The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio 1501385313, 9781501385315

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
Section I Entertainment
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
1 ‘Don’t Let ’Em Divide Us’: Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama Matthew A. Killmeier
2 Podcasting as a Music-Educational Practice Morten Michelsen
3 Hearing Age in Music Streaming: Well-being, Marketing and Older Listeners Christina Baade
4 Past the Gate: Women in Sports Talk Radio Lori Beckstead
5 Expressions of Radio Drama: Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC Emily Best
6 Illuminated Radio: Imagination and Affect in the Tradition of the Audio ‘Feature’, ‘Acoustic Film’ and Radio Documentaire de Creation Virginia M. Madsen
Section II Listening
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
7 Tuning In and Listening Out: Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio Bridget Backhaus
8 The Listener of the Future: Exploring Public Service Broadcasters’ Strategies about Radio Apps Marta Perrotta
9 Using a ‘Critical Ear’: Developing a Practitioner–Researcher Framework for Analytical Listening in Podcast Studies Britta Jorgensen
10 An Analysis of Black American Radio Listenership Kim Fox
Section III Emotions
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
11 Emotions in the Dark: A History of Late-Night French Radio Marine Beccarelli
12 The Radio Phone-in and the Suicidal Caller Kathryn McDonald
13 Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters Helen Wolfenden
14 Audio Within Audio: Phones, Materiality and the Elicitation of Emotion in Podcasting Evi Karathanasopoulou
Section IV Communities
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
15 Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Community-Building Approaches Across Community Radio Katie Moylan
16 Feeding the Beast: What It Means to be a Community Radio Presenter in the UK Josephine Coleman
17 Daring to be Different! Ethnic Community Radio as a Space of Inclusion Gloria Khamkar
18 The Changing Context of Community Radio Lawrie Hallett
Section V Democracy
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
19 Dutch Radio News: From Public Polarization to Public Service Anya Luscombe
20 Still Serving the Public? News Provision on BBC Radio Katy McDonald
21 Spanish Radio in the Early Years of Democracy: Antena 3 Radio Pilar Dobón-Roux
Section VI Studying Radio
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
22 Studying 1960s Commercial Radio Richard Legay
23 Studying Radio: Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC Kate Murphy
24 ‘Podcasting Radio on Podcasts’: Edutainment Podcasting Pedagogy for Radio Students During COVID-19 Kylie Sturgess, Lauren O’Mahony, Kathryn Trees and Simon Order
25 The Place of Radio in the Soundscapes: Everyday Listening and Producing Sounds in Marginalized Communities of the Global South Andrea Medrado
Section VII Futures
Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell
26 Queer Networks Versus Global Corporations: The Battle for the Soul of Audio Fiction Ella Watts
27 Recalling Radio: An Archival View from Radio’s Second Century Alexander Badenoch
28 Hyperlocal Radio: Reclaiming Conversation through Social Broadcasting Lucia Scazzocchio
29 Making Waves Behind Bars: The (Past, Present and) Future of Prison Radio Phil Maguire
30 Radio in the Round: Reflections on the Future of Sound Media Richard Berry
Index

Citation preview

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio Edited by Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2023 Copyright © Kathryn McDonald, Hugh Chignell and contributors, 2023 For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image @ iStock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-8531-5 ePDF: 978-1-5013-8529-2 eBook: 978-1-5013-8530-8 Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of Contributors ix Acknowledgements xiv

Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

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Section I Entertainment Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

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1

‘Don’t Let ’Em Divide Us’: Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama Matthew A. Killmeier 10

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Podcasting as a Music-Educational Practice Morten Michelsen 27

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Hearing Age in Music Streaming: Well-being, Marketing and Older Listeners Christina Baade

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Past the Gate: Women in Sports Talk Radio Lori Beckstead 62

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Expressions of Radio Drama: Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC Emily Best 79

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Illuminated Radio: Imagination and Affect in the Tradition of the Audio ‘Feature’, ‘Acoustic Film’ and Radio Documentaire de Creation Virginia M. Madsen 95

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Contents

Section II  Listening Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  115 7 Tuning In and Listening Out: Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio  Bridget Backhaus  117 8 The Listener of the Future: Exploring Public Service Broadcasters’ Strategies about Radio Apps  Marta Perrotta 131 9 Using a ‘Critical Ear’: Developing a Practitioner– Researcher Framework for Analytical Listening in Podcast Studies  Britta Jorgensen  147 10 An Analysis of Black American Radio Listenership  Kim Fox 162

Section III  Emotions Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  173 11 Emotions in the Dark: A History of Late-Night French Radio  Marine Beccarelli  175 12 The Radio Phone-in and the Suicidal Caller  Kathryn McDonald 190 13 Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters Helen Wolfenden 208 14 Audio Within Audio: Phones, Materiality and the Elicitation of Emotion in Podcasting Evi Karathanasopoulou 226

Section IV  Communities Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  243

Contents

15 Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: CommunityBuilding Approaches Across Community Radio  Katie Moylan 245 16 Feeding the Beast: What It Means to be a Community Radio Presenter in the UK  Josephine Coleman  257 17 Daring to be Different! Ethnic Community Radio as a Space of Inclusion  Gloria Khamkar  275 18 The Changing Context of Community Radio  Lawrie Hallett 290

Section V  Democracy Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  313 19 Dutch Radio News: From Public Polarization to Public Service  Anya Luscombe  315 20 Still Serving the Public? News Provision on BBC Radio  Katy McDonald  332 21 Spanish Radio in the Early Years of Democracy: Antena 3 Radio  Pilar Dobón-Roux  348

Section VI  Studying Radio Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  365 22 Studying 1960s Commercial Radio  Richard Legay  367 23 Studying Radio: Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC  Kate Murphy  383 24 ‘Podcasting Radio on Podcasts’: Edutainment Podcasting Pedagogy for Radio Students During

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COVID-19  Kylie Sturgess, Lauren O’Mahony, Kathryn Trees and Simon Order  398 25 The Place of Radio in the Soundscapes: Everyday Listening and Producing Sounds in Marginalized Communities of the Global South  Andrea Medrado  415

Section VII  Futures Introduction  Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell  435 26 Queer Networks Versus Global Corporations: The Battle for the Soul of Audio Fiction  Ella Watts  437 27 Recalling Radio: An Archival View from Radio’s Second Century  Alexander Badenoch  453 28 Hyperlocal Radio: Reclaiming Conversation through Social Broadcasting  Lucia Scazzocchio  473 29 Making Waves Behind Bars: The (Past, Present and) Future of Prison Radio  Phil Maguire  486 30 Radio in the Round: Reflections on the Future of Sound Media  Richard Berry  504 Index  520

Contributors

Christina Baade is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University, Canada. She researches popular music and sound media. Publications include her award-winning book Victory Through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II (2012) and three co-edited collections, most recently Beyoncé in the World (2021). Bridget Backhaus is a lecturer in journalism and media studies at Griffith University, Australia. A former community radio journalist and producer, her research explores the role of community media in social and environmental change with particular focus on issues of voice, listening, identity and participation. Alexander Badenoch is Endowed Professor of Transnational Media at the Free University of Amsterdam and Assistant Professor in Media and Culture at Utrecht University. His research focuses on the transnational entanglements of broadcasting in post-war Europe, as well as digital archives and audio-visual heritage. Marine Beccarelli is a doctor in media history, teaching at Paris 1 University. She published the book Micros de nuit about the history of French night-time radio (2021). She also worked for the radio station France Culture and wrote the podcast Les Nuits du bout des ondes, a fiction about night and radio. Lori Beckstead is an associate professor and director of the Allan Slaight Radio Institute in the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson U). She teaches courses in radio, podcasting, sound design and sound studies and is co-producer and co-host of The Podcast Studies Podcast. Richard Berry is a senior lecturer in radio in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at the University of Sunderland. He published one of the earliest academic articles on podcasting in 2006 and helped to develop the field of podcast studies. His research explores the intersections between radio and new technologies, how the internet generates new opportunities for producers and listeners, and how these trends might change our understanding of what radio is.

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Contributors

Emily Best is a PhD candidate at Birkbeck, University of London, researching the role of the listener in Samuel Beckett’s radio drama, and co-runs the online listening group The Echo Salon with fellow radio scholars. She previously completed an MA in modern and contemporary literature, also at Birkbeck. Hugh Chignell is Emeritus Professor of Media History at Bournemouth University. He has published mainly on radio and radio history including Public Issue Radio (2011) and British Radio Drama, 1945–63 (2019). Hugh is co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio. Josephine Coleman is a practitioner-researcher lecturing in media and public relations at Brunel University. She is communications officer for the MeCCSA Radio Studies Network and has worked in PR for independent radio, broadcast journalism/presenting on local BBC radio as well as for community media in the UK and the USA. Pilar Dobón-Roux holds a PhD in communication and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Communication at the International University of Valencia (VIU), where she directs the Master’s degree in corporate and strategic communication. Her research has focused on the recent history of the media in Spain. Kim Fox is a professor of practice in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JRMC) at The American University in Cairo in Egypt. She is the executive producer of the award-winning ‘Tell Your Story Egypt’. She is the founder and organizer of Podfest Cairo, Egypt and Africa’s first podcasting conference. She has published widely about podcasting and is a leading authority on the subject. Lawrie Hallett researches and teaches radio and audio, alongside international development, at the University of Bedfordshire in the UK. A former broadcast producer and presenter, he previously worked for the British broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, specializing in community radio regulation and digital radio policy. His current professional practice includes operating DAB services in Norwich, England. Britta Jorgensen is a podcast practitioner and researcher based in Sydney, Australia. She completed her practice-research PhD at Swinburne University of Technology in 2021 on independent podcasting and narrative journalism in Australia. She has a background in community radio and journalism, has taught and mentored emerging producers, published podcast criticism and research in the field of podcast studies with a focus on practiceresearch methods. She is host and producer of Rise of the Superbugs. She is currently producing podcasts for Deadset Studios, the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, and ABC Radio National. Evi Karathanasopoulou is a Principal Academic in audio production at Bournemouth University (UK) and works across theory and practice in the field of audio media. She

Contributors

gained her PhD at the University of Sunderland, researching radio as an intimate medium. She has most recently written and presented interdisciplinary work that connects audio media to other diverse fields of study, such as architecture and gender studies. Gloria Khamkar is a media academic and researcher, with a special interest in the area of community radio/media, media and migrants, migrants and mobile storytelling. She is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Bournemouth University, UK and her PhD charted ‘The Evolution of British Asian Radio in England: 1960–2004’. She is an experienced journalist and a community radio broadcaster and hosts a weekly live radio show on Southampton’s Asian and ethnic community radio station, Unity 101.1FM. Matthew A. Killmeier researches golden age American radio drama, and has written about horror programmes, Arch Oboler’s work, and is working on a study of Second World War morale dramas. He is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Theatre at Auburn University at Montgomery, USA. Richard Legay is a specialist in radio history and popular culture in the 1960s. He holds a PhD in contemporary history from the University of Luxembourg where he studied commercial radio stations in Europe. He is now a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Anya Luscombe, a former radio journalist, is Associate Professor of Media at UCR/Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. In 2019 she was a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision. She is the author of BBC Radio News, From the Swinging Sixties to the Turbulent Noughties (2013), and the co-editor of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Views on Diplomacy and Democracy: The Global Citizen (2020). Kathryn McDonald is a Principal Academic at Bournemouth University, UK. She worked in the industry as a radio producer and her PhD explored the history of the radio interview. Her research, professional practice and teaching engages with participatory media, broadcast talk, ethics, community engagement, production and broadcasting history. Kathryn is co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio. Katy McDonald is a senior lecturer in journalism and Associate Dean for Education at Newcastle University, UK. A former broadcast journalist, her research interests include radio and journalism practices and higher education. Her next research project combines these interests, using radio production as a methodology to better understand the needs and desires of under-represented communities in higher education. Virginia M. Madsen is a senior lecturer and the Convenor of Radio, Macquarie University. She is a member and board member of the Faculty of Arts Research Centre for Media History (CMH), and now Deputy Director, CMH. She has a doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney. Prior to working in academia, she had a career in radio broadcasting

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Contributors

as a producer with ABC Radio National. She has also written, directed or produced sound designs, documentaries and creative works for a range of institutions, broadcasters and arts companies. Phil Maguire worked in the fields of social work and education before following his passion for radio. After working as a BBC radio producer, he became the founding Chief Executive of the Prison Radio Association. Phil is co-founder of Prison Radio International – a growing global movement of people using audio for social good in criminal justice settings. Andrea Medrado is a lecturer at the University of Westminster, UK. She also worked as an Associate Professor at the Federal Fluminense University, Brazil. Andrea was the CoInvestigator for the eVoices Network (AHRC), focusing on media activism to fight against marginalization in the Global South. She is currently Vice President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Morten Michelsen is Professor of Musicology at Aarhus University, Denmark. Among his publications are Music, Radio and Mediatization (2017, with Mads Krogh) and two anthologies on music radio: Tunes for All? (2018) on Danish music radio and Music Radio: Building Communities, Mediating Genres (2019) on international music radio. Katie Moylan is Associate Professor in Media at the University of Leicester, UK where she teaches modules in radio and television studies. In collaboration with Leicester multilingual station EAVA FM, she runs a production-led module, Community Radio in Practice. Between 2019 and 2021 she was an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellow, studying Indigenous radio as a settler scholar. She has written on radio and television theory and critical pedagogy. Kate Murphy is a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University, UK. Prior to her academic career she was a BBC radio producer, predominantly on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Her book Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC was published in 2016. Marta Perrotta is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts at Roma Tre University where she teaches television and radio formats and digital media. She directs Roma Tre Radio. Her research publications cover radio and women studies, television production studies and comparative television studies. She coordinates the international research group ‘Women on air. Voices, professions and listening in radio and sound media’. Lucia Scazzocchio is a London-based sound artist, radio producer, community facilitator and educator. Driven to produce engaging participatory radio and audio experiences as imaginative on- and off-line broadcast formats, she actively researches and imparts the versatility and potential of audio as an evolving social and artistic medium.

Contributors

Kylie Sturgess is a lecturer in journalism, creative radio and strategic communication at Murdoch University, Australia. She has recently completed a PhD in educational digitalnarrative podcasting. She is a former high school teacher of philosophy and literature, the host of the Token Skeptic and 365 Days of Philosophy podcasts and has presented on many other public/community radio shows. Her research interests include science communication and the intersection of creative arts and health. Ella Watts is a podcast producer, director and audio-fiction expert best known for creating Doctor Who: Redacted. She has consulted extensively on audio fiction for the BBC, especially BBC Sounds. She holds an MA with Distinction in radio from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently working as a voice director for Six to Start. Helen Wolfenden is a lecturer in radio at Macquarie University, Australia. Helen spent the first part of her professional life as a radio broadcaster (presenter, producer, manager and researcher) with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC. Helen researches spoken-word audio including radio, podcasting, audio books and emerging forms.

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Acknowledgements

Producing a book of this size working with international authors writing across a wide range of themes is a challenge. It has been made possible by the support, advice and effort of a number of people who we would like to thank here. Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury Academic has been enthusiastic and supportive throughout the process from the original idea to submission. Our thanks to our friends, colleagues and families for their support over the last two years. Finally we must thank all of the authors who put in so much work researching and writing the chapters and all responded swiftly to our endless emails. It is their expertise, hard work and enthusiasm which has made this book possible and we are extremely grateful to all of them.

Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

Many people have worried about radio and how it could survive in a visual culture. The alarm really began in the 1950s with the arrival of television, although it wasn’t until the following decade that television posed a real threat with high-quality programmes and the arrival of colour. The television age continued into the present century, but somehow radio survived, and it is clear, as the chapters in this book demonstrate, that it had some spectacular new and successful ideas and innovations which would keep it relevant and keep people listening. We have returned to one of the fundamental questions of Radio Studies, which this collection goes some way to answer. How has radio survived (and arguably thrived) in a visual culture? The answer lies not only in the enduring strength of both commercial and public service broadcasting but also in the hugely successful phenomena of community radio and more recently, podcasting. In the original and inspiring work presented here not only are community radio and podcasting prominent but other categories too, which are represented by the section headings. Some of these are familiar to students of radio, for example entertainment (especially music), the listening experience and radio’s democratic function, but in addition we have three other areas that are less familiar. The emotional dimension has had little recognition but here we read about an exciting new field of emotion-led radio research. This writing suggests that radio and podcasting have a particular emotional resonance and connection with listeners. There is also a separate section which considers the question of how radio can be studied. The problem of getting access to some radio and audio output has been partially answered by the availability of a selection of many programmes online. In addition, search tools such as the BBC’s Programme Index in the UK have revolutionized approaches to studying historic radio while the majority of podcasts are of course available online. However, many of the issues identified by our authors (around access to commercial collections for instance) look to help those carrying out research into historical or contemporary broadcasting. Again, some of this is situated in our main ‘Studying Radio’ section, but again these questions are debated in some other chapters, notably Alexander Badenoch’s focus on the future of digital sound. The final part of this Handbook looks to the future. Encouraged to respond to this theme our authors have provided remarkably diverse, optimistic chapters which suggest a bright future for the medium in whatever form it takes. The aim of this collection was to invite people who study radio or podcasting to write around their subject expertise and recent research. The editors took the view that although the title of the collection is a ‘Radio Handbook’ we also wanted perspectives which dealt with podcasting. Our justification for subsuming podcasting under the title ‘radio’ is

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hardly controversial. The relationship between the production and consumption of both radio and podcasts is very close indeed and although podcasting has added considerable diversity to audio output it surely makes sense to study them together. This is not the place to consider whether podcasting is just part of radio, or a natural extension of it, that question is answered by Richard Berry in the final chapter of this book who writes, ‘Podcasts and radio do share a common palette of skills (editing, recording, scripting, etc.) but they are becoming allied but diverging forms of media, where each serves a different purpose.’ This is a collection of writing that reflects inventive approaches to studying the subject and fresh areas of research – as well as revisiting more fundamental concerns of radio studies. More than half of its chapters are written by women, and as a result women’s contribution to radio, so often ignored in the past, is acknowledged, even celebrated. In addition, this is a truly international book: the authors come from the USA, UK, Denmark, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Greece, France, Spain, India, Italy and Brazil. There is also a rich variety in the different methods that our authors have used to underpin their work, which we hope will be of special interest to those who are learning about radio. It is worth identifying some of the overarching themes which appear throughout this collection. Many of the chapters, probably the majority, include some references to history. This is of course a particularly strong field of scholarship, so it is not surprising to see the way writing about the present is informed by writing about the past. Community, commercial and public service radio as well as podcasting are all highlighted. In the case of community radio, it is striking how varied this can be; including radio for the diaspora (as described by Gloria Khamkar), the radically different community radio in the Brazilian favelas (Andrea Medrado) and the context of international prison radio projects (Phil Maguire). This variety is important as it conveys a powerful sense of radio’s flexibility and ability to respond to circumstances and remain relevant. We also read how important technological development has been. In the digital age the advent of podcasting as well as streamed services and the ability to listen on mobile devices, often using headphones, has changed the listening experience. But technology and new ways of transmitting and especially receiving radio have always been influential, as Anya Luscombe describes here in her examination of how radio news developed in the Netherlands. There is a separate space here dedicated to listening, which serves to emphasize the critical importance of audiences and the listening experience. What is also notable is the prominent place of listening in many of the chapters in this collection irrespective of which section they are located in. So, for example, Marine Beccarelli’s chapter on late-night radio in France is to be found under ‘Emotions’ but is also about the listening experience. We read about the radio host, Macha Beranger whose deep and sensuous voice produced a devoted following in her ‘family of sleepless people’. Similarly, Christina Baade’s chapter on music radio and playlists for older listeners appears in the Entertainment section but provides a vivid account of older music fans using smart speakers and other new technologies. Through Andrea Medrado’s ethnographic research we learn about practices of listening and producing sounds as a form of daily resistance.

Introduction

A defining feature of this international collection is the way it introduces the reader to some of the most recent scholarship by authors, some of whom are early in their careers (Britta Jorgensen, Emily Best and Richard Legay for instance). Their work is new to many of us and is truly seeing the light of day for the first time. In addition, there are chapters by radio practitioners, and similarly their work is made public here too. In the Futures section this is true of Ella Watts, Phil Maguire and Lucia Scazzocchio. The editors like to think that this combination of genuinely new and original work combined with chapters by leading authorities in their field makes this collection a truly comprehensive survey of the field.

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Section I Entertainment

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

Public service broadcasting is often characterized as providing information, education and entertainment for its audience. But these are clearly difficult categories to pin down. News is information which can also be entertaining. Comedy entertains but doesn’t it also inform us, for example about other people and their lives and what they think? Having said that, categories are useful starting points, and we can use ‘entertainment’ at least as a way of approaching the study of radio and podcasting. Entertainment programming such as music and sport has come to dominate radio schedules while the success of podcasting owes much to resurgent audio drama. In the sound sphere entertainment seems to be everywhere. Even political coverage, as demonstrated by the argumentative talk radio format, seems to prioritize entertainment over information. Another way of thinking about this area of production is as radio’s response to culture. Radio and podcasting provide access to contemporary and historic culture by selecting and playing from the mass of music output and this has continued to be an important role in the digital age. As well as music, different forms of drama became central to radio output in the last century and are resurgent today in podcast form. We should surely also include sport, which from the early days of boxing on American radio in the 1930s to today’s NFL Super Bowl extravaganza has sought to entertain the mass audience, in the entertainment category. Entertainment in all its various forms remains central to radio and audio and the chapters in this section offer important insights into the huge variety of that coverage. Matthew Killmeier’s account of ‘morale dramas’ in the USA during the Second World War provides evidence of dramatic entertainment fulfilling a propaganda function. He examines the Free World Theatre which in 1943 endeavoured to instil democratic American values in its listeners. Values of democracy, peace and unity were promoted in dramas to try to answer the question, ‘what are we fighting for?’ This was drama which entertained but also confronted social divisions and especially race. The part played by Black and Filipino soldiers was dramatized as well as class disadvantage and the plight of Jewish refugees in Europe. Killmeier provides a positive account of American morale dramas which not only aimed to entertain their huge wartime audiences but pointed to a more egalitarian and united America after the war had ended.

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Morten Michelsen takes us into a different audio world. He examines the relationship between the contemporary phenomenon of podcasting and music using examples from the USA, the UK, Denmark and Germany. This is the territory of educational entertainment and Michelsen demonstrates what an important aspect of radio and podcasting this has been. He describes the origins of the music podcast in the earlier public service provision of music education broadcasting. The BBC’s twenty-five-episode Story of Pop in 1973 is a good example of radio’s treatment of the subject using a radio DJ as the presenter and featuring a lot of music. The educational music podcast, however, is rather different. In fact some music podcasts include no music at all (such as Watching the Throne on the music of Kanye West) and require listeners to be more attentive. This is research which illustrates the difference between radio and podcasting as well as the intermediality (the various mixes of media) to be found in radio and podcast music education. So ubiquitous are radio and audio in our lives that what appears to be about one small aspect of listening behaviour tells us about something far bigger. Christina Baade’s research on older people listening to streamed music in North America is also about the important question of how people engage with new technology. Surprisingly, the senior citizens in Baade’s research are enthusiastic adopters of streaming services and represent a significant market for music online – with the over-fifty-fives being a rapidly growing market for music services in the UK. Baade dismisses old-fashioned stereotypes about older people and technology and instead describes a growing population with a particular liking for smart speakers. The music industry has finally discovered the older listener, and this has produced a new framing of this group in industry publications around themes like wellbeing and consumer empowerment. It turns out that ‘peak streaming’ may not have been reached as older listeners embrace technologies which have the ability to bridge the care gap so vividly revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It comes as little surprise that the world of sport radio presentation is sexist. But Lori Beckstead’s chapter on women in sport radio in Canada paints a particularly gloomy picture of women being excluded from an intensely male preserve. Using in-depth interviews with some of the very few women presenting on sports shows, Beckstead reveals the extent of gatekeeping which prevents women from getting jobs but also devalues the legitimacy of the work of those who have. Broadcast sport in Canada is heavily biased towards male activity and the interview data reveals what an enormous challenge it is for women to enter that world and to be accepted by the largely male audience. The final two chapters take us yet again into a different aspect of what is framed here as entertainment. Artistic or serious radio, especially from the last century is still important for what it tells us about radio’s capacity to be a significant art form. Emily Best claims that the radio play is a particular literary phenomenon in her discussion of Samuel Beckett’s Words and Music and Louis MacNeice’s Persons from Porlock. Both of these writers were major literary figures and the fact they chose radio as a medium confirms the potential of sound drama. As there is no narrator in these dramas and no visual clues the listener is obliged to make an effort to appreciate them. Best quotes the BBC producer Martin Esslin who said, ‘the listener is an active collaborator with the producer’. MacNeice and Beckett

Entertainment

had quite different approaches to radio drama but the fact that we are still listening to them over fifty years later is significant. The Entertainment section ends with the work of the Australian scholar, Virginia Madsen, who writes here about the radio feature. In Madsen’s chapter, we read about the intersection of entertainment, education and information. The radio feature is indeed a curious and difficult to define genre. Features programmes (and more recently podcast features) blur the boundary between fiction and non-fiction and have been important parts of radio broadcasting internationally. Drawing on examples from Europe, Britain, the USA and beyond, Madsen provides an historical account of a uniquely radio (or audio) phenomenon. We read of the German hörspiel as well as poetic British features epitomized by Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood and the work of the pre-eminent American producer Norman Corwin. In the radio feature, poetry and documentary collide in a particularly radiogenic genre which demonstrates radio’s ability to entertain while at the same time challenging the listener to think about what it is they are hearing.

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1 ‘Don’t Let ’Em Divide Us’ Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama Matthew A. Killmeier

During the Second World War, American radio aired propaganda dramas, part of the media effort to inform and engage citizens. Morale dramas, a particular species thereof, targeted civilian audiences and focused on the ideals animating the war effort, including democracy, domestic and Allied unity, and the post-war world. Morale dramas tended to stress domestic concerns. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the public initially, but John Blum (1976) argues that afterward the threat appeared distant with the far-off war causing more temporary aggravation than sacrifice, and the USA needed more effort and zeal from its citizens. It deployed domestic propaganda, particularly morale dramas such as Free World Theatre, as one means of bolstering public confidence in and support for the war. This anthology programme of thirty-minute dramas aired for nineteen weeks in 1943, and in some respects epitomizes wartime morale dramas and the peculiar US propaganda effort. As with other morale dramas, FWT was created for the domestic audience. It was a sustaining show, as were most morale programmes, meaning it had no sponsor and its production was chiefly funded by the network. It aired over the Blue Network on Sunday afternoons.1 The programme was also an effort of a private agency, the Hollywood Writers Mobilization in conjunction with the government Office of War Information (OWI), a common partnership with American propaganda programmes (Blue 2002; Hilmes 1997). The HWM formed to contribute creative labour to the war effort and comprised the major media unions. The OWI was a government agency formed in 1942 to coordinate dispersal of US government information about and understanding of the war effort, and it did so largely by working cooperatively with US media. HWM provided the bulk of the work for FWT, and it solicited prominent writers to craft statements regarding what the Allies were fighting for, intending to use them to inspire its plays. Understanding what the war was waged for animated the programme, which was initially titled What Are We Fighting For?

Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama

FWT differed from most other morale programmes in that many of its plays were set in or addressed the post-war world, a number of its dramas articulated leftist ideals and criticisms, and it used a collaborative editorial process for the crafting of some of its plays. As Albert Wertheim argues, the programme often pointed towards ‘a future imbued with world peace, blessed by the work of the (not yet officially founded) United Nations, and in which the United States played a major role in a new and pacific, Augustan world order’ (2004: 192). It aimed at a domestic audience, yet, as its title suggested, it spoke of and to an idealistic, larger, post-war world. This world, some plays suggested, would entail winning the war against the Axis as well as social ills, abroad and in America. Leftist ideals animated some of the plays and echoed those of popular theatre, film and fiction of the Depression, such sentiments having traction because of the cultural politics of the New Deal, according to Michael Denning (1996). Indeed, the inaugural play of the programme, ‘The People March’ (21 February 1943), written by Arch Oboler and starring Alla Nazimova and Conrad Veidt, used a good deal of a speech by Vice President Henry Wallace, which advocated a just peace, international institutions and full employment: ‘if everybody can be given a job in war work now, why can’t everybody have a job in peacetime production later on?’ (‘The People March’ 1943: 22).2 The play uses the speech, aired over radio sets in the play, to segue between various characters, an allegory for the people of the free world. An American couple, where the husband responds to the speech saying nothing will change, serve as a foil for European resisters and wounded American servicemen inspired by the speech. Though it had a small role in FWT, the OWI’s definitions of morale framed the programme to some extent. The OWI advocated radio address ‘the issues’ so that the nation ‘knows and understands what it is fighting for’, as well as ideals, ‘things every citizen must know and understand about our fight’ (OWI 1942: n.p; OWI 1943: 2). One suggestion was Roosevelt’s four freedoms – freedom from want and fear, freedom of religion and speech – another the United Nations, which then referred to the Allies as well as the organization of the post-war peace. Morale also includes affective qualities such as confidence, hope, enthusiasm and unity of purpose. FWT plays that invoked the enemy could count on its threat to activate such unity. The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (9 May 1943) was written by Stephen Longstreet, who later became a screenwriter and novelist, and starred James Cagney. It was the first play that the HWM Editorial Committee collectively vetted, critiqued and approved. The first twelve plays were crafted by a writer or writers with input from Arch Oboler, while the last eight plays evolved from the editorial committee.3 It was composed of fifteen members, including Stephen Longstreet, Arch Oboler and Chairman Howard Estabrook. The idea for a play addressing the Japanese execution of American airmen was approved by the committee. The airmen were part of the Tokyo or Doolittle Raids on 18 April 1942, the first air attack on Japan.4 Several airmen went missing and eight were captured by the Japanese: three were executed. The play provides a first-person narrative of airman Smith’s last moments, including his execution, in which he wills, among other things, ‘my anger I leave to you – and my belief in you who are coming to avenge me’ (The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith 1943: 17). It ends with a statement from the

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commanding general of the US Army Air Forces: ‘These men died as heroes. We must not rest – we must redouble our efforts until the inhuman war lords who committed this crime have been utterly destroyed’ (ibid.). The play resurrects an incendiary event and individualizes it through an effective morale-bolstering melodrama. Other plays used the enemy for building solidarity with America’s allies, as with China to America (2 May 1943), written by Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck and starring Lee J. Cobb and Mercedes McCambridge. The play consists of a radio transmission between American operators and their Chinese counterparts during which the latter are attacked by Japanese aircraft. The Chinese operators bring several locals to the microphone, serving to humanize the Chinese through their remarks of suffering from deprivation, love for their children and commonalities with their American comrades. One man who says he has relatives in New York makes this clear: ‘I think Americans like the same things we do: peace and everybody have food and our sons have jobs’ (Buck 1944: 142). The play effectively represents the Chinese as brave, tough, egalitarian, freedom-loving, people who will never surrender, and Wertheim claims it ‘suggests the survival of China and the future well-being of the world is largely in American hands’ (2004: 195). In contrast, Allan Scott’s Your Day is Coming (7 March 1943), focuses on solidarity with another ally but reveals racial and ethnic fissures in America. Allan Scott was a screenwriter and member of the editorial committee. The play starred Fred MacMurray and Dinah Shore, and concerned the Philippines, then a US Commonwealth under Japanese occupation. In December 1941, Japan invaded the Philippines and defeated the American and Philippine forces in May 1942, considered one of the worst American losses of the Second World War. Like China to America, the play is about the relationship between the United States and the Philippines, which was likely more fraught than the Sino-American one owing to its quasicolonial link, and the US suppression of Filipino efforts to form a nation. The play begins just before the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and centres on two men, American Jed Buell and his friend, Filipino Julio Vargas. Buell and his wife Marilyn are honeymooning in Manila where they connect with Julio and his wife Isabelle. The Japanese attack, killing their wives and Vargas’s children, and the two friends join the fight against the Japanese. The play’s opening narration stresses the resistance and comradery of US and Filipino forces: ‘They have not been defeated. They fight on, our American boys and their Philippine comrades’ (Your Day is Coming 1943: 1). However, much of the play centres on the interactions between the Buell and Vargas families. While Jed and Julio seem close, Marilyn initially seems cold towards Julio. In Julio’s first scene, we learn that Marilyn, though having never met Julio, disagrees with Jed’s claim that ‘you’ll go for him!’ (ibid.: 3). Jed says he is concerned that Julio will be upset that they will not be staying at Julio’s house, and then the two indirectly reveal the issue with Julio and his family: Marilyn: (SLOWLY) I –I’m sorry, Jed, I – I just wouldn’t feel right. After all, he’s – Jed: But it’s not like at home, dear! Julio comes from one of the wealthiest families in Manila! Besides, he’s an educated fellow! It isn’t as if – Marilyn: I just wouldn’t feel happy, dear. It’s just a feeling I’ve got –I know I wouldn’t! (ibid.: 3)

Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama

Most American listeners could infer the source of Marilyn’s reservations are racial since Filipinos were discriminated against in America. Later, Marilyn warms to the Vargas family, perhaps an allegory of the US public’s prejudice against the Filipinos, the change aimed at persuading listeners likewise. After the attack kills their families, Jed joins the army, and he, Julio and other Filipino fighters end up behind enemy lines engaged in guerilla tactics following the defeat of American and Filipino forces. Filipino fighters are depicted as people from all walks of life, ‘just boys’: ‘one of our most notorious playboys’, ‘a farmer from Northern Luzon’, ‘a tennis champion–runner-up at Wimbledon’ (ibid.: 16). Julio relays they are ‘fighting like men’ because ‘you and your country gave them a taste of freedom’ and ‘we have learned to trust one another as a child trusts its mother and this trust makes you strong’ (ibid.: 17). Furthermore, Julio tells Jed, perhaps alluding to the USA, that ‘sometimes when people are born with freedom and democracy they do not know how to prize it … but we have acquired it from you … have made it our heritage now too’ (ibid.). While the play is about the Philippines, and the Filipinos, America’s strategic interest and Allies, it also is clearly about the USA and its citizens, who may have something to learn from their Filipino allies, but also something to show them, too, as the ending suggests. The play’s climax has Jed and Julio setting up a charge to blow up a bridge. When the detonator fails, Jed rushes to ignite it with a short fuse, a sacrificial act that costs him his sight. Julio tells him to ‘take my hand’ (ibid.: 19). The everyday self-sacrificing Filipino fighters are echoed by Jed’s act at the end. Jed, like America, is initially reluctant to fight and naive about the enemy, but when attacked responds with vigour and tenacity. The play evoked a negative response from Philippines President Manuel Quezon. According to OWI officials, Quezon was ‘pretty hurt’, as he thought that the claim made at the beginning of the play that it was based on a theme by Quezon ‘was perversion of facts’, additionally his ‘specially prepared quote was nowhere used’ (Josephy 1943: n.p.). The OWI decided to withdraw their support for FWT in April, noting, as Howard Blue details, ‘there is rarely any relationship between the as-broadcast scripts and the statements that allegedly inspired them’ (2002: 151). Arch Oboler addressed Quezon’s criticism at the 20 April 1943 HWM Editorial Committee meeting, noting his statement and many of the others ‘have turned out not to be very dramatic’, and ‘our task is to build the essence of the statements into drama’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943: 1). Race also figured in the creation and realization of Something about Joe (14 May 1943), which focuses on African American servicemen and their contribution to the war effort. The play was co-written by Milton Merlin and Clarence Muse. Milton Merlin was a member of the editorial committee and a film producer before going into radio writing during the war, and Muse was a film actor, screenwriter, director, songwriter, singer and composer. It originated as an idea in an editorial committee meeting when Milton Merlin proposed an all-Black show featuring a statement from Paul Robeson. A committee member suggested contacting Clarence Muse for ideas about writers. Muse attended their next meeting and pitched adapting his musical programme based upon the story of African American naval hero Charles Jackson French. Clarence Muse created a song, ‘Abraham Lincoln Collects a Dividend’, and ‘would like to have a montage, a panorama of what negroes have done in

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the war effort, then from that work into the Charles French story, and segue into the song finale’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943a: 2). He said Black people want to know what the war is about and what they can contribute. ‘What is democracy, anyway? If they buy bonds, they still can’t fly the bombers they buy. The point of the programme is to give some answer to the questions negroes are asking. And in song lyrics you can say a lot more than you can say in dialogue’ (ibid.). The committee voted that Milton Merlin and Clarence Muse work out a script using Muse’s song for the ending. At the outset of the war, Horace Cayton (1941) diagnosed African American morale as disillusioned. Black soldiers had thought that service in the First World War would positively affect their treatment. But their experience fighting resulted in no changes in their treatment in the military or at home. The armed forces remained segregated, African Americans suffered disproportionately during the Great Depression, and they were excluded from employment in defence jobs. The OWI defined morale as Americans knowing and understanding what they are fighting for; it did not address whom Americans were fighting or where the fight was taking place. However, the Black newspaper Pittsburgh Courier did in 1942 when it advocated for a Double-V Campaign, victory over the Axis abroad and the domestic enemy, white supremacy.5 Jansen Werner argues this campaign provided African Americans with ‘a rhetoric with which they could support the war effort while simultaneously advocating for civil rights’ (2015: 447). However, it faced challenges in reforming structures that stymied Black rights and freedoms, especially segregation, owing to wartime pressures for national unity, and as Brian Ward (2004) argues, complementary compromises the Roosevelt Administration made with powerful Southern Congress members. Something about Joe culturally advocated for and celebrated African American military history, contemporary servicemen and civil rights during a period in which Black media representations were relatively progressive. As Cayton predicted, African American morale would ‘doubtless be met by the development of propaganda rather than any fundamental attempt to change the Negro’s social and economic position’, and this play along with other relatively progressive wartime representations of Black people were not accompanied by changes to the Jim Crow status quo (1941: 375).6 According to J. Fred MacDonald, before the war American radio had ‘one of the more effective policies of discrimination’, limiting Black employment as technicians and talent and deploying ‘strident stereotyping’ of African American characters (1979: 327). One of the longest running dramatic radio programmes, Amos ‘n’ Andy (1929–60), epitomizes this. The two white men who created the programme performed the eponymous lead characters, a common practice in US radio. A comedy, humour in the programme derived chiefly from the characters’ malapropisms that reinforced stereotypes of inferior Black intelligence. Characters were drawn from minstrel figures marked by simpleness, lasciviousness, superstitiousness, indolence, cheating and laziness. While the war did not dispense with such treatment of African Americans, which returned after its end, it did provide a space for more realistic representations of Black people, in part owing to the urgency of depicting harmonious race relations, as Michelle Hilmes (1997), William Barlow (1999) and Barbara Savage (1999) claim. Enemy propaganda partly spurred the change. Japanese propaganda exploited the

Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama

chasm between US claims of fighting for democracy and the lived conditions of African Americans. According to Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, a 1942 survey by the OWI’s predecessor suggested Black people felt racial solidarity with the Japanese, and 18 per cent thought they would be better off under Japanese rule (1986: 386). However, more progressive cultural representations proved conducive for Double-V rhetoric, particularly in those featuring African American soldiers. Something about Joe echoes the Double-V Campaign through the Joe character, a composite military-everyman and an actual Black serviceman: Charles French. An African American messman who served in the segregated United States Navy, French saved several comrades from enemy capture after Japanese forces sunk their ship near the Solomon Islands in 1942. Dubbed hero of the year by the Chicago Defender, one of the most influential Black newspapers, Charles French’s only official recognition came in May 1943 as a letter of commendation from the Navy. The play amplifies the cultural rhetoric of the Double-V Campaign in three intertwined ways. First, it incorporates the words and performances of African American stars who fought on the home front against racism. Second, the play featured a Black military figure and conveyed his heroic efforts. Third, the play addressed the stymieing of African American freedoms. The play begins with a quote from Paul Robeson: ‘We have our part to play in this war – We cannot be free unless peoples everywhere are free!’ (Something about Joe 1943: 1). It aptly alludes to the Double-V Campaign through stressing Black people’s necessary role in struggles for freedom. Robeson became prominent as an actor in theatre and film and a singer. He was also a strong civil rights advocate, refusing to act in films that depicted African Americans in demeaning roles, something he shared with one of the play’s musical performers, Hazel Scott. A pianist and signer, who plays the first song in this play, Hazel Scott worked in film beginning in 1942 and resisted the derogatory roles to which Hollywood relegated Black people. According to Karen Chilton, ‘there would be no obsequious smiles, no hunched shoulders, downcast eyes, or shuffling of any kind’, and she refused ‘four different opportunities to play a singing maid’, and insisted on being cast and credited as herself (2008: 73). Her involvement in the Civil Rights Congress and sponsorship of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee and the Artists’ Front to Win the War later led to her blacklisting, something she shared with Robeson and fellow Something about Joe singer, Lena Horne, who was a famous singer and film actor. Lena Horne and Hazel Scott rose to prominence at the racially integrated Café Society, and Horne performed with a white band in 1941, a rarity (Denning 1996). She said Paul Robeson mentored her and influenced her interest in ‘Civil Rights and equal opportunities for everyone’ (Horne and Schickel 1965: 117). Lena Horne was later blacklisted for speaking at the Civil Rights Congress. Scott and Horne’s performances respectively bookend a brief scene involving a preacher, a woman and a man that serves to situate French in the context of past African American military contributions, further his story and rebut potential concerns about Black support for the war. The preacher’s words, the script notes, should be delivered ‘sincerely and without dialect’ (Something about Joe 1943: 5). On US radio, African Americans typically spoke in dialect, a common code of Black speech derived from minstrelsy. The preacher’s

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speech complemented his sermon and the actor portraying him. Though not as wellknown as Horne and Scott, film actor Rex Ingram portrayed the preacher. Donald Bogle claims he ‘played men who seemed essentially free, slightly heroic, and removed from typical American life’, and like Paul Robeson he portrayed ‘immensely dignified and selfcontained Black male characters’ (2001: 70). Through their performances, Rex Ingram, Lena Horne and Hazel Scott thus embodied more positive Black representations than the roles Hollywood and radio limited most African Americans actors to. After Hazel Scott’s performance, the play segues to the preacher’s sermon where he connects God with war, describing the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, and tying their fate to the present: ‘so shall fascism – with all its monstrous chariots and hordes be sent to the bottom as a stone’ (ibid.: 5). He links Joshua to Black soldiers in past conflicts. ‘Crispus Attucks – Peter Salem at Bunker Hill – soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalry at San Juan Hill, and more than four hundred thousand of us who served during the First World War,’ and connects them to French and his contemporaries (ibid.: 5A). The preacher also notes French ‘towed a raft full of his white comrades to safety’, illustrating the Double-V Campaign. French saved his wounded compatriots from possible capture and killing by the enemy in the war abroad. He did so despite being a messman, a servile rank in the United States Navy in which mostly African Americans and other men of colour cooked and served food for white officers, his actions implicitly making a case for ending segregation in the military and domestically. A man interrupts the preacher, and challenges him, asking why French, whom he calls a ‘crazy fool’, risked his life for them (ibid.). He serves as a foil for concerns about Black support for the war. The preacher responds that Charles French fought ‘for his brothers’, echoing the rhetoric of tolerance and brotherhood espoused during the war by government and civil society groups (ibid.; Savage 1999). The man notes he has been fighting his whole life, not getting anywhere, and will not fight any more. The preacher responds, paraphrasing Paul Robeson: ‘We cannot be free unless all of the peoples everywhere are free’ (ibid.: 6). A more forthright rebuttal then comes from a woman portrayed by Hattie McDaniel. Though her part is smaller than those of Rex Ingram, Lena Horne and Hazel Scott, Hattie McDaniel was the biggest star on the show, the first African American woman to win an Academy Award in 1939 for her performance in Gone with the Wind, though that role and many others she performed provoked criticism due to their stereotypes. Nevertheless, in 1942 Hattie McDaniel helped form the Hollywood Fair Play Committee, which advocated with the Screen Actors Guild for more positive representations of Black people. Jill Watts (2005) notes she also pressed for more inclusive leadership in SAG, helping to get Lena Horne on its board. ‘I want to give you a piece of my mind’, Hattie McDaniel’s character begins (ibid.), ‘I’ve been fighting all my life – and I’m going to keep fighting ’till I die … we’ve come a long ways and fought in all the wars – and we’re going to fight to keep what we got’ she says. ‘I’m going to keep battling to get the rest that belongs to me’, she adds, alluding to the fight at home to end Jim Crow (ibid.). Afterward, Lena Horne performs a song, then the play segues to several soldiers talking. Their light conversation turns toward what they are not fighting for: ‘three families in a lil’ dark room’, ‘Jim Crow!’, ‘pellagra’, ‘poll tax’ and ‘lynchin’’ (ibid.: 9). Each reflects the racially

Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama

segregated and subordinated status of African Americans. Jim Crow refers to the racial segregation prevailing in much of the USA and its military. Poll taxes disenfranchised Black voters. Lynching was vigilante torture and execution enacted publicly against African Americans. Pellagra is a disease caused by a niacin deficiency due to poor nutrition, common to the poor, and poverty affected Black people more than whites. These contradict Roosevelt’s four freedoms; Jim Crow and lynching contradict ‘freedom from fear’, poll taxes contravene ‘freedom of speech’, pellagra and crowded housing are the opposite of ‘freedom from want’. Although one soldier says he is fighting ‘against all the things that causes such things’, the connection to racism is not explicitly stated (ibid.). It would not need to be made for African Americans, who intimately experienced racism. However, it also could not be overtly articulated, as Donald Meckiffe and Mathew Murray claim, since wartime radio excluded ‘any considerations of race relations’ (1998: 347). In addition to race, FWT also addressed ethnicity, specifically Jews, in several plays, a subject David Weinstein (2007) argues was scant on US radio during the war. According to the HWM Editorial Committee, this was not because of a lack of audience interest. The programme received ‘a number of letters … about the Jewish problem’, Arch Oboler said at its 22 April meeting, and he hoped ‘someone would do a play in terms of religion, and in terms of the responsibility of the world to those two million Jewish dead and the millions more who are now dying and being persecuted’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943b: 3). FWT aired two plays prior to this meeting that address Jews. I Have No Prayer (14 March 1943) starred Lloyd Nolan and was written by Arch Oboler. It echoes popular wartime stage and film productions in representing soldiers as diverse in ethnicity, region and class harmonized within a military unit, and the play centres on a tank crew mourning one of their comrades, Jake Cracow, killed by Nazis in North Africa. Flashbacks reveal some tensions as Sergeant Joe Kelly, who describes himself as Irish and from New York, says he did not like Jake. He refers to Jake as ‘a Hebe from Chicago’, but he changes his view (I Have No Prayer 1943: 13). ‘Yeah, you who all your life had been full of words like, hunkie, and Dagoe, and Wop, and Sheenie … All of a sudden you were forgettin’ all those things and likin’ these guys’ (ibid.: 15). They buried Jake on the battlefield where he died and promised to return. Joe ends the play with a speech about the pluralistic collective they and the Allies have become, noting that they are ‘one guy … fightin’ for one reason’ regardless of region, nationality or race, so that men ‘can be free men together all over the world’ (ibid.: 17). He says they only thought they were free, until they realized they were not because of their hate, and only by overcoming that hate and working together were they able to become truly free. Joe hopes that the war will bring about such a change globally, ‘and nobody will be askin’ anybody else where they’re from, or what they did, or what’s their skin, or the shape of their head, or the crook of their nose’ (ibid.). The play’s military melting-pot metaphor echoed other media texts of its time that portrayed US servicemen as transcending prejudices tied to region, ethnicity and social class. Programmes that addressed anti-Semitism were much less common (Weinstein 2007). Fiesta (18 April 1943) mounts a more topical treatment of the plight of the Jews. It was written by Richard Collins and Tommy Tomlinson and starred Paul Henreid and Mercedes McCambridge. Richard Collins was a screenwriter and would later work as a producer and

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director. Tommy Tomlinson was a radio writer, director and producer. Fiesta is set in the present in a Mexican village, where Rosa Bergman, a refugee from Prague, has been living for two years. Rosa’s husband, Conrad, who has been in a concentration camp, is supposed to reunite with her in the village but another man, Stefan, arrives in his stead. Stefan is an anti-fascist fighter who ended up in the same Vichy concentration camp as Conrad, who was put there because he was a refugee.7 After Conrad gets a letter from Rosa saying she has the money to get him to the village and permission of the Mexican government to do so, Conrad decides Stefan’s life is more valuable, that he should go in Conrad’s place under his identity. ‘The one who leave this place must go’ Conrad says, ‘not because he has a Rosa waiting for him, but because he can help win for the rest – win our freedom and our war!’ (Fiesta 1943: 17). Stefan leaves the village to join uprisings against the Nazis and Europe. The play ends with his words of gratitude to the people of the village and Mexico: ‘You have given me and others like me refuge and help … our children and our children’s children will hear the story of your faith – and they will always remember!’ (ibid.: 19). Fiesta presents a moving portrayal of noble self-sacrifice on the part of Conrad and a heroic sketch of anti-fascist resistance through the figure of Stefan, and addresses the plight of Jewish refugees and the concentration camps, nearly taboo on American radio at the time (Weinstein 2007). Fiesta never identifies Rosa or Conrad as Jewish, instead providing inferential clues through their names and refugee or concentration camp status, which may have reflected implicit restrictions on addressing Jews on the radio: ‘During the early 1940s, the word Jew was rarely spoken in network radio drama’ (ibid.: 108). In discussing The Second Battle of Warsaw (13 June 1943), the editorial committee advised the author to not use ‘the word Jew till later in the play – it will be more effective then’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943c: 1). Early on, the committee was not unified on addressing the plight of the Jews. At the 22 April meeting where Oboler said he hoped someone would craft a play on the Jewish problem, other members ‘felt it would be a mistake to differentiate between the Jews and other religious minorities’ (ibid.: 3). John Wexley said ‘it would be a mistake to deal with the subject, that nothing in particular could be accomplished by it, and a lot might be lost’ (ibid.). Arch Oboler and Stephen Longstreet noted that the ‘point was not to stress the importance of Jewish blood or suffering, but to hold to light the fact that the Fascists need a scapegoat – and if the scapegoat disappears, their thesis is undermined’ (ibid.). John Wexley said the ‘problem of the Jews is essentially the same thing as the problem of the Catholics or of any religion that is being kicked around; if we could make it a composite of all religions being persecuted by Hitler, a healthier way of handling the problem would be reached’ (ibid.). The reluctance of radio networks to address this subject was driven by a business conservatism that feared offending advertisers and the public, as well as concern about offending politicians, government regulators and the OWI (Weinstein 2007: 112). However, no one on the committee expressed reservations or objections at the 26 May editorial committee meeting when Arch Oboler introduced Irving Ravetch ‘who wrote in suggesting a play on the European Jews and asked for a chance to write such a play for the series’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943d: 1). Irving Ravetch initially said ‘the insufficiency of quotas, leaving millions of Jews without a country to go to even if they succeeded in

Free World Theatre and US Wartime Morale Drama

escaping from Germany, might provide a dramatic subject’, and suggested that the Jews return to Jerusalem (ibid.). Committee members objected that ‘was undesirable, for OWI has not expressed itself on this subject, and it might appear that OWI was endorsing the Zionist Movement’ (ibid.). The committee assigned him to write The Second Battle of Warsaw. Irving Ravetch, then a young writer at CBS, would later work as a screenwriter and film producer. The play featured John Garfield and Anne Baxter. The committee described its idea for the play as ‘a dramatisation of the hand-to-hand fighting to which the Jews were forced in the Warsaw ghetto just recently when the Nazis exterminated millions of Jews, making it a Jewish Alamo, dramatised through one family’ (ibid.). Irving Ravetch crafted the play about the recent Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April to May 1943), in which Jews mounted an armed resistance to Nazi efforts to remand the remaining Jewish population to concentration camps, part of the Final Solution. It concerns a family in the ghetto who are given the choice of being smuggled out of the country or joining the resistance in the fight against the pending destruction of the ghetto and everyone in it. They decide to join the fight, understanding that they will likely die doing so. Despite the committee’s recommendation, Irving Ravetch has the Herzogs identified early on by a Nazi as ‘the Jewish family Herzog’ (The Second Battle of Warsaw 1943: 3). The committee also indicated that he could address ‘obliquely the dilemma’ of Jewish refugees (HWM Editorial Committee 1943d: 1). Rather, Irving Ravetch squarely addresses this issue as the Herzogs discuss whether they should join the partisans or try to escape. While one of his sons advocates leaving, the grandfather is adamantly opposed because of what they will face as stateless, Jewish refugees, accepted nowhere. His son, Chaim, disagrees, ‘they will have us’, he says, ‘they must have us – we are the first, the first to fight the beast. How can they close their doors to us?’ (The Second Battle of Warsaw 1943: 8). His father offers a rebuttal that makes explicit the plight facing many Jews at the time: So soon you have forgotten. It is too soon, Chaim. To forget that word ‘quota’ – to forget that we are only the unwanted, refuse, scum. The others, Chaim – the others who got out – did they win freedom and honor? Who helped them – who were their friends? Nowhere, nothing. They will not have us. Such a prospect you offer, Chaim – one hell into another, the freedom of starvation and hopelessness on a ship that never stops. (ibid.)

The son responds, asking about ‘our Allies’ (ibid.). His father notes where some stateless Jews actually ended up. ‘So we should join our old neighbor Milstein in a concentration camp on the island of Mauritius’ (ibid.). After they decide to fight, the patriarch speaks of their effort in ways that echo other wartime dramas about the Allies, including The People March, China to America, Your Day is Coming and Fiesta. He tells his children, ‘we are Polish citizens, and this is our home. And here we shall stay. And here we shall die. But there is only one way for free men to die. And that is in defense of their freedom’ (ibid.: 9). According to Weinstein (2007), conflating the Jews and Allies was a strategy of Jewish organizations to combat anti-Semitism. By the end of the play, all are dead except Zelbel, Chaim’s son, whose words close the play: ‘Will the world know? Or are we alone here?’ (ibid.: 17).

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In addition to race and ethnicity, FWT addressed a domestic problem that the writers believed hindered unity and morale, and consequently the war and the peace to come – US businessmen and the class they stood for. Tomorrow (28 February 1943) was written by Budd Schulberg and Jerome Lawrence and starred John Garfield and Ray Collins. Budd Schulberg was a screenwriter and novelist, and Jerome Lawrence was a member of the editorial committee, a radio writer and co-founder of the Armed Forces Radio Network. The play is set in a post-war future and centres on Jack Reynolds, a young veteran returning from the war to his small hometown in which his father owns the biggest paint company in the state. Jack was stationed in North Africa, and his bunkmate was Steve Taylor, a denizen of the same small town. It is ‘like any other town – split down the middle’, Steve says, ‘and while you were swimming up at the country-club pool, I was diving into that mudhole in Thompson’s Creek’ (Tomorrow 1943: 11). Steve’s father works at the plant that Jack’s father owns. Jack went to Yale, and Steve dropped out of high school to help his father. However, Steve is an intellectual whose interest in reading and ideas was sown by his father. Steve and Jack become fast friends. Steve has a big impact on Jack – he raises Jack’s consciousness about the war’s goals. Steve dies in battle, and Jack finishes a letter Steve was writing to his parents. The letter conveys what Steve, Jack and their generation think the war is about. Steve writes to his parents that ‘you taught me that anything was bad that made another human being suffer, no matter how happy it made you, or how prosperous, or how glorious – it was bad … it seems that’s what we’re fighting for’ (ibid.: 20). Steve and Jack’s ideals are also conveyed through dialogue. For instance, when Steve tells Jack the meaning of the word ‘anachronism’: ‘it can be one of those guys who goes around talking about how much he loves freedom – and then wants to make sure that nobody gets it but him’ (ibid.: 13). Just before he dies in battle, Steve tells Jack, ‘there’s only one way to get peace and keep it. Don’t let ’em divide us! Join hands around the world – and don’t let go!’ (ibid.: 22). Steve’s views stand in stark contrast to those of Jack’s father, an allegorical figure of the self-interested American businessman. When Jack tells his father that the war was won by the Allies, a collective effort, his father responds: ‘That’s a nice way to feel. But I’m a businessman. I like to face facts. Whether we won the war ourselves or not is beside the point. We came out of the war the strongest nation in the world, and by God we’re going to make the most of it!’ (ibid.: 8). He envisions international branches for his company to capitalize on American military successes: ‘They need us and we’ll make ’em pay!’ (ibid.: 9) However, by the play’s conclusion, as Jack reads the letter he and Steve wrote, Jack’s father seems emotionally moved, suggesting a potential change of heart by the father and his class and generation. Though the play emphasizes class and generational divisions, it aims to raise morale through the unity of Steve and Jack in their effort to fight common enemies and for a shared vision of the future. This unity, the play suggests, can transcend such divisions. Tomorrow addresses class embodied by the American businessman who takes centre stage in General Armchair (6 June 1943), which starred Edward Arnold. It was written by Samson Raphealson, a successful playwright, screenwriter and a member of the editorial committee, which discussed the script at its 26 May 1943 meeting. Oboler advocated

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having the character be a civilian rather than a soldier, specifically a businessman, who ‘dreams of himself as a hero’ despite doing no more than ‘pushing pins around on his war map’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943d: 1). The committee concurred and gave it its title. The play concerns American businessman Cornelius Armstrong who is in heaven where his life is being scrutinized. A Walter Mitty-like character, Armstrong daydreams war scenarios where he directs defeating blows to Axis enemies and his business-partner Joe obsequiously fawns over his heroics, such as bombing Hitler’s home and forcing the Führer to surrender. Awake, Armstrong keeps tabs on war developments by plotting tacks on a map in his office, critiquing military leadership and declaring what he would instead do. ‘No one can tell me anything about the war, no, sir! If those big shots would only listen to my sort of common sense’ (General Armchair 1943: 16). He otherwise leads a desultory life marked by excess consumption in a time of rationing, though he considers his appetites modest, describing his lunch as ‘the usual business man’s snack: soup, potato salad, meat, toasted rolls with butter, peas, carrots, corn, a nice slice of home-baked pie a la mode, a little cheese and a couple of cups of coffee – a thimbleful or two of brandy – and naturally, a cigar’ (ibid.: 6). Questioned about his meat, he confesses it was a black-market steak. ‘The butcher has to make a living, doesn’t he? They got all those price ceilings hanging over his head – just the way they have over mine’ (ibid.). Armstrong describes his after-lunch routine of driving aimlessly near the beach. Listeners would know that gas was rationed at this point, adding to Armstrong’s depiction as a profligate. Armstrong also ignores many other wartime mandates and principles. He hires former war production factory workers by paying them a higher wage during a time of labour shortages, potentially increasing inflation. Armstrong thus illustrates how characters in dramatic programmes can illustrate what people ‘must not do if the anti-inflation program is to succeed’ (OWI 1942: n.p.). Furthermore, Armstrong describes his habit of getting a massage and confesses to paying the masseur twice his usual rate because he works in a receiving hospital and is prohibited from side work. The play and Armstrong’s flouting of wartime shared sacrifice were discussed at an editorial committee meeting where it was agreed that Armstrong’s actions be linked to the war effort (HWM Editorial Committee 1943e: 1). At the play’s end Armstrong’s fate follows a summative assessment. ‘A plain, ordinary creature, rather overweight – a soft, confused, impractical man, who sits in the middle of a world cataclysm, and dreams his daydreams, and thinks of himself as hardfighting, clear-thinking, good, [and] practical-minded’ (General Armchair 1943: 19). The angel notes Armstrong’s not a real villain, but he committed the ‘real crime’ of ‘everlasting muddling’ and must be sent to hell (ibid.). Like General Armchair and Tomorrow, In Memory of a Hero (20 June 1943) written by Howard Estabrook, also addresses class through the figure of a businessman who, like Armstrong, flouts wartime restrictions, and like the father in Tomorrow is dismissive of the young soldiers’ leftist idealism about the post-war period. FWT ended 27 June 1943 with its last play, ‘V Day’. Approximately one-week earlier the editorial committee met for the last time to try to build on the programme’s success, according to the HWM President, Robert Rossen, though they mostly discussed its demise. Arch Oboler said it had been cancelled by the Blue Network in part owing to its cost of US$2,000 per week, high for a sustaining series. Originally, the programme

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was to be twenty-six plays. Some committee members suggested trying to sell the show commercially. ‘I don’t think it is saleable’, Arch Oboler said at their 21 June meeting. ‘This isn’t a neutral show – it isn’t the kind of show someone with taxes they don’t want to pay might buy … thoughts like ours are lucky to get a chance to be spoken and heard, let alone paid for’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943f: 2). Another committee member suggested trying to get a philanthropist to back the programme financially. Paul Franklin noted that there are not that many of them with the money they needed, and that it was unlikely ‘any of them [would] sponsor speech as free as ours’ (ibid.) That same month Congress voted to gut the OWI’s domestic budget, effectively killing the agency’s domestic operations. The seeds of OWI’s domestic demise were sown early in 1943 when it became a focus of Congress following gains by an alliance of Southern Democrats and Republicans. OWI’s efforts offended Southern Senators when they addressed race the wrong way, as they did in OWI’s Negroes and the War pamphlet (1942). One representative described OWI radio scripts and other media as ‘partly insidious propaganda against Congress and for a fourth term [FDR]’, sometimes ‘along communistic lines’ (Blum 1976: 40). Internally, the OWI sometimes agreed with the latter criticism, describing FWT as ‘dangerously close to political propaganda’ in April (Blue 2002: 151). The editorial committee essentially acknowledged this concern. Arch Oboler speculated that the show’s content contributed to its demise. ‘Someone listened in and felt it was too hot stuff – someone just thinks it’s kind of red. Maybe some important person, or maybe just a relative of an important person’ (HWM Editorial Committee 1943f: 3). He said that Congress asked for the programme’s scripts each week, and that the co-founder of the House Un-American Activities Committee requested some scripts. One committee member asked who could object to the show. Stephen Longstreet said ‘it is the business men who oppose it’ (ibid.). Samson Raphaelson concurred and said he ‘was amazed we even got these scripts on the air’ (ibid.). This chapter explored FWT, an example of the wartime morale programme, a domestic propaganda vehicle focused on unifying the public and bolstering its support for and confidence in the war through dramatic entertainment. Unlike propaganda focused chiefly on the enemy, morale programmes are revelatory for chiefly assaying domestic concerns, in particular matters militating against morale, such as racial, ethnic and class divides in US society as demonstrated in FWT. Many of its dramas also reflect ideals for the post-war era and the problems inhibiting their realization. Radio entertainment, as Hilmes (1997) argues, was instrumental in developing some semblance of a national culture, and wartime morale programmes, including FWT, leveraged American radio entertainment for propaganda purposes. OWI Director Elmer Davis, a former radio commentator, claimed that entertainment offered the ‘easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds’ (Koppes and Black 1986: 391). NBC anticipated this as early as 1939 in an internal report on the role of the network in the event of US entry into the war. Louise Benjamin (2009) notes that radio would ‘inspire or suppress war spirit as well as guide the direction of our participation’, and ‘civilian morale must be maintained by entertainment and diversion from the horrors of war’ (107, 108). Government wartime propaganda policy, realized through the OWI and its predecessor, the

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Office of Facts and Figures, was to work with the radio industry and private organizations, such as the HWM in the case of FWT. OWI’s William B. Lewis, chief of its domestic radio bureau and formerly of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, was instrumental in facilitating and shaping the coordination between government propaganda efforts and their expression by the radio industry. According to Cynthia Meyers (2014), Lewis stressed in a 1942 speech the importance of tapping radio’s established success as ‘primarily an entertainment medium’ in order to reach large audiences with government propaganda (237). He planned ‘not to displace [programming] with the war, but rather to superimpose the war’ onto existing radio content and forms; ‘We are coordinating not only radio with Government – but Government with radio’ (Ibid.: 238, 240). FWT exemplifies the cooperative collaboration Lewis devised and led. It used the established form of radio drama as a discursive means for propaganda through the indirect instrument of entertainment. Like many US radio dramas, each play was just under thirty minutes in length, and its creators deployed the popular anthology programme, a well-established format for serious and popular drama. FWT drew upon a combination of established and developing writers and actors, from radio and Hollywood. It was supported by veteran NBC production professionals, including Gordon Jenkins, music director for its West Coast division. Furthermore, it did so through the sustaining programme format, which was well-established and common in the American commercial system, with sustainers often serving as vehicles for serious fare to meet the FCC’s public interest mandate. OWI Radio Division consultant, Charles Siepmann, a former BBC Director who would later write several influential scholarly works on radio and television, in 1942 argued that wartime radio has three chief uses on the home front: news, entertainment and morale. FWT combines entertainment and morale. Siepmann stresses wartime entertainment should not be escapist, calling for ‘a tonic, not a laxative’ (1942: 28). He critiques radio entertainment as sometimes catering to ‘the morbid indulgence in escapism’, which ‘is in war a dangerous liability’ (ibid.). Siepmann claims building and sustaining morale is wartime radio’s most important use. ‘The problem of morale is the problem of mental and emotional unpreparedness’ (ibid.: 29). America’s insularity led to a vicarious relationship with the world beyond its borders Siepmann argues, and radio can restore the reality that remoteness has divested it of (ibid.). Radio’s wartime purpose is ‘to kindle our imagination’ so we can clearly see the issues at stake in the war, its ‘democratic task’ domestically and abroad, and ‘the shape of things to come’ (ibid.). FWT effectively fused radio entertainment and morale, addressing subjects that worked against insularity and towards internationalism. China to America and Your Day is Coming address the perseverance and pluck of allies suffering under enemy occupation. Significantly, they humanize the Asian characters in the plays through representing them as subjects struggling against a stronger, brutal invader in ways that make them relatable to Americans. The Chinese and Filipinos are framed as the little guys being bullied by the larger, imperialist Japan. These plays strive to do so in part to aid American’s sense of solidarity with these new Allies, but they also look toward the post-war ideal of the brotherhood of the United Nations. Your Day is Coming also raises an issue that works

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against such brotherhood and domestic American democracy, racial prejudice against Filipinos. Something about Joe focuses on the domestic face of prejudice and indirectly counsels for civil rights through its recounting of Charles French’s heroism as well as the lack of freedoms for African Americans. It links this in part by echoing the Double-V campaign throughout, most overtly through Robeson’s quote: ‘We cannot be free unless peoples everywhere are free!’ This play, with its incorporation of several musical pieces along with its short sketch, also echoes the variety-show format, one of the most popular and longstanding programme types on American radio at the time. With I Have No Prayer, Fiesta and The Second Battle of Warsaw, FWT also addresses anti-Semitism, the plight of Jewish refugees and the attempted genocide of Jews in Europe. I Have No Prayer interweaves the overcoming of domestic anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism and class divisions to the goal of military cohesion. It broadens this through the melting-pot tank crew to the fight against fascism in the North African desert, echoing many popular wartime and Depression movies and theatrical plays. The consequences of anti-Semitism internationally are central to Fiesta, specifically the plight of stateless Jewish refugees struggling to find states willing to accept them. It also touches upon the concentration camps in which some of these Jews were incarcerated and killed. Furthermore, its self-sacrificing hero echoes JudeoChristian narratives that were likely resonant with contemporaneous listeners as they were commonplace in Westerns. The Second Battle of Warsaw, like China to America and Your Day is Coming, humanizes the Polish-Jewish family as they fight to their death against the Nazis, with the committee recommending a Western frame for the drama, a Jewish Alamo. The play also addresses anti-Semitism, the concentration camps and the plight of stateless Jewish refugees, as well as the Nazis’ final solution. Issues affecting domestic democracy and the shape of the post-war world are also engaged in Tomorrow and General Armchair. In the former, the young protagonists transcend their class backgrounds in part through military service, becoming advocates for the ideal of United Nations brotherhood. General Armchair, through the allegorical gluttonous businessman, addresses domestic problems that need to be overcome to succeed in the war, advocating for shared sacrifice to achieve Allied victory in the war and implicitly a more just and equitable post-war world. Its story of the after-life judgement is redolent of the popular Christmas novella, A Christmas Carol. Through its plays discussed in this chapter and others, FWT tapped and leveraged popular entertainment forms and conventions toward the ends of its morale dramas, propaganda for the homefront, demonstrating the broad rhetorical capacities of radio entertainment.

Notes 1 2

Although still owned by NBC, the Blue Network would soon be sold, as required by the FCC, and in 1945 it would become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Wallace’s speech is ‘The Century of the Common Man’ (1942). Conservative Democrats dropped Wallace from the 1944 presidential ticket because of his left-wing views, and he became Secretary of Commerce. President Truman fired him in 1946 for conciliatory remarks made towards the Soviet Union.

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3 4 5

6

7

FWT aired twenty plays in nineteen broadcasts – one featuring two short plays. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt told the military he wanted such a strike in part ‘to bolster the morale of America and the Allies’ (Glines 1988: 10). Black newspapers targeted African American readers with news and features concerning them. These papers date back to the early nineteenth century and still exist today, though their greatest influence and number was in the twentieth century. The most influential papers in the 1940s were the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier and New York Amsterdam News. ‘Jim Crow’, originally a minstrel character, became a term for racial segregation laws and policies that prevailed in much of the USA, particularly the South, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through the 1960s. Although the play notes the camp was in Vincennes, at the time the only Vichy-France concentration camp was Gurs, near Pau.

Works cited Americans All, Immigrants All (1938–9) [radio programme], Dir. Earle McGill, CBS. Barlow, W. (1999), Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Benjamin, L. (2009), The NBC Advisory Council and Radio Programming, 1926–1945, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Blue, H. (2002), Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blackout, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Blum, J. M. (1976), V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bogle, D. (2001), Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, New York: Continuum. Buck, P. (1944), ‘China to America’, in A. Oboler and S. Longstreet (eds), Free World Theatre: Nineteen New Radio Plays, New York: Random House, pp. 141–50. Cayton, H. R. (1941), ‘Negro Morale’, Opportunity 19 (Dec.): 371–5. Chilton, K. (2008), Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood and HUAC, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Denning, M. (1996), The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, New York: Verso. Fiesta (1943) [radio play], Dir. Arch Oboler, Blue Network, 18 April. Free World Theatre (1943) [radio programme], Dir. Arch Oboler, Blue Network. General Armchair (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 6 June. Glines, C. (1988), The Doolittle Raid: The Complete Story of the Daring 1942 Air Raid Against Japan, New York: Orion Books. Hilmes, M. (1997), Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943) Meeting minutes, 20 April, Box 10, Folder 8, Arch Oboler Collection, Washington: Library of Congress. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943a) Meeting minutes, 5 May, Box 10, Folder 8, Arch Oboler Collection, Washington: Library of Congress.

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Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943b) Meeting minutes, 22 April, Box 10, Folder 8, Arch Oboler Collection, Washington: Library of Congress. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943c) Meeting minutes, 8 June, Box 10, Folder 8, Arch Oboler Collection, Washington: Library of Congress. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943d), Meeting minutes, 26 May, Arch Oboler Collection, Box 10, Folder 8, Washington: Library of Congress. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943e), Meeting minutes, 1 June, Arch Oboler Collection, Box 10, Folder 8, Washington: Library of Congress. Hollywood Writers Mobilization Editorial Committee (1943f), Meeting minutes, 21 June, Arch Oboler Collection, Box 10, Folder 8, Washington: Library of Congress. Horne, L. and R. Schickel (1965), Lena, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. I Have No Prayer (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 14 March. In Memory of a Hero (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 20 June. Josephy, A. W. (1943), Telegram to Nat Wolff OWI, 25 March, Box 10, Folder 9, Arch Oboler Collection, Washington: Library of Congress. Koppes, C. and G. Black (1986), ‘Blacks, Loyalty and Motion-Picture Propaganda in World War II’, Journal of American History 73 (2): 383–406. MacDonald, J. F. (1979), Don’t Touch That Dial: Radio Programming in American Life from 1920 to 1960, Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Meckiffe, D. and M. Murray (1998), ‘Radio and the Black Soldier During World War II’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15 (4): 337–56. Meyers, C. (2014), A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio, New York: Fordham University Press. Office of War Information (1942), Negroes and the War, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Office of War Information (1943), When Radio Writes for War, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Savage, B. (1999), Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race 1938–1948, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Sieppman, C. (1942), Radio in Wartime, New York: Oxford University Press. Something about Joe (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 23 May. The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 9 May. The Second Battle of Warsaw (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 13 June. Tomorrow (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 28 February. Ward, B. (2004), Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. Watts, J. (2005), Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, New York: Harper Collins. Weinstein, D. (2007),‘Why Sarnoff Slept: After NBC and the Holocaust’, in M. Hilmes (ed.), NBC: America’s Network, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 98−116. Werner, J. B. (2015), ‘Black America’s Double War: Ralph Ellison and “Critical Participation” during World War II’, Rhetoric and Public Affairs 18 (3): 441–69. Wertheim, A. (2004), Staging the War: American Drama and World War II, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Your Day is Coming (1943) [radio play], Blue Network, 7 March.

