Procesos de la gestión de almacén

By applying a broad definition to the term “broadcasting magazine”, the number of potential titles for consideration is extensive: nearly one hundred titles have been identified as complying with the model under the terms defined and over the time period of 18 years. Moreover, as with the magazines investigated by White, broadcasting magazines altered their formats, changed their styles and foci, a tendency which was all the more prevalent because the readerships were growing increasingly sophisticated in its expectations, as the subject matter grew more familiar.

While broadcasting magazines remain a distinct group, bound by their topic of interest, there are considerable differences in the magazine’s target audiences, and in their content, to the extent that a comparison across too many types of broadcasting magazines would necessarily be superficial and the insights would be overwhelmed in the detail. As more titles were uncovered and added to the bibliography, it became clear that it would be necessary to narrow the selection of material for closer study from a range of magazines to a much smaller

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sample. I decided to shift from an overview of the magazines to an in-depth analysis of two titles and I chose the Radio Times and Radio Pictorial. Comparing like with like has allowed the essential research questions to be investigated, and enabled a close study of the ways in which these magazines mediated between the broadcasters and the listening public.

Radio Pictorial and the Radio Times were selected for closer investigation because they represent the two chief sectors of the broadcasting landscape in 1930s Britain; the Radio Times supporting the programmes provided by the BBC, in its capacity as the state-endorsed monopoly, and Radio Pictorial which, although it was also primarily preoccupied with the BBC output, also covered the details of the English programmes broadcast from abroad by the advertising-led entrepreneurs. The Radio Times was one of several contemporary magazines to which the researcher can refer to recapture something of the flavour of the early broadcasts, and in supplying the details of the weekly broadcast programmes it was a particularly rich resource for researchers who cannot hear the programmes themselves. Moreover, the channel of communication between the broadcasters and the listening public which the magazines offered was, at least potentially, two-way; the listeners could send in their letters, and the broadcasters, and even sometimes the radio artists themselves, could respond.

Radio Pictorial was one of the most lively and rich resources for broadcasting material of the period. It was first published on 19th January 1934, and continued until the outbreak of the Second World War closed down the Continental stations for which the magazine provided the listings. The insights which can be gained by studying this magazine are greatly enhanced by evaluating it in conjunction with another broadcasting listing magazine, thereby offering opportunities for comparative analysis. Although the Radio Times has been examined in previous studies, these have not assessed the magazine against other contemporary magazines, nor have they placed the magazine within a broadcasting history context, as discussed in Chapter One. Moreover, Radio Pictorial’s relationship with the International Broadcasting Company (IBC) makes it a particularly important “player” during this period.

The two titles chosen provide sufficient material for a comparing and contrasting exercise, since there were some core similarities between the two, but also marked differences in their target markets and in their content and tone. They were both weekly listing magazines; and both had a vested interest in the broadcasting industry; the Radio Times because it was a BBC

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publication, and Radio Pictorial because the broadcasting industry (particularly the BBC) formed its staple material. However, the dissimilarities between the two include the fact that the Radio Times was established in 1923, and Radio Pictorial commenced publication in 1934; Radio Times was conceived as a projection of the BBC’s public service broadcasting mission, but Radio Pictorial was openly commercial with a populist tone and published by an independent publisher.

During the course of this study, it soon became apparent that World-Radio had a critical significance to the BBC during this period and this magazine was therefore examined too. World-Radio and the Radio Times both had elements of their content which placed them in competition with Radio Pictorial, but as a magazine the Radio Times was much closer to Radio Pictorial than to World-Radio. The point of connection between World-Radio and Radio Pictorial is in the provision of the foreign programme listing, and the decision was taken therefore to limit the comparisons between Radio Pictorial and World-Radio to the significance of the competition they presented to each other, and not to a comparison of content. World-Radio was a very technical magazine, concerned chiefly with the narrow field of broadcasts from primarily state-run broadcasting organisations abroad, as opposed to sponsored commercial programmes; the object of this study is to examine the experience and response to broadcasting rather than the technicalities of the technology. Similarly the correspondence to World–Radio was technical and therefore not relevant to this study.