When looking for audio entertainment, there are only two options: music and the audio book. However, just because something is called an ‘audio book’, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a book in the traditional format. Whilst, there are plenty of dictated books to choose from, the choice does not start and end there. If you only just look, in fact, the audio ‘book’ can encompass a great deal else, too.
Downloadable audio books come in all different forms and one of the most popular is the serialised radio or television show.
Shows as popular and iconic as Blackadder, Fawlty Towers and Little Britain have all been given the audio book treatment, bringing their comic sketches and characters to a whole new format.
All the classic radio shows have also been reincarnated as audiobooks. Shows as wide-ranging as ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’, ‘The News Quiz’ and BBC4′s seminal ‘Afternoon Play’ have all been archived and turned into audio books to be enjoyed at the listeners pleasure – not as the schedules dictate.
There are also serialised interviews of prolific politicians, sportspeople and public figures, giving the listener something that a book never could – the chance to hear the person describing the stories themselves. This, of course, allows the user to be transported away much more freely; the subject putting emphasis on certain points in a way that just does not come across when reading the same page of dialogue.
