Abstract

Despite the best efforts of many Canadian nationalists and government agencies to control and develop radio broadcasting in the 1930s such factors as the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of the private broadcasters as well as the availability of various types and forms of programming governed the direction and development of the program schedule offered to listeners during the decade. A simple random sample of radio program schedules has been selected from The Vancouver Sun, The Montreal Gazette and The Halifax Herald employing three weeks from each year of the decade for all three cities. A content analysis of the sample was conducted to assess trends and the development of Canadian radio programming in the 1930s. This analysis has allowed for the re-creation of the broadcasting environments of Vancouver, Halifax and Montreal and permitted the development of a typology that describes the stages of the evolution of Canadian radio stations from novice to mature. Studying the similarities of programming strategies as these radio stations moved through common stages of development isolates and amplifies the impact of local and national circumstances. Canadian radio stations operated within a fixed framework determined by their geographical location, local population distribution, language and wavelength restrictions. Successful survival depended upon their objectives, financing and to a significant extent, the manipulation of their program schedules. Most importantly, these stations existed within the context of a broader North American radio industry characterized by the domination of networks. In the United States during the 1930s, NBC, CBS and Mutual modelled the development of diversified program genres. In Canada, the creation of a public broadcasting body, first the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) and then the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), was the most significant innovation in Canadian broadcasting history. Through the analysis of program schedules, this thesis explores and explains how Canadian radio stations survived the Depression decade by diversifying their offerings through the use of a combination of local and network, Canadian and American programming.