Sean Street has led three major projects to digitise early commercial radio archives during his time as Director of the Centre For Broadcasting History Research in the Media School at Bournemouth University. This article explores the importance of such material as an educational resource

Street, Sean

English

Bournemouth University Research Online

A World in Your Ear: Radio Archives and EducationIntroductionSome years ago, as part of a broadcasting oral history initiative in the Media School at Bournemouth University, I conducted a series of recorded interviews with retired BBC staff  who  had  been  active  in  the  development  of  radio  during  the  first  half  of  the twentieth  century.  Among those I  interviewed  was the  late  Dr  Desmond  Hawkins,  a former  controller  of  the  BBC’s  West  Region,  a  moving  force  in  the  creation  of  the Natural  History  Unit  in  Bristol,  and  an  active  programme  maker  in  pre-war  British broadcasting. He recalled the experience of listening to early transmissions during the 1920s from the then British Broadcasting Company: “I first experienced a Shakespeare play through radio…and Beethoven – I heard my first quartet not in a concert hall, but in my living room. My parents were not the types to take me to such events  in situ so to speak, but fortunately I was part of the first generation for whom sound broadcasting provided access to the cultural world beyond the family walls.”  For the young Desmond Hawkins, radio’s democratising power was a key to his first response to the medium. For several subsequent generations, prior to the development of television, the same was true, not solely in terms of high art, but crucially in the field of entertainment, music and news. The power of sound to create pictures in the mind, to fuel the imagination or to simply tell stories has remained constant and much vaunted through the years, and the development of new media. At the same time the death of the medium has frequently been predicted, not least within the first decade of the twenty first century, when downloading content and new platforms for delivery have forced the industry to consider in which direction it is to reinvent itself this time. One of the beneficiaries in this new world of downloads, podcasts and audio on demand is showing itself to be speech-based radio; the technology which enables listeners to store content on mp3 players also enables them to create and understand the value of their own personal archives. Thus we are  coming  to  a  point  where  the  purpose  of  radio  archives  needs  no  explanation  or justification; it is ‘case proven’.Radio Ballads and New BeginningsWhen, in 1958, Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger made  The Ballad of  John Axon, a new form of radio feature blending actuality, location-recorded speech and music, enabled largely by new portable recording technology, it is likely that they saw themselves  as  programme  makers  developing  radio  into  fresh  fields  of  making  and production. The fact that 50 years on, this and the subsequent seven other Radio Ballads would have spawned an annual conference studying their work and methods, as well as a commercial  release of every programme in the series, may well  not have occurred to them. The fact is, there has emerged over recent years, the new academic phenomenon of “Radio  Studies”,  which,  coupled  with  a  growing  industry  awareness  of  its  past,  is developing  useful  work  in  the  exploration  how –  and why –  radio  interacts  with  its audience.Yet  the value of our radio collections  exists  beyond the confines  of the study of the medium for its own sake. Charles Parker left a huge personal archive of tapes, books and papers, now held at Birmingham Central Library. This material is perceived as a living, valuable  resource,  not  just  for  the  study of  radio,  or  the  past,  but  as  a  modern-day commentary  and  cultural  link  in  today’s  mixed  society.  Connecting  Histories  is  a partnership  project  led  by  Birmingham  City  Archives,  working  with  the  School  of Education at the University of Birmingham, the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick, and the Black Pasts, Birmingham Futures group. The mission statement of the project clearly articulates the role of archives as currency rather than history:Britain  today  is  commonly  portrayed  as  a  multicultural  nation.  However,  the diverse historical experiences which constitute the story of this ‘new’ Britain are less well known. The history of the West Midlands in the 20th century is central to this story but the stories that  make up this history remain largely hidden in archive collections.  Connecting Histories aims to release the potential  of these collections so that connections can be made between the past and the present and thereby  encourage  debate  about  our  shared  identities,  our  common  sense  of belonging and our multiple heritages.The audio material recorded by Parker and his team half a century before this project, is given a new importance here, rediscovered and placed in context  to relate to 21st century concerns.Witnesses to HistoryThe pace of change affects us all, we live increasingly in a sort of permanent present; that strange country, the past, where people did things differently, seems increasingly remote. Yet  within  100  years  we  have  moved  to  a  point  only  dreamed  of  by  historians  of yesterday; the very existence of broadcasting is still just – only just – within the lifespan of a human being. A man or woman born in 1910 grew into a world where mass media provided a commentary on their life. Imagine reading Pliny the Younger and hearing the voice  of  the  Emperor  Trajan,  or  being  able  to  play  news  reports  from  the  French Revolution… Film,  television  and sound can do this  with modern  history;  above all, sound, the human voice, concentrates the mind on the spoken text. A transcript will give you the sense and meaning,  but a  recording demonstrates  the nuances  of speech,  the hesitations,  the inflections,  the thought process and the emotion.  