Radio History and the important stages into making it.

Radio wasn't something that just suddenly came around. Many people contributed to the making of radio and a lot of these managed to get a patent suggesting that they were going to develop radio transmittion and development. James Clark Maxwell was one of the first people to develope a set of equations describing electromagnetic waves which he worked on between 1861 and 1865. These later later became known as Maxwell's equations. In 1873 he published his theory to paper where it was being throughly being looked into by other scientists.


After Maxwell, William Henry Ward received a U.S Patent for radio development. The patent couldn't prove however that their was any scientific theory related to electomagnetism which is when Mahlon Loomis also recieved a patent in 1872 for wireless telegraph, however just like Ward the patent didn't include and theory and he could not have transmitted and received radio waves. From then on many other theorists were trying to explore the theory behind wireless radio. Some of these theorists include Thomas Eddison, David Hughes, Temistocle Calzecchi0-Onesti, Hertz and Stubblefield.


Oliver Lodge transmitted radio signals in 1894 which proved to be a massive breakthrough in the radio industry. This was then extended by the theorist Alexander Popev who made a public appearance to show everyone a demonstration of transmission and reception of radio waves and how they can be used for communication. Since he produced this, Russia has celebrated the day as 'Radio Day'.


In 1901, Marconi made one of the first radio broadcasts by using morse code. No voice transmittions were made but everyone was still amazed and the success that he had achieved. The transmittion was sent from England to Canada. In 1909 he was awarded a Nobel prize in physics for to the "development of wireless telegraphy".


In 1916, Harold Power made the first continuous broadcast with his radio company American Radio and Research Company (AMRAD). The company was the first to launch shows on a daily basis and broadcast the first radio dance programs, university professor lectures, the weather, and bedtime stories.


During the 1920's the first amplifying vacuum tube was produced to help improve radio recievers and transmitters. Hanso Schotanus a Sterinha Idzerda made the first regular wireless broadcast for entertainment from his home in 1919. The program ran on four nights per week until 1924 when he ran into financial troubles.

The first BBC broadcast was made in 1932 coming from the broadcasting with. Shortly after followed BBC Dance orchestra in 1939. A massive milestone was reached in 1946 when a BBC Fm broadcast was made from a transmitter in kent. This saw the launch of BBC's third programme.

A radio license was then bought out and people were expected to pay £1 in order to listen to the radio, however in 1957, portable radios were bought out so this meant that the £1 fee was worth it. These charges were droppped soon after in 1971.

By this time Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 were up and running and becoming more popular by the minute. Over the next couple of years, radio became increasingly popular and radio stations such as Radio 5 and five live came out shortly followed by the launch of digital radio in 2004.

From 2001 onwards all the channels that we know today are being aired, however not all channels have been so successful and some have even resulted in being shut down.

Radio Drama genre and comparisons with alternative media formats

After researching a lot of radio dramas, I found that ours was in the genre of 'Teenage Drama'. In comparision with other media products, 'The Archers' relates very well to ours because it is also a radio drama. Even though we made out radio drama a public drama 'The Archers' is a radio soap opera set in the fictional English village of Ambridge. It provides contemporary drama in a rural setting. Our drama is the opposite and is set in an urban area which you can tell by all the traffic that we have added into our radio drama. I feel that our radio drama really reaches the genre that we wanted it too. The target audience was teenagers and I feel that after listening to it, mainly teenagers would listen to it.

If we were to produce our radio drama into other media products, I think it could be made into a television drama stretching out over a series. I think this would work because there was so much going on in our drama that it would be possible to have lots of episodes but making the scenes a bit more dramatic and more detailed. However, due to it being a radio drama the only visual components are the ones that you imagine in your head by the script we have created.

Also another media product that we could create would be a book, this is where we actually got the idea for our plot. I think this would be a good media product to produce because it uses all the same components expect for sound. We would still have to include all the description for different scenes. I think by writing it as a book it would be a lot more detailed about the settings and certain actions that the characters are doing.