Public Radio at a Crossroads: Emerging Trends in U.S. Public Media

While useful in establishing U.S. public media, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 is an imperfect instrument for moving public radio to a secure future. Policies governing public broadcasting are insufficient to address the economic, political, social, and technological changes upending media organizations, both commercial and non-commercial. The urgent need is for more flexible structural arrangements as public radio and public television stations merge, partner with non-profit media entities, and seek funding that builds on the strength of the local public radio network as well as responds to the demand for imaginative, on-demand content from national networks.     

“A certain stigma” of educational radio: Judith Waller and “public service” broadcasting

This paper explores Judith Waller’s radio programming philosophy over her career that began in 1922 at WMAQ Chicago. In the 1940s, representing the interests of her employer NBC, Waller began to use the phrase “public service” as a way to break free of the “stigma” of educational radio. The concept of public service programming shifted during the 1930s and 1940s in the US, redefined and negotiated in response to assumptions about radio listeners, the financial motivations of commercial radio, and Federal Communications Commission rulings. This paper brings renewed attention to the past and present political economy of media in the US, providing a window into the historically complex relationship between commercial and noncommercial media that continues to this day.     

Turn On,Tune In,Drop Out: Radio Listening,Ownership Policy,and Technology

Radio listening in the United States fell by more than 10% between 1998 and 2003. During this time, broadcast radio faced new competition from satellite radio and the Internet while the industry was also undergoing significant changes due to increased radio ownership caps. This article quantifies the effects of these factors on audience sizes and explores the implications for audience composition and programming content. The results show that industry consolidation played a larger role in decreasing overall listening than new technology. New technology did have a role in altering the distribution of listeners among programming formats.     

Johnson,Phylis. (2009). KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton's Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict

When Rush Limbaugh made his now famous remarks about Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony he set off a social media firestorm. The ensuing backlash cost Limbaugh many prominent advertisers and damaged his public image. In this study, we examine the characteristics that motivated some to engage in the social media conversation while others remained on the sidelines. We find that political information efficacy, or confidence that one has the knowledge and skills necessary to participate, dictate political engagement online. We discuss the implications of this finding for radio, communication and media scholars, and healthy democratic deliberation among young Americans.     

Tripping Down the (Media) Rabbit Hole: Radio Alice and the Insurgent Socialization of Airwaves

This article illustrates the case Radio Alice, a “free radio” active in late 1970s Italy, which challenged traditional forms of thinking and doing broadcasting. The author discusses how the station utilized the airwaves first to constitute an alternative arena in which different voices, experiences, and social groups utilized radio as a 2-way communication device; second, to convey a new political sensibility and sense of sociability resembling a contemporary social network site. Ultimately, this case illustrates how radio can be understood as a modality of social interaction in its own right, rather than a mere distributor/amplifier of messages.     

BEYOND THE MILITARY SPHERE

The article discusses the political and public debates in Israel over the appropriateness of a military radio station in a democratic state. The Israeli station was established in 1950 to assist the defense forces in absorbing and educating new Jewish immigrants, but later developed to become one of Israel's major media outlets. Previously unstudied documents reveal that the initiative to launch the station was met with criticism from its early stages; concerns about letting the army run a radio station without public oversight have been raised repeatedly ever since. This research project illustrates the benefits of media historiography as an effective prism for studying wider aspects of societies in which various media organizations operate. It adds, as well, to the historiography of military radio stations around the world.     

"The Farmer's Friend": Radio Comes to Rural America, 1920–1927

Nowhere did the coming of broadcasting have more social impact than in America's rural areas. With radio, farm families that were once isolated by vast distances and poor roads were brought into immediate and continuous contact with the rest of the nation. The United States Department of Agriculture was quick to seize the potential of the new medium and began producing weather forecasts, market reports, and other agricultural programming at an early date. Commercial interests also built stations and designed programming to serve the rural audience. This article examines the arrival of radio on America's farms during broadcasting's earliest years, from the introduction of radio in 1920 to the passage of the Radio Act of 1927.     