A written version of Herb  Morrison’s  famous  commentary  on  the  Hindenburg  disaster  of  6  May,  1937 conveys only a fraction of the anguish in Morrison’s voice as he strives to describe the experience. Here, the impact of the event is in the sound of the voice as much as in the words themselves.Within the United Kingdom, we may be aware of two principal sources of audio history, available to varying degrees to public and academic scrutiny; the BBC Sound Archive and the British Library Sound Archive, one, the sound of broadcast history and the other, the broader soundtrack of life, both touching from time to time. Yet there has been, until recently,  a  neglected  and at  risk third  source,  another  voice  that  provides  a  different angle,  an approach  to  broadcasting  as  oral/aural  history  that,  because  of  the  pace  of change  in  radio  regulation,  technology  and  style,  might  not  at  first  seem  to  offer promising potential for the historical and social researcher. UK commercial radio – or “Independent  Local  Radio”  as  it  was  first  titled  under  the  severe  regulation  of  the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) at its birth – did not come into existence – legal existence at least – until 8 October, 1973. Compared to other national broadcasting systems, this is highly unusual; look outside of Great Britain, and you will find that most media cultures embraced commercial radio before commercial television, the financing following the developing technology. This has not been the case in Britain, with ITV, born in 1955, coming almost 20 years before its radio equivalent. Thus  we  have  a  relatively  short  historical  span,  yet  within  that  period,  two  vastly differing models of broadcast output. The over-regulation of UK commercial radio, up to the 1990 Broadcasting Act, when companies were released to a certain extent from the public service role they had been forced to play under the IBA, produced as a by-product of  commercial  aspiration,  a  range  of  often  excellent  and  largely  forgotten  speech programming – “meaningful speech” was the phrase coined by one IBA executive. The changing map of commercial radio – the amalgamation or disappearance of the original companies, the creation of large groups such as GCap, Emap and others – all this might suggest that many of these archives have been lost or destroyed. While in some cases this is true, there have been a number of notable cases where collections have survived, often against  the odds. One such archive, the subject of digitisation and cataloguing by the Centre  for  Broadcasting  History  Research  in  the  Media  School  at  Bournemouth University,  and academic dissemination via the BUFVC website, is the Felicity Wells Memorial  Archive  –  the  IBA/AIRC  ILR  Programme  Sharing  Archive,  covering programmes  covering  all  sorts  of  subjects,  shared  between  stations  between  the  late 1970s and 1990.  This  material  is  being  augmented  by  other  collections;  the  Wessex  Film  and  Audio Archive in the Hampshire Record Office holds material which is the subject of a similar process  –  a  tripartite  collaboration  between  the  County  Archive,  the  CBHR  at Bournemouth  and  the  BUFVC  –  to  make  commercial  radio  archives  from  Central Southern England available to researchers of late 20th century history and sociology. Here we are able to examine specific aspects of media/audience relationships, taking important historical events as case studies. For example, the Falklands conflict of 1982 affected the whole country in one form or another, but for families of service personnel in cities such as Portsmouth, the impact was visceral. Radio Victory was the Independent Local Radio station serving Portsmouth at the time; the war demanded a re-examination of its role, and the Wessex Archive gives us insight into the pastoral place of local radio within a community in emotional crisis. At the same time it provides a window on national and international  history  at  once  unexpectedly  intimate,  personal  and  often  extremely poignant. To these collections can be added a third strand from UK commercial radio, the archive of LBC/IRN, the largest and most significant British radio news collection outside of the BBC.  LBC  (The  London  Broadcasting  Company)  was  the  first  legal,  land-based commercial  radio  station  in  Britain,  commencing  broadcasting  at  6.00am  on  the  8th October, 1973. For nearly the first twenty years of its existence, it was a company linked to Independent Radio News, and the sound archive of those years has been preserved on more  than  7,000  reels  of  quarter-inch  tape.  