A Passion for Radio

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

Forget cable network news, forget television headline services—indeed,
forget television on the world stage. Radio is where it is at; in
thousands of languages and dialects, unscripted, cheap, and accessible.
Not one peasant in Iraq had access to outside television coverage of the
Gulf War. Yet there were more than 100 radio stations in almost as many
languages beaming information into the country, where radio receivers
were cheaper than the price of one egg. Radio is everywhere, inexpensive
to transmit and inexpensive to purchase. Here in North America, AM radio
ear bugs can be had for less than $2.

This anthology deals with “community radio,” or what others might
describe as alternative radio. It was sponsored by the World Association
of Community Radio Broadcasters. Twenty-seven contributors write about
diverse public-radio projects that deal with cultural and political
change in countries such as Sri Lanka, Haiti, Russia, and the
Philippines. Some of the projects described here include a feminist
radio collective in Peru, a multicultural radio station in Marseille,
rural radio in Mali, a guerrilla radio station in El Salvador, and the
aboriginal Radio Wataweg in Northern Ontario. Since most countries have
a state monopoly on radio, there is material here on pirate radio
stations such as Holland’s Radio 100 and France’s Radio Gazelle. The
articles are mainly descriptions of what they are and what they do.
Informative and interesting material, with, unfortunately, no index.