Radio in the Global Age / Edition 1

by David Hendy

Overview

Radio in the Global Age offers a fresh, up-to-date, and wide-ranging introduction to the role of radio in contemporary society. It places radio, for the first time, in a global context, and pays special attention to the impact of the Internet, digitalization and globalization on the political-economy of radio. It also provides a new emphasis on the links between music and radio, the impact of formatting, and the broader cultural roles the medium plays in constructing identities and nurturing musical tastes.

Individual chapters explore the changing structures of the radio industry, the way programmes are produced, the act of listening and the construction of audiences, the different meanings attached to programmes, and the cultural impact of radio across the globe. David Hendy portrays a medium of extraordinary contradictions: a cheap and accessible means of communication, but also one increasingly dominated by rigid formats and multinational companies; a highly 'intimate' medium, but one capable of building large communities of listeners scattered across huge spaces; a force for nourishing regional identity, but also a pervasive broadcaster of globalized music products; a 'stimulus to the imagination', but a purveyor of the banal and of the routine. Drawing on recent research from as far afield as Africa, Australasia and Latin America, as well as from the UK and US, the book aims to explore and to explain these paradoxes - and, in the process, to offer an imaginative reworking of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum that radio is one of the world's 'hot' media.

Radio in the Global Age is an invaluable text for undergraduates and researchers in media studies, communication studies, journalism, cultural studies, and musicology. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers in the radio industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745620695
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	10/19/2000
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Senior Lecturer in Radio, University of Westminster

Table of Contents

List of Figures.

List of Table.

List of Boxes.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

Radio in the Social Landscape.

The Structure of this Book.

Chapter 1: Industry.

The Global Structure of Radio:.

Industrial Sectors.

Funding and Goals.

Local, National and International Dimensions.

Commercialization:.

Diversity.

Consolidation and Control.

Technology.

A Global or a Local Industry?.

Chapter 2: Production.

Producers:.

Producing 'actuality'.

Producing narratives.

Producing 'liveness'.

Time and Money.

Formats:.

Programme Formats.

Station Formats.

Schedules.

Creativity versus Predictability.

Chapter 3: Audiences.

The Act of Listening.

The Radio Audience.

The Active Audience.

Chapter 4: Meanings.

Radio as Communicator.

Radio texts: Talk and Music:.

Talk.

Music.

Radio and Modernity: Time, Place and 'Communicative Capacity'.

Time.

Place.

'Communicative Capacity'.

Chapter 5: Culture.

Radio and Democratic Culture.

Radio and Identity.

Radio, Music and Cultural Change.

Conclusion.

Bibliography.

Index