Dividing by number of broadcasts

4.2. Dividing by number of broadcasts

“most radio plays are broadcast once; some twice; a few, a very few, three times or more and after that, if not destroyed, the recordings end up in the limbo of the Tape Library. Few find their way to print. For this last, a recent move by the Drama Department to publish play scripts will, if pursued, provide some remedy; so will the intended annual publication by Eyre Methuen of some half dozen scripts, winners of the new Giles Cooper Award. But these are drops in the ocean; substantially the radio play is and seems likely to remain a literary art without a literature.” [Wad81]

This may be due to two reasons. First of the factors can be the amount of remuneration that BBC pays for beginner’s play and that is slightly lower (36.14 pounds per minute) than the remuneration for established writer’s play (55.02 pounds per minute), as mentioned in the previous chapter. But to be positive about the number of writers beginners employed each year there would have to be done different type of research and there is not enough space in this thesis. Second reason may be the search for new talents.

It must be agreed with Mr. Wide that there are no more repeats then five. So that gives us five possible groups in which the afternoon dramas can be divided into. The total number of plays for this analyze is 82. The original number, 122 plays, was lowered because the multiple episode plays are considered as one in this part of thesis. The chart below helps to visualize the group that predominate all the others by considerably higher number of play broadcasted.

The biggest portion of the chart belongs to afternoon dramas that had been broadcasted only once. The final number came up to forty four (53.6 %) and that is more than a half. Broadcasts which had been heard twice by BBC listeners are in a second place and the number of plays is twenty (24.3%). In a third place are eleven dramas with the number of five broadcasts (13.4%). In fourth place are dramas with four broadcasts with five plays (6%) and last place, the fifth, belongs to two plays broadcasted three times (2.4%).

As it had been written in the Radio Commissioning Agreement Draft, by commissioning a writer’s play the BBC buys the right under which the work can be used in six transmission days during the period of three years. One transmission day means that the dramatisation can be broadcasted up to four times during any twenty four hour period. After that if the BBC Radio 4 wants to broadcast any play again a new licence permitting the broadcast must be bought. [np111]