Industrial Context: The History of Radio

Guglielmo Marconi is widely considered to be the father of radio, and his 1885 broadcast is considered to be the first radio transmission in history. The broadcast of music and talk-shows was experimented with in 1905-06, and commercial broadcasts started in 1920. However, the modern format of radio had been experimented with in the 1890s in the UK, France and Hungary with a system called the Electrophone.

In 1922, the British Broadcasting Company was formed which at the time ran sponsored programmes. In 1927, this company would be dissolved to form the British Broadcasting Corporation, the non-profit public service broadcaster. Commercial stations such as Radio Luxembourg were also in the early days at this time, however, they were being broadcast from mainland Europe and not from within the UK.

Commercial radio such as Radio Luxembourg declined in popularity during the 1950s due to commercial television and pirate radio - illegal broadcasts from international waters - such as Radio Caroline. The UK still had no domestic commercial radio so the BBC retained its ubiquitous popularity in the medium.

The UK legalised commercial radio in 1973 with the Independent Local Radio programme which was spearheaded by London's LBC and Capital Radio. The Radio Authority was established as part of the Broadcasting Act 1990 to serve the licencing of commercial broadcasts, especially short term broadcasts. In 1998, digital radios began to be sold in the UK.

The shift to 'on demand' services has also affected radio broadcasting, with the BBC, for example, adopting the model in order to unify their radio and iPlayer catalogue in 2018 with the launch of the BBC Sounds service.