Radio Dramas

Radio Dramas

A radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, with no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story. 

I am analyzing a radio drama called The Archers. The Archers is a series of radio dramas and it’s a single narrative. The dialogue and speech in this drama is very farmer like because you can hear the characters putting on an accent and this will engage the audience. There is no music in this episode of the radio drama however there is diegetic and non-diegetic sounds involved in it. As the radio drama ends it has a very joyful piece of music to end with. The sounds are very natural such as the wind blowing and birds tweeting. When changing scenes, the sounds and dialogue fade into nothing then change scenes. You can tell when a change of scene is happening because everything just goes silent and then people start talking again. There is not a really a cliff hanger ending because it just runs on to the next episode. There is also no intro music they just get straight into conversation. By their accent it sounds like they are from the country side and they talk about farms and farming. This drama is a single narrative because there is only one story line. I think the audience that this is targeted for is and older generation because it’s not very interactive and its quite boring for a young audience to listen to. I think they are aiming this at male and females older than 50. I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 would enjoy this type of drama because it’s too boring. 

The next radio drama I am analyzing is called The betrayal. The betrayal is a thriller drama and it’s a single narrative drama. It opens with a piano playing; this is the opening music like a them tune. The dialogue and speech in this drama is just a woman telling a story, she puts a different voice on when a different character is talking but most of it is just her voice because she is just telling the story. The woman is talking for every character in this drama, which shows she is just the narrator. There are no sounds in this drama not even non diegetic sounds. There is no change of scene, the reason you can tell is because the woman never stops talking and the speech just flows. I think the audience that this drama is targeted for is older people because it is quite boring for a young person to sit and listen to someone talking. I think a young person would get bored quick because there is no video and there is just one woman talking. 

The reason these two radio dramas are different is because one of them has different people playing different characters and the other one has just one women talking for every character. In the first one I analyzed, you could tell when a change of scene was happening and then in the second one there wasn’t any change of scenes. I think the first one is better because the audience will be able to understand each character and who is who. The second who is a bit boring because there is only one person for every character. Another reason why the first one is better is because it includes sounds and foli sounds. However, the first one doesn’t have any intro music but it has outro music. The second one has an intro and outro music which I assume is its them tune. The first one also ended with a cliff hanger to keep the audience attached so will they watch the next episode. The second one didn’t finish with a cliff hanger which doesn’t entice the audience to watch the next episode. However, both of them are aimed at an older generation because the younger generation would not want to listen to any of them.