Valerie Geller,Creating Powerful Radio. Burlington,MA: Focal Press, 2007

This essay explores the phenomenon of community radio in Colombia in light of the ongoing internal conflict. Combining a review of the written materials about Colombia's social-political conflict and the history of its radio industry, both in English and Spanish, with first-hand research on the ground in Colombia, I try to demonstrate how community radio is part of a broader movement to democratize society in the face of extreme violence, political repression, and economic dislocation. By using one youth-led radio station in southern Colombia as a case study, I argue that notwithstanding the many problems and drawbacks they face, community radio is playing a role in creating a public sphere.     

Historical Constitution of Public Radio Stations in Brazil

Educational, state, cultural, and university radio stations have already developed over more than 70 years of history in Brazilian radio broadcasting. Currently, there are hundreds of stations transmitting across the country, from the North to the South. Some of them—that in the 1990s included 100 broadcasting stations and among these, the oldest and nationally referenced—up to this decade operated and were referenced as a component of the educational radio system. Mainly from this period on, most of these stations began to call themselves public. And, especially due to their programming, they have been attempting to define themselves within the profile of public radio stations. The purpose of this article is to uncover the historical construction of this group of radio broadcasting stations, by means of a timeframe, from the advent of the non-commercial segment in the 1930s until today. It reconstructs referential models and presents main threads and features of the programming of these stations throughout these seven decades. In this way, it will also evince how Brazil is constructing its model of public radio.     

Effects of Local-Market Radio Ownership Concentration on Radio Localism,the Public Interest,and Listener Opinions and Use of Local Radio

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and ensuing radio ownership consolidation are often blamed for harming radio localism and the public interest. The present research sought to determine effects of local-market radio ownership concentration on listener opinions and use of radio—potentially indicative of stations' localism and public service—by surveying listeners in markets categorized by ownership concentration. Findings suggest concentration does not strongly influence perceptions; however, overall results indicate potentially negative consequences from local and national consolidation on amounts of local music, news, and public-service programming; live-local programming; and station responsiveness.     

Symposium: Radio broadcasting in Scandinavia—Part II

Radio stations were organized in Europe during the 1920s as state‐regulated public service institutions. Contrary to the model in the U.S., radio thus was embedded in the cultural and political spheres and accordingly kept outside of the market forces, although some countries allowed limited advertising. Radio's role as a national service faced increasing legitimation problems, and in most Western European countries, local radio was introduced as a divergence measure to balance political and cultural convergence of national radio. Generally, local radio activities were initially an attempt to revitalize a vivid public sphere. This article describes the development in the Scandinavian countries, where local radio developed in different ways with a rather strong commercial component that filled the “commercial deficit”; resulting from public service policies and a rather fragile component of noncommercial community stations. Although the structural development in many ways showed a different pattern than expected and wanted, local radio will have an ever greater role to play in a globalized media and information society.     

Transformative Radio and Stubborn Audiences: A Tale of Two Cities

A decade ago the regional programming of CBC Toronto successfully transformed itself with a new notion of community reflection that utilized a range of emerging digital platforms but put narrative radio storytelling at its centre. With the launch of CBC Hamilton in Spring 2012, as Canada's sole digital-only public broadcasting outlet (no over-the-air TV or radio), audio storytelling was conspicuously absent from the equation. Based on the only publicly available research conducted with CBC users and community leaders prior to and following both launches, the authors raise questions about audience conceptions and the enduring value of audio storytelling in an era of digital broadcasting and social media.     

Music and Identity in a Postcolonial World: Radio Airplay of Lusophone Music in Public Service Broadcasting in the Portuguese- Speaking World

With music being one of the key elements of radio, and plurality one of the most important principles of public service, this article’s central argument is that one of the missions of public radio is to foster musical elements produced in the country’s national language. Focusing on traditional musical genres of the Portuguese-speaking countries, we will analyze the role of music in public radio by selecting specific musical shows focused on the Lusophone world. In order to determine the presence and impact of Lusophony in national stations, music will be the common thread for a reflection on how multicultural their programming strategies are able to be.     

