Development of Radio in Kazakhstan

This article discusses how radio in Kazakhstan changed after the Soviet Union collapsed and market-oriented independent countries emerged. Since independence in 1991, the media, including radio, developed partly as a private enterprise and partly as a government entity with government radio operations controlled by the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Corporation. State radio stations in Kazakhstan are subsidized and operations do not depend on popularity or successful competition for audiences. Commercial stations have found support in advertising and continue to be successful. Although Kazakhstan has been independent for about 20 years and Kazakh stations are successful, the radio market in Kazakhstan is dominated by Russian radio. This article highlights the significant challenge for Kazakh radio as it continues to develop a uniquely Kazakh character that can promote Kazakh language and culture, and successfully attract a Kazakh audience.     

Tuning In to Radio: Promoting Audience Transference During Frequency Shifts

This investigation explores the interaction between radio listenership, station attributes, branding and promotional strategies, and their impact on total audience and target audience transference during frequency switching. A multistation, single market switch in frequencies serves as the focus of this case study analysis. Although the enhancement or deterioration of signal strength is a primary contributor, stations whose formats had the greatest competition within the market and who had highly accurate and accessible Web sites did the best job of product differentiation through station branding and were most effective in maintaining and, in some cases, increasing audience share.     

Local Ownership and Radio Market Structure

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 changed the nature of radio markets. Recent policy recommendations from the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Congress have led to questions about localism in local radio markets. This study analyzes station ownership, the number of clusters, radio programming, and audience data from 32 radio markets and compares the information for the years 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2010. The results suggested a degree of stability for the types and size of radio owners, the market power of local radio clusters, and the number and type of formats.     

What Makes a Good Radio Remote: Factors Leading to Perceived Cost-Effective and Well-Received On-Site Radio Promotional Sales Events

In the US., the on-site radio remote is commonly used to generate listener interest in the station and the client. Factors that were most important to stations, businesses, and audience members were studied in five radio markets. Investigators attended 30 remotes, collecting usable responses from 432 attendees of remotes, 31 radio station personnel and 74 businesses. Results suggested that Location, Product, Giveaways, and Station Personalities were most important to having a successful radio remote.     

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.     

Radio as a Screen Medium in BBC Arts Broadcasting

Today more than half of all radio listening in the UK is occurring through digital platforms. Within this context the BBC’s current arts proposition provides a valuable insight into how public service broadcasters are adapting and responding to this burgeoning digital audience. In particular, attention is drawn to the ways in which digital platforms are used to supplement and enhance the auditory listening experience. In doing so, the present article argues that radio continues to occupy a significant position in furthering public engagement with the arts due to, rather than despite of, advances in digital technology.     

Radio Listening and News Prominence in Zambia

Although much of the world basks in the glory of the Internet and availability of competitive media outlets, Africa's media landscape remains bleak. Radio, newspapers, and television continue to be government controlled: Radio's power to reach the masses suggests that many governments may never fully privatize the electronic media. Zambia has experienced growth of private media. Private radio stations in Lusaka have attracted nearly half of the listening audience away from government radio. Listeners rate radio as their most important source for news and the medium is highly regarded for accuracy and fairness. Yet these few private stations lack national coverage and political and economic clout to challenge government broadcasting.     

Quiz Show Radio News Formats: A Test of Retention,Involvement, Attention,and Perception of Credibility

Entertainment news formats, such as radio talk shows and late-night comedy shows, continue to gain audience interest, while traditional news formats are slowly losing audience members. This study examines audience effects from entertainment news formats by comparing retention, involvement, attention and perceived credibility of information presented in a traditional radio broadcast news format and a nontraditional news quiz show format. Findings showed audiences recalled information from quiz questions significantly better than from the traditional news form. Levels of attention and involvement did not differ, and there were no differences for perceived credibility, suggesting audiences may be increasingly accepting of new formats.     

Finding Power of Hidden Radio Audiences in the Fields of Guatemala

This paper provides a case study of a radio station in Guatemala notable for making programming decisions to serve rural audiences. Sometimes these broadcasters broke with accepted practice and provided programs that some listeners might consider controversial. However, the case study reveals these programs were pitched directly at an underserved niche in the audience of these broadcasters: low-income listeners from indigenous groups. This paper will document the history of these trends and discuss some of the methods of how these broadcasters serve this underserved audience.     

Robert S. Fortner,Radio Morality and Culture: Britain,Canada, and the United States, 1919�1945

Three pioneer radio rating services contributed to the development of basic audience measurement concepts, which have become part of a standardized ratings vocabulary. Archibald Crossley gave to radio and, later TV measurement, its most basic term, rating. Claude E. Hooper made Hooperatings a part of the nation's vocabulary and contributed the available audience base and the average minute rating. Arthur Nielsen Sr., designed the first probability sample. In the long term, Nielsen's most important innovation was his projectable ratings. As a result, Nielsen championed CPM theory, which tied advertising prices to audience size. Nielsen also was the first to provide a wealth of analytical detail, such as reach, frequency, and audience flow.     

Radio Adaptations of Robin Hood's Legend During the Golden Age of Radio

During radio's reign on the airwaves, classics and legends were sources for radio plays written for a wide audience. Scriptwriters realized radio's cultural importance and culled classics for material that pushed their conception of “high” culture but still satisfied a wide audience. Radio plays were adapted from William Shakespeare's plays, Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and Robin Hood's legend. This study covers radio adaptations of Robin Hood broadcast between the 1930s and 1970s: Popeye (1939); Buster Brown (1948); Family Theater (1949); the children's theater program Let's Pretend (1954), Escape (1952), Gunsmoke (1955); and Crisis (1975).     