2 Podcasting as a Music-Educational Practice Morten Michelsen

At the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, podcasting has become a well-established medium with its stars, its institutions, its production practices and its many listeners. During the two previous decades the number of podcasts has grown exponentially as it has become ever more simple to produce and distribute them. Most podcasters want to inform, want to tell a story, want to make a point, maybe even to educate – and to entertain. The science podcast Radiolab (2002–present; see reference list for detailed information on podcasts) is one of the most well-known podcasts to do all this, and despite its highly original style it is hard not to relate its science journalism to the classic triad of information, education and entertainment known from traditional public service broadcasting corporations. In this way, the Radiolab people and thousands of other producers do not differ from publicists in traditional public service media. Podcast genres have proliferated and mutated to the point where it is impossible to survey the entire field. Music was among the original topics for early podcasters, and music podcasting has grown as fast as any other podcast genre. By far the most podcasts on music share Radiolab’s intentions (if less ambitiously) to inform, to entertain and educate. The results are wildly differing with regard to music ideologies, production values and formats. It is fascinating how music podcasts have taken inspiration from several other media informing and educating about music, including radio, magazines, journals, books and film documentaries and used them to establish a wealth of music podcast practices. In addition, many music podcasts are part of multi-media efforts developed by traditional media (newspapers, broadcasters, record companies). In this chapter I will argue that educative aspects of the notions of public service developed in connection with public service music radio and other music media are central to music podcasts. Special attention will be given to questions of continuities and breaks in the mediation (techniques and formats), the intermediality (the various mixes of media) and musical discourses (what it is to ‘know about’ and ‘understand’ music within radio and podcast regimes). Following a few remarks on the concepts of the public sphere, public

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service and intermediality I will discuss first public service music radio and then the field of music podcasting and its contributions to discourses on music by naming a few central formats and comment in detail on three series.

To inform, educate and entertain A few US media scholars have suggested understanding podcasting as a separate public sphere in Jürgen Habermas’s sense of the word and in parallel with other media (Aufderheide et al. 2020; Lombardo 2008; Sienkiewicz and Jaramillo 2019). I will not touch upon the intense debate on the concept since Habermas launched it in the 1960s, but confine myself to a basic definition: [The public sphere is a] domain of our social life where such a thing as public opinion can be formed [and where] citizens … deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion … [and may] express and publicize their opinions freely. … today, newspapers and periodicals, radio and television are the media of the public sphere. (Habermas [1989] 2006: 103)

The three works mentioned above build on this in order to demonstrate (parts of) podcasting as a public sphere. Lombardo argues that podcasts, like previous media, present the possibility of informing and being informed in a space for public debate (2008: 217–18). Sienkiewicz and Jaramillo (2019) call for understanding podcasting as caught up in a paradox between the publicity of public debates and the intimacy of production and reception. Aufderheide et al. (2020) relate a general public sphere to the notions of public service and suggest a concept of public podcasting (sometimes even public service podcasting) in continuation of public media. They conceive of public podcasting as a specific podcast ecology within a larger podcasting ecology. The difference between the two is that the smaller includes ‘fact-fuelled [and] story-driven’ podcasting based on principles of news and public affairs journalism (2020: 1685). The larger ecology includes the smaller and what they call entertainment podcasts ‘which typically simply promotes the program and builds its fan base’ (2020: 1687). While I think it is important to point out podcasting’s public service functions, it is less fruitful to operate with such a sharp contrast between public service and entertainment. It might make sense when studying news and public affairs podcasts (Habermas’s political sphere) but less so when studying podcasts on cultural subjects in a broad sense (Habermas’s literary or cultural sphere) which are informed by somewhat different ideals of mediation. For example, public service writing and broadcasting on music are related to journalistic ideals of the entanglement of information, education and entertainment. This ideal will constitute the basis for the following remarks. The concept of public service is almost impossible to define, and it hardly becomes easier when narrowing it down to public service broadcasting as it might refer to principles of, for example, funding, organization, policy and/or programming. Here, I am interested in programming and the notion that information, education and entertainment should

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be spread over the entire schedule and to some extent even in the individual programmes (Reith 1924). The three words constitute the trinity of public service programming from the 1920s until today. What they mean, though, has been open to interpretation based on changing cultural values. Focusing on education and music, the values attached to the high and the low are important. Throughout the twentieth century the cultural hierarchy has worked as a disciplinary dispositive, that is, a set of norms and rationales which are always contested but still strong enough to make individuals accept them and act according to them (Michelsen 2019: 238–9). By referring to its public service obligations radio has challenged and changed the dispositive (Guthrie 2021; Hendy 2013; Scannell and Cardiff 1991), for example by installing genre-specific criteria for musical quality rather than one over-all criterion. Such a poly-dimensional idea of ‘quality’ challenged the one-dimensional cultural hierarchy, and the two came to coexist and to some extent compete within the broadcasting corporations as shown by Brian Fauteux in a case study on the Canadian station CKUA’s music-educational programming history (2019). The debates concerning the balancing of programmes continues to this day, and they constitute an important part of public service. The practices and ideals developed in relation to public service broadcasting are close to those of newspapers and periodicals. It would be relevant to use the term remediation (‘the representation of one medium in another’, Bolter and Grusin 1999: 45) to demonstrate how these flowed into music podcasts. First, in a historical perspective, the continuous broadening of the media palette from print media to broadcast media to electronic media is a continuous remediation of media practices, of public service ideals and of ideas of music. Second, the broadening indicates that the media mentioned coexist – old media tend not to disappear. In some ways they converge and in others they insist on their own specific mediality thus creating a complex mesh of intermedial relations, and basically, ‘no medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 15). So we have two aspects of intermediality: a close coexistence of separate media, but also traces of other media (the same as or different from the coexisting media) within a given medium. For example, the medium of radio is both separate from and part of podcasts. The chapter is based on materials from the UK and the USA, but also from Germany (especially Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR) and Denmark (Danmarks Radio, DR). It includes broadcasts and podcasts related to various music genres (e.g., pop, jazz, schlager, classical). It would be wrong of me to claim an overview of the entire field, but in order to obtain at least a sense of the field I have listened to episodes from roughly 150 music podcast series chosen from a variety of ‘best of ’ lists from the four countries in question. I mention several en passant in order to give a slight idea about the vastness of the field, and three series have been selected for more detailed comments in order to exemplify some of the central characteristics of music podcasts. By now, qualitative analyses of podcasts are quite common. The three seasons of the non-fictional podcast Serial, which is based on investigative journalistic practices, are probably the main objects of attention, for example in the anthology The Serial Podcast

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and Storytelling in the Digital Age (McCracken 2017). The textual analysis of podcasts, on the other hand, has not been central to podcast research according to Spinelli and Dann (2019: 4). They have changed that by including detailed analyses of popular podcasts such as The Heart, Serial and Radiolab in their book, and along the way they suggest a series of analytical approaches. Writings about music podcasts are rare, and the few existing focus on podcast production as a music-pedagogical tool (e.g., Bolden and Nahachewsky 2015).

Educational music radio Educational music radio is a historically rich category. It includes stations and corporations broadcasting programmes concerned with informing, educating and/or uplifting (and entertaining) listeners. Broadcasting the actual sounds of ‘good music’ has in itself been considered educative – ‘good music’ traditionally being the art music tradition and gradually any genre deemed to be ‘serious’ music. Here though, I will limit the field to programmes consisting of or including verbal discourses about music. Which music is deemed worthy of information and explaining depends on somebody in power choosing to regard the music in question as ‘serious’ in some way. And then what I would call the ‘serious music grid’ (the underlying arguments for why music is ‘good’) is applied. It has developed from the art music tradition and includes establishing a history and a mythology, some kind of music theory and an aesthetics (for example autonomy or authenticity) while also identifying canons of great works, composers and performers. Through the twentieth century musicians, musicologists, journalists and other publicists have applied these ‘core qualities’ to various genres from jazz over pop and hiphop to various world musics. The specific knowledge was new (Ellington instead of Beethoven, so to speak), but the ways of knowing were not. Such ways of knowing became the blueprint for talking about and valuing music in print, on the radio and, in time, in podcasts. In order to realize the ideal of information, education and entertainment, programme producers developed various formats through the years. The two basic music-radio forms are the concert transmission including the introductions and breaks and the record programme where one or more hosts speaks between (and often about) recordings (Michelsen 2021: 212). The concert form includes all kinds of live broadcasts and the record/speech format includes everything from critics commenting on new records to traffic radio and contemporary flow radio. Both forms demonstrate music radio’s basic intermediality and, in addition, radio’s ways of appropriating external media for its own uses. The educational music radio evolved in the words around the concerts, in the words between the records and in broadcast talks and debates about music. The producers and hosts writing and uttering the words came from various backgrounds. In Denmark, those working in the art music tradition often have a musicology degree. As jazz entered programming in the 1930s and 1940s, many of the hosts had tertiary education, but not in music, and as rock came about the new staff had secondary education and adhered to journalistic ideals. It would be fair to label those working in the non-art music traditions

Podcasting as Music-Educational Practice

amateur experts because they had picked up their extensive knowledge and expertise outside the educational system. The talk is the most obvious example of educational music radio. It is modelled from the educational system, and when produced for adults they have academic ambitions combined with a wish to come across (Guthrie 2021: 68–98). Other programme categories such as music debates, journalistic essays and reportage programmes also serve an educational purpose, while programmes on music news (new recordings, this week’s concerts etc.) might be less ambitious but nevertheless important to the continued conversation about musical life. An important and in time a quite radiogenic category was the genre-specific music magazine, an evening-radio mainstay from the 1930s to the 1990s. The genre descriptor ‘magazine’ came about in the mid-1930s and denoted a serialized programme containing shorter clips of a lighter nature about recent events. After the war, the term could denote more serious programmes as well, for example BBC’s Music Magazine which ran from 1944 to 1973. Again, we have an intermedial format, this time mixing print magazine, recordings and radio. The radio magazine is modelled after printed special interest magazines which use a series of text genres to inform and educate an interested public about a specific topic. Apart from art music radio, inspiration for music radio magazines came from fan communities, and it was their values and ways of expressing them that came to dominate the discourse appearing on radio. Radio magazine broadcasts and most other music broadcasts are episodes in never-ending series. They build on a simple additive principle, which I term ‘open form’, without any narrative leading on from one broadcast to the next. Programme series built on narrative principles with a clear ordering of episodes with beginnings and closures (‘closed forms’) are few and quite expensive to produce – and thus prestigious. Such narratives were well known from print media (books, newspapers, magazines), and radio incorporated the format early on by producing series on famous composers, music theory and history, and music appreciation in general. Jazz took over the format and by the 1970s series on rock were common as well. In 1973 Alan Freeman’s 25-episode The Story of Pop premiered on BBC Radio 1. It was expanded into a 52-episode series in 1994. DR broadcast an edited and translated version of this from 1994 to 1995 (Rockens historie). During the 2010s radio corporations renewed their interest in such series, and they were marketed as both broadcasts and podcasts. Programmes mixing records and talk tend to be less explicitly educational, but they still might contain a multitude of information. The informal essay is one, and even chart shows may be considered information-based broadcasts. Quizzes and morning shows may provide some information even though it is not their objective. Music podcasters have taken inspiration from this broad field of educational music radio and from educational writing on music in magazines and books. The inspiration includes ways of knowing about music, values for ‘good’ music, and ways of mediating this. Such ways include formats and the public service balance between information, education and entertainment. They continue a tradition, but podcasters have also contributed to variations of radio formats and to specific music podcast formats.

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Music podcasting Explaining podcasts as distinct from radio has been an important issue ever since the first academic articles on the subject, and many podcast researchers have argued extensively and convincingly for podcasts as an independent medium. In 2016, Richard Berry, who has studied podcasting since the mid-2000s, reflected on the relations between the two media and pointed on the one hand to radio’s (historical) influence on podcasts and on the other to podcasts’ separate practices and characteristics: Podcasting is a hybrid of forms, it is both a platform and an identifiable collection of practices and characteristics. It is also a space that unlike broadcasting or platforms such as YouTube is self-governed by participants, listeners and intermediaries, and so is capable of being both mass market and incredibly niche with all the inherent diversity that may be involved. […] Podcasting and radio are closely intertwined, sharing technologies, techniques and content, but they are increasingly coexisting on divergent and often intersecting paths. Podcasts can (but do not have to) sound different to radio; podcast listeners can consume in different ways to traditional radio listeners, and increasingly audio content is being produced exclusively with this market in mind (2016: 17).

Here, Berry balances similarities and differences admirably. In a later book, Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution (2019), Spinelli and Dann make an extended argument for the distinctiveness of podcasting, mentioning several marks that distinguish podcasts from radio programmes, some of the cue words being earbud listening, mobility, listener control, active consumer engagement, niche global audiences, interwoven into social media, no gatekeepers, the principle of freemium (a business model combining a free basic application and a premium, paid-for application), no definitive version, no time constraints with regard to length or publishing date, podcast is not live (ibid.: 8–9). They also offer a tentative definition: ‘a podcast is more than a mere audio text, it is a relationship invited through an audio text between people involved in making and listening to the text and beyond’ (ibid.: 13, italics in the original). When comparing music podcasts to music radio, the relations are less obvious than when discussing podcasts versus radio in general. Music podcast producers ignore some of the most popular music radio formats, namely those with recordings at the centre: the recordspinning DJ, chart shows (despite that format’s strong and never-ending narrative), and small talking hosts interspersed with a variety of records (the basic form in music-based flow radio). Small talk about music and everything else without music being played is a popular format, though. The radio format giving most inspiration is probably the radio magazine. I think of music podcasts as digital audio files containing mainly or only spoken words about music, musicians and/or musical cultures most often ordered in series according to an unending additive principle. They are addressed to listeners interested in music, and listeners are supposed to listen with at least some attention. Ideally, it is specialists addressing the curious. While music radio’s raison d’être is to play music, music podcast’s is to inform about music. Some podcasters do not play any music at all (Machiavelli – Rap und Politik, Watching the Throne), while most play brief examples, very often lasting about

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30 seconds. Only a few play whole songs or movements (Song Exploder, Rockhistorier). Some podcasters recognize the lack of music by establishing play lists on, say, Spotify. Podcasts produced by music institutions such as opera or concert houses (Aria Code) or radio stations tend to play longer examples or whole tracks, and Spotify has recently introduced a new format called ‘Shows with music’ where premium Spotify customers can listen to whole songs within the podcasts (Ugwu 2021). As in any other medium, the actual beginnings of podcasting are unclear. Depending on definitions sometime in the mid-1990s is a relevant bid as slightly different practices and technologies like podcasting, internet radio and audioblogs were developed (Bottomley 2021: 40). Writing for the Guardian the British journalist Ben Hammersley coined the actual term ‘podcast’ in 2004 using it to name what was then a burgeoning and clearly definable cultural form (Morris 2019: 497). Some of the early downloadable internet radio programmes were music-driven, but individual producers like Brian Ibbott (Coverville, 2004–present), C. C. Chapman (Accident Hash, 2005–10) and M. A. Gunn (Irish & Celtic Music Podcast, 2005–present) – all North Americans – made some of the first more successful music podcasts. Radio-wise they were amateurs, but quickly they became award winners in the US Podcast Awards’ music category. As the first wave of podcasting solidified around the middle of the decade several broadcasters began to make some of their programmes available for download or streaming. Sound Opinions, a radio programme since 1993, was one of these and has led a double existence since 2005 when the first show was uploaded. Since 2005 music podcasting has grown slowly, and since 2014, the beginning of the ‘Golden Age of Podcasting’ (Spinelli and Dann 2019: 199), the number, including music-themed podcasts, has grown exponentially each year. In 2019 Spotify CEO Daniel Ek even claimed that ‘music podcasts [are] growing very fast, which if you look historically in podcasting, that’s not been a big category, but that’s becoming a much bigger one’ (Ek quoted in Aufderheide et al. 2020: 1692).

Music podcast formats When browsing music-podcast recommendation sites it becomes obvious that creative minds have developed the field in many different directions and suggested a wide range of practices and formats. They span from the simple, often thought of as amateurish (bad sound or ‘bad’ sound, long stretches without any cuts), to almost baroque productions (many and close cuts, several sound layers, various sound milieus, complex microand macro-narratives). Spinelli and Dann suggest calling the two practices ‘analogue’ (practices of subtraction, keeping it simple) and ‘digital’ (practices of addition, playing with sounds) (2019: 32). The music podcasts may run from less than two minutes (Pohlers Popgeschichten) to more than three hours (Questlove Supreme). The open-form series are normally organized in seasons (sometimes articulated as semi-closings), while other series of six or eight episodes are closed forms, a bit like chapters in a book. Music podcasts are intensely intermedial. They remediate several media dealing with music in some way (e.g., radio, magazines, fictional and non-fictional books, film

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documentaries) and specific formats within these media. I have mentioned the music radio formats most important to broadcasters, but traditions from features, neue Hörspiele (a specifically German tradition for sometimes rather experimental features), reportages and other auditively-based documentary and fictional programmes with their complex editing practices and many-layered soundscapes have inspired some of the most renowned music podcasts of the last decade (for example Dolly Parton’s America), and such inspiration can also be found in more modest productions. Being an internet phenomenon, podcasts use several media on their web pages (text, still pictures and videos) and uphold social media channels for exchanges with listeners. Podcast series may be part of other internet media such as music streaming services or magazines/newspapers. Beyond the internet a few (North American) producers publish newsletters (Disgraceland), sell merchandise (Dissect, Inside the Groove, Cocaine and Rhinestones, Watching the Throne) or books (Switched on Pop (Sloan and Harding 2020), Disgraceland (Brennan 2019)) and videos on streaming services (Song Exploder on Netflix). Some podcasters even do live shows (Rockhistorier). Nearly all music podcasts are devoted to a single music genre – and most often a popular one. Pop, rock and hiphop feature heavily at the top of the recommendation lists, while you need to look a bit further for podcasts on genres like heavy metal, EDM, jazz, world music and classical. But they are there, and in fact it takes some stretch of the imagination to find genres completely without podcasts devoted to them. There is only a little research on podcasting and gender, most of which focuses on how feminist themes are dealt with in podcasts (e.g., Lindgren 2018). Empirical evidence concerning the involvement of women in podcast production is very rare. Wang (2021) quotes US studies from the early 2010s stating that roughly 75 per cent of the hosts are male (2021: 55) but concludes that ‘Truthfully, we have little hard data about the actual numbers of female podcasters (and even less about the numbers of people of color, of different classes, and of different sexualities who podcast) and the extent of the gender imbalance’ (2021: 57). Judging from my sample of music-related podcasts, this is also mainly a male occupation, maybe because the combination of fandom and fact-oriented ways of knowing about music practised by many men (McDonnell 1995: 14) fits the medium well. Music podcasts produced solely by a woman (or women) are decidedly rare in my sample (Irene Kurka’s Neue Musik Leben, Danyel Smith’s Black Girl Songbook and Kelly Harlock and Sascha Kelly’s That Classical Podcast) while mixed-host teams are quite common, especially in podcasts produced by public radio. Below I will sketch some widespread categories based on content rather than production qualities or uses. The first three categories form a movement from podcasts on single songs/ works/albums over podcasts on bands’ or composers’ careers to genre portraits or music histories. These three are probably the largest categories containing thousands of series all diverse in their delivery. Podcasts in the fourth category mime the music and radio magazine by taking up several contemporary topics in each show. The fifth category deals with fiction including true crime. ●

Music and its contexts (breakdowns): Podcasting has brought attention to musical details like never before in the public sphere, and judging from their number,

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●

●

●

●

series discussing or breaking down individual tracks, songs or works are extremely popular. The category is rooted in music appreciation (lecturing, concert notes) and known from videos and television documentaries as well. The intention is to discuss the actual music, the lyrics, the broader cultural and historical context and/or more or less anecdotal tales. Even though they claim to focus on the music, most only do so for a couple of minutes, proceeding to less technical observations. Also, they seldom play whole songs. More or less ‘classic’ pop and rock tracks are the most popular subjects, but other genres are given the breakdown treatment as well. When full albums are put up for discussion in dedicated album series the intention is to celebrate the album and contribute to the continued canonization of such ‘relics’. Careers of individual artists: This category takes up artists by thematizing their careers in more or less chronological fashion, mainly based on biography or discography. It is rooted in book-length biographies, fan newsletters and magazine articles, but not really in radio. Engaged male fans produce sometimes lengthy series dealing with the careers of white male rock groups, female pop stars, hip-hop artists like Tupac and Kanye West, and deceased art music composers. They contain a wealth of detailed facts, gossip and speculation. The one on West (Watching the Throne 2015–present) is probably one of the most monumental fan series yet with its 225 episodes lasting between one and three hours. Related series devote each episode to a new artist. This places the host at the centre of continuity, and several high-profile hosts are involved in such series (musician Questlove, journalist Danyel Smith, German jazz pianist Pablo Held). Genre overviews: Podcasters aspiring to eventually portray whole genres in their series tend to do this in an open format, that is, by just discussing artist after artist or topic after topic. Again, most genres imaginable (including congregational singing in Voices United) may be the subject of such series. The chronologically based genre (or general music) history, which is quite popular in the book medium, is a less popular narrative form among independent podcasters. The podcast magazine: Music magazines are a huge inspiration for podcasters with regard to both form and content. Some actual magazines have produced podcast series as well (Rolling Stone, Billboard). Contrary to other categories magazine podcasts present several stories in each episode which may also be covered in the actual magazines. Specialist magazines like Song Lines (world music) and Sing Out! (folk music) produce podcasts as well, and the New York Times is one of the few newspapers to produce regular music podcasts (Popcast). Some radio shows using the magazine format have a parallel life as podcasts (Schacht & Wasabi: Der Deutschrap Podcast). Storytelling: Telling stories about music or using music as a vehicle for stories, be they ‘authentic’ or fictitious, has become a popular category as well. The true-crime genre has also become part of the music podcasts as series devote single episodes to musical crimes (Lied vom Tod, Disgraceland, Case Notes (classical music crimes)). Most of these are lavishly produced.

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These five music podcast categories appear to me the most widespread in the four countries sampled. Among the more specialized categories would be podcasts aimed at people working or wanting to work professionally with music (for example Bitesize Bodacious Babes with advice for women in the industry and Operabizz); podcasts produced by musicologists presenting contemporary musicological problematics for a broad audience (Musikgespräch, Sound Expertise); and music podcasts for children (Do Re Mikro, The Music Box).

Three music podcast examples I have chosen episodes from three rather different podcast series. They do not represent the field as such as it is too varied, but they serve to point out some important characteristics. They differ with regard to country of origin (UK, USA, Denmark), genre covered (classical, pop/rock, jazz), series structure (open, closed), and production values. They also serve to point out how conventional music discourses are important to music podcasting and how intermediality is basic. The three examples traverse the scale from ‘analogue’ and not-very-edited to the ‘digital’ and thoroughly-crafted. The first addresses the listener extensively at the beginning, the two other acknowledge the listener, also at the beginning. All three use short music clips but only Song Exploder plays whole songs. In That Classical Podcast the sound elements of talk, music examples and (music) breakers are clearly separated. In Song Exploder examples can morph into music beds and vice versa, but there are long stretches without any bed. In the third there is an almost continuous music and sound effects bed. The first is based on conversation, the second on interviews, while the third one is based on the narrator. Despite them being music podcasts none of them have a significant music intro and none of them mention music which they think is not ‘good’. The British independent series That Classical Podcast (2016–21) belongs to the category of genre overviews. It was hosted first by a woman and a man and from 2019 by two women. Apart from doing podcasts, they worked for Spotify, Classic FM and in classical music management (That Classical Podcast, 2022). They collected funds via the crowdfunding platform Patreon and put extra materials behind a paywall in addition to running a simple website. The sixty episodes took up general themes like the cello, women composers, Christmas or romanticism. The most common structure was to introduce two (male) composers in the thirty to forty-five-minute episodes without relating them in any way. Three episodes focused on women composers. The basic content mediated conventional ways of knowing about music: biography, anecdotes, a few words on a couple of works and brief musical examples (the Spotify page refers to a complete play list). In episode twelve bearing the ‘silly’ title Fiery Cosmic Eggs and Sŷnthéšīśęrs (February 2017) they devote seven to eight minutes each to Hildegard von Bingen, Fanny Mendelssohn, Germaine Tailleferre and Kaija Saariaho. Reading passages from a Mendelssohn letter is a fine historicizing move, but despite their wish to entertain they end up with slightly esoteric and non-explained music history references in relation to Tailleferre and Saariaho.

Podcasting as Music-Educational Practice

The hosts emulate the widespread lack of familiarity with contemporary music, but conclude that it is ‘important to hear pieces like that [and to discover] the method in the madness’ (ep. twelve: 33:00). Why it is important is not explained. The apparently non-scripted dialogue is extremely enthusiastic with a lively intonation. The co-hosts are actively listening by exclaiming sounds like ‘hmm’ and ‘aha’ and words like ‘sure’, ‘great’ and ‘stop it’. All kinds of laughs and giggles are important as well to the dialogue. The fact that Tailleferre is French makes them play around with a faux French accent and insert weird diacritics in the episode title. Here, the sounds and rhythms of language are a conspicuous part of the mediation. As stated on the website (which includes a brief dictionary), ‘Kelly, Sascha and Chris talk to you about classical music whilst making you laugh. AND LEARN’ (majuscules in the original, thatclassicalpodcast.com, 2022). The intention with this series is to promote the classical canon while taking away the discursive pomposity surrounding it. Essentially, it is about upholding the canon and the traditional ways of knowing about it known from classical music magazines and classical radio (and judging from the hosts’ interaction, also children’s radio and daytime flow radio) by adding humour in the form of anecdotes and banter among the hosts. Despite their efforts to erode the music’s elevated status via the presentation, the music-historical tradition is present not just as a subtext but sometimes also as explicit, esoteric and non-contextualized information. The US independent podcast series Song Exploder has run successfully since 2014, and by early 2022 this breakdown series consists of 225 episodes lasting between twelve and thirty minutes. The repertoire is mainly alternative rock while the odd hiphop or pop musician or film score composer may appear. Based on an analysis of the first 170 episodes Emilia Barna establishes that there is a marked ‘opening towards female artists’ as the series develops (2020: 82, 92). Musician Hrishikesh Hirway has hosted and/or produced the show since the beginning, but for the whole of 2019 he stepped down to enable a woman, Thao Nguyen, host. He uses a fairly simple narrative, namely that of editing one or more interviews with one to four guests about the composition and/or production of a single song. In the editing process the questions are edited out (almost) and host Hirway is only heard in the beginning and at the end of each episode when introducing and rounding off the episode. Hirway has access to multi-track versions of the songs in question and can thus demonstrate details which would otherwise be hard to point to. Towards the end of each episode he plays the whole song. Song Exploder goes into detail with regard to the technicalities and the ways of creative processes and inspiration. The intro gives some context, but in the central interview part musicians’ lingo rather than journalists’ or musicologists’ constitutes the discourse. The musicians do not use music-theoretical terms related to composition but some technical language from the recording studio appears. An example is the episode on Bon Iver’s ‘Holyfield’ where the musicians talk rather esoterically about a keyboard setup: an EML ElectroComp 101, ‘which is this early modular synth’, the EML’s random noise generator, a Yamaha CS synthesizer and a Messina, ‘a harmonizing machine’ (episode 166, 3:28). As in other breakdown podcasts, comments on the lyrics and general inspiration and anecdotes take up most of the time.

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Song Exploder and similar breakdown podcasts are podcasts about music as a craft, and they contribute to the development of discourses on popular music for a general public. The media feeding into it would be, for example, musicians’ magazines (‘nerdy’ interviews) and filmed documentaries about the production of albums. Apart from these I have not been able to uncover any clear influences. So in this way, song breakdowns are to some extent an original music podcast genre. Song Exploder exists among several other media. Apart from being a podcast it has turned into a Netflix visual documentary series (two seasons). The web site leads on to a line of Song Exploder merchandise (T-shirts), to social media, to transcriptions of each episode, and to music videos of the songs analysed. Live shows and talks by Hirway himself are another activity. Given its popularity, having your song broken down on Song Exploder is a sign of quality, and it feeds into canonization processes. Song Exploder also contributes to the general respect surrounding contemporary popular music as it is a successful demonstration that you can talk seriously about it, and as Barna concludes, ‘it functions to educate the listener’ (2020: 92). Farlige toner – historien om dansk jazz (Dangerous Notes – The Story about Danish Jazz) tells a story of Danish Jazz from the 1920s until today in seventeen episodes lasting twenty-five to forty-five minutes each. It has been produced by the independent company Filt Cph for DR. The series is highly edited, almost a collage, with three narrative layers and a nearly continuous music bed which surfaces every now and then and consists of quite different music. Thus, it belongs to the genre overview category and draws on the storytelling category. In the first episode (The Beginning) the first layer depends on storytelling. It describes three situations in the 1920s told in a Humphrey Bogart cinema-noir style (deep male voice speaking slowly with a drawl) backed by a sparse, neo-classicist score and sound effects. These vignettes are the dramatic high points in the overall narrative. The next layer belongs to the series’ narrator, the Danish jazz musician Kresten Osgood. The music for this layer consists of examples from the 1920s, but also – and a bit confusingly – brief bebop and 1960s avant-garde snippets to underscore the words ‘new sounds’ (episode 1, 2020, 5:49). The third layer belongs to ‘old voices’, clips from jazz broadcasts from the DR archives from c. 1950 to 1960. Some of the clips even stem from an early DR jazz music history series (ibid.: 5:05, quoted from Jazzklubben 1955: 0:01). Unlike the old series this one does not play complete tracks, the longest upfront example – the ‘first’ Danish jazz record—lasts nearly 30 seconds. The ‘old voices’ belong to radio jazz experts talking about decades prior to the 1950s and to jazz musicians active in the 1920s interviewed in the same broadcasts. Osgood has a very distinct and clear pronunciation which comes over as contemporary compared to the old voices’ cultured pronunciation (and the musicians’ old Copenhagen dialect). Being remediated into this episode are not only radio traditions, but several actual clips from previous jazz history series echo through the present one. In addition, according to the series’ web page (Farlige toner, 2020) the text is heavily inspired by a three-volume academic study on Danish jazz (Wiedemann 1982, and Wiedemann appears as radio host several times in the old clips). The traces of 1940s cinema noir in the first layer and the general radio drama and radio feature qualities in the two first layers are obvious

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remediations as well. Farlige toner is not heavily related to other media, probably because it is a niche product due to genre and language. It is a DR-related series without its own web site, only a subpage in the DR system and several other podcast portals. The show has spawned concerts compered by Osgood and talks, also by Osgood. Farlige toner supports a way of knowing jazz history critiqued by the new jazz scholars and young critics in the 1990s for focusing on great masters, important institutions, ground-breaking recordings and an essentialist understanding of jazz (DeVeaux 1991). In the intro Osgood comments on the first jazz recordings: ‘Well, real jazz, you know with improvisation and the quest and wildness that is essential to jazz, is not really present at this time’ (episode 1, 2020, 5:48). This quest for the beginnings of real or ‘authentic’ jazz has been characteristic for generations of jazz fans and scholars, and not least Wiedemann mentioned above. In addition, the old saying that ‘in the 50s and 60s … Denmark became a world centre for jazz’ (ibid., 2:18) is rehearsed in every episode, although quite a lot of countries worldwide reasonably could make that claim. In this sense, Farlige toner contributes nothing to traditional jazz narratives. In one way, though, the series breaks with the tradition: it rehabilitates the many women of jazz. For example, in the first season on jazz before 1945 one out of five episodes is entirely devoted to women musicians and composers.

Conclusions Together, the three examples demonstrate that the traditional public service triad of information, education and entertainment and the way it has been articulated in relation to music has been remediated from radio, periodicals, books, documentaries and other media to music podcasting. It is notable that hardly any music radio formats have survived the remediation. Building on that triad music podcasters have developed their own popular formats (especially the breakdowns), podcasts have become a medium unto themselves, and many series have become integrated as one medium within a complex interplay of media. In some ways, due to the sheer amount of music podcasts produced and the changing music policies of public service broadcasting, music podcasting is challenging radio and television as the primary curator of musical taste. Most of these podcast-based curators seem to be amateurs in the sense that they are far from being able to make a living from their activities, but they constitute a new type of cultural intermediary in musical life. Thousands of such intermediaries have the technology and the knowledge to curate music podcasts, and the question is whether their insights are actually communicated to anybody outside their circle of friends. The way the series talk about ‘serious’ music is different from older radio styles where ‘sincerity’ crept into the choice of words and dialect. The present hosts in the examples are still articulate, and the men in the examples are serious while the two women make an effort to talk about art music in a humorous way and balancing sincerity/non-sincerity in order to take the music down off its pedestal. But conventional ways of knowing about

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music developed since the nineteenth century are still very much at work in contemporary podcasting, and the constant restating of established musical ‘truths’ might turn out to be one of the major characteristics of music podcasting, thus copying two centuries of printed mediation of the same. This is not unique to music podcasts as Charles Fairchild attests to in his analysis of pop and art music museums around the world (2021). In this rather traditionalistic landscape of musical knowledge one major aspect is new: all three series make an effort to include women in the canons (especially Song Exploder and Farlige toner) or in the production (That Classical Podcast). In this, they (and many other series) contribute to the changes taking place in musical culture in the early 2020s, not least thanks to the #MeToo movement. Whether this proves to be more than a superficial trend and actually paves the way for female representation in both production and content will be one important question for future research in (music) podcasting.

Works cited Accident Hash (2005–10) [podcast], producer C. C. Chapman, USA: no website available. Aria Code (2018–present) [podcast], producer WQXR, The Metropolitan Opera, and WNYC Studios, USA: www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/aria-code (accessed 3 January 2022). Aufderheide, P., D. Lieberman, A. Alkhallouf and J. M. Ugboma (2020), ‘Podcasting as Public Media: The Future of U.S. News’, International Journal of Communication 14: 1683–704. Barna, E. (2020), ‘The Relentless Rise of the Poptimist Omnivore: Taste, Symbolic Power, and the Digitization of the Music Industries’, in T. Tofalvy and E. Barna (eds), Popular Music, Technology, and the Changing Media Ecosystem, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 79–95. Berry, R. (2016), ‘Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and its Association with the Word “Radio”’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14 (1): 7–22. Bitesize Bodacious Babes (2020–present) [podcast], producer Gabi Corbett, UK: www. bbbpodcast.xyz/ (accessed 6 December 2021). Black Girl Songbook (2019–present) [podcast], producer Danyel Smith, USA: open.spotify. com/show/20Ifo2kqrmLweDY87KC0dr (accessed 7 January 2022). Bolden, B. and J. Nahachewsky (2015), ‘Podcast Creation as Transformative Music Engagement’, Music Education Research 17 (1): 17–33. Bolter, J. D. and R. Grusin (1999), Remediation: Understanding new Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bottomley, A. J. (2021), ‘Podcast Archaeology: Researching Proto-Podcasts and Early BornDigital Audio Formats’, in J. W. Morris and E. Hoyt (eds), Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 29–50. Brennan, J. (2019), Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly, New York and Boston: Grand Central Publishing. Case Notes (2018) [podcast], producer Classic fm, UK: www.classicfm.com/music-news/casenotes-true-crime-podcast/ (accessed 3 October 2021). Cocaine and Rhinestones (2017–18, 2021–2) [podcast], producer Tyler Mahan Coe, USA: www.cocaineandrhinestones.com (accessed 31 August 2021).

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Cosmo Machiavelli – Rap und Politik (2018) [radio programme/podcast], producer Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Germany: www1.wdr.de/radio/cosmo/podcast/machiavelli/ index.html (accessed 9 February 2022). Coverville (2004–present) [podcast], producer Brian Ibbott, USA: www.coverville.com/ (accessed 5 October 2021). DeVeaux, S. (1991), ‘Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography’, Black American Literature Forum 25 (3): 525–60. Disgraceland (2018) [podcast], producer Jake Brennan, USA: www.disgracelandpod.com/ (accessed 7 June 2021). Dissect (2016) [podcast], producer Cole Cuchna, USA: dissectpodcast.com (accessed 6 December 2021). Do Re Mikro (2017–present) [radio programme/podcast], producer Bayerischer Radio, Germany: www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/do-re-mikro-die-musiksendung-fuer-kinder/517 (accessed 8 January 2022). Dolly Parton’s America (2019) [podcast], producer Jeff Abumrad, USA: www.wnycstudios.org/ podcasts/dolly-partons-america (accessed 6 November 2021). Fairchild, C. (2021), Musician in the Museum: Display and Power in Neoliberal Popular Culture, New York: Bloomsbury. Farlige toner – historien om dansk jazz (2020–1) [radio programme/podcast], producer Filt Cph, Denmark: www.dr.dk/lyd/p8jazz/farlige-toner-historien-om-dansk-jazz (accessed 27 January 2022). Fauteux, B. (2019), ‘The Edufication and Musicalization of Radio: CKUA, “Good Music”, and “Uplifting Taste”’, in M. Michelsen, M. Krogh. S. K. Nielsen and I. Have (eds), Music Radio: Building Communities, Mediating Genres, New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 120–44. Guthrie, K. (2021), The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain, Oakland: University of California Press. Habermas, J. ([1989] 2006), ‘The Public Sphere’ in R. E. Goodin and P. Pettit (eds), Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (2nd ed.), Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 103–6. Hendy, D. (2013), Public Service Broadcasting, Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Inside the Groove – Madonna’s Music (2020–present) [podcast], producer Edward Russell, UK: insidethegroove.co.uk/ (accessed 21 December 2021). Irish & Celtic Music Podcast (2005–present) [podcast], producer M. A. Gunn, USA: celticmusicpodcast.com/ (accessed 16 January 2022). Jazzklubben. Dansk jazz: 1. før krigen (1955) [radio programme], DR P2, 15 January. www. larm.fm/Asset/62e02e4f-965b-469f-b464-0fa8e4667d3d (accessed 6 January 2022). Lied vom Tod (2021–present) [podcast], producer Musikexpress, Germany: www. musikexpress.de/liedvomtod/ (accessed 4 January 2022). Lindgren, M. (2018), ‘Researching Podcast Production: An Australian Podcast Study About Women and Work in Are We There Yet?’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, pp. 283–92. Lombardo, M. (2008), ‘Is the Podcast a Public Sphere Institution?’, in D. E. Wittkower (ed.), iPod and Philosophy: iCon of an ePoc, Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, pp. 215–28. McCracken, E. ed. (2017), The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, New York and London: Routledge.

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McDonnell, E. (1995), ‘The Feminine Critique: The Secret history of Women and Rock Journalism’, in A. Powers and E. McDonnell (eds), Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, London: Plexus, pp. 5–23. Michelsen, M. (2019), ‘Music Radio’s Mediations of the Music-Cultural High/Low Divide before the 1980s’, in M. Michelsen, M. Krogh, S. K. Nielsen and I. Have (eds), Music Radio: Building Communities, Mediating Genres, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 230–48. Michelsen, M. (2021), ‘Sounds on Air: Musicalizing Radio – Radiofying Music’, in K. Nathaus and M. Rempe (eds), Musicking in Twentieth-Century Europe: A Handbook, Oldenbourg: DeGruyter, pp. 211–31. Morris, J. W. (2019), ‘Hearing the Past: The Sonic Web from MIDI to Music Streaming’, in N. Brügger and I. Milligan (eds), The Sage Handbook of Web History, London and Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, pp. 491–504. Music Magazine (1944–73) [radio programme], Home Service/BBC 3. Musikgespräch (2019–present) [podcast], producers Daniel Siebert and Sean Prieske, Germany: musikgespraech.de (accessed 20 December 2021). Neue Musik Leben (2018–present) [podcast], producer Irene Kurka and Neue Musikzeitung, Germany: irenekurka.de (accessed 4 October 2021). Operabizz (2018–present) [podcast], producer Danel Welch, USA: operabiz.fireside.fm (accessed 5 January 2022). Pohlers Popgeschichten (2015–21) [radio programme/podcast], producer Bayerischer Rundfunk, Germany: www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/pohlers-popgeschichten/670 (accessed 22 December 2021). Popcast (2014–present) [podcast], producer New York Times, USA: www.nytimes.com/ column/popcast-pop-music-podcast (accessed 21 January 2022). Questlove Supreme (2016–present) [podcast], producer Questlove and iHeartMedia, USA: www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-questlove-supreme-53194211/ (accessed 6 January 2021). Radiolab (2002–present) [radio programme/podcast], producer Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, USA: www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab (accessed 4 January 2022). Reith, J. (1924), Broadcast over Britain, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Rockens historie (1994–5) [radio programme series], DR P3. Rockhistorier (2017–present) [podcast], producers Klaus Lynggaard and Henrik Queitsch, Denmark: heartbeats.dk/series/rockhistorier/ (accessed 25 January 2022). Scannell, P. and D. Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, Volume One 1922–1939: Serving the Nation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Schacht & Wasabi: Der Deutschrap Podcast (2017–present) [podcast], producer Bayerischer Rundfunk, Germany: www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/schacht-wasabi-der-deutschrappodcast/548 (accessed 4 January 2022). Serial (2014–present) [podcast], producer Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, USA: serialpodcast. org/ (accessed 23 August 2021). Sienkiewicz, M. and D. L. Jaramillo (2019), ‘Podcasting, the Intimate Self, and the Public Sphere’, Popular Communication 17 (4): 268–72. Sloan, N. and C. Harding (2020), Switched on Pop: How Popular Music Works, and Why it Matters, New York: Oxford University Press. Song Exploder (2014–present) [podcast], producer Hrishikesh Hirway, USA: songexploder. net/ (accessed 15 January 2022).

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Sound Opinions ([1993] 2005–present) [radio programme and podcast], producer Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, USA: www.soundopinions.org/ (accessed 4 February 2022). Sound Expertise (2020–present) [podcast], producer Will Robin, USA: www.soundopinions. org/ (accessed 7 February 2022). Spinelli, M. and T. Dann (eds) (2019), Podcasting: the Audio Media Revolution, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Switched on Pop (2014–present) [podcast], producers Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, USA: switchedonpop.com/ (accessed 22 November 2021). The Music Box (2017–present) [podcast], producer Louisville Public Media and PRX, USA: The Music Box: NPR (accessed 13 February 2022). The Story of Pop ([1973] 1994) [radio series], BBC Radio 1. Ugwu, R. (2021), ‘On Spotify, an Arranged Marriage Between Music and Podcasts’, New York Times, 14 May: www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/arts/music/podcasts-danyel-smith-spotify. html (accessed 13 February 2022). Voices United: A Congregational Song Podcast (2018–19) [podcast], producer The Center for Congregational Song, USA: congregationalsong.org/conversations/podcast-voices-united/ (accessed 5 January 2022). Wang, J. F. (2021) ‘The Perils of Ladycasting: Podcasting, Gender, and Alternative Production Cultures’, in J. W. Morris and E. Hoyt (eds), Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 51–70. Watching the Throne: A Lyrical Analysis of Kanye West (2014–present) [podcast], producer Chris Lambert and Travis Bean, USA: watchingthethrone.com/ (accessed 3 September 2021). Wiedemann, E. (1982), Jazz i Danmark: I tyverne, trediverne og fyrrerne, Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

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3 Hearing Age in Music Streaming Well-being, Marketing and Older Listeners Christina Baade

‘Music streaming services … can seem overwhelming’, wrote Whitney Matheson in a February 2021 AARP.org (American Association of Retired Persons) article, ‘The Power of Music Playlists’. But playlists were an ‘easy way to join the party’. Blending information with an enthusiastic, promotional tone, the article sketched a playlist typology, from contextsensitive playlists (‘peaceful yoga’, ‘hipster cocktail party’) to those curated by notable artists like ‘Bootsy Collins and Lucinda Williams’, who had ‘created playlists for AARP’s Spotify account’. Matheson encouraged readers to think of the ‘real humans’ who curated streaming playlists ‘as the new DJs’, drawing a reassuring connection to terrestrial music radio, a medium for which older adults have remained a reliable audience, even as AM/FM radio listenership has fallen (Matheson 2021; Vernon 2018). The article emphasizes the aspirational themes found in much of the consumer-oriented coverage of music streaming as a successor or complement to music radio: listening to streaming playlists is easy, cool and life-enhancing (Baade 2018; Glantz 2016; Morris and Powers 2015). Unlike much of this coverage, however, it directly addresses an audience of older adults, aged fifty and up – specifically, the nearly 38 million members of AARP, an organization that pursues its mission of ‘empower[ing] people to choose how they live as they age’ (AARP n.d.a; AARP n.d.b). In tone and topic, the article aligns with other lifestyle content on AARP.org, which emphasizes that articles must engage ‘timely topics’, ‘practical information and advice’, ‘tips’ and ‘trends’ in its guidelines for authors (AARP, n.d.c). Matheson’s ‘The Power of Music Playlists’ also departs from how much of the academic literature and trade press engage with questions about older listeners, popular music and audio technologies. Three key differences stand out: 1) it addresses older audiences as agents in their own listening, rather than caregivers or musical professionals (e.g., music therapists and music educators) who aim to support or guide older listeners; 2) it emphasizes themes of lifestyle, personal well-being and self-actualization, rather than therapeutic approaches

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(such as support for people suffering from dementia); and 3) it focuses on demystifying widely available streaming platforms, like Spotify and Apple Music, rather than describing platforms, devices or interfaces designed specifically for older people with cognitive, visual or other disabilities and/or living in long-term care settings. Perhaps most strikingly, the article treats older people as a viable audience for music streaming, capable of using the technology and interested in a wide range of music. In doing so, it contrasts with the ageist stereotypes of technologically inept and nostalgic elders that pervade popular culture, such as the skit on the sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live (NBC, United States), that featured impersonations of elderly – and very confused – users in a fake commercial for the imaginary smart speaker ‘Alexa Silver’, which was designed for ‘the greatest generation’ (i.e., people over ninety) and provided ‘all the music they loved when they were young’ (Saturday Night Live 2017). This chapter explores the emerging recognition of older listeners as an important audience for music streaming, as well as the reasons why this reckoning has been delayed. While the AARP and others have long advocated for older adults as consumers, the streaming music industry has only recently recognized them as a significant market for streaming music services. For example, in a May 2020 article examining whether the industry had yet reached ‘peak streaming’, Billboard noted that, even in the early adopting Nordic countries, seniors were a ‘largely untapped’ market, while the UK-based Entertainment Retailers Association identified ‘over-55s’ as the fastest growing group of subscribers and ‘the new battleground in the streaming market’ (Page 2020). Nonetheless, much of the coverage of the music industry, streaming and audio devices remains focused on the habits and interests of Millennials and Gen Z, marginalizing older demographics and oversimplifying their representation.1 In order to understand these dynamics, it is important to consider the impact of ageism. To do so, I build on the growing body of popular music scholarship that engages with questions of ageing – a fraught topic for genres of music historically defined by their ‘youth’ audiences. I also draw on the valuable academic and market research that nuances insights into the use of smartphones and other technology by older users. Throughout, it is important to unpack the extremely diverse demographic encompassed by monikers like ‘older adult’, ‘55+’, or ‘boomers’ (i.e., baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964) – the categories often used in these studies.2 The recognition that older listeners are using digital technologies to listen to music coincides with broader concerns about near-global ‘greying’ population trends, as well as heightened concerns about elders’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic; many look to technology, especially AI, as a key solution to the caregiving gaps opened up by these trends (Corbyn 2021; Gladstone 2019; Mann 2020). After outlining key concepts from the literature on ageing in relation to popular music and technology, I critically examine the discourses – of lagging adoption, passive listening and nostalgic tastes – and counter-discourses – of agency, heterogeneous tastes and affective community – that have developed in the trade and popular press about older listeners and their adoption of streaming platforms (especially, Spotify and Amazon Music) and smart speakers. A critical theme running through much of the research on streaming music has involved addressing the problems of surveillance, the individualization of the listening experience, and algorithmic discrimination against women and racialized musicians

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(Drott 2018; Hadjis Labarca 2021; Morris and Powers 2015; Pelly 2017; Werner 2020). These problems of neoliberal, corporate capitalism also apply to older streaming audiences, particularly when they are conceived as a resource to be tapped or battled over. Ultimately, I consider how the streaming music industry’s recognition of older listeners can be balanced with music’s potential to be a source of well-being, meaning and community.

‘Discovering’ older adults: ageism, popular music and technology In 1983, as the field of popular music studies was coalescing, Simon Frith asserted that the ‘sociology of rock is inseparable from the sociology of youth’ (quoted in Bennett 2013: 2). Over the following decades, scholars critiqued the field’s focus on rock and its stereotypically white, male appeal, expanding it to include female, LGBTQ2S+, racialized and disabled performers and audiences. However, it was not until around 2010 that a significant number of scholars turned their attention to older musicians and fans (a shift that coincided for many scholars with their own lived experience). Perhaps unsurprisingly, this work has been led by popular music scholars already attuned to questions of gender, race, historical change and musical community (Bennett 2013; Forman and Fairley 2012; Gardner and Jennings 2019; Grenier and Valois-Nadeau 2021; Jennings and Gardner 2012). Many of these scholars build on the work of Margaret Morganroth Gullette (2004), examining how narratives that equate ageing with decline drive ageist assumptions about older adults and limit the development of more accurate understandings of how older people engage with music. Murray Forman points to Gullette’s concept of ‘identity stripping’ in which elders must contend with ageist discourses and ‘deterministic authoritative forces’ that deny their agency, stereotype them as being cognitively deficient, and label them as being out of touch with the contemporary world (2012: 246–7). As Line Grenier and Fannie Valois-Nadeau write, critical scholars have rejected such limiting frameworks and have recognized ageing as a ‘heterogenous process’ (2021: 16). Abigail Gardner and Ros Jennings also emphasize ageing as a contingent, contested process, rather than a unitary state of being (2019: 4). By challenging decline narratives, these scholars arrive at several crucial insights into the relation between older adults and music. First, they reject the easy associations of older adults, old music and nostalgia. In his study of middle-aged (aged 45–55) fans of punk and other subcultural musics, Andy Bennett points to the role of music in sustaining personal identity and a sense of continuity throughout the life course. Maintaining an ongoing relation with particular artists, genres and/or songs cannot be reduced to nostalgia, wanting to be young again, or a failure to act one’s age (2013: 32–5, 179). Forman makes a similar point about the residents of assisted living facilities, aged in their seventies and eighties, whom he observed: engaging with older music helps them sustain a sense of continuity while negotiating the many changes involved in downsizing, moving, and residing in a communal living setting (2012: 247–8).

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Second, these scholars challenge stereotypes that cast older music listeners as engaging with music in inauthentic and passive ways. Particularly relevant is Bennett’s critique of stereotypes about the ‘fifty quid man’, a middle-aged music fan who spends extensively on recordings but fails to demonstrate his subcultural commitment by going to concerts or festivals (2013: 17–18). If subcultural disdain for the fifty quid man demonstrates how ageism shapes assessments of authentic fan practices, we should also consider how ageism intersects with sexism (and other biases) to marginalize a broader range of older adults – especially women with caregiving responsibilities – who lack the disposable income to purchase recordings and the time to research and listen to them. Is it possible to be a music fan (or a music lover) without much leisure time or spending money? Drawing on Simon Frith’s framing of ‘individuals’ everyday investments in popular music as a cultural resource’, Bennett notes the diverse ways in which people access and incorporate music into their everyday lives. A wide range of people can access music for free on the radio or online, participating in an imagined community or ‘affective scene’ through their own listening practices and gaining a sense of collective, as well as individual, identity (Bennett 2013: 51–60). Finally, these scholars offer more complex models for thinking about musical taste and age. Gardner and Jennings challenge the ‘“false dichotomy of young and old people” in favour of a continuum’ (2019: 4) while Bennett and Hodkinson point to a growing ‘multigenerational investment’ in pop music (2012: 2). Together with the late-twentiethcentury rise of omnivorous musical tastes (spanning genres and cultural hierarchies) (see Hazir 2021), a more heterogenous understanding of ageing complicates the assumptions that have long driven music radio formats (like urban, adult contemporary, country or Top 40), which connect musical tastes, targeted ads and specific audiences defined by age, gender, class and race. While not negating the role of generational affiliations (particularly in relation to platforms like TikTok – or in higher investment activities like concert attendance), the widespread adoption of music downloading and streaming in the 2000s and 2010s has facilitated more fluid, cross-genre, trans-temporal modes of musical consumption for listeners of all ages. Given these realities, it is challenging to generalize about the relation between age, musical tastes and listening practices – a problem compounded by the challenge of determining who, exactly, older adults are. As Jenna Jacobson, Lin and McEwen note in their study of older adults’ use of mobile technologies, there is a ‘lack of definitional precision with regards to age cohorts’ in the literature (2017: 336). Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are, of course, some of the primary ways that users access streaming music, especially before the introduction of smart speakers in 2014. In studies of music streaming and device usage, the age ranges and groupings differ depending on the survey organization. Further, older adults, however they are defined, tend to be underrepresented in these studies. Part of the reason is that older adults tend to adopt new services and technologies later than younger users. For example, in a study of streaming service users, conducted in 2014 and 2015, Hannes Datta, Knox and Bronnenberg found that the mean age of their 507-user sample, which had been scraped from an unnamed streaming service over a period of 62 weeks, was 22.44, aligning with Spotify’s report that

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its subscribers tended to be ‘millennials (born 1980–2000)’ (2018: 8). But many researchers end up excluding older participants through their recruitment strategies, whether because they recruit university students, use platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Ashfaq, Yun and Yu 2020: 565) or conduct interviews at a music festival – a strategy that recalls conventional (and potentially ageist) assumptions about the practices that define authentic musical fandom (Hagen and Lüders 2017). Sometimes, this exclusion goes unremarked (e.g., Falkowski-Gilski and Uhl 2020, who conduct case studies with three age cohorts that span from age sixteen to thirty-five); more often, researchers acknowledge the limitations of their studies while still asserting that their findings ‘provide insights into the habits of early adopters and avid users of music-streaming services’ (Hagen and Lüders 2017: 647). They have a point (particularly in the case of studies that use data from the mid-2010s), but overlooking older users has become less defensible as streaming services and devices become more widely adopted – and as cohorts age. Approaching ageing as a process involves recognizing that age cohorts themselves age over time. The point is obvious but still bears making: what was true for people in their seventies a decade ago may not be true for people in their seventies now, in part because they are not the same individuals. Jacobson, Lin and McEwen (2017) productively highlight these shifts by comparing surveys conducted in East York (near Toronto) in 2005 and 2012. They acknowledged the still-lagging rate of seniors adopting the use of digital devices, but noted two striking trends. First, older adults (who had been in their sixties in 2005 and were in their seventies in 2012) had ‘leapfrogged’ from no mobile phone to ‘using smartphones as their first mobile devices’ (Jacobson, Lin and McEwen 2017: 352). And, second, baby boomers, the age cohort with the most consistent categorization ‘across the literature’ promised to be far more digitally savvy than their elders (Jacobson, Lin and McEwen 2017: 336, 352). These findings are echoed in the AARP’s ‘2020 Tech and the 50+ Survey’, conducted in collaboration with Ipsos, which finds the boomers now in their sixties and seventies – and Gen Xers (defined by the Pew as the generation born 1965–80) also entering the cohort (Pew Research Center 2014). Drawing on a 2019 online survey, the report states: ‘Adults ages 50 and older are adopting smartphones, wearables, home assistants/smart speakers, and smart home technology at nearly the same rate as adults aged 18–49’, and they are surpassing younger adults in ‘adopting tablets’, with the majority (52 per cent) owning one. While many older adults use their devices daily, ‘many are not using the technology to its full potential’ – using apps for email, internet searches, weather and photos more than those for music, news or video streaming (AARP 2020). Clearly, the report aligns with the AARP’s consumer and political advocacy; it also is part of the discourse challenging ageist stereotypes that dismiss the agency of older adults. This includes overlooking them as consumers. Indeed, as Hsiao-Chi Ling et al. found in their study of smart speaker adoption in Taiwan (a country where smart speakers are not in wide use), elder users had greater intention to purchase a device, and age (not gender, income or education) was the only factor influencing this intention (2021: 6–7). Meanwhile, in one of the rare studies of smart speaker use patterns among people over age sixty-five, Sandeep Purao, Hao and Meng observed that their findings ‘support[ed] the heterogeneity hypothesis in life-course research about aging. … Many of [the subjects] are aware of and

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are effective users of technologies … For this population segment, it is not sufficient to think of technologies merely in terms of “assisted living technologies”’ (2021: 11–12). The researchers note the range of robots and AI technologies being designed to aid elders with tasks, ‘cognitive impairment’, and ‘improve emotional and relational wellbeing’, but they point to ‘a broader conceptualization’ of technologies that can include ‘mobile phones and laptops and tablets, as well as home automation devices [e.g., smart speaker].’ They conclude: ‘With this recognition – that there is great variety in the everyday lives, needs and motivations of the elderly – our findings support the view that technology design must shift … to making things that lead to “more resourceful aging” by providing capabilities that can support multiple use patterns’ (Purao, Hao and Meng 2021: 12). By challenging ageist stereotypes about older adults, scholars of popular music and technology offer models for understanding how older adults access and engage with digital music. Their models embrace a more heterogeneous vision of ageing, challenge stereotypes that deny older adults’ agency, and open the possibility for recognizing them as a key (and growing) audience for music streaming. I turn now to how these older audiences and users have been framed in discussions of music streaming and smart speakers.

Older adults and streaming, pre-2018: missing and lagging In a 2016 report by the investment research group SNL Kagen, Bishop Cheen wrote, ‘Music streaming has been trending up without the support of its once most core base: baby boomers. But I can’t figure out who’s ignoring who [sic].’ By 2016, streaming music services had entered the mainstream (according to the Edison Research Infinite Dial report, online audio reached 50 per cent of the US population each week that year) and were the largest source of income for the music industry (Datta, Knox and Bronnenberg 2018: 5; Edison Research and Triton Digital 2021). However, music streaming was not mainstream for all age groups: throughout the decade, media coverage emphasized the youthfulness of the streaming audience. This was particularly the case with Spotify, which by the late 2010s was the dominant music streaming platform in North America and Europe; the company’s leaders focused on their millennial and Gen Z users with Gustav Söderström declaring in 2018: ‘the subscriber groups that will carry long-term product growth are not baby boomers or Generation Xers’ (Datta, Knox and Bronnenberg 2018: 6; Hu 2018a; The Ticker Tape 2018). The striking differences between younger and older listeners’ adoption of music streaming were easy to explain with narratives of older adults as ‘lagging’ – being reluctant to try new technologies, being digitally clueless and lacking connection to contemporary popular culture – and few commentators looked for explanations beyond these stereotypes. Cheen’s observations stood out because he emphasized the importance of music to baby boomers, noting their CD and vinyl collections, willingness to pay for digital music downloads – and the ability to get ‘great music for free’ online and on FM radio (2016). Drawing on both market research data and his own experiences, his observations accorded

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with those by the popular music scholars discussed above: music was an important source of meaning and engagement for older adults, though their engagement might look different than it did for youth and young adults. Indeed, while vinyl collecting had emerged as a hip, youthful activity in the early 2010s, developing and maintaining physical music collections was an ongoing activity for many older music fans; older music buyers helped sustain the viability of CD sales well into the late 2000s (Rodman 2010). Meanwhile, as John McDuling and Dominic White asserted in 2015, when Apple Music was launched: ‘Apple spent a decade teaching baby boomers how to access music online through iTunes and now, in one fell swoop, it has the opportunity to transition those millions of users over to their new Apple Music streaming service.’ In these accounts, baby boomers, with their consumption behaviour (and ability and willingness to buy increasingly costly concert tickets), had provided a critical income stream for the recording industry during the uncertain decadeand-a-half after digital music sharing had radically disrupted its profit models. Of course, not all boomers were wealthy, and, as Cheen (2016) and Bennett (2013) have observed, terrestrial radio remained a key source of ‘free’ (i.e., commercially or publicly funded) music listening. Indeed, in 2018 the Music Business Association note that AM/ FM radio remained the dominant mode of listening in terms of time (31 per cent of all time spent listening), with the amount of usage increasing with age (Vernon 2018), and numerous studies pointing to the dominance of analogue radio in the car (Hu 2018c) and during the workday (Audio a Top Use Case 2018). As late as 2019, Ipsos found that broadcast radio reached 85 per cent of US consumers each week, which Business Wire noted was twice the daily listening of streaming services (Cirisano 2019; New Study Finds Millennials Are the Biggest Audio Generation 2019). While in-car listening decreased for many during the pandemic, radio listening remained high thanks to the increasing presence of smart speakers in the home (in 2020, 27 per cent of Americans aged 12 and up owned a smart speaker, growing to 33 per cent in 2021 [Edison Research and Triton Digital 2021]); in 2020, 45 per cent of smart speaker owners used the device to listen to AM/FM radio (National Public Media, Edison Research 2020). To summarize, while MusicWatch reported in mid-2021 that streaming had replaced radio as the primary source for music discovery, radio remained the primary source of music for many, particularly for older listeners (Crupnick 2021). Part of the ‘lag’ in music streaming by older adults had to do with their adoption of devices (smartphones, tablets and smart speakers) and services (broadband internet and/ or a generous mobile data plan) required for a seamless streaming experience. According to the AARP, only 46 per cent of US adults aged 50 and older owned a smartphone in 2014, a figure that grew to 64 per cent in 2016 and 79 per cent in 2019. In 2019, a majority (62 per cent) of even the oldest (70+) age group owned a smartphone (AARP, 2020). Ownership of tablets has also steadily increased: from 30 per cent to 52 per cent of adults aged 50 and up. But music apps were comparatively unpopular. Only around a third of respondents aged 50 to 69 regularly (at least once a week) used a music app on their smartphone or tablet, while only 11 per cent of those over 70 did so (AARP, 2020). In the rare instances when older adults’ slower adoption of music streaming services has been addressed, the focus has often been upon questions of accessible design and back catalogue repertory. For

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example, in a short-lived venture into bespoke music streaming by AARP and Concord Music Group in 2011 (a pre-consolidation period when a wide range of streaming services were being launched), the Hollywood Report emphasized the ‘simple design’ of the interface and significant representation of ‘the classics the 60s and 70s generation enjoyed in their younger days’ – a description that drew upon stereotypes of elders as technologically inept and as possessing nostalgic musical tastes (Crouch 2011). Meanwhile, another significant design gap has rarely been addressed in popular coverage: hearing aid compatibility. As Stephani Kim has observed, the ability to pair hearing aids with a smartphone or tablet ‘can normalize the way users consume media because they don’t need to remove their hearing aids or augment them with bridging devices in order to do so’ (Kim 2019b). Ear buds, of course, cannot be used at the same time as hearing aids, while using over-the-ear headphones with hearing aids in place can cause feedback.3 It was not until 2014 that the first iPhone-specific hearing aids were introduced, which were designed to facilitate music streaming with volume and treble/ bass settings, but it took until 2019 for Android-compatible hearing aids to be released (Kent 2020; Kim 2019a). Given the expense of hearing aids (and limited insurance coverage for them), as well as ‘the higher prevalence of hearing loss and uptake of hearing aids as adults age’, there has been a lag in what Kim describes as the reasonable expectation that older adults’ (and others’) ‘hearing aids … support the ways in which they use their smart devices’ (2019b). While not every older adult is dealing with hearing loss, it is striking that device incompatibility issues have not been raised as a factor in the ‘lagging’ adoption of smartphones and tablets by older adults – or by their higher engagement with text-based apps rather than streaming audio and video apps. Ultimately, whether the issue was hearing aid compatibility, marketing, or playlist creation, music streaming services were simply not designing their services with older adults (and accessibility) in mind. As Cheen observed: ‘maybe the music services are not doing enough to create compelling content to make us [baby boomers] want to pay up’ (2016). Inspiring baby boomers to decide to subscribe and pay for music services was a reasonable strategy, but first they needed to be familiar with – and, ideally, using – a service. That opportunity came with smart speakers, as will be discussed below.

Active ageing and passive listening: enter the smart speaker Introduced in the mid-2010s, smart speakers combine an AI voice assistant and streaming audio capabilities. From late 2014, when Amazon introduced the Echo, to late 2016, when Google introduced the Nest, to 2018, when Apple introduced its HomePod, smart speakers have expanded in popularity. Market researchers and academics have explored the impacts of these devices, often emphasizing their role in introducing users to smart home technology, facilitating easier access to audio content (streaming music, podcasts and radio stations), increasing users’ time spent listening, and opening users to greater

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surveillance, data collection and marketing by the large technology companies that make the devices and their AI software. Two topics have dominated the music, radio and consumer electronics trade press: their disruptive effect on these industries and their rapid consumer uptake, especially in North America, China and Europe. In particular, while smart speakers have increased audio listening at home, representing an opportunity for radio to expand its audience, actually persuading listeners to request a music radio station on their smart speaker is challenging, especially when ‘in house’ music services, like Amazon Music, are so easy to access (see Baade forthcoming). Meanwhile, the number of smart speaker owners varies depending on the study; according to the 2020 National Public Media, Edison Smart Audio Report, which has conducted longitudinal research on the devices since their introduction, around 24 per cent of Americans had at least one smart speaker in their home. But, as early as the 2017 holiday season, Consumer Electronics Daily announced that smart speakers had entered early mainstream stage (‘Smart Speakers to Move Beyond Early Adopter Phase in January’ 2017). Given narratives of older adults’ lag in adopting new technology, the declaration that smart speakers were mainstream did not necessarily include them. The Saturday Night Live Alexa Silver skit dating from 2017 captured this dynamic: it assumed that its audience knew enough about how smart speakers worked to get the jokes about the hapless elderly users – who, of course, were assumed to be naive about the new technology. Indeed, this lag in adoption was supported by a 2017 Jacobs Media study, which reported that 14 per cent of respondents aged 13 to 34 owned a smart speaker, while only 7 per cent of 55+ respondents had one (Reigart, 2017). A year later, however, the Smart Audio report described a ‘democratic distribution’ of smart speaker ownership across age groups, with 18 per cent of 25–34-year-olds owning a smart speaker, compared to 24 per cent of 45–54-year-olds and 22 per cent of those 55 and over (Audio a Top Use Case for Smart Speakers 2018). Predictably, the rate of adoption declined with age (20 per cent for respondents in their fifties, 18 per cent for those in their sixties, and 12 per cent for those over seventy) according to the AARP study, but among older adults who owned a smart speaker, over half in all age groups used the device at least daily (AARP 2020). Recalling the challenges that smartphone audio could pose for those with hearing aids, it is worth noting that smart speakers are designed for listening without headphones. For many observers, the expansion of music streaming was connected closely to the adoption of smart speakers. As Consumer Electronics Daily reported in 2019: ‘Older consumers tend to own a smart speaker before a streaming service’, quoting the analyst Alexandre Jornod’s observation that the devices were ‘a key driver of streaming subscriptions, especially in age groups with traditionally slower music streaming adoption’ (Hardware May Play Role in Bringing Older Consumers to Streaming Music 2019). Amazon Music was the greatest beneficiary of this trend; from 2018 the trade press noted its expanding number of paid subscribers, especially among older adults and country music listeners (country songs on Amazon music were streamed at 2.5 times the industry average) (Rys 2018). A year later, the Financial Times noted that although Spotify and Apple had more subscribers, Amazon Music ‘has quietly become the fastest-growing music streamer with 32 million subscribers. Key to that base are customers over 55 years old’ (Amazon: Oldies but Goodies 2019).

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Much of Amazon’s success was rooted in its extremely popular line of smart speakers, with 78 per cent of all smart speaker owners in the USA owning one (National Public Media, Edison Research 2020). With Amazon Music as the default music streaming option – and its loss leader offer to users of a simple, affordable upgrade to a paid subscription – it was well-positioned to surpass Apple’s more expensive, niche devices and services, and Spotify, a ‘pure-play’ platform that needed to partner with device manufacturers to reach smart speaker users (Amazon: Oldies but Goodies 2019). As RadioWorld reported a month later, AM/FM radio (18 per cent) and Amazon Music (17 per cent) led in share of listening time on smart speakers (Stine 2019). Even if older adults declined to purchase a music streaming subscription on their new smart speaker, some observers recognized the value of more casual, passive modes of listening enabled by smart speakers. As the British newspaper Sunday Times noted: ‘It’s the casual fans who are being targeted first; people who love music, but prefer someone else to pick their songs. In other words, traditional radio audiences’ (Verrico 2018). Unlike earlier adopters, they were less likely to skip ads; listener passivity was ‘a good thing when it comes to the consumption of advertising’, as Cara Meverden of Scout FM observed (Hollis 2018). Certainly, not all of these users were older adults, but there was a strong overlap between ‘traditional radio audiences’, users who had acquired a smart speaker before they started using a music streaming service, and older adults. Amazon’s success was not the result of ‘passive’ users with default subscriptions to its music streaming service. In the late 2010s it began collaborating with music companies to create Alexa Skills – essentially, apps designed for the audio interface – to promote specific artists. While some were designed for younger audiences (e.g., Paloma’s Bedtime, which featured ‘lullabies and bedtime stories’ for children), several others featured artists, such as U2 and Michael Bublé, with followings among older adults (Hu 2018b). As MusicWeek reported in early 2019, ‘Warner Music UK chose Bublé as its launch artist because of the singer’s older 35+ demographic fit with Amazon devices’ (Paine). Bublé Daily features ‘a story, a fact or an inspirational quote’ recorded by the singer – a strategy for ‘establish[ing] a deep connection between a fan and the artist’, as one music executive observed (Paine 2019). The Bublé Daily Skill is well-suited to current efforts by music labels to drive interest in ‘catalogue’ – that is, music released more than eighteen months ago. As Billboard reports, the rise of streaming has brought with it the increased availability and use of catalogue music, virtually doubling labels’ income from catalogue (in contrast to current hits): from 35.8 per cent in 2012 to 64.3 per cent in 2019 (Christman 2019). However, as of 2018, the vast majority of streams are from the twenty-first century: 88 per cent (with 73 per cent of all streams from 2010 on) (Christman 2019). For catalogue executives, generating interest in back catalogue materials has proved extraordinarily challenging: ‘Our job is to encourage the fans to go deeper than two or three tracks into an artist’s catalog’ and ‘It’s important to put something new to the artist page on a service every week’ (Christman 2019). Creating an Alexa Skill is a resource-intensive strategy, but it also has the possibility of encouraging a level of connection to energize engagement with the back catalogue of artists like Bublé. Another strategy for catalogue marketers is ‘to drive traffic to playlists like Spotify’s This Is series or Apple Music’s Essentials’, harnessing ‘social media and playlist marketing’

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(Christman 2019). As one observer wrote: ‘Music streaming service Spotify has revealed that their biggest area of growth today is not today’s musical hits, but compilations and flashbacks of much older songs’, such as a Led Zeppelin retrospective (Popyk 2019). In other words, whereas the previous year, Spotify had publicly denied the relevance of older listeners to its future, it had begun to recognize their importance as an untapped market – an especially critical concern given the success with older demographics by competitors like Amazon Music. The playlists on the AARP Spotify account echo this appeal: they feature playlists by artists who became popular in the previous century – who also maintain a public presence as performers and curators. In many ways these curated Spotify playlists recall a range of audio content that sustains the cultural relevance of artists with long careers and deep catalogues, like E Street Radio, a Bruce Springsteen channel on Sirius XM, or the weekly show Uncle Snoop’s Army Radio on Apple Music. Together, these strategies represented a fresh recognition of the value of older adults as an audience for streaming, despite the fact that they remained under-represented compared to other age groups (e.g., 20 per cent of boomers had a music streaming subscription compared to 60 per cent of millennials) (Ciampa 2019). A report by the investment company Deloitte, highlighted Boomers as ‘a potentially lucrative opportunity’ for service providers; the strategy was to work with smart speaker manufacturers. But beyond the business opportunity, the strategies for courting older listeners involved a recognition of the role of ‘affective scenes’ that offered listeners a sense of belonging to a wider imagined community (Bennett 2013). After all, Matheson’s article, ‘The Power of Music Playlists’ emphasized the desire to ‘join the party’ – not simply listening to nostalgic hits of yesteryear (2021). While it described the connection between human curation and radio DJs – a backward-looking reference to what the trade press frames as a medium favoured by ‘passive’ listeners, the aim was to emphasize that ‘real humans’ and ‘notable artists’ were involved. These playlist strategies also underscore the insistence by scholars of music and ageing about the heterogeneity of the ageing process, the multigenerational nature of music audiences and the diversity of older adults. While younger listeners might not be attracted to an AARP-branded playlist, a Led Zeppelin playlist or Uncle Snoop’s Army Radio might well attract a broad age range. Finally, the AARP’s programming demonstrates a recognition that 1960s and 1970s rock might not be the only interest of its diverse membership. Its most followed guest playlists (over 100 as of February 2022) are: Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top (283 folllowers), the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams (256), trumpeter Herb Alpert (195), funk legend Bootsy Collins (143), country singer Randy Travis (118) and crossgenre percussionist Sheila E. (107). The twentieth-century backlist is well represented in their playlists, many of which take a retrospective approach going back to the early and mid-twentieth century, but they also include a range of country, R&B, funk and Latin repertories – as well as better gender balance – that would not normally be found on a classic rock station. By emphasizing the individual identity of the guest artist, they not only enhance the relationship between artist and fan, but also emphasize the values of popular music ‘as a cultural resource’ for individual identity – challenging ageist assumptions about the relationship between older listeners (and artists) and popular music.

