This book charts the struggle to achieve a national radio broadcasting service in Britain after World War 1. It starts with young wireless engineers struggling to develop radio systems capable of transmitting speech to aircraft during the war. It then follows those same engineers for the next five years, and details their early experimental broadcasts from the Marconi New Street works that included the famous 1920 broadcast by Dame Nellie Melba. The Marconi engineers then created the 2MT Writtle station. Its sparkling success led the same engineers to design and then build the BBC, starting in 1923. This then is the story of those amazing times. It is aimed at a wide readership, not just lovers of historic or technical tomes. The book does include separate technical/historical appendices on the Writtle, Chelmsford and 2LO transmitters, the Dutch station PCGG, Belgian station OTL and even the village of Writtle itself. The book also looks at the work of many early pioneers who tried to make broadcasting happen even sooner, including Grindell Matthews, Mahlon Loomis, Reginald Fessenden and David Hughes. It includes an overview of the explosion in radio broadcasting in America along with a detailed Glossary and Appendices on all aspects of the new science of radio. With over 200 photographs, it draws on over 25 years of research and includes much previously unpublished archive material.

"Around the world small children are captivated by programmes produced especially for them - from stalwarts like Sesame Street to recent arrivals such as Teletubbies. Focusing on the UK and US, this book shows how the pre-school television sector has shifted from a small localised industry to a complex, commercially-driven global business"--Provided by publisher.

European Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) are struggling to come to terms with a number of issues: the Europeanisation and globalisation of media ownership, production, programming and distribution; the 'marketisation' of media output; technological convergence; and audience fragmentation. While the prevailing nation-state frameworks for cultural and political identity are gradually fading, some PSBs are finding it hard to serve and promote national culture and identity, and to meet the challenge of growing uncertainties within a cosmopolitan Europe. At the same time, PSBs are considered to be an important way of helping European citizens make sense of such developments by bearing traces of collective identities and therefore creating an expanded, pan-European cultural space. Can PSBs be 'multi-cultural' and mobilise a new sense of Europeanness, while at the same time making the transformation into Public Service Media (PSM) and delivering public service content that will meet audience needs in a digital age? The scholars in this volume - covering mainly European countries but also looking comparatively at the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - discuss the contemporary relevance of PSM as a cultural and political enterprise and as a forum in which a variety of cultural demands can best be met.

From the early Attaturk years, Turkish radio broadcasting was seen as a great hope for sealing the national identity of the new Turkish Republic. Since the inaugural broadcast in 1927, the national elite designed radio broadcasting to represent the "voice of a nation." Here Meltem Ahiska reveals how radio broadcasting actually showed Turkey's uncertainty over its position in relation to Europe. While the national elite wanted to build their own Turkish identity, at the same time they desired recognition from Europe that Turkey was now a Westernized modern country. Ahiska shows how these tensions played out over the radio in the conflicting depictions and discrepancies between the national elite and "the people," "cosmopolitan" Istanbul and "national" Ankara, and men and women (especially in Radio drama). Through radio broadcasting we can see how Occidentalism dictated the Turkish Republic's early history and shaped how modern Turkey saw itself.

Over the past decade, there has been a huge increase in ordinary people's access to video production technology. These essays explore the theoretical significance of this trend and its impact on society, as well as examining a wide range of case studies, from camcorders and camera phones to YouTube and citizen journalism --Provided by publisher.

"Digital radio switchover is unlikely to ever happen in the UK" writes radio specialist Grant Goddard. His book offers a blow-by-blow chronicle of the efforts to implement 'DAB' as a replacement for FM and AM radio in Britain, from the deliberations of the Digital Radio Working Group in 2008 to the legislation of the Digital Economy Act during the final days of the Labour government in 2010. Goddard uncovers a secret deal struck between the government and the UK commercial radio industry to force DAB radio upon the British public. He also exposes a wealth of inaccurate and distorted information published by radio industry lobbyists as part of their campaign to convince the government and consumers that take-up of DAB radio has been a success in the UK and overseas. Whereas, the data in this book show that consumer interest in DAB radio had already started slowing down, making digital radio switchover unlikely to ever happen in the UK. Grant Goddard is a London-based media analyst specialising in the radio broadcasting sector. For thirty years, he has worked in the radio industry as a senior manager and consultant, both in the UK and overseas, and has written extensively about the radio business for consumer and trade magazines.

Against a backdrop of great change in technology and the economics of broadcasting and new media, this timely survey of contemporary attitudes to accountability and the public interest in broadcasting is based on over fifty interviews conducted in four democracies: India, Australia, the UK and the US.

