Everybody’s scrapbook: the BBC, radiogenic retrospection and the mediatisation of memory

Responding to the wave of retrospection around the BBC’s centenary, this article explores the BBC radio Scrapbook series (1933–74) to reflect on the mediation and mediatization of anniversaries from the earliest days of the radio century to the present. The Scrapbooks were both experimental and popular with audiences, deploying innovative audio montage to listen back to a particular year in history. The history of this sometime staple of the schedules illuminates the changing form of retrospectives, and how each anniversary is shaped by the selections that went before, constructing and reconstructing collective, mediatized memories and shared identities.