Radio Was an Interactive Medium

Listeners to analogue radio are accustomed to thinking of themselves as strictly on the receiving end of a transmission medium. The path of a radio broadcast is in one direction only: from station to transmitter mast to radio receiver to our ear. Our scope for interacting with a programme is usually confined to the on/off switch or the tuning control. Occasionally we may phone, write or (now) email the broadcaster to contribute a dedication, question or opinion in response to their on-air invitation. Some of us may be moved to complain about (or, even more rarely, praise) something we have heard on the station. We may even step out of our listening role to lend our physical presence as a spectator at a live broadcast. But most listeners to mainstream radio do none of these things, they just expect to listen to radio.

This is the way the radio spectrum has proved most useful to most people. But radio waves are invisible and we easily forget how much the technology has in common with its more obviously connected cousin in sound, the telephone that most personal, two-way talking, electronic medium. At their most basic, both pathways begin with a microphone and end with a loudspeaker; and the copper wire or the invisible radio wave can carry signals in either direction. The point is emphasized by the fact that, between Bell s invention of the telephone and the arrival of the wireless, telephone technology was used...