by Tim Crook

The radio critic for the Guardian, Anne Karpf, wrote on December 13th 1997: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the first UK Internet Play of the Month, accessible to anyone with a computer and a modem. It even stars the PM's father-in-law, Tony Booth. Modern or what? For the listener, too, though at first it seems perverse to put an aural genre on to what is still primarily a visual medium, there are evident benefits. This is "radio drama on demand", accessible (from http://www.irdp.co.uk/playmonth.htm ) on Real Audio stereo whenever a listener chooses, for as long as they choose. And of course there's a potentially global audience."

The IRDP site was the first audio drama web service to be recognised by the prestigious UK Radio Academy/British Telecom technical innovation award on July 16th 1998, and the first UK audio site to win an award at the International Interactive Media Awards, Washington D.C.in September 1998.

One of the political and social features of Internet broadcasting is that it can be achieved without any state interference or censorship by regulation. It can be argued that it is a profoundly liberating medium for communities and social groups that are exposed to cultural and political discrimination. In this way the Internet can advance the democracy of communications to a level never experienced before.

The BBC which has the largest publicly funded budget for audio in the world (over 18 million UK pounds or $30 million US dollars a year) has done very little. Pages with somewhat shallow gestures to BBC radio drama history were set up, but up until the present day–despite the huge investment in BBC Online–audio drama has continued to disappoint.

It can be argued that the Internet can expand the democratic potential of freedom of expression in writing and art in broadcasting. It clearly extends public access to mass communication and participation in the Public Sphere. Young writers who have experienced the brunt of exclusion and denial of opportunity in BBC licence funded radio drama in the last 10 years have been given an opportunity to send and receive communication on a level not seen since the introduction of the telephone.

The Internet depends on participation in the political economy of the technology, but compared with terrestrial analogue economies of scale in broadcasting, the Internet is remarkably cost effective. The delivery system, which is vast and a veritable electronic galaxy of penetration is not a significant charge for the communicator. It is there like space or air. As a comparison with the telephone, only the production and the telephone itself has to be funded. Connection charges are no more than those anticipated with telephone communication. Yet the transmission is not one to one but a broadcasting distribution. The transmission of the sound as in waves through fm, am, or short-wave broadcasting is not the communicator’s responsibility.

Another important factor from the point of view of democracy is the absence of state regulation. There are no top-down agencies of control. Broadcasting on the Internet is not restricted to oligopolies that operate in so many national broadcasting system.

I think Marshall McLuhan can provide a significant observation on the implications of this development: Archimedes once said, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world." Today he would have pointed to our electric media and said,
"I will stand on your eyes, your ears, your nerves, and your brain, and the world will move in any tempo or pattern I choose".

Radio dramatists and 'sound artists' in Britain have been rather slow to explore and experiment with the Internet/World Wide Web. The pioneers have been independent radio drama productions (http://www.irdp.co.uk) and the LMC (London Musicians' Collective) (http://www.l-m-c.org.uk). IRDP's Web designer Marja Giejgo originated the UK's first Internet Play of the month and set up a public service resource of background information, radio writing guidelines and media history essays on her award-winning site. LMC maintained an Internet Real Audio stream during the broadcast of the brilliant and experimental Resonance 107.3 FM in London between the 9th June and 5th July 1998. This powerful and popular festival of world sound art clearly needs further public investment and certainly deserved wider recognition in an industry and medium which is blighted by market economic ideology.

The Observer newspaper's internet critic, author and Cambridge University scholar, John Naughton wrote on December 14th,1997: "It's amazing what people are using real audio for. This week, a British outfit called Independent Radio Drama Productions started broadcasting an 'Internet play of the month' on its site (www.irdp.co.uk/playmonth.htm). The first production stars Tony Booth, the Prime Minister's father-in-law, in Francis Beckett's satire about an oppressive Jesuit public school, The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen. The play consists of five links - each containing a separate episode - on a Web page. Click on an episode, wait a few seconds and out boom Booth and the rest of the cast from one's speakers".

I would say the LMC– through Resonance FM and some of the Internet Plays of the Month on IRDP's site–have fulfiled the potential of McLuhan's maxim. But there is a paucity of expression in the new medium despite its cultural and political opportunities. Apart from one originally produced Science Fiction series in eight ten-minute episodes, the topography of British Internet sites betrays an element of timidity. Perhaps the slothful BBC will be provoked into throwing millions in this direction. Whilst this will be yet another manifestation of their public service monopoly, the art of web audio drama might undergo a useful expansion. The irony here is that five percent of the BBC's annual audio drama budget would probably guarantee a year- round sustaining Digital/Web-audio station run by the LMC.

TWO-WAY RADIO