When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in the radio elder who, by allowing people to be heard and supporting their claims, reminds authorities of their obligations toward the disaffected. Harri Englund provides a masterfully detailed study of this popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, Englund presents multivocal morality as an alternative to dominant Euro-American perspectives, displacing the simplistic notion of voice as individual personal property an idea common in both policy and activist rhetoric. Instead, Englund focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere. A lively, engaging portrait of an extraordinary personality, Gogo Breeze will interest Africanists, scholars of radio and mass media, and anyone interested in the history and future of free speech.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life was the first comprehensive history of the disc jockey, a figure who has become a powerful force shaping the music industry--and since its original publication, the book has become a cult classic. Now, with five new chapters and over a hundred pages of additional material, this updated and revised edition of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life reasserts itself as the definitive account of DJ culture, from the first record played over airwaves to house, hip hop, techno, and beyond. From the early development of recorded and transmitted sound, DJs have been shaping the way we listen to music and the record industry. Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton have tracked down the inside story on some of music's most memorable moments. Focusing on the club DJ, the book gets first-hand accounts of the births of disco, hip hop, house, and techno. Visiting legendary clubs like the Peppermint Lounge, Cheetah, the Loft, Sound Factory, and Ministry of Sound, and with interviews with legendary DJs, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is a lively and entertaining account of musical history and some of the most legendary parties of the century.

Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. "Climbing the Charts" examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations' abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success.

Contrary to the common belief that Clear Channel sees every sparrow that falls, Rossman demonstrates that corporate radio chains neither micromanage the routine decision of when to start playing a new single nor make top-down decisions to blacklist such politically inconvenient artists as the Dixie Chicks. Neither do stations imitate either ordinary peers or the so-called kingmaker radio stations who are wrongly believed to be able to make or break a single. Instead, Rossman shows that hits spread rapidly across radio because they clearly conform to an identifiable style or genre. Radio stations respond to these songs, and major labels put their money behind them through extensive marketing and promotion efforts, including the illegal yet time-honored practice of payoffs known within the industry as payola.

"Climbing the Charts" provides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.

In this media history of the Caribbean, Alejandra Bronfman traces howtechnology, culture, and politics developed in a region that was "wired" earlierand more widely than many other parts of the Americas. Haiti, Cuba,and Jamaica acquired radio and broadcasting in the early stages of theglobal expansion of telecommunications technologies. Imperial historieshelped forge these material connections through which the United States,Great Britain, and the islands created a virtual laboratory for experiments inaudiopolitics and listening practices. As radio became an established medium worldwide, it burgeoned in theCaribbean because the region was a hub for intense foreign and domesticcommercial and military activities. Attending to everyday life, infrastructure,and sounded histories during the waxing of an American empire andthe waning of British influence in the Caribbean, Bronfman does not allowthe notion of empire to stand solely for domination. By the time of the ColdWar, broadcasting had become a ubiquitous phenomenon that renderedsound and voice central to political mobilisation in the Caribbean nationsthrowing off what remained of their imperial tethers.

X Games skateboarder, pro mixed martial arts fighter, and outspoken SiriusXM satellite radio host Jason Ellis shares his jaw-dropping and inspirational life story, from the depths of addiction to the glory of victory to the joys and ordeals of fatherhood. Fans of The Jason Ellis Show and the MMA-meets-music festival "Ellismania" know Ellis as a fearless daredevil-and as the new voice of action sports in America. Now, fans can learn how he got to be the man he is: the struggles, the setbacks, and the fight he put up to make it through to something better. Fans of Griffin Forrest's Got Fight and Tony Hawk's Hawk won't want to miss this unbelievable tell-all from a larger-than-life icon, and a fighter through and through.

A collection of Sherlock Holmes radio scripts with detailed notes on Canonical references, rewrites, influences and the challenges of adapting Conan Doyles original tales for a 21st Century audience.

In a wide-ranging, cross-cultural, and transhistorical assessment, John Mowitt examines radio's central place in the history of twentieth-century critical theory. A communication apparatus that was a founding technology of twentieth-century mass culture, radio drew the attention of theoretical and philosophical writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, and Frantz Fanon, who used it as a means to disseminate their ideas. For others, such as Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, and Raymond Williams, radio served as an object of urgent reflection. Mowitt considers how the radio came to matter, especially politically, to phenomenology, existentialism, Hegelian Marxism, anticolonialism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. The first systematic examination of the relationship between philosophy and radio, this provocative work also offers a fresh perspective on the role this technology plays today.

