Making Radio and Podcasts

A Practical Guide to Working in Today's Radio and Audio Industries

Steve Ahern, Steve Ahern

• Publisher: Focal Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000580273
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Radio

Making Radio and Podcasts is a practical guide for anyone who wants to learn how to make successful programmes in the digital era. It examines the key roles in audio and podcasting: announcing, presenting, research, copywriting, producing, marketing and promotions. It also outlines what is involved in creating different types of programmes: news and current affairs, music, talkback, comedy and features, podcasts, as well as legal and regulatory constraints.

With contributions from industry experts, the fully updated fourth edition is global in focus and reflects the impact of podcasts and digital radio, including multi-platform delivery, listener databases, social media and online marketing. It also examines how radio stations have reinvented their business models to accommodate the rapid changes in communications and listener expectations.

This is the ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on radio, audio and podcasting, media production and digital media, with broader appeal to professionals and practitioners in the audio industries.

1 History of Radio

Steve Ahern, Wayne Mac and Phil Charley

DOI: 10.4324/9781003181736-1

Radio was born from the convergence of many inventions and technologies more than a hundred and twenty years ago. To make sense of the current media changes it pays to study the lessons of history. The same trends reoccur with the convergence of old and new media and technology in the digital domain as they did in the past. Those who understand them will make good decisions about the future.

Radio was not invented by any one particular person. It developed through advances in science and technology over a period of several hundred years, across several countries, and many brilliant minds were involved.

In 1267 the English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon wrote of the possibility of using electricity for communications (he was promptly imprisoned for dealing in black magic). In 1672 Germany’s Otto von Guericke made a sulphur ball that, when rotated and rubbed, produced electricity, rather like a modern generator. The Leyden jar, forerunner of the modern battery, was produced by Dutch inventor Musschenbroek in 1746. A vital link in the chain of discovery was the identification of positive and negative electrical charges by American Benjamin Franklin in 1752. And, eventually there was an understanding of radio waves as being physically similar to light waves, both being electromagnetic radiations.

1800s

In chronological order, here are some of the other important discoveries and developments that led to radio’s multinational birth:

• 1800 Volta (Italian) developed the first battery.
• 1819 Oersted (Danish) demonstrated that electricity can magnetise.
• 1825 Ampère (French) laid down the basis for electrodynamics.
• 1827 Ohm (German) studied the relationship between current, voltage and resistance.
• 1831 Faraday (English) discovered electromagnetic induction, magnetic lines of force.
• 1831 Henry (American) developed the electromagnet.
• 1887 Hertz (German) transmitted and received the first radio waves.
• 1897 Tesla (Serbian/American) registered an American patent for basic radio transmitting equipment in the United States.

There were also many other great minds that contributed to the overall development of radio, including Edison, Bell, Maxwell, Fleming, Morse, Lodge, Meissner, Pupin and de Forest. However, it was Marconi who deserves the main credit for putting the accumulation of knowledge into the practical use of wireless telegraphy, or radio, as we know it. Marconi recognised that converging existing technologies could create a new medium. But radio owes its success as much to his marketing business skills as it does to his technological prowess.

Guglielmo Marconi came from a wealthy Italian family, and had the time and money to buy apparatus and to experiment. He built his own sending and receiving equipment, and in 1894 transmitted Morse code messages by radio waves, for the first time in history, across the garden of his father’s home in Italy. In 1897 he developed the first commercially successful spark-coil transmitter and registered the first wireless telegraphy patent in England in 1896.

1900s

In 1901 Marconi sent a signal (simply the letter ‘S’ in Morse code) across the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 1800 miles (about 2900 kilometres), a triumph of public relations as well as technology. In April 1912 the Marconi wireless on the Titanic was responsible for sending messages that alerted nearby vessels to come to the rescue of passengers from the sinking ship, saving more than 700 lives and demonstrating the importance of the new technology for long- distance commercial and military transport.

Australia was involved in experimentation about that time, too. In 1897 William Bragg of Adelaide and George William Selby of Melbourne demon strated wireless transmission of messages. In 1901 Henry Jenvey, an electrical engineer with the Victorian Post Office, made radio contact with the Duke of York’s escort ship during a royal visit to Australia. Other Australian wireless pioneers about that time included P.B. Walker, C.P. Bartholomew and Frank Leverrier of Sydney.

The Marconi family is still involved in electronics and Marconi’s grandson is keeping the link with radio alive. He told Steve Ahern:

My grandfather was the one who put all the pieces together, that is why he is remembered. His legacy united the world then and led to the birth of other elec tronic media. His family hope that radio will always be used to bring unity and peace to the world.

Recognition of the importance of radio came about in Australia with the introduction of the Wireless and Telegraphy Act 1905. This brought about federal control of the medium of communication by wireless, mainly for navi gational purposes.

Internationally, the first report of a radio program was in 1906 when Profes sor Reginald Fessenden of Massachusetts, United States, used his experimental station to broadcast a short program of two musical items, a talk and a poem. The program was picked up by wireless operators on ships as far as 300 miles (about 480 kilometres) away.

1910s

Perhaps the most notable pioneer of radio in Australia was Ernest Fisk. He arrived in Australia from England in 1910 with patents from Marconi and Telefunken. He eventually became managing director of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Limited (AWA), which played a big part in the devel opment of radio in Australia. In 1913, AWA established the Marconi School of Wireless, training many of the early pioneers in the technical aspects of radio and continuing to train technicians and engineers over the years. Because of security restrictions there was a suspension of experimental radio in Australia during the First World War. Meanwhile, in the United States, by 1916 the idea of a ‘radio music box’ for home reception of musical programs had been put forward by David Sarnoff, an engineer with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America.

