Long-Form Radio (15 minutes or longer)

Alex Zavistovich reached out to me after 30 years of friendly but infrequent contact. He said he was moving to Baltimore City from suburban DC and wanted to talk to me about working on one of his projects; The National Edgar Allan Poe Theater On The Air.

The Company would produce 20 minute radio theater dramas based on Edgar Allan Poe's frequently hideous stories. One show per month. We would record the actors, add music, Foley and SFX and deliver a mix to WYPR, a Baltimore Public radio station. WYPR would air the show once and then make it available for download from their web site.

In the late Summer of 2019, in a meeting with WYPR, we learned that in a period of three months, the first three shows had been downloaded 6,000 times! And that wasn't counting streams. I thought radio theater had left the building sometime after Prairie Home Companion stopped airing. I guess not!

This is not my first shot at long-form radio. I have produced 181 half-hour medical interview shows with Dr. Paul Christo of Johns Hopkins. That show is called "Aches And Gains." In each show we take recorded phone interviews with people in pain and a doctor or practitioner who helps them through their pain. The programs air on Sirius/XM Family Channel 151 and are then available as a podcasts from Paul's web site. It takes about six hours to edit and mix one half-hour show. Most of that work is pulling ums, ahs and other wasted words out of the recorded interviews. So far, the twenty minute Edgar Allan Poe Theater on the Air programs take about 12 hours to record, edit and mix.

I reached out to Jerry Vigil to see if he would create a space for long-form radio here at RAP. He confirmed that there IS interest in long-form and here we are!

Next time I'll talk about the dialog recording process.

What are your long-form experiences?