Today, the 13th February is UNESCO’s World Radio Day which this year celebrates’ Radio: A century informing, entertaining and educating’. Proclaimed in 2011 by the member states of UNESCO it was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 as a UN International Day and the 13th February became World Radio Day (WRD).
On 13th May 1897, Guglielmo Marconi sent the world’s first radio message across open water but it took until 1906 for what we can now recognise as the first radio broadcast. A Canadian, Reginald Fessenden beamed a “Christmas concert” to the astonished crews of the ships of the United Fruit Company out in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea on Christmas Eve 1906. Concluding this first ever broadcast programme Fessenden wished his listeners “A Merry Christmas”.
Radio has come a long way since then starting with analogue radio – AM and FM, and now with digital radio delivered by satellite, terrestrial DAB/DAB+ and the internet. In UNESCO’s introduction to the day it says, “UNESCO recognizes and understands the tremendous variety of business models and technological architecture in Radio around the world as well as the independent nature of its companies and organizations, large and small, plus the idiosyncrasies of its on-air personalities.”
To find out more about World Radio Day go the UNESCO website here.
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