Radio in Argentina

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Radio in

shortwave transmitters.[1] An estimated 24 million receivers were in use in 2000 (2.4 per household).[2]

History

Installations at LR5 Radio Splendid in Monte Grande in 1933.

Radio broadcasting enjoys a long and varied history in Argentina, tracing its origins to a 1910 stay in the southside Buenos Aires suburb of

wireless telegraph. There, he achieved a rudimentary radio transmission with a kite-mounted antenna connected to earphones. Argentine publisher José C. Paz later sponsored Marconi's radio transmission from Italy to Buenos Aires, the first transatlantic broadcast into South America.[3]

Legendary tango vocalist Carlos Gardel tunes in around 1930.

Three local medical students, led by Enrique Susini, began their own radio experiments in 1917 and, installing transmission equipment in Buenos Aires' Coliseo Theatre, they broadcast, on August 27, 1920, Parsifal, the first opera on radio and only the second radio broadcast in the World. These installations became LOR Radio Argentina, the World's first formal radio station. The number of receivers in the city at the time: around 20. This station was joined in 1922 by LOX, whose ad for the Los Andes Restaurant is probably the World's first on radio. Several more stations opened in Buenos Aires during Argentina's prosperous 1920s and growing numbers of artists signed contracts for live performances on the growing variety of radio dramas.

Leading stations at the time began broadcasting from the numerous, ornate theatre stages in Buenos Aires, including LR5 Radio Splendid (so named for the venue where its shows were produced, the Grand Splendid Theatre). Among the notable events broadcast live at the time was President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear's inaugural, in 1922, and the 1923 "bout of the century" in Polo Grounds, New York City, between Jack Dempsey and Luis Ángel Firpo for the World Heavyweight title.[4]

The medium's boom and the lucrative local

ITT for US$200 million, a record at the time. The visionary entrepreneur invested a part of the funds into Lumiton Studios, among the first to produce sound movies in the world.[3][5]

Argentine radio embraced

tango in the early 1930s, airing the work of orchestras such as Francisco Canaro's and Julio de Caro's; LR1-Mundo (referred to as LR1 for its being the first on the dial) became the standard for tango broadcasts. The decade saw the rise of Jaime Yankelevich, a former radio valve distributor, as the dominant force in the medium, thorough Radio El Mundo (inaugurated in 1935), and Radio Belgrano, which became the first in Argentina to broadcast through a chain of repeater stations, and the first to expand into late-night broadcasting. Buenos Aires was by then home to 25 stations (as many as in New York, a city, at the time, almost three times larger).[3] The state entered the radio market in 1937, with the inaugural of LRA Radio Nacional Radio Mitre became the first in Argentina to broadcast around the clock, in 1960.[6]

ethnic humor. Some of the most popular were Niní Marshall's characters, particularly Catita and Cándida (1939 film).[7] The trend was not without its detractors, however, and in 1943, the newly installed dictatorship of General Pedro Ramírez banned humor which "deformed the language," leading to exile for Marshall and numerous other radio stars.[8]

Football announcer Fioravanti, who helped maintain radio's dominance in sports broadcasting after the advent of television.

Programming focused on

Peronist propaganda during the populist administration of President Juan Perón, who met his influential wife, Evita, when the latter was a radio matinée star; among Perón's most compelling voices in support on the radio was Tango composer Enrique Santos Discépolo, who also hosted political commentary shows. The public sector became increasingly involved in Argentine radio during Perón's 1946-55 presidency, and afterwards. All broadcast chains were nationalized, and state radio extended overseas in 1958 with the inaugural of the Argentine Foreign Broadcasting Service. The station became only the third in the Western Hemisphere (after the Voice of America and Radio Canada International) to broadcast internationally and in several languages.[3]

morning show
format) rivaled their television counterparts.

Alejandro Dolina and Adolfo Castelo were among those who helped shape Argentine radio after the lifting of censorship in the 1980s

corporate consolidation over the airwaves. Many of these hitherto public radio stations (known by their acronym, LRA) had helped extend the medium into Argentina's then-remote far north and Patagonia. Argentine radio, was long dominated by AM broadcasting (only 22 FM stations were in service),[3]
and AM remained popular on the airwaves, even as FM stations grew to outnumber these in subsequent decades.

The

La venganza sera terrible
), also became prominent in radio broadcasting at this time.

Mario Pergolini (middle) hosts Cuál es?

Football remained a perennial favorite on the Argentine radio, and some of the best-known announcers have included Fioravanti, José María Muñoz, Enrique Macaya Márquez, Horacio Pagani, Marcelo Araujo, and Víctor Hugo Morales, among many others.

ArInfo (Buenos Aires) became the first Argentine station to

NGOs.[11][12]

Stations

For a more comprehensive list, see
List of radio stations in Argentina
.

Today, in Argentina, there are now more than 150 AM stations, 1150 FM stations and 6 shortwave radio stations broadcasting throughout the country.

The following stations are licensed to Greater Buenos Aires area (or GBA):

AM

References

  1. ^ Mi Buenos Aires Querido (in Spanish)
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica. Book of the Year: 2005. International statistics.
  3. ^ a b c d e Argentine Radio: Over 60 years on the air. The Argentine Information Secretariat, 1981.
  4. ^ El Gráfico: Cuando Firpo tiró a Dempsey fuera del ring (in Spanish)
  5. ^ Clarín: historia de la radio en la Argentina (in Spanish)
  6. ^ Clarín: Radio Mitre cumple 75 años (in Spanish)
  7. ^ Cine Nacional
  8. ^ Clarín (in Spanish)
  9. ^ notiinforma.com (in Spanish) Archived 2012-02-20 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Gente BA: La concentración mediática en la Argentina (in Spanish) Archived 2012-09-04 at archive.today
  11. ^ BBC News en Español
  12. ^ "Media Law Reform Pits Argentine Executive Branch Against Judiciary". Americas Quarterly. December 7, 2012.
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