One hundred years ago, on April 20, 1923, Edgard Roquette-Pinto founded Rádio Sociedade do Rio de Janeiro, considered the first Brazilian radio station. The founder’s dream of using the media as an educational tool did not come true. However, somehow, the radio provided the fundamental sentimental education and the common repertoire for the formation of the characteristics of what we understand as national identity. The drama, humor, passion for soccer, politics, journalism, the country’s popular music, none of this would be the same without broadcasting. Not even our geography.
The consolidation of the Brazilian radio profile that we know of took place after the legislation of 1932, in the government of Getúlio Vargas, when advertising in the medium was regulated. It is the definitive moment of radio in Brazil for the journalist and researcher Luiz Artur Ferraretto, author of the book “Radio: Theory and Practice”.
Telenovelas, a Cuban invention that was already triumphant in Latin America, debuted here in the 1940s, discredited —the first of them, “Em Busca da Felicidade,” was broadcast in the morning, and not in prime time, because of the night-.
Similarly, soccer brings the DNA of radio into its history. “In the early 1930s, horse racing was the national sport,” says Ferraretto, the researcher. “Football falls into popular taste for radio, collaborating for its nationalization from the teams of Rio and São Paulo.” In music, the medium launched idols such as Carmen Miranda, the sisters Linda and Dircinha Batista, Francisco Alves, Dorival Caymmi, Cauby Peixoto and Ângela Maria. Figures like Almirante, who combined a taste for research and talent as a communicator, established the story, drawing attention to names that were perceived as being of the old school.
Translated by AZAHARA MARTIN ORTEGA
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