![]() ![]() Radio at the time served as a tool for spreading and reinforcing the narratives of the British colonial government. The first radio stations were established as re-broadcast stations for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The arrival of radio in Nigeria could be described as the arrival of electronic broadcasting to the country. However, in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the first community radio was only established in 2015. Countries like South Africa, Niger, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Mali have well established community radio networks. Through community radio, people at the grassroots can voice their concerns on issues central to them including health, gender relations, human rights, security and infrastructure. Community radio describes radio stations owned and run by people of a specific community to promote and protect the community’s common interests and objectives. In response to community needs for public information, community radio stations were established in several African countries in the 1990s. People at the grassroots, often living in remote communities, are often excluded from these broadcasts. However, their transmitters often reach only a few miles. There exist both state and private-run radio stations in most country capitals and other large cities and towns across Africa. Within developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, radio is still maturing with many untapped potentials. In Europe and North America, radio is well established and has become a viable industry that generates billions of dollars annually. The portability, convenience, cheap cost, and availability of free signals make radio a very popular medium in both developed and developing climes. Predictions based on research findings by Nielsen and Deloitte show that people aged between 18 to 34 will most likely spend more time on radio than watching television by 2025. There are over 44,000 functional radio stations worldwide. ![]() Statistics show that radio reaches over 5 billion people, representing 70 percent of the total world population. It is argued that despite the immense popularity of television and the internet, radio remains the mass medium that reaches the widest audience in the quickest possible time. Attributed to the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) and several other inventors in Europe and the USA radio has developed since the 1890s to become one of the most widely used mass media in the world. This was the beginning of the “Golden Age of Radio.” The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), parent company of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) produced and commissioned shows like “The Lone Ranger”, “The Shadow”, “BBC Dramas”, “I Love a Mystery,” and there were even plenty of shows for children, such as “Let’s Pretend” and “Hop Harrigan.Radio as a mass medium employs electromagnetic radio waves through transmitters and antennas, to disseminate information, education, and entertainment to listeners. In the evening, the family gathered around a big “console” that was usually located in the living room, where they might spend hours listening to variety shows or comedies from favorites like Jack Benny or Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.Įveryone used their imagination to visualize all of the characters in their favorite shows. By the 1930s, most households in the U.S. In the early 1920s, radio played an important role in people’s lives, and over 500 stations were broadcasting news, music, sports, drama, and variety shows. Radio works by changing sounds or signals into radio waves, which travel through air, space, and solid objects, and the radio receiver changes them back into the sounds, words, and music we hear.Ī radio broadcast is a one-way transmission, originating from a radio station. In 1906, Marconi shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Ferdinand Braun, a German, in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy. He used radio waves to transmit Morse code and the instrument he used became known as the radio. In 1895, a young Italian named Gugliemo Marconi invented what he called “the wireless telegraph” while experimenting in his parents’ attic. German scientist Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of radio waves, which occur in nature. Radios send messages by radio waves instead of wires. The next advancement in telecommunications was radio, the first wireless mode of communication. ![]()
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