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Conclusion: streaming music as a ‘provider of vitality’ In spring 2020, PR Newswire announced the release of GrandPad, a tablet intended specifically for people aged seventy-five-plus (GrandPad Launches Sale of Purpose-Built Tablets for Seniors 2020). It was designed to be simple to set up, intuitive to use, and secure – protecting users against scams, spam, and hacks, while also boasting, ‘no confusing buttons, no passwords or pop-up ads’ (GrandPad Launches Sale of Purpose-Built Tablets for Seniors 2020). The device connected users with ‘family, friends, and caregivers through simple video calling, voice text and email, and straightforward photo sharing’ – as well as ‘unlimited music streaming, news, games, and more’ that they could experience with ‘enhanced sound and video quality’ (GrandPad Launches Sale of Purpose-Built Tablets for Seniors 2020; GrandPad and 7digital Announce Partnership Renewal 2020). A year later, it added GrandPad Radio, which provided access to ‘local and national stations’, as well as its own, in-house GrandPad Radio station with a ‘DJ who … plays a variety of music genres and artists that are favorites among elderly adults’, in addition to airing news, interviews and information (‘GrandPad Expands Access to Music and News’ 2021). Introduced first in the UK, Ireland and North America, GrandPad could not have been launched at a more opportune time, with the first wave of lockdowns being introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic – a disease that posed particular risk to older adults, and led to unprecedented levels of social isolation (and worse) for elders in long-term care, as well as those living in their own homes. In April 2020, PR Newswire highlighted the value of music streaming on the device: its ‘customized playlists [were] designed to improve health and happiness’ with the CEO and co-founder Scot Lien explaining: ‘In a world where health concerns and limited mobility is distancing seniors physically and emotionally, technology can help reduce the negative health impacts created by isolation and loneliness, and having access to familiar and loved music can bring people joy and comfort’ (GrandPad and 7digital Announce Partnership Renewal 2020). According to Lien, live radio further enhanced users’ sense of connection, ‘to their hometowns or to topics they find entertaining and educational’; indeed, the radio app ‘has been listened to for more minutes than any other content’ (‘Groovin’ to the Oldies’ GrandPad n.d.a) By October, over 960,000 devices had been sold in 110 countries (GrandPad Partners with Orange Belgium and Ericsson 2020). These benefits come at a cost: the GrandPad (combining hardware, data plan, a private network and ‘24/7 US Based White-Glove Support’) cost US$89 a month or US$780 a year (GrandPad, n.d.b). In contrast, an Amazon Echo Dot costs as little as $50, while the most affordable Amazon Fire tablets cost under $100 – though, of course, these products do not include wifi or premium security and tech support. The successes and limitations of the GrandPad resonate with many of the themes that I have explored throughout this chapter. First, it recalls the tension Purao, Hao and Meng identified between technologies that are purpose-built to address pre-identified needs of elders and a ‘broader conceptualization’ of what these technologies can be – together with an approach to design that recognizes heterogeneity in ageing by facilitating ‘multiple

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use patterns’ (2021: 12). Indeed, as Saba Rebecca Brause and Grant Blank have shown, consumers are putting smart speakers to a range of uses – to remind them to take pills, check in on elders (using the Alexa ‘drop-in feature’) and enhance the accessibility of homes with voice commands for lighting (2020: 756) – findings echoed in a Kiplinger Retirement Report, which described a 2018 programme that introduced smart speakers in a retirement community. The article opened by describing Lois Seed, a ‘90-year-old widow’ with impaired vision, who ‘places the device next to a comfortable chair, where she listens to audiobooks and to classical music streamed from a radio station in Los Angeles, where she used to live’ (Garland 2018) – a striking vision of agency and the role of music in creating a sense of continuity, as described by Forman (2012). Indeed, while music is often framed in discussions of ageing as ‘a powerful tool, capable of creating emotional responses that boost happiness and enhance quality of life’, as the CEO of a company partnering with GrandPad described it, its power is highly contingent and relational. This understanding informs the critical and ethnographically informed scholarship in popular music, but it can also be found in the music therapy literature. Essentially, it is hard to prove that music, independently of other factors, has a direct causal effect on enhanced well-being. Rather, its positive impact is rooted in the connections it fosters – to others, to an individual’s sense of self, and to a sense of personal agency. Fiona Costa, Ockelford and Hargreaves articulated the situation most clearly in a study on how music affected ‘pain, depression and anxiety in older care home residents’: music was most effective for participants who ‘regarded music as important, listened frequently, and whose preferences were accommodated’ (and were not in severe pain) (2018: 174). Indeed, two intriguing studies that used in-depth interviews highlighted the value of simply talking about music: Ayelet Dassa credited interviews with opening ‘a process of music and reminiscence [that] strengthened the elderly’s sense of self-identity, illuminated hidden facets, and changed attitudes toward the elderly’ (2018: 419), while Katarina Lindblad and Sam de Boise noted that their interviews were therapeutic for both the subjects and the researchers (2020: 32). They emphasized that music was relational, not medicinal (21–2), quoting Evan Ruud’s observation: ‘It is well established that everyday music use has significant health and wellbeing implications, as a provider of vitality – that is, emotional stimulation and expression; tool for developing agency and empowerment; resource in building social networks; and a way of providing meaning and coherence in life’ (Ruud, quoted in Lindblad and de Boise 2020: 21). Ageist discourses and structures tend to undermine older adults’ capabilities and agency, and this has certainly affected approaches to music programming in long-term care. As Forman observed, regular musical events are regarded as a key marker of a good facility, but residents are sometimes wheeled in to attend without actively choosing to do so, with those who choose not to attend being regarded by staff as being less ‘productive’ than those who do attend – and then act engaged with the concert (2012: 251–2). (Poignantly, throughout the pandemic, even such semi-voluntary activities were not available for many residents in long-term care.) Forman’s observation of residents who don’t always actively choose to attend concerts contrasts with Bennett’s contemporaneous assertion about the desire articulated by a younger cohort of older adults: many interviewees ‘carry with them the

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expectation of retaining control over their lifestyle preferences and practices as they enter the third age’, with the result that ‘future care and intervention policy … will demand greater emphasis on catering to the individual, everyday leisure practices’ (2013: 183–4). Listening to streaming music (and radio) is an obvious way for older adults, even those living in longterm care, to engage with music, with affective communities and a sense of agency. For some older adults, particularly those who need greater assistance, the GrandPad is certainly an ideal for accessing music, social connection and health monitoring. Indeed, the GrandPad website addresses a dual audience of caregivers: individuals seeking options for ageing parents and chosen family, and long-term care providers. But there is also a broad array of technology, including smart speakers, that offers similar (and potentially more) affordances for far less money. The problems of accessibility and privacy that the GrandPad solves don’t have to be limited to specialized devices: more attention to universal design (including accessibility for people with hearing impairments) and better policies around privacy and corporate surveillance would benefit a much wider array of people. After all, as is regularly demonstrated, one of the primary reasons non-users cite for not acquiring a smart speaker is (well-founded!) concerns about privacy. And, as understandings of ageing as a heterogenous process and the field of disability studies have shown, universal design and strategies for flexible technologies can serve a broad array of people. Finally, while the corporate logics that frame older adults as a resource for growing the user base for streaming music are finally helping these listeners to be taken seriously, it is important to keep in mind that music in itself is not medicine – it is a source of relationality and meaning. Come join the party, indeed.

Notes 1

2

3

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996; Gen Z was born from 1997 onward. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that it had set 1996 as the cut-off between Millennials and Gen Z, observing, ‘Generational cutoff points aren’t an exact science. … But their boundaries are not arbitrary’ (Dimock 2019). This is a widely accepted age range and ‘the only generation officially designated by the U.S. Census Bureau, based on the famous surge in post-WWII births in 1946 and a significant decline in birthrates after 1964.’ The other generations figuring in the older adults categories are Generation X (born 1965–80) and the Silent Generation (born 1928–45) (Pew Research Center 2014). My thanks to Gene Baade for this clarification.

Works cited AARP Research (2020), ‘2020 Tech and the 50+ Survey’. DOI:10.26419/res.00329.001. AARP (n.d.a), ‘About AARP: Social Impact’: https://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/company/ social-impact/ (accessed 9 May 2022).

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AARP (n.d.b), ‘About AARP’: https://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/ (accessed 9 May 2022). AARP (n.d.c), ‘Writers’ guidelines’: https://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/info-05-2010/writersguidelines-aarp-magazine.html (accessed 9 May 2022). ‘Amazon: Oldies but Goodies’ (2019), Financial Times 11 July. Ashfaq, M., J. Yun and S. Yu (2020), ‘My Smart Speaker Is Cool! Perceived Coolness, Perceived Values, and Users’ Attitude toward Smart Speakers’, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 37 (6): 560–73. ‘Audio a Top Use Case for Smart Speakers as They Move Mainstream, Says Report’ (2018), Consumer Electronics Daily 20 July. Baade, C. (2018), ‘Lean Back: Songza, Ubiquitous Listening, and Internet Music Radio for the Masses’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 16 (1): 9–27. Baade, C. (forthcoming), ‘“A Golden Age of Audio”: Smart Speakers, Domestic Listening, and the Question of Radioness’, Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies, ed. M. Hilmes and A. Bottomley, New York: Oxford University Press. Bennett, A. (2013), Music, Style, and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully?, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bennett, A. and P. Hodkinson, eds (2012), Ageing and Youth Culture: Music, Style and Identity, New York: Routledge. Brause, S. and G. Blank (2020), ‘Externalized Domestication: Smart Speaker Assistants, Networks and Domestication Theory’, Information, Communication & Society 23 (5): 751–63. Cheen, B. (2016), ‘Music Streaming is Booming without Boomers’, SNL Kagan Media & Communication Report 23 December. Christman, E. (2019), ‘The New Catalog Conundrum’, Billboard, 19 October. Ciampa, D. (2019), ‘Boomers haven’t shown a “whole lotta love” for music streaming’, Deloitte, 7 August. Cirisano, T. (2019), ‘Study Shows Rise in Podcast Listening by Millennials, the Biggest Audio Generation’, Billboard, 20 June. Corbyn, Z. (2021), ‘The Future of Elder Care Is Here – and It’s Artificial Intelligence’, Guardian, 3 June: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/elder-care-artificialintelligence-software (accessed 16 March 2022). Costa, F., A. Ockelford and D. Hargreaves (2018), ‘The Effect of Regular Listening to Preferred Music on Pain, Depression and Anxiety in Older Care Home Residents’, Psychology of Music 46 (2): 174–91. Crouch, A. (2011), ‘AARP Launches Music Streaming Service’, Hollywood Reporter, 4 July. Crupnick, R. (2021), ‘Music Discovery Is Entering New Age, With Streaming at the Helm’, Billboard, 15 June. Dassa, A. (2018), ‘Musical Auto-Biography Interview (MABI) as promoting self-identity and well-being in the elderly through music and reminiscence’, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 27 (5): 419–30. Datta, H., G. Knox and B. Bronnenberg (2018), ‘Changing Their Tune: How Consumers’ Adoption of Online Streaming Affects Music Consumption and Discovery’, Marketing Science 37 (1): 5–21. Dimock, M. (2019), ‘Defining Generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins’, Pew Research Center, 17 January: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/ where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/ (accessed 10 May 2022).

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Drott, E. (2018), ‘Music as a Technology of Surveillance’, Journal of the Society for American Music 12 (3): 233–67. Edison Research and Triton Digital (2021), ‘The Infinite Dial 2021’: http://www. edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-Infinite-Dial-2021.pdf (accessed 9 May 2022). Falkowski-Gilski, P. and T. Uhl (2020), ‘Current Trends in Consumption of Multimedia Content Using Online Streaming Platforms: A User-Centric Survey’, Computer Science Review 37: 1–9. Forman, M. (2012), ‘“How We Feel the Music”: Popular Music by Elders and for Elders’, Popular Music 31 (2): 245–60. Forman, M. and J. Fairley (2012), ‘Introduction: Special Issue – As Time Goes By: Music, Dance and Ageing’, Popular Music 31 (2): 193–7. Gardner, A. and R. Jennings (2019), Aging and Popular Music in Europe, New York: Routledge. Garland, S. (2018), ‘Voice Assistants Can Help Older Adults’, The Kiplinger Retirement Report, 1 August. Gladstone, R. (2019), ‘The Globe Is Going Gray Fast, U.N. Says in New Forecast’, New York Times, 17 June: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/world/americas/un-populationaging-forecast.html?searchResultPosition=6 (accessed 9 May 2022). Glantz, M. (2016), ‘Internet Radio Adopts a Human Touch: A Study of 12 Streaming Music Services’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23 (1): 36–49. GrandPad (n.d.a), ‘Groovin’ to the Oldies: GrandPad Launches New Streaming Radio Feature for Senior-Friendly Tablet’, GrandPad: https://www.grandpad.net/blog/grandpad-radiostreaming (accessed 10 May 2022). GrandPad (n.d.b), ‘What Makes GrandPad an Outstanding Value?’, GrandPad: https://buy. grandpad.net/flow/plan (accessed 9 May 2022). ‘GrandPad Launches Sale of Purpose-Built Tablets for Seniors in UK through TechSilver’ (2020), PR Newswire, 25 March. ‘GrandPad and 7digital Announce Partnership Renewal to Give Seniors Access to Music, Customizable Playlist Capabilities’, (2020), PR Newswire, 2 April. ‘GrandPad Partners with Orange Belgium and Ericsson to expand reach … for families across Europe, starting with the UK and Ireland’ (2020), Contify Telecom News, 15 October. ‘GrandPad Expands Access to Music and News with Launch of GrandPad Radio and New Streaming Radio App for Senior-Friendly Tablet’ (2021), Cision PR Web May 28. Grenier, L. and F. Valois-Nadeau (2021), ‘Introduction: Thinking Memory with Ageing, and Ageing with Memory’, A Senior Moment: Cultural Mediations of Memory and Ageing, New York: Columbia University Press. Gullette, M. (2004), Aged By Culture, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Hadjis Labarca, U. (2021), ‘Music Streaming and its Consequences Within the Dynamics of Power, Consumption and Creation’, Teknokultura. Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales 18 (1): 3–12. Hagen A. and M. Lüders (2017), ‘Social Streaming? Navigating Music as Personal and Social’, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 23 (6): 643–59. DOI:10.1177/1354856516673298. ‘Hardware May Play Role in Bringing Older Consumers to Streaming Music, Says Report’ (2019), Consumer Electronics Daily, 21 August. Hazir, I. (2021), ‘Cultural Ominvorousness’, Oxford Bibliographies.

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Hollis, N. (2018), ‘Listen, Marketers, Smart Speakers Are the New Radio’, MediAvataarMe, 28 November. Hu, C. (2018)a, ‘Why Music Streaming’s Greatest Hopes Are Spotify’s Toughest Challenges’, Billboard, 8 March. Hu, C. (2018)b, ‘From Mood Playlists to Metadata: How Smart Speakers Are the Next Frontier – and Challenge – For the Music Business’, Billboard, 18 March. Hu, C. (2018)c, ‘Car Wars: Spotify Faces Stiff Competition as Music Streaming’s Battle to Conquer the Road Heats Up’, Billboard, 2 April. Jacobson, J., C. Lin and R. McEwen (2017), ‘Aging with Technology: Seniors and Mobile Connections’, Canadian Journal of Communication 42 (2): 331–57. DOI:10.22230/ cjc.2017v42n2a3221. Jennings, R. and A. Gardner (2012), ‘Rock on’: Women, Ageing and Popular Music, Farnham: Ashgate. Kent, C. (2020), ‘Timeline: The Evolution of Hearing Aids’, Medical Device Network, 7 January: https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/features/digital-hearing-aid-history/ (accessed 16 March 2022). Kim, S. (2019a), ‘Ease of Hearing Aid Pairing and Sound-Quality Ratings for Binaurally Streamed Phone and Music’, Hearing Review, 24 June. Kim, S. (2019b), ‘A Comparison of Direct Audio Streaming Quality in Hearing Aids,’ Hearing Review, 8 November. Lindblad, K. and S. de Boise (2020), ‘Musical engagement and subjective wellbeing amongst men in the third age’, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 29 (1): 20–38. Ling, H., H. Chen, K. Ho and K. Hsiao (2021), ‘Exploring the Factors Affecting Customers’ Intention to Purchase a Smart Speaker’, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 59: 102–31. Mann, A. (2020), ‘Pandemic’ [12-part podcast series], Canadaland: Commons, 29 April to 5 August: https://www.canadaland.com/tag/long-term-care/page/2/. Matheson, W. (2021), ‘The Power of Music Playlists’, AARP.com, 10 February: https:// www.aarp.org/entertainment/music/info-2021/music-playlists-streaming-services.html (accessed 9 May 2022). McDuling, J. and D. White (2015), ‘Adele Won’t Save the Music Industry but Apple Might’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November. Morris, J. and D. Powers (2015), ‘Control, Curation and Musical Experience in Streaming Music Services’, Creative Industries Journal 8 (2): 106–22. National Public Media, Edison Research (2020), ‘The Smart Audio Report’, April: https:// www.nationalpublicmedia.com/insights/reports/smart-audio-report/ (accessed 9 May 2022). ‘New Study Finds Millennials Are the Biggest Audio Generation; Rise of Smart Speakers Adds to Radio Listening in the Home with Continued Listening Late Into the Night’ (2019), Business Wire, 20 June. Page, W. (2020), ‘Peak Streaming: Are We There Yet?’, Billboard, 22 May. Paine, A. (2019), ‘Skill Up: Labels Ask Alexa to Create “Deep Connection” with Fans on Smart Speakers’, Music Week, 14 January. Pelly, L. (2017), ‘The Problem with Muzak: Spotify’s Bid to Remodel an Industry’, The Baffler, Winter, 37: 86–95: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26358588 (accessed 16 March 2022).

Hearing Age in Music Streaming

Pew Research Center (2014), ‘The Generations Defined’, 5 March: https://www. pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/sdt-nextamerica-03-07-2014-0-06/ (accessed 10 May 2022). Popyk, L. (2019), ‘Top of Mind Thursday’, News Release Wire, 5 September. Purao, S., H. Hao and C. Meng (2021), ‘The Use of Smart Home Speakers by the Elderly: Exploratory Analyses and Potential for Big Data’, Big Data Research 25: 1–13. Reigart, E. (2017), ‘Smart Speakers Are a Key Gift Trend for 2017’, RadioWorld, 6 December. Rodman, S. (2010), ‘Older Acts No. 1 with Aging Buyers as CD Sales Wane’, Houmatoday, 16 June: https://www.houmatoday.com/story/news/2010/06/16/older-acts-no-1-with-agingbuyers-as-cd-sales-wane/26918967007/ (accessed 9 May 2022). Rys, D. (2018), ‘Amazon Music Says Number of Subscriptions Doubled In the Past Six Months’, Billboard, 2 April. Saturday Night Live (2017), ‘Amazon Echo’, YouTube.com, 14 May: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk (accessed 9 May 2022). ‘Smart Speakers to Move Beyond Early Adopter Phase in January, comScore Says’ (2017), Consumer Electronics Daily, 26 December. Stine, R. (2019), ‘Smart Speakers Grow in Importance’, RadioWorld, 9 September. The Ticker Tape (2018), ‘Spotify Investor Day and the Coming Wave of Gen Z Investors, Consumers’, Benzinga, 2 April. Vernon, T. (2018), ‘Smart Speakers Drive New Music Consumption Habits’, RadioWorld, 10 October. Verrico, L. (2018), ‘Music Streaming on Smart Speakers: Alexa, Is It Adele You’re Looking For?’, Sunday Times, 28 July. Werner, A. (2020), ‘Organizing Music, Organizing Gender: Algorithmic Culture and Spotify Recommendations’, Popular Communication 18 (1): 78–90.

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4 Past the Gate Women in Sports Talk Radio Lori Beckstead

Since even before American reporter Denise O’Donnell declared in 1957 that it was ‘easier to get inside the Kremlin than it is to get inside a baseball press box’ (‘Press Box’ 1957), women working in sports media have faced barriers to entry into this primarily male space (Anderson 2009; Bruce 2013; Markovits and Albertson 2012). While the status of female sports journalists and TV sportscasters has been widely researched (see for example Franks and O’Neill 2016; Grubb and Billiot 2010; Lapchick, Middleton and Richardson 2021; Mudrick et al. 2018; Schmidt 2015, 2018), not as much attention has been paid to women in sports talk radio. On radio in general women have been making progress towards gender parity, but on sports talk radio in particular the number of female broadcasters has always been, and remains, obstinately low (Hardin et al. 2013). Radio plays a significant role in sports broadcasting, with the sports talk radio format providing not only access to live sporting events but also 24/7 sports analysis, commentary and conversation. It’s a popular radio format in the USA where there are over 700 sports talk stations (Kerr 2017; Radio Advertising Bureau, n.d.), all dominated by the voices of men. While the number of women working in sports media has been on the upswing over time, this trend seems to have bypassed sports talk radio altogether; as reporter Shannon Ryan noted in the Chicago Tribune: ‘Sports talk radio appears static as an almost entirely male domain – from on-air talent to behind-the-scenes workers to listeners’ (2016: para.4). Talkers magazine regularly publishes a list of ‘the 100 most important sports talk radio hosts in America’ (‘TALKERS Sports Heavy Hundred’ 2020). Of 187 hosts on the 2020 list (many are ranked as teams) just four women are listed, or 2 per cent of the total. What does this mean for the few women who do manage to carve out space on these particular airwaves? This chapter investigates the experiences of female sports talk radio hosts in Canada, examining their lived experiences in this masculine domain.

Women in Sports Talk Radio

Sports media and hegemonic masculinity Women face a number of challenges that hinder their participation in sports media. Schmidt (2018) found that opportunities for female sports journalists are negatively affected by the culture of hegemonic masculinity in sports and sports media, with women reporting they face more obstacles and greater discrimination than men. Hardin et al. (2103) reveal that about a third of the 160 American sports talk radio stations they studied did not employ any female staffers, and concluded that white women and minority men were under-represented in leadership positions – and women of colour were completely absent. Whiteside and Hardin (2012) state that women in the US sport media industry lack the support and opportunity to compete on an equal footing with their male counterparts, and experience a powerlessness to change the gendered culture of sports newsrooms. The failure of the sports media industry to enfranchise women has been considered by Harrison (2018), who suggests that a post-feminist and neoliberal culture – one that places the onus for success on the individual rather than examining the structures which may help or hinder that success – makes women themselves solely responsible for succeeding in the industry rather than placing the responsibility for their success on the industry itself. Scholarship has long confirmed the relationship between sports media and R. W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity (1987). As a pattern of hegemony that legitimates unequal gender relations (Messerschmidt 2019) and assures the dominance of patriarchal archetypes of virile masculinity and the subordination of women (FernandezAlvarez 2014), hegemonic masculinity has been widely used to describe and analyse sport media institutions and women’s access to them. Toni Bruce, in summarizing a wide body of research about women in sports media, concludes that sports media is ‘an overwhelmingly male and hegemonically masculine domain that produces coverage by men, for men and about men’ (2013: 128, emphasis in original). A salient aspect of hegemonic masculinity is gatekeeping, whereby men control whether and how women can access male domains and gender equality. Connell (2005: 1802) explains: the very gender inequalities in economic assets, political power, and cultural authority, as well as the means of coercion, that gender reforms intend to change, currently mean that men … control most of the resources required to implement women’s claims for justice. Men and boys are thus in significant ways gatekeepers for gender equality.

There are two aspects of male gatekeeping that are pertinent to the present study. On one hand, there are gatekeepers who control women’s access to employment in sports talk radio, which include decision makers such as station managers, programme directors and media executives, as well as the cultural milieu in which these organizations and decision makers operate. On the other hand, there is an aspect of gatekeeping that comes from the intended audience of sports talk radio. As Markovits and Albertson (2012) argue, female sportscasters ‘have a serious problem in terms of having the authenticity, authority, and legitimacy of their work fully accepted by a vastly male audience’ (169). As long as sports talk radio is thought of as being for an exclusively male audience, gatekeeping activities such as harassment of female sportscasters will be present.

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The problem with women’s voices The so-called ‘problem’ with women’s voices has been declaimed for as long as women have been speaking. Anne Karpf (2011) enumerates the often conflicting expectations of women’s voices throughout the ages: the imperative for women to be silent, the pervasive yet false conception that women speak more than men, and the various ways that the inherent biological and sonic qualities of women’s voices have been problematized. In the broadcast era, women’s voices were immediately framed as problematic. A representative from Bell Laboratories was quoted in 1927 saying that women’s speech characteristics ‘do not blend with the electrical characteristics of our present-day radio equipment’ (McKay 1988: The Radio Soprano) – suggesting that there was nothing wrong with the way the equipment was designed, just something wrong with women’s voices. Karpf points out that women’s voices are caught in a catch twenty-two: a high voice is associated with demureness and a low voice with sexuality, so that ‘the voice that escaped accusations of promiscuity wasn’t considered authoritative enough for serious broadcasting’ (2011: 146). This perception of women’s voices as non-normative and problematic, particularly in broadcasting spheres, has persisted over time. In Rosalind Gill’s study of male broadcasters’ explanations for why so few women were on air in the UK, one male programme director expressed concern for the sensitivities of the listeners to women’s voices: if they sound ‘grating’ or ‘shrill’ the listeners will be turned off (1993: 86). But no matter the tonal quality of the voice of a female broadcaster, the fact that it is emitting from a woman’s body renders it subject to criticism, particularly in sports broadcasting. By complaining about the voice, male listeners can avoid saying overtly that they simply don’t like women talking about sports, while putting forth a seemingly legitimate reason – albeit beyond the woman’s control – why they shouldn’t be. ‘It’s not that I have a problem with a woman calling the game’, journalist de la Cretaz paraphrases an imagined male listener, ‘it’s just that her voice is so annoying/shrill/grating/insert sexist adjective here’ (2018: para. 27).

Women’s voices and the male gaze The disembodied1 voices of women on radio, particularly ones that speak in the male domain of sports radio, subvert the idea that a woman must be physically attractive to the male gaze in order for her to be granted a platform to speak. Allowing a woman to be heard without being seen is dangerous, according to film theorist Kaja Silverman, as it puts her out of reach of the male gaze and releases her voice from the ‘signifying obligations which that gaze enforces’ (1998: 164). Male gaze theory, established in the mid1970s by feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey, provides a conceptual lens through which to understand how patriarchal influences shape media language to reflect and satisfy the male unconscious (Kerr 2017). We see the male gaze at play in television sportscasting: female presenters are often conventionally attractive and immaculately groomed, even wearing

Women in Sports Talk Radio

uncomfortably high-heeled shoes while chasing half-time interviews at the sidelines. This is not to diminish the value of the work that these women do; rather it is to point out examples of the ‘signifying obligations’ that the male gaze enforces. A disembodied voice, which removes the literal male gaze from the equation, potentially forces a reckoning with the substance of what is being said, allowing female sports radio hosts a more neutral metaphorical playing field on which to ply their trade of sports conversation and analysis. Yet even with the shackles of appearance removed, a woman’s voice, signifying as it does ‘femaleness’, seems to be enough reason for the mostly male audience to apply a much tougher measuring stick to the content contained in that voice. According to Markovits and Albertson, men accept women’s presence on television sports programmes as long as they look good and are simply reporting the news or action, but ‘as soon as this mutates into analysis, commentary, criticism, challenge – in other words, once it features the female journalist’s opinions and views – male tolerance decreases rapidly and mutates into anger, hostility, contempt, and derision’ (2012: 193). As Mulvey (1974) puts it, the male gaze prefers a woman who is the bearer of meaning rather than a maker of meaning. It is as if in the sphere of sports broadcasting, women are permitted a body but not a voice. The male gaze is perhaps more readily perceived through the viewfinder of a camera than through the loudspeaker of a radio. Is there in fact a male ‘gaze’ in radio? According to Kerr’s analysis of prominent sports talk radio host Amy Lawrence’s show (2017), ‘constant hyper-awareness of the male gaze is just a routine part of life for her in male-dominated sports talk radio’ (Kerr 2017: 90). But perhaps Jennifer Stoever’s concept of the ‘listening ear’ can be useful here; it ‘normalises the aural tastes and standards of white elite masculinity as the singular way to interpret sonic information’, dictating what sounds ‘natural, normal, and desirable – while deeming alternate ways of listening and sounding aberrant’ (2016: 13–14). Karpf points out that ‘men listen to women and women hear themselves being listened to, by a man, to whom the disembodied female voice was always disturbing’ (2013: para.11). Certainly the listening ear must be at play in the realm of sports talk radio where women’s voices are not only very few, but also subject to criticism for their aberrance.

Methodology and findings This study seeks to find out how many women occupy on-air roles at sports talk radio stations in Canada, and to gain an understanding of their experiences as women in the sports radio industry.2 From among the ten commercial, English-language stations broadcasting a 24/7 sports talk format found across the country, a list of programme hosts – defined as those who were identified on the radio stations’ websites as the onair presenter/host of a regularly recurring show – was compiled. Excluded from the sample were any other on-air contributors such as newscasters, reporters, fill-ins, etc. The sample was filtered for women based on appearance where pictures were available online, and name. Racialized hosts were identified based on the researchers’ assessment of appearance.3 Invitations were sent to all of the female hosts found (eleven in total) to

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participate in a semi-structured research interview. Four women agreed to participate, resulting in more than one third (36.3 per cent) of the total target population providing input into this study. Among a total of 250 on-air hosts counted at eleven sports talk radio stations across Canada in 2019, eleven female hosts were identified, representing only 4.4 per cent of the total number of hosts. Almost half of all the sports talk radio stations in Canada (five of eleven) had no women on air as regular hosts at all. Four of the eleven female hosts were at the helm of shows specifically focused on women in sports, accounting for two shows in total (see Table 4.1). These two shows were the only ones hosted solely by women (i.e. without any male co-hosts), suggesting that women without male co-hosts are acceptable on air as long as they confine themselves to talking about women’s sports only. Notably, of all eleven women who had on-air roles at sports talk radio stations, none were racialized. Before delving into the results from the research interviews, here is a brief look at aggregated responses to the interview questions that produced quantitative data. When asked whether it matters if there are women on air on sports radio, 100 per cent of respondents agreed that it does matter, and gave these general supporting arguments: the need for role models for other women and girls; the different perspective that women bring; to demonstrate that women are capable of discussing sports at a deep level; and to represent or appeal to the female sports fans. All four respondents agreed that women have a harder time than men getting jobs in sports radio. When asked if they had ever experienced sexism5 on the job, all four respondents said yes. Types of sexism reported included microaggressions from male colleagues, gendered harassment on social media, and lack of support and opportunities for advancement.

Table 4.1  Number of Female Hosts at Canadian Sports Talk Radio Stations, 2019 Number of female hosts

Details about the women on air

Stations 1–5

0

n/a

Station 6

2

On separate shows; co-hosting with men

Station 7

2

On separate shows; co-hosting with men

Station 8

2

Hosting together on same show

Station 9

3

1 co-hosting the morning show with men 2 co-hosting a rebroadcast of a podcast4

Station 10

1

Co-hosting with men

Station 11

1

Co-hosting with men

Note

Show focuses on women’s sports

Show focuses on women’s sports

Women in Sports Talk Radio

Three out of four respondents disagreed that the sports radio industry is a fair and equitable place for women today. The fourth respondent said it was slow but ‘getting there’, and that listener acceptance of women on the air, as well as willingness to hire a woman, likely varies from market to market depending on the diversity and attitudes of the local population. Let’s now look at the general themes that emerged from the interviews.

If you don’t hear it, you can’t be it: the need for female role models With so few women on the air speaking about sports, a lack of role models for women and girls may be part of the gatekeeping mechanism at play in the industry. Respondents cited this as a possible reason why so few women work in this space: Young girls are growing up only hearing men talk about sports over and over and over again. And if they’re not hearing a woman, then they’re thinking that they’re not worthy to do that job either. And they don’t even consider it as something that they want to do when they grow up. [Becoming a host on sports talk radio] was never anything that occurred to me because it’s that good old saying ‘if you see it you can be it’. I never saw women in radio. So it just never occurred to me that that was a path I could even take. You hear men’s voices, you see men’s faces. There just aren’t enough women’s faces and voices that would even make them think that’s a path that’s available.

While the need for more female role models may exist for all types of sport media, half of the respondents pointed out that radio in particular is especially important for demonstrating that women are capable of understanding and talking about sports on a deep level. One respondent explains how radio is different from other sport media: There’s a different perception with radio. So sports radio, the perception is you’re a diehard. Which also means you are probably the most credible, which also means you’re probably the most knowledgeable. And if you don’t have a woman’s voice in that sphere, then the belief is that women are always on the surface of sports, right? [On TV] you always set up an interview, throw to an interview, welcome back from a commercial, throw to a commercial. I mean, I’m not saying anything about TV that we don’t already know. I mean, that’s me – I am a TV host as well. But there’s something about radio where you know the ins and outs of sports where if somebody throws something at you – because for radio it’s not scripted – that you’re able to answer. So if you don’t have women in that world, in that radio world, then the belief will always be that you’re just there on a very surface oriented basis.

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Women must prove their knowledge of sports Study after study about women in sport media gives evidence that women are regularly pressured to prove what they know about sports (see for example de la Cretaz 2018; Grubb and Billiot 2010; Mudrick et al. 2018; Organista and Mazur 2020). The present study further substantiates that claim, with three of the four respondents mentioning being challenged on their knowledge of sports. One respondent spoke about voicing an opinion in a meeting and being antagonized by a male colleague who disagreed: [He wasn’t] jumping into a dialogue as to why [he] disagreed … but, ‘Oh, really? Well, do you know how many goals he had in this year?’ And it’s just like, ‘No, I don’t, Paul, because I’m not 75.’ And so that’s a micro kind of aggressive way to challenge me and discredit me.

This behaviour exemplifies the drive to challenge the overall credibility of the woman and her right to be present in this environment, rather than dealing directly with the substance of her words, and was a tactic commonly reported amongst the respondents. Respondents also felt they need to know more than their male colleagues in order to be taken seriously. I have taken so much pride in knowing more or just as much as my male counterparts … because I knew that bias was there. I always thought information was key. Because if I could be informative, then it shouldn’t matter what I look like, because I could put up a conversation and an argument better than anybody else, or just as good as anybody else out there. A lot of people are just … going to be harder on women than they are on men because whether they realise it or not, they are already judging based on the fact that she’s a woman.

All respondents reported being judged more harshly than their male counterparts for any mistakes they made. There are people that have been involved in sports, specifically, since their infancy and so they want to call you on it. They’re just waiting for you to stumble, even though they make mistakes all the time.

One respondent relayed a story told to her by a radio executive before she became a radio host. The executive said that if any of his male hosts made a mistake such as pronouncing an athlete’s name incorrectly, the listeners were always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt: He’s always given a pass. But if a woman mispronounces an athlete’s name, ‘look at this idiot, of course, yeah, this is why women can’t be in sport. She doesn’t even know the guy’s name, she can’t even pronounce it properly.’ And [this executive] would actually get phone calls from listeners saying, ‘you got to get this woman off the air, she can’t even do this, she mispronounces this, got this stat wrong’ – by like, one goal, got the stat wrong. And [the executive said], ‘but when my male hosts screw up, way more than her, nobody says anything. Nobody.'

Women in Sports Talk Radio

Online harassment The issue of online harassment of female sports journalist has been detailed elsewhere (see for example Everbach 2018; Organista and Mazur 2020) and is noteworthy not only because it is so widespread and commonplace – in fact Hardin and Shain (2005) found that women in sport media see the harassment as routine rather than deviant – but also because harassment serves to remind women sportscasters of their place in a male domain (Grubb and Billiot 2010). Such harassment is a function of male gatekeeping. One respondent details how she’s had to block her social media notifications to avoid seeing harassing messages, yet considers the harassment mild: whether it’s on social media, or sometimes in texts and emails to the station, you do see a few comments like, ‘get these broads off the air’ or ‘women shouldn’t be talking about sports’. I’ve had people tweet at me almost every time I send a tweet out, or almost every time I’m on the air. I’ve had to make my Instagram private, because I’ve had people comment on my Instagram photos based on something I had said on the air and attack me for essentially being a woman and talking about sports … I consider my experience [with online harassment] to be quite mild. Like I really don’t get it that often … whereas I know a lot of more prominent women in sports media. They get it every single day repeatedly.

Another respondent also blocked her social media mentions, citing the anxiety they caused her: I didn’t realise how my shoulders were always right underneath my ears when I was picking up my phone, because you’re getting ready for an attack, you’re getting ready for someone to say something. I don’t get the mentions popping up on anything I put out there because again, it’s very sexual, a lot of times, the comments, and, you know, degrading in that way.

The expectation of female sportscasters to take on the emotional management of these personal and sometimes disturbing attacks contributes to the sports media industry’s gendered structure (Harrison 2018). As long as women are expected to have a thick skin, to not take it personally, or to just turn off their social media mentions, social and cultural institutions, including radio stations, are able to shirk their responsibility for making efforts to curb harassment. The transfer of this responsibility to the individual woman discourages some women from pursuing careers in sports media and contributes to men’s ‘quantitative and ideological domination of women in the industry’ (ibid.: 953). Another respondent illustrates this point quite clearly: If I were someone who was maybe a little more impressionable, who was younger, whose esteem could be more affected by like, things like this, I would have quit long ago because it’s – I wouldn’t blame someone for not wanting to do this.

When asked what advice they might have for radio managers or programme directors with respect to women working in sports radio, one respondent said: Supporting the women you do have working for you is important. And not just in giving them the resources they need or access to the teams or what have you, but making sure that

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they feel supported in terms of the comments they get, whether it’s online, or through texts or emails to the station.

This mirrors the findings of Chen et al (2022) who report that the majority of female sports journalists they interviewed felt that the organisations they worked for should do more to assist them when harassment happens, wished their supervisors considered it part of their responsibility to ensure a harassment-free workplace (including online), and felt their organisation saw the abuse as the women’s own personal problem.

Managers and executives must provide support for women in sports radio Respondents indicated that media companies must provide more, or a different kind of support to women in sports radio than they would to their male counterparts. You just have to acknowledge that it’s going to be a different path for women, and you have to acknowledge that sometimes it’s going to be a little tougher, and that sometimes it’s going to be a little bit more unforgiving from a listener point of view. So, as a leader of a radio station, you have to recognize that … if you hire a woman, she’s going to be taking a lot and she needs you to be behind her. She needs you to back her up, because a lot of what she’s going to get is going to be so unfair. Walk through that fire together.

One respondent indicated she felt she was given less support from her station than her male counterparts might have got, as a way to ‘test’ her: You gotta be on it as women. No one is giving you anything in radio. You gotta be able to do everything yourself. And it’s almost as if you get tested that way. And what I mean is like, ‘oh, okay, so you want to be able to host a show? All right, well, we don’t really have the money because it’s a weekend show or it’s an evening show for you to have your own producer.’ So you gotta find yourself some guests and then you gotta come up with your topics and [you’re] thrown into the fire. So the beauty of that is you have full control over your own creativity, what you talk about. But at the same time you don’t get help.

Another respondent stated that she was aware of women being paid less than men for doing the same job in sports talk radio – evidence of women not only being perceived as less-than in this space but also being compensated as such. Her characterization of how the pay gap occurs suggests that women feel lucky to be permitted past the gatekeepers: Guys are going into a job under-qualified asking to be overpaid. And women are going into a conversation like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m so happy that you offered me something and validated me.’ That almost is payment in itself to be like, ‘Oh, you picked me.’ … Men, they’ll light a cigar and be like, ‘Alright, let’s talk dollars.’ Right? Women just don’t tend to do that.

In order to understand the particular challenges of women in sports talk radio, respondents indicated they thought more diversity was needed in hiring and decision-making positions.

Women in Sports Talk Radio

As a boss, you have to realise that this person is going to have to deal with different kinds of things that are going to be challenging. Which is why it’s so important to have diversity at the top, right? Because if you have diversity in the decision making positions, they can better understand. Like, if one day I become a boss I would 100% know what a woman is going through at another level. Because I’d be like, yep, that’s totally different than what this guy’s going through. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re bad. It just means that, you know, people don’t understand you – yet. You need more of those different voices and different faces and everything, even at the top. The decision making is … so key.

In terms of decision making, half of the respondents mentioned what they felt was a double standard in hiring and promotion decisions. Another phrase that I hear – which now this one makes my blood boil, right? – it’s like, ‘well, we want to hire the best person for the job.’ Well, what in the world makes you think the woman isn’t the best person for the job? ‘Well, you know, with no offence, we’re just trying to hire the best person for the job.’ Yeah … I am the best person for the job and you’re just ignoring me.

By implying that an objective measure of qualifications is being used (‘the best person for the job’), gatekeepers can disguise gender-based discrimination, whether conscious or unconscious, as neutral objectivity. In other words, by constructing a facade of genderneutrality, organizations retain male dominance while hiding discriminatory practices that keep women out (Anderson 2009). Of course, no neutral or objective rubric is available to assess a candidate’s fit for such a job.

Women are assets, not risks Women in sports, whether they’re athletes, broadcasters or fans, have for so long been framed in popular discourse as deficient, as non-normative, as lacking or less-than in comparison with men. With the weight of this long-standing deficit framing around the necks of female sports broadcasters, they are likely to be viewed as risks rather than assets. When asked what advice they’d give to station managers or programme directors, the suggestion to reframe women as assets came up several times. [Hiring a female sportscaster] shouldn’t be seen as taking a chance. It should be seen as seizing an opportunity to widen your fan base. I can’t tell you how many women now come up to me and tell me they listen to [my radio show], because they can actually relate, you know? So hi, you’re welcome – I just increased your listenership there. So it’s not considered taking a chance, it’s considered seizing an opportunity. You gotta stop looking at it as in women are the risk. It’s like, women are the opportunity. We need to also stop thinking that women are simply filling a quota. Women are not filling a quota. You know, if that’s how you view it, then you are missing out on an incredible opportunity and I actually feel pretty sorry for you.

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Sports talk radio stations demonstrate that they consider putting women on air to be a risky programming decision by relegating them to off-peak time slots. While one of the respondents in this study occupied a co-hosting position in prime time (the morning show) all the rest aired on weekends or evenings. I’ve only occupied evenings or weekends. That’s it. I haven’t done anything during the day. And I’ve been there for seven years. That’s not like I haven’t put in my time, right?

Respondents commonly indicated they believe that diverse voices would bring new perspectives to sports talk radio, and that female hosts will get into the intersection of sports and real life more often than male hosts do. There are so many instances now, where real life seeps into sports, right? Whether it’s a socio-economic issue, whether it’s a domestic abuse issue, whether it’s trying to break down the psychology of a player, why or why not they would have done something. And so that female perspective is imperative. I think that women are … not afraid to go there sometimes. I think it doesn’t make them as uncomfortable as it might make men. And so to bring those conversations to the forefront, especially in the time that we’re in now, when there’s protests for racial equality and justice going on all across the entire world, you need people to represent different voices.

The need to serve a wider audience There was a perception among respondents that sports talk radio is not serving a diverse audience: I think it is important to have a balance of perspectives, regardless of gender, age, or race in any medium, but specifically sports media. Because I mean, here in Canada, fan bases come from all kinds of different backgrounds, and that should be reflected in the sports media that they’re listening to, or consuming in some way. So I would advise [station managers and programme directors] just to take a look at the market, who’s listening to them, and make sure that that’s reflected in who’s actually on the air. I think that we bring in a very important balanced perspective, given that there is such a large portion of sports fans who are women, and they’re often not represented.

Hardin et al. make a similar argument that new audiences could be developed through more diverse programming, but indicate that ‘the lack of programming directed at female listeners suggests that directors are either not concerned about attracting them or they presume that female listeners are interested in the same content as male listeners’ (2013: 418).

Structural reform In an environment characterized by male hegemony, the ability to effect change that would enfranchise women is in the hands of the gatekeepers (Connell 2005). The advancement of women in sports media has been slow if not stagnant (Franks and O’Neill 2016;

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Sherman 2015) because there appears to be no desire among the gatekeepers to do things any differently. The post-feminist and neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility to succeed may also be one of the reasons why change is slow. If broadcast companies feel no responsibility to ensure women succeed, if they believe that the onus is on women themselves to achieve success, they will never make any structural changes to ensure that their success is possible. When asked whether she thought women had a harder time than men getting jobs in sports radio, one respondent said yes, but at the same time seemed to give her boss an excuse for not taking responsibility for that: I think it’s subconscious. My boss … he was very aware of the, you know, little-to-no women’s voices in sports radio, and he really wanted to change that. But again, it’s just a subconscious thing with the more voices you hear that are men, the more you just believe you got to keep hiring men, because it’s the formula that’s been working. And everyone is, they either aren’t aware, or they’re scared, that they have the right to disrupt the formula.

Respondents indicated they thought the advancement of women in the industry took time, echoing the neoliberal sentiment so common in sports media that hard work and long hours will be rewarded in the future. However, for at least one respondent, the rewards never materialized: There’s always this idea, especially in radio, where it’s like you need to put in your time. I’ve been in sports media for 15 years. I’m definitely not new to this. I’m opinionated. I’d like to think I’m well spoken. And I know my stuff. And I think a lot of women that are on sports radio around Canada, they’re all in the same position, they all have those same qualities. If you’ve made it in sports broadcasting in Canada, you definitely have those qualities. So that’s why to me, I just, I don’t know why. I don’t get it.

What she doesn’t get, it became clear in the course of our conversation, is why she was not advancing in her career through promotions, better time slots, or adequate support: They try to make it seem like [the gender-based discrimination]’s inadvertent, right? But how I see it is always like, well, if you’re doing this protocol for everybody else, then why don’t I get that same privilege? There are times when there are shifts that open up that people need filling during the day. But yet, a guy will get that shift and I won’t. And he has been here for a shorter amount of time. So I’ve been here, getting the crappy shifts, the shifts in the evening, or shifts along the weekends. And I say yes to everything because I don’t want to seem like that difficult person. And I’m there. And I’d like to think that I have informed opinions, I do my research. Yet, someone else gets that opportunity. Like, okay, if we’re going by something in terms of pecking order, and … working up towards something, then there is no reward for me working up to it, right? Like there’s zero reward [for] me working my butt off.

We need to talk about Michelle Just a short time after the interview with Michelle Sturino,6 the respondent above, she ended her fifteen-year-long career in sports broadcasting. She made the announcement via Twitter:

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Whatever you think or believe about how far we have come as an industry/society in terms of equality simply isn’t true. Sexism and gender bias are still prominent …. Even though I am one of the ‘lucky few’ in this position doesnt [sic] mean I have gotten the same treatment or opportunity as men in my field.

She went on to write that the sports media industry is run by narrow-minded, middleaged, insecure men (Sturino 2020). In our conversation, Sturino indicated that she felt under-appreciated, that she wasn’t being ‘put into situations to succeed’, wasn’t being given constructive criticism, and felt full of resentment and negative emotions because of it. ‘I know I’m good at what I do,’ she said, but ‘these are the harsh realities, where I kind of want to give up because I’m tired of fighting, you know?’ As one of so few women on sports radio, and therefore a role model, Sturino felt the weight of her decision and how it might impact girls and young women: The unfortunate thing is that my fan base – obviously they like me, you know? So it’s like, you don’t want to disappoint those people. And you don’t want to disappoint that little girl [listening to the radio]. So it’s a real thing to weigh, you know? It’s tough. I understand that … I represent more than just, you know, a voice.

Since Sturino’s departure from sports radio, half of the respondents who were surveyed in this study are no longer in their on-air positions at sports talk radio. What this unfortunate outcome illustrates is how powerful the male gatekeeping mechanism in sports radio is: despite having got past the gate, the adversity to be found within is enough to push women back out.

Conclusions This study has shown that there are very few women on the air in sports talk radio in Canada. Those that have managed to secure such a role report that they experience sexism on the job, sometimes from male colleagues and much of the time in the form of gendered harassment on social media. They unanimously agree that women have a harder time getting on-air jobs at sports talk radio stations, and are almost unanimous in their agreement that the sports radio industry is neither a fair nor equitable place for women. Identifying that managers and programme directors need to provide different and/or additional support to female radio hosts, particularly with regard to gendered harassment from listeners, they indicate that they feel structural changes are needed in the industry. They see an investment in women as being beneficial to the radio station in the long run due to the different perspectives that women bring to sports radio, because role models are needed for women and girls who love sports, and because women on air would make the programming appealing to a more diverse listenership. Sadly, the results of this study are comparable to findings from almost thirty years ago on the barriers female journalists face on the job: the belief that they faced barriers that their male counterparts did not, a lack of professional role models for women, and

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the difficulty they faced in overcoming social attitudes which lead to discrimination (Hernandez 1996). Grubb and Billiot (2010) reached similar conclusions in their study of female sportscasters: that they are persistently challenged about their knowledge of sports and regularly encounter sexism, discriminatory treatment and harassment on the job. Organista and Mazur (2020) uncovered similar themes: that women feel they have to be ‘ten times better’ than a man in the same position, that they have to put up with sexist ‘jokes’ as part of the job, and that they have to adapt to the industry’s masculine conditions while operating as ‘others’ (1121). Male gatekeeping is a major determinant in women’s access to and experience of the sports radio industry. In terms of access, there is more than one gate: the first controls whether women are permitted entry and is controlled by the men in charge, while the sexism women experience – whether it be the online harassment or the withholding of adequate support and recognition by male managers – can be framed as the second gate. With 50 per cent of this study’s respondents (18 per cent of the total population of women hosts on sports talk radio in Canada) having left their on-air positions since the study was conducted, it is more apt to think of the second gate more like a revolving door, serving to sweep women back out again. The complete absence of BIPOC women suggests that systemic racism is in play in addition to systemic sexism, and that as hegemonic male spaces begrudgingly grant access to women, the hierarchical nature of male hegemony coupled with white privilege is what allow white women to be at the front of the line. Add to the mix Stoever’s ‘listening ear’, an agent of racial discernment that privileges white voices and listening practices (2016), and it is clear that BIPOC women are at a particular disadvantage in this sphere. The male gaze and listening ear are determinants of the content of sports talk radio. With nothing for straight males to gaze at on the radio, women seem to be not quite as welcome to speak in this space as they are on visual media. Their disembodied voices may be a disadvantage in this sense, but in another sense this disembodiment perhaps enables a deeper engagement with the substance of sports and the people who play them, if the listening ear is willing to reframe its perspective and pay attention. Is change in sports talk radio likely? If we see sports talk radio as a ‘powerful genderregime’ that reinforces itself by permitting only men who reproduce masculine norms past its gate (Anderson 2009: 11), only major societal changes will result in more diversity in this industry. Hardin and Shain agree, positing that change will not happen unless institutional ideologies that keep women oppressed are eliminated (2005). But because mainstream sports media have been slow, if not completely opposed, to dismantle this hegemonic masculine culture, it will be important for scholars to turn their attention from the enumeration and recording of women’s exclusion from mainstream sport media spaces to investigating the places where those mainstream media narratives are actually being interrupted (Bruce 2013). Where do those spaces exist? Only where male gatekeeping does not. Podcasting – at least while it yet remains platform-agnostic – may be one such space. It has proven to be a medium in which women and BIPOC can engage in discourse about sports, being neither measured up by male station managers or programme directors, nor subject to the gatekeeping mechanisms of male listeners. While it’s unlikely sports talk radio will ever be

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the go-to place to hear feminist analysis of sports or in-depth coverage of women’s sports, we see evidence of both amongst independent podcasts such as Burn It All Down7 (2017– present), Broadscast8 (2020–present), and Diaspora United9 (2021–present), for example. Female sports podcasters are not beholden to resentful male sports fans in the same way that a radio host might be. The harassers of women in sports radio are members of the radio station’s target demographic, and pleasing this demographic is the station’s bread and butter. Despite the women I interviewed having accepted this harassment as part of the job, it must nonetheless have the effect of reminding them of the need to appease listeners for fear of losing their jobs. For podcasters, there is no need to court the listenership of the angry male harasser. ‘We don’t want those people as our fans, we don’t want them listening’, declared one of the hosts of Broadscast (Chesham 2021: para.39). In the meantime, however, there are plenty of competent, passionate women ready to serve an untapped, diverse listening audience should the gatekeepers of sports talk radio care to take notice.

Notes 1 2 3

4

5 6 7 8 9

See Hilmes for more on what she theorizes as the ‘disembodied woman’ (1997: 130). The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of research assistant Anna Ashitey to this study. It is important to note the problematic nature of this approach, which relies on a subjective evaluation on the part of the researcher to determine gender and race. External appearance is not necessarily a reliable indicator of gender – particularly in the case of gender non-binary or trans persons – or of racialization. Thus, self-identification of radio hosts would have been a more accurate way of determining both gender and racialized status, but was not employed in this study. This podcast, Her Mark, was an eight-episode limited-run series that was being rebroadcast on the station. It is not known whether women would normally have been hosting a show in this time slot beyond the eight-episode run of the podcast. Sexism was not defined for the respondents by the researcher. Michelle Sturino granted her permission to identify her by name in this study. Described as ‘the feminist sports podcast you need’ in Apple Podcasts. A self-described ‘girl gang’ talking hockey and sports culture. A podcast about football/soccer that centres Black women.

Works cited Anderson, E. D. (2009), ‘The Maintenance of Masculinity Among the Stakeholders of Sport’, Sport Management Review 12 (1): 3–14. Bruce, T. (2013), ‘Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Women and Femininities’, Communication & Sport 1 (1–2): 125–37.

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Chen, G., P. Pain, V. Chen, M. Mekelberg, N. Springer and F. Troger (2022), ‘Women Journalists and Online Harassment’, The University of Texas, Center for Media Engagement, Austin: University of Texas. Chesham, A. (2021), ‘All-Female Podcast Takes New Approach to Talking Hockey’, The Thunderbird 17 March. Connell, R. (1987), Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Connell, R. W. (2005), ‘Change Among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities, and Gender Equality in the Global Arena’, Signs, 30 (3): 1801–25. de la Cretaz, B. (2018), Where Are All the Women in Play-by-Play Broadcasting?, The Ringer: www.theringer.com/2018/10/11/17963320 (accessed 23 March 2022). Everbach, T. (2018), ‘“I Realized It Was About Them … Not Me”: Women Sports Journalists and Harassment’, in J. Vickery and T. Everbach (eds), Mediating Misogyny: Gender, Technology & Harassment, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 131–49. Fernandez-Alvarez, O. (2014), ‘Non-Hegemonic Masculinity Against Gender Violence’, Procedia Social and Behavioural Sciences 161 (19 December): 48–55. Franks, S. and D. O’Neill (2016), ‘Women Reporting Sport: Still a Man’s Game?’, Journalism 17 (4): 474–92. Gill, R. (1993), ‘Justifying Injustice: Broadcasters’ Accounts of Inequality in Radio’, in Erica Burman and Ian Parker (eds), Discourse Analytic Research: Repertoires and Readings of Texts in Action, London: Routledge, pp. 75–93. [online]. Grubb, M. V. and T. Billiot (2010), ‘Women Sportscasters: Navigating a Masculine Domain’, Journal of Gender Studies 19 (1): 87–93. Hardin, M. and S. Shain (2005), ‘Strength in Numbers? The Experiences and Attitudes of Women in Sports Media Careers’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly [Online] 82 (4): 804–19. Hardin, M., D. Antunovic, S. Bien-Aimé, and L. Ruobing (2013), ‘The Status of Women in Sport-Talk Radio: A Survey of Directors’, International Journal of Sport Communication 6 (4): 409–22. Harrison, G. (2018), ‘“You Have to Have Thick Skin”: Embracing the Affective Turn as an Approach to Investigating the Treatment of Women Working in Sports Media’, Feminist Media Studies 18 (5): 952–5. Hernandez, D. G. (1996), ‘Obstacles Facing Women Journalists’, Editor & Publisher 129 (16): 12. Hilmes, M. (1997), Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Karpf, A. (2011), The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent. E-reader version. London: Bloomsbury. Accessed 1 March 2022 from iBooks. Karpf, A. (2013), ‘Fear and Loathing of Women on the Radio’, Guardian, 1 February: https:// www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/feb/01/fear-loathing-women-radio (accessed 24 February 2022). Kerr, R. L. (2017), The Sociology of Sports Talk Radio, Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. Lapchick, R. E., T. Middleton and K. Richardson (2021), ‘The 2021 Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card: Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE)’: 30.

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Markovits, A. S. and E. Albertson (2012), ‘Sportista I: Professional Women in the Contested Space of Sports Media’, in A. S. Markovits and E. Albertson (eds), Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 167–200. McKay, A. (1988), ‘Speaking Up: Voice Amplification and Women’s Struggle for Public Expression’, in Cheris Kramarae (ed.), Technology ad Women’s Voices (e-book). Perlego. Messerschmidt, J. W. (2019), ‘The Salience of “Hegemonic Masculinity”’, Men and Masculinities 22 (1): 85–91. Mudrick, M., L. Burton, M. Sauder and C. Lin (2018), ‘Sportscasting Success: Varying Standards May Apply’, Journal of Sports Media 13 (1): 49–73. Mulvey, L. (1974), ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in G. Mast and M. Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism; Introductory Readings, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 6–18. Organista, N. and Z. Mazur (2020), ‘“You Either Stop Reacting or You Don’t Survive. There’s no Other Way”: The Work Experiences of Polish Women Sports Journalists’, Feminist Media Studies 20 (8): 1110–27. ‘Press Box at Fenway Still Male Sanctuary’ (1957), St. Petersburg Times, 23 May: 20. Radio Advertising Bureau (n.d.), Sports Radio Knocks it Out of the Park for Fans, Radio Advertising Bureau: http://www.rab.com/public/matteroffact/mar2017/MatterofFactSportsRadio.html (accessed 22 February 2022). Ryan, S. (2016), ‘Why Aren’t More Women Working in Sports Radio?’, chicagotribune.com: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-women-sports-radio-spt-0621-20160620-story. html (accessed 11 March 2021). Schmidt, H. C. (2015), ‘“Still a Boys Club”: Perspectives on Female Sports and Sports Reporters in University Student Newspapers’, Qualitative Research Reports in Communication 16 (1): 65–74. Schmidt, H. C. (2018), ‘Forgotten Athletes and Token Reporters: Analyzing the Gender Bias in Sports Journalism’, Atlantic Journal of Communication 26 (1): 59–74. Sherman, E. (2015), ‘The Growth of Women in Sports Journalism is Stagnant’, Poynter, 21 May: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2015/the-growth-of-women-in-sportsjournalism-is-stagnant/ (accessed 24 February 2022). Silverman, K. (1998), The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Theories of Representation and Difference), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stoever, J. L. (2016), The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening, New York: NYU Press, pp. 1–28. Sturino, M. (2020), [Twitter] 10 August 2020: https://twitter.com/MichelleSturino/ status/1292891352846471171 (accessed 24 February 2021). ‘TALKERS Sports Heavy Hundred’ (2020), Talkers Magazine: https://www.talkers.com/2020talkers-sports-heavy-hundred-%E2%80%A2-1-25/ (accessed 24 February 2022). Whiteside, E. and M. Hardin (2012), ‘On Being a “Good Sport” in the Workplace: Women, the Glass Ceiling, and Negotiated Resignation in Sports Information’, International Journal of Sport Communication 5 (1): 51–68.

5 Expressions of Radio Drama Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC Emily Best

Introduction Radio output reaches countless individual audiences, its reception influenced by everything from the age and tastes of the listener(s) to the condition of the radio set. Commercial radio depends on audience reach to bring in advertising revenue, but the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is mandated to provide content that informs, educates and entertains. The BBC is expected to make judgements and decisions based on the collective tastes of millions, while each individual listener will have a unique experience. As Scannell writes, ‘[t]he for-anyone-as-someone structure is a necessary precondition of any cultural product that can be found as meaningfully available, without any difficulty, by anyone, while presenting itself in such a way that it appears to be “for me”’(1995: 11). For the BBC, this means a pressure to present something that entertains and satisfies both mass audiences and minority tastes; for both anyone and everyone. But the BBC also aims to influence its audience, not just be accountable to them. Radio drama produced on the BBC is fraught with these contradictions. The broadcast is a key moment in the life cycle of a radio play, which is subject to alteration and interpretation at every stage: the scripted piece as submitted by the writer is yet to be rehearsed, acted, recorded or edited. BBC Third Programme producer Martin Esslin remarked of the listener: ‘By having to provide the visual component, which is undeniably present in any true dramatic experience transmitted by radio, [the listener] is an active collaborator with the producer’ (1980: 177). While interpretation is a key part of any art form, Esslin highlights that the scarcity of information in a radio play sets it apart from other media in this regard; the audience is doing more of the work. For a medium experienced by thousands (or even millions) in a single instant, every instance aesthetically different, to write for the BBC was to navigate these challenges.

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Between 1946 and 1967, much of the BBC’s more highbrow entertainment was broadcast on the Third Programme, the channel that stood alongside the Home Service and the Light Programme. In the latter part of the 1950s as television became more widespread, threats of funding cuts and increased pressure were mounted on the Third Programme team who, in Addyman, Feldman and Tonning’s words, ‘redoubled their search for high-quality programming’ from emergent and successful playwrights such as Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco (2017: 2). Beckett’s first piece written specifically for radio was All That Fall, broadcast on the Third Programme in 1957, following adaptations of his stage plays and readings of his prose work. Louis MacNeice, meanwhile, had been a payrolled BBC writer since the Second World War, writing his first play for radio, Christopher Columbus, in 1944, while working independently as a well-respected poet at the same time. Beckett’s Words and Music was broadcast towards the end of 1962, and MacNeice’s Persons from Porlock the following year, when television was a stronger competitor than ever; Addyman, Feldman and Tonning note: ‘the quantity of listening dropped […] from 2 hours and 8 minutes in 1952, to 1 hour and 32 minutes in 1955 and only 1 hour and 14 minutes in 1963’ (2017: 7). Beckett’s and MacNeice’s plays emerged at a time when the radio play did not occupy the privileged space it once did. It was competing with another form of mass-mediated drama: where once the recorded story (without the live physical presence of the bodies as in the theatre) was the preserve of radio and cinema, the domestic television offered an alternative version of at-home drama. Both Words and Music and Persons from Porlock explore the condition of being on the radio, but how the invisible nature of the radio provided a different form of disembodiment from its television counterpart. In Words and Music, we meet Joe (Words) and Bob (Music, whose ‘voice’ is in fact just orchestral music), both controlled by Croak, who makes them retell old stories repeatedly around themes. The play is one of Beckett’s most surreal and resistant to visual representation: a named character, who seems responsive to verbal commands, is at once an entire orchestra. The setting of this impossible person alongside the feeble and ailing Joe who attempts to complete his tasks is like many of Beckett’s works utterly divorced from the world around it. The physical irrationality of Bob and the scenic ambiguity of the whole play rely on their existence only in sound, while the characters are compelled to create sounds on-demand. The story that Croak demands to hear concerns the recollection of a lost and forgotten lover whose face the trio attempt to recover. In their attempts to render this face in sound, they are engaging in a shared experience with the listener, who likewise only has sound with which to imagine such a face and is just as reliant on Joe and Bob to tell this story, should they understand it, as Croak is. Persons from Porlock follows Hank, a young artist forced to create commercially popular art to make a living instead of creating work that is meaningful to him, meanwhile pursuing a potholing hobby that will kill him when he becomes trapped in a cave. In its use of more conventional dialogue and its references to cultural and historical contexts that would be familiar to the listener, Persons from Porlock is a more orthodox piece than Beckett’s. However, MacNeice does employ exaggeratedly stereotyped characters and allows Hank to skip from scene to scene in ways that can be hard to follow. In his final scene, dying in

Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC

the cave, he is ‘visited’ by characters from his past and his imagination, whom the audience can hear as well as he can. In a foreword to the print edition of Persons from Porlock, fellow author and friend of MacNeice W. H. Auden remarked: Hank’s death is a good illustration of a scene that would only be possible in a radio play. […] Firstly, while in the radio play one knows that the other characters are thoughts inside his head, if brought on to the stage they would be visibly external, so that the audience would be puzzled to know – a fatal dramatic flaw – whether they were “real” or tiresomely “symbolic”. Secondly, a dying man cannot “do” anything: he can only lie there motionless, and on stage a motionless figure is an undramatic bore. (1969: 8)

Auden recognizes that radio as a format lent itself well to drama of a psychological, fantastical and ambiguous nature. The fact of this character lying in darkness hearing voices mirrors the listening experience, while the character has been unable to fulfil his creative ambitions. MacNeice explores the condition of radio and of writing for radio, Hank’s commercial pressures reflecting his own constraints as a BBC staff writer. MacNeice wrote this play at the end of a long career working in the BBC and was heavily involved in its production as well as its writing. Beckett, meanwhile, posted the script of Words and Music to the BBC and, as with his other plays for radio, had very little to do with it. These circumstances are inscribed in the plays. Both explore the condition of radio and of sound and both exploit radio’s possibilities in many ways. However, where MacNeice’s play is a fantastical rendition of reality and a clear metaphor for his own writing experience, Beckett operates in a more removed way that also explores radio and the constraints of communication itself, not just of professional writing. Both plays also address in different ways the experience of listening and explore the ways in which the contradiction of a mass-mediated form so dependent on interpretation impact the aesthetic experience for the listener. Beckett extends this through resistance to scenic anchors: we hear Croak’s shuffling as he enters (2009: 73) and exits (80) but there is no further information about place, and the sound of a rap of a baton we assume is coming from Bob, the orchestra-character. Not only is the listener tasked with the imaginative gapfilling that is the hallmark of radio drama, in this case they must also resolve something deeply illogical that cannot be visualized at all.

Early audience concerns The BBC is often accused of ‘dumbing down’ or generalizing, but the very real reluctance to challenge the listener was perpetuated by Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General. As Harris notes: The BBC would be made to Reith’s own design, a vast machine whose every component was conceived to transmit that providential power, and the nature and expression of Reith’s allencompassing efficiency takes on considerable importance in relation to his management

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methods and, consequently, his political stance; and in relation to the criticism frequently levelled at him for his paternalistic, even autocratic style. (2021: 2–3)

Reith in Harris’s description could be read as tyrannical, and certainly, as he says, autocratic. However, Richards suggests that this was symptomatic of Reith’s character and generation: Reith’s critics […] have regularly accused him of being paternalist and patronising. Paternalist he certainly was. But then Reith was a Victorian, his mental universe akin to those of Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. It is unrealistic to expect him to have endorsed or implemented what have subsequently come to be desirable broadcasting goals: informality, public participation, interaction between broadcaster and audience. (2010: 37)

The contradiction of the mass audience as a complex of individuals is also found in the preoccupation with ratings as evidenced by the existence of the listener research unit, and the way it was discussed. Briggs remarks that ‘[i]t was a matter of some discussion […] inside the BBC just how important relative ratings really were. […] Sir George Barnes, Director of Television Broadcasting, said that “to seek success in popularity alone is a trivial use of a great invention. Mass without mind always comes a cropper”’ (1985: 300). The concept of ‘mass without mind’ here likely refers to the content of the programming being populist or trivial, but also suggests the dangers of seeing the public as a homogenous, mindless mass themselves. Reith’s own agenda and the public accountability of the BBC itself became fused in the public consciousness, and such a paternalistic image would persist beyond Reith’s tenure. Briggs notes that the BBC was a ‘servant of culture’ rather than a mechanism of it, suggesting that the role of the BBC was to facilitate access to existing work through cultivation of curiosity, adaptation of novels and classic theatre, and by the use of ‘talks’ in the early decades, rather than a place for creation of new cultural artefacts (1985: 54–5). This was not always the case and the commissioning process that gave rise to many important radio and television plays would prove that the BBC could be fertile ground for experimentation. However, its primary focus was providing its listeners with a complete experience, not an invitation for them to participate in cultural production, meaning that the scope for writers engaging in experimental drama was limited, and that the drama itself would bear traces of this challenge.

The BBC, modernism and experimentalism The Bloomsbury Group Launching in 1922, inevitably the BBC would intersect with the Bloomsbury Group.1 However, while modernist writers experimented in prose, art and music, this new mass medium was not seen so much as a creative medium as a platform. Frattarola writes that talks and lectures from modernists like Forster and Eliot ‘were broadcast[ed] regularly enough to confirm that, despite Reith’s Christian agenda, the BBC became a space for modernist writers to voice their

Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC

opinions and ideas’ (2009: 450). Frattarola places the group in opposition to Reith’s agenda, but the group nevertheless saw the BBC as educative. Todd Avery notes that the Bloomsbury Group used talks to counter Reith’s moral and aesthetic conservatism; they saw a moral potential, or social good, in broadcasting talks and debates that ‘dovetailed with radio’s novel ability to perforate social borders, mix social classes, and effect a general democratization of moral valuation’ (2006: 37). However, these ‘debates’ were in fact heavily scripted and vetted by the BBC, and given the artifice of being ‘interrupted’, as Whitehead notes: A ban on ‘controversial broad-casting’ imposed in 1927 ruled out both a large number of topics and any possibility of ad-libbing. Authors did not simply go away and write a script to read out in front of the microphone; there was at least a facade of spontaneity. A producer would invite the combatants to the office (or sometimes a local hostelry) and ask them to discuss the chosen topic. A stenographer would be present, furiously noting down the conversation, which would then be typed up, the improprieties excised, and the whole thing re-enacted by those same speakers in the studio. (1990: 125)

While public awareness of this artifice is unclear, and while this theatricality may not extend in its fictitiousness to the level of a dramatic work, they do share the sense of ‘eavesdropping’ with the radio play. As Avery suggests, these writers opposed Reith’s paternalism by challenging the listener. But these ‘conversations’ were scripted and prepared, and heavily vetted, not only suggesting that they were themselves limited but also that they underestimated the agency of the listener to handle the more challenging content reserved for the writers’ more creative outputs.

Other forms of modernism at the BBC Aside from the Bloomsbury Group, experimental work was being done mostly by BBC staff rather than pre-established writers. Williams writes: ‘Although the “blind nature of the medium” offered dramatists a much wider field of possibilities beyond the confines of stage naturalism, they were not widely exploited […] even though a sophisticated Dramatic Control Panel to coordinate action and effects from different studios had been operational since 1928 with Lance Sieveking’s Kaleidoscope’ (1996: 35).2 Kaleidoscope itself is often cited as one of the clearest examples of experimental modernism on the radio; describing its live broadcast, Hendy writes: ‘For many ordinary Britons between the wars, the first – perhaps for some, the only – direct experience of having a work of high modernist art in their own homes can be dated quite precisely: to Tuesday 4 September 1928’ (2013: 170). However, while these experiments were limited (and their sparsity in modern scholarship compounded by the lack of recordings) Sieveking and others recognized the potential of sound. In addition to Sieveking, Frances Gray has written of Tyrone Guthrie, author of The Squirrel’s Cage (1929) and The Flowers Are Not for You to Pick (1930): ‘To go back to, say, the early experiments of Tyrone Guthrie is to see radio embark on its voyage of self-discovery, to see the first figures move on the dark and silent stage’ (1981: 50). Williams characterizes Guthrie as establishing a modernist radio drama tradition to rival the more novelistic conventions of Hughes’s Danger (1923), the first

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radio play to be aired on the BBC (1996: 153). Williams also notes, though, that Guthrie’s work was too ‘abstract’ for producer Val Gielgud, and also that Gielgud feared the wrath of the listener-critic when it came to experimentation: ‘Judging from listener feedback, “A play labelled ‘experimental’ might as well have been labelled ‘poison’”, according to Gielgud’ (1996: 154). This is why such work was limited; every stage of experimentation cut short by Gielgud’s wariness of audience response. While the lack of literary modernism on the radio might be seen as a missed opportunity, the early commitment to experimentation in the day-to-day output of the BBC production staff and payrolled writers would lead to an understanding of and appetite for an ongoing output of experimental drama, both from staff writers like MacNeice and more ancillary writers like Beckett.

Introduction of the Third Programme The Third Programme audience Ostensibly, the establishment of the Third Programme in 1946 demonstrated a commitment to experiment and an increased willingness to challenge the listener, and an awareness of an appetite for a more challenging form of drama. However, Whitehead suggests that the opposite was true: ‘the first plans for a cultural programme were […] a way in which the serious programmes could be hived off into another station leaving the popular service free to “entertain”. Perhaps most significantly, it was an attempt to stop listeners abandoning the BBC and transferring their allegiances to rival commercial programmes being broadcast from Europe’ (1989: 7). Meanwhile, Lewis and Booth remark that, according to the BBC, ‘each member of the audience could be placed, as on a cultural ladder, somewhere on this continuum. It could not conceive of quite different cultural needs or expressions’ (Lewis and Booth 1990: 78–9). Both Whitehead and Lewis and Booth’s readings suggest that while the Third Programme did provide a useful platform, it was still beholden both to the need to retain audiences and provide the BBC’s version of ‘high culture’, rather than being led by the content as challenging or experimental. Whatever its intention, the establishment of the Third Programme would usher in a new cohort of staff with newfound curiosity in the potential of radio drama and the capacity of the listener to engage in more abstract or experimental work, understanding that the phenomenon of the radio play enacted a form of collaboration. While the anticipated (and actual) audience was small, it was still afforded a respect and confidence in its ability to interpret more challenging work.

