Article ID: CBB001213833

Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War (2013)

unapi

Risso, Linda (Author)


Cold War History
Volume: 13, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 145-152


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Introduction to a special issue, “Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War”
Language: English

If the Cold War was a war of ideas and ideologies for the `soul of mankind' 1 , radio was definitely one of the weapons of choice. Radio played an important role in the ideological confrontation between East and West as well as within each bloc and, as archival documents gathered here reveal, it was among the most pressing concerns of contemporary information agencies. Radio broadcasts could penetrate the Iron Curtain and directly address the `enemy'. This was extremely important in the early Cold War. For the audiences behind the Iron Curtain, Western broadcasting opened an alternative channel for the flow of new information and ideas and it contributed to the erosion of public support for the government. If recently published figures are correct, one-third of Soviet urban adults and around half of East European adults were regular listeners of Western broadcasts.2 Given the widespread listenership and the perceived destabilizing role of Western programming, it is not surprising that the Communist regimes spent considerable time, energy, and resources fighting foreign broadcasts through jamming, censorship, and a renewed propaganda effort of their own national radio broadcasts. Radio was equally important to keep sustained levels of support among the home public and the public of friendly nations. In the early Cold War in particular, listeners in the West had to be persuaded of the need for higher defence spending levels and a policy of containment. Later, even if other media -- and in particular television -- had become more important, radio continued to be used widely. In the 1970s, the public had to be told about the challenges that came with détente, when Western governments had to carry out costly weapon modernisation programmes while at the same time engaging in diplomatic talks about arms reduction with the East. (from the first three paragraphs)

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Description Contents:


Includes Series Articles

Article Webb, Alban (2013) Cold War Radio and the Hungarian Uprising, 1956. Cold War History (pp. 221-238). unapi

Article Kind-Kovács, Friederike (2013) Voices, Letters, and Literature through the Iron Curtain: Exiles and the (Trans)mission of Radio in the Cold War. Cold War History (pp. 193-219). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001213833/

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Authors & Contributors
Slotten, Hugh Richard
Walewska, Joanna
Piel, Helen
Tom Lewis
Yermolov, P. P.
Webb, Alban
Concepts
Radio
Broadcasting, radio and television
Communication technology
Technology and culture
Methods of communication; media
Cold War
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Germany
Crimea (Ukraine)
Jamaica (Caribbean)
Haiti (Caribbean)
Institutions
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Radio Corporation of America
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