to being underresearched, there is another challenge facing audio drama: its state on the margins of many people’s experiences, in comparison to more widely recognized forms of audio-visual media like film and television. Radio drama is frequently on young people’s peripheries. Guy Starkey noted:
A common reaction to the proposition that they should produce drama, among students working with radio early in their careers, is surprise that anyone should even contemplate such an activity. Although inevitably exposed to various short forms of drama in their own listening, in, for example, radio advertisements […] they do not always perceive radio’s potential for longer works of 90 minutes or more.
(2004: 180)
Although the popularity of podcasts is making in-roads in perceptions of audio drama, for the majority of Americans at least, radio drama died in the 1960s – or, for many British people, it is vaguely experienced in passing, something for old people. So why bother with it?
But is radio what these young people think it is? What is radio? This may seem a naïve question, but it remains extremely relevant. In 2018, Dr Janey Gordon at the University of Bedfordshire asked this very question to the Radio-Studies JISC Mail e-mail newsgroup (Gordon 2018). For many observers, digital radio itself remains the barometer of radio’s elasticity of form, ‘increasingly the preferred platform for the continuity and modernization’ of radio’s ‘languages, narratives, practices and, [ sic ] identities’ (Fernández-Quijada 2017: 77). Podcasting, too, has significantly changed the audio landscape. In their introduction to the 2016 special edition of The