We can't do without radio. However many new forms of mass communication are invented, the grandmother of them all remains indispensable. From Peru to Jordan, it's radio journalists who are often the first, and the last, to defy censorship and push the boundaries. As modern technology multiplies radio's reach, Index examines the medium and its messengers. Alexei Venediktov gives an exclusive interview on the secret of radio station Ekho Moskvy's survival - one of the last bastions of free speech in Russia; Joe Queenan reveals why he has no time for talk radio in the US and Shirazuddin Siddiqi on the programme the Taliban couldn't ban. PLUS Richard Norton-Taylor on the pursuit of secrecy; Marge Berer on a full-frontal cover-up; an exclusive extract from Javad Mahzadeh's acclaimed novel set during the Iran-Iraq war and Martin Rowson's Stripsearch. Index on Censorship is an award-winning magazine, devoted to protecting and promoting free expression. International in outlook, outspoken in comment, Index on Censorship reports on free expression violations around the world, publishes banned writing and shines a light on vital free expression issues through original, challenging and intelligent commentary and analysis, publishing some of the world's finest writers. Forthcoming September 2010: Issue 39/3, Free Speech and Music For subscription options visit: http:/ioc.sagepub.com www.indexoncensorship.org: the place to turn for free up-to-the-minute free expression news and comment Winner 2008 Amnesty International Consumer Magazine of the Year

'Incredibly comprehensive. Learn and understand this lot and you will have a fine grasp' Jon Snow

'This sets the standard for every radio newsroom' - Andy Ivy, Editor, Sky News Radio

In an age of infinite choice made possible by new technology, and a disturbing move away from traditional reporting into colourful comment and speculation by blogs and 'citizen journalists' there has never been a better time to focus on pure journalism skills.

"Essential Radio Journalism "is a vastly comprehensive working manual for radio journalists as well as a textbook for broadcast journalism students. It contains practical advice for gathering, reporting, writing, editing and presenting, the news, alongside media law and ethics. There is a wealth of 'inside' information, checklists and on-the-job advice that you can immediately put to use whether you are in your first job or have several years of experience. This is a book to inspire responsible, accurate and exceptional journalism skills.

Over its twenty-year history National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" has become a landmark American program, a unique source of news and of voices from across the country that don't often get a hearing elsewhere. In these pages, Noah Adams captures a year in the life of "All Things Considered", and celebrates the special pleasures of the show: its original blend of frontline news reporting, commentary, and features; its spirited attention to the highways and the byways of American life; and the people - "All Things Considered" staff and listeners alike - who make it all happen. The year's stories take us from China to Romania and from Alaska to Appalachia, from the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe to a West Virginia fire department's ramp supper fundraiser. Along the way we look in on musicians, writers, farmers, and bungee jumpers; we go whale watching and lighthouse hunting; and we ride the rails from St. Paul to Seattle on the "Empire Builder" train. We see how the broadcast is put together by a team of reporters, technicians, and announcers determined to bring us the news straight from the source, without distortions and simplifications. We learn how "All Things Considered" and National Public Radio got their starts, and how Noah Adams came to join them both. And we hear a lifetime's worth of stories of radio work gone (sometimes) just right and (occasionally) hilariously wrong. Most of all we meet people on both sides of the radio who we're glad to know, listeners from all across the country and the "All Things Considered" reporters - Cokie Roberts, Nina Totenberg, John Hockenberry, Deborah Amos, Susan Stamberg, and others - who have become as familiar to us, and astrusted, as neighbors across the back fence. As engaging and varied as the program it chronicles, here is a must-read for every fan of what Time calls "the most literate, trenchant, and entertaining news program on the radio".

During the first half of the 20th century, when radio reigned supreme in the living rooms of America, the medium's hunger for captivating characters and stories could not be sated. Three national networks and dozens of independent stations created a vast expanse of air time that had to be filled with comedy, adventure, mystery, drama and music, night after night. It's no surprise that radio's producers and writers looked to outside sources for inspiration, drawing some of old-time radio's most beloved characters (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, and Buck Rogers) directly from the pages of literature and popular fiction.This book examines individual characters that jumped from prose to radio, and also looks at a number of anthology programs that specialized in dramatizing short stories or novels. It begins with an exploration of mystery and detective shows, followed by evaluations of adventure stories, westerns, and science fiction. Later chapters focus on anthology shows, such as Orson Welles' ""Mercury Theater on the Air,"" that adapted classic novels by Twain, Steinbeck, Dickens and other great authors. Each chapter explores how the writers and producers approached the source material - what they changed, what they kept and what they left behind. The results of their efforts were almost always highly entertaining radio, examples of a form of storytelling much more engaging and satisfying than much of that with which it has been replaced.

