Reviewing Net-only College Radio: A Case Study of Brooklyn College Radio

This article explores the history and development of college Net-radio and analyzes the factors underlying Net-only college radio's growing popularity. It reports on an ethnographic study conducted in 2005 about one of North America's first Net-only college radio stations, City University of New York's (CUNY) Brooklyn College Radio.     

Better Than Magritte: How Drama on the Radio Became Radio Drama

Using British radio and stage drama as its example, this article explores how a new medium took over an old genre and, after attempting to reproduce it closely, gradually modified it into something more suited to its own character. Initial disagreements about the significance of radio's blindness were attributable to the unreliability of pure sound as an epistemological guide. Yet this unreliability is a source of radio's unique dramatic strengths: It is a "theater of the invisible," severing drama's recent connection with spectacle and renewing its pristine association with speech. Radio drama has, in its turn, influenced the conventional theater.     

Aural Atavism: The Witch's Tale and Gothic Horror Radio

This article offers a cultural historical interpretation of The Witch's Tale (1931–38), an early U.S. horror radio drama, and argues that the program's use of the Gothic genre unified its content and form. Its plays emphasized temporality to highlight the Gothic intertwining of the past and present, and offered allegories that while often rooted in the fantastic nevertheless addressed contemporary concerns—gender, Others, and socio-economic anxieties. It used sound to complement its content, evoking the supernatural and monsters, and cuing and sustaining suspense. And it tapped radio's connotation as a supernatural medium to complement and magnify its generic horror.     

Radio in Estonia: Meager but Enduring

Historically radio has held an important place in the lives of Estonians that shaped radio's character during the years of the Soviet Union and after Estonian independence. Radio developed an intimate relationship with Estonian audiences and was important during the drive for independence. After independence state broadcasting moved toward a public service model while commercial radio developed under the control of a small number of corporations. While public service radio and commercial radio compete in ways similar to other European and Nordic countries, radio in Estonia remains strong.     

Radio Revisionism: Media Historiography and the KDKA Myth

Popular recountings of radio's past tend to begin with KDKA's November 2, 1920 broadcast of the Coolidge-Harding election returns, in effect deligitimizing the complex pre-commercial period in American broadcasting. The effects of this are apparent in the neglect of the pre-commercial period in popular and scholarly histories of radio. In contributing to the bourgeoning body of revisionist work in radio scholarship, this essay reexamines the historical role of KDKA, Pittsburgh. Primarily, I focus on the maintenance and reinforcement of what I call “the KDKA myth” to examine how KDKA has managed its primacy claim throughout the station's history.     

More than Monsters: Dark Fantasy,the Mystery-Thriller and Horror's Heterogeneous History

This article critically examines the golden age radio mystery-thriller genre in order to rectify the history of the horror genre and contribute to the history of radio horror. An excavation of the mystery-thriller's generic roots and an analysis of the program Dark Fantasy illustrate how this genre included, but was not limited to, horror. It offered a broad variety of narrative types that are not addressed in histories of the horror genre or radio horror. Such generic and narrative diversity suggests fruitful connections with radio's science fiction, noir, and mystery genres, and with fantastic television anthologies like The Twilight Zone.     

Rethinking the hits: Why top 40/chr is no longer the dominant radio music format

After providing glimpses of the external competition problems besetting the Top 40 radio format and later clones, the author focuses on hit music radio's internal problems. They include narrow formatting and audience fragmentation, the continuing inordinate influence of teens on pop music, the self‐referential nature of the symbiosis between record companies and radio music programmers, music testing results that are used to produce a “least objectionable playlist,” and flaws in the original theories underpinning the Top 40 format. An in‐depth reanalysis of the genesis of the limited playlist concept then follows. A song's reliability in producing a desired pleasurable reaction in the listener (because of factors intrinsic to the music) is advanced as a useful factor in choosing music for radio airplay.     

Radio's Role During Hurricane Katrina: A Case Study of WWL Radio and the United Radio Broadcasters of New Orleans

This narrative case study examines the news and information role played by WWL Radio and the United Radio Broadcasters of New Orleans during the real life drama of Hurricane Katrina. The performance of United demonstrates that media consolidation, deregulation and the threat of emerging technologies do not justify abandoning the idea that broadcasters still have a moral and ethical responsibility to serve the public interests of audiences; that traditional radio should stop looking over its shoulder at threats posed by other media, and instead should make use of the medium's greatest strength—taking care of the communities it serves on the local level. This study provides further proof that traditional radio is still vital, especially in times of disaster and catastrophe; that radio's attention to the local community, and its ability to collaborate among other broadcast outlets in that community, may be two of many distinct factors that keep the public tuned in to the medium.     

