Radio broadcastingA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWnot lifted until 1919, but in February 1920 the
Marconi Company in the UK began broadcast-
ing from Writtle/Chelmsford, though later in
the year the Post Offi ce withdrew permission for
these broadcasts. However, on 14 February 1922
the fi rst regular broadcasting service in Britain
was again beamed from Writtle, organized by
the Experimental Section of the Designs Depart-
ment of Marconi. Th eir London station, 2LO,
began broadcasting on 11 May of the same year.
The Post Office, faced with nearly 100
applications from manufacturers who wanted
to set up broadcasting stations, and realizing
the need to have some sort of control of the
airways, proposed a consortium of companies
to centralize broadcasting activity: the British
Broadcasting Company was born, and John
Reith appointed its Managing Director (see bbc,
origins). The BBC, set up by Royal Charter,
came into existence 1 January 1927. It was to
hold a monopoly of broadcasting in the UK until
commercial radio was legalized in the sound
broadcasting (uk) act, 1972 (see commer-
cial radio, uk).
From its beginning, radio broadcasting in
the US was fi nanced by advertising; from its
beginning, radio broadcasting in the UK was free
of advertising; the one was predominantly local,
the other a national public service and eventually
a national institution. No study of the evolution
of broadcasting in the UK can avoid also being
an analysis of the philosophy, vision and prac-
tices of the BBC’s Managing Director and later
Director General John (later Sir John) Reith.
Varyingly called the Napoleon of Broadcasting,
and Prospero, the all-powerful magician, Reith
disliked politics and politicians, and viewed
commerce with disdain (and commercialism
with contempt). He forged a defi nition of public
service broadcasting (psb) that dominated
broadcasting, both radio and TV, for generations
and which, even in the age of the dispersal of
control, aff ects us still.
Radio newsreaders wore dinner jackets and
bow-ties to read the news, a symbol of the
aloofness and distancing characteristic of Reith
and much of the output of the BBC. There
was even a Pronunciation Committee. Yet the
Corporation resisted criticisms from the popular
press that its tastes were too elitist. It was to
give drama and classical music, as well as many
other forms of music, a new structure and a new
popularity. Equally, there was room for develop-
ing the potential of radio in outside broadcasts,
drama documentary, discussion programmes,
and fi reside talks.Norman K. Denzin, Reading Race (Sage, 2002);
John Downing and Charles Husband, Representing
Race (Sage, 2005); Kjartan Sveinsson, A Tale of Two
Englands, Race and Violent Crime in the Media
(Runnymede Trust, 2008); Rosalind Brunt and
Rinella Cere, eds, Postcolonial Media Culture in Brit-
ain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Gilbert B. Rodman,
Th e Race and Media Reader (Routledge, 2010).
Radical press See media activism; open
source; underground press.
Radical suppression of potential (technol-
ogy) See supervening social necessity.
Radio See radio broadcasting.
Radio ballads Form or genre of musical docu-
mentary inspired in the UK by radio producer
Charles Parker, and compiled by folk-singers
Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, beginning in
1958 with Th e Ballad of John Axon. Th e introduc-
tion of high-quality portable tape recorders to
the BBC enabled Parker and his team to create
new patterns of vocal sound, interlaced with
sound eff ects (real, not studio-simulated) which
served as an ‘impressionistic’ means of describ-
ing the lives and work of ordinary people. John
Axon was a train driver, killed in a crash, and
the nature of his life was re-created in ballad and
recollection. Singing the Fishing (1960), taking
for its theme the hard life of the North Sea
fi sherman, won the Italia Press award. Th e BBC
withdrew fi nancial support from this pioneer-
ing team in 1964. See radio drama; web or
online drama.
Radio broadcasting The First World War
(1914–18) had given impetus to the development
of radio for military purposes, and the training of
wireless operators. Visionaries of the age saw the
possibility of wireless programmes as an exciting
extension of wireless messages – a ‘household
utility’ which would create a world of sound,
of voices and music; which would annihilate
distance and off er undreamed-of opportunities
for culture, entertainment and information.
With the ending of the war, crystal sets tuned
in by their ‘cat’s whisker’ became immensely
popular. Th e valve, called the ‘magic lantern of
radio’, developed between 1904 and 1914, soon
usurped the crystal.
Th e fi rst ‘broadcast’ of music and speech was
made by an American, R.A. Fissenden, in 1906.
The American Radio and Research Company
was broadcasting concerts twice and three times
a week as early as 1916, though KDKA of Pitts-
burg won the earliest renown as a pioneer in the
fi eld (on air, 1920).
A ban imposed on ‘amateur’ radio in Britain
at the outbreak of the First World War was