Download or read book The History and Politics of Public Radio written by James T. Bennett and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an absorbing study of how educational radio, which originated to broadcast weather forecasts to farmers, has become what the Pew Center calls the most trusted source of news for American liberals and a regular in the rogue's gallery of election-year conservative targets.The Nielsen Company reported in late 2019 that 272 million Americans listen to "traditional radio" each week, a number exceeding those who watch television, use a smartphone, or access the Internet. Yet almost from the start, radio has also been flayed as a noise box of inanity, a transmitter of low-brow entertainment, an instrument of cultural degradation promoting vapid popular music, and a medium whose ultimate purpose is to convince listeners to purchase the goods and services incessantly hawked by the advertisers who underwrite the programs and allegedly dictate content. At the same time, an alternative conception of radio existed as a vehicle for education and for cultural and intellectual (and even political) enlightenment. Most proponents of this perspective disdained advertising revenue and sought subsidies from foundations, wealthy patrons, or varying levels of government.The long, winding road of educational radio led eventually to the creation of National Public Radio (NPR), a fixture on the left of the dial that can be seen as either the consummation or corruption of the educational radio movement. Prized by many liberals, especially affluent whites, and disparaged by many conservatives, NPR has become a potent symbol of the political polarization and cultural chasm that now characterizes the American conversation.
Download or read book Public Radio and Television in America written by Ralph Engelman and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1996-04-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overview of public radio and television in the United States
Download or read book Listener Supported written by Jack W. Mitchell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-03-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. This comprehensive overview of their mission will fascinate listeners whose enjoyment and support of public radio has made it possible, and made it great.
Download or read book Broadcasting Freedom written by Barbara Dianne Savage and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells how Blacks used radio
Download or read book Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France 1921 1939 written by Rebecca Scales and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how radio broadcasting and the emerging audio culture transformed the dynamics of French politics during the tumultuous interwar decades.
Download or read book Public Radio and Television in America written by Ralph Engelman and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1996-04-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins and evolution of the major insititutions in the United States for noncommercial radio and television are explored in this unique volume. Ralph Engelman examines the politics behind the development of National Public Radio, Radio Pacifica and the Public Broadcasting Service. He traces the changing social forces that converged to launch and shape these institutions from the Second World War to the present day. The book challenges several commonly held beliefs - including that the mass media is simply a manipulative tool - and concludes that public broadcasting has an enormous potential as an emancipatory vehicle.
Download or read book This Is NPR written by and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of this anniversary milestone, featuring both new content and some of the most historic and iconic moments in NPR's first forty years on the air.
Download or read book Fireside Politics written by Douglas B. Craig and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Craig provides an in-depth examination of radio's changing role in American political culture between 1920 and 1940. He follows the evolution of radio into a commercialised and regulated industry, and ultimately into an essential tool for winning political campaigns and shaping American identity at that time.
Download or read book NPR written by Michael P. McCauley and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-14 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The people who shaped America's public broadcasting system thought it should be "a civilized voice in a civilized community"—a clear alternative to commercial broadcasting. This book tells the story of how NPR has tried to embody this idea. Michael P. McCauley describes NPR's evolution from virtual obscurity in the early 1970s, when it was riddled with difficulties—political battles, unseasoned leadership, funding problems—to a first-rate broadcast organization. The book draws on a wealth of primary evidence, including fifty-seven interviews with people who have been central to the NPR story, and it places the network within the historical context of the wider U.S. radio industry. Since the late 1970s, NPR has worked hard to understand the characteristics of its audience. Because of this, its content is now targeted toward its most loyal listeners—highly educated baby-boomers, for the most part—who help support their local stations through pledges and fund drives.
Download or read book The Radio Right written by Paul Matzko and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Paul Matzko tells the story of the emergence of ultra-conservative radio in the 1960s, and reveals the Kennedy administration's involvement in a censorship campaign against conservative broadcasters. The Radio Right provides the essential pre-history for the last four decades of conservative activism, as well as the historical context for current issues of political bias and censorship in the media.
Download or read book Talk Radio s America written by Brian Rosenwald and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cocreator of the Washington Post’s “Made by History” blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump. America’s long road to the Trump presidency began on August 1, 1988, when, desperate for content to save AM radio, top media executives stumbled on a new format that would turn the political world upside down. They little imagined that in the coming years their brainchild would polarize the country and make it nearly impossible to govern. Rush Limbaugh, an enormously talented former disc jockey—opinionated, brash, and unapologetically conservative—pioneered a pathbreaking infotainment program that captured the hearts of an audience no media executive knew existed. Limbaugh’s listeners yearned for a champion to punch back against those maligning their values. Within a decade, this format would grow from fifty-nine stations to over one thousand, keeping millions of Americans company as they commuted, worked, and shouted back at their radios. The concept pioneered by Limbaugh was quickly copied by cable news and digital media. Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content. Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts’ playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.
