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Lots of opportunities to challenge your mind this month – mysteries, crimes and good old fashioned legal enmity!
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Even after all this time, Night Beat remains an audience favourite. Wonderfully written and acted, each self-contained episode offers something different, and usually heart-warming.
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If you’re not familiar with the series, these promo words will introduce you…
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Night Beat is the story behind the stories in a newspaper column, and the man who writes them – Randy Stone.
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Night Beat – that’s where Randy gets his stories: the grim ones, the strange ones, and the gentle ones. In Randy’s words: – “You see plenty of action and take a lot of chances, but it’s worth it for the stories you get and the people you meet.
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It means you’ve got to be everything from a private detective to a good Samaritan – a fighter too if you want to remain in the mediocre state of health I am pleased to regard as good.”
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Our feature story this month is all about the ‘half hour self-contained’ series.
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Whilst they’re referred to as ‘half hours’, they’re usually around 23 or 24 minutes – the extra time was filled with sponsor information and radio station promotions. Initially the ‘half hour’ series were designed for weekly broadcast. Being a self-contained story in each episode meant listeners didn’t have to remember the storyline from week to week. It also meant that it wasn’t a big deal if listeners missed one week here or there.
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Usually it was the same lead character in each episode. Series such as Address Unknown, Night Beat, Crime Fighters, Dragnet and Danger Is My Business featured the same lead characters on a different adventure or crime solving mission. Other series focused on a theme – such as Verdict (cases of law from around the world), Medical File and Rebel in White (medicine), The Uninvited (spookiness) and Shadow Of Fate (what seemed like inevitability). Still others offered a mixed genre and were often family friendly – Star- light Theatre and Grace Gibson Radio Classics – Dramas & Serials being such examples. The genre of the stories usually determined the time of day, and which day, the series were broadcast. No crime or horror stories before the children were off to bed! The ‘half hour’ stories were popular on a Friday night as it was felt that at the end of the week listeners would be relaxed enough to listen to the longer tales, particularly the men with images of Dad in his armchair sipping a drink and with a pipe or cigarette in hand. Mum, too, could finally relax and focus after the children were in bed and the weekend lay ahead to catch up on chores.
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As time went on, listening habits changed and the ‘half hour’ shows were offered nightly or frequently on a Sunday night, but at a slightly earlier timeslot.
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Now that listeners can choose their own time for listening, we find these ‘half hour’ shows are popular with people who want a story for a certain (and timed) period. The commute to work, the drive to golf, the drive home after night shift, or our favourite – people who have been told to walk but don’t want to, know that when the story finishes they can stop walking!
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