How Did Radio in the 1960's Mark the Changing Social Order in the UK and US - Term Paper Example

How did radio in the 1960s mark - and even actively promote - the changing social order in the UK and US? The 1960s saw perhaps the greatest social changes in history. For the first time young people and their parents were divided. They had different cultural ideas and little middle ground to understand each other. The music tastes, social conventions and political beliefs of the older generation had been violently rejected by a disaffected youth which sought to establish a new social order. These were times of change, times of disaffection and times in which a whole new social network was being established. This took the form of underground movements, independent press and pirate radio. This essay will focus on this final tool of social expression. It will examine how radio, both mainstream and pirate, marked the social changes of the 1960s and, further, how it at times even actively promoted it. This essay will focus predominantly on the social situation in the UK. However some reference to the US will also be made, given the striking parallels and social interaction between the two countries. The radio, before the advent of television, had long been the tool through which news, politics, music and culture was diffused to the population. The programmes were chosen, written, edited and distributed by the institution and reflected, for the most part, the gentile middle classes. They catered for middle aged tastes and rarely attempted to take on hard hitting social issues or play rock and roll. The dominant radio station through the late 1950s were the BBC and radio Luxembourg. The BBC was the bastion of the middle classes. However, radio Luxembourg represented an approach which was more in touch with the younger generation. As Crisell (1986:33) comments Radio Luxembourg [was] much more in touch with popular music than the BBC during the 1950s. The youth of the 1950s, which would become the militant campaigners of the 1960s, therefore had a radio station which reflected their tastes. However, Radio Luxembourg went little beyond this. It was by no means the voice of a generation, but simply a sign of recognition that things were changing and that parents and children could no longer be catered for with the same programming. Until the late 1950s, the radio had remained a stationary object kept within the home and listened to often intently. However with the advent of the transistor radio for the masses all this changed. The heavy box became small and light and so now that the radio was portable, it could be used to accompany any kind of activity. As a result of this new found liberty, radio listeners relationship with their wirelesses changed. Rather than being listened to as a ritual in the front room, the radio suddenly became a provider of background noise which could be listened to with half an ear while performing other tasks. The radio stations, therefore, needed to adapt to this shift in usage and clearly it would be those that catered to the youth which needed to make this shift most urgently. Radio Luxembourg, with its weak signal, was unable to makes this transition. It was, therefore, time for a new sort of radio -pirate radio. As Crisell (1986:33) explains, the initiative was seized by a number of pirate radio stations which began broadcasting almost around the clock from various ships and forts in British coastal waters. The pirate stations were, in their infancy, largely commercial activities which recognised the fact that people now required background noise rather than political or discussion programmes. Set up illegally, without licences and paying no royalties for the music they played, the pirate stations were able to fill this niche. Radio Caroline, set up in 1964, was the first of its kind and met with enormous popularity. This alternative, underground broadcasting appealed to a new generation who no longer had respect for the establishment. It represented a freedom and liberty to do what they wanted, when they wanted, and was a turning point in radio history. By 1967 nine other major pirate stations had begun broadcasting, before the government began to close them down. However, the tone had been set. Pirate radio stations had also been cropping up in the US during the 1960s. However, rather than appearing offshore as in the UK, the appeared in basements and attics across the States. A number of hoax stations appeared during this period, most famously WBBH, desinged merely to confuse listeners and poke fun at the establishment. However, the most well documented of pirate station in the manner of Radio Caroline was WKOS, Chaos Radio which was set up in Cleveland, Ohio. Broadcasting between 1965 and 1966. As Yoder (2002:13) explains, the teenage DJs played a diet of the Beatles and other pop/rock bands. Here, again, was the youth of America taking the distribution of the music they wanted to hear into their own hands. Rather than listening to commercial stations, young people were making their point, and their voices heard, through pirate radio. However, these stations so far had only broadcast music. They may have marked the shift in the social order, but they were not promoting it, yet. The pirate radio station Radio London, and the young DJ John Peel, were to change all that. Radio London allowed underground publications to advertise on its airwaves while Peels late night show The Perfumed Garden began to allow the free exchange of alternative ideas. As Chapman (1992:125) remarks The Perfumed Garden became a kind of audio bulletin board for the counter-culture. Peel encouraged debate and his listeners would often write in to the show after it had aired to continue the discussions. It was a place where the unrepresented and dispossessed could unite. Chapman (126) sums up the situation in this way; The Perfumed Garden galvanised the underground, and allowed it to speak as one voice. Radio London had gone one step further than Radio Caroline, bringing people together in one place and promoting to changing social order. It would not be until the 1970s