Radioacracy

8/10/2019 Radioacracy

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A R T I C L E

INTERNATIONALjournal of

CULTURAL studies

Copyrig ht 2000SAGE Publicat ionsLon do n, Tho usan d Oa ks,

CA a nd New DelhiVolume 3(2): 153159

[1367-8779(200008)3:2; 153159; 013867]

Radiocracy

So und a nd cit izen ship

John Ha rtley

Q ueensland U niversit y of Technology

A B S T R A C T The histo ry of ra dio fro m th e ea rly pre-bro a dca sting period

show s how tra nsmitted music a nd ta lk ha ve been caug ht up in the evolution o f

cont em po ra ry citizen ship. The a rticle d iscusses Berto lt Brecht s experimen t s in

public ra dio in the 1920s, a nd a rgues tha t comm ercia l ra dio can a lso be seen t o

ha ve cont ribut ed t o t he self-ident ifi cation o f ima g ined communities.

Inte rnat iona lly, despite t he a scendan ce of ot her broa dcast and comm unications

media, radio continues to be used in a variety of commun ity-building

developme nta l situa tions, providing remot e, ma rginal a nd disenfra nchised

commun ities w ith low -cost, low -te ch public spa ce. Ra dio rema ins on e of th e

pillars of civil society, combining e nt erta inment a nd d emo cra cy, soun d a nd

citizenship. This a rticle is a mo difi ed version o f t he w elcom e a dd ress th a t

la unched t he Ra diocra cy conference.

K E Y W O R D S Brecht citizenship democracy development

entertainment nat ion radio

Radiocrats

With some of the BBCs most militant scourges of academic jargon lurkingnearby, I had better be sparing with barbarous neologisms, and I hereby

apologize for coining radiocracy the word. I wont mention within

earshot of our first guest speaker, John Humphrys,1 that radiocracy
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/http://www.sagepub.co.uk/


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1 5 4 INTERNATIO NAL journa l ofCULTURAL studies 3(2)

government by rad io may be part of an ever larger and, no t least fo r him,

even more disturbing hybrid that I have called democratainment (Hartley,

1999: chapter 12).

Professional broadcasters have long known they are poised, sometimesbut not alw ays w ith effortless grace, betw een democracy a nd enterta inment,

betw een public and private life, betw een the sublime and the cor b limey.

Ra dio is the oldest but not a lw ays the best researched example of ho w these

polar ities have been organized a nd played out in the unpredictable immedi-

acy of daily life. Many broadcasters are radiocrats, including those who

w ould ba lk at the w ord itself. But some of the most impressive uses of radio

for democratic development have been in formats well beyond the political

cut and thrust of the kind associated with John Humphrys in the UK.

Radiocrats have used music, comedy, drama and light entertainment to

advance their cause.

H ow does a community identify itself as such? What connects its members

to the imagined community of modern associated life? What links that

community to its representa tive bodies, a nd to the world a t large? How do

smaller groups, especially remote, marginal, disenfranchised or oppressed

communities, press for their place among others? The Radiocracy: Radio,

Democracy and Development conference set out to explore some of these

questions. Along the way, it is important to assess how the polarities

between public and private, democracy and entertainment have changed,

and whether those distinctions are viable any longer. Meanwhile, conceptstha t w ere once associat ed w ith living persons ha ve increasingly been caught

up in modern media provision. Citizenship, nationality, even identity, are

now virtualized, extending our being well beyond our own personal

embodiment.

In the days of the BBC Radio Newsreel, which had the signature tune

Imperial Echoes, it w as possible to imagine that citizenship and music were

one and the same thing. As those echoes have died away, to be replaced by

the rhythms of drum and bass, as Britannia fades to Britney, there is

somehow less consensus abo ut the integrat ion o f public and private life. Themartial oompah of imperial history has become the drunken Ibiza of inter-

national clubbing. What is the connection between the government and the

M inistry of Sound (a club a nd a ssociated marketing brand in the UK); w hat

has sound to do with citizenship?

Early days: Brecht versus the Radio Music Box

These themes were set in motion in Cardiff, location of the Radiocracyconference. The first wireless transmission over water, precursor of the radio

age, w as a chieved in 1895, in a d emonstration by G uglielmo M arconi, from

Lavernock Point to Steep Holm Island in the Bristol Channel. Unfortunately,

the commemorative bronze plaque at Lavernock Point was recently


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Hartley Sou nd a nd citizenship 1 5 5

souvenired, but the historic event is celebrated in a recent sculpture, appro-

priately linking public themes with commercial development, that enlivens

a busy roundabout to Tescos supermarket in Penarth M arina. It is a sta in-

less steel kite-aerial soaring above a stainless steel radio apparatus.In the early period of broadcast radio, in the late 1920s, Bertolt Brecht

w rote of the need to ma ke rad io into something really democrat ic: It w as

suddenly possible to say everything to everybody but, thinking about it,

there w as nothing to say (Brecht, 1979/80: 24). H e was chiding the broa d-

casters for not being ambitious enough, and mocking radio for being an

inconsequential distribution system an acoustical department store in

which you could learn in English how to keep chickens to the Pilgrims

Chorus from Tannhuser (1979/80: 24). Instead , Brecht w anted to promote

his vision for broadcast radio as a two-way medium of communication, if

only:

it were capable not only of transmitting but of receiving, of making the lis-

tener not only hear but also speak, not of isolating him but connecting him.

