The history of American radio broadcasting has often been written as a lament for lost possibilities, a tale of what might have been. One now familiar landmark in that account is the story of how American commercial broadcasters, in the passage of the 1934 Communications Act, won a great victory over reformers who wanted frequencies set aside for non-commercial use. It is generally agreed that the defeat of the radio reformers was decisive and permanent, and that the best hopes for a public radio in the United States had been thwarted by 1934. In Radio's Civic Ambition, however, author David Goodman focuses not on the lost possibilities and defeated reformers, but on what did happen as the beginning of another chapter in the story of the struggle over the meaning and purpose of American broadcasting. Commercial broadcasters paid a considerable price for their victory: in the years after 1934, American broadcasters always had to be seen to be providing public service as well as entertainment. An impressive range of programs, from imaginatively conceived classical music broadcasts to lively multi-opinion radio forums, was designed to promote civic engagement and individualization. By the later 1930s, political leaders, key social science and communications intellectuals, the Federal Communications Commission, and many articulate and educated ordinary Americans, increasingly expected commercial broadcasters in the US to perform a range of ambitious civic functions, including encouraging local community, strengthening democracy, fostering talent, and producing tolerance for other points of view.
A new look at the history of commercial radio broadcasting in America, Radio's Civic Ambition will appeal to students and scholars in communications and radio studies, music history, media studies, and American history.

In "Scripted Affects, Branded Selves," Gabriella Lukacs analyzes the development of a new primetime serial called "trendy drama" as the Japanese television industry's ingenious response to market fragmentation. Much like the HBO hit "Sex and the City," trendy dramas feature well-heeled young sophisticates enjoying consumer-oriented lifestyles while managing their unruly love lives. Integrating a political-economic analysis of television production with reception research, Lukacs suggests that the trendy drama marked a shift in the Japanese television industry from offering story-driven entertainment to producing lifestyle-oriented programming. She interprets the new televisual preoccupation with consumer trends not as a sign of the medium's downfall, but as a savvy strategy to appeal to viewers who increasingly demand entertainment that feels more personal than mass-produced fare. After all, what the producers of trendy dramas realized in the late 1980s was that taste and lifestyle were sources of identification that could be manipulated to satisfy mass and niche demands more easily than could conventional marketing criteria such as generation or gender. Lukacs argues that by capitalizing on the semantic fluidity of the notion of lifestyle, commercial television networks were capable of uniting viewers into new affective alliances that, in turn, helped them bury anxieties over changing class relations in the wake of the prolonged economic recession.

The golden age of radio is often recalled as a time when the medium unified the nation, when families gathered around the radios in homes across the country to listen to live, commercially sponsored network broadcasts. In "Points on the Dial," Alexander Russo revises our understanding of radio's past by revealing the hidden histories of production, distribution, and reception practices during this era, which extended from the 1920s into the 1950s. Russo brings to light a tiered broadcasting system with intermingling but distinct national, regional, and local programming forms, sponsorship patterns, and methods of program distribution. Examining a wide range of practices, including regional networking, sound-on-disc transcription, the use of station representatives, spot advertising, and programming aimed at homes with several radios, he not only recasts our understanding of the relationship between national networks and local stations but also charts the development of new ways of listening--often distractedly rather than attentively--that set the stage for radio in the second half of the twentieth century.

"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.

This title explores the development of local television news and the economic and social factors that elevated it to prominence.As the chief source of information for many people and a key revenue stream for the country's broadcast conglomerates, local television news has grown from a curiosity into a powerful journalistic and cultural force. In ""A Newscast for the Masses"", Tim Kiska examines the evolution of television news in Detroit, from its beginnings in the late 1940s, when television was considered a ""wild young medium,"" to the early 1980s, when cable television permanently altered the broadcast landscape. Kiska shows how the local news, which was initially considered a poor substitute for respectable print journalism, became the cornerstone of television programming and the public's preferred news source.Kiska begins his study in 1947 with the first Detroit television broadcast, made by WWJ-TV. Owned by the Evening News Association, the same company that owned the Detroit News, WWJ developed a credible broadcast news operation as a cross-promotional vehicle for the newspaper. Yet by the late 1960s WWJ was unseated by newcomers WXYZ-TV and WJBK-TV, whose superior coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots lured viewers away from WWJ. WXYZ-TV would eventually become the most powerful news outlet in Detroit with the help of its cash-rich parent company, the American Broadcasting Corporation, and its use of sophisticated survey research and advertising techniques to grow its news audience.Though critics tend to deride the sensationalism and showmanship of local television news, Kiska demonstrates that over the last several decades newscasts have effectively tailored their content to the demands of the viewing public and, as a result, have become the most trusted source of information for the average American and the most lucrative source of profit for television networks.""A Newscast for the Masses"" is based on extensive interviews with journalists who participated in the development of television in Detroit and careful research into the files of the McHugh and Hoffman consulting firm, which used social science techniques to discern the television viewing preferences of metro Detroiters. Anyone interested in television history or journalism will appreciate this detailed and informative study.

