“None of the people one might expect to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the subject to research it and write about it... have shown much interest in it.” This quote, of course, refers to Radio Drama as an art form and dramatic medium and despite the fact that it has been around longer than television and used to be the primary source of family entertainment, “For some extraordinary reason, radio drama has been almost entirely overlooked by many theatre critics and teachers.” This essay will, in part, rectify this and endeavour to present the history, development, strengths and weaknesses of Radio Drama as a unique dramatic art form presented through a very common place form of mass media: the radio. It’s rise to popularity and it’s subsequent decline along with what the future holds for Radio Drama will also be examined. However, study of Radio Drama could not be complete without first tracing the origins of the radio itself.

The development of the radio broadcasting medium began on both sides of the globe spanning several decades as each new theory spurred on a new advancement in the technology, in most cases simply by inspiring a new idea in the min

Radio broadcasting in Australia began on the 23rd of November 1923. 2SB was Australia’s very first radio station. It’s initial broadcast was of a symphony concert. In December of the same year 2FC went to air, again its first ever programme was a concert. The first two actors of note on the air were husband wife team Ethel Lang and James Gibb, whose work could hardly be described as drama, as they mostly performed sketch comedy as opposed to the more structured format of the radio play. Programmes were often transmitted from theatres and playhouses presented as live broadcasts of musicals, variety shows, plays, or entertainments of a vaudevillian nature during a performance of the show. The Murderous Barber was the first full length play to be broadcast on Australian radio; aired in March 1925, it presented a musical version of the well known story of Sweeney Todd who was, oddly enough a murderous barber. It wasn’t until three years later, in 1927, that a play written specifically for the new medium was produced and aired, this was The Tomb of Osiris by John Pickard, which was broadcast on 2FC and opened the door for the rapid rise in popularity of original radio plays. By 1931 groups of “radio players” had begun operating from studios in both Melbourne and Sydney, adopting the repertory format, common in theatre, whereby a group of actors, the line up largely unchanged from week to week, would rehearse, produce, perform and broadcast a different original radio play in seven day then move on to the next for the following week.

The majority of the work being produced by both the commercial stations and the ABC was not original. Adaptations of books, plays, musicals and even movies were the most popular choices for producers. One exception to this was the serials. These were hugely popular with Australian audiences, some shows running for up to thirty years. Although it was not just in Australia that serials and soap operas were a success, the British and the Americans audiences, it seemed, could not get enough of them. A successful serial could have an audience numbered in the millions. The 1940’s and the 1950’s were considered the “golden years” for the radio soap operas and adventure serials. Adventure serials, aimed at a male audience and, there fore, broadcast in the evenings copied their format from the classic movie serials: Good versus Evil, damsels in distress, the cliffhanger ending to keep the audience coming back and, of course, square jawed heroes the likes of Flash Gordon, Bulldog Drummond and Superman, all of whom became the inspiration for immensely successful radio characters who were essentially exactly the same with a different name. Except for Superman, of course, who was then, and always will be, Superman, and astoundingly popular regardless of the medium he is presented in, which is simply a solid indication of the intertextual haze that seems to permeate all mass media. Other serials drew their inspiration from the pulp novels and magazines of the time, a fine example of this being The Shadow, a mysterious, almost sinister hero, of the type that became more popular in radio adventures in an attempt to compete with Hollywood film noir and retain their audiences.

A far more interesting phenomena was that of the radio soap opera. These were sponsored by big name companies and aimed at a family’s primary consumers:; ie: women. These programmes were written by women, aimed at women and aired during the day when only the “housewives” would be home. As a result, the heroines of these soap operas were presented as much stronger characters than in the adventure serials, with a certain moral ambiguity which allowed the writers to create endless subplots, twists and turns, leading to one open ended episode after the next to keep the audience coming back. These soap operas are unique in the history of radio in that they weren’t based on other material or formats and became the basis for

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