RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

the miđ 1920s, 6 ) but that was an aberrant example for the times . To the extent that radio was local or regional đuring the 1 9 2Os , then, it had lost most of that quality in most inđustrialized nations by the ear!y 19305. The 'Great Depression-’, which hit most industrialized nations hard , probably discourageđ financial support for local radio in many instances (certainly a large number of U.S. universities closeđ their radio stations as a depression-era есопоту measure) . The rise of fascism in ltaly , бегтапу anđ Japan also encouraged 'centralism / in part because those nations saw radio as a tool for the molding of a truly national spirit. And as тоге and more nations turned to annual license fees as the chief or sole means of f inancing broadcasting, it became dif ficult to justify supporting local stations : if every radio household was to рау the same fee , then every household should receive the same services , which clearly f avored the development of national services over local ones . There also seems to have been a tendency on the part of those in charge of national broadcasting services, e.g. Sir John Reith of the BBC , to regarđ it as their duty to elevate the tastes of the nation , with consepuent emphasis upon national values, natjonal patterns of speech, etc. French broadcast officials took it as part of their mission that radio should safeguard the 'purity' of the French language , which meant discouraging local dialects anđ slang as well as words from other languages. 7 ) Dialect speech điđn't disappear completely from the airwaves in all instances (there were radio plays and skits in dialect in Nazi Germany , for instance but it became something of a rarity . And then World War 11, with its emphasis in nationalism , put the finishing touches on the disappearance of local radio in most inđustrialized nations where it still survived . Following World War II , a few nations which had abolished local broadcasting during the war (e.f Vichy France) began to reintroduce it , but under tighter national control and often as a part of the national broadcast system . (Private radio in France , for example, was outlawed in 1945. ) The postwar austerity that тапу countries experienced certamly wasn't conđuctive to the expansion of апу existing local or regional services, although the Netherlands began small services for the northern and southern areas of the Netherlands m 1946. The commg of television đuring the late 1940S to eariy 1950s represented a further drain on fmancial resources . West Оегтапу developed a regionally-baseđ broadcast system in the late 19405, but that was largely because the Allied occupation governments msisted upon it (they didn't want another national

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