'This innovative and clearly written handbook does exactly what it claims on the cover, providing students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in Radio Studies... Chignell writes about radio with an engaging mixture of scholarly detachment and private passion' - The Radio Journal 'There is a need for a straightforward, wide-ranging, and up-to-date introduction to ways to study radio and other new audio-based media. Hugh Chignell's new book certainly fits the bill, and admirably takes the reader from initial ideas through to additional readings which explore the core issues in greater depth. It is crisply and engagingly written, draws upon a very good range of scholarship, and provides many useful contemporary examples... Students will find it an essential aid to their studies, and it may even go someway to ensuring that the study of radio is as important in the academy as its visual cousins' - Viewfinder 'This book is a useful starting point for radio students and staff, packed with citations and pithy comment from the author. It is a rich resource book for academic radio study at all levels' - Janey Gordon, University of Bedfordshire The SAGE Key Concepts series provides students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensible study aids and guides to comprehension. Key Concepts in Radio Studies: " Provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use introduction to the field " Grounds theory with global examples " Takes it further with recommended reading " Covers the central ideas and practices from production and media studies " Situates radio studies within its historical context and contemporary auditory culture

The book focuses on radio and sound docufiction and docudrama through comparative analysis of the British and the Italian output from post war years to the 2010s, from both a historical and formal point of view. It sheds light on a rather neglected area of study providing a systematic survey of the development of the form and of its current status and perspectives, and at the same time constructing viable analytical tools that can be used to investigate individual productions. Considering the different docudramatic output in formats and quantity in the two countries, the book explores case studies from BBC Radio, which continue to air a high number of programmes with a great variety of formats and subgenres, and Italian case studies from both independent bodies and the Radio RAI, whose docudramatic production has declined since the late 1980s. Specifically, the study seeks to explain how radio language in its purely acoustic dimension allows access to unpredictable layers of truth often complementary, when not overtly alternative, to the documental truth of declaredly journalistic or scientific programmes. A well-researched resource for university students, scholars, researchers and educators in media, sociology of media and history. In-depth analysis of an original topic.

The developments in digital television technology provide the unprecedented opportunity to drastically extend the role of television as a content delivery channel. E-health, e-commerce, e-government, and e-learning are only a few examples of value-added services provided over digital televisions infrastructures. These changes in the television industry challenge companies to adjust their strategies in order to meet the opportunities and threats in this new environment.Interactive Digital Television: Techniques and Applications presents the developments in the domain of interactive digital television covering both technical and business aspects. This book focuses on analyzing concepts, research issues, and methodological approaches, presenting existing solutions such as systems and prototypes for researchers, academicians, scholars, professionals and practitioners.

While television today is taken for granted, Americans in the 1950s faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the home and in American culture in general. Protestant leaders--both mainstream and evangelical--began to think carefully about what television meant for their communities and its potential impact on their work. Using the American Protestant experience of the introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of the interplay between a new medium and its users in an engaging book suitable for general readers and students alike.

Petros Iosifidis investigates the challenges that Public Television (PTV) broadcasters in Western European countries encounter in a competitive digital broadcasting environment and looks at the policies and strategies that these broadcasters are adopting in order to remain accountable, competitive and efficient. By looking at a number of large and small PTV broadcasters, the book reveals the different policies and strategy patterns that exist across Europe and uses European experience to propose workable strategies to be adopted by national PTV broadcasters.

By looking at a range of different European Public Television (PTV) broadcasters, this book investigates the challenges that these broadcasters encounter in a competitive digital broadcasting environment and reveals the different policies and strategies that they are adopting in order to remain accountable, competitive and efficient.

This book traces how the channel came about, and provides an account of its eventful history through a focus on key figures including Jeremy Isaacs, Liz Forgan, Phil Redmond, Michael Grade, Andrea Wonfor and Michael Jackson. It covers signature and stand-out (for good and bad reasons) C4 programs such as "Right To Reply," "The Tube," "The Comic Strip Presents," "The Big Breakfast," "The Word," "Brookside," "Wife Swap" and "Faking it"; the channel's success with American imports such as "Hill Street Blues," "Friends" and "Sex and the City," and the rise and fall of Film Four. Luke Johnson, Chairman of C4, has contributed a foreword for this book.

There is a great deal at stake for everyone in the future of Arab television. Political and social upheavals in this central but unsettled region are increasingly played out on television screens and in the tussles over programming that take place behind them. Al-Jazeera is of course only one player among a still-growing throng of satellite channels, which now include private terrestrial stations in some Arab states. It is an industry urgently needing to be made sense of; this book does exactly this in a very readable and authoritative way, through exploring and explaining the evolving structures and content choices in both entertainment and news of contemporary Arab television. It shows how owners, investors, journalists, presenters, production companies, advertisers, regulators and media freedom advocates influence each other in a geolinguistic marketplace that encompasses the Arab region itself and communities abroad.
Probing internal and external interventions in the Arab television landscape, the book offers a timely and compelling sequel to Naomi Sakr's 'Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East', which won the Middle Eastern Studies Book Prize in 2003.

