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Telefon Hírmondó

he Telefon Hírmondó (also Telefonhírmondó, generally translated as "Telephone Herald")[1][2] was a "telephone newspaper" located in Budapest, Hungary, which, beginning in 1893, provided news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. It was both the first and the longest surviving telephone newspaper system,[3] although from 1 December 1925 until its termination in 1944 it was primarily used to retransmit programmes broadcast by Magyar Rádió.[4] Three decades before the development of radio broadcasting, the Telefon Hírmondó was the first service to electronically deliver a wide range of spoken and musical programming to a diverse audience.

The contemporary press laws did not apply to a telephone newspaper, and government officials were wary that the Telefon Hírmondó could develop into an "important tool of power", as it could potentially be used to quickly spread strategic, political, and social information. Using news, literary and musical pieces that were transmitted through Telefon Hirmondó in 1897, Első Pesti Egyetemi Rádió, a Budapest based university station, for the first time, reconstructed a full "broadcast day". {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown ( link), Joseph E. Baudino and John M. Kittross, Journal of Broadcasting, Winter 1977, page 61.^ Andrew Orlowski(April 26, 2001).

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