Languages of Broadcasting: Early Radio Research in Berlin and Princeton

The emerging technology of radio posed epistemic difficulties for a range of disciplines in the twentieth century and prompted interdisciplinary initiatives such as the radio laboratory (Rundfunkversuchsstelle) at the Berlin Academy of Music, led by musicologist Georg Schünemann from 1928 to 1935, and the Radio Research Project at Princeton University and Columbia University, managed by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld from 1937 to 1944. The defined aim of both ventures was to integrate scholars in the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences into new forms of applied research. My paper examines these modes of applied research, with particular attention to the multiple ways in which the two projects searched for novel “languages of broadcasting.” This search ranged from the phonetic examination of radio-transmitted speech and the development of testing and training programs for radio announcers, to the design of tailored microphone and transmitter technologies, experiments with newly defined genres such as radio journalism, and the formulation of new audience research methods and techniques of media criticism.