Writers and the Third Programme The Third Programme was pivotal in bringing Beckett to radio, and in giving MacNeice a space to write more original work, his wartime drama having anchored itself in historical events and classic stories. As Campbell notes, ‘[Beckett’s] work was particularly suited to

Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC

the Third Programme […] At its inception the enterprise was considered revolutionary in relation to existing BBC programming. It began broadcasting in 1946, at a time when there was a surprisingly keen interest in culture apparent amongst the listening public’ (2013: 110). This appetite for ‘culture’ on the radio was echoed in an anticipatory note from HopeWallace in an issue of The Listener shortly before launch: A radio play, a play for the ear alone, is something sui generis; or should be, though alas it is nearly always merely an adaptation of something originally intended to be done in quite another way. (1946: 36)

This excitement also suggested a national appetite for more of the sort of output it promised. This is evidenced from an admission from the Listener Research unit that it carried with it a sense of novelty: ‘It was probably curiosity that led many people to listen to the Third Programme on its opening night, Sunday. This was reflected in the level of listening which was higher than on any other day’ (1946: 313). This is not to say that the Third Programme’s introduction transformed radio writing into a universally appreciated literary space, and cynicism persisted from many corners of the literary community. Whitehead writes: In 1946 Horizon printed the results of a questionnaire sent out to a number of writers asking them what a suitable ‘bread-and-butter job’ for creative writers was. [Cost of Writing, Horizon, 14.81, Sept. 1946, 140–75] Most of the twenty-one responses suggested only work that was completely unrelated to the profession of writing. Working for the BBC was regarded as journalism or ‘hack-work’, i.e., to be avoided as a threat to the creative impulse. (1989: 73)

Writing for radio itself, regardless of platform, was not felt to be a creative opportunity for established writers. Williams notes, quoting Sieveking as one of the more radiogenic creatives, that ‘[a] factor that may have put writers off involvement in the thirties was what Lance Sieveking called the “ghastly impermanence of the medium”’ (1996: 153). MacNeice was key in building the idea of a creative radio writer. Even MacNeice, however, shared the cynicism of other writers with regards to the creative curtailments that the BBC were known for in the previous decades – in a letter to E. R. Dodds in 1941 he wrote: I am probably going officially soon on to the staff of the BBC. It’s a v. 2nd rate institution & Christ, the things they do to one’s work … but the choice of occupations here now – unless you choose to have no choice and be clapped into uniform for ever – is just a choice of evils & the BBC, though deplorable, does leave some loophole for intelligence & individual decisions. (quoted in Fauske 2016: 102)

Writing for the BBC was a favourable alternative to armed combat, and MacNeice does concede that there is a little, if limited, artistic autonomy. By the end of the war, there would in MacNeice emerge a writer whose previous role of poet-in-residence would shift into that of playwright, as the first more conventionally ‘literary’ writer to create radio

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drama, paving the way for writers like Beckett. While still resisted by other mainstream literary dramatists the BBC was, before the war, a place for experimentation from within. As Rodger notes, ‘[the] mass medium was regarded as intellectually and aesthetically attractive by people who in other countries would only have found employment in universities’ (1982: 69). Rodger goes on to note MacNeice’s particular interest and investment: Having performed his wartime service, MacNeice could possibly have left the BBC at this time. In his poem Autumn Sequel he recalls this moment, making his decision to stay in radio sound somewhat typically diffident. He wrote: … ‘if you desire,’ My employers said, ‘this office will now return To a peacetime footing where we might require Your further service,’ I could not discern Much choice; it might be better to give Such service, better to bury than to burn.

This suggestion that his decision to stay on was made with some reluctance does not reveal the energy and enthusiasm he was devoting to radio at the time (Rodger 1982: 70–1). This enthusiasm is confirmed in MacNeice’s own introduction to Christopher Columbus. Holme notes: ‘His chief concern had been to persuade some of [his fellow writers] to have a go’, and that ‘he is defensive about the low esteem in which broadcasting and the BBC are held by his fellow writers and the intellectual world’ (1981: 45). MacNeice had become much more entrenched within the ecosystems of the BBC and domestic politics than Beckett was. Both authors advocated radio writing, and though Beckett was less vocal about this, he does announce in his acceptance speech for the Prix Italia, which he won for his second radio play Embers, ‘I do not ordinarily write for radio, but I think that it is a medium which has not been fully exploited, and that there are great possibilities for writers in this form of expression’ (1959). MacNeice was more strident in his praise of the medium, even setting out in Christopher Columbus an opposition to the audience as homogenous and unable to be challenged: [The] synthetic figure of the Ordinary Listener tends to become a bugbear to radio writers and producers; it would be very natural to draw the inference that to hold the attention of this listener a writer has got to ‘write down’. […] This inference would be false. Radio writing must, in the majority of cases, be popular; it need not ever be vulgar. The argument for its vulgarity rests on a misconception of our old friend, the Man-in-the-Street. (1944: 9)

This is a more positive view than that taken by many of MacNeice’s contemporaries, and he was keen to promote radio drama as a medium to other writers as well as to listeners. Again, though, this also highlights the paradox of MacNeice’s writing: he was constricted in writing for mass media but he recognized and respected its potential.

Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and the BBC

The plays as expressing the conditions of expression MacNeice demonstrates his proximity to and understanding of the BBC in his works and their introductions. Beckett, meanwhile, at a distance from the production of the work, shows an awareness precisely of that distance, and of the difference between this sort of mediated work and something more direct, or with which he was more directly involved. Leeder notes that Beckett’s plays ‘disclose a self-conscious interest in the tension-filled interplay between speaking, or performing more generally, and writing […] Far from prompting a simple retreat into a world of pure sound, Beckett’s radio plays are finely attuned to the complex relationship between a text and its reproduction […]’ (2017: 270). The distance between text at the point of writing and its reproduction is reflected in how, in Words and Music and elsewhere, we see characters attempting to recall lost stories simply through sound.

Commissioning Both plays emerged at a point where television was more ubiquitous and commercially accessible. Addyman, Feldman and Tonning note that ‘the rise of television threatened the “dumbing down” of British culture – and the BBC saw itself as that culture’s leading light’ (2017: 2). Producer Donald McWhinnie also expressed this concern when he remarked that: ‘thousands of radio sets have been switched off permanently in the past few years […] Radio at its best is a private experience; the problem in the modern world is whether there is any continuing place for it’ (1959: 11). Commercial television was also a threat, even courting Beckett himself: a series examining Beckett’s plays, The Present Stage (Jones 1966), was produced on ITV, for which Beckett consented to the use of extracts from his work (Bignell 2019). Here lies a tension between a desire for experimentation freed from populism and the mechanisms of mass media that give the work its platform. MacNeice explores this in Hank’s disdain for commercialism in Persons from Porlock. Rodger notes that ‘the play is autobiographical in that MacNeice also had to fight off various influences which deflected him from his vocation as a poet, but it is also an important commentary on the place of the artist or writer in an age when the world offered many chances for persons from Porlock to interrupt their work’ (1982: 126–7). This also, as suggested by Chignell, would have reflected MacNeice’s view of the BBC as a distraction from more ‘serious’ poetry (2019: 121). There are explicit examples of where commercialization is vilified by Hank’s friend and fellow potholer Mervyn, discussing the world’s biggest cave: ‘Do you know it has an intake of five hundred feet and what do they find when they get there? A quick feed restaurant and a male voice choir on record. Commercialisation! You’d think we had enough of that on the surface’ (122). Just as the

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motif of the cave is used to build the sense of darkness and obscurity that swallows Hank, here it is used as a visual metaphor for the pervasiveness of modern life. ‘Quick feed’ as opposed to, perhaps, ‘quick meal’ or ‘fast food restaurant’ emphasizes the passivity of being ‘fed’, while the idea of a record playing a choir highlighting a lack of authenticity in mass entertainment and culture. There is also pressure on Hank to find sources of income since his more serious and challenging artwork does not have sufficient interest to sell. Hank’s friend and teacher Peter introduces Alec to Hank to speak with about commercial opportunities and whom Hank appoints as his agent to negotiate work magazines and cartoons, but Alec is never heard from directly in the play and is in fact referred to by his absence. One scene jumps from Peter caving with Hank and Mervyn to Hank’s meeting with Sarah, who remarks ‘You’ve obviously had a good lunch.’ When she asks Hank where Peter is, Hank replies, ‘[l]eft him with Alec’ (122). We therefore assume that between the cave and now there was a lunch, where Alex was present, but the scene and his presence skipped over. Given the lunch he has left was also a working one, this aligns the working world that Hank reviles with the off-stage elements of the play. There are many conflicting views on how Beckett’s process of writing for the BBC took place: Esslin remarks that ‘Beckett himself has always strenuously denied that he writes plays on commission from anyone. And the truth is that he was, indeed, never commissioned by the BBC to write anything’ (1980: 125). However, Verhulst suggests otherwise: ‘Despite Martin Esslin’s claim […], three of his six radio plays – All That Fall, Embers and Words and Music – were written at their instigation. If it had not been for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Beckett might never have written for the medium at all’ (2017: 81). Addyman, meanwhile, notes that the plays emerged directly through that relationship whether commissioned or not: ‘Beckett confessed to feeling that he was “dried up, with nothing left but self-translation.” It was here, fortuitously, that the BBC’s increasing pursuit of Beckett bore fruit; providing, in James Knowlson’s apt words, an “escape route” via a new medium: radio broadcasting’ (2017: 6). Disregarding a need for consensus on this, the nuanced and varied interpretations of Beckett’s relationship with the BBC do suggest that Beckett was responsive to external influence, particularly in how Words and Music was written as a music composition opportunity for his cousin John, writing only the words before relinquishing the script entirely for John to add the music (Verhulst 2017: 89). In Words and Music, Croak demands that Joe and Bob create performances based on his suggested themes, and they dutifully comply. However, the repetitive similarity of Joe’s speeches suggests a cynical formalist response that might be interpreted as what some authors had disparagingly referred to as grunt-work. Even, his battle with Bob might be read as the conflicting priorities of airtime, and Croak as the audience – or at least the BBC’s image of the audience. This is particularly underscored with the term ‘passion’ when Joe, having graduated as prompted by the thump of Croak’s club and his ‘rending sigh’ from love to passion, described it in technical, almost taxonomic terms; certainly, removed from any subjective involvement with the concept. He remarks that ‘By passion we are to understand a movement of the mind pursuing or fleeing real or imagined pleasure or pain’ (Beckett 2009: 74). ‘We are to understand’ places

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Joe firmly outside the experience of passion but it also affords the mind – the abstract mind we are here to assume – with a vast scope of experience within a single emotion in presenting three concurrent oppositions: pursuing or fleeing, perceived or imagined, pleasure or pain. In listing these details, at the speed at which Joe goes through them, the listener must imagine all the different feelings and surely cannot remain as distant from them as Joe might (particularly considering the voice of actor Patrick Magee, full of its own vocal signatures, being anything but clinical). The speech thus resists the taxonomic anonymity that the BBC newsreader might offer, or the commissioner might demand.

Scheduling Central to the radio phenomenon is the schedule: the arrangement and ordering of features and the spaces between. Scannell notes: The institutionalization of broadcasting (the formation of the networks in the United States and of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, in the United Kingdom) meant the stabilization of what broadcasting did and that, in effect, meant the routinization of production […] Routinization has a double aspect: It means the routinization of the making of programs, and of their relationship to each other. (1995: 7)

The way that broadcasts were organized, their order and how they were framed by continuity announcements would all have influenced the listener’s experience. The listener can switch the set on and off and switch between stations, but the arrangement of programming within a station, where the listener remains tuned to a single channel, overrides personal choice or agency. Lacey notes: ‘While individual shows ostensibly spoke to an idealised and specialised listener, the schedule obliquely invited any individual listener to adopt a series of guises – to masquerade repeatedly in borrowed identities or inhabit the role of interloper or eavesdropper’ (2018: 171). Lacey’s description of the ostensible listener as ‘idealised and specialised’ highlights the contradiction of the individual listener. Idealizing the listener erases their individuality, but to specialize assumes a certain heterogeneity or at least a grouping of listeners, particularly in the case of the Third Programme where the focus was on niche types of entertainment. The listener who continues to listen to an evening’s schedule, not switching between channels or turning the radio off all together, consents to be co-opted into a particular view of the listener for that programme. However, the Third Programme disrupted this idea, having, as Sir William Haley announced, ‘no fixed points. It will devote to the great works the time they require’ (1946). Unlike the more continuous streams of the other stations, the Third Programme was only live from six o’clock until midnight and, as stated in the Guardian (a British newspaper) at its launch, ‘for selective, not continuous, listening’ (1946). Listeners did seem to heed this: a listener research report from the Third Programme’s first month suggested that while the focus across the programmes is on listeners’ engagement with any feature, rather than over a whole evening, this is especially important for the Third Programme where listenership is

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already small. Using as an example the night of 2 December 1946, when the most popular feature was a production of The Canterbury Tales, the note says that ‘[e]xcluding a tenminute interlude, the Third Programme consisted of ten separate items. Roughly half the Third Programme listeners that night heard one item only, a quarter heard two, one-fifth three, and the small reminder more than three’ (1946). This could be in part attributable to the Third Programme’s novelty as a station, with listeners tuning in out of curiosity, but also suggests that the programmes were more of an event in themselves. Where other stations might have used a fixed chronology to punctuate the quotidian experience, thus suggesting a more background function, the more focused nature of Third Programme broadcasts might suggest that the listener must attend in a more present and engaged way. Nevertheless, where the scheduling of the Third Programme was more specialized and punctuated by the programme instead of the hour, it would within those six hours have a continuous output which, crucially, would continue playing whether the listener tuned in or not. This is a fundamental phenomenon of radio, as Lacey points out: ‘eventually, the logic of continuous output to capture the audience would produce, as [Raymond] Williams described it, a flow without interval: a “generally available experience” that has by now become the quotidian experience of media’ (2018: 174). While the more challenging work of the Third Programme might assume that listeners would dedicate themselves from beginning to end, there is always the possibility of the listener dropping in and out: not something that would generally be expected of, for example, a theatrical performance. Of course, one does this with a book but the difference is that the book can be re-joined at the point it was stopped, where a live radio broadcast will, like a play or live television, continue regardless. MacNeice parodies this sense of ‘dropping in and out’ in many of his plays. His historical plays do use exposition, for example with Enter Caesar (1946) and They Met on Good Friday (1954), both opening with an Announcer sharing historical context with the audience. In the case of historical plays, of course, there is an historical context external to the play that will act as a referent even if the stories themselves employ artistic licence. With his less historically centred plays, however, MacNeice makes clear that his audience are entering mid-action. Many start not just mid-action but with reference to specific and specifically unmentioned phenomena. Persons from Porlock opens with Hank exclaiming, ‘So there it is, Sarah. I’ve told hardly anyone else about this’ (109). The Administrator (1961), meanwhile, opens with Martha asking her husband Jerry, ‘So you’re not going to take it, Jerry?’ Both characters refer to something not shared with the audience: not only do we not know why it was referenced, we do not even know what ‘it’ was. In an even more exaggerated version of this, The Mad Islands opens with Cormac stating ‘your move’ to Muldoon. Muldoon and Cormac are engaged in a game of chess, the audience joining mid-game. Considering this as a timeline, the channel broadcasting this play would have, for the earlier portion of the game, been broadcasting something else, another feature or continuity announcement. MacNeice here emphasizes the idea that the world of the radio play, like any fictional world, exists before and after it is witnessed, read or heard. Also, like other forms it is time limited, but its positioning in a schedule where it will be cut off by the intrusion of another piece of content, its audience remaining passive, seems particularly brutal.

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Croak’s exit at the end of Words and Music takes this brutality into the play itself when Joe pauses in his final speech, shocked, to exclaim ‘My Lord’ before the audience hears ‘[s]ound of club let fall.[…] Shuffling slippers, with halts. They die away’ (80). Joe’s reaction confirms that there must be, if not necessarily a visual dimension, at least a level of epistemic privilege over the audience in that he discovers before the audience that Croak is leaving. For the audience this is signposted by the sound of the club falling, and then by the sound of the slippers dying away. The club functions as a form of controlling device for Croak; his dropping it signals that he is finished with listening for now. He is therefore finished also with his companions and as he leaves, Joe turns to Bob, exclaiming, ‘Bob. [Pause.] Bob!’ When Bob responds only with a ‘rude retort’, Joe becomes more formal and addresses him as ‘Music’, at which point a rap of the baton implies that Bob will now comply (80). As Bob and Joe continue to perform with their listener absent, they mirror the stream of the radio signal, transmitting whether heard or not.

Interruption While commissioning and scheduling can be read as organizing forces, the above examples suggest that they can in fact be restrictive. Where they divert an artistic process, they in fact become an interruption. Persons from Porlock is an allusion to Coleridge’s assertion in the preface to ‘Fragment of Kubla Khan’ that the poem’s ending came about when Coleridge, speaking here about himself in the third person, was called out and detained by ‘a person on business from Porlock’ (1816: 53). In MacNeice’s play this refers to the multiple occurrences that preclude Hank, the protagonist, from creating his art in any productive way. Interruption is perhaps most explicit with the bailiff who visits Hank to recover debts. He quite literally interrupts a previous scene where Hank is being reprimanded for spending too much money on frames for pictures he could not sell: Hank More like fifteen. And I haven’t paid for them all yet. Director Fifteen? And what about the – (fade up knocking on door: door opens) Bailiff Are you Mr Hankey? I expect you can guess who I am. (134)

Against the grain of the stereotypical bailiff image, however, this one is polite and apologetic: ‘I’m afraid it’s a Court Order. And it’s my duty to quarter myself upon you until such time as this debt is paid. but I’ll try not to get in your way, sir; it’s fortunate perhaps you have such commodious premises’ (134). His refusal of a drink of whiskey, remarking that tea is his ‘customary tipple’, parodies English formalness (135). The bailiff becomes the everyman of bureaucracy that restricts and interrupts the artist under the guise of public service. He further resists personalization when, asked by Hank how it feels to be a bailiff, he replies that it is an ‘ambivalent feeling’ (136). In Words and Music, meanwhile, the constant battling between Joe and Bob is becoming almost tragicomic as Joe pleads with Bob to let him finish. Where the interrupting persons

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or phenomena for MacNeice are faceless and bureaucratic, for Beckett they are a character in themselves. Discussing Beckett’s reworking of Coleridge in Molloy, when Moran is approached in his garden by Gaber to be given a task, Levin remarks that ‘[t]he loss of paradise that is symbolically intimated in Moran’s expulsion from his garden is thus identified with an initiation into writing. […] Writing is not interrupted but interruptive’ (2016: 257). Marking down is the final part of the artistic process for the artist but it is also incomplete because of the process of production that happens with the dissemination of work, whether printed and published, acted or recorded. Writing for media, then, becomes the ultimate form of interruption whereby a writer is compelled to stop creating for themselves and respond to a command or prompt. Beckett, of course, was not commissioned in the traditional sense but in writing for a medium that he knows can only be produced by others (and in this case with half of the script missing when he relinquishes it) the work is interrupted in its production.

Conclusion Both Beckett’s and MacNeice’s works on the BBC, particularly in these later plays, interrogate their existence on the platform as drama to entertain a mass, if specialized, audience. MacNeice’s work and career were entrenched in the BBC from the beginning of the Second World War to the end of his life, whereas Beckett’s work was much more distanced. Their respective positions as writers are inscribed in their work, and, in turn, the absence of Beckett in the production of his plays take the inscription of that expression to a further level of abstraction that disentangles it from the BBC and places it more firmly in interaction with the listener. Both plays explicitly deal with notions of commissioning and interruption through their characters’ repeated attempts at, and failures in, expression. For Hank in Persons from Porlock, this expression was artistic. MacNeice’s was a part of the BBC, but was restricted by it, and as Smith notes he uses this to explore the formation of the self on a national stage. The artist within the play thus becomes a facsimile of the artist creating the play: like Beckett, MacNeice uses his platform to explore the conditions of production and reception and their impact on the writer, and full achievement of that artistic expression is contingent upon the listener’s interpretation. Beckett, meanwhile, places the expression itself at the centre of the drama. In Words and Music, the existence of characters such as Bob in pure sound – or at least, Bob’s existence resisting any anthropomorphic visualization – alongside the more embodied figure of Croak and the ambivalence of Joe as frustrated expression in ostensibly human form – calls into question the entire nature of what it means to convey a message through sound. While Beckett’s radio plays might not have existed were it not for the BBC, and while certainly the role of the Third Programme as an example of a radio dramatic platform plays into Beckett’s work, it is more of a conduit than it was for MacNeice. Beckett therefore removes the writer from the play just as he was himself removed from the play’s environment, the play becoming even more fully about its interaction with the listener.

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Notes 1

2

The Bloomsbury Group, as described by Rosner, was ‘an intellectual and social coterie of British writers, painters, critics, and an economist who were at the height of their powers during the interwar period […] [The group included] Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, […] Leonard Woolf, and Virginia Woolf ’ (2014: 2–3) Kaleidoscope, in 1928, was an experimental piece created by BBC producer Lance Sieveking, which is perhaps best described by Hendy: At 9.50 p.m. the BBC’s 70-minute long radio ‘experiment’ began. At its Savoy Hill headquarters in London the announcer warned that what followed would be ‘fairly alarming’. Then, across the country, what the announcer called a ‘tumultuous noise’ was unleashed: fragments of dialogue, poetry, and music, clapping melting into the sound of the sea, the passionate avowals of a lover melting into the sweet singing of a choir, dance tunes melting into the symphonic grandeur of Beethoven. (2013: 170)

Works cited Addyman, D., M. Feldman and E. Tonning, eds (2017), Samuel Beckett and BBC Radio: A Reassessment, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Auden, W. H. (1969), ‘Foreword’, in L. MacNeice, Persons from Porlock: And Other Plays for Radio, London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Avery, T. (2006), Radio Modernism: Literature, Ethics, and the BBC, 1922–1938, Aldershot: Ashgate. Beckett, S. (1959), Acceptance Speech for the Prix Italia, awarded for the BBC radio play Embers in Sorrento, Italy: https://www.ubu.com/media/sound/beckett_samuel/various/ Beckett-Samuel_Acceptance-Speech-Italy-Prize_Sorrento_1959.mp3 (accessed 2 May 2022). Beckett, S. (2009), All That Fall and Other Plays for Radio and Screen, London: Faber and Faber. Bignell, J. (2019), ‘”Do You Really Enjoy the Modern Play?”: Beckett on Commercial Television’, in: P. Stewart (ed.), Pop Beckett. Samuel Beckett in Company, 7, Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, pp. 63–84. Briggs, A. (1985), The BBC: The First Fifty Years, Oxford: Oxford University Press. British Broadcasting Corporation Listener Research Unit (1946), Listener Research Weekly Bulletins. Campbell, J. (2013), ‘Beckett and the BBC Third Programme’, Samuel Beckett Today/ Aujourd’hui 25: 109–22. Chignell, H. (2019), British Radio Drama, 1945–1963, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Coleridge, S. T. (1816), Christabel; Kubla Khan, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep, London: John Murray.

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Esslin, M. (1980), Mediations: Essays on Brecht, Beckett, and the Media, London: Eyre Methuen. Fauske, C. J. (2016), Louis MacNeice: In a Between World, Ireland: Irish Academic Press. Frattarola, A. (2009), ‘The Modernist “Microphone Play”: Listening in the Dark to the BBC’ Modern Drama 52: 449–68. Gray, F. (1981), ‘The Nature of Radio Drama’, in P. E. Lewis (ed.), Radio Drama, London: Longman, pp. 48–77. Guardian (1946), ‘Plans for the BBC’s “Third Programme”: https://www.theguardian.com/ century/1940-1949/Story/0,6051,105116,00.html (accessed 2 May 2022). Haley, S. W. (1946), ‘Breaking New Ground in Radio’, The Listener 36: 2–3. Harris, T. (2021), ‘John Reith and the BBC 1922–1939: Building an Empire of the Air?’ Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique/French Journal of British Studies, XXVI (1): 37–71. Hendy, D. (2013), ‘Painting with Sound: The Kaleidoscopic World of Lance Sieveking, a British Radio Modernist’, 20th Century British History 24 (2): 169–200. Holme, C. (1981), ‘The Radio Drama of Louis MacNeice’, in J. Drakakis (ed.), British Radio Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hope-Wallace, P. (1946), ‘Critic on the Hearth’, The Listener 36. Jones, D. (1966), The Present Stage, ABC Television. Lacey, K. (2018), ‘Radio’s Vernacular Modernism: The Schedule as Modernist Text’, Media History 24 (2): 166–79. Leeder, N. (2017), ‘”None But the Simplest Words”: Beckett’s Listeners’, in D. Addyman, M. Feldman and E. Tonning (eds), Samuel Beckett and BBC Radio: A Reassessment, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 269–88. Levin, Y. (2016), ‘The Interruption of Writing in Molloy: Sunday Visits from Porlock’, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 14: 255–73. Lewis, P. M. and J. Booth (1990), The Invisible Medium: Public, Commercial, and Community Radio, Washington, DC: Howard University Press. MacNeice, L. (1944), Christopher Columbus, London: Faber and Faber. MacNeice, L. (1946), The Mad Islands & The Administrator: Two Radio Plays, London: Faber and Faber. MacNeice, L. (1969), Persons from Porlock: And Other Plays for Radio, London: British Broadcasting Corporation. McWhinnie, D. (1959), The Art of Radio, London: Faber and Faber. Richards, J. (2010), Cinema and Radio in Britain and America, 1920–60, Studies in Popular Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rodger, I. (1982), Radio Drama, London: Macmillan. Rosner, V. ed. (2014), Introduction, in The Cambridge Companion to the Bloomsbury Group, Cambridge Companions to Literature, New York: Cambridge University Press. Scannell, P. (1995), ‘For a Phenomenology of Radio and Television’, Journal of Communication 45: 4–19. Verhulst, P. (2017), ’The BBC as “Commissioner” of Beckett’s Radio Plays’, in D. Addyman, M. Feldman and E. Tonning (eds), Samuel Beckett and BBC Radio: A Reassessment, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 81–102. Whitehead, K. (1990), ‘Broadcasting Bloomsbury’, The Yearbook of English Studies 20: 121–31. Whitehead, K. (1989), The Third Programme: A Literary History, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Williams, K. (1996), British Writers and The Media, 1930–45, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

6 Illuminated Radio Imagination and Affect in the Tradition of the Audio ‘Feature’, ‘Acoustic Film’ and Radio Documentaire de Creation Virginia M. Madsen

The experience of freedom is akin to adventure: it explores new borders but never erases or transcends them. Through adventure we can test the limits but also navigate – more or less successfully – between convention and invention, responsibility and play. (Boym 2010: 5) To interrogate the real is to annotate it, connote and recycle it, confront it with other contexts, allow it to stray off the straight and narrow, onto wild and wanton paths. (Farabet 2004)1 When the sonorous body truly hears, it is illuminated.

(Carter 2019: 29)

The journey: features and documentary propositions I start this chapter by reflecting on a set of deeply connected radio forms which can still be encountered in radio today, and which appear to have transmigrated into some of those related spaces, where we can identify a continuation of radio’s documentary and ‘audio storytelling’ traditions, for example, in some podcasts and ‘audio docs’. This field of forms – not formats – originating in radio and almost as old as sound broadcasting

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itself, can loosely be brought together under a diverse and multilingual nomenclature: the ‘radio feature’, radio and audio documentary, radio documentaire de creation, documentaire sonore, film sonore, (French descriptors), radiomontager (Danish descriptor), acoustical film, Hörfolge, Hørebilleder, Hörfilme, Hörstück, Hörspiel and so on. This last two of these German language terms (translated as ‘sound play’ and ‘hearplay’) refer us to radio plays and audio drama, but they may also signify non-fiction and documentary-derived forms plus other dramatic, composed or poetic audio works with all these forms potentially also classed as ‘features’ in the English language context.2 Examples of this work which blur boundaries between drama, fiction and non-fiction would be Dylan Thomas’s renowned ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood (the first 1954 production by BBC’s features producer Douglas Cleverdon we will return to) or, almost forty years later, I could select a virtuosic radio feature from Australian writer–composer Moya Henderson. Her 1990 piece, a biographical response to the life and tragic death by suicide of Belgian Jeannine Deckers (known as the ‘Singing Nun’) was produced by Roz Cheney and Philip Ulman for the ABC and from a programme (‘The Listening Room’) that was highly open to the mixing of forms and experiment. The work could be described as provocative radio opera or radiophonic music-theatre with the writer–composer as also performer. Henderson oddly perhaps described it as ‘Hörspiel’.3 To confuse matters even more, the work received a Special Commendation in the ‘radio documentary’ category of the 1990 Prix Italia.4 Curiously, this perennially illusive, hard to define English word, ‘feature’, in use from the late 1920s on the BBC and adopted from cinema and long-form print journalism, would spread after the Second World War to the Australian ABC, and to numerous European state and public radio outlets. The term was adopted in the BBC-influenced German station NWDR in 1945 to 1946 for instance and incorporated into the public service broadcasting (PSB) system of West Germany soon after the Allied occupation ended in 1948. Features would also come to be understood as encompassing documentary and dramatic works, or both these together drawing on forms and approaches as they were then evolving at the BBC and in other places.5 Dramatized features such as those produced at this same time in the BBC and USA were influential: the experiments and diverse radio ‘play’ output of the celebrated ‘radio writer’ Norman Corwin inspired one of the post-war leaders in German features, for example, the writer Ernst Schnabel.6 Much later from the 1970s Peter Leonhard Braun would be instrumental in promoting the field internationally. Before he became the Director of the largest Features department in Germany (Berlin, SFB), he took his own trip to London to the BBC in 1964 to understand this space for creative and journalistic production, documentaries and the performance of an audio literature which could draw on reality and fiction. There he learnt about the British feature tradition he and the then West Germany had also inherited. He met and spoke with producer– directors like Lance Sieveking and Douglas Cleverdon. Sieveking had experimented first in the 1920s with features and plays in the fledgling BBC’s studios, and described these as ‘mosaics’, ‘sound pictures’, ‘posters in sound’, ‘actualities’ and ‘features’. All new, these forms had intermedial connections and arose in a world of other rapidly evolving new media forms, practices and art movements. A culture of features grows here and spreads much later internationally.7

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The term ‘feature’ also appears as a departmental name, or as part of the title for various broadcasting institutions’ production groupings from the post-war period. In time, these departments would go on to invest in writers and to produce radio features with substantial mass audiences – some of these works (fiction and non-fiction) becoming celebrated ‘classics’ of golden age radio which are still appreciated and heard today. The BBC’s Under Milk Wood stands out as one of these, but we might also turn to another poet and BBC features writer, Louis MacNeice, and his parable sound play, The Dark Tower (1946), or other ‘masterpieces like Sackville West’s The Rescue for which [Benjamin] Britten wrote the music’ (Rodger 1982: 93). Many more once widely heard and powerfully affecting literary and dramatized documentary works from the 1940s and 1950s that ‘make the listener feel as well as think’, to cite Laurence Gilliam, BBC Features Department head in its golden age (Gilliam 1950: 10), could be added here.8 The Americans, Canadians and Australians were all experimenting with feature forms along these lines after the war, as were diverse European broadcasters even as they had their own rich traditions of the radio play, radio art and Hörspiel, longer-form reportage and actualities to draw upon. This term, ‘feature’, however, was not always in use by the major European broadcasters, even as it appeared early in their orbits (Clausse 1945). It was an accepted and discussed field and term in those organizations as they re-established themselves post-war, and as they would soon go on to embrace and promote expressive feature and documentary forms.9 This ‘wild sound recording’ became the core of other kinds of radio features which are still made today (and of course so many documentary films). While the BBC pioneered ‘sound pictures’ in the 1930s, with the ‘actuality’ features of Archie Harding, Olive Shapley, Joan Littlewood and D. G. Bridson most notably, and in portraiture and social features capturing life in Britain, in the factories, on the doorsteps, on the byways and canals and in the slums – these programmes were before their time, because they were pre-tape. Truly portable recorders which might record more than mere sketches and snippets were simply not available. We can however reconnect this period to the work that came after in the 1950s, and some of it emanated from the BBC Northern Region. Here an inheritor but also innovator of this tradition emerged to continue that arrested tradition of the ‘actualities’ which had largely been forced to end because of the war and the lack of the right tools. Denis Mitchell created his radio series People Talking (1953–9) for the BBC in the north, and this series of work in radio and sound prepared the way for his better-known and later television documentaries (e.g. Morning in the Streets). Nevertheless, it was through his essentially poetic and adventurous approach to recording with tape in the streets, opening his microphones to the people he sought out, or who sought him, the voices, the vernacular ‘parole’, that we can identify Mitchell as a significant auteur audio-visionary and reinstate his presence in the new art of radio cinema or ‘film sonore’ as it was developing in Britain. I would like to also mention another poet documentary maker of radio and also film who is barely acknowledged in the English-speaking world, and yet he is close to Mitchell in spirit and in the kinds of work he also made. His work might also be claimed as a direct precursor to early cinema verité and cinéma direct. The artist documentarian is Pierre Perrault who created ‘radio films’ or a radio de la parole made for French speaking RadioCanada. His pioneering work has certainly been cited by the protagonists of the French

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new wave cinema and cinema verité (e.g. Jean Rouch). With his 1956 series Au pays de Neuve-France, tape recorder in hand, he also leaves the studio to discover the sounds of places not so far removed from his world and yet they are almost light years away for him, and his Canadian and Quebecois audiences. What he discovers foremost in his travels is the richness of Quebecois oral culture and its poetry of place, which also inhabits this world. Here the eloquence of spoken words captured by long takes with microphone and recorder can be received as a living poetry. Perrault discovers a compelling and barely acknowledged world through that listening which the tape recorder now offers him. This recording–listening practice, as much as the editing, is at the heart of his discoveries, and these happen in radio first as they also did with Denis Mitchell. This at first purely radiophonic cinéma du réel, leads the auteur to the greater significance in these recordings, and this is to be located also in the discovery that these ‘ordinary’ voices are extraordinary for their vernacular elegance which is inextricably interwoven with and into their milieu (the St Laurence River communities). There is something in common here in both these affective examples of ‘the radio eye’ (a term coined by Dziga Vertov) which brings us a world, and takes us in to what is not seen, and not acknowledged by the camera. There is a common ground between the radiophonic and television work of Mitchell, made in the 1950s BBC, and that of this francophone Canadian pioneer of cinema direct who pursued this eloquence first for a radio de la parole and then a cinéma de la parole, and both these supported by Radio Canada.10 A maverick with the tape recorder, we might also listen again to the American sound hunter Tony Schwartz who lovingly captured the sounds and voices of his city, New York, or a small part of it, in the 1950s and early 1960s and made these into sonic portraits or acoustic films. Examples of this out-of-place and barely remembered radio work, types of ‘feature’, and hidden by the cinema perhaps, can fortunately be accessed today.11 But it is hard to chart the revolution in these forms if we cannot listen to a greater selection, and if we do not know where to find at least some of the more significant work of this kind from this still analogue period. If we could listen to these works more easily, if they were more accessible, we would hear, I suggest, how the radio was being remade with the advent of lightweight recorders and a parallel to cinema-verite. We then might be able to grasp the significance of the illumination for just another one of these producers upon listening with their new audio machines of perception and creation. Here is the BretonFrench producer, regarded as a master of the audio documentary, Yann Paranthoën, who described the impact of the ‘leap into radiophonic space’ that the new Nagra allowed in the 1960s and 1970s. Here was ‘a new radio horizon’ he said, that rewrote the charts of what had formerly been understood as radio. So radical was this change for this ‘tailleur de sons’ (tailor/sculptor of sounds) working within the French national cultural broadcaster that he could announce, without irony: ‘Radio before the Nagra? Was this really radio?’ (Paranthoën et al. 1993: 2). With the television era, ‘the feature’ then is still very much in this mediascape and evolving, although we might have expected the radio play and the feature to have faded away around this time: indeed, this was largely what did happen to these categories within commercial outlets and networks. In the public service broadcasters (PSBs) and state

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radios of Europe, Canada or Australia (and in some university and ‘public radio’ outlets of the USA, e.g. the Pacifica network) however, these forms not only survived, but in some cases were re-energized and reinvented. By the 1960s, the revolution in recording technologies (especially these being more lightweight and portable) would have a huge impact on the feature and documentary field of radio, advancing its fortunes in a way that was not so dissociated from film and television documentary, although this period for radio and its documentary developments deserves deeper comparative analysis than we have space for here (see Madsen 2010, 2014, 2018). Those analogous developments in film technique, extensively documented in contrast to radio, revolutionized cinema, especially non-fiction forms of the 1960s and 1970s. The revolution was there in radio too, even if this transforming period has largely been overlooked outside of a few key texts, and the more recent and welcome digitization of noted archives and bodies of work (e.g. the Pacifica network’s archive), or the making of commemorative collections (EBU-UER 2004 and the CD and book collection of radio art and documentary makers released by Phonurgia Nova). There are also some key non-English works available on a website titled Radio Atlas.12 Perhaps if we could sound out this archive even more, we might discover, as I have, that the revolution probably started in this sound medium before it changed the cinema (with radio and film/TV makers such as Perrault or Mitchell?). We could also understand how they brought in their insights from their making and listening to the scenes they captured, channelled and created as they recorded in the field. This acoustic aperture would open a space that had not been heard before, or perhaps only by those few gifted writers and poets and producers who could hear it, who then channelled it in their brilliant written words, or through the sounds, music and voices they registered as they recorded not in a dissimilar way to the new wave documentary filmmakers with their new portable 16mm cameras and onto a magnetic tape recorder such as the Nagra? Dylan Thomas – to take a poet who wrote and made ‘features’ for the BBC – of course does not record any actuality for one of his most famous works – there were just words that he writes, starting many years earlier, for a radiophonic documentary-steeped journey that is also not in the end to be completed and broadcast in his own lifetime. But surely, he does hear his characters speaking to him out of the dark for his Under Milk Wood? They speak to us, still, I think, transporting whoever listens, conjuring life and death, emotional zones of intensity, parody, love, lust and comedy. These voices (not characters after all are they?) are as if transcribed from Thomas’s own wanderings in places that existed in reality, but were also palpable fictions in his mind. They come to us in this radiophonic landscape as a distillation of voices rather than as real voices from an imagined village in Wales. Yet, it is as if we are given the keys to the locks of these people’s lives for one short highly intense moment here – the radio time varies of course, but the first production (recorded) is ninety-four feature-length minutes and I encourage those who have never heard it to stay that distance. This is also a channelling from, and of, the poet’s memories, and no doubt it is of a landscape Thomas returned to in researching and making other radio features before for the BBC: it is perhaps also these which are being distilled again through this vivid radiophonic imagining set in motion by sculpted words, and the poetry of such words as

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they are sounded and embodied, but also by the environment of features as it had found a supportive space and ecology within the BBC? I return to this idea soon. Although of course they are at first just words on a page, only script – but how seamlessly they still do take us to this ‘there’ as we listen, and as they arrive as embodied, materialized voices. (But where is that place exactly we are being taken to?) All I can say here on this journey into the space and illumination that is the radio feature, is that in a ‘play’ like this with its ability to take us through walls and into private rooms and private lives (this is still radio’s great gift, a going through walls, a radiating illumination), we go under, out of the frame as much as in it, and it is as if we are held in a spell (or a reverie) for that whole ninetyfour minutes, maybe longer. We go inwards and down beneath the surface, in this play for voices sounding the contours of not just this oddly named Welsh ‘town’ – Llareggub, which if we see the wordplay, spells ‘bugger all’ backwards – but we also hear and sense these lives distilled and condensed for us, not documentary reality but still made possible because of the microphone’s overhearing and rendering back to us of that which might have been ‘ordinary speech’. This capacity to record real people speaking also changed how producers and writers perceived our world, and filling this diverse world of speech, as Bachelard named it, it is a ‘logosphere’. And then through this art of radio play, resonating with our own poor fleeting reality – this is also the illumination that such a work like this has – we slip into the spell … a literally going under … Milk Wood. Is this also what the radio ‘film’ or poetic feature could still do, as the new wave and a more sober approach to documentary making pulled the rug from under BBC Features at the end of its ‘golden age’, and as work like this would become perhaps harder to make? (The department responsible for a work like Under Milk Wood concluded in 1964, and if we recall, this was also when Braun arrived to ‘go under’ in search of the radio feature’s space of freedom.) The understanding in these states, or PSB licence fee-financed systems was also that radio could be and should be more than news, information or entertainment. These institutions’ roles were conceived and understood as democratic, cultural and educational as their outlets disseminated and shared ideas and knowledge freely; they were also generative culturally as they gave new spaces to writers, thinkers, creators, performers, actors, singers and musicians. This was core mission for PSBs wherever they were given a place and were supported: the roots of this thinking can be located in early PSB institutional philosophies, in their charters, and in the immediate post-war period where those who worked from the production end to the managerial level might also play a part in reimagining the ethos while also re-emphasizing core principles of this ever-evolving set of alternative media. These radio outlets saw it as their special mission to continue to invest in ideas, the arts and culture in the broad sense even if TV was taking the limelight: they invested in, let’s call it, illumination, and this investment became more, not less, important after two devastating world wars. These organizations in radio, were cultivators – seeding ideas, growing cultures, inspiring, enlightening and illuminating (see Scannell 2004 and Madsen 2007). While most other radio by the 1960s went literally with the new ‘flow’ formats (whether ‘news talk’ or music ‘golden oldies’, Top 40 etc.) as I have already noted, the PSBs, perhaps even counterintuitively, continued with these forms born in the ‘golden age’ (drama or ‘radio

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music’, short stories, sound documentaries and features) and many of them even expanded their channels dedicated to ‘built programmes’ and composed of distinctive cultural and specialist offerings in areas such as science, history, literature, music, poetry, religion etc. To provide this ‘rich-mix’13 (Hendy 2000, 2007), which might connect and define these kinds of ‘cultural radio’ stations and networks (Madsen 2007), it was also essential to employ and invest in craft, and ideas people – writers, directors, poets, sound engineers, specialists with ideas, sophisticated communicators, performers and intellectuals. Many of these outlets, in Europe in particular, continued their investment in radio drama and features production evolving their traditions into the 1970s and beyond. They understood their mission was also about responding to societal, political, cultural and technological changes, and the upheavals of this era were also pronounced, sweeping the globe. It is not a surprise then that we would encounter producers and leaders working for these institutions who were drawn to or persuaded to embrace a new set of spaces for creativity in radio, forge new forms and speak to new audiences, while at the same time not abandoning everything so far achieved with this field of audio literature and documentary features. While features lost some of their former support and place for some years in the BBC, the BBC dramas star rose with Martin Esslin, Donald McWhinnie and Barbara Bray, and hybrid works continued to be made – with the BBC still investing in writers. A younger group of radio producer–writers encouraged by the new spaces of freedom that were opened to them, also entered other cultural outlets elsewhere in Europe, the USA and Canada at this time. And they were able to ‘essay’ with the radio, sculpt, compose and create new ‘propositions’ (see Farabet 1974, 1979). In turning to ‘wild sound’ recordings as they went en plein air with their Nagras and other portable tape machines coming onto the market, they approached the radio space as a new kind of extended field for encounters with the world, the street in particular, but also closed spaces like prisons and monasteries were opened to their microphones with beautiful work coming from Italy, France, Belgium and Japan. They sought the interior and exterior life of people in these places. The impulse was to record again sur le vif, as the early documentary avant-garde had done (see Ortoleva 1996), to document and create reportages, but to not leave it at that. The ‘feature’ or the expressive space of the new wave documentary in radio, as on the screen, would be a site for sounding the depths as well as picking up the surface waves – also for annotation, for interaction, for listening as a compositional practice offering a new kind of adventure and journey. The new wave era brought with it, responding to the portable magnetic tape recorder and other changes of the world itself, an emphasis on this ‘wild sound recording’ then, taking the microphone to and into the real. And yet the new wave film and its equivalent radio adventure was not about erasing the past or all those earlier references, or even overturning earlier discoveries and conventions. It was a going under, that also sought what had come before. As state and PSB radio outlets created new spaces for experiment we can see how the younger producers entering them also wanted to resound works just like Under Milk Wood. Rene Farabet who was brought into the French new atelier, the atelier création radiophonique (acr) in 1969, replayed Under Milk Wood with some translation and contextual material for a French audience in January 1972. An earlier version of Au Bois Lacté, was produced and

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‘adapted’ by Alain Trutat in 1955. Farabet also aired what he called ‘a monster’ of radio history from the vaults of French radio (Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu 1947, ORTF), a searing ‘feature’ confined to its prison, a Horspiel, ‘essaie’ and sound play for voices channelled in 1947/8 by Antonin Artaud, and never before heard on air as it had been censored just before its intended broadcast on 6 March 1948. The excavation in the features space was, and is here then, a little like finding an ancient cave with mysterious and beautiful or terrifying images on the walls and then shining a torch on them in the dark to reignite their energy, and then to articulate a new set of directions and commentary; to hear new voices in the cave which would also provide new dialogues and a revised map for making and experiencing, then moving the journey on as one re-performed with the new, but also with older knowledges, craft traditions and memories from the pioneering and golden age of creative radio as it might still sometimes be invited back into these reinvigorated spaces. The idea of the ‘acoustic film’ was suggested by Braun also for his new approach. It is interesting that here too we find a term that was first used in Weimar radio and in radio theatre and features experiments in Berlin radio prior to the Nazis taking over. Braun, however, related how he was not conscious of this link back to Ruttmann and his 1930 ‘blind film’, Weekend, rather that the acoustic film idea comes as he is able to give more significance to sounds over words in the features he and others were beginning to make in Berlin by 1964 with longer play magnetic tape recorders: he records for example a total hip-replacement operation in its entirety, in the operating theatre, but it is highly edited and shaped to create a powerful and visceral feature. Words or commentary are not expunged here, and interactions were recorded with an elderly but feisty Berlin woman who undergoes this liberating procedure: this make the experience utterly human, allowing the listener to imagine themselves on the table and in the recovery. By contrast, Lindemann who also worked on this programme, told me how many other radio stations in Germany recorded more operations after hearing this programme and seeing its success: And they thought they’d make it much better without this bloody narration, and they recorded the whole length of an operation, about two and a half hours, and it is the most boring programme I ever heard. You can’t imagine what is going on because you have no eyes, you have no camera.

Just to confound any easy reading of the new radio ‘acoustic films’, Lindemann is emphatic with his insight that; ‘The microphone is not a camera. The time [we were there recording] is authentic, but in the programme it is not authentic. It is shaped, it has a form which is a quite different thing’ (Braun and Lindemann 2002). Art mixes fiction with documentary, and is so much more than reportage or a ‘soundscape’. There was a rejection for Braun of some elements and indulgences perhaps of the ‘literary feature’ tradition found in Britain or France, however, and still there in 1964, with their expensive studio productions involving often a cast of thousands, orchestras and composers … But these programmes were considered far too distanced from the reality Braun wanted to bring in a most visceral way into the heart of his new features (Braun 2001; Braun and Madsen 2004). Braun was still also employed as a features writer at his home station in Berlin of SFB and his text as much as the sounds in the scene are needed to create these images in the mind. And yet writing, even here, is not exiled in

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these acoustic films: it expands to become more aligned with the new idea of a filmic writing, not writing with pen and typewriter so much as writing with the microphone and on tape, but still there is the voice, and the guide. In resurrecting this much earlier term, the ‘acoustic film’, he with other producers like Klaus Lindemann, who were already working more with tape and seeing its revelatory potential, are beginning to grapple with the materiality of their recording medium, though, and the microphones they were increasingly demanding to get the ‘high definition’ they wanted. Their features at first were attempts to understand more about writing in sound in these terms. The radio producer handles tape, physically cuts it, and joins the severed parts in this analogue universe. This is also to write with tape and the edit, as well as with the mix and the microphone. The microphone, understood much earlier as creating spaces, offering transport and resonance to voices (including the voices of the dead), is not simply registering a set reality here, nor its theatre equivalent. The microphone is so much more, as Norman Corwin would say: ‘The microphone is not an ordinary instrument. For it looks out on vistas wide indeed’ (Corwin in Keith 2008: 129) And yet, it is strange how this instrument of capture and transmission but also of transfiguration continues to be so hidden in the radio apparatus and in ideas of writing, and of the radiophonic illumination, including of authorship of these kinds of feature and radiophonic film work. The creation of the radio ‘text’ or ‘play’, can also offer an extended sense of authorship, especially when we make that comparison with film, and understand its construction and performance as a recorded medium. In this sense, we might consider Douglas Cleverdon as now a writer or auteur of the 1954 ‘work’, Under Milk Wood, a posthumous work for Thomas, and already introduced to you, but regarded as seminal in English language radio history for drama, features and poetry, and translated into numerous languages after its win at the Prix Italia in 1954. This assignation and understanding of creative authorship is one that was already familiar and uncontroversial in cinema, especially in cinema as art, or in the cinema of auteur documentary-making, as the French describe this, as documentaire de creation. On the other hand, it has always been more usual to bestow authorship (and almost exclusively) on the writer of radio dramas, and this applied to many of these feature-plays for voices, produced by the BBC Features department in its heyday. Gilliam wrote that radio features, whether of the more literary or journalistic kind were primarily works of a single author with a vision: ‘[t]he essential quality of the feature programme is that it should be the expression of one mind, whatever technique it uses’ (Gilliam 1950: 9). Klaus Lindemann much later, when features were made with magnetic tape, precision microphones, stereo, electronic studios and multitrack, and edited in ways more akin to film and music, would write of his own work echoing that understanding: It’s like making a sculpture, first you find your rock, your material, and then you are walking around it for quite a number of days, even weeks. What does it want? Then you follow it and sometimes it’s good enough for a miniature, and sometimes it’s a gigantic piece. (Lindemann 1980)

Lindemann was also a visual artist, a painter, and he has been described as a sculptor of the form and a painter in sound (Erickson 2019),14 working with sonic scenes and

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characterization drawn from life and listening to both the sounds and the silences he finds therein with his microphone/s. And yet, in the radio of long-form recorded features, in this remodelled sound broadcasting medium post the portable tape recorder, and as with cinema (both recorded media), surely, we are required to rethink authorship further? While works still varied considerably, we can see the value of this change in perception of the new types of work in sound. Under Milk Wood is a good case in point. While Cleverdon is not the writer in the literary sense of the term of the original text by Thomas, we have a collaborator director who prepares the text, as well as its performances in and for voice. He also works for this recording (the first production) over a long gestation period, thinking acoustically and radiophonically, circling his ‘sculpture’ not yet knowing whether it would be a miniature or a gigantic piece. To do so, over years, he was drawing on an extensive body of creative and documentary-styled work of his own, and this provided an imaginative reservoir too for this singular radiophonic ‘piece’ to find its form (see Cleverdon 1969).15 The perspective, the point of listening is harder to pin down and locate than in cinema perhaps, but it is there in a recorded work of this kind, even as Under Milk Wood, and many more of these poetic features predate the extensive use of tape: in the BBC tape was not used as a matter of course until after the Features Department was decommissioned (see Rodger 1982: 92).16 A focus and rhythm is prepared for us in the writing, however, through Thomas, but it is also there in the direction, in the performers’ voices, and especially as this is a work that is recorded with actuality scenes. Radio is importantly also made of trompe l’oreille (tricks of the ear, as Farabet would highlight) through the joining and cutting of invisible edits and layerings of sounds on tracks, or even as played in live, in ‘mixes’ which are impossible to disentangle without seeing a full and annotated radio script – and even then, a lot can happen in an improvised way in these productions, so the script is more a plan often than a detailed score. The archives of most PSBs and other state broadcasters also hold these kinds of annotated script/scores for radio features, and I have many images of these unruly (often handwritten) plans which again give a greater sense of the work involved in one of these long-form pieces than a finished typed script. A mise-en-scene also occurs to conjure atmospheres and places through sounds. Reading Cleverdon’s reflections on making a work like this one, and many other features and ‘plays’ from this period, we sense he hears these channelled voices in this text. It is he who also must deliver to the words their new voice-bodies or personas (literally ‘through sound’), to be transported and embodied in the Welsh cast, with Richard Burton’s performance of the narration perhaps as unforgettable as the words. Through these performances, we receive a weight and something like a ‘spirit’ that may not otherwise have been there to connect us to what feels like the ghosts of those who once lived out their lives in a town just like this. Finally, what we might hear when we listen, is a communing with the (imagined) poet, Dylan Thomas, conjured into being with the broadcast (but perhaps not animating all of the many productions made after this very first one?). The first production brings to the fore for me most strongly this eloquence of ‘ordinary’ speech which is distilled and channelled by the poet and by the producer–director who must take a leap into the unknown after the poet’s premature passing. The director was here then a kind of poet and traveller, mapping

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in sounds and sound-images, and in these voices, which also interpret this ‘score’, a new radiophonic work and landscape. This is that kind of poetic work, yes, a feature, which also might connect us to other works (from radio, and from cinema) which also draw on the poetic sensibility to guide us through their real and fictional landscapes. These may be worlds that become both real and are felt, but they are also imagined very fully when we listen. They can still be found on the radio, or as tissues of texts and sounds in some podcasts, and I have heard them ‘revived’ in the work of a producer like Francesca Panetta (schooled in features, formerly of the BBC) for example, who worked on the Hackney Hear App and podcasts. Listen to ‘Night in Hackney’ as an example of this kind of journey into a real and imagined place as it also interweaves past writing (H. V. Morton on Hackney, London from the 1940s) with the ordinary voices of people who leave their voice traces and spirit of adventure on the ‘tape’ via Panetta’s sensitive writing with the microphone.17 As these audio works, though, became less a rendering of a written text, less a live theatre broadcast in the form of the more traditional radio play (by the 1960s), and more responsive to recording, tape editing and manipulations in the studio, that remaking of the potentialities of creation now possible with editing and mixing, sets the scene for a new conception of radio writing, authorship and sound media composition for features, and then also as Neues Hörspiel (explored by Klaus Schöning in 1969). By the 1960s, it is in ‘features’, and these new forms of radio play which were also drawing on the wider documentary arts, where we find the artist-producer-director assuming a more prominent role – and as potentially, this new kind of collaborator ‘writer’-author. In features, and in work we might find in this admittedly large hybrid field today, an opportunity was opened to approach the work as ‘acoustic film’ or ‘radiophonic film’, or as film sonore, or as the Danes described their ‘features’ with a new term – ‘montage’. The documentary field in radio with editable tape and portable magnetic tape recorders could draw on auteur traditions, and these most close to radio might be found primarily in cinema, and certainly this was so by the 1970s. Alain Trutat, who created the atelier création radiophonique (acr) in the French national radio service (1969), and previously worked with Pierre Schaeffer and (poet) Jean Tardieu in the Club d’Essaie, summed up this thinking well when he tried to define one of the key areas of creation for the acr, documentary (‘the most interesting of the radiophonic forms’) in terms of auteur cinema: ‘When we talk about the documentaire of the acr … it’s akin to the film documentarists, Joris Ivens, Murnau, Flaherty, Chris Marker, Jean Rouch … Dziga Vertov’ (Trutat 2002). The producer-director here can assume the creator role of a ‘writer in sound’, moving into an almost filmic space: the references to film, increasingly used from this period, are not accidental. Trutat: ‘The vision of radio for me is there; it is an interior one, you close your eyes and an interior film is screened: it unwinds [“derouler”]’ (Trutat 2002). Also, in this new kind of work’s making, we find parallels with film montage and the creation involved in mise-en-scene, especially when sound scenes are recorded in the field and edited, placed and mixed for documentary work. The layering and manipulations of scenes, voices, texts and actualities also now possible – and even before the digital – with electronics, opened this radio work to a new ontology. Affects – that come when words and sounds mix, proposing scenes, characters and mental imagery – may also find some kinship with

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cinema here, but this is a highly undertheorized area.18 For now, I will propose that the change that comes with radio features and radio documentaires in the age of magnetic recording and its portability (and perhaps also stereo), allows the ‘hear play’, montage, film sonore and feature to be released from the previous restrictions of the ‘live’ broadcast, and the performance of an a priori scripted text, usually performed in a studio or theatre. The confinement of the real-time space of performance, whether in the studio or another venue, no longer determines the feature’s boundaries or its possibilities. Features in the age of magnetic tape and stereophonics could then be as the BBC feature maker, John Theocharis described them: ‘acoustical works that use the manifold possibilities of sound radio to enable factual information to stir the imagination of the listener … and at the same time to sharpen his perception of the world and of human existence’ (Lindemann 1980: 1). As scenes of actuality sound become more possible to not only record but edit and arrange in the late 1950s, ‘the feature’ is reinvented as ‘sound pictures’, and a new ambitious documentary essaying or surveying emerges. There should be greater opportunities to hear documentaries for example from D. G. Bridson, for The Negro in America and America Since the Bomb series. These were large-scale and drew on a vast mix of work and recordings, sweeping the listener up into the eruptions and tumult of the civil rights period, and the cold war response to the new world order post Hiroshima. Non-fiction here is not ‘news’ nor even its longer form news-journalism corollary. The influence of new literary voices, criticism, new musics – popular and high culture, the impact of cinema’s new wave and new auteurs, the vitality of a myriad of movements and styles and approaches across the arts, all this is strongly heard in the works emerging from Europe, the UK, Canada, the USA and Australia. Radio art exploration would emerge from this lineage, and from music and drama departments. More reflexive radiophonic essaying akin to that important strand, or mode, of film documentary and film art was there in the pioneering period to signal a way forward, but really developed to an art form in its approach to sound and ‘writing with the microphone’ and ‘for tape’ by the late 1960s and 1970s, and this in parallel with cinema verité. If we could more easily access this work, to stress this once more, we would register a space for the feature and sound documentary that is expanding long before the podcasting Big Bang, and so much so that these much older terms like the ‘acoustic film’, the ‘radio eye’ ‘feature’ or film sonore might not be silenced or misunderstood but be rediscovered, as the field and the practices of making are again being re-energized. The emerging project of the radio feature and documentary which was coalescing by the 1970s, and evident earlier in some key producers’ work like these, should be reconnected to the current ‘renaissance’ or ‘new wave’ in audio storytelling as we find this in podcasts of the last ten or so years, but also it should be resonating in other spaces in which we still can encounter radio and its forms today (broadcast, online, streaming, downloads, some podcast networks and even audio initiatives found in high-profile magazines and newspapers, or as created by independent audio/radio artists). As the tape recorder lost weight literally, it gained in audio-visionary status. As in cinema, with the discovery of the Nagra, this same tape recorder (and others similar to it) could now take on a more important role in expression, and for the radio as well as

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film. The field opens to embrace something more filmic as we have heard, but yet it is not bounded by a frame or vision. We have an art, wrote Michel Butor, of the hors champs. This art is still evolving in the digital sphere and with the podcast revolution. New kinds of audio documentary and acoustic films have emerged, some have risen and faded but adventure is still in the offing. Whether broadcasters and others who have sustained this expression and revelatory work thus far will continue to see its worth is very hard to determine here, however. That stated, the broad field we have entered so lightly is a precarious one even as it has survived and evolved over almost 100 years of radiophonic imaging.

Notes 1 ‘Interroger le réel, c’est l’annoter et le connoter, c’est le recycler, le confronter à d’autres contextes, c’est le dévergonder.’ Farabet was Director of Radio ‘France Culture’s’ atelier de création radiophonique (1969–2002). Trans. Madsen. 2 Priessnitz commented that the term ‘feature’ could have different meanings in different countries and at different periods. In 1981, he wrote: ‘In Germany, the term “feature” has come to mean the presentation of documentary material in a way that is effective for radio’, whereas these documentary forms constitute ‘only a part of what in England is known as a “feature”’ (in Lewis 1981: 34). Lindemann also tells us how the very early 1929–33 period produced ‘Weimar features’, drawing on Tamar Auer-Krafka’s study of the form (in Lindemann 1980: 8). Ania Mauruschat references ‘the German tradition of the artistic feature established by Peter Leonhard Braun, Alfred Andersch, Ernst Schnabel, Arno Schirokauer and Friedrich Bischoff ’ (Mauruschat 2018: 1), calling this, ‘the künstlerisches Feature’ (Mauruschat 2018: 5). Fisher noted how the early BBC producer Lance Sieveking used the term ‘radiogenic’ to describe features, and that ‘features were a British counterpart to the German Hörspiele’ (Fisher 2002: 75). 3 See https://www.moyahenderson.com/works/ meditations-and-distractions-theme-singing-nun 4 Deckers was well known in Francophone countries as ‘Soeur Sourire’. The full title of the work is Meditations and Distractions on the Theme of the Singing Nun. This work has also been described as ‘radio art’. 5 The 1951 edition of the Schoffler-Weis English-German pocket dictionary included ‘radio feature’. In Lindemann (1980: 46). 6 Schnabel became director of Features at NWDR in 1951. His ‘reportage’ feature Anne Frank – Trace of a Child won the Prix Italia (Human Rights Prize) in 1958. 7 Braun related how there were other words used in Germany for forms such as reportage and documentary, but there was ‘no exact equivalent for the feature’ as it had developed in the BBC. From Lance Sieveking (who described features in his 1934 book The Stuff of Radio), Braun learnt of ‘[t]he vagueness, the absolutely undirectional purpose of it, going for any subject, going for any form.’ And, that this openness, ‘there in the beginning as well’, was part of the attraction and power of a field that Braun wanted to further develop with the help of new precision portable recorders and stereo (Braun 2002). 8 The BBC Features Department produced hundreds of poetic documentaries and much harder to categorize original imaginative works – portraits, chronicles, essays, sound

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poems, journeys, mindscapes, reflective prose … and these made by distinguished writers and composers who also explored the medium of radio itself. The producer Douglas Cleverdon, responsible for many beautifully made poetic features, described how in these ‘[t]he tape recorder is the alert and roving ear that can listen at the sources of experience’; however, ‘the feature program does more than play the findings back: it can present them with dramatic impact. It can give us authenticity shaped by an individual mind.’ The French state broadcaster, RTF, then ORTF, Radio France, did not use this word as the Germans did, although it was well understood in radio circles according to Alain Trutat (1922–2006), a former Director of Programmes at Radio France, and founder of atelier création radiophonique. He was also behind the transformation of the French cultural station, France Culture (Trutat and Madsen 2002). The acr pioneered and expanded forms of ‘reality-fiction’, blurring genre boundaries in the process, while still drawing on their own very developed sound and poetic traditions encompassing radio theatre, film, essays, musique concrète and diverse expressions we might call radiophonic art. In this period Perrault made his first recordings with the small community of the Îleaux-Coudres, later to become protagonists of his first poetic documentary films. He was inspired by the words of fishermen, sailors and hunters who lived on the banks of the St Laurence River, and remains most known for these films he made, rather than his radio work, particularly La suite du Monde (Madsen 2009, 2010). The National Film Board (NFB) of Canada produced a box set of Perrault’s films of Au pays de Neufve-France which included the ‘Emissions radiophoniques’. See Radio Canada: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/grandes-series/232/pierreperrault-un-poete-sans-bon-sens (accessed 1 June 2022). Radio Atlas provides translation as you listen online or as a podcast. Most of Atlas’s work is contemporary and much of it European, although the inclusion of some selections from the past give an idea of the vast scope that is, and has been, ‘the radio feature’. Two works I would highlight: Rene Farabet’s Words from Inside (St Maur Prison) (1992); Stephen Schwartz’s The Night Watchman (1971) https://www.radioatlas.org/ Hendy first used the term to describe some BBC outlets in his survey of radio in 2000, then later the term aligns with a station like Radio Four (2007: 272–3). Unlike a radio format, the rich mix is not intended to be driven fundamentally by market forces – audience data, market demographics or algorithms. He also cites Richard Hoggart’s reflection: ‘how this kind of outlet “shows us that the world is wider than we’d thought”’ (Hoggart 1982 in Hendy 2007: 460). Erickson, a producer who left his home, the USA, to make features in Berlin at SFB, described Lindemann as ‘foremost and always a painter, he created pictures and in the audio studio, his pallet was acoustic, his color was sound. Seldom does a person take a gift in one medium and transfer it so completely to another.’ The Canadian CBC features producer John Reeves recounted his experiences working with the BBC and with Cleverdon in 1956: ‘Cleverdon will probably be remembered as long as English literature exists because he is the man who was very largely responsible that the world possesses Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood … [He] nourished the text along … [as well as] producing it eventually’ (in Peach 1977). Rodger wrote how the ‘portable tape recorder was regarded with suspicion and hostility’ by many in the BBC Features Department in the 1950s (1982: 92–3) and ‘[t]he obvious

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technical advantages of the portable tape-recorder were at first deliberately ignored.’ Also, ‘It argued to the greater use of ingenious cutting and editing and gave the producer, rather than the writer, much more editorial control’ (Rodger 1982: 92). Impacts on writers, however, became noticeable in the plays and features, as the ‘evidence presented by the tape-recorder made the writers listen with fresh ears to ordinary speech’. This also alerted writers and producers to the silences in speech, how silence carried weight, and indeed the unsaid became as important as the said (Rodger 1982: 97). This is also there in new wave documentary cinema. 17 The work can still be heard here: https://hackneypodcast.co.uk/2010/04/edition-18-night/ (accessed 1 June 2022). 18 Farabet has written a lot about how the radio film in particular produces images that are not fixed but triggered by both words and sounds together. In the space opened by the long journeys that were presented on the acr, a journey and detours conjure up for the listener images and hallucinatory sounds which also go into making a ‘world’. There can be great pleasure that comes with this and those mental images in radio. He also draws on the still highly relevant work on the imagination and creative radio of the 1940s and 1950s by Gaston Bachelard (Bachelard 1943, [1951]1970; Cooper 2019; Farabet 1994, 2011, 2016). In cinema, recent work which could be fruitfully brought to bear on audio documentary and its effect on and interaction with the so-called ‘imagination’ as well as other ‘feature’ forms in radio and podcast include Sarah Cooper (Cooper 2019) and Elaine Scarry (Scarry 2001/1999). Scarry ventures a concept ‘radiant ignition’ to describe how words might create a moving image ‘film’ in the head of a reader or viewer/listener. Cooper draws also on this concept when discussing the work of auteur Marguerite Duras. The concept might apply well to the action of certain radio works on the imagination of listeners, and this radiant ignition might also account for the pleasure to be found in listening to these kinds of works, often they are adventurous or speculative, and poetic, although not always narrative (Cooper 2019: 22).

Works cited Bachelard, G. (1943), L’air et les songes; essai sur l’imagination du mouvement, Paris: J. Corti. Bachelard, G. ([1951]1970), ‘Rêverie et Radio’ in Philippe Garcin (ed.), Le Droit de rêver, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 216–23. Boym, S. (2010), Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Braun, P. (2001), Peter Leonhard Braun Presents the Classics, Sydney: Audio Arts Department, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Braun, Peter L. (2002), Braun Interview, Virginia Madsen (ed.), Berlin. Braun, P. and K. Lindemann (2002), Virginia Madsen in conversation with Peter Leonard Braun and Klaus Lindemann of Sender Freies Berlin on the history of radio features, V. Madsen (ed.), Unpublished. Braun, P. and V. Madsen (2004), Interview with Peter Leonhard Braun Tracing the History of the International Features Conference and Documentary Influences, Sender Freies Berlin, Funkhaus, Charlottenberg, Berlin: Unpublished audio interview recording.

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Carter, P. (2019), Amplifications: Poetic Migration, Auditory Memory, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Clausse, R. (1945), La radio, huitième art, Bruxelles: Office de publicité. Cleverdon, D. (1969), The Growth of Milk Wood: With the Textual Variants of Under Milk Wood, London: Dent. Cooper, S. (2019), Film and the Imagined Image, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. EBU-UER. (2004), The I.F.C. (International Feature Conference) Collection, Geneva: EBUUER. Radio Features (Documentaries), A collection chosen by Edwin Brys (IFC) for the IFC Thirtieth Anniversary. Erickson, S. (2019), Hörspiel und Feature: Meeting Klaus Lindemann [website with audio and text]. Deutschlandfunk Kultur: https://www.hoerspielundfeature.de/reihe-wirklichkeit-imradio-ein-weites-dunkles-land-100.html (accessed 13 May 2022). Farabet, R. (1974), Coque, conque, coquille, cornet, cirque … L’Art vivant, Mars 1974 (March 1974). Farabet, R. (1979), ‘Espaces de l’utopie radiophonique’, strategies de l’Utopie, Paris: Editions galilee. Farabet, R. (1994), Bref Eloge du Coup de tonnerre et du Bruit d’ailes (1st ed.), References du Huitieme art, Arles: Phonurgia Nova. Farabet, R. (2004), ‘Ecrire avec des sons’, Telos (60): pdf: http://www.acsr.be/wp-content/ uploads/revista_TELOS_Ecrire_avec_des_sons.pdf (accessed 12 March 2008). Farabet, R. (2011), Théâtre d’ondes, théâtre d’ombres, Musique-environnement, Nîmes: Champ social. Farabet, R. (2016), Le son nomade impressions, variations, digressions, Collection Musiqueenvironnement, Nîmes: Lucie éditions. Fisher, M. (2002), Ezra Pound’s Radio Operas: The B.B.C. Experiments, 1931–1933, Cambridge, MA; London: MIT. Gilliam, L. (1950), B.B.C. Features. Edited by Laurence Gilliam, London: Evans Brothers. Hendy, D. (2000), Radio in the Global Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hendy, D. (2007), Life On Air: A History of Radio Four, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keith, M. C. (2008), Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life, New York: Peter Lang. Lewis, P. E. (1981), Radio Drama, London; New York: Longman. Lindemann, K. (1980), Origin of the Feature, Berlin: SFB. Madsen, V. (2007), ‘Cultural Radio at the Crossroads: “When I Hear the Word Culture I Switch on My Radio”: Reflections on an Underestimated Form, “Cultural Radio”’, Southern Review 39 (3): 16–37. Madsen, V. (2009), ‘Radio and the Documentary Imagination: Thirty Years of Experiment, Innovation, and Revelation’, in Andrew Crisell (ed.), Radio: Critical Essays in Media and Cultural Studies, London; New York: Routledge, pp. 207–19. Madsen, V. (2010), ‘A Call to Listen: The “New” Documentary in Radio – Encountering “Wild Sound” and the Film Sonore’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 30 (3): 391–410. Madsen, V. (2014), ‘Children of Sodom and Gomorrah: A Critical Reflection’, [on the radio feature by Jens Jarisch], RadioDoc Review 1 (1): https://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr/vol1/iss1/11/ (accessed 1 July 2022).

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Madsen, V. (2018), ‘Transnational Encounters and Peregrinations of the Radio Documentary Imagination’, in Golo Föllmer and Alexander Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, pp. 83–100. Mauruschat, A. (2018), ‘“Failure as Liberation: A Critical Analysis of Rilo Chmielorz’’ Artistic Feature “Scheitern ist. Eine Bestandsaufnahme”’. RadioDoc Review 4 (1): 18. Ortoleva, G. (1996), ‘From the Past to the Future’, in Prix Italia/RAI (eds), in The Quest for Radio Quality: The Documentary, Naples: Prix Italia, RAI, pp. 51–60. Paranthoën, Y., Kudelski, Crèis and Goy (1993), On Nagra … Paris: Co-edition Radio France, INA, SCAM Institut national de l’audiovisuel France distrib. Harmonia mundi France. 1 disque compact 60 min. Peach, R. (1977), Other People’s Radio. ABC Radio Two Programmes, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Commission. Rodger, I. (1982), Radio Drama, London: Macmillan. Scannell, P. (2004), ‘Love and Communication: A Review Essay’, Review of ‘Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication’, by John Durham Peters, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 1 (1): 93–102. Scarry, E. (2001/1999), Dreaming by the Book, reprint, Princeton: Princeton Paperbacks. Schöning, K. (1969), Neues Hörspiel. Texte, Partituren, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Sieveking, L. (1934), The Stuff of Radio, London: Cassell. Trutat, A. and V. Madsen (2002), Alain Trutat Interviewed by Virginia Madsen, Studio of Trutat, Paris: Unpublished.

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

It might seem obvious that we listen to radio and podcasts as if there was nothing more to be said about it. Perhaps that is the reason why comparatively little has been written about the act of listening. However, as these chapters demonstrate, there is a great deal to be said about what is a fundamental human activity and one which is central to our understanding of sound media. Bridget Backhaus makes this point very clearly. She claims that radio listening has been greatly underestimated if we just ‘turn up’ to listen and that is that. She challenges this superficial approach by arguing that listening involves active engagement, rather than being a passive act. Backhaus applies this approach to community radio where she thinks that the listener has often been ignored. The discourse of community radio has centred around the concept of ‘voice’ and giving a voice to marginalized communities, but there is little point having a voice if there are no listeners. She argues that the act of listening should be intertwined through all aspects of community radio. The close relationship and affinity between community radio and its audience should make this straightforward. An important lesson to be learned from Backhaus’s analysis is that listening is a diverse activity, and she introduces varieties of listening including ‘empathetic’ and ‘caring’. Marta Perrotta looks at the ways European radio stations design the listening experience in the world of new media. She explores the strategies of radio managers to ‘reimagine the content access experience’ when access has become so diverse. New technologies of listening, including streaming and apps, have fundamentally changed the listening experience although radio remains an important provider because, for example, of the way it can help listeners discover new music and rediscover music from the past. Britta Jorgensen takes the exploration of modes of listening one step further in her discussion of listening to podcasts. She argues persuasively that listening to a podcast through headphones can be an embodied, even a sensual, experience. The immersive nature of this listening heightens the intimate and physical nature of listening and she also refers to Spinelli and Dann’s characterization of ‘persistent, careful and patient listening’. Her research is based on her PhD studies during which she listened to over 1,000 podcasts using evaluative criteria outlined by the influential RadioDoc Review. Jorgensen’s work points us in the direction of much-needed listening research of this kind.

