Rethinking Docudrama and its Origins From Radio and Film to Streaming Media.

This study offers a new perspective on documentary drama in the television, cable and streaming eras by mapping the trajectory of US media industry discourse about docudrama from the early twentieth century to the present. It uses aggregate data from eight entertainment trade journals to show that docudrama emerged in broadcasting and film in the 1930s and has played a significant role in US media culture ever since. It analyzes trade journal commentary and radio broadcasting practices to demonstrate that the two key components of docudrama—dramatization and a discourse of factuality—developed in the network radio era. The key radio innovation was dramatization, which required producers to re-create actual events, conform to generic expectations, and promote a particular ideological perspective on social events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]