Radio is 75
...and still coming in, loud and clear
In the beginning, long before Television, CD-ROMs or the Internet, was the word, and it was heard over radio Seventy-five years ago this month, ( 1995 ) the first licensed station in the world went on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, broadcasting the results of the U.S. presidential election to as many as 1,000 listeners.
Since its glory years in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, radio has had its death knell tolled many times over. In the cold blue light of television flickering on the faces of millions of people, prophets of doom thought they saw the demise of the by-then quaint older medium. Then, thank you, Elvis, the world discovered rock 'n' roll; Top 40 was in and radio was, like, cool.
Talk radio brought a second, international renaissance. American commercial radio which began with the 1920 election of Republican Warren G. Harding, came full circle in the 1980s when the conservative talkers began making loud noises on the airwaves. Says Robert M. Batscha, president of New York City's Museum of Television & Radio, "On a continuing basis, radio is finding its role, and it is an effective role, in a crowded media environment."
With chat shows everywhere on the dial, suddenly people around the globe are phoning their stations to voice opinions and seek advice on topics from bonsai growing to sexual hang-ups. Veteran producer Kit Cummings of Radio Television Hong Kong notes that "in other countries, people ring stations to have a bleat. Here people ring in because they want to get things done. There's a pothole in the road outside, and they have rung every government department to no avail."
Like politics, radio has made mighty strange bedfellows. North and South Korea, for example, have little open contact; since the two share no direct postal or telecommunication exchanges, radio has become a vital liaison and propaganda tool. When Seoul needs to make a proposal that it wants to be heard by Northern ears, it turns to the state-run network, which Pyongyang constantly monitors. In a broadcast on Aug. 15, Liberation Day, President Kim Young Sam called on the North to resume reunification talks between the two countries, which had broken off in July 1994.
Radio was the first link uniting the global electronic village. In much of Africa only the rich own TVs, and newspapers are not available in rural areas where most of the continent's people live. Yet this year 82 nonprofit radio stations received licenses in South Africa, many of them black operated. They present entertainment along with educational and health programming, including information about AIDS, and some carry shows in tribal languages as well as English.
Great hopes are pinned on a windup radio invented by Britisher Trevor Baylis that needs neither electricity nor batteries. Capable of receiving radio signals even in the remotest regions, it is powered by a tiny generator driven by a clockwork mainspring. In a universe traversed by the information superhighway, can radio still sound loud and clear? Just stay tuned.
Source: Emily Mitchell, Time International, 11-20-1995, pp 14.
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