Recently I came across a newspaper article, the gist of which I’d like to share with other GRB members. It suggests still another form that original radio drama could take in the Nineties and beyond, if broadcasters could be convinced.
The Instigator
In New York, 71-year-old Irwin Gonshak, a retired high-school teacher and script supervisor for local educational station WNYE, is the driving force behind a campaign by the Writers Guild of America East to bring back to radio the kind of drama we knew during the Golden Age but in a shorter format perhaps more suited to today’s impatient audiences.
Right up-front Mr. Gonshak admits he is not an old-time-radio buff seeking out lost episodes of radio shows from the Forties. Rather, he and the Guild would like to see modern dramas but in bite-size chunks, perhaps three to five minutes long, written expressly for and tailored to today’s audiences of commercial radio stations.
Tailored To Fit
Rock-music stations, for instance, might feature action dramas. Classical-music stations might prefer more sedate, high-toned material.
"I look at today’s America," Mr. Gonshak says, "which is America on the run, bombarded by short bursts of information: news, weather, traffic, one-minute film reviews, 30-second advertisements. So why not short-short drama?"
He admits that, as a kid, he enjoyed the programs of the day. "One of my great thrills," he recalls, "was that if I was sick I could stay home all day and listen to the radio soaps, one after the other."
It’s just that in today’s society he feels a more rapid pace is needed. "I say old-time radio is good, but it’s not for our time."
A Demonstration
In 1998 the Writers Guild kicked off its campaign by staging a live, lunch-hour demonstration of three bite-size mysteries in the atrium of the Citicorp Center. Several hundred persons gathered to watch and listen to the performers, one of whom was Joyce Randolph, best known as Trixie in TV’s The Honeymooners.
As a follow-up, Mr. Gonshak is approaching various radio stations with possible miniprograms. To a business-oriented station he suggested several thrillers related to money.
To a music station that features Sinatra and the like, he suggested a short dramatization based on Cole Porter’s "Miss Otis Regrets."
"She’s going to be hanged," he said, "so she can’t make it to lunch. It’s a great radio drama."
__________________
Reference: Joanne Kaufman, "Stay Tuned for Radio Drama Renaissance," The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1998, p. W3.