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American Babel - Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age (Hardcover)
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American Babel - Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age (Hardcover)
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When American radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s there was
a consensus among middle-class opinion makers that the airwaves
must never be used for advertising. Even the national advertising
industry agreed that the miraculous new medium was destined for
higher cultural purposes. And yet, within a decade American
broadcasting had become commercialized and has remained so ever
since. Much recent scholarship treats this unsought
commercialization as a coup, imposed from above by mercenary
corporations indifferent to higher public ideals. Such research has
focused primarily on metropolitan stations operated by the likes of
AT&T, Westinghouse, and General Electric. In American Babel,
Clifford J. Doerksen provides a colorful alternative social history
centered on an overlooked class of pioneer broadcaster-the
independent radio stations. Doerksen reveals that these "little"
stations often commanded large and loyal working-class audiences
who did not share the middle-class aversion to broadcast
advertising. In urban settings, the independent stations broadcast
jazz and burlesque entertainment and plugged popular songs for Tin
Pan Alley publishers. In the countryside, independent stations
known as "farmer stations" broadcast "hillbilly music" and old-time
religion. All were unabashed in their promotional practices and
paved the way toward commercialization with their innovations in
programming, on-air style, advertising methods, and direct appeal
to target audiences. Corporate broadcasters, who aspired to
cultural gentility, were initially hostile to the populist style of
the independents but ultimately followed suit in the 1930s. Drawing
on a rich array of archives and contemporary print sources, each
chapter of American Babel looks at a particular station and the
personalities behind the microphone. Doerksen presents this group
of independents as an intensely colorful, perpetually interesting
lot and weaves their stories into an expansive social and cultural
narrative to explain more fully the rise of the commercial network
system of the 1930s.
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