Radio

The culture of consumption in radio is the product of a three-way relationship between audiences, broadcasters, and technology. Although in the contemporary West radio is typically thought of as an entertainment medium, over its long history the nature of radio consumption has changed extensively. Nineteenth-century experiments focused on direct communication, and it was not until the early twentieth century that the notion of broadcasting—from the center to a body of listeners—became widespread. From being the preserve of amateurs, the technology then saw extensive military use in various countries in the period around the First World War, which consolidated its national regulation and localized consumption.

In the 1920s, radio became a social medium, and organizations and companies began to form in the United States and Europe to offer services via radio. In Europe, radio was dominated by state-owned organizations, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in contrast to the dominance of private enterprise seen in the United States from the 1930s. These organizations were complemented in different national systems by smaller broadcasters covering religious, political, and community groups and the unlicensed “radio pirates,” culminating in the huge volume of radio stations we have today. Radio's reach is international; radio broadcasts are transmitted in almost every country, and it is often possible to receive broadcasts and webcasts from elsewhere in the world.

Radio consumption can be functionally divided into three primary categories: technology, content, and message. The first category refers to the way that consumption is driven and supported by innovation in the ways sound is encoded and decoded for over-the-air and Internet distribution. The second refers to the consumption of the music, talk, and so on that forms the mainstay of broadcast, webcast, and podcast content. The last category refers to the purposes of radio, achieved not only primarily through entertainment, information, and advertising but also through the health, educational, and moral messages that appear to varying extents around the world.