"I Like it Live": Feliks Banel and the Allure of Live Broadcasting

At length with Steve Scher. - The House of Podcasts

From the 1920’s until television permanently settled into our living rooms in the late 1950’s, radio blasted out comedies, variety shows, adventures and dramas to waiting listeners. Radio launched performers like Jack Benny and Fred Allen into stardom. It offered established stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Stewart and Frank Sinatra an audience during lulls in their film careers. Radio became a second platform for Hollywood screenplays like “The Bishops’ Wife,” a 1947 holiday movie starring David Niven, Cary Grant and Loretta Young that resurfaced with a different cast on the Lux Radio Theater in 1949.

Feliks Banel is a local historian, writer and radio producer. He has been producing a live holiday radio broadcast for the past few years. This year he is again bringing “The Bishop’s Wife,” starring familiar voices from KIRO radio to a Town Hall stage. KIRO’s Dave Ross leads the cast at University Temple Church Friday December 8th, 2017 at 8 pm,

Feliks joined me for a long talk about the future of radio and the qualities of recorded and live performances in the age of the independent podcaster.