ABSTRACT
In the 1930s radio would no longer be celebrated as a magical invention of modern science, nor spoken of as a gadget or toy; preoccupation with its technology was replaced by a preoccupation with its content and audience. Similarly, alternative images of radio’s possible use - as a means of communication between groups, a means of class education or of public entertainment - largely disappeared from official and popular discourses about broadcasting. These changes, foreshadowed in the late 1920s, signalled the delimiting of radio’s social usage: radio was now clearly defined as a means of communicating messages from a central source to a mass, albeit privatized and passive, audience.
