Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Nutshell: Else Barrat-Due

In Norway we now often call radiodrama “sounddrama” because radio is only one of several means of distribution. And probably not even the best one, because it is authoritarian. We tell the listeners: We decide when and for how long you must listen. Not very tempting for a young audience. Streaming and podcast with apps – that’s the future, or rather the present, right now. Technological innovation is happening so fast these days that yesterday’s truth is obsolete tomorrow. What we can observe is that more and more people walk and travel with a white cable from their pockets to their ears. Our ambition must be to fill that cable with as much sounddrama as possible. So there are at least three primary challenges: Content and distribution – and the connection between them. And production. In our horizons we don’t think budgets for sounddrama will increase. So we need to find ways to produce smarter, quicker, cheaper.

The challenge is to find the younger audience, our future audience. We have tried to find them through a project called “Horron on the net.” An interactive deal where the audience write the scripts. These small sounddramas has been free to be podcasted due to special rights for this project. So far more than 100 000 have podcasted them which is considered to be very good.

We have also a dramatic writing community, a laboratory for developing new texts with both established and younger writers. The challenges for the future are among others linked to rights, formats, leaders understanding of the necessity for means, and most of all awarenesbulding in the audience."

Else Barrat-Due, NRK, director/producer, Norway

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