History Of Radio Drama

Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. Radio drama started when networks began adapting short stories, and even writing original scripts, for broadcast.By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the invention of televisions in the 1950s, radio drama lost some of its popularity, and in some countries, for example America, has never regained its large audiences that it once had.

One of the first Radio dramas was “Danger” by Richard Hughes, broadcast by the BBC on January 15, 1924, about a group of people trapped in a Welsh coal mine.

Radio drama has now become a niche market around the world, but is still very popular, in countries such as the U.K .The BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new radio plays each year on Radio 3, Radio 4, and BBC Radio 7. The relatively low cost of producing a radio play enables them to take chances with works by unknown writers. Radio can be a good training ground for beginning drama writers as the words written form a much greater part of the finished product.

You can see from the chart (left) that the boom in radio drama was from 1930s to the early 1940s, and since 2000, there has been an increase in radio listening, this could be down to programmes such as Little Britain and Silver Street.

On the BBC there are two ongoing radio soap operas: The Archers on BBC Radio 4 and Silver Street on the Asian Network.

On October 30, 1938, The Mercury Theatre performed a radio play called "War of the Worlds". It aired for 60 minutes and was based on a science fiction story by H.G. Wells which entailed Martians landing in New Jersey to take over the world. The broadcast imagery produced through sound effects and acting was so powerful, it caused mass hysteria throughout america. Thousands of listeners panicked nationwide, not realizing it was just a radio play, even though disclaimers were announced before and during the production. The broadcast was so shocking that the next day The New York times ran headlines on it; there was a huge negative response to the story as people were petrified it was labelled by some as being cruel and deceptive, but others as genius.