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.

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.

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.

Dozens of books currently available address some aspect of digital television, yet almost all of these texts deal exclusively with engineering and production issues associated with implementing new hardware and software. "Digital Television: DTV and the Consumer" offers a pragmatic, more socially oriented basis for understanding digital television. Beginning with a basic summary of how digital television works and how it evolved into its present state in the different television viewing environments (over-the-air, cable and satellite), author and researcher Book then offers the reader a more practical understanding of how digital television is currently being consumed in the household. Additionally, the text presents a summary of what consumers are saying regarding their digital television experience and what this data suggests for the future development of digital television business models.

Unique to this volume are numerous "Innovator Essays" by some of the industry's digital television pioneers. These insightful essays - from significant DTV innovators such as Jim Goodmon, president and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting, home of the first commercial digital television broadcast - give brief snapshots of critical moments in the transition and rollout of DTV, while focusing on what the future holds for consumers and the broadcast and electronics industries.

The latest entry in Blackwell Publishing's "Media and Technology" series, "Digital Television: DTV and the Consumer" provides media students, scholars, and professionals a compelling perspective of the social and cultural presence of this emerging technological phenomenon.

Blackness has always played a central role in the American imagination. Therefore, it should not be surprising that popular television--a medium that grew up with the Civil Rights Movement--has featured blackness as both a foil and a key narrative theme throughout its sixty-year existence. Ironically, in modern "colorblind" times, we are faced with a unique turn of events--blackness is actually overrepresented in television sitcoms and dramas.
Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America presents fifteen classic and contemporary studies of the shifting, complex relationship between popular television and blackness. Using a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, these essays examine four key issues that have framed popular and scholarly inquiries into the nature of race on television:
* The black-white binary * The power of media * Distinguishing between "negative" and "positive" images * The relative importance of markets versus racial motives in television
Firmly establishing popular television as a central cultural forum in our society, Channeling Blackness looks at how television has profoundly shaped and been shaped by America's ambivalent relationship with blackness. It provides numerous examples of how our current interaction with television distinguishes the lived experiences of today from those of the past. The book also shows how the entertainment function of television often masks its ideological purpose, particularly its role in reflecting and reproducing America's racial order. A useful supplement in any number of courses on race and society, Channeling Blackness is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courseson race and media, media and society, television studies, television criticism, communication studies, and African American and ethnic studies.

Public radio stands as a valued national institution, one whose fans and listeners actively support it with their time and their money. In this new history of this important aspect of American culture, author Jack W. Mitchell looks at the dreams that inspired those who created it, the all too human realities that grew out of those dreams, and the criticism they incurred from both sides of the political spectrum. As National Public Radio's very first employee, and the first producer of its legendary "All Things Considered," Mitchell tells the story of public radio from the point of view of an insider, a participant, and a thoughtful observer. He traces its origins in the progressive movement of the 20th century, and analyzes the people, institutions, ideas, political forces, and economic realities that helped it evolve into what we know as public radio today. NPR and its local affiliates have earned their reputation for thoughtful commentary and excellent journalism, and their work is especially notable in light of the unique struggles they have faced over the decades. More than any other book published on the subject, Mitchell's provides an accurate guide to public radio's development, offering a balanced analysis of how it has fulfilled much of its promise but has sometimes fallen short. This comprehensive overview of their mission will fascinate listeners whose enjoyment and support of public radio has made it possible, and made it great.