This book covers personalities, policies, and programming.When it first appeared in the 1930s, FM radio was a technological marvel, providing better sound and nearly eliminating the static that plagued AM stations. It took another forty years, however, for FM's popularity to surpass that of AM. In ""Sounds of Change"", Christopher Sterling and Michael Keith detail the history of FM, from its inception to its dominance (for now, at least) of the airwaves.Initially, FM's identity as a separate service was stifled, since most FM outlets were AM-owned and simply simulcast AM programming and advertising. A wartime hiatus followed by the rise of television precipitated the failure of hundreds of FM stations. As Sterling and Keith explain, the 1960s brought FCC regulations allowing stereo transmission and requiring FM programs to differ from those broadcast on co-owned AM stations. Forced nonduplication led some FM stations to branch out into experimental programming, which attracted the counterculture movement, minority groups, and noncommercial public and college radio.By 1979, mainstream commercial FM was finally reaching larger audiences than AM. The story of FM since 1980, the authors say, is the story of radio, especially in its many musical formats. But trouble looms. Sterling and Keith conclude by looking ahead to the age of digital radio - which includes satellite and internet stations as well as terrestrial stations - suggesting that FM's decline will be partly a result of self-inflicted wounds - bland programming, excessive advertising, and little variety.

Nothing was too large or too small to engage Jerome Stern's interest. Along with the mysteries of the universe, he wrote about kids versus adults, the moods of teachers, and summer camp. He wrote about chocolate, the anxieties of plane travel, and the night fantasies of husbands. And in a suite called "Patient, " broadcast for the week on "All Things Considered, " he considered his own experience of illness. All in all, these pieces, whether cautioning or celebrating or simply turning over ideas (to see wha makes them tick), add up to a freewheeling autobiography of a man who was curious about everything. Now, with this book, readers and listeners can recapture his words and the familiar musing voice.

KQED Radio's Michael Krasny is one of the country's leading interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. He is a writer's interviewer.
But it didn't start out that way.
In "Off Mike," Krasny, host of one of public radio's most popular and intellectually compelling programs, talks of his strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent as a communicator--a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor. Krasny remarks that, "Trying to meld life into art as I read and interpreted and taught and wrote about writers, I went on to talk and talk and talk with writers until I had interviewed more writers perhaps than anyone ever has or will or should. I was on the road. My own road to literary Damascus. More than ever, I wanted to live a life that could answer Bellow's primary question: How should a good man live."
In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers inside his world--his coming of age during the heady times of the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement and political activism, to the vivid description of his journey from a student of literature to a struggling novelist to an educator and--somewhat accidentally--a radio host. Krasny gives an account of the polarizing transformation of talk radio, from his early days at KGO commercial radio, through to his current role at NPR, where he manages to keep the flow of talk in his San Francisco based show animated and politically balanced.
"Forum" fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the insightful and amusing vignettes and behind the scenes accounts. Theywill get a taste of the sharp commentary from his encounters with panels of experts, and interviews with cultural and political personalities as well as writers.

Motor mouth. Loud Mouth. Tubby DJ. Overpaid ego. What is the truth? Who is Chris Moyles? And what does he have to say for himself when he's not on the radio? Who is this man they call 'The Saviour of Radio 1'? In The Gospel According to Chris Moyles, Chris dissects the world around him and tackles all sorts of subjects; from interviewing the world's most famous celebrities, to trying to find a parking space in his own street. But you'll also get to meet his family and friends and learn about how he went from teenage DJ on a psychiatric hospital radio show to become the nation's favourite breakfast show DJ on BBC Radio 1. His is a life lived on and off air. And this book is a combination of both. It's funny, honest and gives Chris a platform to talk about his favourite subject... himself. Ego? What ego?

In this book my father dies. I almost die.*** My showbiz career winds down. And yet everyone keeps telling me it's the funniest book I've ever written. If I'd known that's what the public wanted, I'd have cancelled Pets Win Prizes and just got sick sooner. Along the way this time we encounter, among others, David Bowie, Kanye West (I think), John Cleese, Peter O'Toole, and have several adventures in the Fourth Dimension. Oh, and I can reveal the Man With The Foulest Mouth In All Show Business. Plus assorted high-kicking hoopla and a whole lot of rather stark stuff about what it's like to be told you could be On The Way Out. *** (SPOILER ALERT: I don't actually die.)

