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

这篇科学和技术研究论文改进补助金探讨了两种不同的欧洲模式之间的冲突引发的问题，以组织广播技术。虽然到1930年，像BBC这样的国家、公共资助的垄断机构已经成为欧洲广播的主导组织模式，但卢森堡政府避开了这一趋势，授权一家私人公司不仅在卢森堡境内播放广告商支持的广播节目，而且还向一个足够大到足以支付其开支的欧洲市场广播。在接下来的几十年里，卢森堡广播电台成长为一家跨国媒体集团，在几个国家拥有投资者、子公司和分包商，多语言广播覆盖了北欧和西欧的大部分地区。尽管他们拥有全国性的垄断地位。邻近的公共广播公司发现自己现在的处境与所有公共广播公司一样，被迫根据不同的价值观，与一家构思和融资规模完全不同的竞争对手公司竞争。这笔赠款将用于研究卢森堡电台与英国和法国公共广播公司之间的冲突的经济、社会和文化史，利用广播公司的节目时间表、备忘录和信件，监督各部委和外交办事处，这些档案保存在卢森堡和法国国家档案馆、英国广播公司书面档案馆、英国公共记录办公室和谢菲尔德大学卢森堡研究中心的斯蒂芬·威廉姆斯档案馆。这项研究的总体目标是揭示与卢森堡广播电台的竞争如何以及为什么威胁到国家广播公司。这种冲突在很大程度上是经济的，是由每种类型的制度采用的不同经济模式的优缺点造成的吗？国家广播公司的许可费和政府拨款与卢森堡广播电台的商业资金？社会和文化因素有多重要，例如对广播的社会作用或不同类型文化的价值和目的的不同定义？由于在所有情况下，绝大多数广播时间都花在音乐上，因此应注意在每个系统下围绕不同音乐选择的问题。谁决定了要播放什么，音乐有什么意义，播放了什么，为什么播放。将是这一分析的一个重要方面。这个项目挑战了技术史和欧洲史上的关键假设。虽然技术史学家对技术发展的社会背景越来越感兴趣，但广播和其他技术系统的历史通常是通过比较或分析国家制度来处理的，因此将社会等同于。大致与.国家..然而，在这种情况下，跨国公司和国家之间的冲突表明了这种方法的局限性，并提出了令人兴奋的新问题，即当我们谈论技术系统的社会建设时，我们所指的“社会”是什么。另一方面，在欧洲史学中，国家和多国之间的冲突通常被视为美国化的一个方面，或者是最近后福特主义全球化的一个症状。通过比较国家广播公司对20世纪30年代以来欧洲跨国威胁的反应，这个项目揭示了一段更古老、更广泛的全球化历史。这对社会的潜在影响是巨大的，因为公共资助的国家广播系统仍然在与商业化的跨国公司争夺全球听众的心、头脑和钱包。因此，即使在今天，这里提出的主权、社会责任以及文化的意义和用途问题仍然与公共广播的决策者、听众和支持者有关。然而，无线电历史是令人兴奋的，不仅因为无线电对人们日常生活的历史和现实重要性，而且因为历史本身有可能影响到这么多人。对许多人来说，收音机的历史唤起了他们对年轻时的音乐和节目的美好回忆，无数致力于旧时代收音机的声音和历史的目录、网站和新闻组就是明证。因此，这篇论文以及最终将从中引出的这本书，可以通过一篇引人入胜的、容易理解的关于西方历史上一个迷人的、对许多人来说是怀旧的时期的叙述，将围绕媒体商业化和国际化的重要问题带给广大读者。

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.