Just added to our AUTHOR PAGE section is a detailed audiography of SFWA Grand Master LESTER del REY!
And, there’s a new HuffDuffer podcast feed for Lester del Rey too:
http://huffduffer.com/tags/lester_del_rey/rss
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Posted by Jesse Willis
Sharon Miller and Steve Miller are authors surprised that audiobooks aren’t audio drama. Their reaction to hearing the audiobook version of one of their novels: “freaky” and “odd” and “with any voice tricks”! Yikes!
The rest of the interview is available HERE. |READ OUR REVIEW| of Local Custom by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.
[via the Buzzy Multimedia Blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
BLOGGERS NEEDED! SFFaudio.com is looking for a few good bloggers.
With more than 300,000 unique visitors in 2008, 1,000 downloads per show on our podcast, having been BoingBoinged, written up in Asimov’s magazine and having had one of our contributors been named a John W. Campbell Award winner we think we’re doing pretty awesome. But, we think we can do more and be awesomer. FREE audiobooks and audio dramas are just the beginning, all positions at SFFaudio come with fancy job titles and as much street-cred as the SFFaudio name will get you (I’ve been told it may garner you as much as a fresh ginger snap and a cup of tea in some places).
We are looking for:
1. At least one voracious reviewer for Paranormal Romance audiobooks (we get tons of these).
2. A podcast producer for our show (can you host, record, edit and run our podcast?).
3. At least one podiobook/podcast novel reviewer (there are so many great free podcast novels coming out we want to cover more of them).
4. Cool hunters (do you have psycho-crazy-web-searching-spider skills? Can you find the coolest audio out there? If so we want you).
5. Other positions (if you have some other skill or interest you’d like to bring to the SFFaudio table, let us know, we’ll have a serious look at it).
Posted by Jesse Willis
The words “free” and “podcast” (as in “free podcast”) have always gone together like “cold” and “ice-cream.” To say your podcast was “free” was tantamount to saying your “water is wet” or your “fire is hot.” Okay, there has been an exception or two in the short history of podcasting – most notably in the form of James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod. But the ties between FREE and PODCAST may be about to change. The newest unfree podcast is from the producers of The Sonic Society, a long running radio show and podcast out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It has been an endless showcase of audio drama goodness and their new project, Sonic Gold, may be all that and just a bit more. Membership in Sonic Gold requires a fee of $25.00 for a year. The idea was to find “a way to offer professional audio drama paid content to those who are interested for a reasonable price.”. Sonic Gold began April 1st, 2009 and has a planned 35 shows for the year, with new shows coming on the 1st, the 15th, and at the end of each month. Content for the first year will come from a number of sources including Colonial Radio Theatre.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Matt Watts, creator, writer and star of Canadia: 2056, has posted a surprisingly upbeat (but downbeat) journal entry about the sad future of CBC Radio Drama to his blog. Sez Matt:
“…and with the CBC’s recent cutbacks, the questions have turned more to the future of radio drama in general.
The official announcement is that radio drama will be ‘reduced’.
Sadly, this doesn’t look to be the case.
The project that is in the pipeline will be seen through, and after that, Radio A&E has decided the best thing to do is to cut their losses, redeploy the staff into other positions and put drama on ice until funding is reinstated.
So, it looks like there’ll be no new radio drama for a while.
It’s a very sad time for me, and for my colleagues and friends in the drama department.
But, it’s a sign of the times, and instead of being bitter and angry, I think the best thing to do is to be understanding, and to try and hope for the best. This is genuinely one of those ‘greater good’ times.
For me, it means that I have to move on, and start looking for other mediums and formats to write in.
I will say, that writing for radio has been one of the great joys in my life. I could honestly write radio drama for the rest of my life, and be more than fulfilled and satisfied. I love it. Writing Steve, The First was an experience not unlike being thrown into a pool and discovering that you already know how to swim.
I’m one of the lucky few who found something they were good at, enjoyed it to the fullest and had a good run with it.”
Explaining why he thinks the cutback happened Matt said this:
“The sad truth, and reality, is that it [radio drama] doesn’t get that many listeners, and it doesn’t justify the cost. And these things have to be taken into account – these are the times we live in.”
My thinking is that there is actually quite an audience for audio drama, especially audio drama of as high a quality as Matt and his team at CBC Radio’ A&E department were producing. The main problem is that CBC’s radio drama are on the radio. I love the CBC and CBC radio programing in particular – but the reality is nobody I know listens to the radio anymore. We are listening to the podcasts of the radio shows. But ACTRA has not come to any agreement with CBC on podcasting, so none of the shows with acting in them are getting podcast!
The reality is that forcing an audience to tune in, in the middle of the afternoon, or late on a Sunday night is not the best way to showcase an audio drama anymore.
ACTRA needs to get it’s act together, go over to CBC radio (just a 7 minute cab ride), hammer out a deal on internet distribution and together SOLVE THIS SHIT. UPDATE: Apparently ACTRA has now “come to an agreement” with CBC, and what’s holding up CBC radio drama from being podcast is the writer’s guild. Yay! This is even better news because the Writer’s Guild of Canada HQ is only a “5 minute” walk away from the CBC HQ!
CBC isn’t entirely off the hook though. More of CBC Radio needs to be podcast. CBC needs to be putting even more effort into living up to what the audience really wants:
The Canadian Podcast Corporation.
The future of CBC is online. The CRTC is all worried about Canadian content on the internet. I think we have the content and the talent, but what we don’t have is all that Canadian content on the internet.
To read Matt’s full POST head on over to his blog.
Posted by Jesse Willis
P.S. Oh and hey CBC!! After Matt’s last project gets delivered, don’t forget that CBC Radio still has something that’s already ready to play… CBC give us the J. Michael Straczynski radio drama series that’s already been produced and paid for!! – it’ll help tide us over til the financial crunch is over
Hey we had a birthday today! SFFaudio was born on March 31st 2003 @12:09PM. Now we are six!
Don’t feel embarrassed if you forgot, we forgive you. Besides you can send presents throughout the coming year in the form of audiobooks and audiodramas.
Happy Birthday to us, and thanks for visiting!
Posted by Jesse Willis