An essential guide for anyone who dreams of penning tomorrow's radio classics.

The free-standing radios of the middle decades of the 20th century were invitingly rotund and proudly displayed--nothing like today's skinny televisions hidden inside "entertainment centers." Radios were the hub of the family's after-dinner activities, and children and adults gorged themselves on western-adventure series like "The Lone Ranger," police dramas such as "Calling All Cars," and the varied offerings of "The Cavalcade of America." Shows often aired two or three times a week, and many programs were broadcast for more than a decade, comprising hundreds of episodes. This book includes more than 300 program logs (many appearing in print for the first time) drawn from newspapers, script files in broadcast museums, records from NBC, ABC and CBS, and the personal records of series directors. Each entry contains a short broadcast history that includes directors, writers, and actors, and the broadcast dates and airtimes. A comprehensive index rounds out the work.

Radio drama has been around for more than one hundred years and is still vibrant in many countries. A narrative-dramatic genre and art form in its own right, radio drama has traditionally crossed medial and generic boundaries and continues to do so in our age of digitization. Audionarratology: Lessons from Audio Drama, edited by Lars Bernaerts and Jarmila Mildorf, explores radio drama from a narratological angle. The contributions cover key questions surrounding audiophonic meaning-making, storyworld creation, mediation, focalization, suspense, unreliability, and ambiguity as well as the relationship between script and performance, seriality, antinarrative tendencies, and radio drama's political implications now and in its early days. The book thus explores the interplay between sound, voices, music, language, silence, electroacoustic manipulation, and narrative structures. Providing examples from American, Australian, British, Dutch, and German radio drama--such as I Love a Mystery, The War of the Worlds, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--this book has important insights for scholars working in transmedial narratology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, and communication studies as well as for practitioners and lovers of radio drama alike.

For generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a “theater of the mind.” This book unpacks that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In Theater of the Mind, Neil Verma applies an array of critical methods to more than six thousand recordings to produce a vivid new account of radio drama from the Depression to the Cold War. In this sweeping exploration of dramatic conventions, Verma investigates legendary dramas by the likes of Norman Corwin, Lucille Fletcher, and Wyllis Cooper on key programs ranging from The Columbia Workshop, The Mercury Theater on the Air, and Cavalcade of America to Lights Out!, Suspense, and Dragnet to reveal how these programs promoted and evolved a series of models of the imagination. With close readings of individual sound effects and charts of broad trends among formats, Verma not only gives us a new account of the most flourishing form of genre fiction in the mid-twentieth century but also presents a powerful case for the central place of the aesthetics of sound in the history of modern experience.

The first novel in #1 New York Times bestselling author Jan Karon’s beloved series set in America’s favorite small town: Mitford. It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet, Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's sixty years old. Suddenly, Father Tim gets more than he bargained for. And readers get a rich comedy about ordinary people and their ordinary lives.

Audio Drama is unique. There’s no other book like it. First it’s aimed at the vast audience for audio drama, whether in the form of traditional radio plays or as podcasts. For them, Audio Drama provides the opportunity to see how ten literary classics were dramatised for radio, and to recreate the performances for themselves as they read. Secondly, it’s for all those podcast producers who are keen to exercise their imagination and technical skills by producing audio drama for their followers. These ten scripts provide the raw material from which podcasters can craft their own drama productions. The works on which they are based are literary classics and are in the public domain. The audio dramatisations – all of which have been, or are about to be, produced and broadcast either by the BBC or across the USA – are offered to the global community of podcasters with no strings attached. An experienced dramatist and abridger, with more than 50 BBC radio dramatisations under his belt, Neville Teller not only presents 10 of his scripts, but also explains something of how a radio drama script is crafted. Audio Drama fills a niche that will appeal on both sides of the pond, and more widely in the whole English-speaking world.

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories gathers together in one magnificent volume all of Agatha Christie’s short stories featuring her beloved intrepid investigator, Miss Marple. It’s an unparalleled compendium of murder, mayhem, mystery, and detection that represents some of the finest short form fiction in the crime fiction field, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans. Described by her friend Dolly Bantry as “the typical old maid of fiction,” Miss Marple has lived almost her entire life in the sleepy hamlet of St. Mary Mead. Yet, by observing village life she has gained an unparalleled insight into human nature—and used it to devastating effect. As her friend Sir Henry Clithering, the ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, has been heard to say: “She’s just the finest detective God ever made”—and many Agatha Christie fans would agree.

Throughout the world, the media is used in various ways to promote social awareness and initiate social development. Of all the available means of communication, radio is still the one with the maximum reach in most developing countries. This book, the first in a three-book series titled Communication for Behavior Change, offers extremely practical guidance on how to design, write, and produce radio dramas aimed at motivating social change. Written by a leading teacher and practitioner of Entertainment–Education, it is the only available book which provides complete and hands-on instructions for creating successful radio serial dramas for behavior change. The text is interspersed with examples which show how entertainment and education have been woven together to create awareness programs that are both popular and effective. Extracts from several successful scripts from many countries are also provided to demonstrate what has previously clicked with the audience.