Radio Drama Analysis: The Colour Purple - Sony Radio Academy Silver Award 2009

This radio drama centred around a young black woman, born into poverty and segregation - the struggle of uneducated black girl Celie in America's Deep South. The episode was heavily revolving around the idea of inequality of two main races: the white and black populations in America. The female characters are all young, yet intellectual black women, which goes against the stereotype of the ''white man'' in the drama. The male characters are all middle aged black men and they share the stereotype of violence and unintelligence, though they too are very intelligent. To begin, the young girl Celie is being abused by her harsh father, who takes his anger out on her as there is no one else for him to take it out on. Every character here has a stereotypical Southern American accent, with the black characters dialect being stereotypically representative of the black communities. Their expressions and phatic conversations reflect a sociolect of well educated people. Religion also played a large part in this drama.

Research: The Effectiveness of Radio Today

It can be argued that young people nowadays listen more to the radio via the internet than by any other source, with the conventional AM/FM radios receiving less than 20 hours of listening via them per week.

So yes, to an extent, it would seem as if the radio is slowly dying out, with the enabling for more and more 15-24 yr olds to utilise the internet as a means of listening.

The benefits of radio production over television production are that: There is a higher level of control here, in the sense that radio presenters can have structured scripts in front of them, as no one else can see them, whereas TV presenters must learn the script before going on-air, and pray that they make no mistakes.

Hopefully, as we have scripted the entire drama, we shall have it presented in front of us during the recording. If there are any mistakes that we make during the recording process, we can edit them out, or simply record over them electronically.

Research: The History Of Radio

Twenty years after the telephone was invented and music was first sent down a telephone line, Guglielmo Marconi sent radio signals. Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Italy and studied at the University of Bologna. He was fascinated by Heinrich Hertz’s earlier discovery of radio waves and realized that it can be used for sending and receiving telegraph messages, referring to it as “wireless telegraphs.” Marconi’s first radio transmissions, in 1896, were coded signals that were transmitted only about a mile (1,6 km) far.

 
But Marconi’s wireless telegraph transmitted only signals. Voice over the air, as we know radio today, came only in 1921. Marconi went on to introduce short wave transmission in 1922.

Marconi was not the first to invent the radio, however. Four years before Marconi started experimenting with wireless telegraph, Nikola Tesla, a Serb who moved to the USA in 1884, invented the theoretical model for radio. Tesla tried unsuccessful to obtain a court injunction against Marconi in 1915. In 1943 the US Supreme Court reviewed the decision. Tesla became acknowledged as the inventor of the radio – even though he did not build a working radio.

  

There are other claims to the throne of radio inventor. Indian scientist J.C. Bose

demonstrated the radio transmission in 1896 in Calcutta in front of the British Governor General. The transmission was over a distance of three miles from the Presidency College and Science College in Calcutta. The instruments (‘Mercuri Coherer with a telephone detector’) are still there in the science museum of the Calcutta University. Thus writes contributor Dipak Basu, referencing the Proceedings of the IEEE, January, 1998.

Bose repeated his demonstration in the Royal Society in London in 1899 in the presence of Lord Rayleigh (Nobel prize winner in Physics, 1904), J.A. Fleming (Professor at London university and later an advisor to the Marconi company), and Lord Lister (President of the Royal Society). As a result he was offered Professorship in Cambridge, but declined.

Bose had solved the problem of the Hertz not being able to penetrate walls, mountains or water. Marconi was present in the meeting of the Royal Society and it is thought that he stole the notebook of Bose that included the drawing of the ‘Mercuri Coherer with a telephone detector’. Marconi’s Coherer, which he used in 1901, was the exact copy of that of Bose. Apparently Marconi was unable to explain how he got to the design. He said that an Italian Navy engineer called Solari had developed it, but Solari later denied it. Marconi then said that Italian Professor Timasina did, which later was exposed as a lie by another Italian professor, Angelo Banti, who claimed that the design was invented by signalman Paolo Castelli.

 
It is reputed that Nathan B. Stubblefield, a farmer from Murray, Kentucky, made a voice transmission four years before Marconi transmitted radio signals. In 1892, Stubblefield handed his friend Rainey T. Wells a box and told him to walk away some distance. Wells said later: “I had hardly reached my post.. when I heard I heard HELLO RAINEY come booming out of the receiver.”

Stubblefield demonstrated his invention to the press in 1902 but, being afraid that his invention will be stolen, never marketed his wireless radio. When he was found dead in 1929, his radio equipment was gone.

Nikola Tesla remains acknowledged as the inventor of the radio.

Today, there are more than 33,000 radio stations around the world, with more than 12,000 in the US alone. Worldwide there are more than 2 billion radio sets in use, or about one radio for every 3 persons; proof that video never killed the radio star.