Completamento testi

Unit 3 The audiovisual media

Lesson 1 – Radio

Exercise 1: Fill in the blanks with the words given below. Some words are used more than once.

The radio was first invented in 1895 by Guglielmo Marconi as a means for ___________ Morse code through the ___. However, by 1906, this “wireless ___________” was to change forever. On December 24, a few operators on a ship in the North Atlantic heard a ________ reading from St. Luke’s Gospel, instead of the usual _______ of the Morse code. This _____ belonged to Reginald Fesseden, an inventor who first made transmitting a wide range of _______ possible. This was the start of a technological, as well as a cultural innovation called “radio”.

Soon after, ________ radio operators were using this newly discovered technology to _____ to each other over the ________. Some operators, who proclaimed themselves as ___________, took interest in reading the newspaper or playing music over the radio. By 1920, the first American __________ radio station had been established in Pittsburgh __________ KDKA. An additional 575 __________ radio stations were established nationwide two years later. From the late 1930’s the popularity of the radio began to grow immensely. By 1940, nearly 90 percent of American households owned at least one radio ____. On average, families _______ to three to four hours of ___________ a day. The most popular radio ________ drew in approximately 30 million people. Even some of the secondary shows were able to attract a few million ____________.

With such enormous popularity, it is no wonder that radio became the principal __________ of communication during World War II. During the war, the radio served as the main tool by which a “wartime culture” could be created. Using ___________, daily soap operas and popular programming, the government was able to insert _____________, instil patriotism, and explain the intricacies of the war, and at the same time was able to __________ millions of __________ around the country.

The decision to use radio as the main __________ of war propaganda was based on two advantages that radio held over other forms of _____________, such as newspapers. First, the radio provided a daily link to large portions of the population. Since 90 percent of American families owned a radio, the reachability of the populace was quite high. Radio also reached many more people than newspapers or posters because anyone could ___________ radio. There was no __________ requirement to understand what __________ were saying. Therefore, everybody could be informed. Another reason why radio was used so widely was because it had a regular and predictable __________. Propagandists could plan for the distribution of their __________ and be able to count on the same number of people to ___________ daily.

By the early 1940's the ___________ were controlled mostly by advertising agencies and their commercial clients. Almost every time _______ was taken up by these _________. Once they controlled a _______, it was up to them to fill it with whatever _____________ they preferred. Eventually radio ________ became connected with the specific product they were selling: Bob Hope with Pepsodent, the comedy soap and Jack Benny with Jell-O.

Advertising air airwaves amateur beeps broadcasters / broadcasting commercial / commercials communication entertain listen / listened / listeners literacy means medium messages programs propaganda schedule set slot sound sponsors stars talk telegraphy transmitting understand voice

Pre-reading

1. Have you ever heard about The War of the Worlds?
2. Who is its author?
3. Do you know why it is so famous?

Study note

Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds

On October 30th, 1938, the United States experienced mass hysteria in response to a radio broadcast put on by Orson Welles and his “Mercury Theater on the Air” over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System’s coast-to-coast network, from 8 to 9 o'clock. A dramatization of H. G. Wells’s novel, The War of the Worlds, led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.

The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program with a “break-in” for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.” They ignored three additional announcements made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.

Mr. Welles opened the program with a description of the series of which it is a part. The simulated program began. A weather report was given, an announcer remarked that the program would be continued from a hotel, and for a few moments a dance program was given in the usual manner. Then there was a “break-in” with a “flash” about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on the planet Mars.

News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, reporting, with the technique in which the radio had reported actual events, the landing of a “meteor” near Princeton N. J., “killing” 1,500 persons, the discovery that the “meteor” was a “metal cylinder” containing strange creatures from Mars armed with “death rays” to open hostilities against the inhabitants of the earth.

Despite the fantastic nature of the reported “occurrences” the program, coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programs to report developments in the Czechoslovak situation, caused fright and panic throughout the area of the broadcast.