. . . That is w hy it is extremely positive when radio a ttempts to give public

affa irs a truly public nature. (Brecht, 1979/80: 25)

Brecht produced a t least tw o plays for G erman ra dio ba sed on his didac-

tic epic theatre principles, in which some of his ideas for involving the

masses directly in radio were put into practice. Listeners were to take the

role of chorus and join in w ith the perfo rmers (see Hood, 1979/80) anearly form o f t alkback, perhaps.

In addition to epic theatre, Brecht saw clearly that radio provided an

unprecedented opportunity for citizen participation in public life. He rec-

ommended actuality broadcasting of politics and important trials; real

interview s and debates (instead o f dead reports); lectures and discussions

instead o f the grey uniformity o f the daily menu of light music and language

courses (quoted in H ood, 1979/80: 18). In short, as ear ly as 1927, ra dio

was envisaged as a means for community-building, collective communi-

cation and dramat ic imagination. Brecht saw rad io as a perfect opportunityfor building a public sphere and for promoting the development of civil

society. R ad io a llow ed d irect contact w ith the population a t la rge, bypass-

ing the existing ideological apparatuses of the state. This heroic role for

radio was not able to survive in the political circumstances of 1930s

G ermany. But tho se same circumstances demonstra ted exa ctly w hy Brecht

was on to something worthwhile in radio theory.

M eanw hile, in Britain and the USA, a different mod el of broad casting had

already been established. David Sarnoff, then working for the Marconi

Wireless Telegraphy C ompany, w rote in 1915 abo ut a Rad io M usic Box that could become a household utility in the same sense as the piano or

phonograph. The idea is to bring music into the house by wireless (Lubar,

1993: 213). H ow ever, this novel use for radio telephony w as also imagined

as public: it wasnt just entertainment that the radio music box promised,


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1 5 6 INTERNATIO NAL journa l ofCULTURAL studies 3(2)

but a lso baseba ll games, lectures, a nd events of nationa l importance (Lubar,

1993: 213). It was not until 2 November 1920 that Westinghouse estab-

lished the first commercial radio station, KDKA, and the first news broad-

cast by KDKA was the result of the 1920 presidential election.Thus, radical and commercial innovators alike Brecht and Sarnoff

seemed to agree that radio was capable of mixing music and politics, home

enterta inment a nd na tiona l events. Where they differed w as in their att itude

to the two-way aspect of radio. Brecht wanted to exploit it; the broadcast-

ers wanted to stamp it out. It has been estimated that in 1922 there were

15,000 transmitting stations in the USA, almost all of them run by ama-

teurs, reaching perhaps 250,000 listeners. Steven Lubar (curator at the

Smithsonian Museum) comments: Most amateurs looked down on people

w ho just listened to broa dcasts. M ost o f them believed that rad io should be

an active medium of communication (Lubar, 1993: 214).

The eventua l dominance of commercial broadcasting, as opposed to other

cultural forms, was not inherent in radio technology. Nor did radio arise

from an existing social need as Brecht pointed out, it was not the public

tha t w aited for rad io but ra dio tha t w aited for a public (1979/80: 24). It

won that public by commercial methods in the USA and by the brute force

of monopoly in Britain a brute force that included the deliberate sup-

pression of local radio stations by John Reiths BBC. The two-way possi-

bilities of radio seemed to have ebbed away, remaining only as a technical

hobby for boys.

Radio and development

But it turned out (against Brechts expectations) that one-way broadcasting

was nevertheless able to perform the public service that early proponents

imagined for ra dio. Listeners liked the sense of imagined community pro-

vided by hearing the same sounds at the same time as millions of others.

Even the most domesticated form of light entertainment, the Radio MusicBox , w as a d ifferent experience in kind from listening to the same music on

a phonograph. Ra dio became a prime site for the establishment o f na tional

identity through national culture.

Through an enduring combination of music and actuality, radio came to

symbolize civil society and community during the modern broadcast era of

the nation-state. The democratic benefits of such an invention were en-

thusiastically exported. Short-wave radio teemed with national broadcast-

ers talking to global listeners. The BBC World Service, Voice of America,

Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Radio Netherlands arestill the big five of international radio broadcasting, and still maintain a

rhetoric of democracy rather than commerce to justify their costs.

