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: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.
A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocalize numbers, although digital modes such as phase-shift keying and frequency-shift keying, as well as Morse code transmissions, are not uncommon. Most stations have set time schedules, or schedule patterns; however, some have no discernible pattern and broadcast at unpredictable times. Stations may have set frequencies in the high-frequency band.
Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942.
Hancock's Half Hour was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sidney James; the radio version also co-starred, at various times, Moira Lister, Andrée Melly, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. The final television series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone.
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The station describes itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music", and through its New Generation Artists scheme promotes young musicians of all nationalities. The station broadcasts the BBC Proms concerts, live and in full, each summer in addition to performances by the BBC Orchestras and Singers. There are regular productions of both classic plays and newly commissioned drama.
Simulcast is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio. Likewise, the BBC's Prom concerts were formerly simulcast on both BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television. Another application is the transmission of the original-language soundtrack of movies or TV series over local or Internet radio, with the television broadcast having been dubbed into a local language.
The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4.
Alexander James Naughtie FRSE is a British radio and news presenter for the BBC.
The Essential Mix is a weekly radio show on BBC Radio 1 currently broadcast between 0:00 and 2:00 a.m. UK time on Saturday morning. Originally broadcast on 30 October 1993, the Essential Mix features contemporary DJs and music producers of electronic dance music. The show has been presented since its inception by Pete Tong and features an uninterrupted two-hour mix from a different artist each week, overlaid with occasional continuity announcements delivered by Tong. With a broadcast run of nearly 30 years, the Essential Mix is one of the longest-running programmes in the current BBC Radio 1 schedule. It is one of very few Radio 1 shows which is not broadcast live.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series primarily written by Douglas Adams. It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada. The series was the first radio comedy programme to be produced in stereo, and was innovative in its use of music and sound effects, winning a number of awards.
Paul Temple is a fictional character created by English writer Francis Durbridge. Temple is a professional author of crime fiction and an amateur private detective. With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her journalistic pen name 'Steve Trent', he solves whodunnit crimes through subtle, humorously articulated deduction. Always the gentleman, the strongest expletive he employs is "by Timothy!".
Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, comedian, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a humorous novel by Marina Lewycka, first published in 2005 by Viking.
Dark Star Safari (2002) is a written account of a trip taken by author Paul Theroux from Cairo to Cape Town via trains, buses, cars, and armed convoy. Theroux had lived in Africa as a young and idealistic early member of the Peace Corps and part of the reason for this trip was to assess the impact on Africa of the many years of aid from Western countries. His assessment is generally critical of the long-term impact of aid programs.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at the Broadcasting House in London, originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company and evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, it employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,900 are in public-sector broadcasting.
Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game, hosted by Sue Perkins since 2021. For more than 50 years, with a few exceptions, it was hosted by Nicholas Parsons. Following Parsons' death in 2020, Perkins assumed the host's chair permanently, starting with the 87th series. Just a Minute was first transmitted on Radio 4 on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003.
BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products, press cuttings, artifacts and historic equipment. The original contents of the collections are permanently retained but are in the process of being digitised. Some collections are being uploaded to the BBC Archives section of the BBC Online website for visitors to view. The archive is one of the largest broadcast archives in the world, with over 15 million items.
The Sunday Hour was a long-standing show broadcast on the BBC Light Programme and then BBC Radio 2 in the United Kingdom, broadcast for 78 years between 14 July 1940 and 28 January 2018.
Tweet of the Day is a British radio programme that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on weekdays at 05:58 from Monday to Friday. The original format of an episode is a short programme of 90 seconds, the original series featuring the song or sounds of a British bird, visitor, or bird chorus and a few facts about each bird described by a BBC wildlife presenter.
The Dark Tower is a 1946 BBC Home Service radio play written, in verse, and produced by Louis MacNeice, with music composed for it by Benjamin Britten. Dramatist and author Robin Brooks, writing in The Guardian in 2017, called it "a landmark in radio drama".
