Radio in Argentina: 100 years of a love that was born on a terrace

If we could go back to 1920 and tell Don Enrique Telémaco Susini what Argentine radio is like in the year 100, we should first warn him that we celebrate with a pandemic radio, untidy in sound, "made" from the trenches and isolation , with interference, creaks, cuts, the barking of the dog, the ringing of the "Rappi/Glovo" boy, the vibration of the multiprocessor or the background scream contained by a chinstrap.

This is how we celebrate the milestone, bathing the microphones in alcohol, separating conductors with acrylic, submitting ourselves to the infrared "revolver" that marks the border between entering or not entering a station. When we thought the radio was a plain, the plague kicked our ranch. Austerity and reinvention. Distancing ourselves, separating ourselves bodily to unite from the ear.

It was on August 27, 1920 that four gentlemen broadcast Wagner's opera Parsifal from the terrace of the Colosseum Theater. Until there, the well-known tale of Susini, César Guerrico, Luis Romero Carranza and Miguel Mujica. But there are secrets and pearls that enlarge the event and make it epic, narrated today by his heirs.

Gonzalo Susini, great-nephew of the otolaryngologist who was the greatest author of the feat, believes that this patriot who spoke eight languages ​​and thought of sharing the advances brought from Europe, did not have "the marketing" enjoyed by other historical figures. "He had no children, he was unconcerned about promoting his feat and today he is related only to radio without his role as scientific researcher, registrar, entrepreneur of the nascent film industry, founder of the Lumiton studio being known" .

"Enrique died in 1972, I was born in 1966. I remember his stories well, and the anecdotes told by my grandfather Hernán, his brother. There were 11 children. Enrique was the first Argentine otolaryngologist, son of the doctor Telemaco. Of an intelligence superior, he studied in Vienna. He said that he operated on María Calas, on Enrico Caruso, he treated Carlos Gardel", sums up Gonzalo a sea of ​​desperate data.

"Already in 1910, Marconi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, had traveled to Argentina and installed a radio station in Bernal. But what Enrique did, who by 1920 was 29 years old, was to join his young nephew Miguel Mugica and his friends, César Guerrico and Luis Romero Carranza, to change history".

A 5W transmitter, French tubes, an antenna attached to a nearby dome. The first radio words were little more than 20 and in the mouth of Susini himself. The recording was registered: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Argentine Radio Society presents today the Sacred Festival of Ricardo Wagner, Parsifal, with the performance of the tenor Maestri...". But Susini's work was more titanic than that and few know how it continued beyond that roof.

"After that day, Enrique sent his brothers to the hardware stores and electricity stores to buy what was necessary to assemble the receiving devices. He recorded the first broadcasting in the world", adds Gonzalo Susini. "Like every genius, he started something, got bored and went on with something else. He was interested in bringing television to Argentina long before the '50s, wrote theater and directed Los tres berretines, the second Argentine sound film, but the first with script".

That rooftop where a passion based on sound awoke will be the scene of a tribute broadcast this Thursday by Radio Nacional. In times when it is debated whether the podcast integrates or barely touches the radio category, the older sister of television resisted with height, absorbed and nourished from other platforms to branch out and not disappear: far from dealing with the image, it added it. Today a station is a window with a thousand other open windows, a medium that without neglecting the first essential activity, offers added value.

Living stars of the radio drama

For those who were children of 1950, Mabel Landó will always be Juana, from the radio drama Las aventuras de Tarzán. From Monday to Friday, at 5:30 p.m., the cycle paralyzed the children's segment of the country. Without too many marketing laws, the visionary Toddy chocolate milk company sponsored on Radio Splendid the program that marked the history of hearing children, with César Llanos. Legend has it that the tons of letters from parents at the time managed to change the schedule: success ended up moving to 6:00 p.m. to give the little kids time to get home from school and stick next to the device.

At 88 years old, Landó cannot stop tearing up when he remembers that milestone. "I still have the emotion of Spring Day when Toddy's businessmen decided to make us go out into the streets to paralyze Santa Fe Avenue," he told Clarín. "They spoke with the Municipality to stop the trolleybuses that circulated there. I was wearing a short dress, greeting the crazy children who put my character and that of Oscar Rovito, Tarzanito, for the first time."

There are several pioneering gems of radio theater that accuse ninety-somethings and were forgotten by the media. The living history of the air is told today by Julia Sandoval, Hilda Bernard, María Duval, Nelly Prince.

