Family radio

The first video clip is an excerpt from the film This is the ABC produced by the Film Division of the Department for the Interior for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1955. The second video clip is an excerpt from the film The Invisible Link, produced by the Department of the Interior for the Postmaster-General’s Department for the Australian National Film Board in 1951. Both archival video clips are on the From Wireless to Web website, produced in 2005.

The interview with Tim Bowden was recorded for the website. Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and delivision documentary maker, oral historian and author. You can view his full biography at From Wireless to Web

The website is a selective history of broadcast media in Australia. Decade by decade, from radio and newsreels to TV and the internet, this history shows how the Australian broadcast media developed and shaped the way Australians see themselves.

From Wireless to Web is a Film Australia production in association with Roar Film.

Students will:

• discuss aspects of the history of Australian radio, drawing comparisons to radio and television today
• write a researched commentary for a popular magazine
• draft and edit a short radio play
• rehearse and record the radio play for playback.
  Reading standard: Students read and view imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that explore ideas and information relate to challenging topics, themes and issues.

Writing standard: Students produce, in print and electronic forms, texts for a variety of purposes, including speculating, hypothesizing, persuading and reflecting.

Speaking and listening standard: Students express creative and analytical responses to texts, themes and issues. They identify main issues in a topic and provide supporting detail and evidence of opinions.

The activities in this learning module are relevant to the Interdisciplinary Learning strand of Level 5 Communications (Listening, viewing and responding standard; Presenting standard) and Thinking Processes (Reasoning, processing and inquiry standard; Creativity standard).

The activities are also relevant to the Physical, Personal and Social Learning strand of Level 5 Interpersonal Development (Building social relationships standard; Working in teams standard) and Personal Learning (The individual learner standard; Managing personal learning standard).

The wireless delivered education and entertainment to children, companionship to women at home, and gave families an evening pastime.

The ABC’s Children’s Session with its Argonauts Club began in 1933, and by 1950 the club boasted 50,000 members. School lessons were broadcast in all States. Programs such as Women’s Session and Banish Drudgery dominated morning slots, with hints on health, mothercraft, the science of beauty, cooking and cleaning. Popular recorded music (English and American crooners and dance bands) was the staple of the commercial radio stations.

But family serials were the most popular entertainment, and most popular of these sagas was Dad and Dave, based on Steele Rudd’s classic On Our Selection (1899). According to the first radio episode in 1937: “this is a human story of two typical Australians … their families, their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their fears and their triumphs … you’ll laugh with them … and perhaps their troubles will remind you of your own …” (Kent 37)

1. Getting started
   As a class view the broadcaster interview with Tim Bowden and the archival video clip from The Invisible Link then discuss and write notes on the following:
   1. Comment on Tim Bowden’s attitude towards radio serials and the actors who took part in them.
   2. Explain what happened if a radio actor made a mistake while recording a drama program on acetate disc (Bowden interview).
   3. Describe in your own words the events being depicted throughout the archival video clip from The Invisible Link.
   4. Comment on the general popularity of radio today, compared to that of television, and whether radio is better at doing some things than television.
2. Writing a commentary for a popular magazine
   Research a popular, long-lasting Australian radio program (or programs) of the 1940s-1950s era, and write a commentary in 200 words about it for a modern popular magazine market. You may include photographs and other illustrations if relevant. Some examples are:
   1. Quiz programs such as Pick A Box, The Ampol Show, The Dulux Show
   2. Children’s radio serials such as Search for the Golden Boomerang, Hop Harrigan
   3. Women’s serial such as Blue Hills, When a Girl Marries
   4. Comedies such as Yes, What, and Life with Dexter.
3. Preparing a radio script
   In small groups draft, edit and proofread a comedy radio play script (i.e. for sound only) of one scene, two or three minutes’ duration, about actors trying to record a serious radio drama, where things keep going wrong.
4. Recording a radio play
   Using sound effects and music if required, rehearse then record your group’s radio script as a sound file for your school’s intranet. (Remember you don’t have to record everything in one “take”.)

Go to From Wireless to Web for more about the history of broadcast media in Australia.

Go to Having Fun, The War Years, (scroll down to Children’s Radio Club advertisement from Western Mail, 2 December 1948

Go to Biggles takes to the skies again!, radio broadcast, ABC Western Plains NSW, 15 April 2003, presented by Chris Coleman

Go to Tony Palermo’s Ruyasonic, Audio Theatre/Radio Drama Resources, April 2006

Richard Lane, The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama 1923–1960: A History Through Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994