How to Write a Radio Serial Drama for Social Development- PDF

18 Chapter Two: Writing Begins: The Writer’s Brief
• Religion;
• Environment (e.g., urban, suburban, or rural) and attitudes
toward the environment;
• Respected authority figures, decision-makers, and influential
citizens;
• Extent and types of community involvement;
• Entertainment sources and preferences, if any;
• Access to media, such as radio, television, film, newspapers, and
magazines;
• Typical daily food, including meal times and habits; and
• Meeting places.
3. Justification of the chosen medium. The writer should understand why
radio has been chosen as the medium (or one of the media) for the
project's message. The dramatized story will be affected depending on
whether radio is being used because:
• The audience is largely illiterate;
• The audience lives a long distance from central health services;
• Radio is the only medium that can reach them with this information;
• Radio is their favorite medium; or
• They enjoy radio drama.
4. Measurable objectives. Measurable objectives are the hoped-for end
results of a radio drama, that is, what the audience will know, will
believe, and will do as a result of listening to the serial. Development
projects can have a wide range of measurable objectives, but, for the
writer's purposes, they fall into three general categories. By the end of the
serial, audience members should demonstrate:
• Knowledge of the new behavior;
• Positive attitudes and intentions toward the new behavior; and/or
• New behavioral practices.
As the Steps to Behavior Change in prologue indicate, changes in attitude
and intention typically follow improved knowledge and precede behavior
changes. Classifying measurable objectives into these three categories is an
over-simplification, because change involves a sequence of many smaller
steps. Nevertheless, this classification gives the writer an understanding of the
general.
Measurable objectives for a nontechnical serial differ markedly from
those for a technical knowledge serial, as demonstrated by the family
planning examples given below. In nontechnical programming, the
measurable objectives are likely to be fairly general, usually along the
following lines:
Objectives of a Nontechnical Family Planning Drama
As a result of this serial, members of the audience will:
• Know the advantages of planning a family and the availability of
contraceptive choices;