Within this category there is a further sub-division between academic studies with an analytical intent such as the works of Curran & Seaton (2003) and Scannell & Cardiff (1991), and accounts of magazine titles which were of more general and nostalgic interest. The Radio Times holds a prominent position in the affections of the nation, and has, accordingly, been the subject of several populist reminiscences. These are exclusively post Second World War, such as Tony Currie’s (2001) and Susan Briggs’ (1981) works.
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Generally the major works on broadcasting history fail to engage with the aspect of broadcasting magazines in any depth. In the view of Scannell & Cardiff (1991) there is a particular difficulty confronting the broadcasting historian which is that the very subject under research has almost entirely vanished and, in fact, may only be studied at all by the imprint or shadow that it left on surviving materials. It is the task of the historian to attempt to recapture the lost detail, and hope “to stimulate an interest in the historical recuperation of the character of broadcast output” (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991, p.xiv). And yet their research makes little use of the rich resource of broadcasting magazines.
Briggs’ comprehensive work on the history of broadcasting is a dominant authority in this field, even if his BBC focus led him to over-look some important developments which were taking place beyond the BBC. His work falls into the first sub-division of an in-depth study Post Second World War commentary on broadcasting. In a subsequent article Briggs says of his multi-volume history:
In 1961 there were no general histories of broadcasting in any country with the exception of Gorham (1952) on Britain and Archer (1938) on the United States: Erik Barnouw did not publish the first volume of his three-volume trilogy on American broadcasting until 1966 … Several books on broadcasting institutions had already appeared, some of which included brief historical sections, and many autobiographies of leading personalities concerned with broadcasting-a genre in themselves-had been produced.17
Briggs has a short section on the BBC’s magazines, The Listener, Radio Times and World-Radio (Briggs, 1965, pp.280-292) but otherwise references to them are comparatively few and far between, the majority being incidental, referring to items of interest which were printed in the flagship magazine, the Radio Times. Briggs’ primary use for the Radio Times is as a source for referencing the opinions of the principal figures within the BBC, rather than as a publication with its own intrinsic interest. However, Briggs emphasises that the Radio Times was a publishing phenomenon, noting “By the end of 1928 it had passed the million mark. Profits for the Radio Times helped to carry the BBC through its financially lean years”
(Briggs, 1961, p.297). This information is key to understanding the Radio Times’ importance to the BBC, and might have been an argument for devoting more space to such an important source of revenue.
17 Briggs, 1980, p.6.
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If Briggs’ account focuses on the BBC, Street (2006) charts the threat to British public service radio posed by the commercial competition before the Second World War. Street uncovers the previously neglected story of the pre-War rise of International Broadcasting Company and Radio Luxembourg. While he does not describe the entire content of the magazines from the period in detail, he acknowledges their importance. He also devotes attention to the advertisements which Radio Pictorial carried, as an intrinsically interesting topic for research, capturing as they do the interests, aspirations and anxieties of the times.
Street describes the origin of the BBC’s World-Radio, as the BBC’s response to the commercial activity which had struck upon the lucrative business of buying airtime on foreign radio stations to make programmes catering for an English audience. (Street, 2006, p.148). Critically, Street uses the programme listings for the continental stations in Radio Pictorial to make a direct comparison with the programmes being broadcast by the BBC. For Street, this is a key part of the evidence that the Reithian Sunday policy of broadcasting was instrumental in allowing the continental stations to gain such a firm foothold as a regular source of leisure and entertainment for UK listeners. Thus, the present study develops several of Street’s themes, in investigating the BBC’s decision to add another magazine to its portfolio and assessing the part that the magazines played in rise of commercial competition.
Pegg’s work on the early wireless press (1983) captures the enthusiasm of both the amateur wireless hobbyists and also of the wireless press itself, conveying an impression of how joyfully the editors tackled the complex details of their readers’ queries (Pegg, 1983, pp.45-49). Wallis’ autobiography of the IBC’s Captain Plugge (2008) uncovers a great deal of details about the Continental broadcasts from the 1930s, and moreover provides a vivid pen portrait of the highly colourful Captain Plugge. Murphy’s account of women working in the BBC from 1923-1939 has been invaluable for providing the BBC context of the period and in particular detail about the Isa Benzie, who was Foreign Director for much of this period and who was therefore either the author or recipient of several of the memoranda and letters examined for this thesis at the BBC Written Archives at Caversham.
Other more general studies of the time period with the broader focus of mass communication provide a backdrop for the adoption of early radio. LeMahieu, for example, makes a pertinent remark that can be applied to radio:
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Much remains uncertain about the structure of demand for the commercial mass media, particularly in the early decades of the twentieth century ... knowledge of the age, sex, class, region, and occupation of the audience for newspapers, films and music would reveal only part of the story. ... The essential nature of demand for mass media particularly in earlier eras, will always remain largely unknown. The elusiveness of demand may explain why most interested historians and sociologist prefer to concentrate on supply.18
The broadcasting magazines and, particularly, the listeners’/readers’ letters which they carried do provide an insight into some aspects of this elusive demand, by recording the requests and comments of a small sample of the audience.
The Radio Times
The Radio Times has been the subject of a number of studies, reflecting its appeal as an omnipresent artefact, and an object of cultural significance within the home. Several monographs have been devoted exclusively to the magazine. However, the majority of works have concentrated on the Radio Times’ illustrations. Usherwood’s erudite 1961 work describes the Radio Times as having “established before the war a reputation as one of the leading patrons of a great tradition of graphic art” (Usherwood, 1961, p.10). However, his work is exclusively a review of the artwork and therefore is only of limited usefulness for the current research. The Radio Times’ artwork is an important feature of the contemporary impact which it had, but it is of limited value for capturing the intrinsic character of the magazine, and its importance to the BBC.
Baker’s study (2002) of the artists of the Radio Times is similar, although it provides a limited history of the magazine’s inception. Baker asserts “The drawings, many created by the finest artists of the time, are as valuable a record of the twentieth-century as any images in the great photographic libraries” (Baker, 2002, p.15). Once again, however, the focus is entirely upon the magazine’s “avant-garde” artwork. Driver’s (1981) work also focuses on this single aspect of the magazines, although it does provide an astute forward by Briggs.
Susan Briggs’s monograph is a nostalgic homage to the Radio Times (1981) and Currie’s (2001) is a populist history. These both fall into the second sub-division of modern non-academic commentaries, aimed at readership seeking entertainment rather than being critical
18 LeMahieu, 1986, p.11.
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analyses of the magazine. Further studies have trawled the magazine for specific aspects, such as Alan Beck’s study (2000) which draws extensively on the Radio Times, but purely as a source for programme details. All of the works on the Radio Times published to date examine the magazine in isolation from both other contemporary magazines, and developments in broadcasting. They are therefore of limited value for describing the impact of the magazine, beyond the recognition that it was a publishing phenomenon, in terms of its unprecedented circulation figures and as a pioneer in its commissioning of avant-garde artists.