Radio - The evergreen medium (original) (raw)
Related papers
Media Studies Journal, 1993
SK ABOUT "THE MEDIA" and people think first of television, then newspapers. Sometimes, though not always, they acknowledge the existence of radio. But it is not mmon for media critics to ignore radio altogether in their treatt of the larger modern media mix. Although the average erican owns multiple radios and lives with this most portable 'urn in every room in the house, in the office, the car and even in parks, mountain retreats and at the beach, radio is rarely the topic of public discussion, giving it the dubious identity of "the forgotten •wn." This, the oldest of the broadcast media and once the king electronic media, has moved farther and farther back in the media .ily photo. Occasionally there are references in the press to a radio. on sale, a new radio network or a controversy first ignited on radio, but such sightings of radio in the public discourse are cameo appearances, like those of a once-famous leading actor reduced to pia-on or character roles. Radio, however, is much more than a bit J yer or an aging "maiden aunt," as more than one author in this "'1'I'lIzi suggest. iQl A close look at radio demonstrates its vitality, its economic, politnica a.n d social importance, as well as its staying power in the commu-Co tlon ?eld. A flurry of articles last year about the Federal eire rn;unlcations Commission's concern over broadcasting for chiltil n emonstrated how far the radio star had fallen and how invisible ~"rnedium had become. In article after article, the term "broadcastmeant only television-not radio. Radio program listings, once a
"Rethinking Radio" From The Radio Reader (2002)
Opening chapter in The Radio Reader, co-edited with Jason Loviglio (Routledge 2002). Also TOC -- a great line-up of contributors, all of whom have gone on to prove my main point in this chapter: radio studies has come of age, giving radio as a medium the recognition it deserves as an important element of 20th and 21st century American culture.
An editorial introduction for radio
Continuum, 1992
While he enjoys sessions behind the microphone from time to time, Senator Richardson won't be giving up his day job. 'You can't do this too often-there's a line you cross when you stop being a serious politician and getting into the realms of being frivolous, and I can't do that,' he said. (Cameron 5) Chesterfield is merely the nation's cigarette, but the radio is the voice of the nation. (Adorno and Horkheimer 377) Language is sought in its most authentic state: in the spoken word-the word that is dried up and frozen into immobility by writing. A whole mystique is being born: that of the verb, of the pure poetic flash that disappears without trace, leaving nothing behind it but a vibration suspended in the air for but one brief moment. (Foucault 286) Some people leave the radio tap running all the time, and are only vaguely conscious of what is coming out of it. (Miller 183) The field of writing on radio is neither large nor worthy. As an object for behavioural research panics, it was quickly overtaken by the advent of cinema and television. As an object of textual analysis, it was less easily recuperated archivally than more visual fields. As a casual part of everyday life, it was held to occupy less real attention than, for example, the newspaper. But radio training manuals, audiological research and governmental policy documents are now being supplemented by a literature deriving its force from textual studies, although exegetical and historical work is still sparse. As the everyday becomes a category of contestation and valorisation in cultural theory, so Eco's use of the 'radio that is turned on but not tuned' as a model example of phatic communication may even offer providential investigation at a node of cultural criticism that formerly seemed to be devoid of significant signification (164). At the same time, the medium is expanding its audience reach, and its availability as a means of production. Australians, for example, spend more time listening to the radio each week than they do watching television, and have more options for becoming actively involved in what it broadcasts. In its different forms, radio both 'speaks to the public' and 'lets the public speak' (Potts 172). It
Editor’s Remarks: Saving Radio—The Cultural Value of Preserving Sound
Journal of Radio & Audio Media, 2016
February 2016 was one of my busiest years to date, but I decided to accept an invitation from Dr. Josh Shepperd to attend the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference in Washington, DC. Interestingly enough, it came about because I was following the RPTF Facebook page, of which he was the administrator. I sent him a message, inviting him to consider organizing a symposium for JRAM on a related theme-that was more than a year ago as of this publication. Attending the conference made me (and others respectively, I imagine) reconsider my part within radio history, as a broadcaster and researcher; how my views had changed through the years, how the industry had transformed, and what might be gleaned from radio's past. Part of that process meant a recognition and concerted effort that radio had to be "saved" to ensure there were recordings and related documentation to study, national and local, from numerous voices not yet collected or analyzed. It was an incredible gathering of audio enthusiasts, archivists, practitioners, and scholars, dedicated to preserving the history of radio and sound, then and now, with the goal of not letting audio history slip away. In this issue, the overall arching theme is dedicated to preserving radio (and audio) culture. In the immediacy of life, it is easy to forget that American broadcasting and audio technologies have shaped society and impacted the world, in good and not so good ways. That is the goal of this journal, in essence to provide reflection and critical discussion on such issues and themes. Aside from the 15-article symposium, organized by Drs. Amanda Keeler, Josh Shepperd, and Christopher Sterling, we include two articles that were independently submitted to JRAM, which were located apart from, but appropriately within, the theme. One of which was a contribution by Dr. Mary Myers, who discusses the "The Hoosier Schoolmaster of the Air"-Dr. Clarence M. Morgan. The other is "Networking the Counterculture: The 1970 Alternative Media Conference at Goddard College" by Drs. Liz W. Faber and John L. Hochheimer, a rare historical piece that provides a unique account of alternative radio. Finally, the journal closes with two book reviews, one with a first look at listeners' letters following Orson Welles's broadcast of The War of the Worlds. The second review is the autobiography
