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For my final blog entry, I want to explore the difference between AM/FM radio because, quite embarrassingly, before writing this blog I really didn’t know the difference between the two!

AM Radio

AM (or Amplitude Modulation) radio is the original format used for broadcast from c.1900 onward. Like FM Radio, AM needs to be transmitted through a carrier wave, and the primary difference between the two is in how this is done. With AM, the information is transmitted via variations of amplitude (volume/strength) within the carrier wave. AM can often be prone to more static than FM.

Although AM radio is the original format for broadcast, it has been quite unpopular for around 70 years. This is due to FM Radio and TV superseding its place.

FM Radio

FM (or Frequency Modulation) radio is a more recent invention than AM, having been invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong. FM broadcast is far higher quality than AM, and is much more popular today because of this. Similar to AM radio, FM also needs to transmit information through a carrier wave, however with FM it is the carrier wave frequency that is altered, instead of the amplitude.

Due to FM’s higher audio quality it is the industry standard for broadcast at the moment, and has been so for decades. However, that is not to say that AM doesn’t have its advantages. AM equipment is a lot less complex and has a lower bandwith than FM, meaning that it is comparatively easier to receive an AM signal and there are usually more stations availably within any given frequency range.

However, FM is generally accepted as being superior to AM for public broadcast, and is usually a better method for when it comes to transmitting music or radio art broadcasts.

Bibliography

1. Midland Radio. 2021. What Do AM and FM Stand For? A Quick Guide. [online] Available at: <https://midlandusa.com/blogs/blog/what-do-am-and-fm-stand-for-a-quick-guide> [Accessed 5 February 2022].
2. Seamount, C., 2022. Applications of Electromagnetic Waves: Radio Waves. [online] Ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu. Available at: <http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/webproj/213_fall_2017/Christopher_Seamount/page4.html> [Accessed 5 February 2022].

For this blog post, I thought I would take a brief look at the history of radio.

There is some debate about who first invented the radio – the two main contenders are Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi. In 1893, Tesla first demonstrated the wireless radio in St. Louis. However, Marconi was the first wireless telegraphy patent in England in 1896, and in 1901 was the first person to transmit signals across the Atlantic Ocean.

Originally, the main use of radio was to contact ships at sea from land and morse code was typically used due to radio signals not being very clear at the time. It was invaluable in the First World War and was used to deliver messages to armed forces.

Between the wars, civilians started to purchase radios for their own use, and in 1922 the BBC began broadcasting (Fun fact – I sampled a part of their broadcast in a song I made a few years ago!) and by 1926 started to gain in popularity, partly in reaction to the newspaper strike that same year. Radio at this time was primarily broadcasting the news and serial dramas.

After the Second World War, where it again proved itself invaluable, there was a shift towards playing popular music and the idea of the Top 40 began to rear its head. The target demographic for popular music programmes was generally young teens to adults in their mid-30s.

In the 1960’s, pirate radio began to emerge in Britain. Due to the BBC refusing to play certain records, a new generation of youngsters decided to take matters into their own hands. There were many stations, the most famous of which was Radio Caroline, that broadcasted off boats in international waters to avoid authorities. At the height of their reign they were broadcasting American Rock n’ Roll records to over 10 million listeners a day!

Right now radio is a very diverse landscape, with all types of programming ranging from traditional top 40 countdowns to phone in radio stations where listeners can talk to presenters live on air.

And what about the future of radio? Well, as discussed in my previous article, that remains to be seen.

Bibliography

1. Wood, J., n.d. History of the Radio: A Complete Radio Timeline. [online] Techwholesale.com. Available at: <https://www.techwholesale.com/history-of-the-radio.html> [Accessed 4 February 2022].
2. Kiger, P., 2020. How Pirate Radio Rocked the 1960s Airwaves and Still Exists Today. [online] HowStuffWorks. Available at: <https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/pirate-radio.htm> [Accessed 4 February 2022].

The argument is certainly there – people, especially younger consumers, want to stream content they choose to listen to now rather than having it curated and decided for them by radio stations and DJs.

According to a study by Larry Miller, director of New York University’s Steinhardt Music Business program, there are many threats facing radio at the moment. These include, but are not limited to:

• Digital services severely crowding traditional AM/FM radio
• Younger listeners instead seeking out new content through the likes of YouTube and Spotify, especially now that Spotify also hosts podcasts
• Car makers marginalising radio on their dashboards (this is important as cars used to be a very popular setting for people to listen to the radio)
• Smart speakers shaping people’s demands and making them less likely to choose the radio over Spotify, podcasts, etc.

It’s hard to argue with these concerns. As humans, we are moving towards a more on-demand based culture, something which radio (and traditional television) have failed to keep up with. Maybe the future is in podcasts, where episodes can be any length and are not subject to as many strict regulations.

