Another kind of empire: The voice of Australia, 1931-1939

This article examines this alternate model of overseas broadcasting and its interaction with the BBC's. The service from the bottom of the world ultimately failed, but it reveals a largely forgotten feature of early broadcasting in Australia and New Zealand, a global ambition. It also confirms a familiar feature, the commercialism that owes more to American than British broadcasting at the time. It is a case study of Dominion nationalism -- assertive, and fired by frustration over policy determined in London, but seeking to renegotiate the terms of the imperial relationship, not dissolve it. The young institutions of broadcasting, like the nation states that crafted them, explored different kinds of relationships, complementing, co-operating and competing with each other. Complex and shifting relationships, especially between national public broadcasters like the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and their extensive overseas audiences, are an important feature of today's global media. This contemporary context helps us to re-inscribe the foundations of broadcasting, re-imagining the Voice of Australia as it was, an ambitious attempt at a different kind of media service, rather than a largely forgotten 'wrong turn' on the way to state-controlled short-wave international broadcasting.