Voice — E-voice-Design — E-Voice-Community : Early Public Debates about the Emotional Quality of Radio and TV-Announcers’ Voices in Germany, the Soviet Union and the USA (1920-1940)

Abstract

This article focuses on public debates about the emotional quality of electronically recorded voices of early radio and TV announcers. The following questions will be addressed in connection with this main research focus: Which technical problems did the sound designers of the early 1930s encounter in transforming a natural human voice into an electro-acoustic voice design? What psycho-acoustic and ethno-cultural aspects of voice performance have been rated most important in the context of such transformations? By which means were the boundaries of social communities and gender displayed in early e-voice-designs?The analysis of discussions and surveys carried out by early radio magazines in Germany (Radio Amateur, Funk, Radio für alle), Russia (Radio front, Radio Vsem) and the United States (Radio broadcast; Radio service bulletin) with regard to the quality of female and male announcer voices should provide an answer to the posed questions. The first part of the study examines press materials, in which the problem of low vs. high voice pitch was discussed with regard to the semantic differentiation of hard vs. soft news in newsreels. Based on the analysis of early sound films, the second part of the study deals with the interrelationship between the voice stereotypes of radio and TV announcers on the one hand and the voice stereotypes of classical horror films (monster, scream queen) on the other hand. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the contribution of electronically reproduced voices to the emergence of mass media publicity.