Film and television production are important components of the Canadian economy. In Vancouver, popular American television series like "The X-Files" and Canadian series like "Da Vinci's Inquest" have boosted the city's profile as a centre for international and domestic productions. Serra Tinic's "On Location" is the first empirical analysis of regional Canadian television producers in the context of developing global media markets.

Tinic observes that global television production in Vancouver has been a contradictory process that has, on one level, led to the homogenization of culturally specific storylines, while simultaneously facilitating the development of new avenues for international ventures. The author explains how federal and regional network considerations, funding guidelines, and partnerships with international co-producers affect the capacity of Canadian television producers to negotiate culturally specific storylines in the development process. She further interrogates the concepts of globalization, culture, and national identity, and their relationship to broadcasting from the perspectives of members of the television industry themselves, highlighting the extent to which industry practices in Vancouver epitomize current trends in global television production. "On Location" fills a major gap in contemporary media and cultural studies debates that question the connections between the politics of place, culture, and commerce within the larger context of cultural globalization.

"Television in the Antenna Age" is a brief, accessible, and engaging overview of the medium's history and development in the US. Integrating three major concerns--television as an industry, a technology, and an art--the book is a basic primer on the complex, fascinating, and often overlooked story of television and its impact on American life.
Covers the entire history of American television, from its urban, middle-class beginnings in the late 40s, to the contemporary impact of new technologies and consolidated corporate.

Includes interview segments with industry insiders, pictures, and sidebars to illustrate important figures, trends, and events

During the second half of the 20th century, the developments in television broadcasting exerted an immeasurable influence over our social, cultural and economic practices. This volume presents an overview, written by leading media scholars, which traces the history of broadcasting in two major centres of television development and export: Great Britain and the USA. to make connections between events and tendencies that both unite and differentiate these national broadcasting traditions. From the origins of the public service and commercial systems of broadcasting to the contemporary period of technological and economic convergence, this book provides an accessible overview of the history of television technology, institutions, policies, programmes and audiences.

This is the fascinating history of the innovative work of Wisconsin's educational radio stations, from the first broadcast by experimental station 9XM at the University of Wisconsin to the network of stations known today as Wisconsin Public Radio. Randall Davidson provides the first comprehensive history of the University of Wisconsin radio station, WHA; affiliated state-owned station, WLBL; and the post-World War II FM stations that formed the WPR network. Davidson describes how, with homemade equipment and ideas developed from scratch, 9XM became a tangible example of "the Wisconsin Idea," bringing the educational riches of the university to all the state's residents.

If a judgment were ever rendered on all the multi-million words I have spoken into microphones, I hope something like this could be said: 'He [Huntley] had a great respect, almost an awe, of the medium in which he worked. He regarded it as a privilege, not a license.... Perhaps the best I might hope is that by some accident of voice tone or arrangement of words I did, on a few occasions, excite, exhort, annoy or provoke a few of my fellow human beings to think with their heads, not the viscera'"-Chet Huntley. This biography of NBC newsman Chet Huntley, who, along with David Brinkley, anchored NBC's "Huntley-Brinkley Report," covers his youth on a farm in Montana, his education and his graduation from the University of Washington, his development as a radio personality and news reporter for stations in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, and his work for CBS, ABC and NBC radio and television in Los Angeles from 1939 to 1955. It also details his move to New York and his work on the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" from 1956 to 1970, his retirement from the news business, his supervision of the development of the Big Sky Ski resort in Montana, and his death from cancer in 1974 at the age of 62.

" Among America's most unusual and successful weapons during the Cold War were Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. RFE-RL had its origins in a post-war America brimming with confidence and secure in its power. Unlike the Voice of America, which conveyed a distinctly American perspective on global events, RFE-RL served as surrogate home radio services and a vital alternative to the controlled, party-dominated domestic press in Eastern Europe. Over twenty stations featured programming tailored to individual countries. They reached millions of listeners ranging from industrial workers to dissident leaders such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel. Broadcasting Freedom draws on rare archival material and offers a penetrating insider history of the radios that helped change the face of Europe. Arch Puddington reveals new information about the connections between RFE-RL and the CIA, which provided covert funding for the stations during the critical start-up years in the early 1950s. He relates in detail the efforts of Soviet and Eastern Bloc officials to thwart the stations; their tactics ranged from jamming attempts, assassinations of radio journalists, the infiltration of spies onto the radios' staffs, and the bombing of the radios' headquarters. Puddington addresses the controversies that engulfed the stations throughout the Cold War, most notably RFE broadcasts during the Hungarian Revolution that were described as inflammatory and irresponsible. He shows how RFE prevented the Communist authorities from establishing a monopoly on the dissemination of information in Poland and describes the crucial roles played by the stations as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke apart. Broadcasting Freedom is also a portrait of the Cold War in America. Puddington offers insights into the strategic thinking of the RFE-RL leadership and those in the highest circles of American government, including CIA directors, secretaries of state, and even presidents.

