Drama International

By the mid-point of the twentieth century, the technology and artistry of commercial radio entertainment had reached maturity throughout most of the world. In South Africa, broadcasting remained under state control through the auspices of the South African Broadcasting Company. The SABC's origins were with the South African Railways and was modeled upon and closely associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Like the British Broadcastin, the SABC's purpose was to serve the public and was funded by the South African government, but he SABC served a multicultural and multilingual society. Broadcasts were originally in English and Afrikaans, but by 1940 Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho and Tswana had been added.

The decision was made in 1945 to begin a commercial broadcasting service which would fund the SABC's operations. Springbok Radio finally went on the air on May 1, 1950. Springbok programming was largely directed toward a white suburban audience and took advantage of the advances in radio programming which had been radio programming in other nations. There was some original programming developed for the South African audience, but many of the programs were copied to a greater or lesser extent from shows originally broadcast in the US and Great Britain.

One of the better locally developed programs was Drama International. The anthology format would have been familiar to fans of US commercial broadcasts. The original stories were based on classic short stories and novels and adapted to a half hour long radio play. It would be easy to credit the success of Springbok Radio to the fact that it did not have to compete with television until 1976, but it is also true that thanks to the lessons learned from the BBC as well as NBC, ABC, CBS, and the Mutual Networks in North America, Springbok was able to develop and distribute entertainment of such high quality that TV was simply not needed.