Preamble: A Personal View
On most days I wake up to a radio alarm clock that switches on to the Today programme broadcast on BBC Radio Four. This experience continues over breakfast with my family. Others might tune into a music station in the morning and listen to the patter of the DJ and sing along to the popular tunes of the day. Many sit in their cars going to work listening to the radio, or under headphones on the commuter train, existing both in their own private listening environment while also connected through radio to the wider world. People sit in cafes sipping tea, or go about their shopping, with the radio playing in the background, providing some ambiance to their activities. Radio is there when we wake up, go to sleep, travel and undertake leisure activities. According to the Radio Audience Joint Audience Research (RAJAR), â49.2 million adults or 90% of the adult (15+) UK population tuned in to their selected radio stations each week in the second quarter of 2017â (RAJAR 2017). Radio, whether we know it or not, is part of our everyday lives and routines and has been there, in this form, for nearly a hundred years or so. Indeed, at an anecdotal level, my parents can still remember as children listening to it in the 1940s, when radio played a more important role in the life of the nation, listening-in to the radio news about the war, comedy programmes, swing, dance and classical music, variety shows and childrenâs programmes. They remember the way their family would sit around the radio set in the evening, listening to the voices, music and sounds coming out of the ether, linking the nation together. Indeed, my father remembers using his short-wave radio after the war to listen, through the crackle and hiss, to stations broadcasting from around Europe. However, it very much appears to be the forgotten medium. If you ask a group of students which media they have used in a day, radio is usually forgotten. For many it is used as a background medium, one through which other media, such as music or news, are heard and remembered. However, as noted above, it is still a popular medium. We almost all still, at some stage during the day, listen to it, whether by choice or not. Reflecting this disinterest, in some ways, has been the lack of scholarly work on radio, with most interest in the media being focused on film , television or the press (Lacey 2009: 21).
This has led me to wonder why such a popular medium as radio no longer attracts much public discourse . If I open up a newspaper, magazine, or even use my computer to look at a news website, most of the articles, when they touch on the media, will relate to film , music or television . Radio is hardly covered at all. It is not only a secondary media in terms of how many of us seem to consume it, such that we do not know or remember that we have listened to it, but also that there is little popular or critical discussion about it. There are few previews , reviews or critiques about radio to be found in the mass media, or even on the new media. As Peter Lewis argues , there is a gaping hole in public discourse about this medium (2000). However, as we shall see, this has not always been so. For some decades, particularly when radio was the pre-eminent medium of the day, radio critics or radio columnists , such as Collie Knox or Jonah Barrington , were in fact minor celebrities . Such columnists were given a regular slot in the paper, and attracted a lot of public attention. There were also journals, such as Popular Wireless and Amateur Wireless and even the British Broadcasting Corporationâs (BBC) very own The Listener , which concentrated on radio broadcasting. What my book will focus on, is not radio and its history, its output and programmes, nor that of the press and its history, but on the link between them, the radio critic and their coverage, and their input into the public debate and public discourse about radio. I am interested in the radio coverage that appeared in the major national newspapers, the appointment of critics, different types of output the critics provided, how their work helped position radio in both the wider cultural debates and for the public. I will also look at how the role of critics has changed over time and, indeed, how their importance has waxed and waned over the decades for newspapers, readers and listeners.
Seeking an Approach
I start this book, in some ways, with a problem of defining the medium the critics write about: radio. Is it the programmes, the act of listening to programmes, the underlying technology, practices of making radio, the relationship between radio and other media, the context within which radio operates, the stories of the people working there or the regulations and policies which have shaped its development? (see: Lacey 2009: 24â5). In many ways it is all these elements and more. And, as such, no one piece of work can take or provide a complete holistic account of these elements, all that can be done is to focus on particular issues, processes and time periods, marshalled together and organised through a particular conceptual or theoretical view point or historical narrative. Likewise the finished work can never present a finalised view of radio, but instead it can only but add to a developing and growing understanding of the medium. The same, in many ways, can be said of the press, the other part of the equation I am dealing with in this book.
