No abstract

This article examines the importance of radio in the context of public service broadcasting in Northern Ireland. It analyses the strategies used by BBC Northern Ireland to engage with the problems of the last thirty years, and argues that technological and audience developments have produced a new listening environment that demands new modes of broadcast address. The Legacy series, broadcast in Northern Ireland during 1999, is used as a case study to illustrate the ways in which this new mode of address is being constructed. The article uses examples from the Legacy broadcasts to illustrate the fact that radio in Northern Ireland could be entering a new editorial phase aimed at complementing the political changes enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement.

Si peu de travaux ont été consacrés à ce sujet, on sait aujourd’hui que dans les quelques mois qui ont suivi la première projection publique, à Montréal en juin 1896, les films ont voyagé d’un océan à l’autre partout au Canada. Chaque localité a sa propre histoire du cinéma et, mises en commun, ces histoires permettent de cartographier la nouveauté d’une pratique culturelle qui embrasse beaucoup plus que la simple collection de dispositifs technologiques et la chronique d’évènements touchant des publics disparates. Documenter la circulation des premiers films montre comment le nouveau médium permettait la relation de chaque localité à sa région et même davantage. Pour inclure cette réalité régionale, cet article prolonge la portée et la durée de ce que nous appelons les débuts du cinéma à l’échelle nationale et couvre toute la première année de projections. En se basant sur les comptes rendus des journaux et sur la publicité, l’article donne ainsi une vue complète de la circulation massive du cinéma des premiers temps au Canada et rend ainsi compte des variations régionales dans l’exploitation des films en relation avec les réseaux de communications commerciaux déjà existants.

This article has evolved from the author's continuing relationship, as a broadcaster and trainer, with two so-called community radio stations. One is a community station according to accepted definitions of the global community radio movement, and the other is an example of community radio in a public service environment. Both, the article argues, fail their communities through being too closely associated with the norms and practices that have shifted radio from the sphere of material to the sphere of broadcast, with all that such a move entails in terms of business practices, political intervention (ideological and authoritarian), censorship and essentialist notions of identity and consensus. Through an examination of the concept of community and the exploration of the two radio stations as case studies, the article argues that only radio as art can fully articulate the community voice and go some way to answering the questions as to who is speaking for whom, why and with what consequences?In a six hundred-channel universe, it may seem unusual to consider radio as a medium for critical intervention in today's cultures.

No abstract