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Finally, Kim Fox alerts us to the need to acknowledge the diversity of the listening public. From the All-Negro Hour first broadcast in 1929 and providing comedy and gospel music for Black listeners, radio has been an important, even vital, part of Black cultural life in the USA. Her wide-ranging chapter covers the period 1970–2020 and provides a fascinating account of Black radio listening which Fox likens to church attendance and even visiting the beauty salon. Radio played the part of supporting a Black public sphere and had a direct impact on peoples’ lives – even influencing what people did and when. These four chapters provide us with an important lesson for future scholarship. Radio Studies has often failed to address the act of listening and its various forms. In particular the participatory nature of listening and the variety of modes of listening need to be addressed. The transition from collective listening on radio sets in the neighbourhood to the very different experience of individualized headphone listening clearly has consequences for producers even if they have not always thought sufficiently about it.

7 Tuning In and Listening Out Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio Bridget Backhaus

Listening and voice are intrinsically connected with radio as a form of communication. While print media weave narratives from text and images, television allows audiences to watch what is happening, and the internet bombards users with every possible form of information, it is radio that draws solely on the intimate and deeply personal nature of both voice and listening to tell stories. The roles of voice and listening in radio have long been clearly demarcated. Broadcasters speak, audiences listen. This was one of the primary critiques, most notably levelled by Bertholt Brecht (2005), who lamented the squandered potential of radio, which could have been ‘the finest possible communications apparatus in public life’, if only it could listen as well as speak. More recent critiques have questioned radio’s role in the contemporary public sphere, where discourse and interactivity are paramount – exercising voice is a hallmark of the digital age. Yet listening, long considered the sole purview of audiences, is neglected in more ways than one. Listening is rarely problematized, it is only relatively recently that scholars and practitioners (see Bassel 2017; Couldry 2006; Dreher 2009a,b; Lacey 2011, among others) have begun to unpack and analyse the role of listening in aural and oral media like radio and podcasts. The role of listening is further complicated in an environment such as community radio where the boundaries between broadcasters and audiences are blurred. Community broadcasters and stations are deeply embedded within communities under-served, silenced or ignored by mainstream media – voices for the voiceless, or so the rhetoric goes. If the relationships between broadcasters and stations and their audiences are to be meaningful and reciprocal, then they must be dialogic and built on a strong foundation of listening, not just on the part of the audiences. Yet the role of listening in informing content, in building community, and in setting broadcast agendas is an under-explored area. By drawing on a citizens’ media framework, this chapter explores and analyses how listening might be

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understood in the context of community radio and, in doing so, aims to suggest a future research agenda for further critical engagement with the theories and practices of listening.

Defining and problematizing listening within media studies In order to engage with listening more deeply, it is necessary to move beyond simplistic, essentialist definitions. Listening is often interpreted mechanistically: a means to an end and a necessary physiological conduit through which message transmission and reception can take place. Such simplistic definitions perhaps explain the relative dearth of literature probing and problematizing listening within communications and media studies. Listening is often overlooked in favour of the more perceptible component of the communication equation: voice. Listening, however, is one of the fundamental processes of human learning and communication, and the first language skill we develop. As Wolvin and Coakley (1985: 13) explain: ‘Our ability to speak, read, write, and master complex cognitive skills is directly and indirectly dependent on our ability to listen.’ Despite this, listening is taken for granted and underestimated as a skill: there is the assumption that listening is characterized by passivity or the absence of speech; that listening does not require actually doing much, simply staying quiet while others speak (Manyozo 2017). The assumption of passivity conflates the difference between listening and hearing. Purdy suggests that hearing is ‘the physiological process of receiving sounds’, whereas listening represents the infinitely more complex process of ‘attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to other human beings, in a sociocultural-linguistic environment that thoroughly permeates and influences the receptive, meaning creation process’ (1991: 61). This is a valuable distinction, yet one that is often conflated and overlooked. In the field of media studies, the neglect of listening, particularly when compared to voice, is particularly stark. Mediated communication seems to broaden the gap between those who speak and those who listen. This distinction is something that even more complex definitions of listening, perhaps inadvertently, reinforce. The onus for listening – and its associated processes – falls on one party or group. You speak or you listen. You are a broadcaster or the audience. A dialogic interpretation of listening adds much-needed nuance to these discussions. Indeed, Blackman (2012: 139) suggests this is yet another difference between hearing and listening: where hearing is ‘monological’, listening is ‘always dialogical and relations, directed towards the other’. In this interpretation, instead of distinct speakers and listeners, it is more useful to reconceptualize towards ‘participants’ in dialogue, for whom listening and speaking merge together and intertwine (Penman and Turnbull 2012). Taking a dialogic approach also sheds light onto some of the goals or motivations for listening. Participants in dialogue, in contrast with distinct speakers and listeners, are entering into a ‘discursive communion’ with a goal of understanding different perspectives, ‘not as a way of reaffirming and strengthening our position’ (Thomas and van de Fliert 2015;

Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio

Manyozo, 2016: 4). This communion involves the listener inhabiting, or at least attempting to inhabit, the ‘intersubjective space of otherness’ (Murru 2016: 395–6). Dialogic listening requires an openness to a multitude of constructed realities and highlights that we do not discover meaning, rather it is assigned based on our values, experiences and socio-cultural context (Bickford 1996). Existing in such ambiguity means that listening to others to understand their own realities and meaning-making structures is a critical skill. It involves ‘moving ourselves to the background’ so we can truly listen to others as ourselves, without the positivist notion that we can be objectively removed from the situation (Bickford 1996: 24). Listening, then, could be conceptualized as making space: a space that is not characterized by absence or withdrawal of the self, but instead one focused on sustaining interconnection (Dreher 2009a). Thus, dialogic listening involves not only complex cognitive and socio-cultural processes, but also the willingness to try and interpret the world from the perspective of another. Alongside the growing nuance and complexity of how we understand listening, there has been somewhat of a listening turn in media studies. A focus on listening has begun to reframe how we research media and democracy, and more effectively brings the participants in democratic communication under analysis (O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher 2009; Waller, Dreher and McCallum 2015). Similarly, listening forces us to re-examine the theories and tools of analysis that have become so widespread and taken for granted in media studies. Habermas’s (1991) seminal work on the public sphere, for example, offers an invaluable frame for contextualizing the role of the media in facilitating the public deliberation that is essential to a functioning democracy. However, Habermas (1984: 17) also suggests that the purpose of communicative action is ‘oriented to achieving, sustaining, and renewing consensus’. Such an approach fails to account for differing power relations and social identities in a pluralist society, particularly so given the influence of neoliberalism. Mouffe (1999: 756), in arguing for an ‘agonistic’ approach to democracy, describes consensus as a ‘temporary result of provisional hegemony, as a stabilisation of power’. The media’s role in this process is described at length in Chomsky’s work on manufacturing consent (in Herman and Chomsky 2010). Listening therefore applies a much-needed critical perspective on how we theorize media studies inquiry. A further use for a listening frame in media studies is to explore the mediated interactions and engagements across difference. More useful than viewing listening as merely a tool for constructing consensus among media audiences is Bickford’s work on listening as building a path. She elaborates: We do not simply float over to another’s position in our heads; we create together a concrete worldly means of getting at each others’ perspectives. Or, rather, of getting as close as we can get. (Bickford 1996: 148)

This approach has been utilized in the work of O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher (2009) in their work on The Listening Project, a collaborative project involving cultural and media scholars and activists. They suggest that listening as path-building offers possibilities for media reform by providing spaces for meaningful interactions that span political, social,

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economic and cultural differences and inequalities. This frames mediated communication as ‘relational space of interacting practices and identities, a space of recognition and refusal, connection and contestation, representation and re-presentation’ (O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher 2009: 423). This interpretation of listening holds particular relevance to community and alternative media due to their commitment to representing the interests and worldviews of marginalized groups and providing a so-called ‘voice for the voiceless’.

Situating community radio and listening The growing attention to listening in media and cultural studies literature is promising, but the importance of such inquiry has an additional layer when focusing on community media. But before considering community radio specifically, it is worth problematizing the medium itself. Brecht, as discussed, levelled a famous criticism of radio, as did Adorno and Horkheimer (1997) who wrote of the telephone as a democratic medium and radio as an authoritarian one. More recently, Kate Lacey (2011: 10–11) linked these critiques to the ways in which democratic participation is linked to voice and not listening: Even those who would celebrate the democratic potential of radio would do so in terms of it providing information to enable subsequent political participation, or providing a platform from which to speak. Here again, listening is granted little status as a political activity in its own right.

In a medium like radio, where voice is privileged, we find ourselves hearing privileged voices. Fraser (1989: 164–5) observes that sociocultural means of communication are ‘organized in ways that are congruent with societal patterns of dominance and subordination’. Mainstream discursive spaces, like radio, are oriented towards specific articulations and foreclose opportunities for listening (Dutta 2014). The current media landscape is rife with inequality: in terms of both the content produced and those who have access to media production processes. This inequality has serious consequences: the range of alternative views is reduced, thus the complexity of social and political debate is reduced (Couldry 2006). Foreclosing discursive spaces allows the elite to reproduce the systemic, hegemonic inequalities that best serve them (Dutta 2014). Community radio, however, has long been an attempt at addressing both the one-way nature of radio as a medium, and the issue of who is able to exercise mediated voice. Indeed, the richness of community media is said to lie in their ‘potential as forces of resistance’ (Rodriguez 2001: 158). It is within these fundamental underpinnings of community radio that the importance of listening comes to the forefront. Community radio takes many forms around the world with national, regional and even neighbouring stations taking vastly different approaches to management, funding, staffing and broadcasting. There are, however, several defining tenets that can be drawn from the wealth of literature. Community radio stations are not-for-profit, they serve a specific

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community, and centre access and participation (see, among others, Atton 2001; Bosch 2014; Lewis 1993; Mtimde, Bonin and Opoku-Mensah 1998; Pavarala and Malik 2007; Rennie 2006). There are also the broader societal roles that community radio stations play within their communities: namely, to expand and diversify mediated spaces for democratic discourse and enacting citizenship. Atton (2001) suggests that a key aim of alternative media, including community radio, is to provide access to the media for marginalized groups on their own terms. Similarly, one of the most important theories underpinning community radio comes from the work of Clemencia Rodriguez on citizens’ media. Rodriguez (2001: 20) advocates for conceptualizing community or alternative media as ‘citizens’ media’, which refers to media that actively enact citizenship, contest social codes and structures, and involve media practices that are empowering to the communities involved. This involves taking a more nuanced view of the role of community radio and other forms of community media in society: rather than evaluating based on their ability to disrupt the megalithic mainstream media, it is more useful to explore ‘how citizens’ media activate subtle processes of fracture in the social, cultural and power spheres of everyday life’ (Rodriguez 2001: xiv). Through this lens, community radio is a radical departure from the one-way, authoritarian tool of information dissemination that radio as a medium is accused of being. The difference here lies at the intersections of traditional forms of media studies and active audience theories. Traditional media studies view audiences as passive recipients, where ruling-class values and messaging are accepted without question (Foxwell 2012): an approach that aligns with the simplistic definitions of listening discussed earlier, where the onus for listening lies solely on audiences. Active audience theories, in contrast, see audiences as having agency and the power to control how messages are interpreted and acted on (see Ang 2006; Hall 2002; Radway 2009; among others). Here the importance of listening on the part of the media outlets is particularly important: without it, there is no way of knowing how media messages are being received, interpreted, and if they are being acted on. Community radio is at a distinct advantage here. Common features of community radio stations – particularly ‘blurred boundaries between sender and receiver, closeness to the audience’s cultural codes, political idiosyncrasies, and non-commercial goals’ (Rodriguez 2001: 47) – situate broadcasters closer to, and part of, their audiences. Closeness to cultural codes and a lack of commercial motivations can assist in crafting messages relevant and tailored to audiences. Blurred boundaries between producers and audiences mean that listening may be easier, as community radio producers are, theoretically, at least, members of the communities to which they are speaking. This closeness to communities and blurred boundaries between producers and audiences are the result of community radio stations facilitating greater access to and participation in media production. These processes empower communities to represent themselves, tell stories relevant to their communities, and challenge the hegemony of mainstream media practices. This democratization of the media takes place through direct challenges with explicit political goals, but also indirectly through experimental and transformative practices, roles and processes within community media (Atton 2001). In this way, community media, including community radio, create ‘fissures in the

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mediascape’ (Rodriguez 2001). These fissures occur where there is community will to take action towards communication goals, a social, historical and political context that poses challenges to be overcome, and creative strategies and approaches to making the most of the exposed fissures (Rodriguez 2001: 164). Tacchi (2003: 2183) elaborates and describes these fissures as spaces of ‘increased and more democratic access, freedom of expression and operation, as well as creativity and innovation’. These fissures in the mediascape are borne out of a failure to listen. Where powerful groups and institutions set media agendas and dictate whose voices are heard, and participation in media production is strictly limited, listening is performative at best and coercive at worst. Citizens’ media, as a theory, offers a framework for a radical rethinking of the power relations embedded within both the acts of media production and the privileging of voice within radio as a medium. It also offers a way of understanding the democratic role of listening in community media and the importance of critically engaging with a more nuanced, considered interpretation of listening.

Listening as ethical practice Listening clearly plays a significant role in the theoretical underpinnings of community radio and is a key differentiating feature as compared to mainstream radio broadcasting. There is, however, a further dimension: listening on the part of community radio stations, not just audiences, represents an ethical commitment, not just a professional practice. Downing (2003: 632–3) considers listening as ‘central to the alternative media process and must be the ethical dimension at the heart of our models’. If we consider community radio to be a form of citizens’ media – a space where citizenship is enacted and communities are empowered – then listening as an ethical value is particularly important. Where social polarizations, economic inequalities and oppression impact media narratives, and groups are silenced and excluded from democratic discourse in the public sphere, listening is ethical practice (Wasserman 2013). Attention to listening shifts the focus and assumed responsibility for change from marginalized groups on to the structures, institutions and power relations that dictate whose voices are heard in the media (Dreher 2009b). Listening contributes to linking individual stories and experiences with broader social and historical forces (Back 2007). In doing so, community radio stations can empower communities to ask important questions about their social, economic and political circumstances. But it all starts with listening. If community radio stations are to fulfil their democratic function as citizens’ media, critical, empathetic listening is an ethical imperative. If listening is to be ethical and empathetic rather than extractive, there is much to be learned from the kinds of listening that take place in social relationships. Social relationships play a crucial role in building and maintaining the communities around community radio stations. Social contact is considered by some to be a key defining feature of community (Carpentier, Lie and Servaes 2007). In my own work, I have seen the power of social relationships and social listening in informing, directly and indirectly,

Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio

the work of community radio broadcasters and reinforcing links between station staff and their audiences (see Backhaus 2021). Social listening empowers broadcasters and volunteers to expand their networks and tangibly contribute to the issues and discussions in their community, but it also often involves a different type of listening, one that centres humanity and caring. Positioning listening as an act of caring is a radical approach in the contemporary media landscape, where listening is just as easily co-opted to be performative, extractive and purely nominal. This listening environment has been described by Dutta (2014: 76) as a ‘façade of listening’, where the language of listening is manipulated ‘to fundamentally silence and erase the opportunities of participation of the margins’. Listening as an act of radical caring, in some cases embedded in social relationships, but not always, represents a significant rejection of this façade and a move towards a more empathetic listening. Palmer-Mehta (2016: 1477–8), in analysing Andrea Dworkin’s work, argues that listening should be viewed as ‘sacred’ and lists advice for those who aim to engage in a radical, caring listening: enact listening with no expectation of personal gain; recognize that failing to listen enables oppressive structures to reproduce; listen to those who have ‘no claim’ to speak; and recognize that personal stories have the potential to provide concrete knowledge that may serve as the basis of challenging social structures and motivating collective action.

This commitment to challenging oppressive structures and engaging in collective action is of particular importance for broadcasters as representatives of their communities. If broadcasters are to speak for, or on behalf of, their communities without ventriloquizing, listening must be grounded in friendship and a sincere dedication to liberation (Manyozo 2017). Social relationships and a shared commitment to emancipatory action offer a useful way of situating caring listening as ethical practice in community radio. While social relationships and their implied shared values and cultural codes may easily lend themselves to caring listening, by no means should they be the sole purview. This would result in the kinds of echo chambers that are so prevalent on social media. Back (2007: 23) argues that active listening should be challenging and involve engaging in ‘critical dialogue with one’s enemies as well as one’s allies’. Husband (1996: 205) takes a slightly different approach and instead writes of ‘the right to be understood’. After all, listening, in and of itself, is not inherently liberatory (Palmer-Mehta 2016). While listening is an act of attending, it is understanding that represents ‘an act of empathetic comprehension, a willing searching after the other’s intention and message’ (Husband 2009: 441). Understanding, however, is affected by how we listen – the kinds of orientation we bring and our openness to difference (Murru 2016). Listening that is self-serving, performative or otherwise a façade for selffocused motivations cannot result in meaningful, empathetic understanding. Similarly, listening among friends, while it offers a blueprint for ethical, empathetic listening, does not represent an emancipatory practice that aligns with a citizens’ media approach to community radio. While a failure to listen leads community radio broadcasters and stations down a path well-trodden by mainstream media, the ‘richness’ of community media is lost where they are used as a ‘one-dimensional static platform’ by a chorus of identical voices (Rodriguez 2001: 158). Openness to difference, a willingness to engage in

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challenging, critical dialogue and ‘moving ourselves to the background’, as Bickford (1996: 24) puts it, are key to a listening that is both critical and empathetic. This is the kind of listening that represents ethical practice for community radio stations and broadcasters if they are to fulfil their democratic potential as citizens’ media.

Future directions for listening research Framing discussions in light of citizens’ media and listening as ethical practice highlights the need to think critically about how we theorize and understand listening, particularly within contemporary media systems. In a media landscape where voice and participation appear to be paramount, critical attention to listening serves to highlight the structures and limits of supposedly democratic media. This is particularly evident given the growing power and influence of social media – a supposedly egalitarian online space that, in reality, exposes the frayed edges of voice and democratic speech within capitalist structures. Community radio is certainly not immune to these influences. The pressures of commercialization and competing within neoliberal structures affect even the most resolute community radio station and seep into policy and practice (see Backhaus 2022; King and Rahemtullah 2019). This is not necessarily cause for despair, but rather highlights the importance of critical attention to listening within community radio research and media studies more broadly. Based on these discussions, I suggest three streams of future research on media listening: listening in; listening out; and listening to. While my focus is on community radio, these streams could equally be applied across media formats and outlets, with insightful and valuable results. First, listening in calls for a focus on what is going on within the community radio stations themselves. Listening in applies a critical lens to the internal structures and processes of community radio stations and their broadcasters. While there has been work conducted on broadcaster motivations (Milan 2008; Order 2017), the economic tensions of community radio work and volunteerism (Gordon 2015) and governance (Mhlanga 2009), the internal listening practices of stations and broadcasters remain unexplored. Listening in also involves seeking out stories and voices from within stations that have otherwise been neglected. Birdsall and Carmi (2021) apply a ‘listening in’ framework to explore questions of infrastructure and the role of technical staff as creative contributors, as well as moving beyond the ‘auteur legacy’ that sees agency largely ascribed to highprofile broadcasters and personalities. Further, listening in involves a critical introspection on issues of access, participation and decolonization within media outlets. Despite the radical roots and left-wing leanings of many stations, particularly in the West, structures of racism and colonialism persist throughout management structures and processes. A critical ‘listening in’ aims to highlight and critique these structures that may be consciously and unconsciously engrained within stations. Next, there is a need to explore how media, particularly community radio, listen out. A focus on listening out situates media outlets within their broader contextual environments. This form of listening may not be overt, but rather implicit and embedded within everyday practices. A

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listening out research agenda aims to interrogate the broader environment in which community radio stations operate. Community radio stations operate under unique political, economic and legislative conditions depending on where they are located. These conditions significantly influence the work that stations are able to do. Some initial research in this area highlighted the complex interplay of social and economic structures, and their impact on the day-to-day operations of community radio: such explorations highlight both the barriers to listening and to subsequent action (Backhaus 2021). Further, there has been some important work conducted into policy landscapes and their influence on the development of community radio sectors in South Asia (Raghunath 2020). Broadly though, scholarly attention to structural conditions and their impact on community radio stations, broadcasters and their audiences is limited. An additional aspect of listening out requires paying attention to the political economy that stations operate within. In her work on community radio and social change, Juliet Fox (2019) calls for greater attention to political economy of communication in studies of community and alternative media. This has been a somewhat neglected area within community radio studies, with the overwhelming majority of research taking a cultural studies approach. Fenton (2007: 21) advocates a holistic approach, blending a cultural studies approach with political economy, and reminds us that ‘cultural consumption is a social act; it is always affected by the social context and the social relations in which it occurs’. Exploring the structures surrounding community radio through a political economy lens has the potential to illuminate the varying pressures facing community radio stations and their broadcasters, and contribute to arguments about the influence of neoliberal, capitalist systems on community and alternative media outlets. Finally, listening to is an area rich with potential for future research. This refers to how stations and broadcasters listen to their audiences, communities and broader environment. There has been extensive theorizing in this area: Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier (2007) employed Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) concept of the rhizome to explain the connections between community media and other aspects of civil society. Empirical research, however, is limited. There have been studies of community radio stations working alongside organizations, groups and social movements (see Anderson and Bedford 2017; King 2017; Rodriguez 2001; Santana and Carpentier 2010; among others), but the nature of the relationships and communicative processes remain relatively unexplored. Listening to, however, implies a further dimension beyond just the interactions and relationships between stations and organizations. Listening to implies close attention and compassionate, empathetic engagement with others (Back 2007; Rice 2015). What this means for research is the need to frame explorations of listening in community radio in terms of ethics and caring. What does it mean to listen ethically and empathetically in the contemporary media environment? While the theoretical underpinnings of community radio imply that this should be possible and, indeed, commonplace, community radio stations still operate within neoliberal media markets. There are significant structural limitations and barriers to ethical ‘listening to’, which further reinforces the need for more research in this space. A further, more abstract, area for future research under the broad category of listening to is how community radio stations listen to the environment around them. This has

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particular relevance given the compounding impacts of climate change around the world, impacts that disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalized groups (Nixon 2011). It is these same groups that community radio stations have a commitment to serving, therefore there is an ethical imperative to listen to the environmental changes happening around us. Despite the aforementioned limitations of radio as a democratic medium, radio is also uniquely placed to capture and share the findings of listening out to the environment. There is an underutilized role for community and alternative media within the environmental humanities, a commitment to listening out with a focus on the environmental and the non-human may offer transdisciplinary opportunities.

Conclusion Listening represents one of the most fundamental building blocks of communication and our lives. We learn because we listen, we listen so we can speak. Yet somehow the importance of listening has been overshadowed in a world besotted with voice. Listening is taken for granted and seen as a passive activity or as simply the absence of speech. In reality, listening embodies complex cognitive and sociocultural processes, as well as a commitment towards actively seeking to understand the perspectives, experiences and worldviews of others. Given the prevailing attitude towards listening in broader society, it is not entirely surprising to see the same neglect in media studies as well as community radio studies. This chapter has problematized dominant definitions of listening, both generally and as applied within media studies, and has situated the importance of critical attention to listening within community radio as citizens’ media framework. A citizens’ media framework offers a useful way of conceptualizing the role of community radio in terms of democratic deliberation and democratized access to the media. The role of listening in this space is particularly evident where citizens’ media are contrasted with mainstream media: the former are characterized by blurred boundaries between producers and audiences, while the latter maintains a distance from audiences and relies on elite sources and institutions. Having established community radio as a form of citizens’ media and highlighted the importance of a more nuanced interpretation of listening, this chapter has argued for considering listening as ethical practice in community radio. There are several reasons for this. Attention to listening shifts the onus for change from marginalized groups towards oppressive structures, institutions and conditions. Further, community radio producers and stations, as representatives of their communities have a responsibility to listen so as to tell the stories of their communities. Social relationships between producers and their communities, offer a blueprint for a caring, empathetic listening that acts as the basis for challenging embedded unjust social structures and inspiring collective action. Of course, listening cannot just take place among friends. There is also an ethical imperative to listen to difference and dissent, which should be challenging and difficult, but also entered into with the same commitment to caring listening that would take place among friends. This represents a significant challenge

Intersections of Voice and Listening in Community Radio

for community radio stations but, as a form of citizens’ media occupying hard-won fissures in the hegemonic mediascape, they have the most potential and promise when it comes to engaging ethically and meaningfully across difference. Finally, this chapter has drawn on the preceding discussions to suggest a research agenda for future explorations of listening. I propose that future research on media listening focus on three broad streams: listening in; listening out; and listening to. Though the focus of this chapter is community radio, these streams could equally be applied across media formats and outlets, with insightful and valuable results. A listening in research agenda explores the internal processes and structures within community radio stations themselves. There should be particular critical attention paid to issues of diversity, decolonization and decentring whiteness. Next, there is a need to explore how community radio stations listen out, that is, how they engage with the broader environment in which they operate. This includes examining the social, cultural and legislative environment, as well as applying a holistic approach to research that integrates both cultural studies and political economy to truly explore how listening takes places between community radio stations and their contextual setting. Finally, there is a need for research that explores how community radio stations listen to individuals, groups and organizations, where listening to implies an attentive, compassionate and ethical form of listening. This research area also includes scope for listening to the non-human – environmental listening and community radio’s role in communicating and representing the environment is sure to grow in importance as the climate crisis continues to worsen. Listening represents a rich and important field of research, not just in community radio, but also across media studies more broadly. Listening is a process that is fundamental to the human experience, and central to understanding community radio’s role as citizens’ media, yet it is chronically undervalued and overlooked. This chapter has argued for a renewed appreciation for and focus on listening, not just from those on the other side of the radio set, but on the part of all involved in community radio. Listening gives us access to the stories, perspectives and worldviews of others, the first step towards understanding across difference. In a contemporary media landscape characterized by polarization, clickbait and who can speak the loudest, listening on the part of media outlets represents a radical and ethical act. Listening across difference and linking individual stories and experiences to systemic factors is key to driving the kinds of systemic change needed across many areas of society. Listening is not only the first step, but an ongoing commitment to valuing others and working towards change.

Works cited Adorno, T. W. and M. Horkheimer (1997), Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso. Anderson, H. and C. Bedford (2017), ‘What I Know Now: Radio as a Means of Empowerment for Women of Lived Prison Experience’ Journal of Alternative and Community Media 2: 14–27.

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Ang, I. (2006), Desperately Seeking the Audience, London: Routledge. Atton, C. (2001), Alternative Media, London: Sage. Back, L. (2007), The Art of Listening, Oxford: Berg. Backhaus, B. (2021), Polyphony: Listening to the Listeners of Community Radio, Delhi: Routledge. Backhaus, B (2022), ‘“Just Like Us”: Community Radio Broadcasters and the On-air Performance of Community Identity’, Continuum 36 (4): 581–94. Bailey, O. G., B. Cammaerts and N. Carpentier (2007), Understanding Alternative Media, Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Bassel, L. (2017), The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life, Cham: Springer. Bickford, S. (1996), The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Birdsall, C. and E. Carmi (2021), ‘Feminist Avenues for Listening in: Amplifying Silenced Histories of Media and Communication’, Women’s History Review June: 1–19. Blackman, L. (2012), Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation, London: Sage. Bosch, T. (2014), ‘Community Radio’, in K. Wilkins, R. Obregon and T. Tufte (eds), The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 426–38. Brecht, B. (2005), ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’, in D. Holmes (ed.), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, London: Sage Publications, pp. 29–31. Carpentier, N., R. Lie and J. Servaes (2007), ‘Making Community Media Work: Community Media Identities and their Articulation in an Antwerp Neighbourhood Development Project’, in J. Servaes (ed.), Communication for Development and Social Change, New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, pp. 347–73. Couldry, N. (2006), Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics and Agency in an Uncertain World, Oxford: Paradigm Publishers. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1988), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Downing, J. D. H. (2003), ‘Audiences and Readers of Alternative Media: The Absent Lure of the Virtually Unknown’, Media, Culture & Society 25 (5): 625–45. Dreher, T. (2009a), ‘Eavesdropping with Permission: The Politics of Listening for Safer Speaking Spaces’ Borderlands 8 (1): 1–21. Dreher, T. (2009b), ‘Listening Across Difference: Media and Multiculturalism Beyond the Politics of Voice’, Continuum 23 (4): 445–58. Dutta, M. J. (2014), ‘A Culture-Centered Approach to Listening: Voices of Social Change’, International Journal of Listening 28 (2): 67–81. Fenton, N. (2007), ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media’, in E. Devereux (ed.), Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates, London: Sage Publications, pp. 7–31. Fox, J. (2019), Community Radio’s Amplification of Communication for Social Change, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Foxwell, K. (2012), ‘The Rise of Community Mass Media: Some Implications for Classic Media Theory’, in J. Gordon (ed.), Community Radio in the 21st Century, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 133–52. Fraser, N. (1989), Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Gordon, J. (2015), ‘The Economic Tensions Faced by Community Radio Broadcasters’, in C. Atton (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media, London: Routledge, pp. 265–75. Habermas, J. (1984), The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1991), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hall, S. (2002), ‘The Television Discourse; Encoding and Decoding’, in D. McQuail (ed.), McQuail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, London: Sage Publications, pp. 302–9. Herman, E. S. and N. Chomsky (2010), Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media London: Random House. Husband, C. (1996), ‘The Right to be Understood: Conceiving the Multi‐Ethnic Public Sphere’, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 9 (2): 205–15. Husband, C. (2009) ‘Between Listening and Understanding’, Continuum 23 (4): 441–3. King, G. (2017), ‘History of Struggle: The Global Story of Community Broadcasting Practices, or a Brief History of Community Radio’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 12 (2): 18–36. King, G. and O.-S. Rahemtullah (2019), ‘Community Radio Contradictions in Canada: Learning from Volunteers Impacted by Commercialising Policies and Practices’, Journal of Alternative & Community Media 4 (4): 20–36. Lacey, K. (2011), ‘Listening Overlooked: An Audit of Listening as a Category in the Public Sphere’, Javnost-The Public 18 (4): 5–20. Lewis, P. (1993), Alternative Media: Linking Global and Local, Paris: UNESCO. Manyozo, L. (2016), ‘From Speaking to Listening’, Wumen Bagung 1: 3–5. Manyozo, L. (2017), Communicating Development with Communities, London and New York: Routledge. Mhlanga, B. (2009), ‘The Community in Community Radio: A Case Study of XK FM, Interrogating Issues of Community Participation, Governance, and Control’, Ecquid novi 30 (1): 58–72. Milan, S. (2008), ‘What Makes you Happy? Insights into Feelings and Muses of Community Radio Practitioners’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 5 (1): 25–43. Mouffe, C. (1999), ‘Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?’, Social Research 66 (3): 745–758. Mtimde, L., M. H. Bonin and A. Opoku-Mensah (1998), What is Community Radio?: A Resource Guide, AMARC Africa. Murru, M. F. (2016), ‘Listening, Temporalities and Epistemology: A Hermeneutical Perspective on Mediated Civic Engagement’, Participations Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 13 (1): 392–401. Nixon, R. (2011), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. O’Donnell, P., J. Lloyd and T. Dreher (2009), ‘Listening, Pathbuilding and Continuations: A Research Agenda for the Analysis of Listening’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23 (4): 423–39. Order, S. (2017), Community Radio: The Joy of Social Connection, Perth, Australia: Murdoch University.

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Palmer-Mehta, V. (2016), ‘Theorizing Listening as a Tool for Social Change: Andrea Dworkin’s Discourses on Listening’, International Journal of Communication 10: 4176–92. Pavarala, V. and K. K. Malik (2007), Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India, New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Penman, R. and S. Turnbull (2012), ‘From Listening … to the Dialogic Realities of Participatory Democracy’, Continuum 26 (1): 61–72. Purdy, M. (1991), ‘Listening and Community: The Role of Listening in Community Formation’, International Journal of Listening 5 (1): 51–67. Radway, J. A. (2009), Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Raghunath, P. (2020), Community Radio Policies in South Asia, Singapore: Springer. Rennie, E. (2006), Community Media: A Global Introduction, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Rice, T. (2015), ‘[9] Listening’, in D. Novak and M. Sakakeeny (eds), Keywords in Sound, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 99–111. Rodriguez, C. (2001), Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of Citizens’ Media, New Jersey: Hampton Press. Santana, M. and N. Carpentier (2010), ‘Mapping the Rhizome. Organizational and Informational Networks of Two Brussels Alternative Radio Stations’, Telematics and Informatics 27 (2): 162–76. Tacchi, J. (2003), ‘Promise of Citizens’ Media: Lessons from Community Radio in Australia and South Africa’, Economic and Political Weekly 38 (22): 2183–7. Thomas, P. N. and E. van de Fliert (2015), Communication, Power and Social Change, Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change, Cham: Springer. Waller, L., T. Dreher and K. McCallum (2015), ‘The Listening Key: Unlocking the Democratic Potential of Indigenous Participatory Media’, Media International Australia 154 (1): 57–66. Wasserman, H. (2013), ‘Journalism in a New Democracy: The Ethics of Listening’, Communication 39 (1): 67–84. Wolvin, A. D. and C. G. Coakley (1985), Listening, Dubuque, IA: WC Brown.

8 The Listener of the Future Exploring Public Service Broadcasters’ Strategies about Radio Apps Marta Perrotta

Introduction This chapter explores the strategies by which some European public service radio stations relate to listeners and design their listening experience, as the sound consumption scenario is enriched by digital audio sources and the competition for listening time becomes increasingly fierce. The recent boom in the audio industry and digital audio market (IAB Europe 2020) has seen both public (Berry 2020; Martin 2021) and private radio broadcasters having to respond to a highly articulated competition from commercial platforms for listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks and other audio services (reading of press articles, bedtime stories, etc.) for free or for a fee. These platforms have developed dedicated applications, investing a lot of resources in contents, metadata strategies, algorithms and in designing the experience of fruition – flexible, agile and personalized – on smartphones, in the car or at home, with the help of smart speakers. Certainly, most of the European public service broadcasters, already engaged in a long and elaborate transition to digital – and after overcoming the ‘digital dilemma’ (Anderson 2012; Fernández-Quijada 2017) between terrestrial and internet-based digitization in favour of hybrid solutions – have taken up this challenge with commitment, but with what idea of the listener in mind? What distinctive principles of the public role played have been prevalent in guiding the adoption of effective solutions to digital competition? What strategies were in place to reimagine the content access experience? What were they inspired by? What types of audience did they choose to most carefully target, if that? In short, how have public service media responded to the challenge posed by apps like Spotify?

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Literature review In order to frame the topic, it was necessary to put together theoretical contributions that addressed some of the most relevant issues for the research question. This includes the interface concept with reference to radio (Austin 2016), the affordances of apps for listening to podcasts and radio-like content (Berry 2020; Morris and Patterson 2015), the meanings of the radio experience (Chan-Olmsted, Wang and Hwang 2020; Hilmes 2013; Hirschmeier and Beule 2019), the relationship between Public Service Media (PSM) and third-party platforms (Martin 2021), the distinctiveness (Fernández-Quijada 2017) and universality (Van Den Bulke and Moe 2018) of public services in their experience of personalization and in driving technological innovation. The literature on the concept of the listener and on ways of listening in the digital and social media age (Bonini 2014; Lacey 2013, 2014) provides a background to the above questions and helps in the elaboration and interpretation of answers from the questioned sources. Following Hilmes (2013), in the shift from analogue transmission to digital streaming, from radio sets to websites and apps, existing practices could be made more ‘visible and material, substituting a coherent screen-based interface for a set of prior practices that had been scattered and evanescent’ (Hilmes 2013: 48) and turning radio into a visual experience conveyed by texts and images that come along with the sounds. In a fascinating analysis of the concept of interface, based on a semiotic interpretation, Austin wondered how important is ‘the physical interface to the experience of radio’ (2016: 339), stressing how the various digital tools that make the relationship between radio and listeners possible have been inspired by the very first radio interface – coded in a series of analogue features like a selection dial, a scale as a graphical representation of the spectrum, an antenna: ‘is our interaction with radio partially bound up with physical tuning dials and antennae or is our experience of radio purely based on the ways we relate to the content as the actual physical interface fades into the background of our lives?’ (Austin 2016: 339). The article opens up questions about the evolution of the concept of the listener, and in particular how much of the past and present remains in the design of the listening experience in the future. It’s no coincidence that the first BBC iPlayer Radio interface, released in 2012 and then replaced by the BBC Sounds app in 2019, had a large dial that allowed the listener to select which radio to listen to live; a dial that, in the BBC Sounds app for example, is not present anymore (Berry 2020: 66): in its place, in fact, always in the foreground, there is a channel selection system running along a rounded track – this is the only visual reminder of the previous dial. Previously, similar reflections had emerged from Morris and Patterson’s (2015) analysis, which has to do with the affordances of podcast listening apps and their role as cultural intermediaries with respect to the usage and consumption practices of radio-like sound: ‘through playback controls to scrub, edit-out silence, and equalize podcast episodes, mobile apps allow users an increased sonic interactivity. These features work in tandem with cloud syncing technologies to encourage listener consumption of a steady stream of mobile sound media across devices through their everyday life’ (Morris and Patterson

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2015: 229); for the authors, the listening experience becomes truly efficient and highly personalized, but at the same time it turns into the consumption of visual commodities ‘packaged and curated for listeners through recommendations that cater to personalised taste, while also seemingly reinforcing the widespread consumption of a narrow range of programmes’ (ibid.). Without dwelling too much on how critical the process described is to the evolution of the promises of radical transformation of broadcasting culture represented by podcasting – at least in its initial phase – it is interesting to note that the features of the early podcasting apps have almost entirely merged into the forms of consumption of the radio stream and then of Audio-on-Demand (AOD) contents that radio stations have gradually implemented in their digital transition. Berry (2020) describes the launch of BBC Sounds as not only a simple ‘redesign of the interface used by listeners to consume BBC radio content’, as the iPlayer Radio has been before, but a brand new platform to be used as ‘single point of interaction for listeners, including access to live and on-demand feeds of all BBC services’ (Berry 2020: 65). Besides providing consumption of BBC audio content across various synchronized devices, the app plays an active role in proposing and recommending content based on previous interactions, and most importantly no longer categorizes its offer in relation to the origin of the content – whether radio, music or podcasts specifically designed for the AOD offer. The BBC’s approach reminds us what Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013) would call ‘stickiness’, aggregating attention in centralized places, a concept that is dynamically contrasted with spreadability, the modern virality of content expanding its reach as far as possible. Moreover, Berry states that apps can be considered as a digital iteration of broadcasters’ policies and responses ‘to the changing dynamics of the radio landscape where public service broadcasting is reflecting on its role’ (2020: 67). BBC Sounds can be considered the instrument with which a far-sighted public service corporation engages with the specificities of podcasting – ‘a self regulating and generating media form in its own right’ (Hancock and McMurtry 2018: 100) – rather than constituting a simple ‘remediation of radio’. The introduction of this platform for medium-specific content and distribution is a response to social changes (younger people are not listening to enough radio) and the political desire and responsibility to engage with media forms (podcasts) that they might respond to. Since the advent of digital audio, younger audiences have definitely changed the way they consume sound media, apps like Spotify being the most-used to listen to music and also to podcasts (Mulligan 2020),1 at least in the majority of European countries. According to Chan-Olmsted, Wang and Hwang (2020: 223), ‘millennials see broadcast radio platforms, especially apps, as different from music streaming services, but have the potential to complement the latter’. The study – conducted over a population of millennials who are regular users of broadcast radio apps – finds that the perception of greater control and selection of music content and the overall listening experience makes music streaming platforms preferable to radio in many cases, especially to satisfy audiences’s escapism and socialization needs, while radio is still preferred to entertain and inform (Chan-Olmsted, Wang and Hwang 2020: 223). Other research exploring how radio is experienced and how

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it can be transformed into a digital service is that of Hirschmeier and Beule (2018, 2019) and Hirschmeier, Beule and Tilly (2020) who have investigated consumption patterns of what they call the ‘classic radio experience’ (Hirschmeier and Beule 2019), based on thirtyseven characteristics that fall within a detailed categorization: ‘attractiveness of content’, ‘attractiveness of editorial preparation’, ‘interactivity’, ‘motivation of usage’, ‘advantages over alternatives’ (ibid. 11–12). For example, the authors note that in-between content pieces, moderation, jingles and so on, represent a large part of the value of the radio experience both in terms of content and because they are made by human voices which are the ‘major component of popular media’ (ibid. 14). They also report that the discovery of new music and the rediscovery of old music are still very important to listeners, and that ‘current motivation for turning on the radio e.g., to have background entertainment […] or to structure one’s day […] should also be considered for future radio services’ (ibid. 16). Lastly, the advantages of choosing radio over other media lie, according to the researchers, in the fact that it is easy to access, free of charge, has no data consumption and does not require configuration: retaining these elements in the radio listening experience through an app – which relies on a connection and often requires a login – is a big challenge for those involved in designing digital online radio, and specifically for public services, whose role as drivers of digital innovation is particularly stressed in the requirements of public media remits (Fernández-Quijada 2017: 77). A final focus concerns the literature that has dealt with public service and algorithms and the notion of universality as something that can be both enhanced and threatened by customization and personalization. Although it does not focus on the specifics of radio services, Van Den Bulck and Moe’s survey (2018) covers many of Europe’s PSM, investigating the way in which the personalization strategy operates and the extent to which it is directly or inversely linked to the objectives of universality – while there are some PSM that do not consider personalization a tool linked to the objectives of universality. Going deep into the opinions about recommendation systems of two specific examples – the Norwegian and the Flemish ones – the authors note that for one of them ‘recommendation is considered a sensitive point because you create a filter and encourage binge viewing while Public Service values involve encouraging people to view different genres’ (Van Den Bulke and Moe 2018: 886–7) and consuming ‘more than just the content they are interested in’ (ibid.). The authors claim that public services are trying to achieve universality ‘both in its understanding as universal appeal and as beyond the mainstream’ (ibid.: 890). Similarly, Martin (2021) questioned the ways in which public services (on both sides of the Atlantic ocean) have progressively relied on third-party platforms and their algorithms to realize universality goals and remain relevant. Its main conclusions look bitterly at the need for public services to consider the global platform route as a secondary route to the necessary redetermination of the relevance and legitimacy of PSM through alternative formulas to commercial services. Bonini and Mazzoli (2022) go even further by suggesting an alternative approach to the dominant models, capable of radically rethinking the principles and rewriting the sense of universality as currently understood by public services.

The Listener of the Future

Methodology and survey design The research methodology underpinning this study is qualitative and incorporates a mix of secondary and primary sources, like data from internal organizational documents and semi-structured qualitative interviews to executives and managers of the digital area of selected2 public radio services3 to understand their institutions’ vision about the future of radio listeners. An interview with the EBU’s head of radio completes the set of interviews. From the literature review and the study of internal documents of some of the selected radio stations, the semi-structured questionnaire that was proposed to the respondents addresses useful elements to understand what kind of listener is imagined in the strategy of defining the AOD offer and in the app for its fruition. The questions that were asked leave room for the exploration of several issues: the type of interface designed for the listener – whether inspired by that of the main third-party platforms or linked in some way, visual or haptic, to the more classic radio experience; the way in which the contents are presented and the identity of the radio is recalled; the way in which the whole experience of use is shaped; the strength of the visual elements in the overall AOD strategy; the personalization of services and the algorithmic management of listeners’ preferences, the relationship with third parties, and the elements of continuity for listeners – in the terms intended by Hirschmeier and Beule (2019) – between the radio of yesterday and that of tomorrow. Interviews were conducted with a range of industry figures, including commissioning editors, channel managers, audio strategists and directors of digital content.4 The talks were recorded with the consent of the participants and lasted between forty-five and seventy minutes; finally, they were transcribed and processed with NVivo in order to map the field investigated and identify the main thematic nodes of the issue.

European public service radios and their apps If we look at the landscape of public service radio stations operating in Europe, and especially to the examples chosen for this study, we can see that most of them are involved in a strategy of updating and redefining their audio-on-demand offer, in which listeners are offered linear radio in live or catch-up form and online-only content – mostly podcasts and curated playlists. It is widely believed that the years of the COVID-19 pandemic intensified and accelerated this process of innovating audio-on-demand offer, services and apps, along with strategies to reach listeners through third-party platforms, now well-established players in the audio ecosystem. The process of defining the strategy therefore concerns both the app and the contents, their availability and how to promote them to the listener.

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The weight of video in the sound app strategy Most European public broadcaster companies have opted to develop dedicated platforms for listening to radio and watching video content, although many of them are integrated companies, with both radio and TV services: indeed, as EBU data show, 37 per cent of TV and Radio public service media mix both media in one app.5 The sound app ARD Audiothek, for example, was in the beginning a side product of ARD Mediathek, which combined audio and video; it was then decided, in 2017, to separate the apps and the brands, creating two different user experiences and environments, where what was developed for video is a benchmark for audio. Prior to the launch of the new app for AOD offerings, Rai has integrated a 24/7 live radio channel in the VOD app RaiPlay, experimenting with visual radio: Radio Rai has transformed its own entertainment channel – Radio 2 – into a multi-platform radio that can be seen and heard from any device. Internal data show that its promotion on RaiPlay has proved to be of great appeal to the native video audience, and has made it one of the first television channels to be accessed by the app audience. But the audio-on-demand app that Rai has recently released (RaiPlay Sound launched in December 2021) is a service that doesn’t feature video content, not even the native content of visual radio (Radio 2). VRT, the Flemish broadcaster, is in the midst of a transition (which will last until 2025) from an ecosystem in which there are several apps for listening to linear radio channels, to a single app that integrates both audio and video (VRTnu). ‘Data from combined radio and video behaviors will be very rich and will let us know our users and, with their consent, apply information from video routines to audio ones’ (Lardon 2022). The Swedish public service, a radio-only company, has focused on audio with its SR Play app since 2016, the year in which the previous app, dating back to 2008 was replaced: as stated by Granryd: within this global and digital context, Sveriges Radio needed both to have a specific reason for being there, and to give the audience a reason for choosing SR among so many other services. We decided not to try to be multimedia but, as a radio company, to have audio at the core of our innovation strategy, at its focus. Which means that we still do some text, some video and some footage, of course, but all the innovation tries to get the audience to actually start to listen to Sveriges Radio, not to read or to watch. This is what we can do best. (Granryd 2021)

Somewhere between the choice of a single app and two totally separate paths is the position of RTVE (with the radio brand RNE) and DR, where radio and TV platforms are two sections of the same site and viewing and listening apps coexist. So for some of the PSM surveyed, the listener of the future is and should be also a viewer – perhaps a viewer who is not used to listening to radio and audio content but whose viewing data may be useful for profiling – whereas for others, the aim is to bring the listener into an exclusive relationship that enhances and develops the specific power of audio.

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Copy-pasting linear to on-demand When broadcasters design their apps for audio-on-demand content, the discussion that opens up at strategic level concerns the opportunity for the platform to provide an offer that completely follows the linear offer of the company or rather to express a different offer – either complementary to the linear one, or totally divergent. ‘That is the main difference between the broadcasters, the core question that makes the platform specific’ (Kudláčová 2022). On one side there are broadcasters like VRT that are ‘creating a unique experience for on demand content, based on the listeners’ interests and aggregated by themes and topics’ (Lardon 2022) and targeting people without a knowledge of what VRT is broadcasting on air; on the other side there are broadcasters like RNE that reflect the stations’ portfolio and branding in the online environment, keeping reference to the radio stations because they need to strengthen their visibility in the digital environment as well. ‘Then you have something like BBC Sounds, whose main thing when opening the app is still the player for radio, with strong visibility given to station brands; but at the same time they also have contents promoted by genres – comedy, true crime, drama – so they’re trying to mix both of the approaches’ (Kudláčová 2022). This leads to the consideration of the importance of the brand in the creation of the listener’s experience by the broadcaster. Currently, according to the EBU, station brand is the main category for organizing content on PSM platforms:6 some of them choose to keep the linear brands relevant to invite listeners in the on-demand environment, like RNE and also SR Play. Others – namely DRLyd, ARD Audiothek, RaiPlay Sound and soon also VRTnu – are pushing the identity of the platform brand, avoiding explicit reference to the linear channels. Regardless of the approach chosen, almost all apps offer the possibility to explore content based on elements such as topic and genre, with the idea of reaching out to those who are not used to listening to a radio station, but who through unbranded – or weakly branded – content may perhaps discover a radio presenter and his/her world: We don’t want to throw away the power of brands, because our linear radios – Studio Brussel, MNM or Radio1 – really mean something to people. In order not to lose the strength of the brand we can do something with the curation, so we remove the brand on the podcasts produced by radios but we say: ‘Hey, Michèle (Cuvelier) from Studio Brussel has a new podcast, check it out.’ But we don’t want to capture the podcast in a close environment. (Lardon 2022)

Channel brands and personalities, alternatively or together, can be tools for managing the transition from a model of app and experience more focused on the linear identity of radios, to a ‘stickiness’ model, as Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013) put it. All the interviewees underline how this process of progressive eclipse of the visibility of the single channels – both of their linear offer and of their contribution to the on-demand production – is subordinate to the cooperation of all the subjects involved, an objective that is not always easy to achieve, due to the different articulation of the organizational structure that each broadcaster has set up to support the platform.

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As the workforce behind the AOD is subject to several variables – centralization/ decentralization of figures,7 greater or lesser dedication to editorial, product development or software-related aspects, corporate budget for the whole operation – the results also vary accordingly: for a hundred years of linear radio thinking we were exclusively focused on brands. Our different stations were the focus of everything, and every project had to fit into those brands. And then, we were finding ourselves in a situation where those brands didn’t mean the same for our digital audience as they did for a linear audience. For an organisation that is so old and so into its own routines as DR, washing away those brands and then trying to take a user perspective on what the user is asking for, and prefers, and maintain it has been very difficult … A lot of ideas, ideas that didn’t have a home before. I think it’s just a different name, but a different name sometimes really sets you free, because it makes you think about things in different ways. (Godsk Hansen 2021)

In the digital offer, complementary audiences are sought to those of the linear portfolio, and therefore the identities of the radio channels take a back seat to the single brand, notwithstanding the specificity: ‘even in relations with third-party platforms, there is only the DR brand, there are no references to the internal worlds of the radio, to the subdivisions of content or network’ (Godsk Hansen 2021). More specificity is found, sometimes, in proprietary apps, where it is possible – but not necessary – to provide a visual chromatic link where there is a connection between the audio content and the single channel to which it can be traced back. It seems that, in spite of the difficulty in changing the approach to imagine who is on the other side, for several broadcasters the listener of the future is someone who is not yet listening to the radio through traditional devices, and who does not yet know the many potentials of the radio experience. However, these are users who are already quite familiar with on-demand listening through third-party platforms, so the way to access these listeners is through the strength of the content, its positioning in relation to genres and topics, and the building of reliable brands in terms of quality and relevance.

Continuity and changes in the affordances of the interface Walking through the apps analysed – in the sense suggested by Light, Burgess and Duguay (2018) – a number of features emerge and recur now and then in different combinations, showing how to interact with both on-demand content and the live stream: users can download contents and listen to them offline; they can subscribe to content and receive alerts when updates are available. Listeners can share a specific link on social networks, make their own playlists, tag programmes that they would like to listen to, choose their favourite songs; they have the chance to pause the content and pick it up later on, from the same device or from another one; they can doze to their favourite radio show or podcast through the sleep timer; they can move back and forth in the stream, with dedicated

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buttons, and also change the play speed (0.5x, 1.5x, 2x), together with the possibility of going back a few hours in the linear stream; they can also skip pieces of programming and replacing them with others, according to their tastes. All these control options allow users to customize the service and interact with live or prerecorded sound clips, thanks to visual clues – icons, buttons, search bars, scales – referring to physical interfaces: the most interesting example – found in the SWR38 app – is a graduated scale representing the live stream, a slider placed vertically on the right side, in which the stream is punctuated by songs (indicated by the musical note icon). Song information appears at a simple touch of the notes, whereas the scale can be scrolled and leads to re-listening to songs that have already passed. The ‘exchange button’ – as described on the Apple app store description, allows the user to replace the current song with another one. ‘You can still stay live in our programme and don’t miss any news or moderation’9 – let’s not forget in this respect that in-between content pieces make up a large part of the whole radio experience. The scale (present also in the DR Lyd player) is a direct reference, reworked and updated in appearance, to the calibrated station scales found in early radio sets, and its design is a visual representation of a kind of exploratory listening experience where sight has priority over hearing, creating something similar to what Fickers (2011: 412) calls ‘the “user illusion” of an easily manipulable machine’. Indeed, the affordances of the app invite the user to experience the radio stream independently. When they press play: listeners always start with the live content, but then interact with other elements, songs, programme pieces. So the user does not perceive discontinuity and feels less need to switch to another type of app or another broadcaster. Total flexibility must be negotiated in terms of rights management agreements with the various players, because it goes far beyond traditional linear radio. In addition, we had to upgrade our metadata system quite rapidly in house because all these interactive features or digital services don’t work if you don’t have the proper metadata. (Freytag 2021)

On the whole, the interfaces developed in the surveyed apps almost always follow those of the major third-party platforms: the listeners of the future, in the broadcasters’ vision, are expert practitioners of the forms of sound consumption, occasionally able to appreciate vintage details. In fact, by citing the visual organization of the radio dial scale, broadcasters also give clues to listeners reminiscent of the tactile sensation of the dial sliding the cursor to tune in, and invite them – along with others less familiar with this call – to play with the content, integrating live radio and on-demand items in an innovative way.

Questioning the public service value of algorithms and recommendation The topic of public service algorithms – or ethical algorithms – emerged strongly in conversations with interviewees about strategies for audio-on-demand. There are broadcasters – not among our respondents – who strongly link the public service’s

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universality objectives to algorithmic personalization strategies (the case of NRK discussed in Van Den Bulck and Moe 2018: 884). Others like Rai say that algorithms, recommendation and data analysis can suggest content to users that can significantly increase consumption and time spent on the app, but a public service algorithm should be at odds with what seem to be commercial objectives and values: I cannot follow the model of commercial apps, whose interest is to maximize the user’s time on the platform and enrich themselves with consumption data. My idea of a recommendation engine is hybrid with respect to the editorial value of our proposals. It must be a hybrid approach, which on the one hand allows us to respond to the requests that the listener has indicated as his/her preferences, and on the other hand develops an editorial proposal to allow him/her to get to know all the potential of the offer and to discover new things. Obviously, we are interested in the users staying on the platform, but we are also interested in them broadening their horizons. (Capparelli 2022)

So, it seems that broadcasters are aware of the huge responsibility inherent in the use of recommendation systems. The apps considered are all equipped with a sign-in option – the only one without it is SR Play, which nevertheless allows customization of the service and activation of the recommendation without collecting personal data. Similarly, recommendation, when not already active, is foreseen for all of them, for sign-in users only or also for anonymous ones. For several interviewees, these characteristics are associated with the universality of the public service as they are the means by which specific content is served to specific audiences, ensuring that there are products capable of representing every part of society. AOD space offers many more creative places to produce content, and you can use that flexibility to experiment with language and ‘investigate delicate subjects’ (Perrotta 2022: 424) and ‘create opportunities for teenagers, younger audiences, minorities, niches, and all the target groups that you wouldn’t be able to include in a linear offer. According to law, PSB should be universal and inclusive, and have a content offer for every social group, but it’s hard to produce linear stations for each minority. With podcasting you can create something very specific’ (Kudláčová 2022). It is then necessary to identify and know the users of the platform and allow the algorithm to relate the content to the recipients. ‘From our research we see that listeners are quite puzzled when they figure out what and how much is available on our platform – and it’s a pretty good argument to lead our distribution team to think differently: if you manage to bring people on your platform, if you have the algorithm and if you have a rich and diverse catalogue, you might find completely new audiences’ (Müller 2022), also due to the greater ease in recognizing their needs and expectations and their consumption habits. In this sense, many interpret the role of the public service app as the tool that can ensure discoverability – that kind of media power that ‘allows content discovery platforms that coordinate users, content creators and software to make content more or less engaging’ (McKelvey and Hunt 2019: 1) and being found by the audience despite the overload of supply. ‘We use metadata to enlarge the vision, to bring people into another place in their mind, and open up another world. The listeners’ tastes are the starting point. You are who you are, we don’t want to make you someone else. But, as public service, we can bring you out of your comfort zone’ (Lardon 2022).

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Through the platform, public service radios can also make clear the quality of their valuable content and direct users’ paths towards it: ‘we do need an algorithm that helps us in playing out the stuff that make the Public Service different from others. People trust us when it comes to the news. Current affairs is something that hasn’t really been used for digital distribution yet, so when you want to go deeper in things that happen in the world, you should check the public service app’ (Müller 2022). The project called ‘News Values’ by SR seems the ‘perfect example of technical ingenuity combined with Public Service values, helping Sveriges Radio to better fulfil its mission’ (EBU 2021), as stated by Judy Parnall, chair of the EBU’s technical committee. This editorial algorithm for news is powered by ‘“news values” – a system by which editors rate every one of the hundreds of news stories produced by SR every day. The pre-publication rating feeds the algorithm that in turn helps us automate and personalise the news experience for a wide and diverse audience’ (Beckett 2020). It ensures that listeners get the most important news of the day depending on where they live and what they claim to need, while also finding articles that surprise them and broaden their knowledge and perspectives. Data and computational power don’t set aside editorial control, but rather reinforce quality and help refine the ranking of stories and updating news playlists. Regarding the use of algorithm and recommendation, the approach to the listener of tomorrow seems to be open and transparent. Most of the respondents consider the strategy of their broadcaster as a way to reinforce the pact of trust with the listener: ‘explaining the algorithm, opening it up, making it adaptable and tangible. Offering the listener the chance to customize it to his/her needs. This is something that they appreciate. By signing in the app, they confirm their trust’ (Lardon 2022).

Universality with or without gatekeepers The relationship with third parties is central to the discourses and strategies of the Public Services consulted for the purposes of this study. It is commonly agreed that it is difficult to hold together the perspective of the user, who wishes to access content from any platform, and that of the public service companies, whose investments in content creation seem to be undermined when this content is managed by gatekeepers that do not share data, do not allow control of curation and related content. At the same time, it is clear to all that radio is losing ground in the transition from linear to on-demand audio. And to stay relevant the space of global players is a tempting terrain. Nevertheless, not everybody is putting content on third-party platforms: there are broadcasters that are completely open to this choice, others say no and use only the proprietary platform, but for each subject it is a fluid relationship, a strategy which has to be negotiated every three months. The approach that Radio Rai is adopting, for example, ‘is not one of closure, but rather of a confrontation between equals: partnership strategies according to shared rules, so that global players are aware of the value of Rai’s content. I am in favour of agreements for content of which I do not lose control’ (Capparelli 2022).

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As already argued in Martin’s study (2021), in order not to lose legitimacy, broadcasters need to strengthen the role and deepen the sense of universality of the service – provide a service that is relevant to all and not simply capable of reaching everybody; also, they need to use third-party platforms for targeted promotion of their brands and contents, with a smart windowing policy. ‘Being data driven is always useful: when we see that people come more and more on our platform for a podcast, then we can start being really exclusive’ (Lardon 2022). Once again, it is interesting to observe that the company that most put itself in the shoes of the user is Sveriges Radio. In the vision of the Swedish broadcaster, the listener of the future ‘considers it normal that our content is there where they find it, on Spotify or Apple. They see it as an open resource that should be everywhere’ (Granryd 2021) and that is taken for granted. After all, as Hernández Bravo (2021) notes, audio streaming platforms have generated an ingrained need and listening habits that are very difficult to shape and change. The complementary view – that of those PSM negotiating temporary agreements with gatekeepers – sees the listener effectively switching between platforms, redirecting smartly from one environment to the other: ‘smart connections are important in the evolution, and that’s something that you have to take your time for,’ says Lardon (2022). The listener of the future, in their plans, is just born.

Conclusions The attempt to draw a sketch of who is the listener imagined and predicted by the audioon-demand delivery apps of some European public services has been more difficult than expected. This is because, although some interviewees explicitly stated that they were taking an evolution rather than a disruption approach (Granryd 2021; Lardon 2022), the characteristics of the classic radio experience (Hirschmeier and Beule 2019) and the characteristics of the listeners – who are human beings after all – have not changed at the same speed. The analysis shows that the ideal users of these apps are young-adult and curious persons. Radio is not among their primary consumptions, vice-versa audio is relevant to them and they are news consumers and try to inform themselves wherever possible. Being familiar with the on-demand listening and viewing offer, these listeners know how to orient themselves through genres and topics and seem to be skilled bricoleurs of linear sound, which is called upon to organize live clips, near-live segments, songs and create playlists that easily mix linear and non-linear items. The listeners are able, where possible, to steer the algorithm and adapt it to their preferences. With third-party platforms, these listeners are confident but are also witnesses of deep changes in the market, taking time to get used to changes. There are, among those analysed, apps more suited to adult and loyal radio audiences, and apps that wink at younger people. For the first ones, after an initial moment of disorientation and disappointment, it is likely that ‘their passion for the radio medium will

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make them adapt over time to the mode of consumption proposed by the apps’ (Borgnino 2022). For the second ones, the app may be the tool that can hook tomorrow’s audiences, where perhaps, the perception of greater control over music – as Chan-Olmsted, Wang and Hwang (2020) suggested – can still be improved. ‘Younger targets will have to grow into the platforms, being engaged by relevant and attractive content, that explores their interests and hobbies. Radio must be there for them: it’s a huge challenge, not easy at all’ (Kudláčová 2022). Among the elements of the classic radio experience that do not find much evidence in the analysis of the usage patterns envisaged by the apps is interactivity. The typical interactions of linear radio, which make so much of the spoken humanity of the radio medium, seem to be relegated to the possibility of content sharing on social – expecting a networked (Bonini 2014) but anti-social (Lacey 2014) kind of listener, we could say. However, broadcasters feel that the app must have attention for community building: ‘it’s very important that people can chat around a podcast, can share things and use their power to promote contents’ (Capparelli 2022). Apps are designed to provide answers to needs and after all, these needs don’t change over time: ‘people want to be part of something, sometimes they want to be calm, sometimes they want energy. They want easy solutions that adapt to them. Now they have more opportunities to construct their experience, their own puzzle, and in five years – or even less – they will expect Public Service to do that for them, offering them different puzzles’ (Lardon 2022). These last reflections focus on an issue that overturns the initial research question and radically transforms it. Instead of asking which listeners the public service expects to intercept with its digital distribution medium, let’s ask ourselves how public services will evolve, how much of their efforts will be dedicated to distribution and how much to content creation. Even from its position of relative strength, will public service radio manage to overcome what many call its existential crisis? While apps therefore more and more look ahead to the future needs of audiences (Sinton 2018), they risk overshadowing radio’s historical competitive advantages such as the live coverage of events, both local and national, the ability to inform in real time reliably and lightly, and that of providing a collective identity and a sense of belonging to a group. The balance between the objectives of consolidating traditional usage motivations and patterns and those of creating new listening routines and experiences through stand-alone audio-on-demand assets, seems to be the key to radio’s transformation in the coming years.

Notes 1

2

As a commentary on the Midia Podcast 2020 Q2 report shows, 2020 was the year in which Spotify’s consistent leadership emerged as the platform of choice for podcast listening in the countries surveyed (USA, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany). The cases were chosen following the distinction between models of media systems and public services identified by Moe and Syvertsen (2009), which provides a useful typology

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to balance examples of public services that are highly relevant in the media and political system, well-supported economically and often at the forefront of experimentation, and examples of public services that are less relevant, receive fewer economic resources and that tend to follow and not lead in technological innovation. SR (Sveriges Radio, Sweden), DR (Danks Radio, Denmark), RNE (Radio Nacional de España, Spain), ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, joint organization of Germany’s regional Public Service Broadcasters), SWR (regional public service broadcaster of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, southwest Germany), VRT (Vlaamse Radio-en Televisieomroep, public service of the Flemish community in Belgium) and Radio Rai (Italy). This is the list of people interviewed, between June 2021 and March 2022: Andrea Borgnino, Editorial Manager RaiPlay Sound, Italy; Elena Capparelli, Director of Digital Content and interim head of RaiPlay and Digital Management, Italy; Daniel Freytag, Developer SWR Audio Lab, SWR Südwestrundfunk, Germany; Tine Godsk Hansen, Commissioning Editor podcast, DR-Dansk Radio, Denmark; Tomas Granryd, Digital Committee Vice President, Digital agreements, SR-Sveriges Radio, Sweden; Javier Hernández Bravo, Former Radio Nacional Head, RTVE, Spain; Edita Kudláčová, Head of Radio, EBU, Switzerland; Sven Lardon, Digital Audio Strategy VRT Connectie, Belgium; Thomas Müller, Channel Manager ARD Audiothek, Germany. Source: EBU based on 2021 Members’ data, including thirty TV and Radio Members. Source: EBU based on 2021 Members’ data, including thirty-seven Radio Members. The staff can be either assigned or re-assigned to a new team dealing with the whole audio-on-demand project (centralization) or it can be assigned to the same AOD project while remaining in its original structure (de-centralization). The radio with the youngest target audience of SWR, the regional public service of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Retrieved from: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swr3/id809956389?l=it (accessed 23 March 2022).

Works cited Anderson, J. N. (2012), ‘Radio Broadcasting’s Digital Dilemma’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 19 (2): 177–99. Austin, M. (2016), ‘Experiencing Radio at the Interface: Preserving the Past and Designing the Future of Radio’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23 (2): 335–49. Beckett, C. (2020), ‘An algorithm for empowering public service news’, Polis. Journalism and Society at LSE 28 September: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2020/09/28/this-swedish-radioalgorithm-gets-reporters-out-in-society/ (accessed 27 January 2022). Berry, R. (2020), ‘Radio, Music, Podcasts – BBC Sounds: Public Service Radio and Podcasts in a Platform World’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 18 (1): 63–78. Bonini, T. (2014), ‘The New Role of Radio and its Public in the Age of Social Network Site’, First Monday 19 (6) 2 June.

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Bonini, T. and Mazzoli, E. M. (2022), ‘A Convivial-agonistic Framework to Theorise Public Service Media Platforms and their Governing Systems’, New Media & Society 24 (2): 922–41. Borgnino, A. (2022), interview by author (22 February). Capparelli, E. (2022), interview by author (25 February). Chan-Olmsted, S., R. Wang and K. Hwang (2020), ‘Substitutability and Complementarity of Broadcast Radio and Music Streaming Services: The Millennial Perspective’, Mobile Media & Communication 8 (2): 209–28. EBU (2021), ‘Sveriges Radio wins the 2021 T&I Award’, press release, 9 June: https://www.ebu. ch/news/2021/06/sveriges-radio-wins-the-2021-ti-award (accessed 5 December 2021). Fernández-Quijada, D. (2017), ‘Distinctiveness of Public Radio in the Age of Digitisation’, Journal of Radio and Audio Media 24 (1): 77–89. Fickers, A. (2011), ‘Visibly Audible. The Radio Dial as Mediating Interface’, in T. Pinch and K. Bijsterveld (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 411–39. Freytag, D. (2021), Interview by author (21 July). Godsk Hansen, T. (2021), Interview by author (10 August). Granryd, T. (2021), Interview by author (17 July). Hancock, D. and L. McMurtry (2018), ‘I Know What a Podcast is: Post-Serial Fiction and Podcast Media Identity’, in D. Llinares, N. Fox and R. Berry (eds), Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 81–105. Hernández Bravo, J. (2021), Interview by author (21 June). Hilmes, M. (2013), ‘The New Materiality of Radio: Sound on Screens’, in M. Hilmes and J. Loviglio (eds), Radio’s New Wave, London: Routledge, pp. 43–61. Hirschmeier, S. and V. Beule (2018), ‘Compliance of Personalised Radio with Public-Service Remits’, in Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalisation Adjunct, Singapore, July 2018 (UMAP’18), pp. 15–21. Hirschmeier, S. and V. Beule (2019), ‘Characteristics of the Classic Radio Experience Perceived by Young Listeners and Design Implications for Their Digital Transformation’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media (28): 1–21. Hirschmeier, S., V. Beule, and R. Tilly (2020), ‘Translating Editorial Work into Algorithms for Personalised Radio Streams’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media. DOI:10.1080/19376529.170460. IAB Europe (2020), ‘The Buyers’s Guide to Digital Audio’: https://iabeurope.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2020/11/Buyers-Guide-to-Digital-Audio-IAB-Europe-Nov-2020.pdf (accessed 5 December 2021). Jenkins, H., S. Ford, and J. Green (2013), Spreadable Media. Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, New York: New York University Press. Kudláčová, E. (2022), Interview by author (9 March). Lacey, K. (2013), ‘Listening in the Digital Age’, in M. Hilmes and J. Loviglio (eds), Radio’s New Wave, London: Routledge. Lacey, K. (2014), ‘Smart Radio and Audio Apps: The Politics and Paradoxes of Listening to (Anti-) Social Media’, Australian Journalism Review 36 (2): 77–90. Lardon, S. (2022), Interview by author (25 March). Light, B., J. Burgess and S. Duguay (2018), ‘The Walkthrough Method: An Approach to the Study of Apps’, New Media & Society 20 (3): 881–900.

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Martin, E. N. (2021), ‘Can Public Service Broadcasting Survive Silicon Valley? Synthesizing Leadership Perspectives at the BBC, PBS, NPR, CPB and Local U.S. Station’, Technology in Society 64: 1–11. McKelvey, F. and R. Hunt (2019), ‘Discoverability: Toward a Definition of Content Discovery Through Platforms’, Social Media + Society January–March: 1–15. Moe, H. and T. Syvertsen (2009), ‘Researching Public Service Broadcasting’, in K. WahlJorgensen and T. Hanitzsch (eds), Handbook of Journalism Studies, New York, London: Routledge, pp. 398–412. Morris, J. W. and E. Patterson (2015), ‘Podcasting and Its Apps: Software, Sound and the Interfaces of Digital Audio’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (2): 220–30. Müller, T. (2022), Interview by author (24 February). Mulligan, M. (2020), ‘Podcasts Q2 2020: Spotify takes an early lead’, Music Industry Blog 20 October: https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/podcasts-q2-2020-spotifytakes-an-early-lead/ (accessed 17 March 2022). Perrotta, M. (2022), ‘From Niche to Mainstream. The Emergence of a Podcasting Culture and Market in the Italian Radio Context’, in M. Lindgren and J. Loviglio (eds), Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 418–28. Sinton, M. (2018), ‘No Longer One-to-Many: How Web 2.0 Interactivity is Changing Public Service Radio’s Relationship with its Audience’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 25 (1): 62–76. Van Den Bulck, H. and H. Moe (2018), ‘Public Service Media, Universality and Personalisation Through Algorithms: Mapping Strategies and Exploring Dilemmas’, Media, Culture & Society 40 (6): 875–92.

9 Using a ‘Critical Ear’ Developing a Practitioner– Researcher Framework for Analytical Listening in Podcast Studies Britta Jorgensen

Introduction Just like the layered audio tracks in a podcast itself, podcast listening is a multilayered experience. At its most basic, it involves immersion in the voices, sounds and stories typically played directly into the listener’s ears via headphones or earphones. There is often a layer of emotion evoked through this highly intimate medium (Lindgren 2021), a layer of activity as the listener performs other tasks while listening (Sharon and John 2019: 333) and a social layer as they develop para-social bonds with the podcast host (Schultz and Hedder 2021). These ‘listening layers’ are complicated when taking a critical ear to podcast analysis, whether as a researcher, a practitioner or both. There are now more tools for analysing podcast listening than ever, through quantitative data gathered from RSS feeds and large-scale listener surveys such as The Infinite Dial (Edison Research and Triton Digital 2021). At the same time, ‘the podcast listener’ is a focal point of research as the experience of podcast listening is distinguished from other forms of media consumption including radio; it is described in terms of ‘hyper-intimacy’ (Berry 2016: 14) and as a uniquely embodied, even ‘sensual’ experience (Clevenger and Rick 2021). Despite this, critical podcast analysis tends to overlook the listening experience of the podcast analyser and the potential value this could add to the analysis if the analyser is also a podcast maker. Methods for analysis of podcasts by practitioners themselves or approaches to developing a critical ear as a practitioner–researcher have not been well-documented. RadioDoc Review, established in 2013, remains one of the only forums for this type of work by ‘bringing into being a peer-reviewed canon’ using a specific set of criteria for practitioner–researchers

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to draw on in their analysis (McHugh 2014: 31). Although it started as a forum for radio documentary criticism, RadioDoc Review now includes a significant body of work in podcast analysis (2022). The practitioner–researcher perspective in podcast studies is particularly valuable in a field of study still finding its feet. Practitioners – in other words, podcast makers or producers – bring an ear to podcast listening that can analyse technical skill, creativity and innovation that non-practitioners may not be familiar with. As the field of practice-based podcast research also grows, developing some frameworks for this analysis would be useful for these researchers. This chapter outlines my own experimental practitioner–researcher approach to developing a framework for analysing podcasts, which I used as part of my practice–research doctoral thesis, ‘Australia’s Podcasting “Change Agents”: A Practice–Research Case Study of Disruption at the Intersection of Independent Podcasting and Narrative Journalism’ (Jorgensen 2021). I was (and still am) both a podcast maker and a podcast researcher. I drew upon skills from my background in both these roles to design a critical-listening log based on the ten evaluative criteria for radio and podcast documentary analysis outlined by RadioDoc Review. I included 1,095 individual podcast episodes in my log,1 critically listened to throughout the duration of my PhD candidature (four years). This exercise was intended as a learning tool to develop my ‘critical ear’ for analytical listening to the podcast case studies included in my doctoral project; however, it may provide a useful starting point or example for other researchers wanting to develop a practitioner–researcher framework for analytical listening in podcast studies.

