Thursday 25 June 2009

[creative-radio] Excerpt: Through the looking glass - Foreign journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao



"...Through the looking glass
by Paul French

By looking back at the men and women who have reported and written on
China since the late 1820s, it might just be possible to gain some
perspective on the media's current obsession with the China story.

For a start, such a glance at those who wrote, edited and launched
newspapers in China, as well as those correspondents who visited briefly
to report back, might constructively give us pause for thought about the
accepted wisdom that today the West is obsessed with China as never
before. ..."

Chapter 8, The Dirty Thirties — Left Wing, Right Wing, Imperialists and
Spies: Radio Shanghai
by Paul French

<http://www.danwei.org/china_books/paul_frenchs_chinas_foreign_jo.php>

[excerpts]

"... Newspapers, journals and periodicals were all well-established media
forms by the 1930s but the decade was a time of technological change when
both the radio and the newsreels became forms of mass communication to
stand alongside, complement and often rival the newspapers. China's first
wireless station — the Osborn Radio Station, known alternatively as XRO
and the Radio Corporation of China — had opened in 1923 in Shanghai. It
transmitted from studios on the roof of the Dollar Building on the Bund
with an initial 65-minute programme of classical and light music as well
as some news. The station estimated that there were 500 wireless sets in
the International Settlement though, to boost the audience, XRO's signal
was transmitted to Tianjin and other major areas where foreigners lived.
The station was owned and established by an American journalist called E.
G. Osborn and a wealthy overseas Chinese. Sun Yat-sen declared himself a
fan of the new media but there simply weren't enough listeners. Despite
moving the studios to the more prestigious roof garden of the Wing On
Department Store on Nanking Road and trying to organise live concerts, the
station failed after a few months due to a combination of precious few
listeners, government distrust and censorship.
AXL090619french1.jpg
Irene Corbally Kuhn

Shanghai's second radio station — the Carol Broadcasting Station launched
in 1924 from studios on Nanking Road — fared better....."

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