News, Tunes and Drama

1925-1930

Nowadays, we view the radio as a tool used to play some overplayed music, daily forecasts and traffic updates on the way to work, school and our daily endeavours. However, it is important to acknowledge its significance during the early 1900’s as it brought a whole new way of communication and entertainment. Commercial radio broadcasting had been used publicly after the war during the 1920’s. This meant that radios were able to broadcast news, music, culture, stories to the world. Prior to this particular use of the radio, it was used solely to communicate through morse code, also known as wireless telegraphy which was set up by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. The further developments of the radio by Alessandro Volta, Andre-Marie Ampere, George Ohm, James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz, brought the idea of broadcasting world-wide news, music, and stories across nations of the world.

Argentina was known to be the pioneer in broadcasting as it was known to be one of the first countries to make its first regular broadcasts in 1920, transmitting classical music on the daily. Argentina broadcasted several historical events live for their people to tune into, such as the assumption of President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear on October 12, 1922. They also broadcasted sporting events such as the “fight of the century” between Luis Ángel Firpo and Jack Dempsey which was located overseas in the United States. The importance of the radio was made clear by the early achievements of Argentina. It shared music, and documented events from around the world to the homes of their people to enjoy.

Not only was the radio used for news, events and music, it was also used for education. Around this time period, the idea of the “wireless college” had started to rise. This was the act of tuning into the radio for student lectures. This idea was started by Medford Hillside’s WGI Radio in April 1922, broadcasting series’ of educational lectures from Tufts College professors, and was later implemented in many different schools.

The radio also provided stories and fictional readings for entertainment. Weekly studio broadcasts of sound plays had taken place in New York, 1922. These were broadcasts of full stage plays which consisted of a narration accompanied by backgrounds sounds a fitting music, much like podcasts of today. However, these ‘podcasts’ were known as radio dramas/audio theatre.