that stations of this nature would come to prominence in the US. Yoder identifies the Falling Star Network, based in Yonkers, New York, as one such station. Established in 1970, Yoder (2002:16) states that the station was dedicated to a popular youth culture that had yet to be addressed by established radio. The Falling Star Network was Americas answer to Radio London, promoting alternative thought and dialogue between like-minded radical thinkers in the same way. The establishment of the radio was also based on improving the social good, since the area did not have a local radio station. The station broadcast openly, inviting the authorities to challenge their presence on the airways in the embarrassing absence of an alternative. The radio openly campaigned to be granted a licence and so in this way functioned slightly differently to other pirate stations whose very purpose was to go against the social order, rather than attempt to comply with it. Although no licence was granted and the station received several warnings from the police, it was not closed down, probably due to its popularity. The voice of the people had triumphed. However, in spite of the apparently radical stance of the pirate stations, it is important to note that many were simply illegal broadcasters who did not want to pay for a broadcasting licence, rather than stations which were genuinely concerned with the messages of freedom of the 1960s. As Yoder (2002:18) underlines, the...early pirate radio stations were largely “wannabe” commercial broadcasters. He notes that it was not until the mid 1970s that free radio became an actual movement campaigning for broadcasting without licences. Chapman (1992:125) also picks up on the commercial side of the 1960s, commenting that by the summer of 1967 the more commercial aspects of what the media was calling flower power were already being exploited. The radical movement of the 1960s was proving itself to be a new target market for commercial enterprises. With the commercial possibilities of a radio station designed to cater for the youth becoming clear, it was now the turn of mainstream radio and the BBC to take up the challenge to produce a program which appealed to more than the middle-aged and middle class. During the 1950s and early 1960s audience figures for BBC radio stations had been declining. Although the initial intention had been to appeal to all classes, programs had fallen into a rut of inoffensive fodder for the middle aged, middle classes. With competition from the pirate stations as well as radio and the birth of television, things had to change. This, therefore, saw the birth of Radio One. For the first time, youth culture was given its own space on the BBC. A radio station was born which devoted its attention to the latest pop and rock music and teen issues. The BBC was suddenly at the forefront of entertainment provision for youth culture, and its impact on the changing social order was significant. The DJ John Peel was instrumental in this change. Hailing from the BBCs long standing enemy, pirate radio station Radio London, Peel became part of BBC One in September 1967 at the very start of broadcasting. With an eclectic taste in music, Peel promoted music genres hitherto unheard of on mainstream radio, such as Reggae and American Psychedelic rock. Peel was bringing the youth culture to the youth, rather than chasing along behind as the BBC had previously done. It was events such as these that saw radio move to the position of promoting the new changing social order The image of broadcasters also changed. Hendy (32) comments that ‘1967 represented a tipping point delicately poised between past and future. One year before, John Simpson had been arriving at Broadcasting House dressed in tweeds. By the beginning of 1968 he was turning up in yellow cords and a dashing red scarf.’ The youth affect was also felt beyond Radio 1. As Hendy explains, ‘young people, it was assumed, could also be courted as Radio Four listeners, and not just fobbed off with Radio One’. The focus shifted to supplying programs which appealed to young people. Fashion, youth culture and money matters replaced programs which previously had catered only for their parents. Programs retained the same names, but the target audience shifted. Drug addiction and the rise of right wing political parties gave the station an edgier feel. The impact of the social changes of the 1960s had finally been felt by radio’s institution, the BBC. From now on it would be Radio One which told teenagers what to listen to, not the other way around. Radio, therefore, was a key tool in the freedom movement of the 1960s. Pirate radio carved the path for the distribution of rock and pop music, as well as opening the door to hard-hitting political discussion programmes and programmes dealing with social issues. Through manipulation of the radio, the youth of the 1960s set itself up as a voice apart from the establishment and made it clear that the BBC and other mainstream broadcasters were not providing what they wanted. In the first instance, therefore, the radio promoted social change. However it is important to recognise that by the time programming changes filtered down to the BBC, radio was merely reflecting this change. The shift, in any case, was immense. A station such as Radio One would have been unthinkable just ten years earlier. The proliferation of youth culture today owes much to the evolution of the radio during the social upheaval of the 1960s. References Crisel, Andrew (1986) Understanding Radio. Oxford: Routledge Yoder, Andrew (2002) Pirate Radio Stations: Tuning in to Underground Broadcasting in the Air and Online. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Hendy, David. 2007 Life on Air: A History of Radio Four. Oxford: OUP Chapman, Robert (1992) Selling the Sixties. Oxford: Routledge Hendy, David Radio in the Global Age: http://www.mediauk.com/the_knowledge/i.muk/The_history_and_development_of_radio_in_the_UK Accessed 23rd April 2009 Radio London in the 1960s: http://www.radiolondon.co.uk/kneesflashes/stationprofile/hist.html Accessed 23rd Apriil 2009 Read More