Text 1: The psychological power of radio

Part I

When you consider the history of the twentieth century, broadcasting skits or hoaxes are more associated with radio than with television. This is because radio was the first electronic medium of mass entertainment and radio is a more psychological medium. Its relationship with its audience is based on an emotional and imaginative bond. Today radio has not lost its importance as a huge and significant source for news and entertainment and the opportunity to hoodwink the audience is as strong as it has ever been.

There are few people who are unaware of the panic created by the Mercury Theatre on Halloween night 1938. The radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds had been transformed into a close representation of an American entertainment programme interrupted by urgent news bulletins. Orson Welles and Howard Koch are credited with the idea, and the outstanding, almost naturalistic acting of the cast is credited with convincing hundreds of thousands of people that the Martians were invading New Jersey.

I think we can now say that the panic that followed the broadcast was the result of: 1) determination to shock and confuse by Orson Welles; 2) the unusual circumstances of a mischievous the period; 3) the actual day of the broadcast. I think the evidence available to us indicates quite strongly that Orson Welles deliberately sought to create alarm, although he did not anticipate the scale of the panic.

CBS was aware of the risks of listeners being taken in by the realism of the writing and performance. Documentary evidence shows that producers insisted on changing real place names to fictitious ones, but the ersatz place names still had a ring of authenticity. Orson was conscious of the psychological impact of the Herbert Morrison’s emotional ad-libbed radio description of the destruction of the Hindenburg just over a year before. In fact the actor playing the reporter in the production was directed to listen to and study the broadcast in a CBS booth during the rehearsals. An attempt was made to mimic the voice of President Roosevelt, and the production pastiched the texture of contemporary networks which were continually interrupting music and soap opera broadcasts to bring the latest news developments from European crises such as Munich and the expansionist designs of the German, Italian and Japanese dictatorships.

The CBS Mercury Theatre series had intelligent listeners that could engage powerfully with the skilful imaginative and emotional manipulation of the Mercury company, but the audience was boosted on that particular night because the higher rated NBC Charlie McArthy Show began with an unusual operatic aria and its regular listeners twiddled the dial and found dance music on the CBS networked station frequencies. Listeners tuning in after the beginning of both programmes would have been unaware that the drama was a fictional copy of contemporary radio icon sounds.

The rest, as they say, is interesting history. The power of radio was established, Orson Welles’s name reverberated around the world, “Campbells’ Soups” decided to sponsor the CBS Mercury Theatre’s programme, and Orson later readily acknowledged in the 1980s that his plan to “make a radio splash” got him to Hollywood to make Citizen Kane.

The hysteria and controversy surrounding the War of the Worlds broadcast was also accentuated by the hostility of the newspaper media which had seen the infant and now adolescent radio medium aggressively competing for advertising revenue and audience share. Here was an opportunity to exaggerate the degree of the panic. It does not appear that anyone died as a result, but listeners were treated for shock and hysteria. Somewhat suspiciously, there were more newspaper offices than police stations swamped with frantic queries: “What is happening? Where’s the nearest bomb shelter? What must we do?”

Part II

Attempts have been made to imitate the War of the Worlds scam within regulatory controls. Not surprisingly the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an urgent enquiry and produced a raft of laws for US broadcasters to guard against deception of this kind again.

Television has never been able to match up to radio for the force and terror of ‘broadcast panics’. We know that a BBC Television’s April Fool’s joke about spaghetti harvests in Switzerland had a fair number of people fooled in 1957, but television was a relatively new medium of mass communication at the time and the authoritative introduction and endorsement by Richard Dimbleby helped emboss the item with credibility. Actually, how the audience’s reliance on experts and information icons can be used to deceive and panic had been tested by The War of the Worlds’ portrayal of an expert astronomer, Professor Pierson, as one of its leading voices and ‘eyes’.

Further research yields much richer examples of panic caused by radio spoofs and cock-ups. A little known broadcast by the BBC from Edinburgh on January 17th 1926 convinced many listeners that a revolution in London had resulted in the destruction of the Houses of Parliament by trench mortars and the Minister of Transport being hanged from a tramway post.

In recent decades, radio has been effective in developing a ‘skit genre’ which engages the listeners in ironic entertainment rather than fooling them. This is the realm of the spoof