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Winter 2019 www.otrr.org No. 105 Contents DIY: A Show of One’s Own difficult. But it can all be broken down into doable steps, so take DIY: Your Own First in a series of articles by Joseph Radio Drama 1 Kessler Adamsty heart. You, too, can create your own “House in Cypress If you have listened to radio Do-It-Yourself Radio Theater. Canyon” 5 theater for a while and developed a Know Your History Wistful Vistas 5 passion for it as an art form, it may have occurred to you that there are Before you recreate the wheel, it Book Review 11 is a good idea to know what has very few groups doing radio with a Blog Profile 11 gone before. And the Old Time modern twist. A show of one’s own. Purchasing This does not mean there are no Radio Researchers is a great Groups 12 resource for the kind of self- groups. There are many. Some Inner Sanctum produce shows to emulate the shows education in radio history. The era Premium 12 between 1935 and 1960, a mere 25 and styles they have learned to love. Crime Classics They may do on-stage recreations of years, is generally the era we refer Re-Released 14 to as the Golden Age of Radio radio theater with a live audience. Lou Merrill 14 They may be doing new scripts in Theater. In this country. In other Africa Screams the old styles. They may be doing countries radio theater never died. 17 new work that might be considered In old time radio the shows in Young Widder experimental. Some are able to this country were defined by the Brown 19 finance shows based on internet sponsor. Someone showed up at an Truth or Conse- distributions, others produce them ad agency and said, “I want to quences in the under the real meaning of sponsor a show that will sell my comics 22 products.” Then the agency would “amateur.” Those who do it for the Acquisitions 42 love of the thing. put together a pilot show with an idea for whatever the show would Contributors: If you want to create new radio become. Joe Adamsty theater you will need to define what will mark your group as different – Sometimes it was a music show Ryan Ellett with a personality or “house band” Martin Grams why should an audience choose your show? to share the stage with guests, but Denise Noe above all to put the sponsors’ Why you, and why radio theater? Edited by Ryan Ellett message prominently in the format. *** Usually the goal is very vague – “I OldRadioTimes want to do that.” But the road from These were the dozens of local and @yahoo.com national live and recorded programs wanting to and doing is long and for individual bands and whole programs of the most contemporary styles of music. Big Band remotes, particularly, have a big following in the OTR community. Other times it might be the agency going to the sponsor with a solution they never knew they had. “We found that people are tuning in for detective shows (or westerns or music remotes or comedies), are almost always tuning in, so we have come up with a weekly, 30- minute continuing drama they will want to listen to.” The sponsor wanted to sell to people tuning in and agreed to put their money into producing and distributing new shows. The agency would then go to the network to sell the show for national broadcast, or failing Technology had changed the scene to the that would put together their own network of point that anyone with a working computer independent stations, called syndication. has access to the same audience and Syndication means distributing the costs of distribution as any great commercial production so that each station (and each local production concern. That computer gives sponsor) only paid a fraction of the costs of you full studio connection for multi-track production. recording and when the show is mixed down Still other times it was a client who came to that same computer gives you access to the a local station with a desire to put their name on web for distribution. something unique to identify that show with the But before you record the first word of sponsor. These would be shows like The your first drama, you have a lot of jobs to do Whistler (Signal Gasoline), Suspense (Roma and need people to do them. No matter how Wines), or The Shadow (Blue Coal). big your ego may be, you cannot do all the In the past the sponsor link covered dozens jobs. Getting your core group is necessary. of daily programs now called “soap operas” through their type of sponsors because of their How We Did It (Once Upon a Time) enduring association with household cleaning In my own case that group was fairly products. Although other sponsors, like cooking easy to get together. We were all volunteer products, also bought time on the daily programmers at a unique radio station in schedule of continuing melodramas, they were Los Angeles; KPFK, one of the Pacifica still called soap operas because of those early Foundation stations (look it up). My comedy associations. partner (Gregg) and I had done late night In this country it was always a matter of shows for five years before we met another keeping the sponsor happy. That can be helpful programmer (David Krebs) on the same in creating your own new radio group. station, even though we had both done many Your group will most likely be different things for Roy Tuckman’s unencumbered with the burden of keeping Something’s Happening late night show. I sponsor happy other than keeping the people had been Roy’s first broadcast engineer. financing the production happy. To keep them Gregg and I had been doing our own regular happy you will need to define your goal in slot and filling in for 2 The Old Radio Times * Winter 2019 * Number 105 producing the kind of radio theater your group also the home of the Firesign Radio Theater has set out to produce. cast who were also well versed in radio Captain Midnight (The late night on-air drama. personality before Roy), Nawana Davis (Music In our radio community we had Bob Black and White), and Mike Hodel (with Hour Lynnes who hosted his own Don’t Touch 25). David was producing a show based on That Dial on KPFK, KCRW, and KSCN, Escape, one of the great OTR series, called and he was a channel of more information Dimension of Imagination. about radio history and was involved with Gregg and I had a small crew of comic other production groups. actors who had produced material for our In 1980 David and I were asked to teach shows, David had a small crew with his radio writing and sound effects at the First Dimension of Imagination series, and these two Midwest Radio Theater Workshop (MRTW) worlds collided to become The American Radio in Columbia, Missouri, which put us in Theater workshop series. Its sole purpose was contact with Jim Jordan (of Fibber McGee training new talent for new productions. We and Molly), Tom Lopez (of ZBS Media, were in that wonderful time when many of the Fourth Tower of Inverness, Ruby, and Moon original talents of radio theater were available, Over Morocco), and Yuri Yuri Rasovsky often as volunteers, to pass their knowledge on (National Radio Theater of Chicago and to the next generation. Radio Theater of the Ear). It also put us This is just who was there. It was who back in touch with Peter Bergman and showed up when the call went out to learn from David Ossman (On a Note of Triumph) from the original radio talent. Arch Oboler came Firesign Radio Theater from KPFK, who down to the studio to do a show on radio theater were teaching radio acting and production. and brought June Foray and Marvin Miller with Above all, MRTW created a new fellowship him to perform. Ray Bradbury was a regular among attendees from many local guest on Hour 25 and made himself available. production companies. We came to attend Edwin Duerr, author of Television and Radio and enjoy the atmosphere like-minded, Acting, contacted us because he heard we were dedicated radio producers. trying to reach new people with the stylistic Through Sue Ziza’s Radio Works we requirements of radio performance. Several also became acquainted with even more dozen classic radio and television actors small but dedicated groups of radio theater showed up to show our new actors how it was around the country. done – people like Joe Maross and Wes Lau. It was a heady time. When we did a pilot We recognized that we were blessed to series for commercial be alive at the right time to catch the benefit radio, Peggy Webber, of what those people had to share before Sam Edwards, and they were gone. We were downright spoiled Marvin Miller showed by the quality of people in our neighborhood up to perform with our (think Hollywood, California) who had talent from American come to break into the entertainment Radio Theater. Sound industry. People showed up who wanted to effects wizard Cliff work, add some productions to their resume, Thorsness suddenly and come out of the experience with some appeared to help David shows as samples of their work. We were Krebs with our short eventually able to come up with some series of radio sound effects classes.