Broadcasting Queer Feminisms: Lesbian and Queer Women Programming in Transnational,Local, and Community Radio

Notable radio scholars including Christine Ehrick, Phylis A. Johnson, and Caroline Mitchell have explored critical challenges of gender and sexuality radio research and its importance in relation to communities. A major issue faced in studying the early years of women’s history in broadcast is the ephemeral nature of the medium as many of the voices are lost in the ether, unrecorded or once deemed inessential to archive. Web-based radio and podcast archives provide renewed avenues for listening to lesbian and queer women’s radio across transnational borders yet many long running shows in Canada such as The Lesbian Show on Vancouver Co-Op Radio have only recently begun to surface as digital collections. As personal and institutional archives of lesbian and queer women radio begin to reach a public audience, analysis of radio works across decades of LGBTQ2+ activism and feminisms must be traced to understand the role of radio and digital radiogenic media in creating space and identity for queer activism. A turn to the past brings forward questions of analog and digital futures for radio and podcasting space as place to construct and shape queer and especially lesbian communities and identities in the North American broadcasting industry. Through research of notable live and pre-produced content including Dykes on Mykes on CKUT 90.3 FM, and The Lesbian Show on Vancouver Co-Op Radio, this work offers an exploration of radio and radiogenic media’s role in creating sonic space for queer and feminist subjectivities.     

How the Left Does Talk: A Fair and Balanced Examination of Air America Radio

Air America is a self-identified liberal radio talk show network initiated in the months before the 2004 U.S. presidential election. This article examines Air America's efforts to gain legitimacy in politically tense times as well as attract audience through its use of comic genres. The article explores how its grappling with fundamental questions of political truth versus lies shapes the form and content of its shows. The growing popularity of Web logs may also contribute to the continued existence of the shows: Air America illustrates the reciprocal influences of talk radio and blogs, as well as the roles of both in political interaction.     

Learning to Listen: Developing the Canadian Radio Audience in the 1930s

This article explores the development of the early Canadian radio audience. Without a pattern to follow, the listeners found ways to listen that reflected the restrictions and possibilities of the new technology. Early listeners picked favorite programs, became club members, and were sports fans for the first time. The early listening experiences created the foundation for radio audiences and their listening patterns.     

KBOO Community Radio: Organizing Portland's Disorderly Possibilities

Across the radio spectrum, there are relatively few stations in the United States that concentrate on community building and sustainability. One of the country's early community radio stations, KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon, has been on the air since 1968 and has significantly expanded its signal reach and audience during that time. Preceding National Public Radio, KBOO is the outcome of a Portland grassroots activist movement that initially sought to restore classical music on the local airwaves and eventually concurred on a more radical mission to serve the underserved and to cater to communities at the margins in the metropolitan listening area and beyond. KBOO transmits a potpourri of musical and artistic styles, foreign language programs, and critical news, public affairs, and commentaries—all with a largely volunteer-based governance structure. It also devotes its attention to promoting community-based initiatives. This article focuses on four major community functions served by KBOO community radio: public transmission, radio training, political education and mobilization, and community building and outreach. We conclude with observations about the uses and potential of community radio in developing a rich democratic civil 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.     

The Relationship Between Sports-Talk Radio and Local Pro Franchises and Big-Time College Athletics

Previous research into sports-talk radio focused on the relationship between hosts and callers or examinations of audience effects and behaviors. This study looks at the mutually dependent, uneasy and sometimes contentious relationship between the hosts and the newsmakers who appear on their shows. While many of the hosts have journalism degrees and say they practice good journalism, the sources don't see it that way. For this study the author interviewed sports-talk radio personnel and the newsmakers they cover. Most of the subjects work in the area of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri.     

Credibility of Radio News

This study used a statewide sample of 400 Alabama residents to analyze the relative credibility of local radio news, as compared to local television and local radio. The results indicated that local radio news has a level of credibility that is lower than that of local television, but is comparable to that of local newspapers. This finding confirms previous studies that have noted that media consumers tend to have a higher regard for television than any other news medium, but this difference was not as dramatic as those reported by studies that have used forced-choice questions. Local television is indeed more credible than local radio news, but not dramatically so.     

The Influence of Humor in Radio Advertising on Program Enjoyment and Future Intent to Listen

Research has found that humor in advertising can have effects on media evaluation. This experimental research discovers that positive effects suggested by excitation transfer and framing theories can apply specifically to radio advertising. It also extends previous research beyond the American context. Although gender sometimes leads to differences in humor appreciation, no important differences were identified in this research. Indirect links between humorous advertisements and potential audience ratings are uncovered, although direct links were not proven.     

The Development of Rural Wired Radio Systems in Upstate South Carolina

In the 1930s, the residents of upstate South Carolina constructed a homemade media system—wired radio—which lasted in some areas for almost 10 years. Wires were strung across miles of countryside to connect thousands of nonelectrified rural houses to a central receiver located at the end of the power line so that residents could partake in the radio revolution being experienced in other parts of the nation. This essay describes the development and construction of these wired radio systems and looks at local programming and resident reactions to the medium. Information for this essay comes from interviews with and the writings of system operators and subscribers. Initial research indicates that such homemade media system; were unique to that area of the country and that they served different purposes and needs than the wired radio systems that developed in the large cities during the 1930s. Also, previous scholarly work on this topic has maintained that such systems in the United States died out after experimentation in the 1920s, contrary to the findings covered in this paper.