Philippines marks 100th anniversary of broadcasting

Broadcasting has reached a milestone in the Philippines this 2022 as it reached its 100th year, an academic institution said.

“One of the oldest in the world and the oldest in Asia, radio broadcasting in the Philippines began in 1922 during the American colonial period,” the University of the Philippines Department of Broadcast Communication said Monday.

“Through that period and the periods that followed—World War II, postwar years, martial rule, post-Marcos years, and until the present—an amid the challenges of television and the Internet, Philippine radio has survived, grown, and evolved,” the UP Dept. of BroadComm said in a statement.

The start of television broadcasting in the Philippines followed in 1953, according to the UP institution.

“Crossing geographic and cultural borders, both radio and television have followed our fellow Filipinos in the diaspora,” it said.

“The voices and images have touched our political and social lives; their songs have brought Filipino music and musical talent to a global stage; their narratives of our lives have made us imagine ourselves as a nation, even if dispersed across physical and other boundaries.”

The centenary of broadcasting in the country will be marked with a series of activities by the UP Dept. of BroadComm, in partnership with DZUP, UP Diliman, UP Visayas and the Philippine Studies Association.

These include an academic conference, public lectures and webinars, and the development of an archives of broadcasting in the Philippines.

This month, the UP Dept. of BroadComm will launch the series, “Pag-uugat, Pagpapatuloy: Ang epikong Dumaracol sa DZUP.”

The official launch of the event “100 Years of Broadcasting in the Philippines” will take place in June.

Academics, researchers and students are expected to gather for a conference later this year on Oct. 18-21, “which will generate new knowledge about broadcasting in the Philippines, both its cultural practice and its teaching as an academic discipline.” ABS CBN