Writing on the Radio

Stumbled into IDEAS4ALL website and thought, "What a delightful place to pick up novel notions, actions for articles, and short story sparks." Then I found the section on Arts & Culture where the top idea is:

A specialised radio station broadcasting narrative 24 hrs a day. All kinds of stories, poetry, classic literature etc. narrated over the radio. Would be great for long trips in the car, for a lie down on the sofa at home, and for the blind or non-literate.

In America, radio stations used to broadcast stories. The earliest ones I remember were soap operas and humor for adults (which I listened to anyway) and ones for children, like Howdy Doody (I think) and The Lone Ranger and The Buster Brown Show. Who can forget The Shadow and Amos 'n' Andy and so many more. This was in the time before TV had caught on, and before my family had one (1940s).

Most of those story programs migrated to television and radio lost some punch. From time to time, someone resurrects the oldie goldies here and there, but I also remember listening to "Reading Aloud" in the late 1960s. It was probably out of Boston. Every day after lunch, a big fat pregnant yours truly sprawled on our new couch to listen to another chapter of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I learned all about the habits of hobbits during that long winter, quite content to remain indoors out of the ice storms that blew across Portsmouth Harbor and right through the old house we'd rented.

Now similar programs are appearing on the Internet. Just do a search on "radio stories" or "story radio", and see what you come up with. I think a podcast would be a perfect venue for this type of program, and sure enough there's the Radio Detective Story Hour, Short Story Radio, and beginning October 27, you can listen to Halloween tales on The Writing Show.

O.K., so the Internet isn't radio, really, but what does that matter? The sound comes out of a speaker or earphones, and that's really old radio!