The radio played a very important role in my formative years as it was one of the first, if not the first, places where I heard the types of music that defined me as a person. For that, I have always felt a strong connection and appreciation of it though I rarely listen to the radio anymore. As much as I have loved the radio, I've never known much about it in the sense of history or how it works. Needless to say, I was very excited to see this book on the history of radio broadcasting. I was finally to learn more about it and put it in a better historical context. Possibly even learn of the ways it has changed the lives of others through its history.

Gordon Bathgate's Radio Broadcasting does that, to a degree at least. Yes, it tells the story of the first radio and the numerous people who worked tirelessly for it to happen. Sure, it also touches upon the ways this invention has changed society and the world as a whole. But it does it in the most unimaginative and boring way possible.

Reading Radio Broadcasting, I often felt like a high school student cramming for a history exam. Way too many dates, names, and facts and way too little characterization, intention, and depth. It's just a fact after a fact after fact and that's about it for a few hundred pages. This makes the text both supremely boring and incredibly taxing to read. I guess that might be because I am less interested in raw facts (I will rather read an academic paper for that) but in characters, context, and the writer's interpretation, and none of them seem to be found here.

As much as I am thankful to the radio and still hold it in my heart, I can safely say that I did not enjoy reading this book even for a second and would not recommend it to anyone except for the most diehard trivia fanatic, who loves "dazzling" (read boring to death) people with loads of facts and dates.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Pen & Sword for providing me with the ARC in return for my honest opinion.

Radio Broadcasting by Gordon Bathgate is a new publication from the excellent Pen & Sword History. It comprehensively covers the history of radio broadcasting from Marconi and his predecessors up to 2019. Although it majors on Britain, the USA and Australia & New Zealand, Europe is covered fairly well too.

Typically for Pen & Sword, there is a lot of information in this book. However, anyone who is interested in radio will wallow in that detail! The Marconi Company began the first officially approved broadcast service to Britain in 1922 from station 2MT although radio hams had been transmitting speech and music to the London area since 1920. 2MT gave rise to a sister station in London: 2LO, with a transmitter power of 100 watts. That’s right, the same as a household light bulb before Nanny stopped us buying them.

In 1920, Station 2ADD in New York produced what is likely to have been the first public entertainment broadcast in the US. The US government at that time wasn’t keen on foreign control of its international communications and pressured Marconi to sell its operations to an American firm. OTL in Belgium, however, was broadcasting musical entertainment in early 1914.

There is humour in the book. Bathgate mentions Mexican stations broadcasting into the US that didn’t have to abide by US laws: “Another radio evangelist reportedly was trying to sell listeners autographed photos of Jesus Christ.” And the image of sound engineers producing the sound of splattering blood and guts using a bathroom plunger and warm spaghetti will stay with me for a while.

The BBC Board of Governors weren’t impressed with the American artistes heard on the Force Programme during the war, even though the public loved the programme. The Board’s minutes stated “Popularity noted, but deplored.”

Although Bathgate mentions Radio Caroline North, which was stationed off the Isle of Man, he doesn’t mention that the pejorative term “anoraks” arose from the DJs seeing the fans in wet weather gear who wanted to go out on a boat the see the station.

This is a very well written and edited book. I didn’t spot any spelling punctuation or grammatical errors - hurrah! The only quibble that I have – and it really is a nerdy minor one – is that the book doesn’t explain the logic behind the early station call-signs. We had 2MT and 2LO but then Birmingham became 5IT. Why the jump in numbering? I told you it was a minor quibble!

#RadioBroadcasting #NetGalley

Thank you for allowing me to review.

Radio Broadcasting tells the story of the birth of Radio and TV. Unfortunately it is less of a story, but a concatenation of a lot of facts and events in a fairly monotone voice. While the information is very complete and detailed, it may be a great piece of reference for the scholar of the topic, but it is not very entertaining for the average non-fiction reader. The book would do better with omitting some of the rather insignificant events and share more funny and entertaining stories. The author tries at times, but comes in a short of the goal line.

But if you need to study the history of Radio and TV for College, because you seek a career in the field, this may still be your best bet. The book seems to be thoroughly researched.

An interesting history of one of Britain's great, and undervalued, national institutions. Filled me with hope.

Good on broader issues; too detailed otherwise

I liked some parts of the book, especially some of the funny anecdotes about the early days of radio, and the sections on broader issues such as streaming, digital radio, piracy, and the effects of television. I found the introduction a little technical and I thought that many of the country-by-country discussions were by far too detailed. Overall, the book left me feeling rather neutral.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

A fascinating book which is a mixture of technical detail, history, biography and the story of the development of radio broadcasting from early experimentation via two world wars to the current digital age.

Whilst I found some of the technical information at the beginning of the book a bit heavy it soon grabbed me with the stories of the pioneering companies and characters from the early 20th Century that brought radio broadcasts into peoples homes.

From local radio to network broadcasters and pirates everything is here for the radio buff including interesting facts about the programmes and people that led the way in the 'Golden Age' of radio