French Musical Broadcasting in 1935: Toward a Modern Radio? : A Comparison of two Models of Stations

During the Thirties, France shows a profound transformation of its broadcasting panorama. To the pioneer listeners' great displeasure, successive governments lead constant actions to reinforce their control of the stations. In parallel of this situation, an explosion of the households' equipment level occurs. In fact, the number of sets owned is multiplied by ten from the beginning of the decade to its end. This development then leads to a diversification of new musical broadcasting expressions. This fact will eventually contribute to emerging forms of acculturation of the listeners. In order to verify this hypothesis, a meticulous monitoring of musical programs has constituted the indispensable first step. It helped understand the complex relations that then tied up between the different actors of broadcasting. An abundance of written sources from specialized magazines compensated the almost total absence of sound archives. This article aims at highlighting this issue. Through most of this period, the French Department of Audiovisual Archives (INA) can provide documents. Both printed musical programs and some of the sounding musical features will be analyzed