Radio in Argentina

Radio in Argentina is an important facet of the nation's media and culture. Radio, which was first broadcast in Argentina in 1920, has been widely enjoyed in Argentina since the 1930s. Radio broadcast stations totaled around 150 active AM stations, 1,150 FM stations, and 6 registered shortwave transmitters. An estimated 24 million receivers were in use in 2000 (2.4 per household).

Radio broadcasting enjoys a long and varied history in Argentina, tracing its origins to a 1910 stay in the southside Buenos Aires suburb of Bernal by Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph. There, he achieved a rudimentary radio transmission with a kite-mounted antenna connected to earphones. Argentine publisher José C. Paz later sponsored Marconi's radio transmission from Italy to Buenos Aires, the first transatlantic broadcast into South America.

Three local medical students, led by Enrique Susini, began their own radio experiments in 1917 and, installing transmission equipment in Buenos Aires' Coliseo Theatre, they broadcast, on August 27, 1920, Parsifal, the first opera on radio and only the second radio broadcast in the World. These installations became LOR Radio Argentina, the World's first formal radio station. The number of receivers in the city at the time: around 20. This station was joined in 1922 by LOX, whose ad for the Los Andes Restaurant is probably the World's first on radio. Several more stations opened in Buenos Aires during Argentina's prosperous 1920s and growing numbers of artists signed contracts for live performances on the growing variety of radio dramas.

Leading stations at the time began broadcasting from the numerous, ornate theatre stages in Buenos Aires, including LR5 Radio Splendid (so named for the venue where its shows were produced, the Grand Splendid Theatre). Among the notable events broadcast live at the time was President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear's inaugural, in 1922, and the 1923 "bout of the century" in Polo Grounds, New York City, between Jack Dempsey and Luis Ángel Firpo for the World Heavyweight title.

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