"My radio history began in 1932 and it's burned into my head," says Prince, 94. "I was six years old. I crossed the street by myself, without help, and entered Radio Belgrano. 'Good morning, sir, I want to work here,' I said on tiptoe so that they could see me from the other side of the counter. They gave me a role in The Marilyn gang". At the age of 13, her continuity in radio was in danger, but Eva Duarte took action. "Evita saw me crying in a corner and went up indignantly to speak to the authorities. 'Listen to me well. They are not only going to return this girl to the stable cast: they are going to increase her payment,'" she asked.

Duval -movie star who retired from acting in 1948 and decided to remain silent-, reappears at 94 to dust off jewels that are not in any book: "I'm from Bahía Blanca. She was very good at declaiming and a teacher advised her I asked my father to take me to the city to try my luck. They hired me at Radio Miter and with the payment for the first fortnight, dad understood that there was a future for the family and he brought them all. Then came the 21 films I made. I changed my life when I got married, but I keep that beginning in radio as a treasure".

Julia Sandoval is another of the silent divas with a resume for painting. She is 92 years old and evokes "another world", the one of her adventures "on Radio El Mundo, sponsored by Sunlight soap, presented by the announcer Jaime Font Saravia". He also evokes his radio drama duo with Eduardo Rudy. He stepped on the threshold of the station and had to put up with the pleas of 'the autograph hunters. .

Hilda Bernard is barely two months younger than Argentine radio. Her centenary will be in October. She is "my little mamarrachito", the woman to whom Oscar Casco delivered his syrupy tone so that the radio amateurs would die of love on the other side of the speaker. "I will have done 100 radio plays, I suppose. Those were magical times. With Nene Cascallar, the author, we did one at night in the window of Splendid. Everything so poetic that the studio opened directly onto a garden and even the crickets could be heard."

From the roof of 1920 to the roof of 2020

How do we Argentines listen to radio, how much? According to Kantar Ibope Media, 4,527,890 listeners are registered per day (but the data only corresponds to the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires. Let's imagine the total number that an in-depth study would show in the other 22 provinces). 63% listen for information and 13% discovered programs and/or stations during the pandemic. The report reveals that in quarantine "most listeners start listening to the radio later than usual" (9 a.m. to 1 p.m. is the prime time) and 57% of listeners prefer to listen to the radio alone.

Which stations do Argentines prefer? On FM -according to the May/June/July quarter surveyed by Kantar Ibope-La 100, Aspen, Metro, Disney and Pop, in that order. On AM, Mitre, La Red, Radio 10, and 750 and Rivadavia, also in that order. La 100 has a 17.94 share. Mitre, 38.80.

What is national radio today, beyond the numbers, between shrinking stations, salary debts and the rib of the podcast? It is also the impossible, the chimerical, the implausible made flesh: that a mute boy makes air. That, thanks to an application, Gonzalo Giles writes his ideas and the cell phone emits a voice that elicits what he has to say from within.

Giles is perhaps the least known and most powerful example of these 100 years: loving the air so much that there is not enough limitation to get involved, to reincarnate in the feat of the Rooftop Fools. At five months he contracted meningitis. The sequelae were "a right hemiparesis, apraxia of the muscles of the neck, jaw, and tongue, and compromised speech." The vocation was stronger than such a diagnosis. In 2015 he discovered that the telephone could help him say what he had to say and he launched into what is called ether. Today he operates, produces, conducts and directs what for many may be a village radio, but for him it is a communication sword, Celestial and white (FM 102.1 from Dolores).

Only among the 20 most popular radio stations in Capital and GBA, there are more than 350 programs on the air. If we thought of relieving the 10 most important stations in each province, that figure would rise to approximately 5,000 cycles.

In an era in which the advertising schedule and human resources are shrinking, faith in the radio does not go out. If we really became federal and also calculated the listeners and the incessant productions of the "ant" stations in each town, the number would be monstrous. In the era in which we believe that platforms like Netflix or Amazon are queens, there is no streaming company that can beat the volume of the radio menu.

From studio bands and radio plays to Instagram live in the studios, the radio curve may have flattened but it never went away. There is a sound that remains charmingly old, ghettos that continue to listen to the pool, waiting for the "ooochoooo" in the Riverito style, the hum of Turismo Carretera engines, the Rotativo del aire always with the truth, the eighties rocker data of Rock & Pop. What's more, the great icon who is planning to retire has not yet done so to the joy of his flock: Don Héctor Larrea (National) is still the popular driver with the longest years on the air.

Says Larrea, threatening to set the difficult 2020 as the last page of his radio calendar: "Confined, it is the first time in history that I have aired from home for several months, by phone. Horrible. There is no order line. My phone produces reverberation. It causes me anguish, but the listener is still grateful for the company." The isolation had a small joy for him, coinciding with the 130th anniversary of the birth of Carlos Gardel, for which he dispatched with pearls and studies on "El Zorzal".

