Recently the BBC have made a new site - World Service Radio Archive Prototype (WSRAP).
I heard of it Sunday last when it was opened up to the general public. Before this it was at a beta stage for a limited few.
It includes about 700 Plays of the Week along with Thirty Minute Theatres, Theatre of the Air and Radio Theatre as well as book readings.
So yesterday I done searches for 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'Conan Doyle'.
Here's a list of what I found:
(BBCWS = BBC World Service)
Charles Marowitz Sherlock's Last Case BBCWS Play of the Week 19870803&05 (pts 1 & 2)
Gillian Gray Sherlock Holmes BBCWS 1987 (pt 1/2 16 July & pt 2/2 23 August)
MJ Read 221B BBCWS Play of the Week 19860711
Moriarty BBCWS Good Books 19950424
Roy Marsden & John Moffatt Thirty Minute Theatre Sherlock Holmes BBCWS 1993
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS Analysis 20090520
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS Meridian 19880329
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS The Strand 20090522
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS The Strand 20111222
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS The Word 20070330
Sherlock Holmes Festival BBCWS Meridian Books 19980707
Sherlock Holmes film album BBCWS The Strand 20111223
Sherlock Holmes film Review BBCWS The Strand 20091221
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle BBCWS Meridian Books 19960521
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle BBCWS The Strand 20090522
The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes BBCWS Goodbooks with Bert Coules 19941104
Whodunnit BBCWS Meridian Masterpiece 2000
Young Sherlock Holmes BBCWS Meridian 19860314
I have a number of other things keeping me busy at the moment. I can upload the odd Imagination Theater file but going through this lot to add to my SkyDrive will have to wait for a while. What I have done is to grab mp3s of everything above. The mp3s are labelled the same way as in the list and I have added text files for each with the info found on the WSRAP site. One or two things might not have text files in which case the WSRAP site has no more info than what's in the file label. The files haven't been tagged either.
You can stream the files on the site but not download them. I'm grabbing them with a Firefox extension titled VideoDownloadHelper. The streams are mono 32kbit 48000Hz mp3s. The whole lot above in the list total 158MB. For now I have zipped up the whole lot and uploaded the zip to SkyDrive. Link:
BBC World Service Radio Archive Prototype - Sherlock Holmes
Many of the feature type shows like The Strand and Meridian include a few pieces. When I have the time I will edit the other pieces out leaving just the Holmes/Doyle piece.
Some observations on a few shows, from the top:
I noticed that Sherlock's Last Case has an older date, 1987 than the Radio 4 version I have from 1989. The WSRAP site is a bit of a mess though and the dates on the site could be wrong.
Gillian Gray Sherlock Holmes - This is in this group already. Without checking I think one of Rogers. Even though it's mono I think this 'new' version is a little clearer myself.
221B - My desert island Holmes play. the date is a couple of months later than the version posted by Roger. Doesn't matter anyway, I doubt I'll keep this. Roger's is much better, in stereo and has the intro.
Thirty Minute Theatre Sherlock Holmes - This group has excellent rips from the cassette releases of these. All 24 stories. The BBCWS aired 6 of the stories. I've never came across them as Thirty Minute Theatres myself. Stick with the better sounding cassette rips although I will keep these simply to fill a hole in the BBC Holmes folder. For completists only and of the list above these are the only ones I've filed, tagged and also uploaded to the SkyDrive BBC folder.
Sherlock Holmes BBCWS Meridian 19880329 - all 30 minutes of this are dedicated to Holmes and this show is new to me.
Whodunnit - 3 parter examining the literary genre of detective fiction.
As for the rest I still have to go through them myself. Like I said text files are enclosed for most of the shows.
I can imagine one or two of you would like to see the site yourselves. Here's the link to join up. Once the form has been sent you need to confirm by clicking a link in the email that the BBC send you. By the way this is open to all, not just the UK. I've found some gems myself. For example before I found the site I had 22 Terence Rattigan BBC plays. I now have 29 with 5 from Play of the Week and a couple of others. One of them, Harlequinade, being totally new to me.
http://worldservice.prototyping.bbc.co.uk/users/sign_up
Good hunting!
Replies
Skydrive says the file is no longer available. Any advice?
Robert Johnson
You might be talking of the zip version that Roger had problems with.
I did say above in my last post that I have removed the zip but I can appreciate it's easy to miss. There's no way I can see of editing posts on Times Past once the 15 minutes period after first posting has expired. If I could edit I wouldn't be making new posts but rather just edit the first one.