AWA conducted many experiments in radio telephony. In August 1919, AWA transmitted a radio program of music from their offices in Clarence Street, Sydney, to a hall in Elizabeth Street, a few city blocks away. Quite a number of former First World War wireless operators helped to increase the growing interest in radio in the early 1920s, establishing amateur (or ‘ham’) wireless stations.

1920s

The world’s first radio station to broadcast regular programs was the Marconi transmitter in Essex, England. It started in February 1920 with a recital by the renowned Australian singer Dame Nellie Melba. The first radio station on air in the United States, KDKA Pittsburgh, followed nine months later, in November 1920, premiering with a presidential election broadcast.

By 1922 the broadcasting of music was an accepted fact of life. In the United States more than 500 radio stations had been licensed to operate and in Britain the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was under way. The name was changed to British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927.

Back in Australia on 31 March 1922, the country’s first ‘live’ broadcast took place, transmitted from the stage of Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney. The program featured a Russian pianist, and vocal duets by British couple Madge Elliot and Cyril Ritchard.

In 1922, AWA entered into an agreement with the Commonwealth of Australia to develop, manufacture and sell radio communication equipment, to erect radio stations and conduct radio services.

In 1923 the Australian Commonwealth Government approved the ‘sealed set’ system that had been proposed by AWA. Listeners paid a subscription to a private broadcasting company and a licence fee to the government, then tuned into the station or stations to which they subscribed. The sets were fixed to only those frequen cies, so that nothing else could be heard. Limiting the way consumers could use new technology did not prove successful and the sealed set regulatory system was soon abandoned, showing that consumers will get what they want from new technology irrespective of what lawyers and regulators may say. This same trend is evident with new technology, the internet and social media today.

The annual government licence fee was 10 shillings for one station and £1 for two or more stations. On top of the government fee the annual station subscription ranged from 10 shillings to three guineas (£3.3). In 1925 the minimum weekly wage for men was about £4.10, so it was not cheap to buy radio services.

There were two stations approved for Sydney: 2SB, operated by Broad casters Sydney Limited, with a subscription of 10 shillings, and 2FC, operated by Farmer and Company, with a listener’s subscription of three guineas. In Melbourne there was 3AR, the Associated Radio Company; and in Perth 6WF, Westralian Farmers Limited.

The great occasion for Australia was 13 November 1923 at 8 pm, when the first radio station went to air. This was 2SB Sydney which later changed its call sign to 2BL. Twelve days later 2FC went to air, although it was not officially opened until January 1924. Radio 2SB’s opening program was broadcast from a studio in Phillip Street. It was a live musical performance featuring a soprano, a baritone, a contralto, a cellist and the St Andrews Quartet. The 2FC opening program was a complete transmission of the J.C. Williamson and J. & N. Tait production of the musical The Southern Maid from Her Majesty’s Theatre. The next radio station to open was 3AR Melbourne, on 26 January 1924. As well as its pioneering work in Australia, AWA also pioneered inter national broadcasting by being the first to broadcast a radio program from Australia to Britain.

The origin of call signs in Australia is interesting. The prefix numerals 2 for New South Wales, 3 for Victoria, 4 for Queensland, and so on, dates back to Federation in 1901 when defence became a federal responsibility. At that time Australia was divided into numbered districts. New South Wales was the second military district, Victoria the third, and so on. This method of identifying the states was carried on by the radio authorities and is now also used in Australia’s postcode system. There was no first, or number 1 district, probably because it could be confused with the letters ‘I’ or ‘L’.

Now to the origins of the letters used in just a few of Australia’s original radio station call signs:

• 2HD Newcastle comes from Harry Douglas who started the station in 1925. 2UE Sydney was originally 2EU, standing for Electrical Utilities. It was thought that 2EU sounded too much like ‘who are you?’ so the letters were reversed.
• 4GR Toowoomba stood for ‘Gold Radio’ because the first licensee was Ted Gold.
• 4QG Brisbane stood for Queensland Government.
• 7HO Hobart was started by Ron Hope, so the letters stand for the first two letters of his name and for the word ‘Hobart’.
• 2GB Sydney came from the name of an Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, respected by the Theosophical Society, 2GB’s first licensee.
• 2SM Sydney came from St Mark’s Church, Drummoyne, because the local parish priest, Father Meaney, held the first licence.

Many call signs are derived from the name of the town or area concerned, such as 2DU Dubbo, 2BH Broken Hill, 4BU Bundaberg and 3CV Central Victoria. Over the years most original call signs have changed or been dropped by successive station owners who wanted to market a brand name rather than a call sign.

In July 1924 the government brought in new regulations that established two categories for radio stations in Australia – the A Class stations, financed by licence fees from listeners, and the B Class stations, financed by the selling of advertising time – in other words, the commercial stations.

The government initially allowed some ambiguity by permitting the A Class stations to accept restricted advertising – a total of one hour in every 12 hours of broadcasting time, in periods of no longer than five minutes at a time. However, the A Class stations were not very interested in selling advertisements and this arrangement was dropped three years later, in 1927.

The first B Class station to take to the air was 2BE Sydney, operated by the Burgin Electric Company. It started on 7 November 1924 and ceased operations in November 1929.

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