Radio comedy

Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve sitcom elements, sketches and various types of comedy found on other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some simple dialogue. Because of this, it is often less restrictive and can allow for more imaginative and inventive comedy.

Background and history

Radio comedy in the United States began when Raymond Knight launched The Cuckoo Hour on NBC in 1929, along with the 1931 network debut of Stoopnagle and Budd on CBS. Comedians such as Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Judy Canova, Bob Hope and Red Skelton were top-rated in the decades that followed. Even after the big name comedians moved to television, radio comedy continued, notably from Bob and Ray, The Firesign Theatre and segments heard on NBC's Monitor.

Although traditional comedy was once a significant part of American broadcast radio programming, it is now mainly found in the archives of Old Time Radio enthusiasts and in Internet streaming of comedy recordings. The majority of mainstream radio comedy now consists of personality-driven shows hosted by talk-radio hosts such as Howard Stern or comedic duos such as Armstrong & Getty and Bob & Tom. Exceptions to this are WSRN's "Audience of Two", Garrison Keillor's work on Minnesota Public Radio: A Prairie Home Companion and Comedy College, and NPR's Car Talk, a comedy show thinly disguised as car advice, and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Shows featuring comedic music are also popular; one of the better known national comedy music programs is the long-running weekly program hosted by Dr. Demento, and several other local stations (mostly college radio, freeform and eclectic formats) have similar programs. Several networks program 24 hours a day of stand-up comedy routines; several channels on the Sirius XM Radio platforms focus on this format, as does the terrestrial All Comedy Radio network. Rock music stations often play bits of stand-up comedy within the bounds of their regular formats, usually under the banner of a "five o'clock funnies" feature.

In Britain and Canada, however, the BBC and CBC respectively have continued making new radio comedy and drama. British radio comedy also has a home on Australia's Radio National and in Ireland there are always a few comedy shows in the week's programming on RTÉ.

Many of the BBC's most successful television comedies began life as radio shows. These include Hancock's Half Hour, Goodness Gracious Me, Knowing Me, Knowing You, The League of Gentlemen, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Room 101, Have I Got News For You, (based on Radio 4's The News Quiz), Dead Ringers and most recently Little Britain and Absolute Power. The science fiction comedy Red Dwarf was developed from ideas in a radio show called Son Of Cliché. Another science fiction comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was created for radio, but also went on to great success in book, television and film formats. This has unfairly led to some people viewing radio as just a stepping stone to television, ignoring the many advantages of the medium.

Examples of American radio comedy can be heard on streaming internet radio stations. Humorous storytelling is the focus of The Moth Radio Hour. Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion can be heard on public radio stations in the United States and a different version of the shows can be heard on BBC7 and RTÉ under the name Garrison Keillor's Radio Show. Old shows can be listened to online at the websites of "A Prairie Home Companion" or RTÉ. British radio comedy can be heard on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 2 and BBC7. Minnesota Public Radio maintains a website where it is possible to listen to episodes of Comedy College. A British commercial station Oneword broadcasted American vintage radio comedy as part of their 24 hour-a-day programming of books, comedy and drama and this was streamed on the internet until the station closed in 2008.

Interest in radio comedy and radio drama is currently enjoying a resurgence. Epguides.com, which provides encyclopedic information on television shows, has recently begun to build a similar list of radio shows.^[1]

In America, new groups have formed to try to bring about a renewed interest in the art-form. At the forefront of this new wave of audio-only comedic groups is Peeper Radio Theatre. Veteran NPR Producer Joe Bevilacqua is creating new radio comedy for The Comedy-O-Rama Hour, which airs on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel 163, five times per week. In the UK, recent standup and revue comedy performances are also now receiving airing on radio.^[2]

List of radio comedies

Produced independently

• Man of the People: The Only-Recently Discovered Secret Political Recordings of Acting Mayor Francis "Woody" Woodson
• The Sound of Young America
• The Comedy-O-Rama Hour
• The Wireless Theatre Company^[3]

Produced by ABC (Australia)

• The Idiot Weekly
• Yes, What?/The Fourth Form at St Percy's (discontinued)