However, this may not necessarily be the case. Maybe all radio needs to do is adapt, to not simply view itself as a distribution service but to view itself as a form of content. This is an argument that Mixcloud’s Ben Lawrence and BBC Radio 1’s Kate Holder made at a panel on the future of radio at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam in 2017.

“Looking at streaming as a competitor, in terms of taking people’s time, absolutely it is (a challenge)… but actually, in terms of the concept of a streaming service, I don’t necessarily see it 100% as a competitive thing. Audiences use them in different ways… Radio’s appeal is you can stumble across things that you wouldn’t hear otherwise. Hopefully people will hear bands they love, and then they’ll go and look for them on streaming services” said Holder.

Lawrence argued that “In the future people won’t be listening at all in FM or AM, or DAB. If you think about how radio is distributed through that media at the moment, it’s a lot in-car and a lot at home… Streaming is only really a threat to incumbents if they don’t see it as the feature. if they try and silo themselves and say ‘we’re radio, we don’t really do streaming’…”.

I agree with these arguments somewhat. I think that if radio stations manage to adapt to audiences new methods of consuming content, they will do rather well for themselves. Podcasts are certainly evidence of this. As well as this, listening to live radio is still an engaging and pleasurable activity. When I’m driving my car, I like to stick on the radio as I find it more interesting to hear new content than to stick on the same CD I’ve heard tens of times before when I wasn’t driving (although maybe this is a sign of the antiquated audio system in my car, as I still can’t plug my phone in through an auxiliary cable).

I think that yes, the traditional format of radio is losing its appeal in popularity. However, this doesn’t mean radio as an art form has to!

Bibliography

1. Sanchez, D., 2017. Radio Is Dead In 10 Years. This Study Proves It.. [online] Digital Music News. Available at: <https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/31/radio-dead-musonomics-study/> [Accessed 4 February 2022].
2. Dredge, S., 2017. ‘People say radio is dead. Actually, radio as content is exploding…’ – Music Ally. [online] Musically.com. Available at: <https://musically.com/2017/02/23/radio-dead-content-exploding/> [Accessed 4 February 2022].

October 30th, 1938.

The date of one of the most infamous radio broadcasts of all time, still talked about 84 years later. This is of course Orson Welles’ reading of H.G. Welles’ classic, ‘The War of the Worlds’. This broadcast is well documented for having caused widespread panic (although the extent of this is heavily disputed) due to the first act’s news bulletin-style presentation.

I wanted to listen to this broadcast as although it is very well known I have never actually heard it, and thought it would be interesting to analyse the use of sound.

I think the most innovative use of sound in this story is the flip-flopping between a concert in “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in Downtown New York” and the news bulletins of Martians coming down to invade Earth. If the listener had not tuned in right from the start of the broadcast, or had simply not been paying attention for a few minutes, then there would be nothing to indicate in the story that this was fiction, especially seeing as there wasn’t a break in the programme until 38 minutes in, well after a large portion of New Jersey and New York had been vaporised by Martian heat rays. I think this is an excellent plot time and incredibly forward thinking for the time as it is quite a non-traditional way of telling a story. It’s certainly better than the awful 1977 musical version of the same story by Jeff Wayne. I was subjected to that once. Never again.

Bibliography

1. Schwartz, A., 2015. The Infamous “War of the Worlds” Radio Broadcast Was a Magnificent Fluke. [online] Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/> [Accessed 3 February 2022].
2. HISTORY. 2009. Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast. [online] Available at: <https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/welles-scares-nation> [Accessed 3 February 2022].

The Archers is the world’s longest running drama, with almost 20,000 episodes and was first broadcast on 1st January 1951.

It’s also something I remember from my childhood – in a slightly strange way though. I remember in my formative years thinking that The Archers was simply the ‘Barwick Green’ maypole dance that is used as the theme tune for the show. I used to be really excited to hear it whenever my mum would turn the radio on at 7pm, 5 days a week. For some reason I thought that the radio drama that followed was something completely different and was of no interest to me at all.

I decided to revisit this artefact of my childhood for this unit, and this time actually pay attention to the story and the techniques used that differentiate from television, a format that I am much more familiar with. I decided to examine this particular broadcast from the 31st of January 2022:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013zj8

At first I found it hard to adjust, as I haven’t actually listened to a radio drama for quite some time. The first and most obvious difference I noticed was that the characters always refer to each other by their names, often multiple times within a scene. This is obviously because listeners aren’t going to be able to see who the characters are, and a lot of them have similar voices. Also, listeners may be drifting in and out of the story as the radio could be on in the background so it’s important to reiterate who is in which scene.

I actually found that compared to what I was expecting, there were relatively few sound effects in this episode. This might have been because of the laid back, rural nature of the programme as there were only really a couple of soundscapes that were quite low in the mix, and there was one instance of a telephone eq being used. Other than that, the use of sound effects was fairly sparse. I think for my next post I will try to find something a little more engaging.