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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

The Future of Radio

Comedy: Satire

Comedy series making fun of technology and radio.

Comedy series making fun of technology and radio, written by Jerome Vincent and Stephen Dinsdale

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

William Beck

Emma Kilbey

Lizzy Watts

David Brett

Joan Walker

Chris Stanton

Jerome Vincent

Stephen Dinsdale

David Blount

The Future of Radio: Series 1: Episode 1: Sweet Smell of Success

Episode 1

Episode 1: Sweet Smell of Success

Series 1

Sweet Smell of Success

BBC Radio 4 - The Future of Radio, Series 1, Sweet Smell of Success

BBC boffins explore the possibilities of broadcasting smells over the airwaves.

4 Extra Debut. Can the boffins add smells to broadcasts? Secrets of the Institute of Radiophonic Evolution. With William Beck. From 2014.

What is the future of radio? In a world of digital overload can the public be expected to just listen to something without any pictures? Is the radio era over? The Institute of Radiophonic Evolution (IRE), based in South Mimms, is working hard to give radio a bright future.

Their secret work is revealed in these programmes which draw on conference calls, voice notes and life-logs, to tell a compelling and strange story of the technological lengths to which the researchers will go to keep radio relevant.

Instead of just adding pictures, the lab is working on ways to transmit smells, vibrations, and 3D images, as well as a way of putting radio into listeners' very brains!

It sounds impossible, but the IRE boffins believe in making the impossible audible. And that's their motto.

Each week a jiffy bag of sound files arrives at the BBC. We listen to the contents to discover what backroom boffins Luke Mourne and Professor Trish Baldock (ably assisted by Shelley – on work experience) have been up to.

In this week's episode, they discover that radio can transmit smells and use them to enhance the output of the Radio Drama Department.

Luke ..... William Beck
Trish ..... Emma Kilbey
Shelley ..... Lizzy Watts
Felix ..... David Brett
with Joan Walker and Chris Stanton

Pianist: Mike Woolley
 
Written by Jerome Vincent and Stephen Dinsdale

Producer David Blount

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in July 2014.

The Future of Radio: Series 1

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Comedy

Comedy series making fun of technology and radio, by Jerome Vincent and Stephen Dinsdale.

Comedy series making fun of technology and radio, written by Jerome Vincent and Stephen Dinsdale. Secret audio files and life logs reveal the special work of the Institute of Radiophonic Evolution.

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Episode 1: Sweet Smell of Success

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