Download or read book The Disinformation Age written by W. Lance Bennett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.
Download or read book Shadow Network written by Anne Nelson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reveals a political trend that threatens both our form of government and our species.” - Timothy Snyder, author of ON TYRANNY "Riveting.... Want to understand how so many Americans turned against truth? Read this book." Nancy Maclean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today. In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.
Download or read book Radio Goes to War written by Gerd Horten and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By focusing on the medium of radio during World War II, Horten has provided us with a window into an important change in radio broadcasting that has previously been ignored by historians. The depth of research, the book's contribution to our understanding of radio and the war make Radio Goes to War an outstanding work."—Lary May, author of The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way "Radio broadcasting, and its impact on American life, still remains a neglected area of our national history. Radio Goes to War demonstrates conclusively how short-sighted that omission is. As we enter what is sure to be another era of contested claims of government control over freedom of speech, the controversies and compromises of wartime broadcasting sixty years ago provide an ominous example of difficult decisions to be made in the future. The alliance of big business, advertising, and wartime propaganda that Horten so convincingly illuminates takes on a heightened significance, especially as this relationship has tightened in the last several decades. When radio and television go to war again, will they follow the same course? This is cautionary reading for our new century."—Michele Hilmes, author of Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952
Download or read book Radio s America written by Bruce Lenthall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orson Welles’s greatest breakthrough into the popular consciousness occurred in 1938, three years before Citizen Kane, when his War of the Worlds radio broadcast succeeded so spectacularly that terrified listeners believed they were hearing a genuine report of an alien invasion—a landmark in the history of radio’s powerful relationship with its audience. In Radio’s America, Bruce Lenthall documents the enormous impact radio had on the lives of Depression-era Americans and charts the formative years of our modern mass culture. Many Americans became alienated from their government and economy in the twentieth century, and Lenthall explains that radio’s appeal came from its capability to personalize an increasingly impersonal public arena. His depictions of such figures as proto-Fascist Charles Coughlin and medical quack John Brinkley offer penetrating insight into radio’s use as a persuasive tool, and Lenthall’s book is unique in its exploration of how ordinary Americans made radio a part of their lives. Television inherited radio’s cultural role, and as the voting tallies for American Idol attest, broadcasting continues to occupy a powerfully intimate place in American life. Radio’s America reveals how the connections between power and mass media began.
Download or read book Radio Utopia written by Matthew C. Ehrlich and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As World War II drew to a close and radio news was popularized through overseas broadcasting, journalists and dramatists began to build upon the unprecedented success of war reporting on the radio by creating audio documentaries. Focusing particularly on the work of radio luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, Norman Corwin, and Erik Barnouw, Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest traces this crucial phase in American radio history, significant not only for its timing immediately before television, but also because it bridges the gap between the end of the World Wars and the beginning of the Cold War. Matthew C. Ehrlich closely examines the production of audio documentaries disseminated by major American commercial broadcast networks CBS, NBC, and ABC from 1945 to 1951. Audio documentary programs educated Americans about juvenile delinquency, slums, race relations, venereal disease, atomic energy, arms control, and other issues of public interest, but they typically stopped short of calling for radical change. Drawing on rare recordings and scripts, Ehrlich traces a crucial phase in the evolution of news documentary, as docudramas featuring actors were supplanted by reality-based programs that took advantage of new recording technology. Paralleling that shift from drama to realism was a shift in liberal thought from dreams of world peace to uneasy adjustments to a cold war mentality. Influenced by corporate competition and government regulations, radio programming reflected shifts in a range of political thought that included pacifism, liberalism, and McCarthyism. In showing how programming highlighted contradictions within journalism and documentary, Radio Utopia reveals radio's response to the political, economic, and cultural upheaval of the post-war era.
Download or read book The Cigarette written by Sarah Milov and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-02 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prize Winner of the PROSE Award in United States History Hagley Prize in Business History Finalist A Smithsonian Best History Book of the Year “Vaping gets all the attention now, but Milov’s thorough study reminds us that smoking has always intersected with the government, for better or worse.” —New York Times Book Review From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, tobacco has powered America’s economy and shaped some of its most enduring myths. The story of tobacco’s rise and fall may seem simple enough—a tale of science triumphing over corporate greed—but the truth is more complicated. After the Great Depression, government officials and tobacco farmers worked hand in hand to ensure that regulation was used to promote tobacco rather than protect consumers. As evidence of the connection between cigarettes and cancer grew, scientists struggled to secure federal regulation in the name of public health. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov reveals, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials. The Cigarette puts politics back at the heart of tobacco’s rise and fall, dramatizing the battles over corporate influence, individual choice, government regulation, and science. “A nuanced and ultimately devastating indictment of government complicity with the worst excesses of American capitalism.” —New Republic “An impressive work of scholarship evincing years of spadework...A well-told story.” —Wall Street Journal “If you want to know what the smoke-filled rooms of midcentury America were really like, this is the book to read.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
