(The private radio networks become governmental. The acquisition process of radio stations by the peronism (1947-1949))

Abstract

This paper analyses a fundamental part of the Peronist policy on media, that is the acquisition process of radio stations by the government between 1947 and 1949. Peronism appealed to control the radio stations to be able to dispute the symbolic space of it and to build hegemony. To achieve these goals, Peronism needed to respond to a complex political context.  On the one hand, in an international context the United States placed the free flow of information as a democratic indicator, a clear takeover of the radio stations jeopardized Argentinian attempts to rebuild the relations with the United States. On the other hand, the prevailing social imaginary of the entertainment field shared the idea that private property was fundamental for the development of the radio. Therefore, the radio was the first means of communication to enter the private sphere, so introducing politics on these media had to avoid creating any kind of rejection to the audience that was used to listening to entertainment-oriented programming.
The objectives proposed in this paper involve not only describing how these acquisitions took place, but also constructing hypotheses about the political purposes that were being pursued. A systematic review of pieces of documentation was carried out for the elaboration of this analysis. It used government decrees and resolutions, e-mail addresses and telecommunication documents, and from the Under Secretary of Information. Show magazines covered some of these processes on their web pages. This allows determining that the acquisition of radio stations by Peronism had to stay hidden from the listeners to sustain the idea of continuity of the radio, and thus facilitate the incorporation of government policy into the programming.