Feminist Media Histories, 2018
Radio studies is an inherently feminist endeavor. Radio was long considered too commercial, too personal, too crowded with pop music, too frivolous, too. .. feminine to be taken very seriously either in academia or in the culture at large. My own introductions to radio studies and feminist radio studies were one and the same. Even before returning to graduate school, I happened upon Michele Hilmes's landmark study Radio Voices through the serendipity of an Amazon search. As others have noted before me, Hilmes masterfully mixes industrial and cultural history, with a heavy emphasis on gender. In her fifth chapter , " The Disembodied Woman, " she argues that gender is a " central conflict " and formative influence in the evolution of American radio. 1 Feminist radio scholars are still answering her call to tease out the complex relationships between the women who have historically composed the majority of radio's listeners and the medium's broadcasters—a historically (but not exclusively) masculine group of producers, writers, advertisers, and radio station owners. Radio studies incorporates cultural studies, gender studies, and the aesthetic tool kit it shares with film and literary studies. Indeed, feminists' emphasis on the importance of female-centric popular media helped make broadcasting an acceptable academic focus. 2 An intrinsically intertextual approach for an inter-textual medium, scholarship on radio overlaps many other branches of media inquiry, especially television. However, it is important to understand radio as its own medium. Radio preceded television by some three decades, and many of its industrial and aesthetic characteristics shaped its younger broadcast sibling's development. Radio continued to exist beyond its so-called Golden Age (generally agreed to span from the s to the early s), when the last American network radio dramas made the leap to television in the early s. Radio remains a vibrant, international site of public debate, cultural exchange, and
Up in the air? The matter of radio studies
Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 2018
Ten years ago It is ten years since this journal published 'Ten Years of Radio Studies: The Very Idea!', a reflection on a decade of work since the launch of the Radio Studies Network (Lacey, 2008). The Network had come together in 1998 when a group of radio scholars from around the UK responded to a plea, published in The Guardian by Peter Lewis a year earlier, for the academy to take radio seriously (Lewis, 2007). 1 Scholarship on radio had long been under-represented in the field of media and cultural studies in comparison to that on television, film and print, and increasingly, of course, the "new media". The essay acknowledged and celebrated the Network's spur to new research, new collaborations and new spaces for discussion and dissemination, including this journal and the biannual transnational conference. Ten years on, there was a new confidence in our collective endeavours, no need any longer to preface every contribution with an apologetic justification. But the phrase, 'the very idea!' was intended to indicate a certain ambivalence, if not quite incredulity, towards the conception (in both senses of that word), of radio as a separate field of study. To caricature the main thesis, I argued against the idea of 'radio studies' on the grounds that there is no such thing as radio, and that setting up a new intellectual enclave would in any case just continue to isolate, distort and marginalise our work pragmatically, intellectually and philosophically. This essay is a response to the editors' invitation-and challenge-to revisit that argument another ten years on. 2 No such thing as radio Of course, I was not seriously claiming that there is no such thing as radio. Rather, I was trying to draw attention to the fact that there is no singular thing called radio. Instead, this singular word, radio, is called upon to describe any number of different thingsmaterial, virtual, institutional, aesthetic, experiential. And, in turn, each of these meanings unfolds over time and in different contexts to reveal anything and everything, from a cat's whisker contraption of minerals and metal, rigged up by pioneering
Radio reinvented: the enduring appeal of audio in the digital age
This issue marks quite a departure for AJR as it focuses on one medium – radio – and one that rarely gets to be the centre of academic attention. Radio itself has long been described as the invisible medium, ever present, but in the background of our lives. Radio scholarship has had a similar invisibility, scattered among journals from different disciplines and with only two publications worldwide devoted solely to the discipline: the US-based Journal of Radio & Audio Media (formerly known as the Journal of Radio Studies) and the UK-based The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media. Radio scholars could find themselves in departments of journalism or media studies, history or creative arts. As a result, this issue requires a broader scope than the lens of journalism to explore current issues in radio.
The Lost Critical History of Radio
This was published as “Radio’s Lost Critical History,” Australian Journalism Review Special Edition “Radio Reinvented: the enduring appeal of audio in the digital age,” 36:2, Spring 2015. For an art form to flourish, a sense of expressive continuity – a knowledge of aesthetic roots and a sense of how the new connects with the old – is vitally necessary, both for creative producers and for audiences. Yet, across the world but in the US in particular, soundwork’s critical history remains in a largely neglected state. Imagine the field of literature without access to the vast majority of books; imagine a contemporary cinema that cannot clearly recall what film was like before Star Wars, or Gone With the Wind. This is more or less the state of soundwork today. In this article I focus primarily on the United States, but most of what I say applies to other national contexts as well, with a few notable exceptions that I highlight.