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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Both Canadian and Australian governments were quick to appreciate the benefits to be gained from wireless broadcasting. In 1905 in Australia and in 1913 in Canada, ministers of the Crown were given the power to oversee the development of wireless telegraphy. Shortly after the First World War, technical advances made possible the broadcasting of music and the human voice; in 1919 the Marconi Company, through its station XWA, Montreal, initiated radio broadcasting in Canada; in the same year, Amalgamated Wireless of Australasia Pty. Limited, through a small station in Sydney, broadcast Australia's first radio programmes. By the late 1920s, Canada boasted seventy-nine broadcasting stations and 297,000 licensed receivers, while Australia had twenty broadcasting stations and approximately 225,000 receivers. With few exceptions, these stations were privately owned, subject to little government regulation and, in Canada at least, supported entirely by commercial revenues.
In the first thirteen years of Australian broadcasting, from 1920 to 1932, at least three different attempts were made to find a satisfactory economic basis for broadcasting. Each reform, however, failed to silence the complaints about poor reception, tardy news reporting, indifferent programming, and the concentration of broadcasting in the urban areas of the country. Limitations of space prevent a discussion of all the schemes attempted, but brief mention will be made of one of them which, if not unique in the annals of broadcasting, is of interest as an historical oddity and an example of man's ingenuity.
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 10, 1961.
1 Mackay, Ian K., Broadcasting in Australia (Melbourne, 1957), 21.Google Scholar
2 Canada, Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, Report (Ottawa, 1929), 1.Google Scholar Hereinafter referred to as the Aird Commission, after its Chairman, Sir John Aird.
3 Hereinafter referred to as the CRBC.
4 Hereinafter referred to as the ABC.
5 Australia, Commonwealth Acts, 1932, Act no. 14 of 1932, s. 16.
6 Hereinafter referred to as the CBC.
7 Hereinafter referred to as the BBG.
8 Canada, Statutes, Broadcasting Act, 7 Eliz. II (1958), c. 22, s. 10.Google Scholar
9 Ibid.
10 See, for example, Aird Commission, Report, 12.
11 Australia, Australian Broadcasting Control Board, Twelfth Annual Report (Canberra, 1960), 10.Google Scholar
12 With regard to this expansion of its facilities, the ABC is in a position superficially different from the CBC. The Commission does not own studios. It is responsible only for the equipping of its television studios. All other technical equipment necessary for the production and transmission of its radio and television programmes is provided for the Commission by the Postmaster-General's Department. Hence the ABC can expand only as quickly as the government, through the Postmaster-General's Department, will allow.
13 Canada, House of Commons, Special Committee on Broadcasting, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa, 1961), 619–21.Google Scholar Since the delivery of this paper, the Special Committee has brought in a recommendation which, on the surface, contradicts Mr. Ouimet's point of view. See ibid., 991.
14 Canada, Royal Commission on Broadcasting, Report (Ottawa, 1957), 130–5.Google Scholar
15 Canada, BBG, Submission to the Special Committee on Broadcasting (Ottawa, 1960), 9.Google Scholar
16 Australia, Broadcasting Act, 1942–1956, s. 114(2).
17 Broadcasting and Television Yearbook (Sydney, 1960), 41.Google Scholar
18 Twelfth Annual Report, 38.
19 Australia, Broadcasting Act, 1942–1956, s. 114 (3).
20 Quoted in Broadcasting and Television, 03 3, 1960, 1.Google Scholar
21 Australian News and Information Bureau, Australian News Weekly Round Up, 04 26, 1961, 3.Google Scholar
22 For example, an article in Broadcasting and Television, 08 11, 1960, 1 Google Scholar, makes reference to the purchase by four Australian stations of a fifteen-programme package deal from American sources. The fifteen programmes include “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun-Will Travel,” “Wanted-Dead or Alive,” “San Francisco Beat,” “I Love Lucy,” “Our Miss Brooks,” and “Annie Oakley.”
23 Australia, Broadcasting Act, 1942–1956, ss. 64 and 77. He also has similar powers with regard to the private stations. See ss. 99 (3) and 104. These powers have been exercised on only three occasions, in each case by a Labour postmaster-general.
24 Ibid., s. 116 (1).
25 Canada, CBC, Annual Report (03 31, 1960), 24.Google Scholar
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