Last night I listened live on Ds106 Radio to a story called “The Fifth Dimension Twilight Zone.” I liked the new format of storytelling this group brought to the table. Sort of like a variety show with different stories attached to one.  However it was a bit confusing to listen to at first, as seen by some of the Twitter comments. By the end I could sort of see that it was a group of mini stories and poems, but some things still confused me, like the introduction of movie clips. What sort of segment were they going for with that one? Also it was a bit hard to tell what audio was from a movie, and what was actually being said live.

During the 1st poem read, there could’ve been some sound effects to help the listener visualize what the narrator was reading; to help them paint a mental picture of the scene. They fixed this in a later poem, which I could follow alot better.

I LOVED the Swap Shop scene! The effects and creepy background music was spot on and the voice acting was hilarious. Sure, it may be weird to listen to the acting as much as the  story, but just think if the characters would’ve read their scripts in a……..monotone………boring…….Ben Stein sort of voice. This would’ve put listeners to sleep.

Overall this show wasn’t bad, it just needed to tie the elements together a bit  more to better explain the main theme. The hosts should tell the viewers what the show is going to be about in the beginning to give them a reference point, just incase they’d never seen the Twilight Zone and are not familiar with this storytelling style. Confusion will cause the audience to change the station (believe me, I’ve seen it happen.) Keeping listener’s attention and filling them in on what’s happening is the most important part of radio in my opinion. Since we are not visually seeing the story on a screen, we need that extra imaginary boost. This is what audio stories can do that shows on TV cant; give the audience total imaginative freedom!

I would give this show 3 stars; 1 for effort, 2 for having somewhat of a structure and not doing a bunch of random things, and 3 for the pretty decent audio mixing (whoever did that, a few parts were louder than others, but still good job integrating everything!)