The voice we hear on the radio--the voice with no body attached--is a key element in the history of media in the twentieth century. Before television and the internet, there was radio; and much of what defined the makeup of these newer media was influenced by the way radio was broadcast to people and the way people listened to it. Emergency Broadcasting focuses on key moments in the history of early radio in order to come to an understanding of the role voice played in radio to describe national crises, a fictional invasion from outer space, and general entertainment. Taking the Hindenburg disaster, The War of the Worlds hoax, Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats, and the serial mystery The Shadow as his focal points, Edward Miller illustrates how the radio, for the first time, instantly communicated to a mass audience, and how that communication--where the voice counts more than the image--is still at work today in television and the World Wide Web. Theoretically sophisticated, yet grounded in historical detail, Emergency Broadcasting offers a unique examination of radio and at the same time develops a complex understanding of the media whose birth is owed to the innovations--and disembodied power--established by it. Author note: Edward D. Miller is Chair of the Department of Media Culture at The College of Staten Island/CUNY.

Blending cultural, religious and media history, Tona Hangen offers a detailed look into the world of religious radio. She uses recordings, sermons, fan mail and other sources to tell the stories of the determined broadcasters and devoted listeners who, together, transformed American radio evangelism from an on-air novelty in the 1920s into a profitable and wide-reaching industry by the 1950s. Hangen traces the careers of three of the most successful Protestant radio evangelists - Paul Rader of Chicago, Aimee Semple McPherson of Los Angeles and Charles Fuller of Pasadena - and examines the strategies they used to bring their messages to listerners across the nation. Initially shut out of network radio and free airtime, both of which were available only to mainstream Protestant and Catholic groups, evangelical broadcasters gained access to the airwaves with paid-time programming. By the mid-20th century millions of Americans regularly tuned in to evangelical programming, making it one of the medium's most distinctive and durable genres. The voluntary contributions of these listeners in turn helped to bankroll religious radio's remarkable growth. Revealing the entwined development of evangelical religion and modern mass media, Hangen demonstrates that the history of one is incomplete without the history of the other; both are important to understanding American culture in the 20th century.

This book presents information on minority commercial radio and television ownership in the United States. It reviews the history of such ownership and the role of viewpoint diversity in a changing industry. It also continues the data collection efforts, examining the current status of minority commercial broadcast ownership.

A collection of essays by leading media professionals and academics, which debates the past, present and future of British television drama. Writers, producers and television executives reflect on the changing face of TV drama, and academics present case studies on critical approaches, general topics and specific programmes.

Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. In "Stations of the Cross" political theorist Paul Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement's popular culture--evangelical conservative radio--interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson's enormously influential program, "Focus on the Family"--its messages, politics, and effects--Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture.
Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory--in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno--can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno's theories to interpret the nationally broadcast "Focus on the Family," revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right's marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religion's utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order.
Mixing critical theory with detailed analysis, "Stations of the Cross" provides a needed contribution to sociopolitical studies of mass movements and will attract readers in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history.

This continuation of the history of shortwave broadcasting takes up the story at the end of the Cold War, exploring the many developments in the context of an era of wide political change. Propaganda, religious and other areas of broadcasting are examined in different cultural settings.

Throughout the world, television has become an important part of the way in which political candidates and parties present their messages to voters during election campaigns. This is particularly true in campaigns at the national level where voters have little personal contact with candidates and must rely on experiencing candidates through the media. Despite the importance of the media for voter-government interaction, however, many new reform governments in the post-communist era in Eastern European countries failed to appreciate the demands of creating workable new media systems.