The centenary marks several advances and some outstanding accounts. From that first radio station "founded" strictly by men, we moved on to one in which the female presence abounds, although in the driving role the quota is not equitable. In the relay of stations, there are many presenters, columnists and producers, but not those who play the role of owners of a cycle at non-marginal hours.

Of the four "locos on the roof" promoting the first radio transmission in Argentina to this radio with trans visibility, there was a twist. Radiophony 2020 slowly tries to change the paradigm. A significant example: the most listened to program on FM, El club del Moro (La 100), has Costa in its ranks and at some point also had Lizy Tagliani.

"Two transvestites in a program? Two?, they said. Nobody questions two women or two men, yes, two trans. And the funny thing is also Santiago Del Moro's response: he never hired us because of our condition , yes because they are responsible and funny. It desexualized us", judges Costa. "The real triumph is having reached the little ones. During school days I used to tell the children stories. They asked me to make them shorter; the boys did not want to get out of the car."

Another achievement of the medium was the gala of delivery of Martín Fierro. The radio went from being Cinderella whose figure made a "cameo" at a party with television supremacy, to gain space, shortlists and visibility.

The power of the radio jingle and other herbs

The radio today is simple, hyper-displayed, with selfies even from the antenna, but after all similar to that first one. "Mate, coffee, flour and hearts of palm, yerba, jam, cocoa, mincemeat"...

The most powerful jingle of recent years shows that 100 years will have passed, but radio advertising does not lose strength.

The woman who can attest to how the radial sea can engender an auditory tsunami is Andrea Báez, "la señora Marolio", a seasoned jingle singer and backup singer of Ciro y Los Persas. Almost 20 years after that catchy little song that ended up on t-shirts and mugs, she also feels part of the centenary: "Radio is the natural habitat of jingle, the best space to develop it even today, a radio jingle is guaranteed memorability," she said. enthuses Baez.

"The history of the jingle goes back to live musicians in the studios. This recording is from 2001 and became a rare phenomenon. It's a case study in advertising: it lasts a long time for a radio jingle, everything tends to to the audio-logo, to a sung word. The jingle became an anthem."

In the morning close and early as a rose, a little, fragile, small elf went out for a walk. If you read that line singing (the curtain of Rapidísimo), you will understand that the auditory colonization exercised by radio does not go out of style. Although they want us to believe that the algorithm reigns, radio is itself its own algorithm, with unbeatable nostalgic/emotional rules.

Spanish radio will celebrate its centenary only in 2024. In a country that has exhaustive radio analysis and a "monstrous" audience (half of the inhabitants listen daily), knowing numbers and the development of this model can serve as a guide to understand where we stand.

According to the journalist, consultant and trainer in Communication and Radio Gorka Zumeta, there were 23,823,000 daily listeners in Spain at the end of 2019. "The most worrying is not that the vast majority are over 50 years of age: the worst is that generational renewal does not take place", he analyzes. "Young people have other entertainment and information channels. Radio is in the process of being redefined. In the future it will take on a huge role in podcast support. Basically it is nothing more than recorded radio."

The coronavirus encouraged listening, but also exposed problems: "Radio has played an enormous role during the pandemic. Studies confirm that its consumption has increased, especially in digital, a circumstance that has favored teleworking, but paradoxically the radio has suffered evils", adds Zumeta. "For example: the stoppage of the confinement has caused advertising to retract and the losses have been millions in the first months of the year. The investment has already begun to be recovered, little by little, but the figures speak of tens of millions of euros that the radio has stopped perceiving".

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"The other great evil has been measurement. In Spain it is carried out through the General Media Study, which is based on face-to-face surveys carried out at the homes of those surveyed. During the confinement it has been impossible to do so. The paradox is that the radio has been listened to more, but it could not be measured, nor could it be made profitable", explains Zumeta.

What is it about that century-old little gadget called a radio that still connects us - not in the wireless/electronic sense-? Perhaps an anecdote from recent days that stabbed the hearts of sports listeners will serve. Hours apart, the voices of Marcelo Baffa and Osvaldo Wehbe, two icons of the fan's friendly company, faded away forever.

Those who tuned in to La Red (and the Cordovan stations) left crying, choking included, on the radio answering machine. "They just ripped off my friend at dawn who made me forget about the virus." "They took away the cry from the goal, without the Cordovan, the goal will sound empty." Perhaps the radio is the opposite of emptiness, a sect, a wasteland, that pastor who preaches based on a faith that can only be understood in the flesh. In the era of the navel and the visual Yo-Yo, perhaps it is - miraculously - our less egotistical and invisible side: letting the other speak, listening to him, recognizing the existence of a company from beyond. Happy 100, Lady of the 10 decades.

Audio production: Catalina Deguer

WD