Kern,Jonathan. (2008). Sound reporting: The NPR guide to audio journalism and production

This article examines the emergence of local radio in a rural southeastern Turkish city called Sanllurfa in the early 7990s following the end of the state's media monopoly on broadcasting. Informed by a media ethnography conducted there in 2001, this article discusses local debates over the content and quality of local radio and the influence of the state's official cultural policies on the programming decisions of local radio owners, managers, and DJs. This paper also illustrates Turkish young people's local and national radio preferences, their responses to local programming and on-air personalities, and the meaning of music and local radio in their lives.     

Archiving the Russian and East European Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Web, 2013: A Pilot Project

This article focuses on the conceptualization and implementation of a web archiving pilot project of selected Russian and East European lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) websites by the University of California, Berkeley. It introduces the use of the Web Archiving Services (WAS) platform developed by the California Digital Library. While identifying the criteria used to harvest these websites, the paper also describes various complexities associated with the viability of projects related to such complex social and political issues as the Russian and Eastern European LGBT rights movements. The article does not take an ideological stance with respect to legal issues, but rather strives to preserve information for academic research.     

The Russian intelligentsia in the public sphere: The mass‐circulation press and political culture, 1860–1917

An independent, commercial mass‐circulation newspaper industry boomed at the end of the tsarist era, one analogous in most respects to that which evolved in the West during the nineteenth century. The Russian press, however, differed significantly from the Western press in the manner in which it functioned politically. Russian journalism, too, helped to open a public sphere in the autocratic environment, in concert with a series of social and political reforms in the 1860s. However, when those reforms failed to create a political order guaranteed by a constitution, the press reconstituted that sphere in a way to actually thwart the evolution of Western liberalism. The pivotal event in this process proved to be the failure of the 1905 Revolution to secure the postreform decades of incremental gains. Like most of the rest of society, journalists became so disappointed by the limited concessions exacted from the government that they lost hope that the autocracy could be reformed. Newspapers sought new political symbols in Russia's past; they found an equally disillusioned intelligentsia, whom they historicized and manipulated so as to undermine whatever substantive part they could have played in using the press as a genuinely transformative institution central to the public sphere.     

Eyapaha for today: American Indian radio in the Dakotas

American Indian radio serves the role of “eyapaha,”; the voice in the community that ties people together across the vast prairies of North and South Dakota. Local news, tribal council meetings, public service announcements, birth and death notices, and indigenous music are essential programming on the reservations, where Indian people seek to maintain and enhance their tribal cultures and languages. This article compares the six American Indian radio stations in the Dakotas, examining their facilities, budgets, programming, and governance.     

The channel reform of public service radio in the Nordic countries

The radio systems in the Nordic countries have many similarities. They all have a long tradition of public service radio monopoly that was broken by deregulation. The new commercial stations have created a competitive radio market and the public service companies have been forced to adapt to the new situation. This article reviews the situation by comparing and contrasting the public radio systems in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The author accounts for the impetus and continuing developmental pressures impacting these systems and highlights some likely trends for the near future.     

(Residual) Public Music Radio in the Streaming Era: Listening for Diversity and Frequency on CBC Music

The aim of this article is to assess whether and how the CBC’s music radio programming reflects the corporation’s mandate of showcasing a diversity of music and culture. I argue that a program logic that privileges an international corporate music industry strategy persists (particularly during the peak morning and afternoon drive time programs) and limits the capacity for public radio to imagine and project alternative musical trajectories. My aspiration is to imagine CBC Music’s over-the-air radio as a residual broadcast service, one that presents novel opportunities at a time when digital and online streaming music is dominant.     

In Our Own Voices: Reproductive Health Radio Programming in the Peruvian Amazon

This article examines the political and social implications of broadening public discourse and facilitating a collective mediated space in which gendered inequities, interests, and identities are debated via the feminist reproductive health radio program Bienvenida Salud! The article describes the mediascape in rural and indigenous Peruvian Amazonian communities and the ways in which feminist reproductive rights discourse has been introduced and interpreted in communities that have limited exposure to global feminism. By analyzing the reception and listening practices among the Bienvenida Salud! audience, the authors explore arguments about the limits and possibilities of participatory media to effect social change. Finally, the article examines the capacity of Amazonian women to use alternative media to voice their traditionally ignored reproductive health priorities, goals, and practices, and in so doing, critically assesses the potential of participatory media interventions to influence the discourses of global feminism and population planning.