Listening in from afar: the BBC Arabic service and the Bahrain radio listeners’ committee, 1938–1943

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses the case study of the Bahrain listeners’ committee, a radio listening group formed in 1938 in response to the establishment of the BBC’s Arabic broadcasting service, to argue that interwar Gulf radio listening was more extensive than has been imagined, that Gulf listeners had specific interests regarding radio programming that differed from those in the Levant, and that small groups of listeners could substantially impact the Arabic service’s programming. The BBC’s Arabic service was launched as a counterweight to Italy’s Radio Bari, which broadcast anti-British sentiment in Arabic, and its primary imagined listeners were Levantine. However, Gulf listeners also tuned in—and the Bahrain listeners’ committee were faithful listeners. They met regularly for 5 years, offering unsparing advice regarding reception and programming, and consistently requesting more news. Their desire for more news resulted ultimately in a second Arabic news broadcast and a new, Bahrain-based broadcast, in which the committee played a critical role. But wartime communications made it difficult for the BBC to obtain their notes, and after 1943, they disappear from the archival record. The committee’s story highlights the importance of Gulf radio listening and more complicated and interconnected notions of broadcaster and listener agency.