Radio: Listening to the airwaves

Pages: 113-130

ISBN: 9780815364801

DOI: 10.4324/9781351106573-7

Abstract:

Sound broadcasting - ‘radio’ - has been ever-present in the Western world and beyond for the past hundred years and is an unrivalled and largely unexploited resource for the historian, both in its own right and for the light it throws on wider social, economic and political history over the past century. The introduction and development of radio in the US and the UK in its earliest years illustrates how the development of the medium was interwoven with the social and political requirements and prejudices of its time and provides telling resonances for the period as a whole. The British experience in particular, in the second half of the twentieth century, is a valuable indicator for the historian of broader societal trends. The nature of radio listening, being both active and passive, and its typical ‘liveness’, presents methodological opportunities and challenges for the historian. There is written archive material, increasing online and digitised records and analysis and a surprisingly wide opportunity to listen to the radio programmes themselves. The way in which radio can be of direct value to the social and political historian is illustrated by three case studies: British commercial radio in the 1930s; UK offshore pirate radio in the 1960s; and the arrival of a national commercial classical radio station in the UK in the 1990s. Taken together, they demonstrate how developments in the radio medium itself are paradigmatic for wider society, correcting prevailing myths and bringing to life times of intense social ferment. The digitisation of radio, its increasing move away from linear output and challenges to archive retention, will all provide challenges for the historian in the future.

Source: Scopus