MEDIA HISTORY OR MEDIA HISTORIES?

Abstract

This essay sets out some of the conceptual and methodological reasons why the historiography of the mass media has tended to consist of parallel histories of individual mediums rather than an integrated history of the mass media as such. It looks in detail at one specific case study, the British mass media in the inter-war years, to explore what a more integrated historical approach might tell us both about the development of each medium in turn and the culture of intermediality in which they have always in reality operated (including convergence of media styles, growing interdependence of content, notably through the newspaper radio and film column, and crossovers of personnel), and been experienced.

Keywords:

• historiography
• archives
• intermediality
• radio criticism
• popular press
• BBC

Notes

1. Including the symposium on which this collection of essays is based.

2. ‘The centrality of the collective notion of the media] to the life of modern societies is such that anybody working on the history of—say—modern Austrian broadcasting or the press in inter-war France could not possibly shut their eyes to what is going on simultaneously in other media …’ (Dahl 552).

3. The absence of any archival evidence of the institutional and production process for the pioneers of American broadcasting history comparable to that available to historians of the BBC has likewise played a significant part in shaping the historiography of American broadcasting: see Briggs ‘Problems and Possibilities’ 9, though cf. Hilmes Radio Voices.

4. See Daily Express 7 March 1934: 1.

5. See for instance, News Chronicle, 9 December 1930: 8.

6. Daily Herald, 31 December 1930: 6.

7. Daily Herald 2 February 1931: 1; for the results see Daily Herald, 30 April 1931: 1, 8.

8. Daily Express 12 October 1931: 17; 19 November 1931: 13.

9. See for instance the Daily Express's ‘Entertainment’ page (on the inside back page of the paper) from 16 September 1935; and the News Chronicle's ‘The Page Before the Middle’ from 30 November 1936.

10. For Murray's role in action see, for instance, BBC Written Archive Centre, Caversham (hereafter BBC WAC) files R44/318 (Publicity: Newspapers: Daily Herald); R44/319 (Publicity: Newspapers: Daily Mail); R44/320 (Publicity: Newspapers: Daily Mirror). For the Daily Herald's ‘Radio Ballot’, see BBC WAC R44/352 Julius Elias to Gladstone Murray 26 January 1931, and Murray to Elias 12 February 1931; also R44/318/1 Elias to Murray 23 March 1931 and Murray to Elias 25 March 1931.

11. See for instance, Daily Express, 14 September 1931: 15.

12. See for instance Daily Express 1 October 1932. The ‘Uncle’ byline appears to have also been a direct lift from the BBC's Children's Hour (first broadcast 1922). Collie Knox also contributed to the ‘Junior Express’, under the byline Uncle Columbus in the early 1930s; see for instance Daily Express, 13 December 1930: 5.

13. The first ‘Collie Knox's Week-end Broadcast’ appeared in the Daily Mail on 2 April 1937. Two collections of the column were published: Collie Knox Calling! in 1937 and Collie Knox Again in 1938.

14. See ongoing correspondence in his contributor file in BBC WAC RCONT 1 Talks: Moseley, Sydney A, File 1 1925–62.

15. Briggs, and BBC WAC L2/154/1 Assistant Controller (Programmes) Note for the PMG, 15 December 1936. The words ‘addiction to drink’ have been typed then ruled through and replaced with ‘well known conviviality’.

16. BBC WAC L2/154/1 AC(I) (Murray) to Controller (Carpendale), 28 May 1931; also Reith to Murray 9 October 1933.

17. BBC WAC R44/320/1 Gladstone Murray to Harold Baker, 19 December 1934.

18. Daily Express, 18 September 1931: 12 (Potter); Daily Herald, 21 March 1934: 10 (Buchanan); Daily Herald, 3 February 1931: 8 (Payne); Daily Express, 21 October 1931: 10 (Sieveking). For more on Lance Sieveking, see article by David Hendy in this special issue.

19. See for instance, Daily Express 24 December 1935: 4, and 3 March 1934: 1.

20. See for instance advertisement for Cherry Blossom boot polish referencing In Town Tonight in the News Chronicle, 28 March 1934: 14.

21. See for instance, ‘BBC May Drop All Its Variety Programmes’, Daily Herald 23 December 1932: 3; ‘Where are the BBC Showmen?’, Daily Express, 22 February 1934: 10, among many examples.

22. Daily Mail, 1 February 1934: 16.

23. Jonah Barrington, Daily Express, 15 June 1938: 10:

It has been human nature to criticise—to talk of dull programmes and red tape administration—but I think that any one fair person, surveying the BBC from 1922 to 1938, will say that Reith has done a brilliant job of work. And that his broadcasting corporation—an almost one-man creation—is about the finest in the world.

For OGPU reference see article by Gordon Beckles, ‘The BBC Out Ogpus the Ogpu’, Daily Express, 23 February 1934: 11. The OGPU were Stalin's secret police and forerunners of the KGB.

24. See for instance a range of papers presented at the symposium ‘Broadcasting in the 1930s’, Madison, Wisconsin, July 2010.