Captivating the audience: theatre, music and publications on the uruguayan dial

Abstract

This article is part of the cultural history studies of the media. It aims to analyze how radio
broadcasting articulated and connected with newspapers, magazines, newsletters, music,
photography and cinema during the first two decades of radio broadcasting in Uruguay, that is,
between 1922 and 1940.
In Montevideo, whose main airwaves expanded throughout the territory, a type of radio
was configured linked to urban cultural experiences and tributary of the fluid links with Buenos
Aires. The common cultural space of the Río de la Plata, was a transit of musicians, composers,
singers, authors, artists, records, and all kinds of works from one shore to the other. Uruguay
was part of the wide market of the Argentine cultural industry; it benefited from its richness,
variety and high degree of professionalization. Uruguayan musicians had to go to Argentina to
record their albums, and writers who aspired to the commercial success of their works had to
publish in that large and economically powerful market.
The possible uses of the new medium were progressively built from a known landscape.
After the first period of trials and improvisations, broadcasting began to shape its most enduring
features. A decade after those beginnings, it was possible to identify a very rich programming
that encompassed a multiplicity of expressions. Its success and popularity resided precisely in
the trait of proximity and closeness it offered by associating itself with very popular activities:
music, theater, fiction, folletines, soccer, carnival and politics, among so many dimensions
covered by the large dial.