This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Art making and criticism have focused mainly on the visual media. This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Taking the approach that there is no single entity that constitutes "radio," but rather a multitude of radios, the essays explore various aspects of its apparatus, practice, forms, and utopias. The approaches include historical, political, popular cultural, archeological, semiotic, and feminist. Topics include the formal properties of radiophony, the disembodiment of the radiophonic voice, aesthetic implications of psychopathology, gender differences in broadcast musical voices and in narrative radio, erotic fantasy, and radio as an electronic memento mori. The book includes a new piece by Allen Weiss on the origins of sound recording. Contributors John Corbett, Tony Dove, Rene Farabet, Richard Foreman, Rev. Dwight Frizzell, Mary Louise Hill, G. X. Jupitter-Larsen, Douglas Kahn, Terri Kapsalis, Alexandra L. M. Keller, Lou Mallozzi, Jay Mandeville, Christof Migone, Joe Milutis, Kaye Mortley, Mark S. Roberts, Susan Stone, Allen S. Weiss, Gregory Whitehead, David Williams, Ellen Zweig

In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years, takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio exploited or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen. Raised on Radio is a generous, instructive, and sinfully readable salute to an extraordinary American phenomenon.

"Radio in the Global Age "offers a fresh, up-to-date, and wide-ranging introduction to the role of radio in contemporary society. It places radio, for the first time, in a global context, and pays special attention to the impact of the Internet, digitalization and globalization on the political-economy of radio. It also provides a new emphasis on the links between music and radio, the impact of formatting, and the broader cultural roles the medium plays in constructing identities and nurturing musical tastes.

Individual chapters explore the changing structures of the radio industry, the way programmes are produced, the act of listening and the construction of audiences, the different meanings attached to programmes, and the cultural impact of radio across the globe. David Hendy portrays a medium of extraordinary contradictions: a cheap and accessible means of communication, but also one increasingly dominated by rigid formats and multinational companies; a highly 'intimate' medium, but one capable of building large communities of listeners scattered across huge spaces; a force for nourishing regional identity, but also a pervasive broadcaster of globalized music products; a 'stimulus to the imagination', but a purveyor of the banal and of the routine. Drawing on recent research from as far afield as Africa, Australasia and Latin America, as well as from the UK and US, the book aims to explore and to explain these paradoxes - and, in the process, to offer an imaginative reworking of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum that radio is one of the world's 'hot' media.

"Radio in the Global Age "is an invaluable text for undergraduates and researchers in media studies, communicationstudies, journalism, cultural studies, and musicology. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers in the radio industry.

During the Cold War, one of America's most powerful weapons struck a major blow against tyranny every day over the airwaves. Radio Liberty became a critical source of information for listeners within the Soviet Union, broadcasting in Russian and more than a dozen other languages, and covering all aspects of Soviet life.

Sparks of Liberty provides an insider's look at the origins, development, and operation of Radio Liberty. Gene Sosin, a key executive with the station for thirty-three years, combines vivid eyewitness reports with documents from his personal archives to offer the first complete account of Radio Liberty, tracing its evolution from Stalin's death to the demise of the USSR, to its current role in the post-Soviet world.

Sosin describes Radio Liberty's early efforts to cope with KGB terrorism and Soviet jamming, to minimize interference from the CIA, and to survive pressure exerted by J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who considered Radio Liberty a deterrent to detente. The insider's perspective sheds important light on world affairs as Sosin tells how, over the years, Radio Liberty took the advice of experts on Soviet politics to adapt the content and tone of its messages to changing times.

The book is rich in anecdotes that bring home the realities of the Cold War. Sosin tells how famous Western political figures, educators, and writers broadcast messages about workers' rights, artistic freedom, and unfettered scholarly inquiry--and also how, beginning in the late 1960s, Radio Liberty beamed the writings of Soviet dissidents back into the country. During these tumultuous years, Sosin and his associates saturated the airwaves with the words of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, and others, while many dissidents who had emigrated from the Soviet Union joined Radio Liberty to help strengthen its credibility among listeners. Radio Liberty ultimately became the most popular station from the West, its influence culminating with the crucial support of Gorbachev and Yeltsin during the attempted coup against them in August 1991.

As Radio Liberty entered the post-Soviet era, it became a model for the Russian media. It is now a voice for democratic education in the post-Soviet nations--broadcasting from Prague, with local bureaus in several major cities of the former Soviet Union. Capturing the work and legacy of this enterprise with authority and exhilaration, Sparks of Liberty is a testament to an enterprise that saw its message realized and continues to broadcast a message of hope.

Robert Rietti's career has spanned theatre, films, radio and television. Featured in this book for the first time are a selection of the authors popular radio talks broadcast on the BBC over many years. They are a series of true stories which Rietti's 'antennae' have gathered which many people would label mere coincidence, but which to him highlight the fact that there is something more than that involved... shall we call it 'His Hand'?