Emil Voigt, the man who began 2KY, was a pioneer of Australian broadcasting, one of the founders of what would become the Federation of Australian Broadcasters, an Olympic gold medal winner and a suspected communist spy. Voight’s interesting story has been compiled by his grand daughter, Robin Voigt, who has submitted it to radioinfo. With all the recent interest in the history of talk radio, it is fascinating to hear about the struggles of an early radio pioneer who wanted to use the medium to educate workers about politics.
Authorities suspected him of being a communist because of his association with the Labor movement, and because he was a vegetarian. Voigt’s legacy to Australian radio also included a family interest in radio which spanned three generations.
Here is his (edited) story as told by Robin Voigt.
Emil Robert Voigt (1883-1973), an English born engineer, was the founder, chairman and general manager of radio station 2KY (1925-1935), founding chairman of the Australian Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations (1927-1930) and President of the Radio Manufacturers’ Association of New South Wales (1928-1929).
With George Taylor, he successfully campaigned in 1925 for a royal commission on wireless, opposing the monopoly held by the Government funded A-class stations, and as a result the independent commercial B-class stations were free to begin licensed operation.
Emil Voigt was a multi-faceted personality – a socialist idealist, political organiser, radio manager, engineer, writer and wrestling commentator. Prior to his involvement in radio and politics he was famous throughout England and Europe as an Olympic running champion. At the age of 25 he won a gold medal in the 1908 London Olympic Games for the five-mile race.
During the early 1900s in England Voigt had become involved with the Independent Labor Party and joined the Clarion Movement and the Vegetarian Cycling Club. He joined members cycling around England distributing the socialist newspaper The Clarion and spreading the message of socialism to towns and villages. Voigt’s involvement in the Clarion Movement gave him a strong belief in social reform for the working class and later shaped his career in politics.
Voigt emigrated to Australia in 1911, arriving in Melbourne where he started Voigt and King, mechanical engineers (acetylene and electrical welders) at Armadale. In 1913 he married Minnie Boardman, they moved to Sydney, living at Five Dock and Maroubra. During the war he moved back to England, and returned to Australia in 1921. He had three sons: Rion, who became a well known radio personality in his own right, and Elmer, an engineer. The third son Eric was a mechanic. Rion worked for 2KY for 47 years, retiring in 1979.
Under suspicion: Machine Guns or radio sets?
On his arrival back in Australia Voigt came under the scrutiny of the Australian Secret Service who reported: “He is a man of very communistic and socialistic beliefs, who has been travelling around Europe a good deal in the past 2 or 3 years. It is suggested that he is acting for the Jen Bolshevist element which is seeking to poison the world. If so he is a very dangerous person to have in Australia”. To further illustrate the paranoia of the Establishment at that time, the report added suspiciously “He is practically a vegetarian and uses a Corona typewriter.”
Emil Voigt joined the New South Wales Labor Council as a senior researcher and adviser. The authorities considered him an extremist and enlisted neighbours to spy on him.
One of Voigt’s overly suspicious neighbours reported to the federal authorities that he was planning revolution and amassing weapons at his Dee Why home. He reported that he had seen cases of ammunition being delivered to Voigt’s home, Voigt working late into the night making machine gun stands, and trucks with red flags coming and going from the property.
In fact the supposed ammunition boxes were later found to be radio parts for radio sets Voigt was building in his spare time (Voigt was President of the Radio Manufacturers Association of New South Wales).
By this time Voigt had become private secretary to the Honorable A. C. Willis, who was President of the NSW Legislative Council. When there were rumblings within the Ministry that Voigt should be dismissed for his revolutionary views, Willis stood by him.
In 1923 with his family in tow, Voigt left for Los Angeles, USA, to further his business interests and to investigate the new medium of radio. While in the United States he investigated industrial, social and health matters on behalf of the Labor Council and studied the emerging medium of radio. He was particularly interested in radio’s use in the USA to cover industrial struggle and the presidential elections. He could see the big picture and on his return to Australia planned to persuade the State’s union bosses to invest in their own station.
A good deal of his expenses in the United States were met from the proceeds of sporting articles he wrote for Australian papers. He also wrote a sports column for the Hearst chain of newspapers, which was syndicated to 64 papers. He wrote a number of books throughout his lifetime, on nutrition, sport and politics.
The beginning of broadcasting in Australia
He returned to Australia in January 1925 enthusiastic about radio and excited by the possibilities it offered. He was the prime mover behind the Labor Council getting into broadcasting. He was clearly concerned that the same conservative powers who controlled the newspapers would try to dominate this new medium as well and attempt to control what information was broadcast over the airwaves. He was convinced that unions should have their own media voice via the radio, as well as the union newspapers, and approached the Labor Council with the idea of setting up its own radio station to give a voice to Labor politics in this country. This would allow a mass Australian audience access to information that countered the conservative political opinions pushed by the existing A-class stations and newspapers.
After Marconi discovered wireless in 1895 the Australian Government came under conflicting political pressures to make a clear-cut policy for the development of this high technology medium and to define their role in its management. Public communication up until that time had been by post, telegraph and telephone and the Commonwealth Postmaster-General wanted to retain its control when the new medium was introduced. This put them in conflict with AWA (Marconi and Telefunken), with patent disputes erupting between commercial wireless companies. During the coming war the Navy took control of all wireless activity but in 1922 the issue again surfaced as the birth of public broadcasting approached.
