AustLit

Radio production company and recording label.

Founded by Donovan Joyce the year after he left 3AW, Donovan Joyce Productions (DJP) commissioned radio dramas and documentaries which were produced out of studios in Melbourne. Many of the company's productions were exported overseas, particularly to South Africa, where Joyce also advised on local radio production. At one stage DJP serials were being broadcast in sixteen countries.

Joyce also formed a partnership with his elder brother Jim to bring leading actors, such as Lyndall Barbour and Dinah Shearing, from Sydney to perform in radio serials. Among the more popular of DJP's dramas were The Devil's Duchess and The Lillian Dale Affair. The Passing Parade, a half-hour documentary series, ran for over 150 episodes (many of which were scripted by Joyce himself). One episode, 'The Old School Tie', received much publicity when four actors walked out of a recording session because they felt that the play was a slur on the English class system. His fifty-episode series, T-Men, which revolves around tax evasion, came to the attention of Australian taxation officials who investigated a suspected 'leak' of inside information.

The arrival of television in Australia in 1956 became the catalyst for Donovan Joyce Production's demise. Rather than move into television Joyce eventually retreated from production and turned his attention instead to writing. [Source: Deirdre Morris, 'Joyce, Donovan Maxwell (1910 - 1980)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14 (1996), p. 592.]