Radio is dead-Long live the Radio.pdf - Universidad del País Vasco

Welcome to the third age of radio: understanding radio's present from radio's past
Simply put, we cannot assume that the transistor allowed radios to become
portable, making radio listening a mobile phenomenon, exploited by a new youth
culture. The transistor was perfected in the mid 40s and the first transistor radios
appeared in the mid-1950s. Transistors used less power, were more rugged,
and were smaller, and were easier to mass produce than the valves they replaced.
These are all qualities which enable mobility, of course. However, portable radio
receivers go back well before the mid 1940s. Portability was an important quality
for the early military use of wireless communication. The Marconi company
produced mobile radio receivers as early as 1901, and of course hobbyist receivers
were small enough to move around. Portability in reception was, then, (in Schiffer
(1991)’s phrase) a cultural imperative from the beginning. Radio receivers developed
into a piece of furniture because of another, domestic, cultural imperative,
not because it was inherent in tube technology. Portable radios, and radios in cars,
were far from unusual in the mid-1920s, and low power and small tubes, and even
pocket radios which used them, could be found in the late 1930s . And, by the mid
1940s, hand-sized portable tube radios with speakers were not uncommon. In the
US, by the mid-1950s, most new radios were produced for cars, and 83% of cars
had radios (Gomery, 2008).
It is fairly straightforward to understand that the increased use of radios in cars,
and ‘carry anywhere’ receiving devices, reconfigured a series of public and private
spaces. The wider opportunity to enjoy ‘music on the move’ is a significant cultural
change within the USA during the late 1950s. Eulogies to the new American pop
culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s give a central place to the car, and to pop
music in cars. The new rock ‘n’ roll songs were often themselves a celebration of
the mobility of the car. In addition, though, there is a new sense of space wrought by
radio during this period which is less often cited
While the transistor did not lead to the invention of car radios (in 1946 nearly
40% of the nine million US cars had radios), the expansion of car ownership in the
USA heralded a revolution in mobile music listening, and 60% of the then 50 million
cars had radios by 1963. Douglas Gomery (2008, 144) points to a whole raft of statistics
which reveal the extent of this change, including: by 1954, cars were replacing
residential property as the main sites for radios, and a year later most radios were
sold in cars; by 1958, there were 78 car radios per 100 US families, and half the population
was listening in their cars. At the same time, television replaced radio in the
living room, with only 25% of radios, but 85% of televisions, based there. Gomery
also singles out radio station WJR in Detroit, which introduced news, travel and
weather information programming aimed specifically at local car travellers in 1958,
after extensive market research.
The Radio is dead. Long live the Radio!
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