Radio

 

Above: A drawing my mum made of me and the radio in our living room, c. 1957.

Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio)  is celebrating 100 years this year. Their very first radio program broadcasted in Sweden was a church service from a church in Stockholm (St Jacob) at 11 am on 1st January, 1925, and it could be received by about 44.000 radio receivers. (100 years later, services from different churches around the country are still broadcasted at 11 o'clock every Sunday.)

In the first year, SR only broadcasted in the evenings. In 1926, they added a half hour in the middle of the day. In 1933, you could listen to the radio for about 8 hours per day. 

In 1937, they reached 1 million radio licences issued. (Sweden had around 6 300 000 inhabitants at the time.)

In 1938, for the first time, a woman read the news on the radio. (Until then, they were always read by men.) The SR telephone exchange broke down because of all the upset people calling to complain...

In 1955 (the year I was born), a second national radio channel was added. 

In 1956, SR also started broadcasting television. My parents did not get aTV of their own until probably 1960, though (when we moved from the flat where I lived the first five years of my life, to a house of our own). The first time I ever saw a TV was probably at my maternal grandfather's house, in 1957 (when I was two years old). Evidence found in my first photo album:

Under this photo, from the autumn of 1957, my mum has written: Child in the age of television - or "Look, it's snowing..." (referring to the fact that most of the time, there was nothing to be seen, just a blur on the screen)...

In 1962, a third radio channel was introduced. In 1966, the three channels each got their own profile, which they have basically kept to this day. P1 for news and other talking programs. P2 for educational programs and classical music. P3 for popular music. (In 1987, P4 was added as a separate channel for local radio.)

In December 1969, a second TV channel was added. 

In 1970, regular colour broadcasts were introduced. I think my maternal grandfather was (again) among the first to get one. My own first experience of watching colour TV was in his house, and it was an ice hockey match. I think it must have been from the world cup in 1970. I remember the hockey players skating so fast that they kind of left the colour of their clothes behind on the screen! (The quality was not yet very good...)

In 1978, Radio and TV were separated into two different companies (SR and SVT - Swedish Radio, and Swedish Television). 

The first TV channel financed by advertising here (TV4) was introduced in 1990. And in 1992 they were allowed to broadcast via the terrestial network rather than satellite/cable.

In 2005, internet radio broadcasting and podcasting were introduced.

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My four grandparents were all born between 1900-1904. The oldest of them was my paternal grandmother, born in February 1900. She grew up on a farm, where she lived until she got married to my grandfather in 1930. I doubt they ever got a radio on the farm; and in spite of my grandfather being a (local) journalist when they got married, I think it probably took a while before they got a radio of their own in their new house too.

I have known about that; but somehow it never really "hit" me until I started thinking about it all now, that there were no public radio broadcasts yet during WWI. Back then, people depended on the newspapers for news - and not everyone had access to those either.

The world has certainly changed a lot in the last 100 years.

I still listen quite a lot to radio, and especially our P1 channel - the one keeping us up to date with world wide news every hour, and other "talking" programs in between.

...

(Main source for the facts and dates in this post: Wikipedia)