Was that it? Was that the sum total of 90 years of radio? Radio Reunited, the three-minute ‘celebration’ of the first BBC wireless broadcast in November 1922, was a very odd affair. Billed as a revolutionary simulcast to a ‘potential’ 120 million listeners round the world, playing out on all the BBC’s radio stations at the same time, it was so short, so compressed, you couldn’t take in the many layers of sound at once, or decipher what the different soundbites could possibly be, now, then, or from the future.
After about four or five listens, the babble of voices, Big Ben, Morse Code, birdsong and beeping did begin to clear so that keywords from the recorded messages from Listeners Anonymous cut through the background interference. But on the day, in the moment, it came across as a sound engineer desperately trying to make some kind of connection between two shorting wires.
Damon Albarn was set an impossible task, to thread together a series of recorded comments about radio’s future with soundbites from wireless history.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in