Here  is  the  witness  of  a  new  strand  of broadcaster on the turbulent twilight of a century, including all of the Thatcher years, the destruction of Apartheid and the issue of Northern Ireland. Thanks to funding provided by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) this invaluable archive will become academically  available  through  a  further  partnership  between  BUFVC  and  the Bournemouth Centre for Broadcasting History Research, turning a collection of boxes of fragile tape, almost forgotten, into a vibrant, accessible witness, available to listen to and reference online to education at every level.Preserving YesterdayThus it can be seen that the responsibility of those involved with this work is two-fold. Firstly there is often a process akin to rescue archaeology; the importance of the work has to be established, and the material saved, often involving remedial technical issues. Once preserved, transferred to what is hoped to be a stable medium the second   aspect of such projects  takes  over  –  that  of  making  the  material  available  to  new  and  coming generations.   We might, in rediscovering such archives, and giving them new life, occasionally pause and reflect on the often remarkable background to the very survival of these newly found collections, consider how fortunate we are that they exist, and that their importance has been recognised. Yet in so doing, we might well run the risk of being complacent about preserving the voices of our present, before they themselves become obscured by the next layer  of  time.  From  2005,  Ofcom  has  been  periodically  licensing  a  new  strand  of broadcasting in the form of Community Radio stations. Here is society speaking to itself at local and ethnic level,  catching always a moment in time, a snapshot of existence. What would Parker, MacColl and Seeger have made of such material? More importantly, where does – where will – that material go? Some stations may keep local archives, but Community Broadcasting is by its very nature volunteer based, chronically short of cash and resources, and born into a world where the pace of reflecting today through media at every  level  moves  us  too  quickly  beyond  yesterday.  We  have  a  unique,  one-off opportunity to help these new stations to themselves help future generations understand what the very word “community” meant at the start of the 21st century. Yet to do so, some form of national,  overarching  archive  strategy needs  to  be established as a  matter  of urgency; we cannot keep everything of course, but we should be aware of the importance of this new resource at the time of its genesis. It will be a tragedy if, despite the apparent lessons  learned  from  the  preservation  and  cataloguing  of  past  collections,  we  find ourselves in a similar – or worse – position in ten or twenty or fifty years time, when today’s audio voices are silent and lost.As we have seen through the example of Birmingham’s  Connecting Histories  project, past and present can hold a vital dialogue together. Perhaps crucially, we have now at our disposal a new use of technology which potentially by its very existence provides the platform for a personal archive. The growth of downloadable programmes – podcasts - has been pushing us towards a redefinition of what we mean by radio, and an awareness that an audio archive, be it institutional or personal, is a device whereby we take sound content and make it available “on demand”, when and where we want to access it. Every mp3 player owner is his or her own archivist. This being the case, the public perception of  audio preservation is growing, providing a major opportunity in education for the use of voices from our past – local, national and international – to talk to us of their present. It also provides us with a developing technology which is revolutionising the means by which those voices talk to our students. The title  of this  article  was chosen with some thought;  it  reflects  a radio programme which until May 2007 was a regular part of the BBC Radio 4 schedule, a magazine of audio from all over the world, reflecting specific topics of common interest. Such insights matter, it is sad that such a programme should cease, yet notwithstanding that, the world is whispering in our ear from all sorts of other sources; now the technology exists which enables students not simply to quote from a written text, but to include an audio quotation within an electronic essay, the voice of the historian, the poet or the scientist themselves. We have  moved  here  from a “push” media  culture,  where the broadcaster  sends  the content to the listener when the scheduler decides, to a “pull” initiative, with the listener in control of ‘when and how…’ It is the very accessibility of recorded sound, stripped of visual distractions, which makes this all the more exciting - and that of course is the very stuff  of  which  old-fashioned  radio  has  always  been  made.  The  turning  of  pages augmented by a murmur of voices is the gift of accessible audio archives. Let us ensure that the understanding of the importance of these things, manifest in the preservation and transfer of knowledge from existing sound archives, continues to inform our strategy for the ongoing development of future resources, as and when they become available.Professor Seán StreetDirector, the Centre for Broadcasting History ResearchThe Media School, Bournemouth University

A World in Your Ear - Digitising Commercial Radio Archives

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