“On this World Day, we celebrate the power of radio to reflect and promote diversity in all its forms”.
– Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of World Radio Day
Annually Feb 13th is held as the ‘World Radio Day’, an occasion which celebrates radio as a medium; a mass medium with the widest audience on our planet; a low cost yet most powerful communication tool that reaches even the remotest of communities around the world.
This is a means of communication, which is easily accessible to even the most vulnerable people and is an indispensable tool in emergency and disaster relief.
The story of Radio
The story of radio begins in 1865, when the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell came up with the theory of electromagnetic radiation and predicted the discovery of radio waves. In 1887, the German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz proved the predictions made by Maxwell true, by electrically producing radio waves, which then he was able to capture at a distance of 50 ft. using simple receivers.
Initially these radio waves were limited only to a very short distance and their possibility to be used as a long range communication medium was doubtful due to repeated failures at extending the range from a few hundred feet.
Then in 1896, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi came up with the concept of ‘wireless’ communication and it was the birth of modern day radio technology. The first entertainment radio program was broadcast in 1906, by Prof. Reginald Fessenden. On Nov 14 1922, the world listened to the first BBC radio broadcast – the six O’clock news read by Arthur Burrows.
It was in 1993 that the first Internet radio broadcast was made. The first DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) was made in 1995 and DAB allowed listeners with high quality audio, text information and easy tuning. Today radio has evolved and has integrated into almost all of the modern digital communication devices and still remains one of the most important and powerful medium of communication.
World Radio Day 2020
In 2020, the theme of the World Radio Day is ‘Radio and Diversity’, aimed at promoting diversity in broadcasting by involving public, private and community broadcasters, promoting diversity in the newsroom by including teams comprised of diverse society groups and including diverse content types reflecting the variety of the audiences.
