money. Whilst not implying that this type of coverage is of any less value on radio, the production cost is a fraction of that of television. Radio in most circumstances is produced with far lower overheads and far less financial investment than television. Television requires a larger budget than radio. Film, when accounted at a cost per minute basis, is considerably more costly than television. A feature film production employs a vast crew, extraordinary overheads and they are very expensive. Here the three medium differ. Of course news is just one area in which we can confabulate differences and similarities between radio and television. Entertainment is, what entertainment does. Comedy for example gives us indication of differences and similarities. The radio comedy is listened to. The humour derives from the oral tradition, crucial to the writing. The actor also and his use of fricatives and sighs. So is much televised comedy. Televised comedy in whatever form; stand-up, sitcom, film for that matter, use also visual devices such as body language and slapstick as well as the spoken word. Film comedy, before sound was available, had to rely entirely on these devices. They cannot work with radio. Here radio and television are not ‘close’.However comedy on the radio has no less appeal and on many occasions the radio medium has born comedy which television has later adopted, the BBC have done this; ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ ~ during the fifties, ‘The Mary Whitehouse Experience’ in the eighties and recently Steve Coogan’s ‘Alan Partridge’ are some examples of this.Although this is done for a few reasons - to test the response ~ Is it funny? And because it saves money, it is a cheaper prototype perhaps. Ironically sometimes in these situations, the later television production loses the panache that the radio show held and the radio fans relish in its ...