A broadcasting conference was held in Melbourne in May 1923 and regulations were drawn up, coming into effect on 1 August 1923. The Postmaster-General introduced the ill-conceived ‘sealed set’ system which required the purchaser of a new radio set to nominate which radio station they wished to listen to and to pay an annual fee which would allow them access to just this one frequency. However many enterprising people found that by tinkering with the sets they were able to overcome this problem and pick up more than the one station. By June 1924 only 1,400 listener licences had been issued and it was clear that the ‘sealed set’ system was impeding the development of broadcasting in this country and that a new licensing system had to be introduced.
In 1925 Voigt teamed with George Taylor to advocate a two-tiered system and campaigned for a Royal Commission into wireless. They fought for the introduction of B-class stations, privately owned commercial radio stations, which would fund their operation via paid advertisements and would cater for more popular demand. The A-class stations (Farmers 2FC and Radio Trade 2BL) drew their funding from listeners’ licence fees which were paid to the Government, but they also now wanted to carry advertising at low rates, and ‘sponsors’, which Voigt fought vehemently against, sparking a Royal Commission. New regulations were drawn up and the B-class stations were free to begin operation without the additional advertising competition from the A-class stations. This was a significant battle – if they had not won, the development of commercial radio in Australia could have been stifled.
The birth of 2KY
Voigt requested permission to address the Labor Council to advocate Labor getting on the air and at a meeting of the Executive Council on 17 February 1925 he talked about the benefits of owning their own station, the approximate cost of its installation and how a 1500 watt frequency would allow the station to broadcast to any part of Australia or New Zealand and explained that it could even be picked up on small crystal sets within a 12 mile radius.
On 7 May 1925 the Labor Council applied for permission from the PMG to build a B-class broadcasting station in Sydney with a power of 1500 watts (which was to make it the most powerful station in the Southern Hemisphere at that time) and with programs that focused on “matters of educational value, musical entertainment, news service, weather and market reports, public debates and other matters of general public interest”. The licence was approved on 20 May 1925 by the Chief Manager of the PMG Department Mr. J. Malone.
Voigt then went to Western Electric to ask for a quote on building a small broadcasting station; they referred him to AWA who controlled the Patent Rights. AWA’s demands were over the top – they quoted 20,000 pounds to build the station plus 1,000 pounds per year in royalties. They stated that the station would not be permitted to advertise and would remain the property of AWA. Voigt was shocked by their greedy demands and decided to take on the AWA Patent Monopoly, telling them that he would go to their rival United Distributors, that the Trade Union Movement would fight them on the patent issue and that their patents would not be sustainable in law. He approached United Distributors and they agreed to build the station for 1,500 pounds, less than one tenth of AWA’s quote. However they were unwilling to build it in the name of the Labor Council as not being a corporate body it could not be sued for debt. So Voigt agreed to build the station in his own name and meet the bill himself. With his strong political beliefs and an unshakeable faith in this new medium, he mortgaged his home in Dee Why to pay for the building of the station.
The call sign allocated by the PMG underwent a number of changes before the station finally went to air – firstly it was allotted the call sign of 2IC on 20 May 1925, but as this turned out to be a typing error it was corrected to 2LC (Labor Council) on 12 June 1925, which was the call sign that had originally been nominated. But as the PMG authorities then felt 2LC could be confused with 2FC they changed the call sign again a few weeks later on 23 June 1925 to 2TH (Trades Hall). Voigt wasn’t happy with this and expressed a preference to call the station 2KY as he felt “it would carry better on air”, and this was finally agreed upon on 9 July 1925.
At the beginning it was a financial struggle for the station so Voigt took little or no pay for the first couple of years, but he made sure that the staff was paid by going round each week to the Unions in Trades Hall and collecting small sums from each from their petty cash. In an effort to get the station up and running successfully there were still more fights to come over the next 10 years with the Valve Combine, with the Performing Rights Association, with the PMG and with some of the political factions, yet Voigt took them all on. Within only a few years the station was soon operating on a paying basis and had become one of the most popular radio stations in the country.
Once built, the station was handed over by Voigt to the Labor Council and it commenced transmission on 31 October 1925. It became the first commercial radio station in Australia with its significant power of 1500 Watts to reach a wide ranging audience, all over Australia and as far as New Zealand.
At the beginning ‘wireless’ was being used for naval and military purposes and the mindset of the conservatives about how threatening radio might be to the established order things if it got in the ‘wrong hands’ bordered on the obsessive. From its inception in 1925 and throughout the 1930s 2KY was closely monitored by the Federal Government and the secret services.
Family Legacy
Over the years other people came to take credit for the birth of 2KY and the use of radio by the labor movement, but Voigt was the real hero behind the beginnings of the station. His story is now being told thanks to the work of his grand daughter.
Five members of Robin’s family were prominent in Australian radio. Her father Rion Voigt was an announcer with 2KY for more than 40 years, her grandmother Eunice Stelzer joined 2GB at its beginning in 1926 working there for 22 years as an announcer and musical advisor.
Robin’s grandfather William Stelzer worked running the Advertising department at 2GB for 20 years. Her aunt Joy Moorhouse started work at 2GB at the age of 15 in 1932 and worked there for 50 years. She was the station’s first receptionist and telephonist and later went on to work with many famous names as a producer of the first open line/talkback programs in 1966.
Robin Voigt lives in Sydney and is a graphic designer, illustrator and writer. Copyright of this material and pictures belongs to Robin Voigt, used here with permission.
Robin can be contacted at email address: [email protected] if you want to follow up this remarkable story with her.