Backdoor Broadcasting

Posted on: 10 July 2013

The aim of Backdoor Broadcasting is to aid the dissemination of new knowledge produced on audio by universities and learned societies. Dr René Wolf provides a profile of his company’s activities.

About the author: Dr René Wolf is the Backdoor Broadcasting director and proprietor, who set up the Company in May 2008. He is a radio historian and teaches Modern European History at Royal Holloway University of London. His publications include: The Undivided Sky: The Holocaust on East and West German Radio in the 1960s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); ‘Mass deception without deceivers? The Holocaust on East and West German Radio in the 1960s’ in Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 4 (October 2006); ‘Judgement in the Grey Zone: The Third Auschwitz (Kapo) Trial in Frankfurt 1968’ in Journal of Genocide Research, 9,4 (December 2007); ‘The Undivided Sky. The Auschwitz Trial on East and West German Radio’ in Martin Davies and Chris C.W. Szejnmann (Eds.), 60 Years on: How the Holocaust looks now (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Backdoor Broadcasting’s origins are partially opportunistic, partially anecdotal and partially serendipitous. The opportunity to engage in something like academic podcasting as an independent company had been long overdue. But it was only through an anecdotal remark by Professor Justin Champion, my then head of department at Royal Holloway that started the ball rolling. In the corridor one afternoon, Justin mentioned a seminar he had been to at the Institute of Historical Research, lamenting the fact that it had not been recorded as it was an outstanding paper but with very few people in attendance. Knowing of my involvement in all things radio, he said jokingly, ’René, you know how to record stuff like that and put it online, don’t you?’ I said yes, but didn’t give it much thought until several application forms later. Yes, why not. There are numerous seminars and conferences every day of the year and all of them want a greater audience. And this is where serendipity really comes into it, because once we started this, I was amazed how many people, and from all over the world, were so keen to listen, every day, from everywhere, new listeners, all the time. We have received grateful comments from happy students and scholars and of course, after a while, some very keen academics trying to get their research to a wider public.

… there are numerous seminars and conferences every day of the year and all of them want a greater audience

But perhaps I should start with a little more detailed information about myself, and my company, Backdoor Broadcasting. I came to academic study rather late in life, starting my first degree at the age of 36, having previously run a jazz club in London for ten years. I then continued to study until I finished my PhD in 2006. My research topic, the use of radio in the ideological warfare between East and West Germany, not only acquainted me with the technology (I had some unofficial encounters with pirate radio in the 1980s and 90s), but also with media theory and thoughts about the future of the radio medium. This is perhaps why I did not persist with those application forms for lectureships and JRFs. I could see the opportunity for academia to be a major content provider for internet radio, and that it would also be near-impossible for universities to embark on such a venture by themselves without spending a fortune. Whereas a small, flexible and mobile enterprise could go around from conference to seminar, from workshop to symposium, recording and editing and placing the material on the net in a matter of hours or days.