DIGITIZING HISTORY

The Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS): A Precursor of Public Diplomacy (1936-1948)

In these webpages, I focus on radio broadcasts of the Palestine Broadcast Service (PBS) as an early pioneering tool for public diplomacy. I will be looking at the various roles of the British and local staffers; the target audiences; the messages they were trying to get across; outreach programmes they developed; the methods they used to analyze/evaluate success and/or failure of their messages. Then attempt to answer the question: why did it fail?

Finally, whatever happened to the nearly 10,000 recordings of speeches and programs they made locally or brought over from Britain that had been stored in their library/archives?

Destroyed? Looted? See "I capture the Public Information Office Bell ..." by Th. F. Meysels, Palestine Post May, 1948. Maybe the recordings still exist somewhere in private/public collections? They need to be found and preserved digitally for future historical research.

A starting point in search of recordings of radio programs and/or transcripts: The Rex Keating Collection, British Library, London, UK

Inauguration of the new Palestine Broadcasting Service transmitter station in Ramallah, March 30, 1936. The British High Commisioner Sir Arthur Wauchope is seen addressing the invited audience. David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, was invited to, and attended, the opening ceremony. However, he was not invited to deliver a speech. That honor went to Dr. Avraham Katznelson. Katznelson was a member of the Va'ad Leumi (Jewish National Council), and of the General Labour Federation, he was invited to address the audience, in Hebrew, as a member of PBS's Programmes Advisory Committee. Unconfirmed: Ben-Gurion sitting in front row sitting next to his wife, Paula, circled in red. Photo from Library of Congress. Call No. LC-M33- 7360 [P&P]

HIGHLIGHTS

Before the Broadcasting: Notable Emissions from Jerusalem, Palestine Post, March 30, 1936

Wireless Programmes: September 8, 1938

Radio Programs produced for Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS), in English, by May Weissenberg, 1937-1939

Explosion at the Palestine Broadcasting Service Studio, August 2, 1939

Let's Speak English, by the Brighter English League

Newspapers and Journals
(Palestine Post; Jerusalem Radio: an illustrated weekly devoted exclusively to radio and entertainment; Haaretz(in Hebrew))

Index to transcripts of broadcasts that appear in Hagalgal, volumes 1-4 (Hebrew only)

מפתח לתמלילים לתכניות בתוך "הגלגל", כרכים א-ד

More Highlights...

צילום: מר אדוין סמואל והגב' יהודית ידידיה מאזינים יחד עם תלמידות כתה ז' של ביה''ס ''למל'' בירושלים לתוכנית משטרת-הגנה בדם, קול ישראל לתלמיד, חוברת א, מעמוד 12,

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