Lyrical Resources of the Art of Broadcasting and Regional Radio in Russia

Radio possesses a special lyrical capacity and a sincere intonation that enables the audience to confide more easily in an invisible voice than in a printed page or a TV screen. Perceived through voice alone, speech becomes deeply emotional, expressive, and profoundly meaningful. Barely noticeable vocal modulations can deflate arrogance and pathos or disclose the absurd and silly in what seems serious and thoughtful. The article cites specific examples to demonstrate how the regional broadcasting in Russia successfully employs radio's “lyrical resources” and describes how the broadcasting majors at Saratov State University learn the art of creating moods and emotions.     

From Coughlin to contemporary talk radio: Fallacies & propaganda in American populist radio

Talk radio has evolved into the town meeting of the 1990s. Talk radio's success comes from a combination of powerful personalities, audience involvement, and propagandistic appeals. Talk radio has become so powerful as to prompt the president of the United States to denounce many of its practitioners. Radio listeners need to understand how public figures use the media to manipulate the airwaves and their messages to influence the masses. This paper critically examines conservative talk radio figures using Father Charles Coughlin, the famous “radio priest” of the Shrine of the Little Flower, as the locus of comparison. The authors analyze the radio discourse of Coughlin, contemporary national figures such as Rush Limbaugh, and a Detroit‐area commentator, Mark Scott. Traditional propaganda analysis facilitates understanding of the rhetorical force of talk radio and enables the public to increase their awareness of and ability to deal with propaganda.     

Revealing a Double Jeopardy Effect in Radio Station Audience Behavior

Scores of consumer behavior studies have confirmed what has been called a double jeopardy effect, whereby brands earning small market shares attract fewer customers but also experience less customer loyalty than more popular brands. This two-fold plight of the small brand has also been detected among consumers of media, such as newspapers and television programs. This study hypothesized a similar double jeopardy behavior among radio station audiences. Using ratings-based turnover ratio and exclusive cume as operationalizations for listener loyalty, an analysis of over 1,600 stations revealed that, despite radio's emphasis on niche marketing, a significant double jeopardy effect can still be found. Furthermore, station competition and program format were tested as intervening variables.     

The Shadow Knows: The Counter-Fantasy of the American Antihero and Symbolic Divergence in Golden Age Radio

Various radio and pulp incarnations of The Shadow have played a pivotal role in shaping American superhero mythology and cultural unconscious. This essay explores The Shadow's origins within the 1930s, and then utilizes Fantasy Theme Analysis to uncover mythic tensions and conflicts within The Shadow's transition from noir-like dystopian antihero into the more romantic utopian superhero of Orson Welles' 1937 radio program. We conclude by contemplating rhetorical implications for The Shadow's “symbolic divergence,” a fantasy evolving into contradictory counter-fantasies and rhetorical visions in radio and pulps, as a provocative illustration of theoretical debates regarding the psychodynamic functions of rhetorical fantasy.     

The radio diary of Mary Dyck, 1936–1955: The listening habits of a Kansas farm woman

From the earliest days of the radio era, the United States Department of Agriculture recognized radio's potential importance to rural families. What the USDA did not realize until later was radio's enormous significance to rural women. This article uses the diary of Kansas farm woman Mary Knackstedt Dyck (1884–1955) to trace the vital importance of radio to isolated farm women. Radio provided these women with information, entertainment, and religious programming. For individuals living literally at the margins of society, it provided a crucial link to the world beyond the farm and was a source of human contact that was otherwise unavailable.     

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.     

Finding Democracy in Spain

Between General Franco's agony (October/November 1975) and the constitution's approval (December 1978), European media reported intensively about the democratisation process in Spain. The present paper deals with its examination through the Radio della Svizzera di lingua italiana broadcasts. As the only Swiss Italian-speaking broadcaster, it tried to provide in-depth information and opinion on a country whose solid ties with Switzerland were based on economy, migration and tourism. The study of this non-commercial radio allows us to determine the way the democratisation was approached and portrayed for a Swiss audience and offers a genuine case for transnational historical research.     

Radio's influence in the Alaska Bush: Cultural transmission or diffusion?

Isolated radio stations serve predominately Native American populations in the Alaska Bush. This study sought to ascertain radio's influence on local cultures and its ability to serve local needs. Issues relating to control and staffing of stations were also examined. Clearly there is a growing push for Bush radio to help preserve Alaska's native cultures and languages. Stations differed in their approaches to some common problems, but all appeared to be moving in the direction of increasing native involvement in station operations.     

Local regulatory agencies for cable television

A complex pattern of radio regulation emerged during the mid‐1920s, one in which a close‐knit relationship arose between regulator and regulated. Working together to get radio service to the public were the “regulators”—Herbert Hoover and the Department of Commerce—and the “regulated”— Westinghouse, General Electric (G. E.), the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and American Telegraph and Telephone (AT&;T). Together, these two groups set radio's agenda and policy through 1927. This essay shows how that synthesis became the blueprint used even today for broadcast license allocation and station licensee assignments.     

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.