Adventures in Odyssey

Adventures in Odyssey (AIO), or simply Odyssey, is an Evangelical Christian radio drama and comedy series created and produced by Focus on the Family. Aimed at families with children age 12 and younger, the series first aired in 1987 as a 13-episode pilot called Family Portraits and has over 970 episodes to date. In 2005, the show's daily audience averaged around 1.2 million within North America. The Odyssey radio series also includes several spin-off items, including a home-video series, several computer games, books, and devotionals. The series is set in the fictional town of Odyssey. Stories center around the people who live there, particularly ice-cream and discovery emporium owner John Avery Whittaker, who was originally voiced by Hal Smith. History In 1982, Focus on the Family began creating several short dramas for inclusion in the ministry's daily half-hour radio show; these radio dramas were commissioned by Focus on the Family founder and then-president James Dobson as an alternative to Saturday-morning cartoons. This effort culminated in a thirteen-week test series titled Family Portraits which aired in early 1987. It was created by Steve Harris and Phil Lollar, who set it in a small Midwest town they called Odyssey. The test episodes engendered a favorable audience response, and led to a continuing radio program in November 1987, called Odyssey USA. The title was later changed in 1988 to Adventures in Odyssey to "increase international appeal". The goal of the Odyssey staff was to create a "values-based" radio show with production values comparable with or surpassing those of most mainstream audio dramas. While the show aimed to promote Christian values, according to Odyssey's co-creator Phil Lollar, the goal is not to be "a preaching program", but to be an "entertaining program". Large amounts of work were put into each individual story; for the first few years, each thirty-minute episode typically took over one hundred hours to produce. Several well-known voice actors were brought in to provide the lead roles. Hal Smith voiced the lead character John Avery Whittaker in one of his favorite roles. The rest of the original "key" characters were voiced by Katie Leigh, Will Ryan, and Walker Edmiston, who, along with Hal Smith, had all previously worked together extensively at Disney. Television star Dave Madden played the character "Bernard Walton" from 1990 to 2008.