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But it was still a poor man’s version of what radio once was, an echo of its unfulfilled promise. CBS gave the time but precious little money, and the affiliates felt free to tape-delay or drop it from the schedule at will. At KOA in Denver, it was often a casualty of the station’s sports docket. A complaining listener was told that, in effect, he was lucky they were carrying it at all. Sports pays, drama doesn’t: that was the bottom line in the ’70s and continued to be in the ’90s. To have any chance of success, radio drama would have to be approached as it is on the BBC in England, where it has never been allowed to die. As radio actress Virginia Gregg once put it, “The British know a good medium when they hear it.
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