IASA 2017 Annual Conference

There is no complete record of radio drama (a dramatized performance broadcasting through radio) production in Hong Kong. This project revitalized the radio dramas that produced by a private radio station in the 1960s and the 1970s and served as the first comprehensive study on Hong Kong’s radio drama. Radio drama was one of the most popular forms of free entertainment in Hong Kong, and exported to overseas Chinese radio stations in the United States, Singapore and Malaysia. Similar to other countries, the production of radio drama by private radio stations declined drastically when television ownership expanded. This project digitalized the records of radio drama from Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company from the 1960s to the 1970s, which is Hong Kong’s only collection of radio dramas that produced by private radio stations. Through the content analysis of these sound archives, interviews with practitioners and secondary data, this study periodized Hong Kong’s radio drama development into three phases: (1) in the post-war era with the influx of Mainland Chinese immigrants, radio dramas educating the public with traditional virtues, (2) from the 1960s to the 1970s, radio dramas largely ignored social changes and emphasized its entertainment value, (3) when radio audienceship declined since the 1980s, ironically, the practitioners explored the distinctiveness of this “blind” medium through new genres and new technologies of radio drama production. This paper enriched our knowledge of media history. It concludes by calling for more attention on sound record preservation in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities.