Romanian public service radio
\nbegan its uninterrupted broadcasting on 1st November 1928. Seen as
\nthe most efficient means of disseminating information, the then brand-new
\nmedium of communication via radio soon grew to become immensely popular with
\nthe public. In its 93-year-long existence, Radio Romania witnessed some of the most
\nmomentous events in 20th century Romanian history. To reconstruct
\nsome of those events, we went to the Oral History Centre of the Romanian Radio
\nBroadcasting Corporation which also contains the recollections of the people who
\nworked there. Paul Berstein is one of them, and he used to be a translator at
\nRadio Romania. He remembers one event that impressed him a lot on a personal
\nlevel:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Before 1990, many different
<\/p>\n
The beginning of the 1960s
<\/p>\n
I got to meet many of
<\/p>\n
Paul Berstein also
<\/p>\n
After I made sure nothing
<\/p>\n
Arts journalist Magdalena
<\/p>\n
Millions of people who
<\/p>\n
As Radio Romania turns
Radio Day celebrates birthday of Romanian public service radio broadcasting in 1928.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":131359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[31180],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-131358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-radio"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nreporters and public cultural figures used to work for the radio. At one time
\nwe received the visit of a delegation led by a deputy minister of culture from
\nthe Soviet Union and who met the leadership of the radio. I was the translator.
\nOne of the members of the delegation was the actor
\nNikolay Cherkasov<\/em>, who had starred in the film Ivan the
\nTerrible. He complimented me on my Russian, asked me where I learnt the
\nlanguage and wanted to send me a present when he got back to Moscow. I told him
\nthat I learnt Russian at home and that I would come to Moscow to collect the
\npresent myself. The next time I was in Moscow, I asked permission from the president
\nof the corporation, a man called Bujor, to call Cherkasov.
\nAnd Cherkasov said he would come to see me at my hotel, but I said to him what
\nabout my present, you promised me a present. And he said what woud you like,
\nand I said that I’d like nothing more than to see him perform a few lines from
\nIvan the Terrible in the church in the Red Square. And so he did. As long as I
\nlive, I’ll never forget those ten minutes when he played the role of Ivan the
\nTerrible. He was a great actor, a truly great actor!<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nsaw a thaw in Romania’s relations with the West and the Golden Stag pop music
\nfestival held in Brasov benefited from this more relaxed climate. Paul Berstein
\nremembers:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nthe musicians who came to the festival, such as Connie Francis, Juliette Greco
\nand Amalia Rodriguez, among others. One day I got a call at B\u0103neasa airport and
\nthey said: Connie Francis is coming, make sure she gets a proper welcome! I
\ntook her to a restaurant and later found out that she was friends with the
\nKennedys. When she went back to America, she sent me an autographed photograph on
\nwhich she wrote: To doctor Paul from Connie Francis. I also met many foreign journalists,
\nfrom Radio France, from the United States, but less so from the Voice of America.
\nI learnt something from every one of them.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nrecalled the earthquake of 4th March 1977, when the public radio
\nwent through a moment of crisis:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nwas damaged in my home, I took my daughter and went to the radio. Mu\u015fat, the president
\nof the public radio at the time, had his office on the third floor. The door
\nopened and Preda and Negru rushed in. Preda said we should go out in the street
\nand record, and Negru said there are people in the street, they have their
\nradios with them and they’re listening to other stations, Radio Romania is not
\nbroadcasting anything. People kept calling the press agency, Agerpres. The approval
\nto go out and record people in the street came eventually, after an hour or
\ntwo.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nBoiangiu also worked for Radio Romania. In 1998, she recalled how some of the station’s
\nmost popular theatre shows came into being:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nare today regular theatre goers learnt about theatre from Theatre on the Microphone
\nor Radio Theatre. Theatre on the Microphone was one of the early shows, when
\nthe building housing the public radio was yet to be built and it was broadcasting
\nfrom St Sava. The actors would go up on stage, microphones were installed in the
\nauditorium to capture the sound and that was it, theatre on the microphone. The
\ntechnology evolved in time and dedicated studios were built, adaptations were
\nmade especially for radio, based on abridged versions of the script. In the
\n1960s when I joined the staff, we all realised we were at a crossroads. An era was
\ncoming to an end and another was beginning. Theatre on the microphone, a type
\nof theatre that was being performed in front of a technical device, was coming
\nto an end, and radio theatre was beginning – a form of theatre written
\nespecially for radio, in which authors knew from the very beginning that they
\ncouldn’t rely on image and that everything must be achieved through words and
\nsounds. Our efforts to produce these types of scripts, to create this special
\ntype of theatre, were not without success, sometimes also international.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n93, we’re looking forward to its 100th anniversary in 7 years’ time. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"