The podcast listener While radio researchers tend to refer to an ‘audience’, podcast studies usually focus on the individual listener’s experience. Richard Berry (2016: 12) has described the podcast listener’s ‘journey’ as ‘one that starts with making a series of choices over what they want to hear’. With an abundance of podcast platforms hosting millions of podcasts, those choices are plentiful. A strong focus of industry research has been on asking listeners how they make these choices (Edison Research and Triton Digital 2021). This on-demand audio aspect of podcasting is one that received ample attention in the earliest podcast research. The data on this from industry-driven studies can be useful as it provides an ‘analytic grounding as to the take-up and listening patterns of shows and series’ (Euritt, Korfmacher and Llinares 2021: 319). However, these findings are also ‘tied to commercial interests and are therefore forms of knowledge-making that do not always respond to the questions that drive academic research’ (Euritt, Korfmacher and Llinares 2021: 319). In other words, the usefulness of this raw quantitative data to podcast studies researchers is limited. In terms of academic research, there are ‘few reception studies, however, that investigate podcasting’s particular aptitude to engage listeners in an intimate experience’ (Schultz and Hedder 2021: 2). While ‘the podcast listener’ is now in the podcast studies spotlight, there are scant in-depth analyses of podcast listening – researcher, practitioner or otherwise.

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More recent discussion has focused on other elements of podcast listening behaviours and experiences. At the forefront of this is the immersion the podcast listener experiences as they ‘tend to remain engrossed for extended periods’ (Dowling and Miller 2019: 171) and because ‘podcast users usually listen closely and often with undivided attention’ (Schultz and Hedder 2021: 3). They are even described as ‘highly dedicated “super-listeners”’ (Bottomley 2015: 165). The extent of this immersive listening has been observed as so transformative it constitutes ‘childlike listening’, which involves fully immersing oneself in the sounds of the narrated story with a ‘curiosity, vulnerability, enthusiasm, imagination, and a sense of wonder through which the world is encountered and understood’ (Sharon and John 2019: 340). While childlike, this immersion has linked the embodied listening experience with deeper introspection, as ‘sensory immersion combines with intellectual stimulation’ (Dowling and Miller 2019: 171). This intersection has been analysed from a journalism perspective as the ‘interplay between the human voice speaking and the human ear listening extends to the key attributes in narrative journalism to create a distinct form of intimate journalism’ (Lindgren 2021: 14). Siobhan McHugh has described podcast journalism as ‘extreme narrative journalism’ since ‘the authorial voice is literally heard, direct and unmediated’ (2019). However, little is known about the links between the sensorial and embodied aspects of podcast listening and intellectual engagement. There are now several new terms to describe podcast listening and its various modalities, such as ‘storylistening’ (Waldmann 2020) and ‘earwitnessing’ (Rae, Russell and Nethery 2019). ‘Earwitnessing’ adds a socio-political layer to the experience of podcast listening, as a ‘practice of responsible listening to injustice’ that ‘encompasses a form of listening that is attuned to the specific social, cultural, and political manifestations of sound and voice’ (Rae, Russell and Nethery 2019: 1038). Maria Rae, Emma K. Russell and Amy Nethery developed this concept in their study of Australia’s The Messenger podcast, which documents the exchange of voice messages between a refugee detained on Manus Island and an Australian journalist. They argue that podcast listening ‘may also activate emotional responses in listeners and promote a sense of ethical responsibility’ due to the ‘significant affective dimensions to tuning in to the carceral soundscape’ (2019: 1038). Stacey Copeland, in exploring the amplification of queer voices in a case study analysis of US producer Kaitlin Prest’s podcast, The Heart (US, 2017–20), argues that podcast listening within a sociopolitical context is far more individualized as each listener’s ‘experience and story play a key role in the understanding and the affective economies that surround and stick to this soundwork’ (2018: 222). Copeland calls for a deeper consideration of the political context of podcast listening, explaining that ‘the political and social mediation and commodification of the amplified voice within soundwork in the digital space is a subject that requires further exploration as more concrete frameworks for the discussion of the material voice and further discourse on the materiality of radio and soundworks are written’. The development of concrete frameworks is also required in many aspects of podcast listening and its materiality – including for practitioner–researchers. Podcast scholarship also acknowledges the role of the listener as more than a passive consumer. In ‘storylistening’, due to the ‘purely sonic nature of the medium and its specificity as an interactive, immersive and intimate medium, listening becomes an act of

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authorship in itself ’ (Waldmann 2020: 38). In an analysis of the iconic podcast S-Town, Ella Waldmann concludes that: If telling a story for an audio medium requires first and foremost to listen, then the act of listening to this story is also an act of participation in this story. Furthermore, the act of coauthorship exceeds the space of these podcasts, as these productions become the starting point of a continuing narrative, with listeners reacting on various forms, blogs, and websites. (2020: 37)

What happens, then, when those conversations extend into modes of podcast criticism or critical analysis? And to extend this concept one step further, what happens when listening to one podcast leads to the production of another podcast, including via critical listening as a practitioner–researcher? One example of this in the field of podcast studies itself is The Podcast Studies Podcast (2019–22), hosted and produced by Dario Llinares and Lori Beckstead and first published in March 2019. Its purpose is ‘analysing and contextualising podcasts from a Media and Cultural Studies standpoint’. The potential complexities of podcast listening, including as an act of co-authorship or to inform one’s own podcast production, are still yet to be interrogated as this field of study grows.

Critical listening Outside podcasting, in the field of immersive audio journalism, the participation of the listener has come under more in-depth scrutiny. Abigail Wincott, Jean Martin and Ivor Richards (2021: 265) refer to the ‘listener as an actor, stepping onto the stage’ and question: ‘how can an immersive audio listener actually act?’ In their analysis of spatialized audio journalism works they ‘considered [their] own responses to the work, generalizing from this to understand the likely meaning or sensations for listeners’ (2021: 265). This crucial point that any podcast analysis includes personal listening experience is one that is not often acknowledged or discussed in podcast studies. Of course, the subjectivity of the researcher must always be considered and plenty has been written about this in all fields of qualitative research. However, this may be more pronounced in podcast research. In fact, in their study of para-social host–listener relationships in podcasts, Daniela Schultz and Imke Hedder (2021: 2) found that hosts can create such strong bonds with listeners that they ‘might be a gateway for persuasive effects’ and ‘can contribute to individual attitude change’. If a personal relationship can be built between podcast listener and host then it may be useful to draw upon principles within other fields of research that mitigate the problems that may arise during research where such relationships may exist, such as ethnography.

Analysing podcasts The dearth of critical discourse, theory and analysis in the early years of podcast studies is now being swiftly replaced with a blossoming field of study including diverse avenues of inquiry. However, Martin Spinelli and Lance Dann suggest that ‘our current critical frames

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of reference (most of them inherited from radio studies) might simply not be a very good fit for podcasting’ (2019: 6). Building podcast-specific critical frames of reference involves understanding podcasting’s origins and ongoing connections with radio. Michele Hilmes (2021: 73) argues: ‘today’s podcasters and broadcasters are feeling their way through the logistics of an incredibly diverse and vital medium with very little consciousness of the history and tradition of their art’. Radio itself has tended to be under-researched as a field of study, largely because of its traditional role as an invisible, background medium. Put simply, according to Hilmes, ‘radio’s ephemerality meant that it was simply overlooked’ (2014: 17). Jo Tacchi (2000: 291) identified this problem in early research in the field, arguing ‘radio studies, or radio theory, needs to achieve some coherence yet, at the same time, remain multi- or post-disciplinary’. Kate Lacey (2018: 106) argues against establishing radio studies as an ‘intellectual enclave’ because it would ‘just continue to isolate, distort and marginalise’ radio research. Podcast studies, unlike radio studies, has also found this type of multi-disciplinary space within digital and online media studies. Some of this research, even when focused on a podcast case study, does not focus on the content of the podcast itself or require any form of critical listening. For example, Freja Sorine Adler Berg’s 2021 study of Danish podcast Fries before Guys, focused on the producers’ use of Instagram and concluded that ‘social media activity, besides providing emotional support through posts, comments and direct messages, is essential to independent podcasters to make revenue’ (155). Other research has linked production methods with podcast content. Sarah Murray (2019: 301– 16) takes the intimacy in podcasting beyond the podcast and the relationships in referring to ‘podcasting’s intimate soundwork’ to describe ‘intimacy’s straddling of both content and the infrastructures of production and labor’ (304). Murray identifies a relationship between the podcast itself, its producers and listeners, and the nature of the production work that must be considered in podcast analysis.

The practitioner-researcher in podcasting – the podcast producer Practice-research lends itself to an experimental approach, involving a subversion of typical or traditional research processes and a reversed trajectory of ‘working from the “unknown to the known”’ (Sullivan 2009: 77). The rigour of this approach is defended by practice-based research proponents in that the theory and analysis are more embedded throughout the process than in traditional research. This is a growing trend within podcast doctoral theses, with the new term ‘PhDCasting’ emerging to describe PhD research through podcast production. Jerry Padfield describes the podcast PhDCasting (started in February 2020) as: Reflexive research through podcast practice. Jerry Padfield documents his personal reflections of a journey through a PhD at Falmouth University researching #podcasting and #CommunityRadio practice for wellbeing.

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Podcast analysis is still a relatively small field but one that is experimenting with innovative approaches, particularly outside academic publications. The Podcast Studies Podcast by Dario Llinares and Lori Beckstead is one example of this. In a 2021 episode, host Lori Beckstead submitted the draft chapter ‘Context is King: Podcast Packaging and Paratexts’ for realtime peer review by Hannah McGregor and Ian M. Cook in the episode. Practitioner– research experimental approaches to podcast studies have also extended to transdisciplinary approaches. For example, Erin Cory and Hugo Boothby (2021) combine ethnography in examining podcasting as a practice-based activist research method. They argue in favour of drawing on multiple fields (2021: 131), inviting ‘radio and audio studies to pursue the potential inclusivity of practice-based methods and to explore further sound and audio technologies at the intersection of art, activism and academic research’. Although experimentation is happening in all areas of podcast research, much of it is concentrated among practitioner–researchers – even where the podcast production element is supplementary to the main research methods.

RadioDoc Review Although it was established almost a decade ago now (in 2013), RadioDoc Review remains one of the only forums for critical podcast analysis. McHugh (2014: 25) created it because at the time ‘an evaluative forum where radio documentary/features were critiqued by informed, disinterested parties from diverse professional or scholarly perspectives under strict editorial standards was still lacking’. McHugh (2014: 26) wanted the ‘new journal to bring together academy, practitioners and industry, for that is the real world in which the form emerges and is shaped.’ An important feature of RadioDoc Review is that the analysis often incorporates the personal experiences of the reviewers. For example, Alyn Euritt’s (2021: 1) analysis of Sophie Townsend’s BBC podcast, Goodbye to All This, about the death of her husband, frequently includes Euritt’s own personal experiences of grief: ‘much like me, with my meal plan and stages and tabs, Goodbye to All This uses the structure of a podcast documentary to take the crumpled moments of grief and spread them out over familiar frames.’ Euritt even explores that listener experience explicitly within the analysis itself (2021: 2): ‘in unfolding her grief, draping it over the familiar, communal rhythms of memoir and audio documentary, Townsend invites me to experience mine, too, reassuringly alongside someone who, as she says in her introduction, “has come out the other side”.’ In my own review published in 2019 in RadioDoc Review, after two years of maintaining my PhD critical listening log, I directly analysed the listener’s experience of the ABC podcast hosted by Honor Eastly, No Feeling is Final (Jorgensen 2019: 2). This was partly informed by my critical listening exercise: ‘it faces a two-fold “feelings frontier” in an age of extreme podcast intimacy and empathy: navigating (1) how to convey the kind of deeply personal “big feelings” that are still often seen as off-limits and (2) how to maintain a hyper-awareness about the listener’s feelings.’ It was the only available avenue at the time to put my developing ‘critical ear’ as a practitioner–researcher to use. The critical analyses in RadioDoc Review tend to focus

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on the listener’s experience by unpacking the impact of specific podcast techniques used, including some self-reflexive analysis on one’s own listening experience. This is a perspective that is often missing in other academic work in podcast studies.

The doctoral case study: ‘Australia’s podcasting “change agents”’ My doctoral project comprised an exegesis and the production of a three-part podcast series artefact about independent podcasting in Australia. As I am a podcast producer, I used ‘practice–research’, a particular form of what is widely known as practice-based or practice-led research, to analyse the contribution of emerging independent podcast producers in Australia to podcasting and journalism. I analysed five podcasts by independent emerging Australian producers,2 conducted semi-structured interviews with their seven producers (Participant Group 1) and an additional nine Australian podcasting experts (Participant Group 2), using a theoretical framework based on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and drawing insights from narrative journalism. I also conducted participant observations at the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Audiocraft events (Australian podcasting conference). Taking a ‘research through and for (as) practice’ (Hope 2016: 82) approach, I experimented with podcast production techniques via the artefact component of this doctoral project.

Developing a practitioner–researcher framework for analytical listening I developed a critical listening exercise as a minor part of my doctoral project; however, it became a meaningful endeavour in itself. Its purpose was as an exploratory learning tool to lay the groundwork for building an evaluative approach to analysing my five independent podcast case studies (as well as self-reflexively analysing my own doctoral podcast series artefact). I listened to 1,095 individual podcast episodes throughout the duration of my PhD candidature (four years). I made brief notes about each in the ‘Notes’ application in my phone while listening (usually on public transport during my long daily commutes) and inserted many of these as entries into a table to build an ongoing critical listening diary. As a learning tool rather than a method for gathering data, this exercise was experimental in nature, although guided by qualitative research principles – most significantly, a theory-driven self-reflexive approach (discussed later in this chapter). I based the evaluative criteria outlined by RadioDoc Review, as one of the few rigorous frameworks for analysing podcasts that currently exist. RadioDoc Review lists ten criteria for evaluation, including (2022):

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1. Storytelling strength 2. Originality and innovation 3. Research and reporting 4. Complexity of information and portrayals 5. Emotiveness and empathy 6. Craft and artistry 7. Ethical practice 8. Public benefit 9. Impact. I combined (3) and (4) (research/complexity), and (8) and (9) (public benefit/impact) to condense these four criteria into two, added a column for general ‘thoughts’ and another column for basic podcast episode information. This left me with a table with nine headings. For each podcast episode I listened to, I wrote comments under each heading of up to fifteen words so that each entry was very basic. As a podcast producer myself, I found it relatively straightforward to evaluate elements such as ‘craft and artistry’ and ‘storytelling strength’. As I delved deeper into podcast studies through my PhD research, I found it easier to evaluate ‘public benefit’ and ‘impact’. The more podcasts (and greater variety of podcasts) I listened to with a ‘critical ear’, the more easily I was able to identify strength in the areas of ‘originality and innovation’ as I could note what set these apart from the other podcasts I had critically listened to – and articulate this with more specificity. The critical listening exercise added only a few extra moments of reflection to each podcast I would have listened to and was thus a realistic endeavour time-wise – an important consideration for any doctoral student. I started to add other notes about where and how I was listening, whether I felt so immersed in an episode I left any reflection until after the podcast ended or whether I noted something as I listened. Much of this emerged as I drew upon selfreflective methods in other aspects of my PhD research.

Finding podcasts for listening Podcast discovery is a rapidly growing area, with newsletters (Hot Pod), apps (Podchaser) and even recommendation-based podcasts made to improve discoverability (The Podcast Discovery Show). As a podcast producer working in a relatively small industry (particularly in Australia), I find that professional networks provide an additional path to podcast discovery. For my critical listening exercise, I wanted to include the widest range of podcasts possible to develop a ‘critical ear’ for a broad range of podcasts. As I partly used a snowball sampling (Dusek, Yurova and Ruppel 2015) approach to the selection of case studies and interviewees for my doctoral thesis, I drew upon similar principles in determining my sampling frame for this exercise. Given the limitations to this type of sampling technique in terms of bias and narrow frame, I was guided not only by preference, but also variety, popularity or notability and recommendations through my social and professional networks. I listened to podcasts mentioned at podcast events, conferences,

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workshops and festivals I attended both in Australia and internationally. I listened to podcasts made by people I met at those events and mentioned by them. I also listened to podcasts recommended by other podcast producers I worked with outside my doctoral project. Rather than listening to podcasts for their subject matter, these professional and/or aspiring producers frequently recommended or mentioned innovative and experimental podcasts with low visibility via other podcast discoverability avenues. In other words, the less popular podcasts were often those pushing the boundaries of the podcast medium itself. This was one aspect of my practitioner positioning that significantly expanded my exposure to different types of podcasts beyond those I could find myself.

Self-reflection The framework I developed for critical analytical listening relied on self-reflection for its methodological rigour. Reflection in my doctoral project more broadly took the form of both Donald Schön’s ‘reflection in action’ and his ‘reflection on action’. Self-reflection should be theoretically informed to avoid the kind of ‘diarising’ Bourdieu warns against and instead taking an approach that reflects ‘back on the structures of the field itself, including its dominant professional ideologies’ (Bourdieu 2005: 155). This was important as I adopted the trend of recording audio memos throughout my doctoral project to record my self-reflections that could lend itself to unguided and problematic ‘diarising’. Where my critical listening log led to more in-depth insights related to the doctoral research I was doing, I recorded these reflections about the podcasts I was listening to. The self-reflection methods I was using in my doctoral project used the principles of ‘action research’ that include many ‘self-reflective spirals of cycles of planning, acting and observing, reflecting and then re-planning in successive cycles of improvement’ (Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon 2014: 2). I applied this approach to the critical listening exercise as well; for example, I moved from single episode entries and analysis to full series analyses for podcasts using serialized storytelling as this format increased in popularity. I was continuously questioning various podcasting tropes I encountered and their effectiveness and/or impact. Rather than an ad hoc approach, I was guided by the research I was conducting for my PhD thesis in considering these issues. My doctoral project encompassed the dual elements of ‘reflexive rigour’ and ‘reflexive imagination’ that Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg (2018: 380) emphasize as an important part of reflexive research. In this sense, the reflection is guided by the research questions and theoretical framework, but allows for analysis of ‘mystery’, ‘breakdowns’ and ‘the unexpected’ (Alvesson and Skoldberg 2018: 390) as they arise during fieldwork and production. I drew on these principles in allowing my critical listening exercise and its parameters to evolve. Podcasting itself is a particularly self-reflective medium, with a host or narrator-driven ‘journey of the self ’ (Murray 2019: 319) now a common trope. According to Murray (2019: 302), the ‘sonic presentation of self-in-process becomes a readily available tool for producers to stake claims to authenticity and intimate connection to listeners’. I used this

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tool in the production of my PhD artefact podcast series, including clips in the series from my audio memos reflecting on the production process as well as my critical listening. This also allowed for listeners beyond the academic audience of my doctoral thesis some insight into my critical listening methods.

Adding a practitioner’s critical ear – how a podcast gets made As a podcast producer, understanding how a podcast is made adds an extra layer to critical analysis. Podcast production can vary enormously, and this may not be readily apparent to a non-producer listener. In fact, the extent of the artifice involved in a podcast that sounds relatively unedited can be underestimated by all listeners. Popular podcasts often sound ‘raw’ and authentic, which can be a quality that is carefully curated by experienced professionals. A podcast that sounds like a spontaneous recorded conversation between a host and a guest may have involved many hours of pre-interviewing by a producer, in-studio guidance by a producer, scripting, re-recordings and many more hours of precise editing to build a natural-sounding, well-flowing conversation. The combination of podcast’s extreme intimacy, its popularity as a DIY medium for non-professionals and its use of ‘authenticity’ as a tool for engagement may have led to a lack of transparency or awareness of these techniques among non-producers (or even among less-experienced producers). Understanding the techniques that allow ‘authenticity’ to be constructed, an immersive listening experience carefully designed, and techniques used to evoke emotion or foster para-social relationships adds to a more informed critical analysis when combined with a podcast-studies researcher perspective. In a highly built documentary-style podcast, the production techniques may be more evident but it can still be underestimated or misunderstood by a non-producer listener. Techniques for producing this type of podcast can include: background research, preinterviews, background interviews, recorded interviews, transcribing, sound recordings, SFX sourcing, extensive multitrack audio editing, structure development, mood trajectory mapping, ‘character’ development, scripting, paper drafts, fact-checking, feedback sessions, sampling, narration recording, music scoring, sound design and mixing in a series of rounds during which many drafts are worked through. Podcasts can be more closely aligned with sound art, be geolocative, extend into the realm of audio installation and, of course, be entirely fictional audio stories or plays (like radio dramas). Identifying the experimental elements of these podcasts, what podcasting tropes they may be subverting, which frontiers they may be exploring and the potential to create innovate work in future episodes may be more apparent to a podcast producer even where the podcast has received little attention – and perhaps not deemed worthy of study by non-producers. Ethical considerations may also be more apparent to a podcast producer and can impact critical listening. In a podcast involving interviews with (in particular, vulnerable)

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interviewees, ethical considerations in terms of the interviewer/ee relationship outside of the recorded interview can be complex and difficult to navigate. A strong focus of my PhD thesis was exploring the interviewer/ee relationship from a journalism perspective, so this also became a focus in my critical listening exercise. In journalism studies (particularly narrative journalism), this relationship is understood as fraught with potential ethical conundrums. One of the most well-known explorations of this relationship is Janet Malcolm’s widely discussed text, The Journalist and the Murderer, in which she characterizes this relationship as ‘morally indefensible’ (Malcolm 2018: 1). In the immediate aftermath of this book there were criticisms of journalists building ‘false rapport’ and ‘slanted empathy’ with interviewees during interviews (Anderson & Killenberg 1992: 66). Understanding how this rapport and empathy may be built (or performed) in podcast interviewing, usually by non-journalists, has not yet been discussed to the extent it has been within journalism studies. There have been many concerns, such as Rebecca Mead’s (2018) warning in The New Yorker that ‘audio narratives offer a rare opportunity for slow immersion. But this intimacy can become manipulative.’ However, first-hand experience as a producer can provide some insight into these ‘unseen’ and potentially unethical methods of podcast production.

Conclusion In the couple of years since I completed the critical podcast listening exercise I developed for my practice–research doctoral project, innovative approaches to analysing podcasts have begun to flourish. If I conducted a similar exercise today, I would readily draw upon these developments – in particular, those that acknowledge the sociopolitical context and subjective experience of the listener may impact critical analysis in a medium with such heightened levels of intimacy and immersion. The listening exercise was experimental and only intended to develop my ‘critical ear’ but as the data gathered grew sizeable and revealed insights into this methodological potential, I realized it could also be a starting point for one of those podcast-specific frameworks researchers have long been calling for. Its most notable elements include: (1) standardized evaluative criteria; (2) a practitionerresearch perspective; (3) a snowballing approach to podcast discovery; (4) theoretically informed self-reflexive analysis; (5) regular recorded audio memos summarizing insights; and (6) publishing those audio memos in a podcast format for transparency about the methodology and accessibility for other researchers also devising new methodologies. Of course, a revised framework would also need to develop further parameters to interrogate some of the potential issues raised in this chapter. Some of the questions that would need to be considered in a redesign or adapted approach may include: ●

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What is the impact of the highly intimate, emotional and immersive experience of podcast listening on critical analysis? What personal biases may be at play and/or heightened while engaging with such an embodied medium?

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How can we navigate the potential para-social relationships that arise between podcast hosts and listeners analysing podcasts? What is the role of the critical listener’s sociopolitical context in the experience of listening? How can we interrogate our choices of podcasts for analysis within an environment of commercialized podcast discoverability?

As a young woman making podcasts that included my own voice as host and narrator, I was acutely aware of basic gender-based biases in podcast criticism. The most common criticisms of young women’s voices in podcasting have been that they lack authority and/ or credibility because they are ‘high-pitched and up-talky’, use too much ‘vocal fry’ and sound ‘too similar’ (Miller 2015). My awareness of this form of bias was almost entirely because it forms part of my own subjective experience as a podcast producer and as a podcast listener. Creating parameters for unpacking other biases, individual experiences and sociopolitical contexts would be vital for a reworked framework. I developed the original critical listening framework for podcast analysis during my first year as a doctoral researcher because there was no existing framework for me to use. Even back then (in 2017), many researchers were calling for analytical frameworks to be designed, podcast criticism to be developed, and new methods to be imagined. Since then, the responses to these calls have not usually included new methodological approaches. Such experimentation is continuing to come from practice-based PhD projects in podcast studies, such as Jerry Padfield’s PhDCasting. These methods are more readily available to other podcast studies researchers when published as podcasts themselves, where access to academic publishing is limited for doctoral students. A doctoral project can be a particularly useful space to experiment with developing methods that include ongoing trial and error. Rather than pursued by individual practitioner–researchers, a framework for critical listening to podcasts could also be a communal endeavour in which practitioners and researchers come together. The framework I designed and developed over the course of my PhD did lead to the creation of a dataset, but its real value was in the framework it provided and the skills it allowed me to develop as a practitioner–researcher. Developing a framework for analysis is one part of advancing critical listening and analysis in podcast studies. The other part is practitioner–researchers developing their skills. On the other side of podcast production, in the technical work of audio engineering, Jason Corey (2016: ix) argues: Engineers cannot rely on one set of recording procedures for every project. As such, they must rely on a combination of technical knowledge and listening skills to guide their work. Although technical knowledge of … the theoretical aspects of audio equipment is critical for a solid understanding of the principles of audio engineering, many of the decisions made during a recording project … are based solely on what is heard. As such, it is often the ability to navigate the subjective impressions of audio that allows engineers to successfully improve on sound quality.

While a framework is vital, it is only the first step in developing that ‘critical ear’ for podcast analysis. As in audio engineering, improving the ability of researchers to ‘navigate

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the subjective impressions of audio’ should be a priority for the field of podcast studies – particularly for its emerging practitioner–researchers.

Notes 1

2

These podcast episodes were those available for listening on the iTunes app (now Apple Podcasts). They were English-language only (mostly Australian but also US podcasts), in a variety of genres and episode lengths. Evana Ho’s Love, Canberra (2016–19), Lindsey Green’s People Movers (2017–20), Sam Loy’s Human/Ordinary (2016–19), Fleur Kilpatrick, Sarah Walker and Kieran Ruffles’ Contact Mic (2016–18) and Raquel O’Brien and Georgina Savage’s Silent Waves (2019).

Works cited Alvesson, M. and K. Skoldberg (2018), Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks; London: Sage. Anderson, R. and G. M. Killenberg (1992), ‘Journalistic Listening and “Slanted Empathy”: Ethical Implications of the Janet Malcolm Accusations’, International Listening Association Journal 6 (1): 66–82. Berg, F. S. A. (2021), ‘The Value of Authenticity and Intimacy: A Case Study of the Danish Independent Podcast Fries before Guys’ Utilization of Instagram’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 19 (1): 155–73. Berry, R. (2016), ‘Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and its Association with the Word “Radio”’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 14 (1): 14–18. Bottomley, A. J. (2015), ‘Podcasting: A Decade in the Life of a “New” Audio Medium: Introduction’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (2): 164–9. Bourdieu, P. (2005), ‘The Political Field, the Social Science Field, and the Journalistic Field’, in R. Benson and E. Neveu (eds), Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 29–47. Clevenger, S. M. and O. Rick (2021), ‘The Uses of Imperfections: Communicating Affect Through the Lo Fi Podcast’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 18 (1): 323–35. Copeland, S. (2018), 'A Feminist Materialization of Amplified Voice: Queering Identity and Affect in the Heart’, in D. Llinares, N. Fox and R. Berry (eds), Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and New Media, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 209–225. Corey, J. (2016), Audio Production and Critical Listening: Technical Ear Training, London: Routledge. Cory, E. and H. Boothby (2021), ‘Sounds like “Home”: The Synchrony and Dissonance of Podcasting as Boundary Object’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 19 (1): 117–36.

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Dowling, D. O. and K. J. Miller (2019), ‘Immersive Audio Storytelling: Podcasting and Serial Documentary in the Digital Publishing Industry’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26 (1): 167–84. Dusek, G., Y. V. Yurova and C. Ruppel (2015), ‘Using Social Media and Targeted Snowball Sampling to Survey a Hard-To-Reach Population: a Case Study’, International Journal of Doctoral Studies 10: 279–99. Edison Research and Triton Digital (2021), ‘The Infinite Dial 2021’, Edison Research 11 March: https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-infinite-dial-2021-2/ (accessed 16 February 2022). Euritt, A., A. Korfmacher and D. Llinares (2021), ‘Introduction: Podcasting’s Listening Publics’, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 18 (1): 317–21. Euritt, A. (2021), ‘Goodbye to All This: The Ordinary Rhythm of Loss’, RadioDoc Review 7 (1): 1–3. Hilmes, M. (2014), ‘The Lost Critical History of Radio’, Australian Journalism Review 36 (2): 11–22. Hilmes, M. (2021), ‘Reality in Sound: Problem Solved?’ in J. W. Morris and E. Hoyt (eds), Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 71–81. Jorgensen, B. (2019), ‘The Feelings Frontier: a Review of No Feeling Is Final’, RadioDoc Review 5 (1): 1–10. Jorgensen, B. (2021), ‘Australia’s Podcasting “Change Agents”: A Practice-Research Case Study of Disruption at the Intersection of Independent Podcasting and Narrative Journalism’, PhD Thesis, Melbourne: Swinburne University of Technology. Kemmis, S., R. McTaggart and R. Nixon (2014), ‘Introducing Critical Participatory Action Research’, in S. Kemmis, R. McTaggart and R. Nixon (eds), The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research, Singapore: Springer, pp. 1–31. Lacey, K. (2018), ‘Up in the Air? The Matter of Radio Studies’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 16 (2): 109–26. Lindgren, M. (2021), ‘Intimacy and Emotions in Podcast Journalism: A Study of AwardWinning Australian and British Podcasts’, Journalism Practice 1–16: www.semanticscholar. org/paper/Intimacy-and-Emotions-in-Podcast-Journalism (accessed 16 February 2022). Malcolm, J. (2018), The Journalist and the Murderer, London: Granta. McHugh, S. (2019), ‘Subjectivity, Hugs and Craft: Podcasting as Extreme Narrative Journalism’, Nieman Storyboard: https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/subjectivity-hugsand-craft-podcasting-as-extreme-narrative-journalism/ (accessed 16 February 2022). McHugh, S. (2014), ‘RadioDoc Review: Developing Critical Theory of the Radio and Documentary Form’, Australian Journalism Review 36 (2), 23–35. Mead, R. (2018), ‘How Podcasts Became a Seductive – and Sometimes Slippery – Mode of Storytelling’, New Yorker 12 November. Miller, K. (2015), ‘Why do These Women’s Voices Bother you so Much?’, Refinery29: https:// www.refinery29.com/en-us/2015/05/87351/female-podcast-voices-vocal-fry (accessed 16 February 2022). Murray, S. (2019), ‘Coming-of-Age in a Coming-of-Age: The Collective Individualism of Podcasting’s Intimate Soundwork’, Popular Communication 17 (4): 301–16. PhDCasting (2020–22), [Podcast] Host Jerry Padfield: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ phdcasting/id1501370607 (accessed 16 February 2022).

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RadioDoc Review (2022), ‘Reviewer guidelines’, RadioDoc Review: https://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr/ policies.html (accessed 16 February 2022). Rae, M., E. K. Russell and A. Nethery (2019), ‘Earwitnessing Detention: Carceral Secrecy, Affecting Voice, and Political Listening in The Messenger Podcast’, International Journal of Communication 13, 1036–55. Schultz, D. and I. Hedder (2021), ‘Aural Parasocial Relations: Host–Listener Relationships in Podcasts’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media: www.semanticscholar.org/paper/AuralParasocial-Relations (accessed 16 February 2022). Sharon, T. and N. A. John (2019), ‘Imagining an Ideal Podcast Listener’, Popular Communication 17 (4): 333–47. Spinelli, M. and L. Dann (2019), ‘Introduction’, in M. Spinelli and L. Dann (eds), Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. Sullivan, G. (2009), ‘Making Space: The Purpose and Place of Research-Led Practice’, in H. Smith and R. T. Dean (eds), Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 41–65. Tacchi, J. (2000), ‘The Need for Radio Theory in the Digital Age’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 3 (2): 289–98. The Podcast Studies Podcast (formerly New Aural Cultures) (2019–22), [Podcast] Hosts Dario Llinares & Lori Beckstead: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-podcast-studiespodcast-formerly-new-aural-cultures/id1456960578 (accessed 16 February 2022). Waldmann, E. (2020), ‘From Storytelling to Storylistening: How the Hit Podcast S-Town Reconfigured the Production and Reception of Narrative Nonfiction’, Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media 4: 28–42. Wincott, A., J. Martin and I. Richards (2021), ‘Telling Stories in Soundspace: Placement, Embodiment and Authority in Immersive Audio Journalism’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 19 (2): 253–70.

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10 An Analysis of Black American Radio Listenership Kim Fox

If the coronavirus pandemic that began in early 2020 hadn’t upended nearly everyone’s lives, more people might have been aware of the centennial for US radio, which was to be celebrated for its 1920 start. However, with the global shutdown, the year 2020 ended up being a good time to reflect on radio’s history, which was captured nicely in the Journal of Radio & Audio Media’s1 second issue that year. My radio memories were also evoked in 2020 due to the death of my former morning radio co-host Bryan Scott (not COVID-19 related) who died in late December. We’d worked together doing the morning shows in the 1990s in both Cincinnati, Ohio and Buffalo, New York. Though our Arbitron numbers were stellar, little did we know then that we were in the pinnacle years for Black radio: amazing rhythm and blues artists, the early days of rap music, dedicated listeners, before the permeation of nationally syndicated Black radio programmes, before regulation and before iPods. The reverence for radio in the USA has been covered for decades from a scholarly point of view with research articles on technology, activism, community radio, college radio as well as from a global lens. Many theories have been applied to radio research over the years including the public sphere, parasocial relationships as well as the ever popular Uses and Gratifications approach. Additionally, research methodologies related to radio run the gamut from content analyses to case studies to a variety of mixed-methods options. The combination of the various approaches provides an overarching view of the radio field. The inclusion of Black radio in this pool of research exists; however, there could be more research on Black radio listeners.

Walking a mile in their shoes There are many scholars who have conducted academic research on Black radio and listenership. Jennifer Stoever investigated the gap in the field with her research covering the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1930s to 1950s (Stoever 2019). Stuart H. Surlin wrote several articles related to Black radio. In 1972, he published ‘Black-Oriented Radio: Programming to a Perceived Audience’ in the Journal of Broadcasting (now the Journal of Broadcasting &

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Electronic Media). Surlin highlighted research from 1966 that supported the supposition that Blacks ‘hold a positive attitude toward black-oriented radio stations’ (289). Additionally, the degree of loyalty that Black listeners have to ‘their preferred radio stations’ was the focus of his 1968 study (Surlin 1971: 290). In a separate 1973 article authored by Surlin, he delved into the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC)2 obligatory ‘public service’ aspects of Black radio. Stoever and Surlin noticed a gap in radio research as it related to Black radio, as did media critic Dave Berkman. However, Berkman took issue with the existence of Negro-oriented radio in the 1960s (Berkman 1966) stating that there was no need for separatist radio because Negroes were seeking integration. Since the 1960s, there has been ample research on Black radio covering college radio (Harrison 2016) and commercial radio (Johnson 2005; Morant 2008) as well as Frank W. Johnson, Jr.’s chapter in the Journal of Radio Studies (1993–1994) on the history of US Black radio networks (Johnson 1993).

The Black-oriented programming block Over the years Black listeners have consistently been attracted to content that is specific to their needs and interests. That would typically be classified as news, information and entertainment, including genres of music like rhythm and blues. A station could be deemed Black-oriented if it had a dedicated block of programming even if the block was a small portion of the station’s airtime, such as an hour (Surlin 1972). One of the first radio stations to offer a block of such programming was WSBC-AM,3 according to journalist and author Marc Fisher, in 1929 in Chicago, where ‘The All-Negro Hour’ featured comedy bits, gospel songs with Mahalia Jackson, and other live musicians (Fisher 2009). It was typical for a station to have news and public affairs programmes or gospel music on the weekends only; or perhaps a two-hour block of soul music. Surlin’s research investigated not only the Black-oriented programming blocks, but he also looked at the kinds of audiences that programming attracted, and it was not distinctly a Black listener. The Black-oriented programming block was diffused as Black radio ownership increased. This transition was viewed positively by activists and listeners because it gave them more hours of programmed content designed for Black audiences. A station that was Black-owned would typically include public affairs shows on weekends as well as gospel music on Sunday mornings. Additionally, seeing the profitability of Black-oriented radio, some non-minority-owned stations adopted formats that were attractive to Black listeners.

Black radio as the pillar of the Black community Black radio’s contribution to the Black public sphere is foundational as Black radio has been a pillar in the Black community for information and discussions. Deceased writer Richard Durham, now inducted in the Radio Hall of Fame, authored narratives of historical Black people that aired as weekly radio dramas on WMAQ-AM4 in Chicago in the late

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1940s (Williams 2015). The vivid recreations, originally funded by the Chicago Defender, documented the lives of prominent Black Americans by including multiple voices along with orchestrated music. In a 2012 article, media researchers Fay Cobb Payton and Lynette Kvasny noted Black radio as the dominant form of communication during both ‘the civil rights and Black power movements in the U.S. from the 1920s to the mid-1970s’ (82). Radio was the vehicle to inform communities about resistance rallies as well as civil unrest with both national coverage and local updates. Fisher also remarked on the strength of Black radio during that time period by stating, ‘Black listeners relied on their deejays – often the only Blacks in town widely recognized by both races – for leadership on civil rights’ (2009: 52). Black radio hosts had the power to inspire communities while highlighting a counterpublic that was absent from the mainstream media. Squires, whose research also addresses the Black public sphere, researched the positionality of Black radio by focusing on Chicago’s WVONAM5 as a case study and how the station addressed the needs of the community (Squires 2000). Though the centrality of Black radio often spotlights the programming, the truth is that the importance of Black listeners to Black radio is reciprocal. That reciprocity was prevalent when the racial injustice case involving the Jena Six arose in 2006. It demonstrated how radio was key to mobilizing the national communities of Black listeners to support six Black teens who were charged in a beating of a white student in Jena, Louisiana (Cobb Payton and Kvasny 2012). By this time nationally syndicated radio programmes, such as The Michael Baisden Show, were common with listeners in smaller markets, like Mobile, Alabama, hearing the same content as those residing in large markets in Atlanta, Georgia and Cleveland, Ohio. The show was available in ‘78 media markets nationwide with over 8 million listeners daily’ (AALBC.com, the African American Literature Book Club, n.d.). It aired during afternoon drive on its radio station affiliates, a key time slot for advertisers, as listeners made their way home from work and school. Baisden is credited with bringing the Jena Six case to the attention of Black communities alongside amplification via social media (Cobb Payton and Kvasny 2012). His commitment to the cause eventually led to a march in Jena, Louisiana, in which he used his radio programme to encourage his radio listeners to participate. The success of Black radio can be attributed to many factors: a traditional medium; many markets only had one Black radio station which increased the likelihood of Black listenership. Also, the ability of Black radio hosts to connect with their audiences contributed to a large listener base in many cities. One attribution that Black radio hosts utilized to relate to their audience was the way they talked. The 1996 radio documentary series Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was dedicated an entire episode to this topic, ‘Rappers & Rhymers’ and ‘Sounding Black’. Radio pioneering disc jockey Jack Gibson (also known as Jockey Jack and later known as Jack The Rapper) gained popularity in the 1940s with his use of slang. It was a be-bop style that he learned from his predecessor, radio legend Al Benson. In Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was,6 Gibson exacted that Black deejays were immersed in the music and made an effort to stand out. It was the beginning of the radio personality (‘Hour Three’ 1996). The radio documentary’s narrator Lou Rawls shared that when African Americans began to saturate the radio in the 1950s and 1960s, it was their distinctive sound, jive talking, that made them stand out (‘Hour Three’ 1996).

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The use of authentic African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was the focus of Kesha Morant Williams’s research: that listeners are responsive to Black radio hosts who present themselves as genuinely part of the community. She stated that ‘the presence and interaction style of the radio host influences the audience’s connection to the medium’ (Morant Williams 2011: 264). She goes on to say that this approach is not common in mainstream radio where the focus is on entertaining listeners, but not necessarily connecting to them using a language style that they can relate to (Morant Williams 2011). Overwhelmingly, Black listeners are drawn to the cross-talk when the radio hosts are on the air. Whether the exchanges are between the hosts or via call-ins, listeners get the feeling that they are eavesdropping on conversations or participating in dialogue that is often heard in the Black community in churches, beauty salons and barbershops; a natural oral tradition.

The nostalgia for Black radio The influx of Black deejays in the 1950s was the catalyst for a younger audience, but younger did not just mean younger Black listeners. White teens were attracted to the new genres of music like rock and roll from artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, just to name a few. The manifestation of youth listenership transcends into a keen affinity to the medium for Black audiences and hence a lifetime of nostalgia for the collective Black radio experience. The development of a sense of community via Black radio has been foregrounded since the 1940s. The sense of community theory certainly holds up based on David McMillans’s definition, ‘[A] sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together’ (McMillan 1976). The sense of community is synonymous with localism and it used to be an FCC requirement whereby radio stations were obligated to cater to the communities where they were licensed by utilizing airtime to address issues of concern. My Black radio-related sense of community was evidenced while growing up in Akron, Ohio. Though we had a Black programming block on Sundays on the Akron-based AM station WAKR, it was the collective listening experience of Cleveland-based WZAK-FM’s ‘Just the Two of Us’ on Saturday mornings that resonated through the Black communities in northeast Ohio. If you were out running errands (washing the car, getting your hair done, etc.), you were likely to hear hosts Lynn Tolliver, Jr’s and Ralph Poole’s shenanigans blasting from car stereos or in local grocery stores. For most Black radio stations promotional events were designed to engage audiences both on air as well as with a physical presence. There would be ticket giveaways to concerts and movie premieres as well as gatherings at local parks and schools. Tolliver and Poole had an ongoing contest where you could win US$93 (the dial position for the station was 93.1) if you called in when they played the song ‘Celebration’ by Kool & The Gang on their Saturday morning show. My reflection on working in Black radio was that I wasn’t just talking into the ether and that there was a diverse audience intently listening to every syllable and every song.

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Though our radio station management would say that our target audience was eighteen to thirty-four, a coveted demographic for its potential to sell advertisements, it was a given that elementary school students were everyday listeners right along with the church elders. While working morning drive at Black-owned and operated WIZF-FM ‘The Wiz’ in Cincinnati, Ohio I witnessed our then news and public affairs directors in action. First there was Karen Turner, the first to hold the position at the station, and now a journalism professor at Temple University. She worked copiously to churn out her hourly newscasts during the morning show, and with few resources. Turner confided to me in recent years that the station did not even have a subscription to the Associated Press, which made it difficult to report and confirm the news of the day. Then came Edna Howell-Parrish. She had a connection to the community as well as a commitment to informing the community in addition to involving the community in discussions on her Sunday morning call-in show ‘Straight Talk Live’. Both Turner and Howell-Parrish, who also grew up listening to Black radio, embodied an innate ‘sense of community’. My radio career also led me to co-host the morning show with Bryan Scott on ‘The Wake Up Club’ at WBLK-FM, in Buffalo, New York. Though it wasn’t Black-owned, the Black-oriented programming had been a staple on the station since its early days. WBLK had a strong presence throughout the greater Buffalo area. The station could be seen at parties in the park and at local clubs, but also at Bison’s games, the minor-league baseball team, concerts, movie premieres and other community events that may or may not have been directed specifically to a Black audience. We prided ourselves on knowing the pulse of the city. If there was hype around an upcoming event or a celebrity in the news, you probably heard about it through us. That sense of community was precisely the sentiment of nearly fifty respondents from across the USA who shared with me their memories of radio stations and air personalities in cities like Cincinnati, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Denver, Colorado, Detroit, Michigan and so many more. Chetachi Egwu, a professor and content creator, was glued to WBLK in Buffalo, New York in the 1980s and 1990s and she says she appreciated ‘the many local events advertised with Black people in mind’. A similar sentiment came from Drew Greer, a brand marketing executive, who, in the 1990s, was a daily listener of KDAY-FM in the Los Angeles area. He remarked that ‘it was the heart of the community’. Other listeners mentioned the inclusion of listeners like them on the radio via call-in programmes. Google has an Arts & Culture initiative that includes a Black radio collection and a segment dedicated to community engagement. It notes ‘the close relationship between Black radio and its audiences extended beyond the airwaves’ (Golden Age of Black Radio – Part 3: Community Engagement n.d.). It highlighted WDIA-AM, the first Black radio station in the USA, in Memphis for its charitable contributions and noted that the ‘deejays were cultural programmers for the Black community and served as agents for empowerment’. Lillie Fears, a professor of journalism in Arkansas, concurs. She listened to the station in the 1970s and still fondly proclaims her love for the station in addition to recalling its public affairs programming. WDIA’s community stance was further confirmed by deejay Martha Jean ‘The Queen’ Steinberg, who began working at WDIA in 1954. She stated that ‘WDIA played a very, very important role in the Black community because they

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mixed entertainment with serving the community’ (Golden Age of Black Radio - Part 3: Community Engagement n.d.). Gibson elaborated on how Black deejays were an integral part of the community: When I was in radio, we were much closer to our communities. We were unafraid to go into any part of town. We went places that you would never think about going. We went into the poorest neighborhoods. We were asked by the police at any time when there was a disturbance to go in or to tell some folks to quit doing what they were doing. (Indiana University Archives of African American Music and Culture)

Despite the fact that Black-oriented radio was rebranded as Urban Contemporary in the 1980s, Black listeners tuned in for the whole of what it was: music and the showmanship of the radio disc jockeys. With segmented radio or day parts, my informal survey of Black listeners confirmed that they were committed to listening daily from morning drive to afternoon drive to ‘The Quiet Storm’, music in the evening for lovers, to wind down the day. Twila Dang, founder and CEO of Matriarch Digital Media, listened to WAMOFM in the 1980s while growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ‘It was always on in the background. It was a daily soundtrack.’ Another survey respondent, writer Josie Wells, was enamoured with ‘the music curations and music segments (e.g. WBLS quiet storm, which featured slow jams).’ The ability to record at home via a cassette tape spawned the popularity of the mixtape, which was a fond memory for Henry Agbo, who now lives in the UK, but enjoyed listening to 100.3 The Beat and Hot 104.1 in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1990s. With the deregulation of radio following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Black listeners had fewer choices for local programming and essentially, the heyday of Black radio (the 1960s to 1990s) was dead. The Tom Joyner Morning Show was nationally available, and it was well received by audiences with ‘more than 8 million listeners each week in more than 115 markets’, according to BlackAmericaWeb.com (Fox 2013). Joyner’s syndicated radio show was popular, many of the survey participants mentioned him by name when asked to share a memory about a radio personality and content-wise, it crammed in everything listeners could want during the four-hour morning drive block: music, entertainment, comedy bits, news and commentary. Perhaps one downside to having a format like Joyner’s, a combination of traditional Black radio as well as a bit of the talk-radio format, when discussing racial tensions was that some listeners may not have delineated the difference between the opinion of the radio hosts and the facts of a particular story (Fox 2013). However, Wells, a New York listener, says she was drawn to ‘the political discourse and news analysis, which made whatever news was unfolding at the time easy for me (I was a kid) to grasp.’ Longtime St. Louis listener Renee Thomas Woods solidly summed up the state of Black radio post-1990s: ‘Segmentation of the Black music genre, loss of stations and some sub genres like smooth jazz/jazz, loss of news, narrowed playlist, lack of opportunities to hear independent music.’ The shift in Black radio programming as a result of consolidation collided with the invention and adoption of new audio technologies including satellite radio and Black radio seems to have lost listeners who lost interest or who migrated to other listening options.

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Where do we go from here? The current view on Black radio is that it has changed to a point where not as many of the respondents would admit to listening regularly like they used to. That’s probably an attribution to the splintering of the audiences (hip-hop, urban contemporary, etc.) as well as the availability of other listening options like digital music and podcasts (many radio stations now re-package their on-air radio content as on-demand podcasts). Black radio did not recover from the deregulation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and since then ‘the landscape of radio has dramatically changed as a voice and outlet for local communities’ (Rodriguez 2009). Nationally syndicated Black radio shows continue to have a presence on the radio dial, but typically hosted by high-profile entertainers such as comedians D. L. Hughley and Steve Harvey. Though popular Black actors and comedians can increase listenership with their name recognition, the sense of community on the local level is often lost (national Black issues versus local concerns) along with the divestment of financial resources through the lack of employing local deejays. With the proliferation of news deserts as a result of the decline in newspapers, we are hearing the buzz of hyperlocal (community-centric) news coverage along with the incorporation of secondary schools and universities filling the void of providing local content for communities. Years ago, we thought that low power FM (LPFM) licences would be the answer to consolidation of the US radio industry as a way to retain localism, but LPFMs in the USA never gained the anticipated saturation. Meanwhile, as of 2021, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) was advocating for relaxed local ownership rules in the name of localism. However, in terms of Black radio, the proposed recommendations such as, ‘remove restrictions on FM station ownership in Nielsen markets 76 and lower’ would likely not benefit Black owners or listeners because it’s likely that the same radio groups who currently own the bulk of US radio stations would just gobble up a few more and then syndicate national programming to the smaller markets as a cost-saving measure (National Association of Broadcasters 2021). After more than ninety years of Black-oriented radio programming and listenership, the Black public sphere has evolved with radio being forced to capitalize on the use of social media and other digital technology, like podcasting or deejay-ing via Instagram (as DJ DNice did during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic), to grow their audiences globally. No matter the listening platform, traditionally or digitally, what remains central to the Black radio, and its attraction to Black listeners, just like in the past, is the sound: the music and the deejays.

Notes 1 2

The author is on the editorial board for The Journal of Radio & Audio Media. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is the governing body that regulates most communication entities in the USA.

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3 4 5 6

WSBC-AM is an AM radio station based in Chicago, Illinois. WMAQ was an AM radio station based in Chicago, Illinois. WVON is an AM radio station based in Chicago, Illinois. Produced by Radio Smithsonian.

Works cited AALBC.com, the African American Literature Book Club (n.d.), Michael Baisden, Author Information, Published Books, Biography, Photos, Videos, and More, AALBC.com, the African American Literature Book Club. Berkman, D. (1966), ‘The Segregated Medium’, Columbia Journalism Review 5 (3): 29–32. Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was: Hour Three: ‘Rappers & Rhymers’ and ‘Sounding Black’ (1996), PRX – Public Radio Exchange, 1 January: https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/355123hour-three-rappers-rhymers-and-sounding-blac (accessed 29 April 2022). Cobb Payton, F. and L. Kvasny (2012), ‘Considering the Political Roles of Black Talk Radio and the Afrosphere in Response to the Jena 6: Social Media and the Blogosphere’, Information Technology & People 25 (1): 81–102. Fisher, M. (2009), Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation (1st ed.), London: Random House. Fox, K. (2013), Black Talk Radio in the Sphere of Political Talk Radio, Journal of Mass Media Ethics 28 (4): 294–7. Golden Age of Black Radio – Part 3: Community Engagement (n.d.), Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/xAUBMS2aFU5JLQ (accessed 30 April 2022). Harrison, A. K. (2016), ‘Black College-Radio on Predominantly White Campuses: A ‘Hip-Hop Era’ Student-Authored Inclusion Initiative’, The Journal of Pan African Studies [Online] 9 (8): 135–54. Indiana University Archives of African American Music and Culture (IUAAAMC) (2015), Jack Gibson Discusses the Social Role of Black Radio DJs in the Black Community, 4 December: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOmt_ocKnGw (accessed 30 April 2022). Johnson, F. W. Jr. (1993), ‘A History of the Development of Black Radio Networks in the United States History of Radio’, Journal of Radio Studies 2: 173–88. Johnson, P. (2005), ‘KJLH-FM, South Central’s Hub to the World: Black Radio’s Emergence on the Internet’, Convergence 11 (1): 26–47. McMillan, D. (1976), ‘Sense of Community: An Attempt at Definition’, Unpublished ms, Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers. Morant, K. M. (2008), African-American Communication: The Continuity and Extension Through Talk Elements of Commercial Black Radio [Ph.D., Washington, DC: Howard University]. Morant Williams, K. (2011), ‘The Bad Boy of Radio: The Continuity and Extension of African American Communication Dynamics Through Talk Elements of the Michael Baisden Radio Show’, Howard Journal of Communications 22 (3): 260–79. National Association of Broadcasters (2021), NAB Newsroom, 3 September, National Association of Broadcasters.

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Rodriguez, S. V. (2009), Disappearing Voices: The Decline of Black Radio, New York: Progressive Pulse, January: www.progressivepulse.com (accessed 1 May 2022). Squires, C. R. (2000), ‘Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity’, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 5 (2): 73–95. Stoever, J. (2019), ‘Black Radio Listeners in America’s “Golden Age”’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26 (1): 119–33. Surlin, S. H. (1971), ‘Black-Oriented Radio: Programming to a Perceived Audience Broadcasting to Minorities’, Journal of Broadcasting 16 (3): 289–98. Surlin, S. H. (1973), ‘Black-Oriented Radio’s Service to the Community’, Journalism Quarterly 50 (3): 556–60. Williams, S. D. (2015), Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom, Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Section III Emotions

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

Radio, and now podcasting, is a privileged space for the expression of emotion, intimacy and imagination. In genres like drama, live talk radio or experimental features, heard across commercial, community, public service or podcast networks, listeners are invited to form an emotional connection with presenters, characters and contributors. In this section, our four authors present informative insights into the storytelling process, on-air/off-air dynamics and interpersonal relationships, not only between listeners and hosts, but also production teams. This selection of original research draws on a rich range of historical and contemporary sources, including sound archives, newspapers, transcripts and letters, together with personal testimonies from practitioners and audiences. In our opening chapter: ‘Emotions in the Dark: A History of Late-Night French Radio’, Marine Beccarelli writes an account of night-time broadcasting, focusing on its emotional role and evolution. Beccarelli signposts the key components of late-night radio (inviting secrets, anonymity and even erotica), allowing for the most personal reflections and confessions. This is a space for experimentation, creativity, support and intimacy – themes which permeate many other chapters, not just within this particular section, but indeed others throughout this Handbook. As well as focusing on the programmes themselves (starting in 1955 and leading up to the 2000s), her work also considers the perspective of night-time radio listeners, studying the act of listening in the dark. Beccarelli identifies those of us who might be more compelled to listen at night – when they may be alone and less distracted by external demands. In Kathryn McDonald’s chapter, she too contemplates the more vulnerable caller, the relationship between host and their listener and the powerful potential of radio to create an almost sacred – and not always intentional – space for reflection, connection and trauma for those experiencing their darkest hours. In ‘The Radio Phone-in and the Suicidal Caller’ McDonald considers what happens when a caller has phoned into a live commercial talk radio show while they are in the process of attempting to end their lives. As one of the first to write about this, McDonald reflects on this from the viewpoint of the caller, the host (and team) and the audience – as well as thinking about the wider context of how the media approach suicide in fictional storylines, factual reporting and across different institutions. The emotional journey experienced as well as the somewhat

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surprising strategies employed by the host to keep their caller talking may also reveal a great deal about our cultural approach to suicide. As well as drawing on archive, this research foregrounds the experiences of hosts, phone operators and producers. Helen Wolfenden’s chapter ‘Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters’ also focuses on the off-air relationship between presenters and producers. Using Arlie Hochschild’s work on ‘emotional labour’, Wolfenden shows us that this relationship is often very complex, cherished and sometimes fraught. This delicate relationship is explored in more depth, using revealing interviews with current and former high-profile Australian Broadcasting (ABC) radio broadcasters to showcase their experiences of this on-air/off-air partnership dynamic. As Wolfenden suggests, in most analysis of talk radio we find the focus is more on the presenters and what they say and do – meaning production studies have been largely underexplored. We see here how it can offer a meaningful and important contribution to contemporary or historical discussions of radio. While the first three chapters have focused more on live radio, our final offering looks at sonic storytelling devices in contemporary podcasts and drama. In ‘Audio within Audio: Phones, Materiality and the Elicitation of Emotion in Podcasting’, Evi Karathanasopoulou continues her research on intimacy. This work shows us the different types of creative and immersive recording and editing techniques which are now being used to generate emotion and atmosphere in both fictional and factual narratives. Looking at episodes of Passenger List (2019), Serial (2014/2020) and S-Town (2017), Karathanasopoulou shows us how podcasting may present audio producers with innovative and interesting ways of offering emotionally tactile and intimate immersive content. Our chapters focus on different perspectives, spanning different genres, platforms and eras. However, all link to the powerful potential of radio (and podcasting) to engage and connect emotionally – through storylines, listeners, hosts, production teams, technology and characters.

11 Emotions in the Dark A History of Late-Night French Radio Marine Beccarelli

The French writer and artist Jean Cocteau used to listen to all-night radio in the 1950s and wrote in his diary: ‘Listening to all-night radio gives information about the time we live in’ (1958). In fact, by the middle of the twentieth century, French radio stations had started to extend their schedules, broadcasting progressively longer in the night, until they reached an uninterrupted broadcast, available twenty-four hours a day. Since then, during nighttime, radio became a privileged place for the expression of emotions, and particularly from the middle of the 1970s, when a new kind of programmes emerged, in which the listeners were invited to express themselves on the air. This eruption of intimacy was not specifically French, since most countries developed these kinds of nocturnal call-in programmes. Following Michael C. Keith’s work about all-night radio in the USA (2001), the aim of this chapter is to examine the history of French night-time radio. With a freer and more intimate tone than daytime broadcasts, night-time radio has long been the privileged place for confidences and the expression of innermost thoughts or feelings, delivered in the anonymity of the night. Moreover, there may be no better moment to listen to the radio than during these nocturnal hours – when the listener is more available, frequently alone, and less distracted by external demands. The night is also the time where truth is sometimes revealed, where social masks and barriers eventually fall down, and this moment is privileged for imagination. At night, ‘the ear is like an eye’ suggests the French anthropologist Véronique Nahoum-Grappe (1997), and ‘it is our hearing that we prefer to rely on’, underlines the philosopher Michael Foessel (2013). Hence the sound unfolds in the dark, tending to be more powerful, the act of listening to radio at night can make people feel particularly strong emotions. If the radio is the ‘soundtrack of our lives’ at all times (Starkey 2008), all-night radio tends to echo even more our inner and intimate worlds.

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This chapter recounts the evolution of night-time broadcasts in France, from the first programme designed for people driving at night up to the phone-ins created for adults in the 1970s, and then for teenagers in the 1990s, passing by erotic broadcasts or late programmes relaying the noisy and festive sounds of night. Leaning on two major historiographic fields – media history and the history of night-time – and on the vast domain of radio studies, this chapter focuses on broadcasts and radio listeners, developing an analysis which relies on a various range of sources: sound radio archives, when they exist, but also newspapers and letters from listeners.

Before the 1950s: radio silence at night ‘Radio is in a way humanity that speaks to itself, that addresses itself day and night’, wrote the French poet Jean Tardieu in the late 1960s (1969). Actually, for a while, this sentence applied mostly for the day-time, and a lot less for the night. In fact, the first French radio stations were created at the beginning of the 1920s, a hundred years ago (Ulmann-Mauriat 1999), but they remained mainly silent at night for more than thirty years. Until the middle of the 1950s, broadcasts stopped at night, around 11 pm or midnight, starting again every morning around seven. It was only in case of some exceptional events – nights of celebrations like Christmas and New Year’s Eve, or political occasions such as elections – that these stations stayed awake, broadcasting later on in the night. During the usual nights before the 1950s, French people who wanted to listen to radio could only explore the frequencies, and look for some short-wave foreign programmes. During night-time, indeed, the radio waves can travel further through the atmosphere, due to a physical phenomenon of the darkness (Demoulin 2012), so it has always been possible to receive broadcasts coming from other countries at late hours. Since the beginning of this medium in the early twentieth century, nocturnal listeners – the amateur pioneers of radio operating – could access cross-border radio transmissions. Profiting on the nocturnal atmosphere, they climbed up to some high points to turn on their receiver. The scientist Daniel Berthelot used to climb up on the hills of Meudon, in the Parisian region, to enjoy the ‘absolute silence’ of the night, trying to catch radio messages from Spain, England, Germany: None of the thousand noises of Paris goes up until the solitary tower, but around half past nine every night, we can hear the voices of the night. […] From North to South, and West to East, the nocturnal voices cross and respond to each other. The space is perpetually travelled by these invisible waves, following each other on the surface of the sleeping earth, […] like the concentric wrinkles formed in the dead water of a pond after a stone is thrown into it. (Berthelot 1922)

Robert Champeix, a radio pioneer, remembered later on the emotions felt by these first night listeners: ‘We appeared to be a very strong guy when we told our friends: “Last night, I caught Berlin, or Vienna, or Motala, in Sweden.” We had consecration when we could brag about having caught America, after getting up at 3 in the morning’ (Champeix 1966: 39–40).

A History of Late-Night French Radio

If radio remained rare during the first years of existence of radio stations in the 1920s, it progressively spread amongst French homes and became an everyday consumer item from the 1930s, though remaining mostly silent after midnight, because the different stations didn’t provide any night broadcast after a certain advanced hour. While French people didn’t have easy access to radio broadcasts at night for a long time, it was different in the USA, where there had been some nocturnal shows since the 1930s (Keith 2001). After the Second World War, the French public stations stopped broadcasting every night around midnight after airing the French national anthem La Marseillaise (Duverney 1982: 12). Moreover, one of the shows aired just before the broadcast interruption was called Prélude aux rêves (Prelude to Dreams), a musical programme offering quiet music tracks, where the hosts invited their listeners to go to bed and sleep. Also, some radio programmes provided during the evening were leading people to relax, with storytellers narrating motionless travels through distant places across the globe, thanks to the use of music and particular sound atmospheres. If the absence of image on the radio always contributed to solicit the listener’s imagination (Douglas 2004), this dimension tended to become more important in the evening or at night, because night-time is a moment that favours reverie.

Radio voices for night workers In 1955, a French public station Paris Inter launched the first all-night regular show, Route de nuit (Road by night), aired nightly from midnight to 2 am. This programme was initially imagined for truck and car drivers. The very recent introduction of the car radio, coupled with the increase in motor traffic, made it possible to keep listeners company on the road, so that they did not fall asleep at the wheel. The launch of such a night broadcast aroused an interest in the night in general and the night workers in particular. When Route de nuit was created, a survey counted the existence of 150 night professions (Remonté 1989: 91). Thanks to this radio programme aired seven days a week, the nightlife was revealed. Hosted each night by a different person, Route de nuit was composed of music, news about the roads, the traffic or the weather, and some games. Every night of the week, the show started at midnight and was hosted by a different person, so seven anchors alternated each week, a majority of men, but also two women, including Denise Alberti, during this night of January 1959: Here is Denise Alberti, at the microphone of Route de nuit, to keep you company. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, or maybe I should say ‘good morning’. At least good night to you who are awake and want to pass some moments with me. Good night in particular to those who are forced to be on the road, because nobody would like to venture to drive for one’s pleasure with such bad weather. Good night to every one of you who are working, good night to those who stay awake to be with us. […] Be very careful if you have to go on the road, we won’t stop to repeat it. […] I will now keep a promise I made to a listener last week, a woman who called asking if I had some records of Colette Renard. I hadn’t brought any with me last Monday, but I repaired this tonight. (Alberti 1959)

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Very quickly, a great number of letters were sent from listeners to the team of Route de nuit, proving that the popularity of this programme soon spread beyond drivers and night workers. Insomniacs, night owls, students, artists and the elderly listened to these latenight shows. Some of them expressed in their letters their disappointment about the fact that the programme was ending every night at 2.00 am. In 1957, reacting to their request, the direction of Paris Inter finally decided to extend this show until 6.00 am, and thus to broadcast non-stop twenty-four hours a day. From then on, the show still existed for approximately fifteen years, and was widely followed by night workers, amongst others. In 1967, the ten-year anniversary of this continuous broadcast was celebrated on air. One baker, a regular listener of Route de nuit, explained the importance of this programme: Before Route de nuit, we only had one distant station, that we could hear faintly: the BBC. It was nice, but it didn’t speak French, it was not from home. […] One night, searching on our radio sets, we realised they were people speaking in French. We thought: ‘Eh, what’s that?’, and we started to listen to it, every night. We passed the word around colleagues, saying: ‘Have you heard? Now there’s a radio station working non-stop at night, that is really great.’ […] They gave us their telephone number, so we called and gave some explanation about the making of bread. […] At the beginning, we were not on air, but then they plugged us on. (Interactualités 1967)

After the creation of Route de nuit, the writer Jean Cocteau seemed to have developed a kind of addiction to night-time radio, even though his relation to it was quite ambiguous. He wrote in his diary while listening to it, transcribing what he heard and how he felt about it: The radio works all night. Amazing thing. On air, an amount of people calling each other with their name and surname chat and joke around, on the pretext of asking or giving some news about the road conditions. These persons are certain to be famous and to captivate the audience. Men got affected voices and women laugh out loud. This is a new ghost society; we don’t know where it comes from and where these people meet. This society owns its own special vocabulary, where the word ‘ambiance’ comes back every minute, ‘great world premieres’ of discs recorded by unknown singers who think they are glorious. I’m sometimes fascinated by these chatters and ‘premieres’. They happen in a world as distant from us than from the moon. (quoted in Héron 2010)

If Cocteau listens to radio at night, it’s largely due to the invention of the radio transistor, a small and transportable radio receiver, which brought voices and music inside the bedrooms. One night, Cocteau was even surprised by it: Midnight. I was reading in my bedroom when I suddenly heard that someone was speaking about me out loud in the stairs. Some male voices were getting closer, even though there are not any men in the house. […] It was Francine with the small transportable radio. She brought the broadcast to me. I only heard the end. [They] were saying very beautiful and moving things. (Cocteau 1955)

A History of Late-Night French Radio

Hence the arrival of the transistor, which made it possible to individualize listening by taking one’s own personal radio into the bedroom, also encouraged the development of more diversified programming.

Mundane and festive nights In 1965, ten years after the creation of Route de nuit, a programme of a new kind was launched on France Inter station: Le Pop Club, produced and hosted by José Artur between 11 pm and 1.00 am, five nights a week. This show was broadcasting live from a bar, the Bar Noir, located in the new Maison de la radio in Paris (Dhordain 1983: 212–13). In this show, José Artur welcomed artists and intellectuals for some spontaneous and relaxed interviews, after the concerts and plays, in the mundane atmosphere of a night bar. The people invited could drink alcohol during the interviews, while the show was opened to the public (Artur 1974). This bar soon became a trendy place of the Parisian nightlife, offering also live music, and broadcasting before anyone else new pop music records, which the Pop Club team collected directly in Great Britain or in the USA. In 1969, for example, a German listener wrote to José Artur to congratulate him for his show: The biggest sensation of the show in 1969 is when you played 21st Century Schizoid Man, by King Crimson. I really liked the song and I asked a very well-known disc jockey in Berlin his opinion about King Crimson. Every time I asked this question nobody ever had anything to say about this group, because they didn’t know it. The first LP of the fantastic King Crimson was released five weeks after the night you played it for the first time in Pop Club. CONGRATULATIONS!!! […] When someone asks me about a good music show in Berlin I can only say … France Inter, Le Pop Club de José Artur! (José Artur’s letters 1969)

Apart from this musical and transnational dimension, the radio station created with the Pop Club in-person events, becoming a meeting place for night birds, artists and listeners, not only on air, but also in the heart of the fancy 16th Parisian district. The tone of this show was particularly informal where improvisation played a great part: the host José Artur never announced in advance the name of his guests, neither wrote a line before the micro opened. We work with a lively material […]. When we have a visit planned in the show, I keep it to myself. Because it is very unpleasant to announce: ‘Tonight, what’s-his-name will be here!’, and then flop, what’s-his-name doesn’t come! I prefer waiting until what’s-his-name is here. (Artur 1970)

In his Pop Club, everything seemed possible and surprising, as opposed to daytime broadcasts from the French public stations of that time, which remained quite serious and sober in the middle of the 1960s. From that moment on, night-time radio not only had the mission to accompany people with some news and music, but also became a vehicle of the

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counter-culture emerging in the 1960s. Apart from the music, José Artur offered in Le Pop Club some quite free talks about seduction or eroticism, for example during a night with Salvador Dali and other guests in 1968: There is a woman-flower next to me. You are a girl-flower, which is very beautiful. […] You may remove your mask later, but I can say that you have Dali’s signature on your tights, at 2 different places, on the hips, and on the thigh. […] Are you pretty? I think you have a very beautiful body, I am quite certain about that, but do you have a nice face? […] You seem to have beautiful teeth; through the muslin I can spot some beautiful teeth and nice lips. […] Some people are really hot. Those people got undressed, to the point it is possible to undress, but there’s nothing improper. You know me well now; I wouldn’t dare to tell you something improper five minutes to midnight. Everything is correct, everything is ravishing. (Artur 1968)

José Artur didn’t hesitate to approach some transgressive topics. He was keen to question the morality of that time, and to provoke his guests in interviews. For example, he pronounced himself in favour of the abolition of death penalty, which would be abolished in France in 1981, and spoke openly about homosexuality. In 1978, a student wrote him a letter in which he thanked him for that: ‘I thank you to have included this section [about homosexuality] as simply as you did in your show, because it is usually horribly artificial when people speak about it, or totally off-topic. Because people want to make an intrinsic problem about it.’ A lot of teenagers and young people listened to Le Pop Club, sometimes secretly, like Martine: I must have been twelve or thirteen when my mother agreed to offer me a small radio set. […] My aim was to populate my nights which were already a problem for me. I didn’t have the permission to read or listen to radio after a certain hour. […] I was pretending to sleep when my mother passed in front of my bedroom to check on me. […] Then, around 9.45 pm, I slowly switched on my radio, with a very low volume, and I plugged in the shows I loved. At 10 pm it was the time of the Great Mass: Le Pop Club from José Artur. I never missed it. […] I Imagined a stylish bar, filled with smoke, with the master of ceremony at the microphone, and the guests following each other by his side. (Bernier 2015)

The high number of letters received by José Artur proved that this show was listened to by a very diverse public. Also, these letters enable us to measure the impact of voices and radio shows. People listening to radio at night tend to attach themselves more likely to a programme and to the voice of the man or woman hosting it, because night-time is the privileged moment to develop fantasies and imagination. José Artur regularly received love letters, along with hate-mail, compliments about the quality of his show and comments about the playlist. He received for example a letter from a woman writing: ‘When my husband falls asleep, I put the radio right on my belly, between my shirt and my skin, and I listen.’ A lot of letters he received described the particular power of night-time radio, allowed by the specific nocturnal context, as Mireille says in 1982: ‘Thanks to the radio, this imaginary power, in the middle of the night, for tying together the heart and the soul from this voice and these echoes.’ As the Pop Club was also popular outside France, largely followed outside the French borders, some letters came from diverse foreign countries.

A History of Late-Night French Radio

One Polish woman, for example, regularly wrote love letters to José Artur, without leaving any address: I listen to you every night […] because you are my dear and beautiful friend. You are the smile of my evenings. You are the most beautiful star of my white nights. […] You are my guide through pop music […] and you are my French teacher […] I WANT TO CHARM YOU, I WANT TO BOTHER YOU. […] I think that anyhow it is a pleasure for you to learn that people listen to you here, it is still quite far away this Poland. (Letter from Gdansk 1970)

If a lot of radio hosts always received love letters from listeners, this phenomenon tended to be even stronger when they performed at night. This was also represented in film, as in the first movie directed by Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me. In this film, Eastwood played a DJ working nightly for a Californian radio station, who was stalked by an obsessed female listener. Three years after the beginning of the Pop Club, the private station Europe No. 1 created in 1968 two similar shows aired in the evening and the night: Campus and Barbier de nuit. Night-time radio was then reflecting the younger voices from the university campuses, and the Parisian artistic nightlife. If these late programmes relayed the noisy and festive sounds of the night, this space would also create an intimate atmosphere of quiet conversation.

