Translating radio productions into television programmes: the post-war career of BBC writer/producer Nesta Pain.

Abstract

When BBC Television resumed broadcasting in 1946, BBC radio still dominated the airwaves. However, within a decade, television had swiftly become the dominant medium. BBC radio producers from the Features Department were eager to try their hand at translating their audio productions into visual ones, although few were successful. BBC producer Nesta Pain ultimately remained in radio production, but she successfully translated some of her radio plays and productions into television programmes, including John Mortimer’s The Dock Brief (1957), A Shaft of Light (1958), and Simon Raven’s The Move Up Country (1961). As one of the few women, and one of the more successful BBC Features writer/producers of the 1940s and 1950s, Nesta Pain’s approaches to translating her work to television and the obstacles she encountered trying to move from audio storytelling to a visual media offers a glimpse into the difficulties radio producers faced in switching to new methods. This paper will discuss the successful, as well as challenging, moments she faced in attempting this transition and will also explore how access to Pain’s personal papers has greatly enhanced this understanding. Although the BBC’s own archives provide compelling information on Pain’s career, here personal papers, also housed at the BBC Written Archives Centre, offer a rare glimpse into the working life of a female producer, and provide a detailed account of one radio producer’s attempt to translate her successful radio productions into the new medium of television.