Author: Beatrice Camarlinghi

Born at the beginning of the century Louis Merlin starts his career in Paris in the 1920s as a radio speaker. He is particularly talented for presenting the commercials at the radio making advertisement entertaining. He works as director, speaker, technician and head of the advertising department.

It is after the Second World War and after a journey in the USA (1945-46) that he joins Radio Luxembourg. It is there that Merlin puts in action the techniques and program formats he saw on the other side of the Atlantic. The most famous of it all is Radio Circus on air for the first time in 1948.

However ten years later Merlin wanted to engage himself into the novelty of the moment: the television. Unable to achieve this project at Radio Luxembourg he left and joined the newborn concurrent station of Europe n. 1 where he worked till his retirement using once again commercials and modern and popular programs to make the radio station successful.

 

Sources :

Pierre Laforêt, La prodigieuse aventure d’Europe N° 1, Paris, Pierre Horay,‎ 1960, pp. 179.

Merlin, Louis, C’était formidable!, Paris : Jullard éd., 1966, pp. 481.

Dominguez-Müller, David, Radio Luxembourg : histoire d’un média privé d’envergure européenne, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2007, pp. 262, ici pp. 163-187.

Maréchal Denis, RTL histoire d’une radio populaire, de Radio Luxembourg à RTL.fr, Paris : Nouveau Monde, 2010, pp. 582, ici, pp. 194-251.