The early history of radio shows that the familiar cultural form of


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one-way broadcasting was not inevitable or even welcome to its early pro-

ponents. But at the same time it shows that the idea of combining music,

democracy, domesticity and radio predates the broadcast era. As the domi-

nance of broadcasting is now under challenge from post-broa dcast fo rms ofmedia, especially the Internet, the same combination seems to have survived

in rude good health. And as the dominance of the nation-state is at least in

question if not under attrition, new models of citizenship, community, civil

society and public communicat ion a re being evolved.

Some of these are very low -tech, low -cost solutions to problems of

development. While he w as D eputy Sta te President of South Africa in 1996,

Thabo Mbeki, speaking to the Commonwealth Press Union, argued for

radio as a key mechanism for growing civil society in post-apartheid South

Africa.2 He saw the need for the African National Congress government to

at tend to the flow of informa tion betw een government and people in a tw o-

w ay exchange that w ent beyond merely using radio as a means o f dissemi-

nation of government information. In conditions where literacy rates,

remoteness and lack of infrastructure made it difficult for a government to

assess what its voters wanted, what they liked or didnt like, Mbeki argued

strongly for state involvement in community radio, along with the develop-

ment of privatized commercial radio in a diverse media environment.

One of the problems associated with that policy is technological. Trevor

Bayliss invention of the wind-up radio, and the subsequent manufacture of

the Freeplay by the Baygen company in South Africa, was one solution tothe problem of diffusing radio to remote communities.3 So elegant w as this

solution that the radio won the BBC Designer of the Year competition for

Baylis in 1997.

In developmental terms, the Freeplay wind-up radio was in fact a tree.

When speaking of the educational legacy of apartheid South Africa, Mbeki

pointed out tha t a mong black teachers there was a n 80:1 imbalance betw een

biblical studies teachers and mathematics teachers. There w as a similar d is-

proportion of sociologists over engineers. Mbeki commented that it is

better to have a good teacher under a tree than a bad teacher in a class-room. He saw the community radio as that good teacher, able to deliver

useful know ledge to under-resourced cit izens in the name of civil society.

Baylis proved that the idea was practical, with a radio that can be thrown

out of an aeroplane, that runs on wrist-power and that is a design classic

into the bargain.

Nation-building and breaking

There are many other exa mples of the use of ra dio t o form communities in

contexts where nation-building is either at an early stage or not relevant.

For instance, in Australia, the National Indigenous Radio Service and the


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conversation between Humphrys and Ian Hargreaves, Professor of Journal-

ism at Card iff University. H umphrys wa s born and ra ised in Card iff and ho lds

an honora ry M A at C ardiff University. H e is renow ned in the UK fo r his tren-

chantly expressed views on, among other things, academic jargon in generaland media studies in part icular.

2 Unbeknownst to him, Ra diocracy w as M bekis brainchild. John H artley and

Amanda Hopkinson were present at Mbekis speech to the Commonwealth

Press Union in Cape Tow n, and the idea for the Ra diocracy conference w as

hatched as we listened to his address.

3 Trevor Baylis, O BE, was a guest of the Ra diocracy conference, w here he w as

awarded an Honorary Research Fellowship of the School of Journalism,

M edia and C ultural Studies, in which the Tom H opkinson Centre for M edia

Research, host of the conference, is located.

4 I have argued that television in particular is associated w ith the grow th of

cultural citizenship and what Ive called DIY [do-it-yourself] citizenship

during the second ha lf of the 20th century. The idea applies equa lly to radio,

which is equally implicated in the overlaying of identity and choice on top of

existing civic, political and social-welfare aspects of citizenship. See Hartley,

1999, especially chapters 1214.

References

Brecht, Bertolt (1979/80) Rad io a s a M eans of C ommunicat ion: A Talk on the

Function of Radio, Screen20(3/4): 248.

H artley, John (1999) Uses of Television. London and New York: Routledge.

H ood , Stuart (1979/80) Brecht on R ad io, Screen20(3/4): 1623.

Lubar, Steven (1993) I nfo-Culture: The Smithsonian Book of I nformation Age

Inventions. Boston, MA and New York: Ho ughton M ifflin.

JOHN HARTLEY is Edito r of t he Internat ion al Jou rnal of Cult ural

Studiesa nd Dea n o f Arts at Quee nsla nd University of Techno log y. He is

au thor o f Uses o f Television(Routledge, 1999), co-editor of American

Cul t ur al St ud ies: A Reader(Oxfo rd Un iversit y Press, 2000) a nd co-a ut ho r

o f The Ind igenou s Pub lic Sph ere: The Repo rt ing and Recept ion of

Abo r ig inal Af f a i rs in t he Austra l ian M edia(Oxford University Press,

2000). Address: Que en sla nd University o f Techn o log y, PO Bo x 2434,

Brisba ne 4001, Austra lia . [em a il: j.ha rtley@q ut .ed u.a u]


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