Austriaʼs Legacy in Early Radio Broadcasting: Lessons for Audio Media in the 21st Century

• Main Author: John V. Pavlik
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Athens Institute for Education and Research 2017-10-01
• Series: Athens Journal of Mass Media and Communications
• Subjects: austria; radio; history; music; drama; innovation
• Online Access: https://www.athensjournals.gr/media/2017-3-4-1-Pavlik.pdf

Early radio broadcasting represents a vital part of media history. It offers an important foundation of mediated storytelling and other content forms in the first electronic medium of mass communication. Contributions from Austria to the development of radio as a medium of mass communication in the early 20th century have been under appreciated in the research literature, despite the fact the very first study of radio and therefore broadcasting was conducted in Austria in 1932 by Lazarsfeld. In the early years of radio broadcasting around the world in the 1920s, Austria was among the countries with the greatest radio content or programming production, following the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France. A systematic examination of early Austrian radio based on broadcasting archives in Vienna reveals several insights into both early radio programming. Moreover, it also suggests an enduring influence in audio media content that still can be heard in the 21st century. Among the key Austrian influences in early radio are classical and folk music, literary dramatizations of the intellectual and artistic figures, culture and geo-politics that have characterized Austria, and innovation in wireless communications. This paper will examine the lessons to be learned from early Austrian radio programming and will outline their implications for contemporary audio content in the 21st century’s age of digital, online and mobile media, including podcasting. As a methodological foundation, this paper draws upon a systematic examination of materials available in the Dokumentationsarchiv Funk. The Dokumentationsarchiv Funk/Documentary Archives Radio Communication – AKA DokuFunk is an essential source of data on early Austrian radio, including some 500 scripts from early radio plays, that had been lost since the rise of fascism in Central Europe in the 1930s and the subsequent second World War.