The origins of radio are deeply rooted in a very idealistic socialist potential to provide the communication necessary to connect people across space and time. At the beginning of the 20th century, radio was the equivalent to the Internet today in terms of its social as well as political possibilities. However, its development into a highly hierarchical system with expensive licensing fees and severe punishments for violations of these laws in order to protect certain industries has resulted in radio space being controlled by guardians of commerce. Radio licensing laws are concerned with the protection of copyrighted material. Radio has the potential to be a completely liberated, mobile and inhabited mass media. Radio – first steps
The BBC case
It was not until January 1927, when the BBC became the Corporation, that it was granted the freedom to arrange early news bulletins during the day, running commentaries and eye-witness accounts of sporting fixture and public events.
BBC agreed informally not to broadcast news before seven o’clock in the evening so as not to compete with the provincial evening newspapers.
In 1926 John Reith the managing director of BBC famously came into conflict with the Government during the General Strike 1926 – Reith “Since the BBC was a national institution, and since the government in this crisis were acting for the people… the BBC was the Government in the crisis too…”
The position from which the BBC presented the Strike in its news bulletin was one detached from both sides of the conflict. It sought a tone that was calm and cheering. It helped dispel rumours of riots and violence and to undermine belligerent elements in the government side.
With Fleet Street silence, the BBC’s news bulletins were the only available source of information for the population.
Broadcasting was being treated in the same way as the printing press had been in the sixteenth century. The restriction amounted to a censorship over the free expression of opinion and knowledge.
The charter and Licence mark the turning point in the BBC’s history, the moment from which it developed in its present form as a major political and culture influence on national life.. But the growth was not accompanied by a strengthening of its financial or political independence. It was transformed from a company in the private sector serving the interests of the British radio industry to a corporation in the public sector under the auspices of the state.
Radio offered a direct and immediate access to the electorate which the parties wished to exploit during the election campaigns in order to get their message across.
Ideally, the task of BBC was to accommodate the demands of the government power, to balance out the interests of parties and to devote its main energies to the cultivation of open discussion of the issue of the day across the whole spectrum of opinion. But never works like that. The interests of government lay largely in manipulating news to its own advantage and suppressing issues that might cause it embarrassment or give rise to criticism.
Audience:
Everyone involved today in the business of creating radio has to think about who will listen and this will have a powerful influence on what they make.
The beginning of the Commercial radio came to satisfy different demand unashamedly giving people exactly what they want. On the other hand, was the commercial face of the radio such as advertisement.
The physical or spatial dimensions of listening have changed in important ways after struggling with the technology in the early stage.
One of the achievements of the radio since the early days has been to establish models of addressing the attention and engage with the audience.
Defining the Radio space
Radio as a mental, physical and soundscape place.
The GAPS into the space: the radio Studies produce a sound space which contain the sound of the traffic, music coming out, the sounds of the radio environment itself.
Sound culture : The sound culture is auditory environment (or soundscape) located within its wider social and culture context.
The concept of the sound culture is directly connected with the soundscape
“Social and culture organization are largely responsible for the sound landscape that we inhabit and those inevitable change over time. In the Pre Industrial European world one of the defining features of the soundscape was the tolling of the church bell. It told the workers in the fields of the progress of their day.
Industrialisation created a very different soundscape of modernity. The cities became unpredictably loud. …The desire of eliminating the unwanted sound.
The contemporary urban soundscape has a electronic quality: using phones and iPod.
…In culture terms the soundscape has to be seen as highly commercialised and global environment in which what we hear is determined by the boardrooms of the media conglomerates.
A soundscape is like a landscape but instead of physical and therefore visual features of geography a sound landscape consists of all the sounds of the environment.
In the context of the radio it is useful to make a distinction between the natural sonic environment in which we live our lives and the specific “radio scape which we hear on the radio
In radio production work, and especially pre- recorded documentaries, the producer may want to capture the soundscape by making a ‘wild track’ recording. This is a recording of the sound of the environment (also called ‘actuality’) indipendent of the voice of the presenter. The soundscape of the radio, however, is more then just a background noise, it is itself the bearer of meanings.
Radio plays: the act of imagination in listening
Regulation
The terms “regulation” and more recently “deregulation” are associated mainly with commercial radio and in particularly with the long regulatory history of both UK and US radio.
The philosophy , funding, content, ownership, diversity, location and format of radio has all been the subject meticulous control at some time.
“The creation of the institutional radio broadcasting as a government- regulated extension of the public sphere have the experience of “listening –in” more weight and influence then going to the movies or reading a popular magazine; its status as a semipublic institution charged with education ad culture uplift put it in on a par with other official institutions….”( Hilmes, 1997)
The UK radio was fully institutionalized by becoming a national body ( a public corporation) licensed by parliament, subject to and paid for by a form of tax (the licence free) and also subject to both parliament - approved ‘charter renewal ’ and regular committees of inquiry.
In the USA, regulation took the form of ‘consensus broadcasting ’in which large independent radio ‘networks’ were attentive to government wishes while making assumptions about audience need..” The day- to- day business of allocating wavelength was the responsibility of the Federal Radio Commission (1927- 1934) and then the Federal Communication Commissions (FCC)
Regulation has not only been about spectrum allocation and political coverage, it has also attempted to prevent the broadcasts of sexually explicit material.
British commercial radio began in 1973 and was immediately subject to interventionist regulation by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA)
Broadcasting Act from 1990 led to lifting of restrictions on ownership and program contend and diversity.
Big companies absorbed small radio stations –
Great Western Radio (GWR) acquire over 30 stations and then merge with the Captial Radio Group
1996 – end of anti- monopoly rules and restriction on radio station ownership, originally designed to prevent the danger of broadcasting monopolies.
The case of the amateus ( pirate) radio
Chignell H., Key concepts in radio studies, London : Sage, 2009.