CINDERELLAS
French radio tax stamps
About a century ago, radio broadcasting was still in its infancy but it made huge progress towards the end of the 1920s, writes Christer Brunström. The BBC traces its origins back to 1922. Radio listening soon became a favourite pastime and the demand for quality programming increased steadily.
From the start it was pretty unclear which way to adopt to finance this new medium. Different countries used different strategies. In the United States, private concerns were licensed to operate radio stations relying on the income from the sale of advertising. In Europe, many countries chose another way of funding their radio stations, by requesting listeners to pay an annual licence fee. Public service radio stressed the need to educate its listeners while the commercial stations wanted to entertain their audiences.
Many countries used radio licence fee stamps to indicate that the tax