Birth of intimate night talks Programmes based on true confessions from listeners began in the USA in the 1960s, initiated by Herb Jepko’s nationwide all-night show. In France, while Ménie Grégoire’s afternoon programme on the private radio station RTL gave women the chance to discuss intimate subjects from 1967 (Maréchal 2010), confessional radio shows took on a new dimension on the late-night airwaves. It began in 1975 with Ligne Ouverte (Open line), hosted by Gonzague Saint-Bris every day at midnight on the private station Europe No. 1 (Saint-Bris 1980). The launch of this night phone-in constituted quite a revolution, as described in the newspaper Le Monde: A voice is speaking in the distance. It’s the night. Precisely the heart of the night. The time when the hearts open up to confide and to listen. The voice? It is the one of a young girl, a student, a factory woman, a lover, a sad girl. It is the one of a man, a sailor, a CEO, a waiter, an alpinist. These voices, all of them, are coming from France, Switzerland, Belgium, England, Italy, and every night, for one hour, they confide. […] Every night, from midnight up to one a.m., Gonzague Saint Bris opens his line to listen to the night hearts beat. […] Why, in the space of one year and a half, this programme broadcast at a time of low audience has become a social phenomenon in itself, the beginning of a new story, a story of love and fraternity? (Cholodenko 1977)

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Two years after the creation of Ligne ouverte, the public radio station France Inter started their own programme of this kind: Allô Macha (Hello Macha) hosted by a woman, Macha Béranger. This second programme quickly became a media phenomenon, and lasted until 2006 (twenty-nine years in total). Macha Béranger was the first woman to host a nightradio talk in France. She died in 2009 and is still considered the symbol of night-time radio. Her voice was probably the main reason why her nocturnal show could last so long. She had a low and deep voice, very distinctive and sensual. The day after her very first show, a journalist from Charlie Hebdo insisted on the power of fascination and seduction of her voice: Here comes out of the radio a lady’s voice: languid, laughing, melting, molto loving, something of an airport voice … The phone is overwhelmed, Macha is pleased. It’s normal, she’s got a voice of a liana which rolls around a tree, a voice of a small river which falls apart the hill … The listeners talk about their jobs, their green plants, they congratulate her and flirt with her … Men love her. It’s the rush on the phone. ‘I won’t be able to answer to all of you tonight, but we have the whole life ahead of us!’ She plays with her voice-music instrument. […] Macha will attract the fantasies of the night listeners. She will become the friend of the baker, the partner of the loner. […] The sleeping pill will be saved. Some scenes of jealousy may burst. Someone will cheat on his wife without leaving the bed. The husband will honour the wife while listening to Macha’s voice, and Mrs will handle Mr thanks to Macha’s voice. Macha will become a national treasure. (Thérame 1977)

If the author particularly insisted on the erotic dimension of this feminine voice in the dark, this journalist perceived quite clearly the importance Macha Béranger was about to acquire. Very soon, indeed, a community of faithful listeners united around her and her show, creating what she called the ‘family of sans-sommeil (sleepless people)’ (Béranger 1978). A real dimension of mutual assistance and solidarity emerged amongst this community. On Ligne Ouverte and Allô Macha, listeners could call the radio station switchboard at the hour when loneliness became most pressing, and anxiety needed to be eased. With the appearance of late-night talk radio in the 1970s, night-time radio started to acquire a particularly strong emotional potential: in these programmes of conversation or ‘couch talk’ (Deleu 2006), people who didn’t sleep at night, for any reason, could then listen to intimate stories. Inheriting the letters to the editor section in newspapers, this new phenomenon of talk radio contributed to bring voices of anonymous people relating their story on the air. This radio, in a way, became a mirror of the society and its emotions. Anybody could call the radio station, chat for a while with the radio host, while thousands of people were listening to their words. These people called usually from their home, in the comfort of their private space, in their usual environment. That kind of programme seemed to respond to a strong desire for communication, bringing some answer or at least some consolation to the people suffering from loneliness, a phenomenon which seemed to have grown since the end of the Second World War, with the rural exodus and a new kind of solitude typical of the life in the big cities (Riesman 1950). In these shows, people expressed the desire to talk to someone at night, to express angst, discontents, but also to

A History of Late-Night French Radio

narrate some joyful personal stories. While it is sometimes difficult to have access to the recordings of these broadcasts, the existing archives are a particularly precious source to study the history of private life and emotions. The host Gonzague Saint Bris wrote: ‘To talk or to be silent on air is like walking on water. The French nights hide miracles and I have always been struck by the richness of the information coming from anonymous beings, while the news coming from above, from the alleged source of knowledge, seemed very poor to me’ (Saint Bris 1980: 41). In the same spirit, the scholar Thierry Lefebvre, who also hosted night-talk programmes during the 1980s, affirms that the personal records he kept from these shows ‘express more about the long winter 1984 than hundreds of newspaper articles from that same period’ (Lefebvre 1997: 283–4). Thousands of letters received by Macha Béranger are conserved by the French National Archives and within them we can locate some very rich resources to learn more about this time. In some of these letters, people explain they started to listen just because of her voice. For example, Alain, a teenager of only fourteen years old, remembered when he heard the programme for the first time: ‘The first time I heard you, it seemed I’ve always known you, because I was shocked by your voice.’ Macha Béranger’s show Allô Macha was massively popular in North Africa, thanks to the distant diffusion enabled by the night context. One of her Moroccan listeners also wrote to tell her about his first encounter with her voice: Can I tell you how I managed to receive your programme in Morocco for the first time? In Meknes, in a little farm, I was listening to some Moroccan radio. […] As there was not much on air, I was turning the button of the radio, from the left to the right. Suddenly I stopped on a magical voice, attractive, seductive: it was your voice and it was half past midnight, meaning half past one in Paris. I can’t tell how happy I was. […] That’s how I became a slave of your programmes, and especially of your voice. Since 1980, always.

The letters Macha Béranger received show that a lot of prisoners listened to this kind of programme. One of them explained the strong feeling created by the voice of Macha: ‘I find again, every night with pleasure, the Macha I was listening to in 1978, around two or three in the morning, I was free then … Now, I just need to close my eyes around midnight to be free again. Thank you miss Macha.’ This letter enables us to insist on the power of evocation provoked by the voice and radio, particularly at night. Some listeners suffering from some psychological troubles and isolation seem to have found a real consolation in this programme, like Bernard: Your presence – so short – too short – from 1 to 2 am – miracle of the radio, is for me a necessary reassurance. Since I participate, as a listener, to Allô Macha, I feel myself much less lonely. Less isolated. You are the string from which the exterior world comes to me. And this, during one hour every day. This hour, Macha, enables me to keep existing. Encourages me to fight, for not going down.

This kind of nocturnal phone-in is not specifically French at all, it has spread through the world, to the point of representing the very essence of night radio – a place where people could communicate and be listened to. Where they still exist, it is these talk shows that

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have lasted the longest on the air. From the end of the 1970s, on the footsteps of night-talk programmes, intimacy seemed to have invaded the frequencies even more.

Daring nights Night-time radio also happened to be a playground for exploring the night in all its dimensions, and for overflowing with creativity. Inventive and pioneering programmes were launched on the after-dark airwaves, with an almost complete freedom of tone and form, in contrast to the daytime broadcasts. An example of this is Nuits magnétiques (Magnetic Nights), launched in 1978 on the radio France Culture, which was the most serious public station during the day, devoted to knowledge and academics. Yet between 10.30 pm and midnight, the Nuits magnétiques paved the way to a totally different universe, with intimate sound documentaries mixing the words of personalities with those of ordinary people, in an experimental and musical, often psychedelic, sound atmosphere. This programme was mainly designed by writers, people who never worked for radio before, and constituted a kind of ‘pirate radio inside the territorial waters of public radio’ (Lacombe 2015: 35). A listener remembered this programme in quite a poetic way: Listening to Nuits magnétiques it was like boarding a small boat every evening in the dark night, and then leave the shore, hearing behind us the sound of paddles of an invisible ferryman. Listening to Nuits magnétiques it was letting the hearing take all the importance whereas the seeing opened up excessively on the darkness, enabling to spot some shadows, false-nights, blurs. […] The travel of one hour and a half on these waters, sometimes heavy, sometimes peaceful, […] ended up always with the edge of the boat slowly hitting blocks of rocks on the quay, with the return to a more urban light, just before the curfew of midnight, with a gradual dissolution of all the emotions accumulated during this essential journey through the unexplored storage rooms of the sensation’s universe. Sensations that we contained inside of us, without noticing. […] Les Nuits magnétiques often caught me with their powerful magnets. (Robert 2013)

At the same time, French pirate radio stations also extensively used the night to go on the air, bypassing the state radio monopoly that had been established in 1945 – in the same way as the British or Italian pirate stations. In France, despite the official ban, there was a tolerance for some stations (Brochand 1994: 274–81), whose transmitters were installed just outside the French borders, in Luxembourg for Radio Luxembourg (RTL), and in Germany for Europe No.1, the station which launched Ligne ouverte at night. The pirate stations created in France in the late 1970s (Lefebvre 2008) to protest against the broadcast monopoly were particularly active and creative at night, broadcasting from student attic rooms or fancy Parisian night clubs. They offered new kinds of music, such as African or Caribbean rhythms, reggae or punk music, but also gave the floor to voices we couldn’t hear on the traditional stations, such as young people and minorities. It was

A History of Late-Night French Radio

thus the aim of the creators of the pirate station Ici et Maintenant (Here and Now), like Didier de Plaige: I sometimes worked for national radios in 1977–1978, replacing Macha Béranger at night. The night listeners were used to talk, to intervene on air. But on the national stations, they received 600 calls every night, so they were 3 switchboard operators in charge of selecting calls. They filled note cards to see who could go on air or no: ‘This one is good to go, that one is mediocre.’ There was an evident filtering. When we created Ici et Maintenant, our aim was to make a less elitist radio, easier to reach. We wanted to see if those people also had something to say. The main goal was interactivity. (quoted in Poulain 2014)

The choice of these pirates to broadcast at night responded to two necessities: ‘avoid the frequency jamming and complicate the work of a potential search during the show’ (Hautin Guirault 1980). In these pirate nights, everything seemed to be possible. At the same time, the traditional radio stations also dared to explore new horizons at night. For example, the programme Les Choses de la nuit, broadcast during the night of the weekend on the public station France Inter, went through the confidences of anonymous people, pedestrians’ explorations of Paris by night, intimate interviews with celebrities – always women, to create a seductive atmosphere between them and the male host Jean-Charles Aschero. In 1981, the newly elected President François Mitterrand ended the French broadcast ban, allowing free radio stations to transmit. This freedom of airwaves would lead to particularly active nights, and in a way to a golden age of night-time French radio. In fact, the traditional stations overflowed with inventiveness to respond to this nightly competition on air. Erotic programmes, underground music, unbridled and sexual phoneins, everything could be broadcast at night during the 1980s. On the traditional stations, some young radio hosts who had started on pirate stations arrived, and new stations and programmes were created. One of them, Carbone 14, was particularly sulphurous and active by night. Its slogan was ‘Carbon 14, the radio which fucks you by the ears.’ One of the hosts, Supernana, was presenting the phone-in Poubelle night (Dustbin night). The opening of the show was intentionally provocative, pronounced over a rock music theme: Death, suicide, perversion, denunciation, masochism, scatology and bullshit, call us. 53 28. Poubelle night, a horrible show, a show full of hatred, a show full of sex, a show full of love. 53 28. Gays, drug addicts, alcoholics, loners, solitaries, without any woman, without any dog, without anything. 545 53 28. (Supernana 1982)

This station created many scandals and was finally suspended in 1983, but the freedom of tone had anyhow impregnated all the frequencies. On the station La Voix du Lézard, Geraldine hosted a night talk-show about sexuality. In her programme, people could call to post naughty classified ads on air. The shyest listeners or those who didn’t want to be recognized could use the ‘sexophone’, an answering machine on which Geraldine recorded the ads she received by mail. Libertine, swinging or more traditional ads followed each other on air.

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The traditional stations also dared to approach sex in their night programmes, including the public station France Inter. Some journalists approved this incursion towards erotism: We don’t have to despair about the French public audio-visual service. The old lady is often constipated but she sometimes takes daring initiatives. Jean-Noël Jeanneney the CEO of Radio France, just happened to give the go for a new risqué show: Si tendre était la nuit (So tender was the night). Every night between 2 to 3 am, on France Inter, Paula Jacques and Daniel Mermet take the listeners inside the moral turpitudes. (Gavi 1983)

Teenager nights and the progressive disappearance of night programmes Until the end of the 1980s, French radio had the monopoly of night over television, because TV programmes stopped around midnight. It changed in the last moments of the 1980s, with the emergence of twenty-four-hour television. The appearance of night TV shows contributed to reducing the importance and excitement of night-radio programmes, after a successful period of all-night radio in France. Thus, from the end of the 1980s, the diversity offered by the different stations at night tended to disappear for the adults, while a new kind of night show emerged at the beginning of the 1990s, now directed at the particular audience of teenagers. These programmes were created on stations which broadcast mostly music during the day, but devised phone-ins for young people in the evening. Teenagers could call the stations to ask questions and talk about their lives. The topics most covered by these programmes were sex, initiation to sexuality and romantic relationships. Most of the time, teenagers listened to this show in secret, sometimes with headphones, alone in their rooms, pretending to sleep: It opened some windows, it switched on some light. My parents sent me to bed around eight, eight thirty p.m. Sometimes the sun was still shining outside and my father sent me to bed! … Your father didn’t want you to listen to radio, so you had your earphones. Or you put the clock radio very low. It was all that held you into the world when you were in bed. (Testimony in Duval 2014)

The next morning, inside the French secondary schools and high schools, these radio shows constituted a topic of conversation, these programmes having become generational indicators (Glevarec 2005): I had the feeling everybody listened to Difool. […] The following day at school we talked about it with our friends. ‘Did you hear, they talked about blow-jobs yesterday? Do you think it really exists?’ Girls spoke about it with details. Boys joked about it, making fun of it, teasing a little. Girls really wanted to know, to analyse. (Duval 2014)

A History of Late-Night French Radio

These programmes gathered really quickly hundreds of thousands of young listeners, while the different private musical stations went for a real competition to capture the teenagers’ attention. These call-ins caused some debate amongst the French adult community, divided about the interest of such programmes for teenagers. In 1992, a short while after the creation of Lovin’Fun, one of the most popular phone-ins for teenagers, an article from Le Monde questioned the reasons for such a big success: On paper, the formula of Lovin’Fun is classical. Between two discs of music, listeners call the radio to chat with Doc’ and Difool, like Macha Béranger or Ménie Grégoire from the FM band. The difference is that Lovin’Fun likes nothing but the ‘sex without any complex, the love with humour’, as indicated in the teaser. While Allô Macha collected the distress or madness of insomniac adults […], Lovin’Fun collects the sexuality of young people born with the crisis, at the end of the 1970s. A sexuality free from taboo, but twice captive: from condom and from the obligation to talk about the worst side: the technical part. (Chemin 1992)

Some programmes designed for teenagers were not only devoted to sex. They were also a space to explore other types of talk: music; jokes; stories. At the same time, the night programmes dedicated to adults didn’t completely disappear for years, and a variety of all-night radio shows still existed until the 2010s, with relaxed and intimate interviews, original musical broadcasts, documentaries and radio dramas, sometimes about detective or fantasy stories. However, night-time radio programmes progressively closed from the mid-2000s, with the development of the internet and the advent of podcasts, which made it possible to listen to radio on demand, disconnected from live real time. Because of budget cuts, French radio stations have chosen to replace their live broadcasts after midnight with automated music or repeats from the previous day, as in most countries. Yet, at night, radio voices offered listeners a presence, keeping them company in a way that has not been replaced by the communication possibilities offered by the internet and social networks. The overabundance of images on television or online also contrasts with radio’s lack of images – which appealed to the imagination of listeners, triggering particularly strong sensations at night, and giving people the impression that the radio voices were speaking only to them. After the end of night-live programmes after midnight on France Inter station in 2012, the philosopher Michaël Foessel regretted this decision: There are those who don’t manage to fall asleep and those who cannot do that for a social reason. It’s for them that the existence of all-night live programme was the most precious. Insomniacs and night workers had the possibility to count on radio as a companion of misfortune. Who doesn’t remember Allô Macha, which gathered every night thousands of sleepless people? Macha’s husky voice was part of a confidence community. It’s not only about dreaming: the night symbolises a time when the barriers of censorship fall down. On the air, it was for long tolerated for people to talk about themselves, that is mostly about their solitude, without really caring about the judgement of others. Until recently, night-time programmes were the only ones where the listeners had the chance to speak. Today, we are giving them time during the day, so they can endlessly editorialise, in the journalist’s way.

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During the night, live shows enabled a sort of solidarity for the lost ones. There are some differences, obviously, between night porters, insomniacs, nurses and night birds back from their peregrinations. But the existence of a voice in the night could appear for every one of them as a comfort towards the feeling of not sharing the traditional social rhythm. By opting for rebroadcast day-time programmes, the radio stations chose to associate darkness to repetition. Everything happens now as if the logic of the day (with its rational imperative of productivity) had won over the unexpected events that can happen at night. […] Depriving the night society from voices that were expressly addressed to them, it suggests that ‘real life’ only happens during office hours. (Foessel 2013)

Night-time radio constituted a space for experimentations and dreams, for meetings and dialogues, offering a support to night-time listeners, a window opened to the rest of the world, to connect in an intimate way with others. Over time, the French radio stations offered various specific all-night programmes, about the road conditions, cultural life, the festive or erotic dimension of the night, or providing some reveries. Radio also gave the floor to the voice of anonymous people inhabiting the darkness, in need of talking to someone. Night-time radio had long been a privileged place for freedom, creativity and intimacy, and a vector to spread strong emotions, on both sides of the radio set. If live nocturnal broadcasts don’t really exist anymore after midnight, there are still some audio programmes exploring the richness of the nocturnal universe, for example the podcast L’Insomniaque (The Insomniac), launched by Camille Juzeau on Arte Radio in September 2021. Outside France, most stations seem to have followed the same path, stopping their live night-time programmes, but some future research may look precisely at night listening in other countries.

Works cited Alberti, D. (1959), Route de nuit, 13 January, France Inter [radio programme], archive available at Institut National de l’audiovisuel. Artur, J. (1968), Le Pop Club, 12 May, France Inter [radio programme], archive available at Institut National de l’audiovisuel. Artur, J. (1969), Letters from listeners, personal collection. Artur, J. (1970), Pop Club, 15 October, France Inter[radio programme], archive available at Institut National de l’audiovisuel. Artur, J. (1974), Micro de nuit, Paris: Stock. Béranger, M. (1978), Allô Macha ou la nuit des sans sommeil, Paris: Nouvelles éditions La Baudinière. Béranger, M. (n.d.), Letters from listeners, Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur Seine, 19980208/1 to 6. Bernier, M. (2015), ‘José Artur et mes Nuits du bout des ondes’: http://www.ecriplume. com/2015/01/jose-artur-et-mes-nuits-du-bout-des-ondes/ (accessed 13 April 2022). Berthelot, D. (1922), ‘Les ondes invisibles’, Le Temps, 25 October. Brochand, C. (1994), Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France (1944–1975), Paris: La Documentation Française.

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Champeix, R. (1966), Simple histoire de la T.S.F., de la radiodiffusion et de la télévision, Paris: Éditions L’indispensable. Chemin, A. (1992), ‘FM, l’amour cru’, Le Monde Radio TV, 30 November. Cholodenko, M. (1977), ‘Les confidences de G.S.-B.’, Le Monde, 17 January. Cocteau, J. (1955), Le Passé défini, IV, Paris: Gallimard. Deleu, C. (2006), Les Anonymes à la radio, Usages, fonctions et portée de leur parole, Bruxelles: De Boeck/Ina. Demoulin, B. (2012), ‘Quelques aspects de la propagation des ondes radioélectriques’, Territoire en mouvement. Revue de géographie et aménagement [online] 12: 30–45. Dhordain, R. (1983), Le Roman de la radio, Paris: la Table ronde. Douglas, S. J. (2004), Listening In. Radio and the American Imagination, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press edition. Duval, A. (2014), 90 FM. Jeunes émois et libres antennes, Arte Radio: http://arteradio.com/ son/616437/90_fm/, (accessed 19 April 2022). Duverney, A. M. (1982), ‘Les Jeunes’, Cahiers d’histoire de la radiodiffusion 1: 22–5. Foessel, M. (2013), ‘Quand la nuit s’éteint’, Esprit 393: 13–15. Gavi, P. (1983), ‘Libertinage sur Inter’, Libération, 27 January. Glevarec, H. (2005), La Libre-antenne, la réception de la radio par les adolescents, Paris: Armand Collin. Hautin-Guirault, D. (1980), ‘Pirates à visage ouvert’, Le Monde, 23 November. Héron, P.-M. (2010), Jean Cocteau et la radio, Paris: Non Lieu. Interactualités de 13h (1967), 19 May, France Inter [radio programme], archive available at Institut National de l’audiovisuel. Keith C. M. (2001), Sounds in the Dark: All Night Radio in American Life, Iowa City: Iowa State University Press. Lacombe, C. (2015), Les Nuits Magnétiques, une radio pirate sur les eaux territoriales du service public, Paris: University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Lefebvre, T. (1997), ‘Nuit Hertzienne’, Sociétés & représentations 4: 277–88. Lefebvre, T. (2008), La Bataille des radios libres, Paris: Nouveau Monde/Ina. Maréchal, D. (2010), RTL, histoire d’une radio populaire. De Radio Luxembourg à Rtl.fr, Paris: Nouveau Monde Edition. Nahoumm-Grappe, V. (1997), ‘Remettre à demain’, Sociétés & représentations 4: 11–38. Poulain, S. (2014), ‘Radio Ici et Maintenant, pionnière en expérimentations’, Cahiers d’histoire de la radiodiffusion 121 (61): 51–94. Remonté, J. F. (1989), Les Années radio, Paris: L’Arpenteur. Riesman, D., ed. (1950), The Lonely Crowd, New Haven: Yale University Press. Robert (2013), testimony received for the 50th anniversary of France Culture station. Saint Bris, G. (1980), Ligne ouverte, au cœur de la nuit, Paris: Robert Lafon. Starkey, G. (2008), ‘La bande sonore de nos vies’, Médiamorphoses, 28. Supernana (1982), archive from Poubelle Night [radio programme], archive available at Institut National de l’audiovisuel, Q15: Num 23: 139–43. Tardieu, J. (1969), Grandeur et faiblesse de la radio, Paris: UNESCO. Thérame, V. (1977), ‘Zoreilles. Radio Nuit’, Charlie Hebdo, 7 April. Ulmann-Mauriat, C. (1999), Naissance d’un média. Histoire politique de la radio en France (1921–1931), Paris: L’Harmattan.

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12 The Radio Phone-in and the Suicidal Caller Kathryn McDonald

Note from the author Please be mindful that this contains references to suicide. We understand that many readers may be impacted by this topic and may find this triggering. Please feel free to skip ahead to the next chapter.

Introduction Caller rings up and says … ‘When I finish this call, I am going to kill myself.’ Now, maybe histrionic, maybe a fake, maybe true. What are you going to do? It’s my job to manage this and to decide how long it’s going to go on for, and err on the side of caution. Research Interview, Radio Host I’ve had loads of people phoning radio stations threatening suicide. You become quite detached from it. Research Interview, Radio Producer

At 2.45am, one early morning on 6 November 1971, a 47-year-old man called Michael Valenti telephoned Radio Unnameable,1 a WBAI talk and music show in the USA. He told the host of the show, Bob Fass, live on air that he had taken an overdose. Fass: WBAI. Valenti: Oh, it certainly takes you long enough. Are you a gentleman? I hope. Fass: I don’t know what a gentleman means. Valenti: Well, I’m in the process of committing suicide.

For the next forty-five minutes, Fass kept Valenti talking about his life and his personal problems. While the call continued, the New York Telephone Company raced to trace it and find his address:

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Fass: How are you gonna do it? Valenti: I’ve done it, I’m sorry to say. Fass: What do you mean? Valenti: I’ve taken an amalgam of pills. Fass: What have you taken? Valenti: Sleeping pills. Three different kinds of sleeping pills and some anti-depressants. And I think the totality of it will do it. At least, I hope so.

Eventually Valenti’s location was discovered, and the police found him at home, unconscious on the floor at 6.30am. His telephone was off the hook and bottles of pills were discovered next to him.2 Decades later, on 7 December 1994, a 29-year-old man called Emilio Bonilla (using the pseudonym ‘Prince’) called in at 8.10am to The Howard Stern Show broadcasting on WXRK-FM in New York City. Bonilla told them he wanted to jump off the George Washington Bridge. Stern initially questioned the validity of the call, telling his listeners: I don’t know if this is real or not, but there’s some guy on the phone who says he’s about to uh, he’s got a cellular phone with him, and he’s about to jump from the George Washington Bridge and kill himself.

Stern asked for confirmation from passing driving listeners who should honk their car horns if they saw the man on the bridge to prove it was a legitimate call, rather than a prank. The short, sharp sound of horns came through loudly for all to hear, almost immediately. Continuing to broadcast to his eight million listeners, Stern and his co-host Robin Quivers kept Bonilla talking for around five minutes until a female listener arrived at the bridge. Later a member of the Port Authority (who had also been listening) arrived and took Bonilla into police custody. Stern said afterwards: ‘Once I determined this was a jumper, I said: “I have to keep this man laughing … until the cops get there”’ (Weber 1994). And finally, to 2018, when a listener, calling himself ‘Chris’ (not his real name) phoned in to a late-night show on TalkRadio (a national commercial station in the UK) to speak on air with host Iain Lee and his co-host Katherine Boyle. He revealed he had taken an overdose and wanted to end his life. Normal programming was suspended on The Late-Night Alternative, as Iain spoke with Chris for over twenty minutes while listeners waited to hear the outcome. Like Bonilla calling from the bridge, Chris was alone in a public space, on a street in Plymouth using his mobile phone. The production team worked together with the emergency services – audiences heard the police eventually locate him while he was still on air. Emotional experience is not something any of us can truly identify in others without hearing first-hand what someone has to say (Brown 2021), and so in studying the suicide call – this unfiltered, unedited and unplanned on-air interaction – we further recognize the unique unpredictability of live radio, the trust placed in the phone-in format by their callers, and a strong attachment to the radio host who they have come to depend on. These callers shared one clear thing in common: they wanted and needed to be heard as they experienced their most profoundly dark and desperate moments. Significantly, they all chose to be heard by a host and their listening public, as opposed to friends, family members or trained health practitioners. Here they are entrusting a radio personality (and their listeners) with something that they will

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not share with anyone else. They are at their most vulnerable, and arguably brave – sharing potentially their last lived, fragile reality with audiences and production teams they have never met. Through these three cases we are able to glimpse into our callers most emotionally raw and usually hidden experiences. And in doing so, we can start to recognize how this type of conversation is managed by the hosts, and what their questions and answers start to reveal. So, what could it be about radio as a medium that compels people (and in seemingly the majority of cases, men3) to call in to disclose such personal circumstances to both a host they have never met, and a listening audience of millions? By taking these examples (originating from 2018, 1994 and 1971), I examine archive recordings and transcriptions – seeking to understand how they sounded and how they progressed. This allows us to start to reflect on what we could learn from these types of interactions. I also briefly discuss some of the wider and often complex results of what happens when we do talk about suicide in the media more generally, so we are able to situate radio within this broader environment. In doing so, I articulate some of the restrictions and challenges that the researcher must navigate as we approach such a sensitive and triggering topic. During this chapter I highlight not only the caller’s words (and silences), but those from the host as they look to reassure, understand, detect and connect with the caller, all the while communicating to their listeners and production team. Of course these are rare cases (many more come through that never get to air), but from studying them I hope to learn more about our cultural emotional response to threats around suicide and our callers’ relationship with radio presenters. It is important to clearly emphasize early on that I am by no means an expert in the study of suicide; rather I am a broadcasting historian, practitioner and researcher with a keen interest in studying on- and off-air production spaces, interaction and broadcast talk. I am particularly fascinated by questions of power, storytelling and emotion between host, callers and team. In writing this chapter I wish to delve deeper into the ways in which radio has been used by those who plan to die by suicide.

Researching suicide Suicide is a complex, baffling and frighting phenomenon; defined as ‘the act of an individual intentionally ending their own life’ (O’Connor and Nock 2014: 73). According to the World Health Organisation (2021), over 700,000 people die by suicide each year, and many more attempt to take their own lives. Suicide (at the time of writing), is the fourteenth leading cause of death worldwide and it is estimated that one person dies by suicide every forty seconds. The Samaritans (a UK charity) reports that in 2019 there were 5,691 suicides in England and Wales, with 833 more in Scotland, while in the USA around 48,000 people take their lives each year and millions more may attempt, plan or experience suicidal ideation.4 When we talk about a suicide attempt, this refers to ‘engagement in a potentially self-injurious behaviour in which there is at least some intention of dying as a result of the behaviour’ (O’Connor and Nock 2014: 73). It is necessary to distinguish between feelings of passive ideation (when people have thoughts about not wanting to be alive), with those who form specific and firm intentions around ending their lives, which is something our three callers share.

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I am hard-pressed to think of a more difficult aspect of live broadcasting than the suicide call – for the listener, the host or team and of course the caller. These conversations are with people who have gone one step further than having ideations or plans and are in the process of making a very real attempt to end their life – either by jumping or taking an overdose: Valenti: I think I’m going. Fass: Stand up. Stand up, stand up. Valenti: Trying to stand up. Fass: Please try and stand up. Do it. You can do it. Just get up on your feet. Pitch yourself up on your feet. Valenti: My feet? Fass: Yeah.

The causes of suicide are often complicated and multifaceted – and while it is not possible to outline all the various explanations here, Edwin Shneidman (regarded as the father of contemporary suicidology) used the term pychache to describe the unbearable phychological pain experienced by those wishing to die by suicide (Leenaars 2010). In his work, Shneidman (1973) came to regard the suicide note as an illuminating way to uncover meaning, detail and life history. Of course this is not always found or indeed written, but can offer an insight into the final thoughts or wishes of someone about to take their own life. The suicide letter is often found later, and may be read by those involved on a personal level, or within the context of a legal enquiry. In contrast, hearing a live broadcast means the listeners and hosts are made to be public witnesses during the attempt itself – we know the intention but do not know the outcome which is a frightening reality for all involved. In studying these live calls (as opposed to focusing on fictional drama or reading memoirs, books or suicide notes) we are hearing directly from those experiencing these profound painful emotions in the moment. As Montgomery reminds us ‘in fresh talk, we have a guarantee that it is the speakers own experience and reactions rather than anyone else’s – first-hand and original, rather than second-hand and a copy’ (2001: 404). For the researcher this offers something quite different in terms of suicide research – contributing something additional to transcripts, or newspaper reports, letters or online text. Typically those who are suicidal may often become shut off from the world, closed or constricted in their mind, so the analyisis of the suicide call I hope can further start to reveal the thinking process and reality of someone in this position. I am yet to find much academic discussion about live suicide calls specifically, or around suicide as a topic in radio studies; possibly due to the lack of audio archive available or the sensitive nature of the content. It is impossible to calculate how many suicide calls have made it onto radio stations across the world (or ones that never made it to air), so I am reliant on the recordings I can trace. Gaining access to a recording of such a call is a challenge (they are not replayed or made available later), and so locating or accessing archives, especially of historic commercial radio recordings, can be an imprecise art at best. There are a few recordings preserved at key locations, but with little funding, staff or physical space, many commercial stations do not hold many accessible archive libraries

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or digital collections (see chapters by Alexander Badenoch and Richard Legay in this Handbook for more on this). For any historian, access to both potential respondents and relevant archive remains a fundamental concern, while a ‘bias of survival’, of course, also must be taken into consideration (Biewen and Dilworth 2010: 136). In my case archive recordings online made it possible to find shows, while YouTube and podcast episodes also provided material for analysis. The quality of audio is clear, the recording is often in its entirety – so the context is evident too, with advert breaks, jingles, other calls, idents and of course voice giving a depth and feeling to the build-up, not possible by simply looking at transcriptions. This reminds us that media historians can play an important role in the construction of new archive projects, especially where there has been no formal method of display (Fickers and Johnson 2010). So what might lead a listener to call a talk radio show to reveal they were going to take their own life? Perhaps they simply want a reassuring and familiar voice to accompany them through their darkest time. Conceivably they have nowhere else to turn, or they feel stigma about asking for help elsewhere, they wish to leave an equivalent to a suicide note, or maybe they really do want someone to help them. It would be ethically challenging to conduct research interviews with these callers (or audiences) due to the sensitive nature of the topic, so instead, my research involved primary interviews with a range of radio hosts, producers and phone operators who help create a sense of context, personal experience and background to the production of these types of shows. Conducting research interviews within the realm of broadcasting history is, according to Seaton, a principle way of discovering hidden motivations and experiences, for they ‘animate the files, explain the real story and give you a flavour of the people and their concerns’ (Seaton 2004: 55). The study of these production processes – of gatekeeping, of backstage dilemas or off-mic decision-making is essential, and can provide rich and evocative clues to better understanding institutions and our broadcasting history. As Skoog has noted, the ‘internal dynamics’ and relationships between production team members, clearly has an impact. Skoog maintains that if we are to fully understand programmes or texts, we must, as researchers and historians, ‘look at the production and editorial process that is going on “behind the scenes”’ (Skoog 2010: 241). We may never truly know the true motivation of these callers, so I seek to understand what did unfold when those calls came through. Reflecting on his own research journey into suicide prevention, O’Connor observed that: ‘it has given me a deeper appreciation of the darkness of despair, the nothingness of living and the unbearable loneliness even when surrounded by others’ (2021: 7). Not only must we be aware of the potential impact of writing or presenting such calls for others to see (considering aspects of distress or benefits), as researchers we must consider the impact of analysing such calls on our own well-being – since the analysis of trauma can trigger a range of confronting responses. We must also be mindful of the risk of trivializing or sensationalizing the topic.This work has tested me, having known family members, colleagues and friends who have been impacted by suicide. But what I hope to learn from foregrounding this subject matter is that we may further understand this medium in terms of emotional connection, and those that use it in a meaningful way – while better understanding listeners’ relationship to radio. Additionally, while these calls

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are historical, the timing of this chapter (written during the COVID-19 pandemic) brings to the forefront concerns about the possible rise of suicide rates, and awareness around global concerns about economic hardship, social isolation and physical/emotional fragility in our communities. There is an active research community consisting of experts across disciplines such as psychology, biology, sociology, journalism, media and psychotherapy (to name a few) who have all produced rich resources, research and guidance on why suicide happens and what can be done to prevent it. While I will not attempt to go into depth around this specific field, it is helpful to include some broad descriptions of key terms. It is relevant here to also contextualize how the media deal with suicide, both in terms of journalistic reporting, representation and public discourse. Media commentary around suicide can be hard to balance between raising awareness among the public while protecting the well-being of those at risk, with common concerns of the copycat effect. The reporting of suicide in news programming or newspapers, and the representation of it in storytelling (film, television, etc) is much more widely publicized in terms of editorial guidelines. Radio, in comparison with more visual media has received significantly less scholarly attention in terms of representation or reporting of suicide. Instead, it appears that more traditional news media like newspapers, television news and entertainment media (films, stage plays) and newer media (internet, social media, for example) are more often foregrounded. In guides found from The World Health Organisation,5 OFCOM (the communications regulator in the UK), or charities like the Samaritans about how best to represent suicide in factual or fictional programming, it also becomes evident that the importance and role of sound is often sidelined at best or forgotton altogether. Images, films and interviews have been rightly recognized for their power to tell stories about suicide – but sound is largely unexplored in terms of production decisions, workflow, aesthetics and ethics. In edited fictional projects, decisions must be made about the script, the choice of sound design, the camera angle, the tone of voice (much has been debated about the 2017 Netflix series 13 Reasons Why for example). It seems important to further understand and document just how stories involving trauma are treated sonically, either on television, in films, through apps or video games or on the radio. It is my hope that this type of work will help those of us who wish to initiate a space where audio, trauma and suicide may be further considered.

Coming out of the darkness The unplanned unpredictability of these live phone-in shows is a far cry from the more formulaic, cohesive and controlled productions that take a more central space in our schedules or accessed in our podcast libraries. It will be helpful therefore to momentarily focus our attention on phone-in radio; and in particular how it came to create this more accessible and intimate place for their listeners to share secret, confessional and personal details about their lives. As I explored during my own research, talk radio more widely

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can be seen as a more democratic means of broadcasting – awarding access to those with authentic stories or first-hand experiences – allowing a space where the ordinary, untrained caller is given a platform for their opinions or confessions (McDonald 2014). As Crisell observes: ‘however “unaccredited” the caller may be, he acquires a kind of authority merely by being on the air, he becomes a broadcaster, a performer, on par with those in the studio’ (1994: 187). The phone-in, although arguably not as popular perhaps now as in decades before, still remains an important and regular offering of the live radio schedule around the world – heard daily across public service, community and commercial broadcasting. Writers like Coyle have talked about the attraction of the private-in-public discourses of this type of radio, where ‘listeners become voyeurs, fascinated with callers revealing intimate details of their lives or being publicly berated and satirised by all-powerful hosts’ (1990: 34–5). This type of fomat is relatively cheap to produce (in comparison with drama or documentaries) and gives audiences not only a platform to share their views, but to hear what others think, experience or sound like – especially significant in local areas. All but one of these suicide calls came through to an evening or overnight show (Emilio apparently worked on the night shift, so called in after he finished) and both Hendy (2010) and Keith (2001) have highlighted the freedom afforded to night-time radio – a type of broadcasting markedly different to those experienced in daylight hours. Here there is more opportunity for experimental formats and in our case, more free-form call-in shows without the potential to damage listening figures in the day, especially for commercial or smaller stations. As Keith remarks: There’s something special about the voice at night, coming out of the darkness. The contact between the host and listeners is intimate … it takes the darkness, particularly in the small hours, to provide the context in which that kind of relationship can evolve. (2001:7)

The late night phone-in affords us a more personal bond between listener, caller and host which can be seen as different from daytime listening. This more intimate ‘club’ relationship of late-night radio makes us feel connected and included in an experience that not everyone is sharing. As Beccarelli shows us from her research on French night-time listening, this type of live broadcasting holds a ‘privileged place for confidences delivered in the anyonymity of the night’ for ‘there may be no better moment to listen to the radio than during the hours of the night – when the listener is more available, more alone, and less distracted by external demands’ (2020:16). Radio sound, and the voices from radio envelop us, according to Karpf, in comparison with gaming or television for instance, ‘we seem to look out at the world through our eyes, but take it in with ears’ (2013: 64). In the night-time there is less competition for our attention, a space that hides us, a place that creates conditions for confidential confession – and where a host’s voice may offer the lonely or vulnerable listener constant solace and reassurance. Someone is there – and someone will be there tomorrow. They do not feel like strangers. As Karpf observes, through their voices broadcasters act as a secure, unchanging and reassuring presence, and through the radio schedule this is embedded into our daily life – and in a world of change, chaos or complexity, we come to rely on the mediated voices of

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those we hear. We become accustomed to the tempo, the pitch and the speed of delivery – so attuned that we anticipate and interpret the tone and meaning behind the words. In doing so we come to trust the persona of the broadcaster – we rely on the familiar voice and start to associate the voice with the tasks we do as we listen – getting ready for bed, the start of the nightshift, the school pick up. Many listeners of these phone-in formats come to believe that hosts can be depended upon, fitting into their routines, displaying predictable and reassuring behaviour – this is arguably especially significant for the ‘socially isolated, the socially inept, the aged and invalid, the timid and rejected’ (Horton and Wohl 1956: 215–29). This trust is key and can offer us some understanding to why a person in crisis may wish to connect to the voice of a radio host, rather than an anonymous voice at the end of a suicide support line. As Katriel (2004) also highlights, the importance of the host is central to the success of this type of format. Presenters like Lee, Stern or Fass have on-air personalities which are considered to be a brand, used to maintain listener loyalty, adhere to the expectations of the network and genre, provide a secure sense of anticipation to their callers and create a sense of familiarity and consistency to the programme: ‘The radio hosts’ ways of performing their role, no less than the topics they choose to address, serve to weave together a credible and recognisable radio persona that becomes identified with the programme over time’ (Katriel 2004: 236). The phone-in can also be seen to actively advocate public exhibitionism, stimulate consumerism, impose strict restrictions about selection and encourage voyeuristic, performative behaviour or listening habits (see Moss and Higgins 1982). While these claims cannot be discounted – ratings, commercial interests and sponsorship is a reality for many smaller networks around the world – there is also a potential for a real evocative emotional connection between the caller, the host and the listener.

Talking about suicide The causes of suicide are not clear cut or always predictable. Drawing on the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (Van Orden et al. 2010) it can be useful to understand who might (but not always) be more at risk. Those who attempt suicide may experience feelings of perceived burdensomeness (thinking they are a liability, that everyone would be better off without them, doubts around worthlessness or self-hate); of thwarted belongingness (disconnected socially); or hopelessness and entrapment – where things cannot be seen to change or be improved. This is not always the case, but can help us think through the experiences that may lead up to a caller reaching what appears to be an end-point. In our three examples, the hosts all directly ask what could lead the caller to choose to end their own life. Fass: Why do you want to die? Valenti: Oh. Fass: I mean, can you talk – I mean, if dying is so hot, why don’t you try to talk me into it? Valenti: No, it has to be a very individual decision.

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Fass: All I ask you to do is to explain in a manner that I could understand why you were going to do yourself in, so that I would say, oh yeah, that’s a logical decision. Valenti: Well, I’ll try.

The accepted cultural response around death is often that it should occur naturally, and we should do everything in our power to avoid it. Suicide, as Luce (2019) shows us, compared with the more acceptable discourse of ‘natural death’ means a person chooses the time, date, place and method, often secretively. The way suicide is spoken about is often rooted in perceptions that it is a cowardly or a weak thing to do. The word is powerfully situated at the heart of myths and misconceptions, linked with feelings of sin, shame or stigma.6 Notable here is that the hosts (Fass, Stern and Lee) are all experienced broadcasters and opt to keep the caller on air – there is no cut-off or move to speak with them off-air instead. And not only did the hosts keep the caller on the air, but they also additionally tried to actively intervene to prevent the caller from carrying out their plans of overdosing or jumping – either by arranging for authorities to intervene: ‘If you want to kill yourself tomorrow you can that’s another day. But tonight, brother I’m not letting you die’, says host Iain Lee to Chris, his caller. Again, this reveals a great deal about how we culturally view suicide – as something preventable – and the responsibility felt or displayed by the hosts. As a result, to know that these attempts are met with empathy and compassion by the hosts could conceivably help listeners who have similar thoughts or potentially bring awareness about suicide for those concerned about colleagues, friends or family members. Stations would normally avoid intentionally opening a discussion on talk radio specifically about suicide as this comes with so many potential risks. OFCOM advises that ‘methods of suicide and self-harm must not be included in programmes except where they are editorially justified and are also justified by the context’ (2021: Section 2.5). BBC Editorial Guidelines follow this position and clarify that ‘We should not include explicit details that would allow a method of suicide to be imitated’ (BBC 2021). Occasionally rules are not followed. For example, in 2017 the BBC had to apologize after a radio phone-in caller was heard on air being asked at 8.20am one morning7 about his preferred suicide method – just after a morning show segment on ‘happiness’.8 The caller (to local BBC station Radio Coventry & Warwickshire) said he had repeatedly tried to take his life and the presenter asked him ‘How do you decide how to do it? What method?’ Over the next minutes, the caller then answered with a graphic description, detailing how he would end his life. This reminds us how suicide requires mindful and sensitive editorial attention, with the risk of triggering copycat cases. This is regarded as the biggest challenge when writing, directing or depicting news or storylines about suicide (see debates about the ‘Werther effect’).9 However, as we can see throughout the examples in this chapter, in the case of speaking with someone during a suicide attempt, guidelines may not always be followed or deemed necessary. Trained media professionals would be aware for instance, that they should avoid signposting explicit information about the location of a suicide (for instance a bridge) to reduce possible risk to any other potentially vulnerable listeners. But this is the first thing that the hosts Fass, Stern and Lee do, asking many questions about what the

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callers can see and hear, to try to understand their exact location and then send help. In this respect they resemble an emergency responder – trying to identify key details in a race against time to find them alive. An awareness of triggering listeners and the fear of copycat cases seems to lay at the heart of many policies, guidelines or editorial discussions around how best to tell stories of suicide in the media – with the thought being that those watching or consuming will be more inclined to imitate. This anxiety around this possible causality may also hold back producers, filmmakers, or journalists from discussing the issue at all. The inclusion of pre-recorded content on radio that features suicide storylines in drama or discussion of suicide in a documentary then would always be considered preferable by producers or networks over live production due to the control over the content (involving editing, scripting, trigger warnings, consultation with experts, and compliance approval from senior editorial figures). Hearing from someone who used to be suicidal or bringing in expert health practioners to talk around the subject is markedly different from hearing the voice of someone who is in the process of taking their own life. Michael and Chris did not reveal their real reason for phoning in until they were onair and changed their story from the one they told off-air to researchers/producers. All three callers used pseudonyms, or fake names (implying they wish for anonymity). This also implies knowledge around the expectations of the show – they know that they would not be put through to air if the producers knew the real reason for the call. If they had chosen to reveal this information off-air, the phone operators would either contact the emergency services directly on their behalf, or if there was no immediate risk, they would link to charities or signpost local support numbers. Broadcasters and production teams are very aware of their responsibility in safeguarding their listeners and those calling in. An experienced commercial radio host told me: ‘Even though these are people in distress we are still making a radio show out of it. And we can’t do everyone.’ Hearing from these types of callers adds a deeper level of emotional weight for those working ‘backstage’ as phone operators, researchers or producers. During a research interview, a former phone operator revealed that: You often were in a position where you felt some level of responsibility and you had to find a space between that, you had to say: Actually, this is not my position, it’s not my job. I am taking calls, I am working to full capacity, but I am not a counsellor in any way.

This feeling of duty is felt not only by production teams but by the hosts themselves – going beyond their role or on-air persona. In February 2004 while working for commercial station Magic 1548, host Peter Price left the radio studio in Liverpool, England, while presenting his late-night radio show to search for a suicidal thirteen-year-old caller (also called Michael). Michael had phoned into Peter’s show a few months earlier from a phonebox, sleeping rough following the death of his mother. Price spoke with him for around forty-five minutes when he threatened to take his own life. Afterwards Price said: ‘There was something in his voice that was so desperate. He said, “It’s unbearable now. I can’t take much more of it”.’ Price encouraged the teenager to reveal where he was (off-air) so he left his show and drove over to see him. Afterwards he remarked: ‘Whether I was sacked,

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suspended, whatever – sod the show. I couldn’t have lived with myself if something had happened to him’ (Sydney Morning Herald 2004).

Callers in crisis For callers, and especially male listeners, talk radio (particularly when it first started) afforded a new opportunity to speak about private or domestic matters – and receive immediate feedback or advice from presenters, doctors or agony aunts/uncles, on topics ranging from baldness to premature ejaculation. These were, according to a commercial radio producer I interviewed, the most common calls during the first years, where the six telephone lines to each phone operator at the station were constantly flashing with calls from men: ‘I think a lot of men had nowhere else to go.’ This ‘confessional’ or ‘emotional’ style of radio phonein was both revolutionary and controversial when it started. Through the phone-in we are offered the possibility of live, unedited self-expression by unseen and untrained members of the public, who can disrupt, or breach expected norms and conventions. In the suicide call the callers have succeeded on getting through to air and once this happens all normal expectations and conventions of everyday programming are halted. It’s forty-three minutes into Iain Lee’s Late Night Alternative show on TalkRadio when we first hear from Chris, who has been waiting on the line. Producers and the two presenters were unaware of what he was about to reveal. The poor telephone reception adds a layer of confusion and a barrier to the conversation at the start: Lee: What have you got for us this evening sir? Chris: Hello Iain Lee: Hello Chris! Chris: Hello can you hear me? Boyle: Not really. Lee: Not very well. Chris: [inaudible] Lee: I can’t really hear what you’re saying. Are you on speaker? Chris: No [inaudible words]. Hang on. Ok is that better? Lee: Yes man, that’s much better, now we can hear you. What you got for us? Chris: [inaudible.] I don’t know but I suffer from PTSD. [Inaudible. Long pause.] And err I’ve taken an overdose. Er to kill me. Lee: When did you do that? Chris: About an hour ago. Lee: Woah woah woah woah woah woah. An hour ago? Chris: Yeah, something like that. Iain: What what what did you take man? Chris: I don’t know. A mixture …

Their conversation is punctuated by gaps of speech. There is a confusing array of background sounds, the phone signal cutting out and Chris losing consciousness leading

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Lee to think he was no longer alive, ‘This is horrendous!’ he exclaims at one point. In the days of Pete Price and Bob Fass, calls would have been made via landlines or telephone boxes. In Emilio’s case, Stern pokes fun at him about having a cell phone, after all back in 1994 this was quite a novelty. At one point Stern jokes that if he is doing so well in life to have a cell phone, then why would he want to die? There is also a battle with time which adds an additional layer of pressure on the host – if the battery dies on these calls, we are losing means to communicate and find the callers – ‘my batteries running low and so am I’, caller Emilio tells Howard Stern. The voice of the caller is heard over an often-distorted reception. In the case of Chris there are times when he is not responding, or slurring his words – as time continues, he gets increasingly disoriented and confused. The rate of breathing, the pitch of the voice, the accent, the speed of talking, the pauses, the speech modulation, the vocabulary, the grammar, the thought order, the metaphors and the self-reflection all must be interpreted by the presenter and the listener – and now me as the researcher. Listening to all these calls we hear the stumbling, the mumbling and the pain. We hear the people walking past and chatting in the background– a sombre realization that everyday life exists, oblivious to the suffering of one man and gradually we witness his decline – the slurring of his words, the increased silence between each utterance as he struggles to stay conscious. We can also hear the desperation in the host’s voice – trying to stay calm, trying to reassure and trying to divide his attention between Chris, his production team and his listeners. This may have been the first time a listener (and perhaps host) would have been exposed to such a call, since only a few of us may have met a suicidal stranger on a bridge or at a train station – or perhaps known a friend, colleague or family member. The telephone here is the link between Chris, his host and their listeners – reliant on a strong battery, a steady signal, connecting him from a road in Plymouth to the studios in London, to us in our homes, workplace or cars. This is a private tool used for public consumption – the telephone is now portable, anonymous and familiar – something we all use daily. As listeners we are familiar with its shortcomings – battery life, credit or poor reception. More often now, radio interviews (especially since the Covid outbreak) are increasingly visual using video technology, but this call was like many millions of others, just using a phone. As listeners we are collectively joined in a now public quest to find Chris: asking where could he be? Who could be nearby? Will he make it?

Hanging on to life Silence10 or the term ‘dead air’ is often regarded as the enemy of speech radio – and tends to be especially unusual on commercial radio. Silence carries with it the danger of being misinterpreted by the listener as a technical fault, so is often treated with suspicion or anxiety. Silence is commonly regarded as an unseen, uncontrollable, uncomfortable act on the radio, and it is widely assumed that listeners tend to feel insecure if it comes with no explanation. Set among the consistent flow of jingles, commercials, news, traffic and talk it

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can sound shocking in comparison – but for the listener, once again, this is the very essence of liveness reminding us that we are connected in real time with a station or host. The long gaps between Lee and Chris are telling – it reminds us of the very real threat he faces. The reception during the call between Stern and Emilio also cut out for a few seconds: Stern: Hello? [Silence] Stern: Oh, I guessed he jumped. Bonilla: Hello? Stern: Hello I thought you jumped.

Although silence is often regarded as the nemesis of live phone-in shows, hosts dare to be unafraid at times of breaching customary etiquette, ignoring protocol and inviting the caller to share an intimate space. A commercial radio host told me: I once let a radio silence last for two whole minutes while the caller considered whether her father’s suicide really meant that she was worthless. It took nerve on my part (radio is opposed to the idea of dead air) but not as much as she needed in outfacing her demons. People wrote to tell me they stopped their cars in lay-bys just to wait for the outcome.

As Street remarks, silence can be ‘a doorway to memory, expectation, anticipation, fear and other worlds’ (2012: 40). Silence here means much more than ‘dead air’ – it became here a place where listener, caller and host are connected in the moment. At times all three hosts are often direct and confrontational in tone – we assume they may be milder so as to not risk upsetting a vulnerable caller – but the aim was to keep them on the air as long as possible. Afterwards Fass said (when interviewed for an episode of the podcast This American Life): ‘Well, I thought I was trying to be gentle, but if you lull someone to sleep, that’s what you’re fighting against. If you can get them to show a little ire, maybe they’ll hang on to life’ (Who You Gonna Call 2017). The caller recognizes this: Valenti: No, no, no. You’re stalling me. You’re obviously stalling me. I appreciate it a great deal. Fass: You’re right. I am trying to stall you and trying to talk you out of it. And I think you ought to give me half a chance.

This is a strategy also shared by Lee while he speaks with Chris. Jokes, sarcasm, digs, almost a belligerent and argumentative tone to gain his attention and find something to fight for – all the while to keep him on air. Lee makes comments about cities and television, trying to find common ground and connect, also buying time. Stern and his co-host rarely break from the jokey, ‘shock jock’ sarcastic style of delivery that will be familiar to listeners and the caller – at one stage he says, ‘I might join you, so don’t let me think about it for a second.’ Stern: Are you a big fan of mine? Bonilla: Yeah, of course. Robin Quivers (co-host): Well, why are you leaving us, we need all the ratings we can get!

Radio Phone-ins and the Suicidal Caller

This can seem dismissive and risky, but arguably would be the very reason this caller feels he can connect with this host above anyone else and would succeed in keeping him on the line long enough for help to come: Fass: I’d like to continue talking to you for a while. Valenti: All right, but only with that promise that you’re not going to have the call traced. Fass: I can’t promise that, but I mean, you can force me to, if you’ll say that’s the only way you’ll talk to me. But it’s not a promise that I want to make.

The host engages with a variety of techniques to manage these calls. At around twenty minutes into Fass and Michael’s conversation it mirrors two friends casually catching up. This extract shows us how informal and open the conversation was – and has a sense of equality between the two parties. It feels like a chat between two colleagues or relatives: Valenti: I despise Orson Welles, but he’s not himself in this movie. Fass: Why do you despise Orson Welles? Everybody digs it. Valenti: I find him so hammy. Fass: Because of those airline commercials? Valenti: I don’t know the airline commercial. Fass: He was great in Citizen Kane. Valenti: That’s like an old Betty Field movie. Did you ever see that? It was called Tales of Manhattan.

The host is under enormous pressure to keep the caller on the line, communicate with his production team and not forget the needs of his audience. There are three elements we can hear when listening to Iain Lee – firstly he is talking directly to Chris, secondly, he is addressing his audience, and finally we overhear him talking to his production team. The delivery to listeners and his team is done using a low and almost whispered, muffled, confidential voice. He tells his listeners, ‘we’ve called an ambulance, so you don’t have to’ and ‘they’ve got him, right, they’ve got him’ – we are hearing what would normally be off-air confirmations now live on air. He then changes his tone and pace when speaking directly to Chris, much louder and energetic. When breaking down this call in its entirety, we see different stages emerge, from start to end: 1. Disclosure: ‘I’ve taken some pills’ and Lee’s reaction to this. 2. Quest of information: Lee questions Chris to ascertain his location, what medication he’s on, what he’s wearing, his age and background – all to try to find him as fast as possible. 3. Playing for time: Lee attempts to keep Chris on the line – to engage him, joke with him, connect with him and reassure his listeners, contextualizing events for them and updating them. He tries to understand why Chris would want to end his life. 4. Despair and relief: Lee is unsure if Chris is still alive until he hears him speak again ‘I thought we’d lost you’. 5. Resolution: the emergency services come on the line to talk to Lee, and we know that he is safe ‘yeah this is the police, we’ve got him now’.

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6. Post-analysis: we return to the familiar format with music beds and jingles, along with a recap of what was happening on- and off-air. We have self-disclosure around Lee’s own struggle with mental health and a link to charities for anyone impacted. The reaction by the press after all three calls were broadcast is worth noting. Although written across different decades, newspapers presented the three hosts as saviours and heroes. In 1971 the New York Times proclaimed, ‘Radio Station Helps in Rescuing Suicide Caller’ (Clarity 1971), in 1994 we read (also in the NYT) ‘Now a Caller from the G. W. Bridge: Stern to the Rescue’ (Weber 1994), while in 2018 the Daily Mirror exclaimed ‘Iain Lee Saves Suicidal Man’s Life While Live on Air in Harrowing Call’ (Saunders 2018). The narrative is resolved, the outcome is positive (none of the men died that day), and our hosts are presented as heroes. The network, audience, host and regulators can all breathe a temporary sigh of relief.

Concluding note This chapter has started to consider the context of suicide calls, the complexity facing production teams and above all else, the continued powerful role of the radio host. I have tried to bring to light some of the ways radio practitioners have responded to live suicide calls in the USA and UK, while also understanding there must be many more international examples which I am yet to uncover. We start to see why radio as a medium has been chosen by these three callers above any other aspects of public communication and how presenters employ a variety of techniques, under extreme pressure, to keep the caller alive. The para-social connection to the host, the possibility of anonymity and the technical ease of a portable telephone all play their part. Traditionally, the sound of trauma has been sidelined, and needs to be further researched, as does the way stories or calls about suicide are presented or heard on the radio and podcasts. In their analysis of 13 Reasons Why (Netflix 2017), Wang and Parris (2021) remind us to recognize the role of the media in educating the public about real risks around suicide and mental health difficulties. There is positive potential here in shaping attitudes, discussion and knowledge around a topic that is often cloaked in shame, guilt and loneliness. By featuring storylines, portrayals, discussions and content on the radio that tackles suicide – be this through their characters, storylines, calls or reporting – audiences could be exposed to more accurate depictions of mental health conditions, learn about professional help or crisis intervention. Some media content can help contribute to suicide prevention and actively help to save lives. Our hosts tread a thin line – keeping in mind their caller as well as their audience, including those bereaved by suicide or who may be vulnerable. They must not glorify, sensationalize or stigmatize. There is then a great deal of pressure and personal responsibility placed on production teams and presenters, with an unknown impact on their tribe of listeners and, of course, the callers themselves. This

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raises further questions around training and support available for hosts and production teams around how to responsibly report on or represent stories about suicide on the radio.

Notes 1 2

Listener-funded community station which is part of the Pacifica Foundation. Michael Valenti (the caller) was taken to hospital, received treatment and lived for another twenty years. 3 According to the Samaritans (2020), males aged 45–9 have the highest suicide rates in the UK, while males are 3.1 times more likely to die from suicide than females. 4 According to figures from The Samaritans charity in the UK (2020) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA (2020). 5 The World Health Organisation has guidelines which are international, and can be used by anyone across the world – as well as one specifically entitled ‘Preventing Suicide: A Resource for Filmmakers and Others Working on Stage and Screen’ (2019). 6 This has repurcussions on those bereaved by suicide, too. 7 Broadcast on Wednesday, 25 January 2017. 8 Guidelines advise that specific information around details surrounding a death by suicide should not be released, the language used by reporters must be checked – including the avoidance of the phrase ‘committed suicide’ which insinuates this is a criminal act (it was decriminalized in the UK in 1961). 9 The ‘Werther effect’ is the phenomenon where there is supposedly an increase in rates of suicide (or those attempting it) after viewing or accessing it through the media. The ‘Werther effect’, is taken following Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. 10 The term silence refers to non-speech. It is a simulation and cannot exist on the airwaves. See Street 2012: 44.

Works cited 13 Reasons Why (2017–20) [television programme], Netflix. BBC (2021), ‘Section Five: Suicide, Attempted Suicide, Self-Harm and Eating Disorders’, BBC Editorial Guidelines: https://www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidelines/harm-andoffence/guidelines/#suicideattemptedsuicideselfharmandeatingdisorders (accessed 30 January 2022). Beccarelli, M. (2020), ‘Late-Night Radio: A Window on Intimacy’, The UNESCO Courier, 1: 16–17. Biewen, J. and A. Dilworth (2010), Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. Brown, B. (2021), Atlas of the Heart, Vemillon: London. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (2020), ‘Underlying Cause of Death 1999–2019’, The National Institute of Mental Health: www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide (accessed 30 January 2022).

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Clarity, J. (1971), ‘Radio Station Helps in Rescuing Suicide Caller’, New York Times, 7 November: https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/07/archives/radio-station-helps-inrescuing-suicide-caller.html (accessed 30 January 2022). Coyle, R. (1990), ‘Witless Wireless’, Australian Left Review 122: 34–6. Crisell, A. (1994), Understanding Radio, London: Routledge. Fickers, A. and C. Johnson (2010), ‘Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach’, Media History 16 (1): 1–11. Hendy, D. (2010), ‘Listening in the Dark’, Media History 16 (2): 215–32. Horton, D. and R. R. Wohl (1956), ‘Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance’, Psychiatry 19: 215–29. Karpf, A. (2013), ‘The Sound of Home? Some Thoughts on How the Radio Voice Anchors, Contains and Sometimes Pierces’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 11 (1): 59–73. Katriel, T. (2004), Dialogic Moments: From Soul Talks to Talk Radio in Israeli Culture, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Keith, M. C. (2001), Sounds in the Dark: All-Night Radio in American Life, Ames: Iowa State University Press. Leenaars, A. A. (2010), ‘Edwin S. Shneidman on Suicide’, Suicidology online 1 (1): 5–18. Luce, A. (2019), ‘Reporting Suicide’, in A. Luce (ed), Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 70–94. McDonald, K. (2014), ‘The History of The Radio Interview’, PhD Thesis, Bournemouth University. Montgomery, M. (2001), ‘Defining Authentic Talk’, Discourse Studies 3: 397–405. Moss, P. and C. Higgins (1982), Sounds Real: Radio in Everyday Life, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. O’Connor, R. C. and M. K. Nock (2014), ‘The Psychology of Suicidal Behaviour’, The Lancet Psychiatry 1 (1): 73–85. O’Connor, R. C. (2021), When it is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can do to Prevent it, London: Ensbury Press. OFCOM (2021), ‘Section Two: Harm and Offence’, OFCOM, 3 March: https://www.ofcom. org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-two-harmoffence (accessed 30 January 2022). Samaritans (2020), ‘Samaritans Responds to ONS Suicide Figures for England and Wales’, 1 September: https://www.samaritans.org/news/samaritans-ceo-ruth-sutherland-respondsto-ons-suicide-figures-for-england-and-wales/ (accessed 30 January 2022). Saunders, E. (2018), ‘Iain Lee Saves Suicidal Man’s Life While Live on Air in Harrowing Call’, Daily Mirror, 20 December: https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/iain-lee-savessuicidal-mans-13758621 (accessed 30 January 2022). Seaton, J. (2004), ‘Writing the History of Broadcasting’, in D. Cannadine (ed), History and the Media, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 141–60. Shneidman, E. S. (1973), ‘Suicide Notes Reconsidered’, Psychiatry 36 (4): 379–94. Skoog, K. (2010), ‘The “Responsible” Woman: The BBC and Women’s Radio 1945–1955’, PhD Thesis, University of Westminster. Street, S. (2012), The Poetry of Radio: The Colour of Sound, London: Routledge. Sydney Morning Herald (2004), ‘Teen’s Luck: Last Night a DJ Saved my Life’, 15 February: https://www.smh.com.au/world/teens-luck-last-night-a-dj-saved-my-life-20040215-gdicz8. html (accessed 31 January 2022).

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The Howard Stern Show (1994), [Radio Programme], WXRK-FM, 7 December. Van Orden, K. A., T. K. Witte, K. C. Cukrowicz, S. R. Braithwaite, E. A. Selby and T. E. Joiner, Jr. (2010), ‘The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide’, Psychological Review 117 (2): 575–600. Wang, H. and J. J. Parris (2021), ‘Popular Media as a Double-Edged Sword: An Entertainment Narrative Analysis of the Controversial Netflix Series 13 Reasons Why’, PLoS ONE 16 (8): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0255610. Weber, B. (1994), ‘Now a Caller From the G. W. Bridge: Stern to the Rescue’, New York Times, 8 December: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/08/nyregion/now-a-caller-from-the-g-wbridge-stern-to-the-rescue.html (accessed 30 January 2022). Who You Gonna Call (2017) [Podcast], This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife. org/622/who-you-gonna-call (accessed 30 January 2022). World Health Organisation (2019), ‘Preventing Suicide: A Resource for Filmmakers and Others Working on Stage and Screen’, WHO, 9 September: https://www.who.int/ publications/i/item/preventing-suicide-a-resource-for-filmmakers-and-others-workingon-stage-and-screen (accessed 30 January 2022). World Health Organisation (2021), ‘Suicide’, WHO, 17 June: https://www.who.int/news-room/ fact-sheets/detail/suicide (accessed 30 January 2022).

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13 Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters Helen Wolfenden

Introduction and context Talk radio presenters are usually supported by producers. Producers execute off-air tasks such as lining up interviews, programme planning, managing text messages, tweets, email or phone-in audience input, cueing, prompting, time management, feedback and debriefing, scripting and other duties. However, despite the critical role that producers play in putting a show to air, producers have generally been neglected in analysis of the radio production process (notable exceptions being McDonald 2014 and O’Neill 1993). This chapter documents the functional and relational roles that producers fulfil, the way that they co-create on-air content, and, in the process, co-create the presenter’s on-air identity. I analyse the relationship between producers and presenters of radio through a series of interviews with high profile Australian Broadcasting Corporation1 (ABC) personnel. The first round of interviews for the study was conducted in the (southern) summer of 2008. Some of the original participants were re-interviewed in the summer of 2022 to understand how things have changed in the intervening period, particularly in light of the social media interface between radio presenters and audiences. Twitter, Facebook, SMS and other forms create layers of visibility in a medium characterized by ‘invisibility’. These interviews also provide a means of checking the ongoing validity of conclusions drawn from the original interviews. In the 2008 interviews, thirteen ABC presenters were interviewed, along with a long-time ABC producer who was a trainer with the organization and a radio industry consultant. The presenters worked for the ABC Local Radio network and presented live, daily (weekday) programmes with a significant talk component. Three of these participants were re-interviewed in 2022. Traditionally, producers were kept hidden as part of the ‘backstage’ of on-air radio presentation. More recently, the taboos that disguised or denied their presence have relaxed significantly to the point that some producers now have on-air input. But even with more on-air recognition, the role is not well understood. This is reflected in the

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literature: the producer role is rarely empirically researched or documented (O’Neill 1993). Some would argue that broadcast organizations do not sufficiently value it either, judging by Bonini and Gandini’s 2015 study (one of the few inquiries into radio producers) which identifies the precarious and underpaid positions of producers in the Italian context. Wendy McLeod, who when interviewed was a trainer developing ABC presenters and producers from across the organization’s diverse range of radio networks and a careerlong producer herself, suggests that the role of the producer is frequently misunderstood. Presenters clearly agree with her: all of them unequivocal about the importance of the producer. For Jon Faine, then a high-profile morning presenter in Melbourne: It’s everything. It’s a team. So you know you’re the front kind of guy, well I’m a guy, and you totally are dependent on them. They can make you look good; they can make you look incompetent. They can leave you dangling or they can keep you well fed.

Bernadette Young, then Afternoons presenter on ABC Perth, said: They’re just completely vital in many ways … I mean, god, it’s just everything … and a great producer is just the best thing. It’s the ultimate situation at work to have a really good team, one that you can actually discuss things with … Nothing’s ever taken personally … I mean that would be a whole other thesis all together as to what that relationship is.

What listeners hear from the radio is a voice that emerges from the producer–presenter relationship. If this relationship is not understood, the broadcasting process is not understood. The producer–presenter system can be understood in terms of functional and relational elements. Functional elements, which account for the ways that different roles and actions work together to produce on-air content, have received some attention in the literature. Resarch on relational elements, which account for the interpersonal, intersubjective ways in which the presenter and producer work in collaboration to produce the voice, presence, atmosphere and ultimately the on-air self of the presenter, is less developed. Together, functional and relational elements work together in what Hutchins (2010, 2020) calls a Distributed Cognition system. In this perspective, cognition is not just what happens within an individual mind – specifically here, the mind of the presenter. Cognition is extended beyond the ‘skin and skull’ of the individual to encompass other minds who may be engaged in symbiotic action and the tools and technologies which are employed by the human minds engaged in the process to extend, assist, distribute and connect elements in a learning or representational system. Hutchins’ examples include marine navigation or the process of landing a plane to illustrate how multiple minds and a range of technologies go together to create a completed process. Within the field of media production, Karen Pearlman (2018) applies these ideas to documentary editing. The theory is clearly relevant to understanding the radio production process and deserves further exploration; however, this chapter will focus on the ways presenters themselves describe the presenter/producer relationship.

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Functional components of the producer role Brian O’Neill’s ethnography, one of the few studies of radio producers, provides a detailed description of the production processes for The Arts Show, on the Irish public-service broadcaster RTE (O’Neill 1993: 66). O’Neill sees the producer role in functional terms, describing ‘the world of the radio producer’ as one which ‘revolves around the activity of filling programme space during which producers are preoccupied with segments of programme material and units of broadcast time’ (O’Neill 1993: 72). O’Neill’s insight into the functional elements of production is supported by Jon Faine’s succinct summary of the producer role for his Mornings, on ABC Melbourne: The producers’ job is to produce. I’m a monster, feed me. I need 40 guests a week and this morning I need five in the first 45 minutes … we’ve got quite a lot of stuff we’ve got to find and their job is to find them … Meanwhile I’ll be frantically trying to get my head around the actual issues.

Ideally, by the time the presenter goes to air, they need to be across all the content that will be covered in that programme. No matter how much a producer does, the presenter always needs to have the front-end covered. The key information has to be distilled so as to be able to be operationalized quickly and seamlessly by the presenter. Kathryn McDonald’s research describes that process for producers of the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs (McDonald 2014), documenting the close collaboration between presenter and producer in preparing a guest for interview – but not to the point where the on-air conversation will lose its spontaneity. The preparation and production process and the division of labour will vary depending upon the demands of the programme and the team members’ mix of skills and knowledge. As Faine explains, I’m not going to start interviewing authors having looked at the back cover of the book. I’m not going to get producers who look at something and give me questions to ask when I haven’t had the time to view the film or watch the documentary or read at least a good chunk of the book.

On the other hand, then Melbourne Drive presenter Lindy Burns realized her involvement was getting in the way. Burns had been heavily involved in production tasks in her previous presenting positions when she was based in Newcastle, a much smaller station. Stepping up to the high-profile Drive programme in a major capital city station required a change in approach. I’ve made a decision, because I’ve over the years had a hands-on role in producing the show as much as presenting it, and I’ve decided not to do that anymore … If I think of something terrific I’ll hand that over. But I think I’ve probably been a bit tough to deal with for a producer because I’m constantly almost interfering in that process.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

The production demands vary because of presenter preference, team strengths and the programme brief. Geraldine Mellet was then filling in across a number of programmes for ABC Local Radio in Perth and explains the difference the programme brief makes. [I]n a current affairs programme … the production is happening as the programme goes to air. So the decision making about what stories and who to get is actually amongst the producers. The decision making on my part is what questions to ask and when to start and finish the interview … On an afternoon programme where we’ve discussed what we’re going to do, … then I’m more in control of what questions I’m asking, how I’m introducing them, what I have to cover.

Producers need to be flexible enough to adapt to these variations. Good teams have tightly regulated systems about how they manage functions and share tasks. For veteran broadcaster Tony Delroy, who presented Nightlife nationally for over twenty-five years, this level of organization was imperative for him to feel secure on-air. I don’t leave a lot to chance. I have a good production team and that is vital. [With] my longtime producer Nicola Harrison, … we quite often didn’t have to speak about issues. I sort of walk in and say ‘which one’ and she’d go ‘yep’ and all of a sudden we’d have an ‘Issue of the Day’ without actually speaking. And she would know … how to do Delroy speak, which is fairly important simply because it is the longest shift on ABC radio.

Delroy is describing a connection so intimate that he and Harrison instinctively know what the other is going to say, and how they will react to the choices and options that are on the table. In that circumstance, words become redundant. Harrison is part of Delroy’s Distributed Cognition system (Hutchins 2020) in which her mind becomes an extension of Delroy’s. This extends to her colonization of Delroy’s voice, so that she is able to speak the way that he does. Even though it may only be one voice that is heard on-air, that voice is driven by more than one brain. In strong presenter/producer partnerships the producer will act as a safety net and know the programme as well as if they were presenting it themself. When presenting Grandstand, sports broadcaster Karen Tighe is often juggling complicated crosses to sporting fields all over Australia. Grandstand is a national Saturday programme that covers the country’s sporting events and, like an air-traffic controller, Tighe is directing audiences who are joining and leaving her to connect to different games while also conducting interviews and updating scores. If you develop a good relationship with your producer – so vital – you can kind of second guess each other. And often while my interview subject is answering me, that’s when I might have to be planning what the next thing is … you’ve got to keep an ear on what your subject is saying but also that’s a time when we can sort of try and liaise about what we’re going to do next.

Tighe depends on the off-air information her producer is gathering while she is on-air. She needs to know to whom she is crossing when: and this changes depending upon what is happening at each of the sporting fixtures and who is available at the right time. Without

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fluid and efficient communication between the producer and presenter those complex changes cannot be effectively established and relayed. Functional and relational tasks both have an impact on the quality of presenter engagement on-air. If the key functional task of having enough content ready is not achieved, a presenter can find themself feeling very uncomfortable. Madonna King (then Mornings presenter, Brisbane) says, I’m not good if there is a hole, a big hole in the first half hour as we walk in … I have absolute trust in the producer I have. And I know she’ll come up with something if I haven’t.

For Bernadette Young, trust in a producer, and especially their accuracy, correlates with confidence on-air. [M]ore than anything actually it’s not even just the words that a producer uses, it’s whether you trust them in terms of their information … because you’re relying on what they’re giving you to be your preparation and your research essentially.

