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Listen to the audio in this video. It’s perfect for radio. With some clever editing, narration, and other content such as interviews with survivors of the crash, you could easily turn this into a radio story.
Why doesn’t that happen more often? The 20th century was captured in sound. Why aren’t there more radio stories featuring archive audio — oral histories, news reels, odd bits of audio flotsam? It seems like an obvious source of content and story ideas, doesn’t it?
Fortunately, producer Joe Richman understands the power and pleasure of storytelling with archive tape. On this edition of HowSound, we feature Joe’s radio story about the historic crash of a B-52 bomber into the Empire State Building — the video alchemized for radio.
Joe’s not alone, of course, but the field of producers using archive tape isn’t crowded. American Radio Works comes to mind. So, too, does Lost and Found Sound by the Kitchen Sisters. And, there’s Talking History, a radio program produced at the State University of New York at Albany. Anybody I’ve missed?
Now, you producers, go mine those archives!
Cheers, Rob
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Podcast: Download (Duration: 22:29 — 20.7MB)
Rob is a radio teacher and freelance producer. He's the lead instructor at the
Hi Rob,
great story! Really nice to hear of Joe’s work and thanks for sharing your love of radio back stories with us.
It might be worth mentioning here that another radio show that regularly uses archives is The Night Air http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/nightair/
Here is an example of one episode Lost Australia it uses a lot of old Aussie media cuts http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/nightair/lost-australiaship-ahoy/3653442
The Night Air is a arts and culture remix program, each week we choose a theme and see how much stuff we can recycle from our back catalogue to create a new listening experience for our listeners.
Cheers John
Hey John — Hadn’t heard of this program. Thanks for sharing! Hope others get to check it out. — Best, Rob
I’m being that person who comments on every story, but this was another incredible story! My favorite part was the scene you pointed out, and also the end, how they just cut back to the music. “Well…we have the story told now…We return you now to the music of the first piano quartet.” That’s something you would not hear nowadays.