'WHAT DO YOU EXPECT OF THIS FRIEND?' Canadian radio and the intimacy of broadcasting

In Canada during the pre-television era, the perception of radio as an intimate medium profoundly affected the way people ordered their listening, production, performance and discussion of programming. With evidence drawn primarily from Canadian archival sources, this paper contends that radio's perceived intimacy deeply troubled those who considered themselves responsible for the physical and cultural welfare of listeners, and that Canada's early broadcasting experience provided a particularly good example of how worry could become action. Though thinking about intimacy had helped broadcasters before the mid-1930s to understand the function of radio in relation to other media, it also led the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) after its formation in 1936 to scrutinize and control commercial and unsponsored programming, advertising and public service messages alike. The CBC's self-assigned stewardship role - a reaction to plentiful and popular American programming and an emulation of the British Broadcasting Corporation and European services - pushed it toward protecting children and other listeners thought to be gullible or sensitive from programmes that abused the intimate relationship by stepping beyond established boundaries of taste or threatening the Corporation's 'civilizing' role.