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

本科学与技术研究论文改进补助金探讨了组织广播技术的两种不同欧洲模式之间的冲突所引起的问题。尽管到1930年，像英国广播公司（BBC）这样由政府资助的国家垄断机构已经成为欧洲广播行业的主要组织模式，但卢森堡政府避开了这一趋势，允许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的欧洲市场播放。在接下来的几十年里，卢森堡电台发展成为一个跨国传媒集团，在几个国家有投资者、子公司和分包商，多语种广播覆盖北欧和西欧的大部分地区。尽管他们的国家垄断。邻近的公共广播公司发现自己处于今天所有公共广播公司的地位，被迫与一家以完全不同的规模、根据不同的价值观构思和资助的竞争对手竞争。这笔拨款将用于研究卢森堡广播电台与英国和法国公共广播公司之间冲突的经济、社会和文化史，使用广播公司、监督部门和外交办事处的节目时间表、备忘录和信件，这些资料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、以及谢菲尔德大学卢森堡研究中心的斯蒂芬·威廉姆斯档案。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上的，是由每一种制度所采用的不同经济模式的优缺点所引起的。国家广播公司的许可费和政府拨款与卢森堡电台的商业资金之间的关系？社会和文化因素有多重要，比如对广播的社会角色的不同定义，或者不同类型文化的价值和目的？由于在所有情况下，绝大多数的广播时间都是用于音乐的，所以要注意在每个系统下围绕不同音乐选择的问题。谁决定播放什么，赋予音乐什么含义，播放什么以及为什么播放。将是这个分析的一个重要方面。这个项目挑战了技术和欧洲历史上的关键假设。虽然技术历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对国家系统的比较或分析来研究的，从而等同于社会。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说明了这种方法的局限性，并提出了令人兴奋的新问题，即当我们谈到技术系统的社会建构时，我们所说的“社会”是什么意思。另一方面，在欧洲史学中，民族和跨国之间的冲突通常被视为美国化的一个方面，或者是最近的后福特主义全球化的一种症状。通过比较各国广播公司对可追溯到20世纪30年代的特定欧洲跨国威胁的反应，该项目揭示了更古老、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在与商业化的跨国公司争夺全球听众的心灵、思想和钱包。因此，这里提出的主权、社会责任以及文化的意义和用途等问题，即使在今天，也与公共广播的决策者、听众和支持者息息相关。然而，无线电广播的历史是令人兴奋的，不仅因为无线电广播对人们日常生活的历史和当前的重要性，而且因为历史本身有可能接触到如此多的人。对许多人来说，广播的历史唤起了他们年轻时对音乐和节目的美好回忆，这一点可以从众多致力于老式广播的声音和历史的目录、网站和新闻组中得到证明。因此，这篇论文，以及最终将从中得出的书，可以通过对西方历史上一个迷人的、对许多人来说怀旧的时期的引人入胜和易于理解的叙述，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.