Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921-1939

"In December of 1921, three years after the Armistice that ended the First World War, a former army radio transmitter on the Eiffel Tower broadcast France's first public radio program, composed of weather and stock bulletins and a short musical concert performed in a rudimentary studio nearby. A decade later, twenty-five state-run and commercial stations were transmitting radio broadcasts across France. Radio had evolved from the pastime of a few tech-savvy wireless amateurs into a mass media capable of reaching millions of listeners. Urban crowds gathered on city streets and in stadia to listen to fiery propaganda speeches broadcast via loudspeaker, schoolchildren clustered around radio receivers in their classrooms, and families tuned in to music and news from the comforts of their living rooms. By 1936, the composer and music critic Emile Vuillermoz could write in the illustrated weekly Le Miroir du monde that French audiences were 'gorging themselves tirelessly in uninterrupted listening to radio, sound films, and the phonograph'"--