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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Radio
British Radio Drama, 1945-1963 reveals the quality and range of the
avant-garde radio broadcasts from the 'golden age' of British radio
drama. Turning away from the cautious and conservative programming
that emerged in the UK immediately after World War II, young
generations of radio producers looked to French theatre,
introducing writers such as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco to
British radio audiences. This 'theatre of the absurd' triggered a
renaissance of writing and production featuring the work of Giles
Cooper, Rhys Adrian and Harold Pinter, as well as the launch of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Based on primary archival research and
interviews with former BBC staff, Hugh Chignell places this
high-point in the BBC's history in the broader context of British
post-war culture, as norms of morality and behavior were
re-negotiated in the shadow of the Cold War, while at once
establishing the internationalism of post-war radio and theatre.
Every weekday, the wildly popular Tom Joyner Morning Show reaches
more than eight million radio listeners. The show offers broadly
progressive political talk, adult-oriented soul music, humor,
advice, and celebrity gossip for largely older, largely
working-class black audience. But it's not just an old-school show:
it's an activist political forum and a key site reflecting on
popular aesthetics. It focuses on issues affecting African
Americans today, from the denigration of hard-working single
mothers, to employment discrimination and sexual abuse, to the
racism and violence endemic to the U.S. criminal justice system, to
international tragedies. In Black Radio/Black Resistance, author
Micaela di Leonardo dives deep into the Tom Joyner Morning Show's
25 year history inside larger U.S. broadcast history. From its rise
in the Clinton era and its responses to key events-9/11, Hurricane
Katrina, President Obama's elections and presidency, police murders
of unarmed black Americans and the rise of Black Lives Matter, and
Donald Trump's ascendancy-it has broadcast the varied, defiant, and
darkly comic voices of its anchors, guests, and audience members.
di Leonardo also investigates the new synergistic set of
cross-medium ties and political connections that have affected
print, broadcast, and online reporting and commentary in antiracist
directions. This new multiracial progressive public sphere has
extraordinary potential for shaping America's future. Thus Black
Radio/Black Resistance does far more than simply shed light on a
major counterpublic institution unjustly ignored for reasons of
color, class, generation, and medium. It demonstrates an
alternative understanding of the shifting black public sphere in
the digital age. Like the show itself, Black Radio/Black Resistance
is politically progressive, music-drenched, and blisteringly funny.
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