Dissertation Research: Radio Luxembourg: International, Commercial Radio in an Age of European National Broadcasting

This Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Improvement Grant explores the issues raised by a clash between two different European models for organizing broadcasting technology. Although national, publicly funded monopolies like the BBC had become the dominant organizational model for European broadcasting by 1930, the government of Luxembourg eschewed this trend by licensing a private company to broadcast advertiser-supported radio programs not only within Luxembourg, but also to a European market large enough to support its expenses. Over the next few decades, Radio Luxembourg grew into a transnational media conglomerate with investors, subsidiaries and subcontractors in several countries and multilingual broadcasts that reached most of northern and western Europe. Despite their national .monopolies,. neighboring public broadcasters found themselves in the position of all public broadcasters today, forced to compete with a rival company conceived and funded on a totally different scale, according to different values. This grant will fund research into the economic, social and cultural history of the conflict between Radio Luxembourg and the British and French public broadcasters, using program schedules, memoranda and correspondence from the broadcasting companies, supervising ministries and diplomatic offices, which

are archived in the Archives nationales of Luxembourg and France, the BBC Written Archives, the British Public Records Office, and the Stephen Williams Archive at the Centre for Luxembourg Studies of the University of Sheffield. The overall objective of this research is to uncover how and why competition with Radio Luxembourg threatened the national broadcasters. Was the conflict largely economic, caused by the advantages and disadvantages of the different economic models adopted by each type of system . license fees and government appropriations on the part of the national broadcasters versus commercial funding for Radio Luxembourg? How important were social and cultural factors, such as differing definitions of the social role of broadcasting or the value and purpose of different types of culture? Since in all cases the vast majority of broadcast time was devoted to music, attention to the issues surrounding different choices in music under each system . who determined what would be broadcast, what meanings were attached to music, what was played and why . will be an important aspect of this analysis. This project challenges key assumptions within the history of technology and of Europe. While historians of technology have become increasingly interested in the social context of technological development, histories of broadcasting and other technological systems have usually been approached through the comparison or analysis of national systems, thus equating .society. roughly with .nation.. In this case, however, the conflict between multinational and national illustrates the limitation of this approach and raises exciting new questions about what we mean by 'society' when we speak of the social construction of technological systems. On the other hand, within European historiography, the conflict between national and multinational is commonly treated as an aspect of Americanization or as a symptom of recent, post-Fordist globalization. By comparing the responses of national broadcasters to a specific, European multinational threat dating from the 1930s, this project reveals a much older and broader history of globalization. The potential impact to society is significant, since publicly funded national broadcasting systems still compete with commercialized multinationals for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of listeners all over the globe. The issues of sovereignty, social responsibility and the meanings and uses of culture raised here are therefore relevant to policy makers, listeners and supporters of public broadcasting even today. Radio history is exciting, however, not only because of radio's historic and current importance to people's daily lives, but because of the potential for the history itself to reach so many people. For many people, the history of radio evokes fond memories of the music and programs of their youth, as evidenced by the numerous catalogues, web sites and newsgroups devoted to the sounds and history of old time radio. This dissertation, and the book that will ultimately be drawn from it, can therefore bring important issues

surrounding the commercialization and internationalization of media to a wide readership through an engaging and accessible narrative about a fascinating, and for many, nostalgic, period in Western history.