Radio broadcasting and identity in the southern British world 1929-1939

Thesis

This thesis explores the role radio broadcasting played in the 1930s in the development of senses of national and transnational cultural identity in the British world. It focuses on Australia and New Zealand, where broadcasting reflected and amplified a process of active reconstruction of identities already underway in the years following the First World War. It argues in four chapters and a series of case studies that broadcasting incubated both national and pan-British sympathies. That it could do this was a function of the central place broadcasting came to occupy in cultural life.

The first chapter assesses the impact of the arrival of radio in Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s, and that on senses of identity of broadcasts of occasions of remembrance. The second chapter examines the consequences of regulation on the development of broadcasting in Australia and New Zealand and the popularity of broadcasts of sporting events, with their contribution to conceptions of identity. The third chapter looks at the creation of the BBC Empire Service and particularly the Empire broadcasts on Christmas Day, bringing together the sounds of the British world for the world to admire, but nowhere more admired than by the British themselves. The fourth notes that if across the decade broadcasting in Australia and New Zealand had developed rich and distinct domestic cultural forms, it also carried regular reminders of connection to the wider British world, reminders that might offer a brake on imaginings of wholly separate national identities. None were bigger than the Coronation of King George VI, heard by two thirds of New Zealanders and carried by every radio station in Australia.

At a time when forces of national self-interest might be pushing the British Empire apart, it is argued that broadcasting sustained, even reconstructed, a sense of shared British identity.

Authors: Hocking, S

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-xm7z0jb7o
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: remembrance; radio; New Zealand; broadcasting; broadcasting sport; Christmas; Australia; British empire; monarchy; Britishness
• Subjects: Radio Broadcasting, Australia; Remembrance; Monarchy--Great Britain--History--20th century; Radio; Radio broadcasting, British; Christmas; Radio Broadcasting, New Zealand; Britishness; Radio broadcasting of sports; Lambeth Walk