Rediffusion (wired radio) in Jamaica

For eighteen years most Jamaicans did not own a radio — they rented a speaker. Radio Jamaica and Rediffusion, licensed in July 1950 as a subsidiary of the British Rediffusion Group, piped programming down wires into speaker boxes in homes and shops for threepence a day. By 1954 there were more than 57,000 boxes across the island, which made the service the single largest shared listening habit in Jamaica and put a small number of programmers in charge of what a nation heard.

The wired service was discontinued in 1968, made obsolete by cheap transistor sets — the moment listening became private and portable, and the moment a sound system's audience could also be a radio audience.