Use the last link in my last post (SkyDrive Public folder). This Public folder is basically the main folder from which you can drill down to all the other folders. There's a folder labelled 'BBC World Service Radio Archive' in the Public folder. It's the third from the top if viewed in list view. Everything in the WS archive folder is what was in the zip apart from one change. One of the shows - 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle BBCWS The Strand 20090522' got messed up when I included it in the zip. I have now fixed it and the show is in the WS archive folder.
Here's a direct link one step deeper than the Public folder. It takes you directly inside the BBC World Service Radio Archive folder.
BBC World Service Radio Archive
I'm glad you posted Roger. Uploading the files has brought something to light. One of the mp3s I made got messed up somewhere along the line. It's the show 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle BBCWS The Strand 20090522'.
For anybody who has downloaded the zip you might want to download the new version I've just grabbed from the WS archive site. I have removed the zip from SkyDrive as well.
Apart from correcting the bad Doyle Strand mp3 everything else is exactly the same as found in the zip. Because the BBC have higher bitrate versions of the shows I think I'm going to leave the WS archive folder 'as-is' on SkyDrive. By as-is I mean no mp3 tags and some of the feature shows include pieces which are not Holmes/Doyle related and I'd like to edit the unrelated pieces out. Hopefully we'll get the higher bitrate versions at some point and I can edit and file them away properly when that happens.
I did just do a search of the site to see if anything had been added since I last checked. I couldn't find anything new. I was hoping that they had added a show titled 'Back to Baker Street! The Sherlock Holmes Mystique'. I heard of this show when doing a search last year for Jack the Ripper related BBC shows. It's mentioned on Brian Sibley's blog. It's quite a long page but if you look a little past half-way (I'm going on the scroll mark which I get along the right-hand side of my browser) you'll see 'Jack from Hell! The Terrible Legacy of Jack the Ripper (WS)' and three entries down 'Back to Baker Street! The Sherlock Holmes Mystique (WS)'. Maybe I should ask Brian Sibley. He filled a request for me recently. He uploaded a couple of songs from a show he produced titled Hit the Heights to his Soudcloud. I asked if he could upload the whole show and he did.
http://briansibleytheworks.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/broadcasts.html
https://soundcloud.com/brian-sibley
Incidentally there was a Jack the Ripper show on the WS archive site. The feature show Omnibus aired a half hour show during the centenary in 1988. If anybody would like it I have uploaded it to the SkyDrive 'NON Holmes or Conan Doyle' folder. You can ignore the 2 zip versions in the same folder. The next paragraph will explain the reason for the zips.
SkyDrive NON Holmes or Conan Doyle folder
Roger I'm intrigued by what happened when you tried to unpack the zip. Has this happened to anybody else? I don't keep up with virus and malware news myself since I changed from Windows to Linux so I don't know what software to suggest to see what the problem could be. How about trying another zip (or two) to see what happens? As well as uploading a straight mp3 of the Ripper Omnibus show (see last paragraph) I have uploaded 2 zip versions. One without a password and one with. The password zip is labelled accordingly and the password is "password" (without the quotes). You can use the 'Non Holmes or Conan Doyle' folder link to get to them. Maybe we can work out what's going on this way.
Lastly - a link to the SkyDrive Public folder. The 'BBC World Service Radio Archive' is the third folder from the top.
SkyDrive Public folder
That's all worked perfectly, Jake. Thank you!
Roger
Jake, some of the recordings can't be extracted from the Zip file as they're password-protected. It's something I've not encountered before!
Roger
Roger,
Strange, I didn't password protect them.
After typing this I will make a folder labelled 'BBC World Service Radio Archive' and upload the files into said folder. Inside the zip each of the WS archive's shows is in it's own folder with a text file. I'll use the same method again.
When I'm done I'll make a post with a link.
Thanks, Jake. You're a star!
Roger
Many thanks, Jake, for sharing this valuable source of radio programs!
Thanks Steve, Douglas and Bob.
You might of heard of the Diversity / Sutton elms website.
I forgot to add in my post that I had heard that they had some kind of list, or partial list of what the WSRAP site has. I had not been able to get on the site until I checked earlier. From Sunday night to Tuesday night i was getting time-outs whenever I tried to get through.
The Diversity site has an update saying that since yesterday (5 Feb) you can't sign up anymore, at least not until the next phase of testing.
http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/world-service-drama-archive.html
I just checked to see if I can still use the BBC WSRAP site myself. I can so if anybody is too late for sign-ups I don't mind the odd request if there's something on the list any of you guys would really like. I know the people on otrplus 154 forum have been downloading like mad and it might be worth checking there as well.
Lastly, roadcone at otrplus has been in correspondence with somebody at BBC R&D about the low 32k quality of the shows. It's not all the BBC have. They have better but this is all they are offering for now.
Nice work, Jake!
And .. you found Harlequinade?!?! That alone would be reason to join!
Thanks again.
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