2.6: Radio

We should remember that printed media require literacy – you need to know how to read. Audio and visual media are different. It is quite easy for almost everyone to listen to the news. In general, people also enjoy watching and listening more than reading and writing; the first mentioned activities require less effort. We had to adapt our brains to decode written language and our arms, hands and fingers to be able to produce written text; however, listening to the radio and watching and listening to television and movies were much easier. This is again becoming increasingly evident in the 21st century, with the increase in audio and visual material available online. This also explains the increasing popularity of digital audio such as podcast and streaming music, as well as digital audio-visual material, for example, streaming services such as Netflix or Disney+.

The origins of radio can be traced primarily to the invention of the telegraph in the 1840s. It was made practical by Samuel Morse, who invented a system of dots and dashes that could be transmitted across the telegraph cable using electric pulses, making it the first nearly instant one-to-one communication technology. Messages were encoded to and decoded from dots and dashes on either end of the cable.

This first cable could only transmit about six words per minute, but it was the precursor to the global communications network that we now rely on every day. However, the telegraph could not transmit the human voice or other messages aside from language translated into coded electrical pulses. Telegraph messages also travelled through a cable, not over the air.

As the telegraph was taking off around the world, physicist Heinrich Hertz began to theorise about electromagnetic energy, which is measurable physical energy in the atmosphere that moves at light speed. Hertz’s theories fascinated Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi, who by 1895 had been able to send a wireless signal about a mile and a half. With this, the wireless telegraph – which used electromagnetic waves to transmit signals coded into pulses and was the precursor to radio – was born. Marconi travelled to England, where he received a patent on his wireless telegraph machine in 1896. By 1901, Marconi successfully sent a wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean. Marconi became extremely successful, establishing companies in the US and Europe and holding exclusive contracts with shipping companies (including the owners of the Titanic) and other large businesses.

Electrical engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi with the spark-gap transmitter (right) and coherer receiver (left) he used in some of his first long-distance radiotelegraphy transmissions during the 1890s. Picture: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...?curid=6859297

After Marconi, the road to radio broadcasting was relatively short, as others quickly expanded on his work. Inventions by J. Ambrose Fleming from Great Britain and Lee de Forest from the US paved the way for much more controlled and manageable receivers.

Lee de Forest, in particular, was interested in competing with Marconi by advancing wireless technology to transmit speech and music. De Forest patented more than 300 inventions and is often referred to as the “father of radio” because of his improvements on reception, conduction (conveying the signal) and amplification (increasing the signal strength). The first radio broadcast in the world was on 2 November 1920 when Frank Conrad broadcast the results of the US presidential election from his garage in Pittsburgh to 100 listeners.

People learn how to use a radio in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, USA, in 1926. Picture: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11739378

During the 1950s, radio technology became portable. Radios were fitted in cars, and people were able to buy smaller, portable receivers to use anywhere.

The first radio broadcast in South Africa was on 18 December 1923 – the Western Electric Company broadcast the first music concert (SA History Online, 2011). The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was founded in 1934 (some sources say 1936), when the African Broadcasting Service, which started broadcasting in 1927, became the SABC. Radio (and television) was always very tightly controlled by the government in South Africa and initially only broadcast in English and Afrikaans. Only in 1950 did broadcasts in indigenous languages start.

The Radio Moscow logo.

From 1963, Radio Freedom – a station run by the ANC from Lusaka in Zambia – started broadcasting on shortwave, a type of radio signal that can be received over vast distances, as an alternative to the state-run radio stations in South Africa. For many South Africans, this radio station became an important source of events in the country, even though it was banned by the apartheid government. There were also other shortwave radio stations at that time, such as BBC World Service, the Voice of America, Radio Moscow and Radio Berlin (from East Germany) that South Africans could listen to for alternative views.

The airwaves were only opened in the 1990s to private and community radio stations, which led to a profusion of new radio stations in many local languages, aimed at a wide variety of interest groups. Radio in South Africa now operates at three levels: public service radio stations (falling under the SABC); commercial radio stations (in private hands); and community radio stations (run by community volunteers).

Today, some of the biggest radio stations in the country, with millions of listeners, are Ukhozi FM (isiZulu), Umhlobo Wenene (isiXhosa), Lesedi FM (Setswana), and RSG (Afrikaans). These are all public radio stations and part of the SABC. There are many commercial radio stations (in private hands; these are radio stations that work on a for profit basis), such as Jacaranda FM, Highveld Stereo, and Algoa FM. Then there are also community radio stations such as Pukfm, Jozi FM, Voice of the Cape and many others. These community radio stations rely on volunteers to operate their services and do not operate on a for-profit basis. You can view a list of these radio stations online.