Local television newscasts around the country look alike and are filled with crime, accidents, and disasters. Interviews with more than 2,000 TV journalists around the country demonstrate that news looks this way because of the ingrained belief that 'eye-ball grabbers' are the only way to build an audience. This book contradicts the conventional wisdom using empirical evidence drawn from a five-year content analysis of local news in more than 154 stations in 50 markets around the country. The book shows that 'how' a story is reported is more important for building ratings than what the story is about. Local TV does not have to 'bleed to lead'. Instead local journalists can succeed by putting in the effort to get good stories, finding and balancing sources, seeking out experts, and making stories relevant to the local audience.

Since the 1950s British broadcasters have used American programmes as schedule fillers, cornerstones and as 'must see' attractions. However, many critics, broadcasters and scholars alike have tended to malign, ignore or sideline the contribution such programmes have made to British television. Through analysis of popular and industrial discourses, the changing roles of such programmes on British screens and interviews with key British broadcasters, this work explores how American programs have become an important part of British television culture.

This is a practical, how-to guide to producing and presenting radio to a professional standard. Packed with day-to-day advice that captures the essence and buzz of live broadcasting; from preparing your show before it goes out, last minute changes to running orders, deciding what to drop in over a track, how to sell a feature or promote a programme, setting up competitions, thinking fast in a phone in- this book will help you do all that and more. It covers network and commercial, music and talk radio skills. It will particularly suit the independent local or community radio sector, where people often start out. It features advice from industry professionals, covers industry-wide best practice with enough 'need-to-know' technical information to get you up and running, and distills tried and tested practical tips from a specialist BBC radio trainer, and award-winning radio broadcaster with over 15 years of experience. A handbook you wouldn't want to be without before you go on air.

A new guide to Spain's most popular and dynamic medium, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2006. Any follower of Spanish cinema who turns to television finds that the locally produced programs most appreciated by both audiences and critics are as creative and original as any feature film. This book, the first of its kind, gives close readings of TV programmes broadcast from the 1970s to the present day. They embrace drama, comedy, and talk/reality shows and are currently available on DVD. It also treats the obsessive theme of television in Almodovar, Spain's most celebrated film director, arguing for a re-reading of his work in the light of TV studies. In addition to analysing particular programmes, this book examines TV channels, production companies, governments, and the role of the press, academy, and audience. PAUL JULIAN SMITH is Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge.

What television viewers around the world watch often depends less on popularity or government policies than on the personal relationships between buyers and sellers in the international programme market. A few thousand acquisitions and distribution professionals decide what programmes the earth's inhabitants can watch, and who can watch them. This book provides an inside look at the cultural assumptions and business practices of these television merchants. It argues that the market in television programs responds principally to institutional needs, rather than to the wishes of the viewing public or the skills of television's creative artists. Leaving aside conventional questions about the production contexts, textual strategies, or popular reception of entertainment television worldwide, this project trains its focus on the business practices of global television sales in order to provide a lucid overview of the diversity of firms, business practices, and programming genres present in international television. Consequently, this volume provides the first comprehensive portrait of the operations of the international television business, the people who work in the business, and the ideas that circulate among these businesspeople. Such a portrait is crucial to any theoretical treatment of television globalisation, since international television executives determine global television flows in the first instance, based on their own understandings of the economics of the business and the preferences of their primary audiences.

While not a production study, this book attempts to provide an insight into the inner workings of the television industry. As such its central concern is with processes, not texts or techniques or histories. "Television Industries" focuses on the essential elements of the industry: the policy and regulatory frameworks, the swiftly changing world of video production technology, all of which provides the backdrops against which broadcasters shape and sell their products. The book also examines the working practices of scheduling, budgeting, selling advertising air-time and so forth. Where issues may be familiar to readers (for example debates around public service broadcasting) the entries aim to be explanatory and fresh. Of course, it's not possible to cover every aspect of what is a complex and ever changing industry. Nonetheless, the aim is to provide a starting point for students and new scholars as they start to research into the nature of the broadcasting industry. Hence, this volume is extensively cross-referenced, to guide the reader as they tease out for themselves some of the complexity of this industry. There are several other elements that are distinctive about this volume. Perhaps the most striking of these is its blend of contributions from the UK and US. This book will raise as many questions as it provides answers. It aims to make a contribution to the on-going debates in the now well-established world of television studies with fresh perspectives on some familiar, and some not so familiar, landscapes. Fully illustrated, "Television Industries" is intended as an authoritative and accessible guide to the inner workings of the television industry.