However, is it not just a question of defining and approaching the study of one medium in isolation, as all media and cultural forms, in some way are interrelated, they all connect in some form. For example, it is impossible to understand film without also understanding its relationship to theatre , drama, radio and television . This does not mean that one cannot focus on one particular medium, perhaps as an organising principle, but as we do so we have to take account of its connection or interrelatedness to others. This might be done through our own research, or by utilising research already undertaken on other media. However, as James Curran notes, this has not always been the case, âBritish media history is highly fragmented, being subdivided by period, medium and interpretive traditionâ (2009: 1). I therefore see my approach as being one that attempts not to just to focus on radio and its related criticism, but to align it, to add it to, to intertwine it, to other histories and media forms. Indeed, by its very nature, it is a form and practice that directly connects two media: that of the press and the related practices of journalism and the object of its critique, radio; and that there is an obvious and self-evident need, therefore, to take account of their different histories. As Siân Nicholas argues , â[h]istorians of the mass media may have traditionally treated each medium separately. Yet the necessity for an integrated approach is evident if we are to address the historical role of the mediaâ (2012: 390).
Therefore, I wish here to stress and to indicate that my aim in this book is to help create a multifaceted understanding of how radio criticism developed as a form and practice and its relationship to radio and the press, and to other media and cultural forms, such as film , theatre , drama and television , as well as to the wider cultural, social, political and economic context. My aim is not to analyse and explore the work of critics separated from the media they work for, the one they write about and the wider context within which they operate. This approach will be echoed in the structure of the work, where chapters have been chosen, partly, to focus on particular moments relevant not just to critics, but important moments in the histories of other media and the wider social and cultural history of the nation, such as relating to the war and the period of austerity that follows, the introduction of commercial television in the 1950s, the cultural upheaval in the 1960s that leads to the launching of Radio 1 , the shift towards the free market in the 1980s and the development of the internet . Also, in relation to the analysis, it will not just be a close reading of the work of the critics, but also a wider analysis of how the output of the critic relates to the wider context within which they work.
Chapter Structure
This work is divided into six further chapters, a division which is, in some ways arbitrary. They could be, like any other book, divided differently. However, the chapters I have decided to use the idea of focusing on particular historical moments or phases in the development of radio criticism , radio, newspapers, journalistic practice and other media and cultural forms and their moments of interconnectedness, as noted above. While five of the chapters focus on particular historical periods or moments, Chap. 2 stands out as being different, as it is designed to operate as a theoretical-conceptual chapter, which explores the nature of the critic, the criticâs role as a cultural intermediary , the relationship between the critic and the industry they work for, and the one they might write about, the wider cultural context they work in and, for my book, how the radio critic related to the radio and television industries. I also use this chapter to help set up the approach, including the methodology, taken within this book.
As the chapter structure is chronological, Chap. 3 starts by focusing on the early radio coverage, which developed in the 1920s. Such coverage was often written by journalists and radio correspondents , as no identifiable radio critics had yet been appointed by the national newspapers. This is the early period of radio broadcasting, one where radio was finding its form, while the press equally was exploring different ways of covering radioâs developments. At this time, as I highlight, two important narratives came to dominate the early newspaper coverage of radio, and which fed back into the wider public debates that were occurring about radio. The first narrative concentrated on the technological possibilities and the spectacle of radio, including the early forms of radio communication and the first experiments in broadcasting. While the medium was still forming, the focus was less on its output and content, than what it seems to be able to offer, its potential. The other narrative, that starts to appear a little later, as the medium of radio broadcasting developed, focused on the worries and concerns about this new form. These were worries about the social, cultural and political power of the radio, but also the impact it might have on existing businesses, British culture, other media and cultural forms, and, connected to this, discussions of how radio might be controlled or regulated to limit the potential harm it might cause. This chapter therefore looks not only at the potential of radio and worries about its possible impact , but also at the form that it took, initially as a regulated commercial monopoly and then as a public corporation, imbued with the aim of serving the public. The second part of the chapter explores the early forms of radio coverage that appeared at this time, some of which celebrated the spectacle and excitement of radio and its output, while other elements criticised the British Broadcasting Company (BBCo) (it became a public corporation in 1927), the organisation given the monopoly to run broadcasting in the UK, and its ...