Following this afternoon's discussion with Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney, I thought I might open up a space for us to discuss the possibilities and challenges that radio offers for making history. Radio tends to be overlooked when we think about history and media, but radio, as I think we all saw (heard?) opens up all sorts of new possibilities for communicating history to broad audiences. Radio's intimacy and scale are suited to different kinds of histories and Sharon and Eurydice's work shows how potent these can be when used well.
I'd be curious to hear what you think sorts of histories radio might suit, what works well on radio, and how you might come to terms with its limitations in making history-themed features, as well as your experiences with interviewing (which is common to most of the formats we're discussing and seems to spark intense discussion whenever we mention it).
Some links to explore that might be useful if you're suddenly contemplating reviewing a radio feature for your first assignment -
you can find BBC radio history programs, including a series on 1968, here, and Radio Eye, where 'The Search for Edna Lavilla' first aired, on ABC Radio National, here. There is already a link to Hindsight, the ABC's dedicated history program slot, on the right hand side of this page.
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Hi Everyone,
I think radio would suit more personal and hidden histories, rather than collective histories, because I don’t think people want to listen to popular histories on radio when they have about a million different Gallipoli/Phar Lap, etc. documentaries to choose from on television.
I think biographical histories are really good on radio because voice re-enactment is heaps easier and cheaper to do than a visual re-enactment on film. And I think that historical subjects are much more likely to be involved in documentaries about themselves on radio than on film, because they don’t have that camera there to intimidate them.
For personal stories that are particularly controversial and sensitive, I feel that radio is far more effective than film, because it allows people to really engage with a speaker’s thoughts and emotions. Sometimes the voice is powerful enough itself to deliver a message across to listeners. It also invokes a more intimate relationship between speaker and listener, because the listener has no visual scenery or dramatic sound effects, etc. to distract them, as they would on film.
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