American Radio Broadcasts during World War II - Article Example

American Radio Broadcasts during World War II Generally, it is becoming evident that World War II America can only be accurately understood if there are further studies on the impact of radio broadcasting during the Second World War on the larger American society. Above all, the radio transformed the daily lives of Americans swiftly and permanently. The radio fulfilled additional functions by the 1940s. It entertained vast number of listeners while promoting the merchandise of profit-making sponsors. It gave global and local news reports, and throughout the Second World War it kept Americans highly informed. Furthermore, it delivered local and national news coverage for particular interest groups, sports programs, transmissions for minority groups and immigrants, weather forecasts, and music (5). According to Horten, radio was the main medium for the American people throughout the Second World War because 90% of American households had a radio and listened to broadcasts every day (4). Radio was an everyday companion, an accurate provider of information and news, and ultimately, a popular entertainment and pastime. The American people of the 1930s and 1940s admitted that they cannot picture their lives during the war without radios (5). The purpose of this paper is to portray the value of radio during World War II and its importance to the wartime propaganda initiative. Similar to other mediums, radio was one of the first to be enlisted for this effort. It eagerly circulated government propaganda and effectively brought together the American people for the war agenda. Actually, due to the fact that radio was available and almost accessible everywhere, it flooded popular culture rapidly and totally, and served a vital function in changing the cultural and public domain into a wartime culture (7). Motivated by a communicable nationalism and profit making, radio merged its activities with those other mediums to bring to light the risks and chances of the struggle and to encourage the American people to fulfill the crucial sacrifices. In due course, the media formed a limited agreement that governed the cultural domain. Up until the 1940s, radio, particularly, functioned mainly as a centripetal force in the lives of the American people (3). Michele Hilmes has claimed that radio was especially fit for the formation of an “imagined [national] community” (22) from the 1920s to the 1940s. Although this nationalization program was filled with ethnic and racial weaknesses and involved a tendency toward gender prejudice, creating a feeling of national solidarity was one of the major roles of the radio: “Physically, culturally, in a common language and through national semipublic institutions, radio spoke to, and about, a nation” (22). Throughout the war, this inclination became increasingly prominent. This inclination of national broadcasting produces a second domain: the radio propaganda’s cultural politics, or the cultural and political context where in wartime propaganda was created, implemented, and challenged (5). The term ‘cultural politics’ attracts particular interest in the active relations between these varied arenas, like capitalist culture, political economy, and politics (2); certainly, it means that we should not and cannot draw a perfect line between these arenas. The actual relevance of radio propaganda’s cultural politics becomes evident merely when it is viewed within the wider economic, social, and political events of the war period (4), for it addressed and fostered transformations outside the realm of broadcasting. The major transformation is the reconfirmation of commercial supremacy over the public sector, which was one of the most important and enduring impacts of the performance of radio propaganda during the war. In the cultural and public domain, capitalism and its main concerns were confirmed (4). After the overwhelming period of the Great Depression, which weakened the trust of the American people in the system of free enterprise, commerce and advertising were revived by the 1940s, equipped and willing to enforce their idea and system on a toughened nation (4). This business-friendly movement, which started in the 1930s up until the postwar era, was not ‘incompletely stopped’ during the war, as claimed by several historians. Rather, this turnaround was at the core of the political and cultural shifts of the war years (2). Knowledge of this important change is particularly relevant if we try to give explanation to why the great challenges to the free enterprise system in the postwar era crushingly failed. The major event of this period was the growth of a commercial-oriented, consumer-driven value system and the formation of a new, and ever more privatized, civic sector. This turnaround began at some point in the wartime era and created more heat in the early postwar period (6). Within these years, the landscape of the American cultural, social, and political sector was reconstructed through an intricate, comprehensive procedure, initiated by a vicious competition on the part of advertisers and businesses to reaffirm their dream of a consumer-driven, privatized creed (5). The wartime propaganda and profit-making radio worked together to influence this important ideology. The radio is the medium most directly and strongly coordinated with commercial America (8). It also gave a very useful and vital key for this major transformation during the war. Hence, a scholarly consideration of American radio during the Second World War is important not only as a way to know how the radio took part in the wartime propaganda, even though this is a tale that requires disclosure and has been neglected for so long now. In addition, it is important because a more definite understanding of American radio and propaganda during World War II aids us in making sense of the enormous difference between the periods that came first and followed the Second World War. The public sector in the 1930s was a much more challenged domain, where in the influence of the state and alternative political and cultural ideas were emerging (5). In the postwar era, ideas aside from commercial ones were more and more consigned to the recesses of politics and culture. It is essential to mentioned here that corporate radio did not in any way speak with a single voice, and no particular group was given the chance to exert complete control over the medium (1). Radio culture during the war presents lots of cases of conflicting trends that weakened popular knowledge and beliefs. Radio was constantly influenced by several distinct, and usually incompatible, motives (4). Even throughout the wartime period, neither politics nor mainstream culture ever became unsophisticated. Hence, what was witnessed is the rebirth of a prevailing trend, the grand strengthening of corporate supremacy’s master narrative, which was reinforced throughout the war and spread out into the postwar years (4). The collective outcome of all this was that the American nation wrestled a rare form of propaganda war throughout the Second World War: the war was privatized, undertaken with references to the consumerist impulses or individual sacrifices of Americans (5). The wartime radio propaganda’s cultural politics created a vital connection for the reinforcement and reaffirmation of consumer free enterprise’s privatized culture. Because radio was one of the integral connections between the private sector and the commercial-driven public arena and one of the much loved pastime and entertainment channel of Americans, it fulfilled a special function in this change. Works Cited (1) n.a. “WWII Communications Equipment.” Western Historic Radio Museum, 2000. Web. 28 November 2011. (2) Cohen, Stan. V for victory: America’s home front during World War II. Pictorial Histories Pub., 1991. Print. (3) Friedman, Herbert. “Radio Leaflets During Wartime.” Psywarrior.com. Web. 28 November 2011. (4) Hilmes, Michele. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print. (5) Horten, Gerd. Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda During World War II. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Print. (6) Sopronyi, Judy. “Watching the Radio.” America in WWII, 2010. Web. 28 November 2011. (7) Sweeney, Michael. Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Print. (8) White, Thomas. “Radio During World War One (1914-1919).” United States Early Radio History. Web. 28 November 2011. Read More