The federal government's approach to regulating the spectrum remains largely administrative, causing major inefficiency and waste. Ironically, just as the FCC has begun to use market mechanisms, some people are pushing to treat spectrum as a common resource open to all entrants. Commons proponents maintain that with new, interference-avoiding technology, licensing is becoming unnecessary and impractical. In this brief study, noted economist William J. Baumol evaluates two options for spectrum governance -a tradable license (market) approach and a commons approach. He compares the practicality of each in terms of six key issues: interference, adequacy of investment in innovation, monopoly power, preservation of diversity, service to rural areas, and the tension between vested interests and the need for adaptable arrangements. Baumol demonstrates that, while neither approach is ideal, a commons regime has severe shortcomings. Above all, he emphasizes the importance of impermanence in the granting of licenses to preserve the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen technological and other developments.

Examines the role of the church in the moral development of radio. ""Radio, Morality, and Culture: Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1919-1945"" examines the moral controversies surrounding radio's development during its formative years. In comparing the fledgling medium in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, Robert S Fortner documents how the church failed to participate in radio's moral development and instead engaged in internecine warfare over issues of legitimacy and orthodoxy. The church was arguing about theological turf and dealing with internal disputes while radio policy was being developed and communications history was being written. Fortner reveals how the church, doomed to play little more than a bit part in the future of radio, eventually lost its voice altogether in the continuing development of electronic media. Fortner effectively synthesizes cultural history and theory, communication studies, and the role religious organizations played in shaping the content and character of early radio. Geared to scholars of history, communications, and theology, ""Radio, Morality, and Culture"" provides a useful resource for research, scholarship, and public policy.

Original essays exploring important developments in radio and television broadcasting.

The essays included in this collection represent some of the best cultural and historical research on broadcasting in the U. S. today. Each one concentrates on a particular event in broadcast history--beginning with Marconi's introduction of wireless technology in 1899.

Michael Brown examines newspaper reporting in America of Marconi's belief in Martians, stories that effectively rendered Marconi inconsequential to the further development of radio. The widespread installation of radios in automobiles in the 1950s, Matthew Killmeier argues, paralleled the development of television and ubiquitous middle-class suburbia in America. Heather Hundley analyzes depictions of male and female promiscuity as presented in the sitcom "Cheers" at a time concurrent with media coverage of the AIDS crisis. Fritz Messere examines the Federal Radio Act of 1927 and the clash of competing ideas about what role radio should play in American life. Chad Dell recounts the high-brow programming strategy NBC adopted in 1945 to distinguish itself from other networks. And George Plasketes studies the critical reactions to "Cop Rock, " an ill-fated combination of police drama and musical, as an example of society's resistance to genre-mixing or departures from formulaic programming.

The result is a collection that represents some of the most recent and innovative scholarship, cultural and historical, on the intersections of broadcasting and American cultural, political, and economic life.

This exciting book goes to the heart of a creative commercial. and public service culture - it shows why ITV matters and how. it was made to work so well. A tremendous contribution.
. Professor Jean Seaton, University of Westminster

. This is a valuable addition to studies of ITV's history and. programming...
. Tom O'Malley, Professor of Media Studies, University of Wales, Aberyswyth, and Co-Editor of "Media History,." . . Since breaking the BBCs monopoly in 1955, ITV has been at the. centre of the British television landscape. To coincide with the. fiftieth anniversary of the first ITV broadcast, this accessible book. offers a range of perspectives on the complex and multifaceted history of. Britains first commercial broadcaster.

. The book explores key tensions and conflicts which have influenced the. ITV service. Chapters focus on particular institutions, including. London Weekend Television and ITN, and programme forms, including. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Upstairs Downstairs "and "Trisha,." The contributors show that ITV has had to tread an uneasy line between. public service and commercial imperatives, between a pluralistic regional. structure and a national network, and between popular appeal and. quality programming. A timeline of key events in the history of ITV is also. included.

. "ITV Cultures" provides a timely intervention in debates on broadcasting. and cultural history for academics and researchers, and a lively. introduction to the history of ITV for students and general readers.. . .

." Contributors: Rod Allen, City University; Jonathan Bignell, University of Reading; John Ellis, Royal Holloway, University of London; Jackie Harrison, Universityof Sheffield; Jamie Medhurst, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Matt Hills, Cardiff University; Steve Neale, University of Exeter; Helen Wheatley, University of Reading; Sherryl Wilson, Bournemouth University..