Modernity, World Wars and Dictatorships | 115political culture of individual countries defined the scope and reach of the
stations. While in Great Britain the BBC was intended to promote national
integration from a central location in London, the cultural federalism of the
Weimar Republic produced a decentralised system of regional channels. The
nine regional companies were public limited companies, but the Post Office
owned 51 per cent of their respective shares, and this also applied to the Deut-
sche Reichsfunkgesellschaft (German Radio Corporation) that maintained the
Deutsche Welle (Germany’s international broadcaster) (Dussel 1999: 30–39).
Both the state’s belief in its right to control the media as well as the bourgeois
fear of unfettered media development led to this model. The Germans even
rejected the term ‘radio’ and pointedly spoke of Rundfunk, as a means of stress-
ing the principle of ‘one to many’ and distancing themselves from the United
States. In addition, the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), founded in
1925, regulated European frequency issues across borders but also organised
an international exchange of concert broadcasts (Eugster 1983: 29–56).
Hardly any radio programmes of the 1920s have come down to us. For
this reason content analyses are based mainly on programme manuscripts
and radio guides. State-affiliated or public channels like those in Germany,
Japan and Great Britain mainly pursued the goal of educating their public via
bourgeois culture. This included lectures, classical music, literary radio plays
and information, although the second half of the 1920s already witnessed an
increase in sports reporting, light operettas and comedy. In Germany about
half of the programming consisted of spoken or musical programmes. Out
of respect for the churches, the Sunday programming was more serious and
included religious ceremonies. For this reason British listeners sometimes
tuned in to foreign channels like ‘Radio Normandie’ and ‘Radio Luxembourg’
on Sundays (Fortner 2005: 51), which had already had an English and a Dutch
programme since 1933. At night especially, listeners would go in pursuit of
foreign channels because, after the regional channels had shut down, reception
was less hampered by static interference (Leonhard 1997: 368).
Tellingly, the stations had hardly any clear ideas about listening habits
(Briggs 1995: 295; Führer 1996: 771). Initial surveys found that in Germany
entertainment, light music, news and time signals were especially popular.
Research on listening habits only began around 1930 in the United States as a
means of targeting different listener groups more effectively. Due to the strong
role of advertising, audience measurement developed quickly. The use of tele-
phone recalls was replaced by coincidental interviews (Buzzard 2012: 11–15).
The non-commercial BBC did not produce its first listener surveys until after
1936, thus documenting its lack of interest in the public’s wishes (Scannell
and Cardiff 1991: 375).
Many observers feared that radio and records would lead to the demise of
live music at dances and concerts. However, the opposite became true. Also