How the Titanic Made the Modern Radio Industry

April 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Share

By Katherine Bygrave Howe on Bloomberg,  April 13 –

We remember the Titanic for its epic technological hubris. But the ship’s sinking also marks the moment when a more modest technology, the wireless radio, began to transform the shipping industry.

As an example of the Progressive-era faith in technology, the Titanic is hard to equal. In addition to its sumptuous interior, the ship was able to churn across the ocean at a staggering 22.5 knots. It was also outfitted with the most sophisticated wireless-telegraph technology available, with a range of nearly 1,000 miles.

While the speed was central to the ship’s operation, the wireless radio was considered a novelty.

Read the full article on Bloomberg

 

Filed Under: Hot Topics Tagged With: ,

Book Review – Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio Beyond the Networks

May 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Share

Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio Beyond the Networks. Alexander Russo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 292 pp.

The Golden Age of Radio, which lasted from 1930 until 1948, implies images of a communal listening experience both in individual homes and on a national level. Families gathered around the floor model radio in the living room after dinner, young children on their parents’ laps and older children camped out on the floor while they munched popcorn, focusing their attention on network-sponsored radio dramas, variety shows, and music programs. These network offerings brought the same entertainment to people across America simultaneously, creating a collective and unifying experience. However, radio’s Golden Age was much more complex. In Points on the Dial, Alexander Russo, an assistant professor of media studies at Catholic University, challenges our assumptions about radio programming, production, and use.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Quarterly Winter 2010, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Book Review – Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio

May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Share

Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio. Alec Foege. London: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2008. 320 pp.

If Enron represented “extreme capitalism” whose hubris brought it crashing to the ground in 2001, its equivalent in finance was Lehman Brothers, which imploded in 2008. In radio, it was probably Clear Channel Communications. These corporate histories bear testimony to the ugliness of greed, and offer only weak hope that unregulated recklessness will surely stumble and fall.

Founded in 1972, and later to become America’s fourth largest media conglomerate, rivaling NBC and Gannett, Clear Channel passed from public ownership in 2008 (though subject to the executive leadership of co-founder Lowry Mays and his sons Mark and Randall) into the hands of two private equity firms, Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Early in 2010, the company flirted with bankruptcy, crippled by the debt of the 2008 buy-out; the decline in radio listenership in the wake of MP3, iPod, and mobile devices; and the fall in advertising revenue after the 2008 economic crisis.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Quarterly Spring 2011, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,