Audio Theater is a very rapidly growing form of entertainment, often replacing radio for the traveling public. Radio drama, once an industry in this country as evolved into a craft, practiced by many small groups across the country, with or without a radio station to air their work.

In the beginning there was radio drama. Now refereed to as OTR (Old Time Radio) where a cast of actors reads the script accompanied by some music and sound effects. The music was used primarily to open and close a scene and provide the transitions between scenes. Most of these show were broadcast live and may have been repeated a second time for the west coast.

The sound effects were usually simple, specific to the requirements of the script. A door knock, a gun shot, a telephone bell ringing. Occasionally there would be what we call a background effect like birds chirping to signify day, crickets or an owl for night and of course rain. Scenes that take place in a driving car would need the sound of the car driving. A sound that would continue in the real world, like a clock ticking, in OTR might be introduced into the scene, then faded out rather than continued.

Many OTR programs will also make heavy use of the narrator. This is the voice that quickly fills you in on what is or is about to happen in the scene.

As Mary entered the room wearing her newly made red dress, John was pouring a drink for the two of them. They had just returned from a …..

In the early 60s, television had become the major in home entertainment source and radio drama as known and produced in the 40s and 50s was dyeing out.

In the 70s, the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre and a short lived series written by Rod Serling called "Zero Hour" attempted to rekindle radio drama as an entertainment format. Unfortunately the American public had begun to loose their ability or interest to listen. A radio series on NPR, Earplay, set out to use the existing worlds of film and theatre to reanimate radio drama. The most famous product was the 1978 play by Arthur Kopit, Wings.

The National Radio Theatre of Chicago was founded in 1972 by Yuri Rasovsky. Also in 72, Tom Lopez produced the first Jack Flanders series. The seventies also gave us Alien Worlds (78), The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (78), The Hobbit (Minds Eye 79), A Canticle For Leibowitz (81) and Ruby (ZBS 81) and the multiple versions of Lord of the Rings.

These are not the only productions of the era, but are some of the most remembered titles.

With the improvements of technology and a move toward more elaborate productions, radio drama begin moving to a more movie like sound. Background sounds become richer and continued through the scene. Bigger effects were possible. Because the latter programs were also bound for a retail market, the time spent producing each became longer.

The concept of books on tape (now a registered TM) left the specialty are of "for the blind" and began to make their way into main stream America. With the population spending more time commuting, this allowed former book readers a way to keep reading while driving. It also provided an alternative to an increasingly boring fare offered by commercial broadcasters.

Today the spoken word entertainment business has grown to provide many alternatives of content, style and formats. The diversity has also created some confusion of expectation when the buying public purchases a title. Is this cassette/cd/mp3 disc a book, a drama or what?

There is no standard of terms in the industry. There are audiobooks that claim multi-cast readers. Is this drama or just different voices reading different parts of the book? When read with multiple voices, is the content still read verbatim including "he said"/ "she said" or has it been abridged to allow the voice changes only to indicate characters?

Richard Fish created a chart that begins to distinguish the spectrum of spoken word audio products. In my conversations and attempts to review product I have started creating a series of references as a short hand.

This list is still a work in progress and I am open for additional suggestions and observations of style.

• Audio Book. The book read verbatim, usually by a single voice. It may have a touch of music at the beginning and end and possible between major sections.

• Lite Audio Book. An audio book that may have slightly more music or possibly a few sound effects or background sounds to add to the atmosphere.

• Heavy Audio Book. This is an audio book with more music and sound effects. It will use multiple voices and may have abridged the "he said / she said"s out. The emphasis here is that it is still more a "read" performance than an acted performance.

• Overweight Audio Book. The same as a Heavy Audio Book except that the music and sound effects overpower the "reading".

• Lite Drama. The script may still be primarily a book, this begins the cross over of adaptation to true drama. The production style is most closely that of OTR, limited use of sound effects and music. The voices are doing more "acting" than reading.

• Audio Drama. This is either a work written for audio or a full adaptation of a book to the stage of audio. The actors perform their parts and the music and sound effects flesh out the environment.

• Mind Movie. This is an Audio Drama whose sound effects and music are full and in your face, much as listening to a movie with your eyes closed.
  An example would be productions of Dirk Magg or the Star Wars series.

• Composers Movie. This is an Audio Drama or a Mind Movie where the composer or mixing engineer are more concerned with the music than the story. The music or sound effects will overpower the words in multiple places. This mix is much like pop music where the "words" of the song require your full attention to understand them, if that is possible.