Produced by or for the CBC

• CBC Festival of Comedy
• CBC Festival of Funny
• Canadia: 2056
• Chas Lawther's Stand Up Documentaries
• The Chumps Without a Net
• The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour
• Double Exposure (comedy series)
• The Frantics Frantic Times, Fran of the Fundy, and The Frantics Look at History
• Gary & Ivan's Winnebago Tour
• Great Eastern
• Growing Up and Having Babies
• The Happy Gang
• Here Come the Seventies (radio show)
• How to Seem Smart
• The Irrelevant Show
• Laugh in a Half
• Madly Off in All Directions
• Mr. Interesting's Guide to the Continental United States
• The Muckraker
• The Norm
• Radio Free Vestibule
• Rick and Pete Grow Up and Have Babies
• The Royal Canadian Air Farce
• Running with Scissors with Mr. Interesting
• Steve, The First
• Steve, The Second
• Sunny Days and Nights
• This Hour Has 17 Programs
• Those People Across the Street
• The Vinyl Cafe
• What a Week

Produced by or for US public radio

• A Prairie Home Companion (Minnesota Public Radio)
• Comedy College (Minnesota Public Radio)
• Le Show (KCRW)
• NonProductive (WRSU-FM)
• Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (Chicago Public Radio)
• The Comedy-O-Rama Hour (Joe Bevilacqua)
• Dave and Chuck "The Freak" (CIMX-FM)

Produced by or for RTÉ

• The Apocalypse of Bill Lizard
• The Comedy Improv Radio Show
• Beyond the Back of Beyond
• Scrap Saturday

Produced by or for the BBC

• 15 Minute Musical
• 15 Minutes of Misery
• 15 Storeys High
• 4 at the Store
• The 99p Challenge

• Absolute Power
• And Now in Colour
• The Arthur Smith Lectures

• Beat The Kids
• Boothby Graffoe, In No Particular Order and Big Booth Too
• The Burkiss Way

• The Christopher Marlowe Mysteries
• Creme de la Crime
• Concrete Cow
• The Consultants

• Dead Ringers
• Delve Special
• Dial M For Pizza

• Educating Archie

• Fist of Fun
• Flight of the Conchords
• Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel
• The Franz Kafka Big Band

• The Game's Up
• Genius
• Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off
• Geoffrey Boycott's Proper World History of Cricket
• Getting Nowhere Fast
• Goodness Gracious Me
• The Goon Show

• Hancock's Half Hour
• The Harpoon
• The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• The Hole In the Wall Gang
• The House of Milton Jones
• The Hudson and Pepperdine Show
• Hut 33

• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
• I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again
• In One Ear
• It's Been a Bad Week
• It's That Man Again

• Jackie Mason
• Jammin'
• Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation
• Just a Minute

• King Street Junior
• Knowing Me, Knowing You

• The League of Gentlemen
• Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World
• Lines From My Grandfather's Forehead
• Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting
• Little Britain
• Loose Ends

• Mackay the New
• The Mark Steel Lectures
• The Mark Steel Revolution
• The Mark Steel Solution
• The Mel and Sue Thing
• Men from the Ministry
• Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music
• Much Binding in the Marsh
• The Museum of Everything

• The National Theatre of Brent
• The Navy Lark
• Nebulous
• Newsjack
• The News Huddlines
• The News Quiz
• Nightcap
• The Now Show

• Old Harry's Game
• The Omar Khayyam Show
• On the Hour'

• The Party Line
• Paperback Hell
• People Like Us
• Police 5...to 12
• The Problem with Adam Bloom

• Quote... Unquote

• Radio Active
• Recorded for Training Purposes
• The Remains of Foley and McColl
• Robin and Wendy's Wet Weekends
• Room 101
• Ross Noble Goes Global
• Round the Horne
• Route One, USA

• Saturday Night Fry
• Son of Cliche
• Steptoe and Son
• The Sunday Format

• Take It From Here
• Think the Unthinkable

• The Very World of Milton Jones

• We've Been Here Before
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?
• World of Pub

• Yes Minister (adapted from television)
• You'll Have Had Your Tea (a spin-off from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue)

Produced by or for Resonance FM

• Entrance of the Gladiators

See also

• Books on the radio
• List of old-time radio people

References

1. ^ Epguides
2. ^ The Comedy-O-Rama Hour
3. ^ The Wireless Theatre Company

External links

• Necrology of Old Radio Personalities
• OTR Actors and Their Roles