Despite the separation described between functional and relational aspects of the producer role, the co-creation of the programme content and the presenter identity are inextricably connected. All of the elements in the production have to come together on-air as an integrated, seamless whole.

Relational components of the producer role: ‘emotional labour’ and trust The research literature on producers, scant though it is, has addressed the functional aspects of radio production to a degree (McHugh 2022; O’Neill 1993; Quah 2021). However, relational aspects of the role, the interpersonal and social supports provided by producers, warrant more attention. This is significant, because the imperative in broadcast programming is relational. There are many ways in the contemporary world for audiences to get content. The presenter brings content – information, entertainment – to an audience through an on-air self that is authentic, companionable, and develops an on-going listener relationship. Arlie Hochschild’s seminal work The Managed Heart describes this as ‘emotional labour’: This labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others … This kind of labor calls for a coordination of mind and feeling, and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honor as deep and integral to our individuality. (Hochschild 2003: 7)

The producer’s relational, as well as functional skills, are vital for achieving this on-air identity. Producers become an extension of the presenter’s self. They provide the scaffolding (functional) and emotional structures (relational) upon which the presenter identity is constructed. Research participants described a working relationship in which there was

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

a subjective symbiosis, in which skilled producers were able to enter into the mind and voice of the presenter, and expand their capacity both in terms of functional tasks and their connection with the audience. At its best, as Wendy McLeod suggests, the level of connection between a producer and presenter is: almost like … it’s telepathic. A bit like you do with a partner when you’ve lived with them for a really long time. And the real skill in being a producer is for the producer not to have an ego invested, but just to be there for that other person. To support them and to enrich them. That kind of career is not seen as being important anymore.

Former ABC broadcaster and radio trainer Steve Ahern provides an example of this in practice: I was going up to news, trying to time-out as you do on radio. Had about 60 or 90 seconds left, and for whatever reason I was totally distracted, lost it. I didn’t know what to say. There would have been 90 seconds of dead air but my producer got on the talkback and spoke the words into my ears that he wanted me to say … He understood what I needed which at that moment was just words. And so the words came in the ear and went out the mouth.

Presenters sometimes describe the partnership as ‘two brains, one voice’. Producers learn how to think like the presenter, sound like the presenter, to the point where they can supply thoughts, words, even feelings in a situation where the role demands more than what one human brain can deliver. If that is not available, things can spiral. When interviewed, Richard Fidler was Afternoons presenter in Brisbane and also presenting Conversations, an hour-long in-depth interview programme that usually focuses on a single guest. Conversations has gone on to become a flagship programme for ABC Radio and the focus of Fidler’s presenting. He describes the co-dependent relationship he had with his senior producer, Pam O’Brien: If Pam’s off sick and I get a replacement, they can try really hard and do their best but they’re not Pam. And so then things start to slip and fall behind and … [the guest is] showing up looking nervous rather than relaxed and that’s when my stress levels go right up again because I have … an hour where you’re kind of naked there.

Lindy Burns describes the struggle of the first years of her move from Newcastle, where she was a radio institution, to the new and often difficult environment of metropolitan Melbourne. A coupling of the fact that I was trying to endear myself to the audience, plus working with people who I just knew didn’t particularly want me to be there, didn’t respect me as a broadcaster, and were just trying to feed me the same stories that they would feed anybody.

Burns recounts facing the five o’clock news not knowing if she would have a story when the bulletin finished. So the producer was saying ‘Don’t worry we’ll have something for you in a few minutes. Hang in there!’ So I’m not having any time to prep, and God knows who it would be, what it will be about anyway.

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David Cook, her new producer, ‘saved’ her. And he just went, ‘Wow. Your five o’clock story. Okay. On a Drive programme, Melbourne.’ I was very lucky that I had David producing me for that year.

The language is interesting. David is not producing the programme. He is producing Lindy.

Marriage It is common to hear the presenter–producer relationship equated to marriage. Traditionally, marriage was often considered a sacrificial relationship where wives renounced their own prerogatives in order to promote their husband’s, and had to be content to bask in their reflected glory. A contemporary view would see the partnership as equal internally, no matter what the external standing of each partner. As Wendy McLeod says, The presenter looks like he or she has more power but … it’s in the balance. And it’s in the stuff that you don’t say … It’s like a good marriage really. It’s about how well you achieve good radio or a fulfilling and growing and fantastic relationship that is the guide. So no one’s really in charge. You’re both doing something together.

However, the relationship is not symmetrical. The producer is there for the presenter, not the other way around. A presenter and producer perform emotional labour towards different objects. Whilst a presenter is audience focused, the producer’s emotional labour is (or should be) presenter focused. To put it another way, the producer’s emotional labour is to ensure the presenter’s emotional labour is done well. Lindy Burns is clear about this. I know this is going to sound incredibly egotistical but when you go to air, everything needs to be about (obviously, the audience) but everything’s about the presenter. What do they need? She’s sounding a bit croaky, I think she needs some tea. Let’s do that. She’s losing a bit of energy there. Maybe let’s not do that story there let’s just flip that … so that you’re getting the best out of that presenter that day.

Wendy McLeod agrees that another kind of wife – a midwife – is also a good word to describe the producer: That’s a really good word for it. You’re actually enabling this other person to give birth to a performance and an event, or a story or whatever … A lot of the producers won’t go and get people cups of tea or water or something. It is about caring for that person and nurturing them and bringing them out and making them better … as good as they can possibly be, and letting them feel secure so they can be themselves.

The producer also has to manage a lower status, poorly understood role. When the relationship with the presenter is strong, the presenter will often endeavour to address this imbalance. Richard Fidler’s loyalty to his producer trumps his interest in his guest: [I]t’s such a trust, it’s such a co-dependency, and presenters must honour that … Because producers aren’t as powerful as presenters … For instance sometimes in the past I’ve had

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

producers doing a pre-interview with well-known Australian people who’ve behaved like absolute shits in the pre-interview and treated my producer like garbage. I don’t care how important, how famous they are, I don’t want them on my show.

Bernadette Young recognizes that if you are going to accept the bouquets, you also have to wear the brickbats. I will never put my producer in the shit on-air … Producers give you so much great stuff that if you were to out them for all the good stuff a lot of people would realise that … a lot of the good stuff that’s come out of your mouth was actually someone [else’s] idea originally.

Developing the relationship, building the team A relationship of this kind is not necessarily built easily or quickly, and is often an arranged marriage rather than a union of choice. Presenters are not necessarily in a position to make demands about who their producer is, and may have to deal with frequent changes in the production team. As Bernadette Young argues, this kind of turnover comes at a high price for presenters. We have a lot of changes in staff behind the scenes. And it’s really hard as a presenter to just continue normally. You know like you really get used to certain people and they get used to how you work. And then it’s just like ‘oh well you’ll just have to be able to work with this person’ … You’re … trying to have this continuity on-air that’s no longer there because the continuity isn’t there off-air.

Another scenario is the fill-in presenter. Mark Trevorrow worked for a time as a freelance presenter for the ABC but his profile was established as cabaret character Bob Downe. Trevorrow’s perpetual temporariness meant that he was not in a position to relax into a production relationship. In Trevorrow’s words, ‘you’ve got to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’. He explained that, when you’re a fill in, you have no choice of your producer and so again I’ve looked at that as a fantastic challenge … You make the best of the job that you’ve been given to cover … I apply the same sensibility to whoever is my producer on whatever shift. I find common ground and stand my ground in ways that I think I should or I have a right to.

Some presenters are more vulnerable to producer impacts than others. Presenters were asked if they were different on-air when they had different producers. Lindy Burns readily accepts that she is different on-air with different producers. Yeah, very much so … I don’t know how Jon [Faine] would have answered this question but to me Jon seems to sound the same no matter who he’s got producing him. Because he just has a very strong sense of what his show is about and who he is on-air. And I was probably like that in Newcastle [but] … it’s probably only now [in Melbourne] that I know what I need to sound like.

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Jon Faine does answer the question. He says he is different with different producers. Yeah absolutely. You try not to be too different but it’s a team. So different producers have different inputs, different suggestions, different priorities, different experiences, different approaches so that’s absolutely reflected in the output.

Distributed Cognition theory has clear connections with the system that these presenters are describing. Variation of any of the constitutive elements will result in complex changes through the whole system. This is not only reflected in content selection, though that will obviously be the case. It is also critical in the constitution of the presenter’s self on air, which is a key output of the cognitive system as a whole. The toll on a presenter who has been unable to connect with their producer can be extreme. In her second interview, Burns reflects on the personal cost of her experience in Melbourne, before Cook came along. You end up having to kind of produce yourself, so you’re doing both jobs which is fucking exhausting. Like that’s when you get shattered. That’s when I said, you know, the damage had already been done by the time I got to the good years.

The system functions to extend the capacity of the individual mind. When key elements (like the producer) of the cognitive system are not functional, other elements (in this case the presenter) overload and become subject to failure or damage. In Burn’s case, the functionality of the cognitive system was maintained by her absorbing the overload, damaging her own capacity in the process.

Being the audience Symbolic Interactionists believe a self is created in interaction with the social context (Blumer 1986). When the presenter is live, there may be no readable audience reaction that can be used to tweak the presentation. Producers stand in for the audience so that presenters can practice and check the response. This is particularly important in live-to-air broadcasts. Bernadette Young can see on their face that something is working. That they’re really enjoying an interview that you’re in the middle of. Or they laugh at something you’ve just said – genuinely on the other side of the glass … it gives you an immediate feedback. Something to gauge against. I will often talk to my producer. In some ways that’s my audience.

For Geraldine Mellet a producer offers a level of distance from the work that she cannot possibly achieve. I depend on them to give me feedback about what’s happening on-air because I simply cannot be a listener, in any sense. Even if I’m listening back to it off-air I’m still filtering it because it was my performance.

Wendy McLeod, as a trainer of producers and presenters, was an advocate of this practice.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

I think one of the big problems is that … there’s not a lot of eye contact often between the person in the control room and the person on the air … With James Valentine, because he sits sometimes with his Madonna mic on, with his feet on the desk, just talking into outer space virtually, and I have gone past one of the windows (and I love this show) and I sit there. I stand there and I will react to him. And he just loves that.

James Valentine (then Afternoons, now Breakfast, Sydney) knows this about himself. ‘There’s a particular kind of producer that I need. I need an audience’, he says. But he doesn’t just need the audience when he is on-air. He also needs that feedback while he is preparing his on-air materials. I tend to have a mental ritual where I’ll chat to the producer and a lot of that is warming up. I’ll just start gabbing and I’ll often have to say to people around the office or new people, ‘now I’m going to do a lot of talking, all I need you to do is laugh a bit and respond a bit. I don’t need you to have an argument with me and the rest of you are going to have to put up with this, but this is me warming up’.

The pre-production checks provide the confidence to launch the ideas in the live space. Young describes using a similar process to check her judgements about whether to share a personal anecdote. I will often run things past my producers, especially a producer who I really trust, and say ‘I’m going to say this. What do you reckon?’ And if they say ‘nah’ then … I’ll find another way to say it … And then I’ll run that past them [again]. And they’ll say ‘yeah that’s better. That’s toned down’ or ‘That’s a little less wanky’, or …

Trevor Chappell is the Overnights presenter nationally. Like Valentine, he uses his producer to make the intangible audience tangible. … sometimes I’ll talk to Michael on-air and he doesn’t answer me but it’s just another person that you’ll communicate with … I need to be able to trust someone that if I’m going on a little bit that he can just say ‘that’ll do’.

For Chappell, the producer is involved in real-time co-creation of the conversation.

Co-creating emotional tone Many of the characteristics being described are subtle, pre-conscious even, co-creating an emotional space which can shape the on-air dynamic. The way Geraldine Mellet felt about coming to work directly translated into the way she felt on-air. I’ve just started a new programme and I’m working with someone who’s a friend, not a really close friend but a friend. And we’re sort of very sympatico in the way that we work. We’ve got similar kind of values I suppose and a shared idea of how the programme should sound. I enjoy coming to work … and … I feel entirely free to be myself around the producers that I’m working with at the moment.

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Closely related to mood is presenter energy. James Valentine has to have someone who enjoys what he does on-air. I need somebody that’s responding well to what I’m doing. And that is sort of as slavish as it sounds, as sycophantic as it sounds. I do need them to be a bit crawly [laughs]. You know you’ve got to laugh at my jokes.

Trevor Chappell has been on air with the same show and producer for over fifteen years. Producers also provide an energy level … Ours wanes a little bit now because we’ve been doing it for so long. But I must admit every now and then I do like it when we get a younger producer coming in to fill in because they’re just so frigging into it.

Even though he tries to mitigate it, Valentine is conscious of the on-air implications if he doesn’t have the kind of producer he prefers. I’m very vulnerable to other people’s tone. So if their tone is a particular kind of tone, I start adopting it. It starts to creep in … a bit snarly and a bit sort of sardonic, a bit sort of down, that’s my dominant tone for the day. Instead of a light sort of you know ‘Hey! Whimsy whimsy. Funny funny. Bla bla blabla’.

The ‘tone’ of the programme is fundamental to the characterization of the presenter the audience will form. An audience who hears the snarly, sardonic James Valentine will find him an altogether different person to the light and breezy alternative. This is not just a function of the presenter. This data clearly indicates presenters’ awareness of how tone and character are co-produced by the production team in interaction.

Emotional labour with guests It is not only presenters who need to be in the right mood to create the warmth and spontaneity of exchange that is preferred for broadcast. Guests need to get beyond being nervous and self-conscious. This is also reflected in McDonald’s (2014) research. Richard Fidler says: What I require from a guest on The Conversation is that they be relaxed and trusting … say things that surprise even themselves. In the pre-interview process, Pam will … take them to places, even before they’re on-air … So at the point when I’m walking over to say ‘hello’ to my guest, I know that … they’re all ready to go … If I have to spend the first 10 minutes of The Conversation getting my guest to relax and trust me … the listener’s long gone.

The contrasting pictures Fidler paints demonstrate the reassurance and security provided by a solid production relationship. As people who are intimately involved in the programme, but one step removed from the actual presentation, producers are an invaluable source of feedback. Jon Faine was direct, and wanted his producer to be.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

I was always my harshest critic. But I wanted my next harshest critic to be my senior producer who would keep me honest, and tell me when I’d stuffed something up or missed an opportunity. Jo Jarvis was great saying … ‘yeah you squashed that grab, you talked over it and the news couldn’t get a grab out of it because you interrupted, you idiot! You would have been leading the news bulletin if you hadn’t jumped in.’ This sort of stuff. And it was really valuable.

Relationship problems and power struggles Undeniably, the presenter’s emotional management is central to the whole enterprise. If the presenter becomes unlikeable because his or her emotional labour has faltered, then the programme – and its team – is at risk.

Dominant producers If the producer is dominant, imposing content, or authority, then the co-creation process breaks down. Geraldine Mellet reflects: There’s one producer I had worked with a long time ago where I felt a bit bound by their own vision of the world. So I would be saying some things that they didn’t particularly like and I just was aware of a kind of level of disapproval. And that made me a little more careful in what I was saying … less free to be myself.

The dominant producer wants to determine what goes to air. This influence can be overt or subtle, and the producer may not even be aware of it. Despite presenters’ best efforts to mitigate the effects of a mismatched producer, authentic connection with an audience means that presenters’ feelings of discontent may not be contained, that some level of resentment or anger or frustration is likely to leak into the on-air presentation. Hochschild (2003) argues that the more managed those feelings have to be, the less authentically the individual can display.

Incompetent producers The new or incompetent producer also risks exposing seams. They jeopardize presenter confidence. In these situations, presenters have to second-guess production processes and become distracted by trying to manage them while they are on-air. Trevor Chappell, the veteran overnight presenter, has been there. You start to lose confidence because you feel that you need to be controlling what’s happening out there [and] controlling what’s happening here. And you can’t totally focus on your job which is to talk to people.

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Like Trevor Chappell, Richard Fidler is likely to get flustered: I haven’t often had dud producers but oh it’s a mess. And I suddenly get really tense because I have no confidence all of a sudden that the next thing I need is going to be there.

Disinterested producers For a presenter, a trait even worse than incompetence or inexperience is boredom. Bernadette Young describes the disengaged producer: My worst producers haven’t listened. They don’t listen to the programme, they don’t actually listen to what comes out of my mouth when I’m on-air. They don’t listen to suggestions or why you think something won’t work. They don’t listen. And producers as much as presenters have to be good listeners.

The bored or disconnected producer is not interested in the co-creation project. They leave the presenter in an even worse place than being stranded. In this scenario the presenter is passively undermined and devalued by the producer and it can have a crushing impact on their self-belief.

Producers who want to be presenters Producers who want to be on-air are also particularly problematic. The producer who wants to be a presenter has a competing self that they want to put on-air. For James Valentine, I’ve just had three or four months of that and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him on day two. I [was] like ‘oh why did I say yes to this guy?! He just wants to be on-air.’ … Producers need to want to be producers and that’s often quite hard to find. There’s not a lot of people in the world who want to be a radio producer. They see it as a stepping stone to something else.

Karen Tighe also faced this scenario. Again, despite her best efforts to contain the problems, she acknowledges that it impacted on the on-air space. I should have been more blunt with the person to say ‘look I know you’re in the situation you don’t want to be in but we’ve got to make the most of it.’ But I’d kind of bottled.. and I was bad … It takes the strongest of individuals to still have everything running really smoothly on-air if you’ve got somebody who doesn’t really want to be on the other side of the desk.

Jon Faine is emphatic about the most problematic trait a producer can have. For him the stakes were so high that he was prepared to resign. The worst producer is someone who wants to be on air. The absolutely toxic environment I’ve seen time and time again, going back to my earliest days at the ABC, and there’s countless examples … is of producers who thought they would do a better job and would undermine their presenter. I had one of those too and it can’t work.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

The broadcast environment is not a democracy. As uncomfortable as it may be to some, it is not a symmetrical relationship. The challenge for producers is to be humble, and for a producer who wants to be a presenter, that challenge can be enormous.

Power of veto Presenters argue they should be the final arbiter of what will represent them publicly – both in personal expression (ad libs, introductions and questions) and the story selection, understanding that story selection also becomes an expression of identity. Madonna King agreed that she had to believe in the story to make it work: [A]t the end of the day I’m the one that puts myself out there. I’m the one that’s got to go on-air and sell the story or tell this story and unless I want to do that you’re going to hear it in my voice, and it’s going to fall flat. Having said that, I don’t think there’s a time where I’ve said ‘no’.

From Wendy McLeod’s perspective, like fish, there are plenty of stories in the sea. The content has to reflect the presenter: Your very keen producer who says ‘I’ve come up with this great idea; we think we should do a story about gardening!’ And your presenter really couldn’t give a fig about gardening – don’t do it. Someone else will do it. So you really need to reflect in a way the things they like.

Despite having the power of veto, presenters like Richard Fidler use it judiciously. I get ultimate say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ … Although there have been occasions where Pam has said ‘Richard, go away and think about it a bit harder. Richard go away and think a bit harder. Richard go away …’. I know it’s not all about me but I have to be in a position in my own mind where I have to be genuinely interested.

Not all producers can easily accept presenter rejection but McLeod maintained that the listener can tell if the presenter is not interested. Producers get very offended. ‘They didn’t like my story!’ Actually, take yourself out of the equation. It’s about the presenter … But no they shouldn’t be forced to do a story that has been researched for them that they really don’t give a stuff about because you’ll know.

Interest, as a function of authenticity, cannot and should not be faked (though it can be found). Having said that, and with the inherent contradiction in mind, a presenter is required to have a broad range of interests, even if that is within a specialist subject. Madonna King recognized that part of the producer role was to extend her interests and her reach as a presenter. The most skilled do this in ways that remain congruent with the presenter’s self. No one has an absolute broad interest. For example, I’m not really strong in environmental issues. One of my producers is, so when she raises an environmental story I know I have to listen because not everyone thinks like me. Everyone out there is really different and so there is an onus on me to listen and to consider everything put up.

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Lindy Burns gives an example of her producer’s skill in getting her to extend her reach. Burns’s disinterest in politics was resulting in a category of stories not going to air. However, as a former national-level basketballer, Burns was absolutely interested in sport. He went, ‘Okay think of it this way. So Cabinet is the Australian cricket team okay? So you’ve got your captain who’s your Prime Minister, and … he wants [this person] dropped and he wants to bring in [another person]’and I went ‘Oh, that’s actually interesting. Let’s do that!’

The producer, as someone who knows the presenter’s mind, is here translating stories so that they connect and the presenter can run with them authentically.

The challenge of social media The introduction of social media has been a major development in the radio environment since the first round of interviews was conducted. Social media provide a whole new sphere of possibility for interaction between presenters and their audiences, and therefore for the constitution of on-air identities. Much of the responsibility for monitoring, filtering, posting and generating social media interaction necessarily falls to producers. The expectation from the 2022 interviews was that this would be reflected as a major impact. Interestingly, the participants indicated that while there was some change, the fundamentals of communicating with audiences remained substantially unchanged over the research period. Trevor Chappell remarks that, Some programmes use Twitter a bit. We don’t just because we’ve got one producer: we haven’t got someone that can be looking at Twitter feeds or Instagram feeds. We just don’t have the capability of that so we just use text and calls.

Chappell’s show does, however, have an active Facebook page that is not an ABC product, but initiated by listeners themselves. There’s thousands of listeners that are part of that and so I tap into that a little bit. I engage with it but only if people ask me questions directly. We do get a lot of ideas from that which is really, really good.

The question of capacity is an issue for Burns, who now has a wider training brief with the organization. I think it’s even harder now for producers because the job is ridiculous now. It’s not just about producing great content to go to air but it’s what we put on social … we need to write a digital article at the end of this and then texting is always coming in. It’s putting stuff up on Twitter … it’s insane. It’s an insane job.

In terms of her own practice, Burns concurs with Chappell. For her team, Facebook was used more as a repository for content which supports the on-air programming.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

I tended not to [use social media]. It was sort of more for special occasions. We used to use Facebook as a kickoff for talkback and so we would incorporate some of the Facebook comments into the talkback. I don’t hear that as much now. Mostly it’s texts. People tend to text a lot more. Especially in the [regional stations], like here in Newcastle, the guys struggle to get calls.

Surprisingly, then, for the presenters in this study, social media has not quite revolutionized the studio as much as might be expected. This is partly a question of resourcing. Servicing social media has for most programmes been added to the workload, and producers have to make choices. For these ABC shows at least, the fundamental dynamic is the voice of the presenter and the ear of the listener, supported and reinforced by the producer’s gift. It is worth noting though that social media is used extensively by producers to source stories and interview talent but this is then converted to on-air content in its more conventional forms.

Conclusions The process of broadcasting requires the presenter to actively construct and reconstruct a self before an imagined audience, and to produce the symbolic indicators of friendship, sympathy, companionship, disclosure and intimacy, in a studio, for consumption by a listening public. These interviews indicate that radio output is a result of a complex set of interactive processes that work together in a Distributed Cognitive system to enable broadcasters to speak to their ‘unknown, invisible absent listeners’ (Scannell 2000: 10). This is a co-creation of producer and presenter, in which skilled producers employ their own cognitive skill along with extended technology to expand the functional and relational capacity of the presenter, enabling them to manage the multiple technical requirements of the role and at the same time to be fully present, emotionally free, engaged and listening. The data clearly indicates that producers enable, or disable, desirable versions of the presenter’s self. Optimally, a producer’s functional and relational work enables a presenter to be ‘at their best’ for a given audience at a given time of day, within a given programme format and set of expectations. Sub-optimally, a producer who is competitive, hostile, critical or disinterested can co-create a self that is ‘a bit snarly and a bit sort of sardonic, a bit sort of down’ even with a presenter as ‘up’ and ‘light’ as Valentine: and even with a presenter who has a clear idea of the kind of person they want to be on-air. Clearly, an understanding of the functional and relational work of producers is critical to an understanding of the broadcasting phenomenon. In analysis of the media, in the recruitment and training of media personnel, and in the development of organizational policies, the absence of such knowledge is likely to significantly inhibit the effective constitution of broadcasting practice. The producer–presenter partnership is a great example of human collaboration, difficult to achieve, magical to see in action. As Wendy McLeod, then one of the ABC’s most experienced producers, and someone who loves producing says:

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I mean it is just the best feeling. It’s like flying a 747, I imagine. You just take off and then you land it. And it’s where I wanted to be and I wish there were more people that could see how much fun it is.

Note 1

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is Australia’s national broadcaster. It is funded by government and publicly owned but politically independent.

Works cited Ahern, Steve [interview], former presenter, trainer and consultant, 31 January 2008. Blumer, H. (1986), Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, London: University of California Press Ltd. Bonini, T. and A. Gandini (2015), ‘Invisible Workers in an Invisible Medium: An Ethnographic Approach to Italian Public and Private Freelance Radio Producers’, in Miranda Banks, Bridget Conor and Vicki Mayer (eds), Production Studies, the Sequel, New York: Routledge, pp. 138–49. Burns, Lindy [interview], Drive presenter (Melbourne), 24 January 2008; trainer (national), 10 February 2022. Chappell, Trevor [interview], Overnights presenter (national), 22 January 2008, 12 February 2022. Tony Delroy [interview], Nightlife presenter (national), 29 January 2008. Faine, Jon [interview], Breakfast presenter, (Melbourne), 23 January 2008; broadcaster and writer, 22 February 2022. Fidler, Richard [interview], Afternoons presenter (Brisbane), Conversations presenter (national), 1 February 2008. Hochschild, A. R. (2003), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (2nd ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press. Hutchins, E. (2010), ‘Cognitive Ecology’, Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (4): 705–15. Hutchins, E. (2020), The Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction, Roots of Human Sociality, New York: Routledge. King, Madonna [interview], Mornings presenter (Brisbane), 1 February 2008. McDonald, K. (2014), ‘Performance, Power and Production: A Selective, Critical and Cultural History of the Radio Interview’, Doctorate Thesis, Bournemouth University. McHugh, S. (2022), The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories Through Sound, Sydney: UNSW Press. McLeod, Wendy [interview], producer, various programmes, trainer, 29 January 2008. Mellet, Geraldine [interview], presenter, various programmes, especially Afternoons, Perth, 18 and 20 February 2008. O’Neill, B. (1993), ‘Producing The Arts Show: an Ethnographic Study of Radio Producers at Work’, Irish Communications Review, Vol. 3. Dublin: Technological University, Dublin.

Presenting … Producers! And Producing Presenters

Pearlman, K. (2018), ‘Documentary Editing and Distributed Cognition’, in C. Brylla and M. Kramer (eds), Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 303–19. Quah, N. (2021), Servant of Pod with Nick Quah, Episode: ‘What does a Podcast Producer do?’, LAist Studios. Scannell, P. (2000), ‘For-Anyone-as-Someone Structures’, Media, Culture & Society 22 (1): 5–24. Tighe, Karen [interview], Grandstand (Perth, and various sports, national), 18 February 2008. Trevorrow, Mark [interview], freelance presenter, various, 22 August 2008. Valentine, James [interview], Afternoons presenter (Sydney), 29 January 2008. Young, Bernadette [interview], Afternoons presenter (Perth), 5 February 2008.

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14 Audio Within Audio Phones, Materiality and the Elicitation of Emotion in Podcasting Evi Karathanasopoulou

Introduction This chapter looks at audio storytelling and the elicitation of emotion and atmosphere through the use and recreation of audio technologies such as the telephone and voice memo. Building onto the now established field of radio studies, it also uses Michel Chion’s cinematic ‘on-the-air’ and ‘materialising sound indices (M.S.I.)’ concepts, which will be analysed as a ‘doubling-up’ of auditory space in podcasting (1994: 76, 114). The concept of ‘on-the-air’ sound may have been considered in relation to radio before (Crook 1999: 86–7); however, podcasting is offering new ways to explore it. The prevalence of headphone listening today and, crucially, the wide use of the mobile phone (also referred to as a smartphone here) as a listening device for podcasts, deliver new exciting parallels and new creative avenues for immersive storytelling. This chapter builds on my previous research into radio as an intimate medium. That research revealed the existence of a number of intimacies deriving from different combinations of two core intimate modes that, I argue, exist in audio media: ‘technological intimacy’, which is inherent in our listening and recording technologies; and ‘performative (or personal) intimacy’, which may enhance the medium’s inherent intimacy to different degrees, depending on genre, producer, production methods (Karathanasopoulou 2015). I look at how telephone conversations and voice memo recordings are used in both fictional and factual narratives in podcasting in order to create immersive, emotive, intimate storytelling. I examine how emotion can be generated by the doubling-up of a phone conversation within a podcast when this is being listened to from a listener’s own

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mobile phone. How a voice memo recorded in a protagonist’s phone can become an intimate aural object for the audience who are listening from similar devices. I will be using the drama Passenger List (2019, Radiotopia) and the documentary S-Town (2017, Serial and This American Life), both created in the USA, as short case studies to test these ideas and unpack how audio technologies are used as intimacy invoking, emotive storytelling narrative devices.

Defining the context: technological intimacy But before I move into this analysis, I must first define terminology and context. The term ‘technological intimacy’ is used here to describe a relationship between the medium and the listener, regardless of type of programme, and refers to the ways in which the technology itself may intimately mediate content to the listener (Karathanasopoulou 2015). Namely, some of these attributes are as follows: 1. ‘Portability’, which means audio media can superimpose themselves on more private experiences and situations; 2. ‘The absence of visuality’, which means that the listener is invited to complete messages and create personalized, idiosyncratic mental images; 3. Audio media being ‘ambient and, thus, not sharply framed’ allowing for stories to leak into the listener’s environment and create immersive, encompassing experiences; 4. Audio media most commonly communicating to the individual, since people tend not to listen to podcasts or the radio in groups (Karathanasopoulou 2015). The RAJAR Midas Audio survey in the summer of 2019, found that ‘Podcasting is almost always a solo activity, with a share of 92%’ (RAJAR 2019). In the winter of 2021, this share went up to 94 per cent (RAJAR 2021). In the case of podcasting, my main concern here, there are additional new intimate characteristics that either expand or strengthen these intimate attributes: ●

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On-demand listening, which turns the podcast into an intimate, personal object that the listener can own, go back to, and listen to, not only anywhere she wants but also anytime she wants. Headphone listening: RAJAR reported in 2016 that 90 per cent of podcast listening happens via headphones (Berry 2016: 13). The technology has been described as intimate in relation to podcasting before by authors such as Martin Spinelli and Lance Dann who talk about headphones, and earbuds in particular, as allowing ‘for a hyper-intimacy in which the voice you hear is in no way external, but present inside you’ (2019: 84). I will be looking at how the materiality of this experience is further extended when mobile phone devices are added into mix.

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Listening on portable mobile phone devices: the RAJAR Midas Audio survey (UK) in 2018, found that ‘Almost three quarters of podcasting hours are listened to via a Smartphone (72%)’ (RAJAR 2018). In the winter of 2021 the same survey found that smartphones continued to be the preferred device for listening to podcasts with a share of 77 per cent, a slight increase from previous years (RAJAR 2021). The Infinite Dial survey in the USA echoes these finding for the US context. In 2021 it reported that ‘the smartphone continues to grow and remains the most important device for media consumption’ (Edison Research 2021: 67).

This last point is where this chapter aims to devote most of its attention. Namely, in considering the phone as a material extension to aural worlds of podcast stories. Richard Berry, considering the modes of podcast listening described above, proposes that, ‘Perhaps by combining a highly personal listening environment with content that has immediate appeal to the listener and is consumed at a time and place of their choosing, we have grounds to consider that podcasts are capable of a deeper level of intimacy’ (2016: 13). I will be looking at another way in which this proposition may be true by focusing on the quirk of the superimposition of listening, recording and telephone technologies, all of which have been concentrated onto one device: the smartphone.

Performative intimacy ‘Performative (or personal) intimacy’ describes the relationship between the listener and a specific programme and/or producer, voice, audio text. Intimacy here is understood to stem from the broadcaster and the ways she uses voice, audio technology and mediated sound in general. It helps ‘identify degrees of intimacy relative to genre and modes of address (or intimacies). Performative intimacy has a role in enhancing technological intimacy’ (Karathanasopoulou 2015). This is relevant in the ways in which podcast creators choose to use audio technologies within their storytelling. Interestingly, we will be seeing in very clear terms how technological and performative intimacies are inextricably linked.

Podcasting as a medium This chapter examines podcasting as a ‘medium’ and a ‘new aural culture’ (Llinares, Fox and Berry 2018). It looks at the unique ways that different genres and creators within it can combine these two relationships (technological and performative/personal intimacy) in order to create a new set of unique intimacies, only present in this medium. This work aims to add to an already existing conversation about podcasting as an intimate medium (e.g. Swiatek in Llinares, Fox and Berry 2018; Spinelli and Dann 2019) and it claims that there is no one ‘intimacy’ but a multitude of intimacies existing in podcasting, which are worth exploring and unveiling. As such, by homing in on Chion’s cinematic concepts of ‘on-air-sound’ and ‘materialising sound indices’ (1994: 76, 114) I aim to reveal textures and

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modes of signification that are new and emerging in audio media. I observe and describe elements of podcasting’s intimacy canon as this is being formulated.

‘On-the-air’ sound and ‘M.S.I’ Chion’s work on film sound has often been useful to radio and podcast studies, perhaps paradoxically as there are no images to accompany the sound. And yet, despite this obvious fact, Chion’s concepts translate well into audio-only media, perhaps because of radio’s and podcasting’s ability to induce vivid and personal mental images in the mind of each listener. McHugh, writing about podcasting, refers to Chion’s work (1994) where he divides the soundtrack used in film into three categories: voice, music and noise – also referring to ambient sound; McHugh remarks (also referencing British audio producer Alan Hall): ‘Whether as film soundtrack or pure audio, the relational layering, timing, and placement of all three kinds of sounds – what might be termed the choreography of sound – viscerally shapes the impact a mixed end product can have on listeners’ (McHugh 2021: 106). In this chapter, I will be homing in a little closer into two specific concepts from Chion’s work. These two concepts might be seen to exist in the intersection between voice and ambient sound. In Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Chion defines ‘on-the-air’ as ‘sounds in a scene that are supposedly transmitted electronically as on-the-air – transmitted by radio, telephone, amplification, and so on’ (1994: 76). Later in the book he talks about ‘materialising sound indices’ which he defines as ‘the sound’s details that cause us to “feel” the material conditions of the sound source, and refer to the concrete process of the sound’s production’ (1994: 114). It is the combination of these two concepts that this chapter is interested in and which will allow me to unpack the doubling up of auditory space and the superimposition of an otherwise immaterial world onto a material piece of technology. The phone in my analysis becomes a material, or ‘materializing’, extension to the story/ narrative of factual and fiction podcasts.

Audio drama – intimate fiction Tim Crook brings Chion’s ideas into radio theory (1999). His discussion is around sound technology and telephones (presumably landline devices mostly, though mobile phones did exist at the time Crook’s Radio Drama book came out). He offers some criticism of BBC drama productions at the time for using ‘a console filter to simulate the sound of a telephone’ and mentions that in independent production ‘we use real telephones and the resonances were much more authentic, even down to the gripping sound of the actor’s hand on the plastic handpiece’ (1999: 65). Authenticity is key here, according to both Crook and Chion, for the creation of intimate storytelling. Chion explains that M.S.I.s ‘frequently consist of unevenness in the course of a sound that denote a resistance, breach, or hitch in the movement of the mechanical process’ (1994: 115). Crook unpacks this notion for radio

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drama storytelling rather aptly: ‘The effect of materialising sound indices is to mortalise the creation of sound. It makes it a human production in contrast to a perfected, ethereal abstraction’ (1999: 65). In the first case study I examine here, podcast drama series Passenger List (Radiotopia 2019), these concepts are truly brought into their full creative potential. Passenger List is a mystery thriller about a disappeared plane where ‘Kaitlin Le, a college student whose twin brother vanished with the flight, is determined to uncover the truth’ (Radiotopia 2019). In the piece (which consists of two seasons with eight episodes each), the listener hears most of the story through the point of view of Le who records everything in voice memos and communicates with other characters mostly via telephone and voicemail messages. Much of the sound in the drama is doubly mediated. Namely, before it reaches the listener’s headphones (or speakers), it is first mediated from within the story through electronic means such as: telephone calls and voice messages/television news sequences/the voices of the pilots of the lost plane as they are heard over radios/PA systems and cockpit recordings/ Kaitlin’s meetings with potential leads and dramatic sequences of her investigations as heard through her phone. When interviewed in 2019, one of the three creators of the podcast, Mark Henry Phillips, was asked about one of his favourite ‘sound scenes’ in the podcast. His response is illuminating: There’s one scene in episode two where Kaitlin is walking around a huge engineering lab with a jet engine expert looking at how an engine would handle a bird getting sucked into it. There was an enormous amount of sound design involved to make all the footsteps, all the mechanics yelling, the machinery. Once I had it, I just played it on my speakers really loud and recorded it on my iPhone using voice memos, gluing it together with a certain texture. (in Cariker 2019)

This segment, with the distortion created by the phone recording, sounds authentic because of its sonic imperfection. Here, the creators of the podcast are weaving a sonic texture which aims to recreate the way in which a person within the story would listen to the protagonist’s recordings. In that way, they immerse the listener into the story in more ways than one: 1. assuming the listener is using headphones, the sound of this engineering lab is leaking inside her head; 2. it does so while being re-mediated as an iPhone voice memo recording; and 3. as the podcast is most likely to be listened to via a smartphone, it is as though the listener has been given the protagonist’s recording to play on her own smartphone. The listener is given access to a material ‘reality’ of a story that is otherwise immaterial; a sort of backstage access that makes the story feel more real than if the producers had given us a perfect soundscape in an attempt to immerse us into the engine room as though we were walking next to the protagonist. Our point of view is now entirely different. We have been given a sound-object to hold and we can materially connect to the story. Chion when writing about dialogue in his analysis of ‘on-the-air’ sound makes a very useful distinction that can be applied here. He proposes:

Phones, Materiality and the Elicitation of Emotion in Podcasting

Imagine a scene in a film where a man is listening to a taped interview. If the sound being listened to has technical qualities of directness and presence, it refers back to the circumstances of its original state. If it has aural qualities that highlight its ‘recordedness,’ and if there is emphasis on the acoustic properties of the place where it is being listened to in the diegesis, we tend to focus on the moment where the recording is being heard. (1994: 77)

The ‘recordedness’ as it happens within the story is superimposed onto the recordedness of the experience of listening to a podcast on our mobile phone. The effect is somewhat of an illusion. Layers of separation seem to be getting removed between the listener and the story world as this superimposition happens. Spinelli and Dann talk about the paradox of radio being considered a disembodied medium (particularly within the avant-garde), when headphone listening is the epitome of embodiment. They write: ‘Earbuds push intimacy inside a body – they are, in very real sense, about re-embodying the voice. This observation cuts against a discourse familiar to media writing for nearly a century which described radio as a “disembodied voice”’ (2019: 102). But what happens here adds another layer of embodiment and materialization. The recording device, the phone, materializes on the listener’s hand, in her pocket, on her desk, no longer as just a listening device for a podcast, but as a listening device for the protagonist’s recordings. The technology here is the intimacy – but it is so, because of how the producers decided to use it within their narrative. Creator Mark Henry Phillips confirms these intentions when interviewed: ‘I was really trying to come up with a sound that made it feel as real as possible. My thinking was that realism was going to pull in the listener way more than just pure drama’ (in Cariker 2019). The technology has created a full-circle moment, because the smartphone has become our one device to call, leave messages, listen and record (technological intimacy); but this is only realized when these audio creatives decide to use this moment in order to enhance their storytelling (performative intimacy). Our smartphones become intimate, tactile, storytelling devices. They do not only allow us to listen to fiction that contains materializing sound indices, the smartphones are themselves materializing sound indices. These devices, however high-tech, remain imperfect (especially compared to professional recording equipment and studios). Passenger List (Radiotopia 2019) creator John Scott Dryden’s discussion of the podcast resonates back to Crook’s discussion of authenticity through imperfection. Dryden remarks: ‘One thing that makes me sit up and listen is when audio sounds like it’s been recorded badly and an engineer has had to make it intelligible. It’s as if this was something you’re not meant to hear. It makes you want to hear it all the more’ (in Cariker 2019). He talks here about creating content that mystifies, brings the listener in as voyeur or even as accomplice, by creating imperfect soundscapes. Victoria Hoover talks about these concepts in her analysis of the drama podcast Homecoming1 (Gimlet Media 2016) which relies on the narrative audio format of found footage and phone tapping (Hoover 2020: 3). She notes that intimacy in podcasting can indeed be created by making use of smartphone technology within a story, ‘as the audience is ultimately listening to a podcast about phone-tapping on their own mobile devices’ (2020: 2–3). In her analysis she briefly mentions Passenger List (Radiotopia 2019) for its

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similarity to Homecoming, remarking that both podcasts ‘attach to a body following a single character from scene to scene’ (2020: 4). Usefully, she also remarks on authenticity being created through imperfect recordings (2020: 5). The creators of Passenger List use imperfection in more than one way in order to create intimate storytelling through dialogue. They perform intimacy by electing for the voices to also sound imperfect, and the smartphone is part of the illusion again. Mark Henry Phillips remarks: When things sound too dramatic they just feel artificial, so the process started with the editing and using takes that were a little more understated. It also meant adding weird, awkward pauses at times or taking out a line here or there. After editing, the next step was to really muck up the sound. We recorded every scene with a blend of mics but also had Kelly hold an iPhone while recording voice memos. Then I blended all of those along with sound FX and plugins. (in Cariker 2019)

His description of the creative process echoes Chion’s theorization of M.S.I.s in voices in particular. Chion writes: ‘An m.s.i. in a voice might also consist of the presence of breathing noise, mouth and throat sounds, but also any changes in timbre (if the voice breaks, goes off-key, is scratchy)’ (1994: 115). Series 1 of the Passenger List ends with a soundscape of Kaitlin crying in the back of a taxi, sniffling, her voice cracking, a lot of handling noise as she tries to reach for the tissues from the back of the cab, blowing her nose, when all of a sudden her mobile phone rings, she picks up, it is a very bad line, we hear the crackling, breakingup voice of her brother, who we had thought was killed in the airplane crash. It is the sonic imperfection of this call that, indeed, makes the listener ‘sit up and listen’, as Passenger List cocreator Dryden remarked about the podcast’s use of badly recorded sound (in Cariker 2019). The listener is mystified as this broken, full of interference telephone call brings a character of the story back from the dead. As we listen through our own smartphone, the call sounds like it would if the missing brother had called us on our device. Again, we are superimposed onto the protagonist in more ways than one. Not only is the protagonist’s voice re-embodied in our heads (Spinnelli and Dann 2019: 102), not only is the ambience of the back of the cab transporting us into that imagined environment, but the mobile phone functions as a materializing device that removes grades of separation between us and the story-world. We find ourselves holding Kaitlin’s phone and receiving this call – faraway-sounding, broken up, distorted – hearing for ourselves what it would have sounded like; what it sounds like.

Audio feature – intimate factual production Context: Serial, novels and literary journalism The researcher, when looking for theoretical analyses of factual podcasting, has to begin with Serial (2014 This American Life), which Siobhan McHugh describes as ‘a serialized, podcast-first true-crime investigation’ belonging to ‘the crafted or narrative audio

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storytelling genre’ (2016: 2, 5).2 The first reason why a researcher would begin from this point is that Serial (‘a spin-off from This American Life3 and the Chicago public radio station WBEZ’) was the first podcast to go viral (Berry 2015: 170). It’s first season was the first podcast to reach five million downloads and streams on iTunes (Dredge 2014). The second reason, and most relevant to this chapter, is that it invented, or re-invented (Berry 2015: 171; McHugh 2016: 6)4 a new genre of audio programming. McHugh notes that ‘Serial blended TAL’s fast-paced, host-led narrative techniques with the suspenseful episodic delivery of popular television formats’ (2016: 2). Theorists describe the work as a ‘new narrative form’, of interest not only to audio creatives but to literature and narrative scholars as well (McCracken 2017: 1). In the introduction to her edited collection The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, Ellen McCracken remarks that ‘Serial created a new kind of intimate storytelling in the digital age. Koenig seems to speak directly and personally to listeners through their earbuds’ (2017: 1).5 It is also of interest here to note that scholars have commented on Serial’s use of conventions typically used in fiction, such as serialization, in comparison to older radio dramas (Berry 2015); or more critically about the ethical questions around the audience being ‘primed to expect a story with characters and a plot, for which it is important to listen in order, serially’ (Haugtvedt in McCracken 2017: 7) – ideas that remain relevant when exploring S-Town (2017; Serial and This American Life). Hancock and McMurtry wrote about ‘Post-Serial’ fiction that has since used Serial’s ‘blueprint’ and they note that, apart from its ‘effective radio journalism aesthetic and form’, it was pioneering in utilizing and expressing its ‘unique podcast media identity’ (in Llinares, Fox and Berry 2018: 82–3). It may be argued that S-Town (2017; Serial and This American Life), the factual case study I will be looking at here, is a ‘PostSerial’ media text. McHugh notes that the ‘massive audience response’ to Serial ‘spurred the TAL stable to experiment with another narrative podcast, S-Town’ (McHugh 2021:105). The above is the context within which this second case study will be considered. S-Town is a record-breaking6 ‘narrative podcast’ (McHugh 2021:102), created by Brian Reed of This American Life, and Julie Snyder of Serial (a spin-off of This American Life) and it has been ‘hailed for inaugurating a new genre, the audio nonfiction novel’ (Waldmann 2020a: 28). It is presented as a true-crime story, told across seven chapters, which starts when a clock restorer from Woodstock, Alabama contacts ‘a reporter to investigate the son of a wealthy family who’s allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder’ (S-Town 2017). The story takes a different turn when ‘someone else ends up dead, sparking a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure, and an unearthing of the mysteries of one man’s life’ (S-Town 2017). Ella Waldmann argues that S- Town ‘benefitted from the success of its predecessor’ Serial, and (referencing a Variety article) notes that ‘four days after its release, it had been downloaded ten million times – ratings that even Serial had not attained in such a short period of time’ (2020a: 30). She also sees the storytelling and narrative form as similar to that of Serial, noting that S-Town blurs the lines between fact and fiction and packages fact as fiction (2020a: 32). While a lot of research has been published about Serial (2014; This American Life), S-Town (having launched three years later) is now beginning to be written about in scholarly work – revealing a fruitful, rich new ground for research. Issues around queerness (Booth

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2019; Rooney 2018), aural representation and narrative non-fiction (Waldmann 2020a, 2020b), literary aesthetics and non-fiction ethics (Cardell 2021), the cultural and industrial positioning of S-Town (Dowling and Miller 2019), S-Town as literary journalism (McHugh 2021), have been explored in relation to S-Town. Some of this work will be of use here. The aim of this segment is to add to a growing body of scholarly work around a text that has gained a lot of attention for its unique form and subject matter: ‘When the podcast won a Peabody Award, the highest distinction for radio and podcast productions, the jury stated that “S-Town br[oke] new ground for the medium by creating the first audio novel, a non-fiction biography constructed in the style and form of a 7-chapter novel”’ (Blanchard quoted by Waldmann 2020a: 29). Brian Reed, host and co-producer of S-Town confirms the team’s intentions to structure the work as a novel (and explains how the work would be different from Serial): I wasn’t directly involved in the making of Serial, though obviously I work with those guys and was around. Julie Snyder made S-Town with me and was the co-creator of Serial. [When we talked about S-Town, we said] ‘It’s going to be something different. We’re going to release all the episodes at once. We’re going to call them chapters. It’s going to be modelled after a novel’ (in McGrane 2017).

In another interview with the Guardian’s7 critic Miranda Sawyer, he goes as far as to mention two specific novels that he and Snyder drew from (in Sawyer 2017). Interestingly, while a lot of scholarly discussion has been offered around the podcast’s similarities to literature, its sound has been less of a scholarly concern so far – with the exception of McHugh (2021) and Waldmann (2020a, 2020b) who offer some insightful discussions, which will be useful here. Creators Brian Reed and Julie Snyder themselves make a point to underline the importance of the sound of this work in the podcast’s website. When the user clicks on the transcript of each episode, it is forwarded by this note: ‘S-Town is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page’ (S-Town 2017). Despite the literary innovation of the podcast, which Reed and Snyder talk at length about in interviews, it is the fact that this is a podcast/a sonic artefact, that makes it ground-breaking.

Calling Alabama Here I will try to unpack one element of S-Town’s sonic production – the use of the telephone. The series starts with a phone call in the first chapter/episode, and it is through the crackly sound of a phone that the listener gets to know the main protagonist, John B. McLemore, a clock restorer from Woodstock, Alabama. Journalist Brian Reed has phoned McLemore a while after he had received an email in which McLemore asked him to investigate a murder. In this first chapter of S-Town, Reed reads the email to the listener. In it McLemore asks: ‘I would like to talk to you by phone if possible, this is too much to type.’ In a piece that is created to function as a novel, the value of the voice, the value of a phone call, is immediately established, ‘showcasing the limits of written communication’ (Waldmann 2020a: 35).

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Reed himself, when interviewed by Vice about the making of S-Town, remarks about how any story needs the person telling it to be a ‘good talker’ and how those in the story of S-Town all fall in this category (in Golby 2017). Reed then, poignantly, specifically mentions the telephone: ‘It’s just the way that they talk to each other. The way they talk on the phone, and they talk when they’re hanging out in the backyard or whatever’ (in Golby 2017). He talks here about the two modes of communication present in his piece: the telephone conversation and the location recordings he does with McLemore and other Woodstock locals where Reed often stands around as an observer. McLemore is a real person, and yet with his eloquent, humorous, often outrageous, dialogue in a strong regional accent, he does sound like the character of a novel: ‘Of course, while the story may feel like a novel, McLemore is not a fictional protagonist’ (Cardell 2021: 2). I argue that the ‘reality’ as well as the ‘larger than life’ characteristics of McLemore are expertly balanced on a tightrope between fact and fiction, partly by creating an intimate separation between Reed and McLemore and, later, those around him. The telephone becomes a device of connection as well as mystification. The first thing we hear following Reed’s introduction to the piece and before we hear McLemore through the phone, is the ringing tone. This ringing tone becomes a staple in the piece; it becomes an important sound, a symbol of connection and distance, and an ominous foreteller later on. Hoover, when writing about similar themes in the podcast Homecoming (Gimlet Media 2016), compares found-footage horror films to found-footage audio storytelling. She talks about the audio recording device itself becoming ‘a character as much as anyone behind or in front of it. In Homecoming, this is especially clear in moments in which the recorder is explicitly referenced’ (Hoover 2020: 9). The same may be said about the way that Reed and Snyder use the sound of the telephone tone in this audio non-fiction novel, which borrows so much from fictional literary tropes. These calls are being recorded, and in listening to them, we are also listening to them being recorded. In fact, we often hear Reed inform his contributors that he is indeed recording. According to Waldmann, ‘Contrary to other documentary productions that seek to conceal the traces of the interviewing process, the specific situation of communication of the interview is always exhibited in S-Town’ (2020a: 35). Chion’s concept of ‘recordedness’ comes back to mind here (1994: 77). Reed often calls from a studio to achieve better sound, but the separation from his contributors, the imperfection of the other side of the conversation creates an atmosphere of authenticity. The listener, most probably listening through her smartphone, is listening to this call as if McLemore had connected with her directly. Waldmann remarks on the significance of the dialling sound in the creation of these immersive, intimate moments: The situation of communication is established by non-linguistic clues, such as the dialing sound that can be heard before John picks up. Whether this sound is a raw sound or a sound effect that was introduced in the editing process, it conveys what DeMair, borrowing the term from Roland Barthes, calls a ‘reality effect’ […] adding authenticity to the scene and contributing to the impression that we, as listeners, are eavesdropping on their conversation. (2020a: 35)

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The story is told partly via recorded telephone conversations and partly with Reed visiting Woodstock, Alabama. The blend of these two modes makes for a rich tapestry of storytelling. The argument here is that there is a function to these calls which goes beyond convenience. It is a powerful, multifunctional narrative device. For one, these calls accentuate the physical distance between Reed and McLemore during key moments in the story. At the end of the second chapter, the listener is confronted with a shocking, unexpected development. John B. McLemore has killed himself. The harbinger of the devastating news is the ringing tone of the telephone. The same tone that introduced us to McLemore at the beginning of chapter one – now seemingly a lifetime ago. McHugh remarks about this moment in the piece: ‘That sound has an inbuilt expectancy, as the listener naturally tries to guess the caller’s identity. Tension ratchets upward until, finally, comes tragic news from Goodson’s sister-in-law, Skyler’ (2021: 115). Indeed, the build-up, the suspense, is almost fictionalized. The third chapter begins the way the second ended. The listener hears the beginning of this call again, but now the suspenseful unreality of that ending becomes grounded and real as we hear Reed’s response to the news. McHugh’s analysis of this scene is illuminating and worth sharing verbatim: There is a certain artifice in how Reed has, as the reporter, recorded the sound of his own distress at the news: as an audio journalist, he would understandably have pressed ‘record’ before he made a phone call to the community, but there is still a cool self-awareness in the technique, as he records his faltering voice and expression of sympathy. The effect is to position the listener as almost an eavesdropper on the scene, compelled to imagine what has happened. Here Reed is deploying what Lindgren describes as ‘sonic elements … to create accompanying inner imagery and experiences of intimacy’. (McHugh 2021: 115)

This scene, for all its dramatic devastation, can be felt as ‘too close for comfort’, as Martin Shingler describes the ‘ultimate intimacy’ when analysing an example from the radio avant-garde in which the producer created an effect of unbearable closeness (2000: 206). We are now indeed, as McHugh and Waldmann suggest, eavesdropping on one of those phone-calls that no one wants to receive. Reed’s breaking, faltering voice through the line, is now that of a grieving friend, not of a journalist, as he tries to take in the news. We hear him sniffling, losing his words. Here, in this factual feature, as if through a mirror, we are reminded of the fictional Kaitlin Le, crying in the back of a taxi in Passenger List (Radiotopia 2019), having received a call from her brother who she thought was dead. Reed’s call with Skyler is a reversal of this line that connects the dead and the living (Le and her brother who is presumed dead); this call is signalling the end of McLemore’s life – his recorded voice now becoming our only connection to him. Chion’s description of M.S.I.s in voice is apt here as well, as we become grounded on to reality, in an audio text that often, somewhat intentionally, sounds like fiction. Reed sounds devastated and lost for words. Skyler on the phone, is far away from him, in the middle of a family tragedy. The contrast between the studio quality in Reed’s voice and the crackly, imperfect line in which he has called Skyler signifies distance and now, loss. Waldmann – reflecting on Mildorf and Kinzel’s ‘audionarratology’ (2016) and DeMair’s discussion of ‘acoustic story telling’ in

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Serial (in McCracken 2017) – remarks that S-Town ‘lends itself to an (audio)narratological analysis, which takes into account nonverbal clues, such as music, sound effects, fading, silence, and pauses’ (2020a: 34). Pauses and silences in Reed’s voice add to the atmosphere of shock, for which the ground has been prepared by the use of the ringing tone at the start of the scene – whether recorded raw or added afterwards, this may be classified as a sound effect. The overall effect, despite having been given the brief version of this scene at the end of the podcast’s previous chapter, is that we are witnessing ‘Reed’s reaction to McLemore’s death in what seems to be real time’ (Waldmann 2020a: 36). Despite the sudden and shocking loss of McLemore, the series continues, now becoming a biography of him: ‘It is as if, despite John’s passing, it speaks immediately to listeners, communicating directly through recorded telephone calls and in-person interviews. This voice from beyond the grave structures the series, but it does so alongside an array of other communicative and/or aesthetic forms’ (Rooney 2018: 157). The listener’s device, most likely a smartphone, becomes now the connecting device, a line through, not only to Reed and S-Town, but also to McLemore from beyond. Radio avant-garde writer Allen S. Weiss, in his book Phantasmic Radio, written before the podcast existed, remarks that radio achieves ‘a reification of the imagination’ (1995: 6). His is a view of radio that includes an element of the corporeal, often avoided in mainstream radio. Reed may be seen to subvert factual radio’s prior avoidance of revealing the corporeal by letting the listener hear bodily sounds like those of a journalist who is crying and has somewhat lost his composure, or of McLemore talking about how he just ‘pissed in the sink’ while on the phone and being recorded by Reed (S-Town 2017). This intimacy is no longer ‘safe’, the listener is perhaps too close for comfort. Weiss’s use of the word reification (1995: 6) has another application when considered in relation to podcasting (perhaps only serendipitously): of the phone becoming a material manifestation of an otherwise unseen world. Audio media now becoming more a matter of the body than they ever were. The listeners can now hold the story in the palm of their hands.

Conclusion Podcasting affords audio creatives new avenues to create immersive storytelling whether in fiction or factual production. What I have observed here is a very interesting intermingling of intimacy inherent into the technology and the various ways in which producers choose to enhance it. While this relationship between ‘technological’ and ‘performative’ intimacy pre-existed in traditional broadcast radio, what I have described here is slightly different: the listening device, the smartphone, becomes a tactile storytelling prop in the hands of a character in a story (fictional or factual), while at the same time it is placed in the hands of the listener. Intimacy here happens not only through the immaterial imaginary but it also contains the possibility to materially connect the listener to a story. Perhaps, in the future, audio producers may include interactivity to their stories, where the listener may be able to dial in to listen to elements of the story. This chapter is by no means conclusive. It is meant

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as an addition to the conversation about podcasting as an intimate medium. I propose here that there is a multitude of intimacies in audio media and that the themes explored here are only one piece to a big, ever-evolving puzzle. Oliveira, Stachyra and Starkey defined radio as ‘the resilient medium’ (2014). As technology continues to evolve, audio media and podcasting seem to continue to have infinite scope to shape around it creatively. And while the modes of intimacy might be multiple and different, it is the same magic of the unseen voices and imagined rooms and landscapes, which enchanted radio audiences in the past, that is now propelling podcasting into its golden age.

Notes Created and written in the USA by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, the Homecoming podcast consists of twelve episodes, across two seasons. It is a phsycological thriller that ‘centers on a caseworker at an experimental facility, her ambitious supervisor, and a soldier eager to rejoin civilian life – presented in an enigmatic collage of telephone calls, therapy sessions, and overheard conversations. It’s an innovative, immersive audio experience’ (Gimlet Media 2016). 2 Across twelve episodes, the first season of Serial, which established it as mediumdefining, investigates the murder of a high-school senior in Baltimore USA, back in 1999. 3 This American Life (also abbreviated as TAL) is a weekly US public radio programme and podcast created by Ira Glass (who is also the host) and Torey Malatia, produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange. It ‘is heard by more than 2 million listeners each week on over 500 public radio stations in the U.S., with another 2.3 million people downloading each episode as a podcast’ (This American Life 1996/2022). 4 ‘The premise was, in itself, original for an audio podcast but one that mirrored narratives in the classic serials of radio’s past’ (Berry 2015: 171).‘The genre has its origins long before the advent of podcasting. Indeed the first “radio features” emerged at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the 1920s and 1930s. These were imaginative audio works that blended “actuality” (ambient sound, recorded outside the studio) with narrated information usually delivered by actors, so that as Madsen points out (2013: 127), they “often sounded more like radio drama than what we today consider documentary”’ (McHugh 2016: 6). 5 Sarah Koenig is the host, co-creator and co-producer of Serial (2014). 6 S-Town was downloaded more than ten million times within the first four days of its release – setting a new record in the podcasting world (Passman 2017). 7 The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. 1

Works cited Berry, R. (2015), ‘A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (2): 170–8.

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Berry, R. (2016), ‘Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and its Association with the Word “Radio”’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14 (1): 7–22. Booth, N. T. (2019), ‘S-Town, Small-Town Literature, and the Uses of Queerness’, Mississippi Quarterly 72 (2): 273–96. Cardell, K. (2021), ‘“Like a Novel”: Literary Aesthetics, Nonfiction Ethics, and the S-Town Podcast’, Australian Literary Studies 36 (1): https://www.australianliterarystudies.com. au/articles/like-a-novel-literary-aesthetics-nonfiction-ethics-and-the-s-town-podcast (accessed 10 February 2022). Cariker, M. (2019), ‘What Happened To Flight 702? The Mystery of “Passenger List”: Go Behind the Scenes with the Podcast’s Creators: John Scott Dryden, Lauren Shippen & Mark Henry Phillips’, Medium, 16 September: https://medium.com/prxofficial/what-happenedto-flight-702-the-mystery-of-passenger-list-85cd36dee2f5 (accessed 9 May 2022). Chion, M. (1994), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press. Crook, T. (1999), Radio Drama: Theory and Practice, London: Routledge. Dowling, D. O. and K. J. Miller (2019), ‘Immersive Audio Storytelling: Podcasting and Serial Documentary in the Digital Publishing Industry’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26 (1): 167–84. DOI:10.1080/19376529.2018.1509218. Dredge, S. (2014), ‘Serial Podcast Breaks iTunes Records as it Passes 5m Downloads and Streams’, Guardian 18 November: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/18/ serial-podcast-itunes-apple-downloads-streams (accessed 9 May 2022). Edison Research (2021), The Infinite Dial 2021: http://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/ uploads/2021/03/The-Infinite-Dial-2021.pdf (accessed 10 February 2022). Gimlet Media (2016), [Homecoming Podcast] by E. Horowitz and M. Bloomberg, USA: Gimlet Media: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/homecoming (accessed 9 May 2022). Golby, J. (2017), ‘How Brian Reed Made “S-Town”’, Vice, 24 August: https://www.vice.com/en/ article/9kkdpe/how-brian-reed-made-s-town (accessed 9 May 2022). Hoover, V. (2020), ‘The Missing Narrator: Fictional Podcasting and Kaleidosonic Remediation in Gimlet’s Homecoming’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media pp. 1–18. DOI:10.1080/1937652 9.2020.1762195. Karathanasopoulou, E. (2015), ‘An Examination of the Concept of Intimacy in Radio Studies, Combining Mainstream and Non-Mainstream Theories and Practices’, PhD Thesis, University of Sunderland – Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries. Llinares, D., N. Fox and R. Berry (2018), Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Madsen, V. (2013), ‘“Your Ears are a Portal to Another World”: The New Radio Documentary Imagination and the Digital Domain’, in J. Loviglio and M. Hilmes (eds), Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era, New York; Oxon: Routledge, pp. 126–44. McCracken, E. ed. (2017), The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, New York: Routledge. McGrace, C. (2017), ‘The Inside Story of “S-Town”: Brian Reed, Creator of the Hit Podcast, on Storytelling in the Digital Age’, GeekWire, 26 October: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/ inside-story-s-town-brian-reed-creator-hit-podcast-storytelling-digital-age/ (accessed 9 May 2022). McHugh, S. (2016), ‘How Podcasting is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre’. The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 14 (1): 65–82.

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McHugh, S. (2021), ‘The Narrative Podcast as Digital Literary Journalism: Conceptualizing S-Town’, Literary Journalism Studies 13 (1–2): 101–92. Mildorf, J. and T. Kinzel (eds) (2016), Audionarratology: Interfaces of Sound and Narrative, De Gruyter. Oliveira, M., G. Stachyra and G. Starkey (2014), Radio: The Resilient Medium: Papers from the Third Conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section, Sunderland: Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland. Passman, J. (2017), ‘“S-Town” Podcast Breaks Records With Captivating Story And Music’, Forbes, 3 April: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanpassman/2017/04/03/s-town-podcastbreaks-historical-records-with-captivating-story-and-music/?sh=2bf33517352e (accessed 9 May 2022). Radiotopia (2019) [Passenger List Podcast] by J. S. Dryden, L. Shippen and M. H. Phillips, USA: Radiotopia, PRX: https://passengerlist.org/ (accessed 9 May 2022). RAJAR (2018), MIDAS: Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services – Spring: https:// www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/MIDAS_Spring_2018.pdf (accessed 9 May 2022). RAJAR (2019), MIDAS: Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services – Summer: https:// www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/MIDAS_Summer_2019.pdf (accessed 9 May 2022). RAJAR (2021), MIDAS: Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services – Winter: https:// www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/MIDAS_Winter_2021.pdf (accessed 9 May 2022). Reed, B. and J. Snyder (2017), S-Town, WBEZ Chicago. Rooney, M. (2018), ‘Queer Objects and Intermedial Timepieces’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 23 (1): 156–73. DOI:10.1080/0969725X.2018.1435392. Sawyer, M. (2017), ‘Brian Reed, Maker of S-Town: “People’s minds go to paranoid places very easily”’, Guardian 9 April: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/09/s-townserial-podcast-brian-reed-interview (accessed 9 May 2022). Serial (2014), [Podcast] by S. Koenig, J. Snyder, D. Chivvis and E. Condon, USA: This American Life, WBEZ/New York Times: https://serialpodcast.org/ (accessed 9 May 2022). Shingler, M. (2000). ‘Some Recurring Features of European Avant-Garde Radio’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 7 (1): 196–212. Spinelli, M. and L. Dann (2019), Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, New York: Bloomsbury. S-Town (2017), [Podcast] by Reed, B. & Snyder, J., USA: Serial & This American Life. Available online: https://stownpodcast.org/ (accessed 9 May 2022). This American Life (1996/2022), [Radio Programme/Podcast] by I. Glass and E. Malatia, USA: WBEZ Chigago & PRX The Public Radio Exchange: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/ (accessed 9 May 2022). Waldmann, E. (2020a), ‘From Storytelling to Storylistening: How the Hit Podcast S-Town Reconfigured the Production and Reception of Narrative Nonfiction’, Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media Issue IV: 28–42. Waldmann, E. (2020b), ‘Sounding Out the South: S-Town and the Challenges of Aural Representation’, PopMeC Research Blog, 23 April: https://popmec.hypotheses.org/2325 Weiss, S. A. (1995), Phantasmic Radio, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Section IV Communities

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

Community radio blurs the line between the producers and consumers of media. In its simplest terms, it can be defined by a type of broadcasting which is managed and produced by and for the community (Fraser and Estrada 2001). It can take different forms depending on where you are in the world and is regulated in different ways – recognized as the third tier of broadcasting, alongside public service and commercial radio. Community radio may respond to the different needs of excluded, marginalized or under-represented groups, exist in alternative or local spaces, seeking to provide a range of benefits to both listeners and those participating in its production. At its heart, it shares a non-profit and independent approach, often seeking to create spaces that promote inclusion, expression and engagement for defined individuals and groups. Radio made by, for and about specific communities is pertinent to many discussions in radio studies. You will find ideas about community (including representation, equality and engagement) embedded throughout this Handbook, notably in contributions by Bridget Backhaus (who analyses issues around listening from within community radio) and in the Futures section, where Phil Maguire discusses international prison radio projects. In this section, our four authors further showcase the diverse and original international research going on in this field. Their discussions and case studies are centred around discussions of diversity and inclusivity, of regulation and technology, of participatory experiences and personal testimony. This research brings us up to current times, covering the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. We hear how ethnic community radio may help its communities to (re)claim their identity and social existence in their place of settlement and further uncover the main regulatory and technical opportunities, challenges and contexts which have come to shape the sector as a whole. In ‘Greater Than the sum of Its Parts: Community-Building Approaches Across Community Radio’, Katie Moylan offers us a present-day perspective. In her examination of a range of pandemic programming, Moylan finds that radio was able to provide essential and valuable content, connection and information through its community-led and community-facing broadcasts. This value, which she describes as cultural, expressive, societal and political, means that community radio has become notably more accessible and relevant as it has evolved. The use of radio by listeners during a crisis reminds us of its continued importance. As Moylan shows, this ‘emotional sustenance’ sits alongside the

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transmission of essential local information such as shopping hours, to testing/vaccination centres, to weather updates. The experiences, practices and perspectives of volunteer presenters is foregrounded by Josephine Coleman, in her chapter ‘Feeding the Beast: What It Means to be a Community Radio Presenter in the UK’. While Helen Wolfenden (see Emotions section) guides us through the thoughts of professional presenting/producing partnerships in Australia, Coleman offers us new and detailed understanding of the feelings of amateur volunteers in the UK. Coleman’s work has recognized the need for this kind of research into those participating in community media, adding a new layer of understanding to existing perspectives which have focused on audiences and content. The various benefits (and challenges) for the presenters show us much about the pressure, responsibility, purpose, identity and motivations for those involved in all types of community radio broadcasting. Gloria Khamkar considers how radio adapts to the cultural needs of a specific community, in her chapter ‘Daring to be Different! Ethnic Community Radio as a Space of Inclusion’. Looking back at the regulatory, political and technological landscape, Khamkar considers how community ethnic radio movements in the UK responded to ideas of access, education, entertainment, migration, participation, representation, integration and linguistic expression. This research further contributes to our understanding about immigrant, refugee and resettlers who make, listen to and engage with radio. No discussion of community media could be complete without questioning, highlighting and engaging with some of the key, and common concepts that underpin the area as a whole. The technological, regulatory and economic opportunities (and challenges) facing the future of the community broadcasting sector are of key importance, and are outlined by Lawrie Hallett, in his chapter ‘The Changing Context of Community Radio’. Hallett queries whether some of these requirements, such as the delivery of community benefits (‘social gain’ in the UK context) may lead to economic and operational challenges – and questions whether this should call for a relaxation in the rules governing its activities. Hallett’s work shows us that this may result in short-term advantages, but as a result may also reduce the unique characteristics and offering of the sector which allow its members to integrate so effectively with its communities. Hallett, like Moylan, considers digitization and social media, as well as changing consumption habits and platform use by listeners. This is essential as we think about the relevance of this type of broadcasting, and its ability to interact and engage with those listeners it is targeting.

Work cited Fraser, C., and S. R. Estrada (2001), Community Radio Handbook, Paris: UNESCO.

15 Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts Community-Building Approaches Across Community Radio Katie Moylan

Community radio’s value – cultural, expressive, societal and political – transcends its constituent parts. Simultaneously local and specific and collectively embodying shared structural and material components, ‘community radio’ is perhaps best understood one station or show at a time. Actively listening to a given community-facing show immerses the listener in an intimate structure of feeling, reinforced through what Larisa Mann calls ‘synchronous listening’ in real time with others of the same community (Mann 2019). Listening to community-led radio, particularly as a member of that community, can produce a collective intimacy created and reinforced through a particular and familiar delivery (Mann 2019; Scannell and Cardiff 1991) but also shaped and supported by the host station, from within which the show fits itself into a wider community-led schedule. As the radio medium as a whole continues to shift and evolve, the function of community radio within it has become both more accessible and more acute. Streaming capacities have revolutionized community radio more than any other sector, imbuing local and culturally specific community programming with a global reach and connecting communities and listeners to each other. The sheer scope of this reach is made more radical by ways in which non-affiliated platforms such as radio.garden enable non-hierarchical, non-curated access, meaning listeners can search out radio free from algorithmic interference or control.1 Radio’s evolutions have been both technological and social. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio describe how: Radio took on a truly global reach, across a digital soundscape expanded far beyond the local and national spheres permitted by traditional broadcasting … Radio has expanded beyond its formerly national boundaries, still a medium of local specificity and intimacy, but increasingly defining its audience not through geography but through cultural affinity. (Loviglio and Hilmes 2013: 2)

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At the same time, radio’s legacy technologies have historically ensured access for listeners without reliable digital connectivity (or whose preferences remain analogue). Mann points out that radios remain inexpensive, adding that this cheaply available technology ‘has always underscored radio’s democratic accessibility, unlike newer networked technologies’ (Mann 2019: 390.) What Hilmes and Loviglio describe in 2013 as ‘radio’s new materiality’ further reverberates in expressive but also political ways, as Tiziano Bonini, Belén Monclús and Salvatore Scifo argue, suggesting that radio’s unique capacities and standing emerge from its technological legacy: Radio is the only medium that still has a relevant analogue component, especially in nonwestern areas of the world. Analogue broadcasting and reception do not only represent old and residual practices of mediated communication. They could also be re-framed as practices of resistance to the process of platformization and audience datafication. (Bonini, Monclús and Scifo 2020: 5–6)

Radio’s ‘new’ or perennially shifting materiality is more strikingly visible, even explicit, in community radio’s structures as well as its sounds. The power of community-led programming lies in significant part in its greater on-air intimacy, created and enabled by community radio’s particular materialities which combine to ensure a less mediated on-air delivery. In short, there are fewer layers of mediation in community radio (both live and recorded); instead, the producer is often also the presenter and often managing incoming messages to the show in real time. For members of many communities, particularly those who remain under-represented in mainstream radio, community radio persists as an important resource, not least for its familiar and intimate form of address. Mann argues that radio’s ‘capacity for cultural intimacy comes from the confluence of cultural and technological affordances of radio broadcasting and helps to explain radio’s continuing popularity especially among ethnic and linguistic minorities and immigrants’ (Mann 2019: 396).

Rethinking radio in lockdown The value of community radio’s constituent components was brought into greater focus during the first pandemic lockdowns in mid-March 2020. Across the USA, the UK and elsewhere around the world, community stations and standalone community-produced shows provided essential services such as local information provision (including localized updates on Covid testing and vaccinations) but also localized support via onair companionship during periods of social isolation (see Coleman 2020; Moylan 2022a). For those countries enforcing a full lockdown, all forms of radio took on a radically new importance, becoming central to everyday life, with presenters providing empathy as well as information. Radio presenters and producers everywhere had to radically adjust both their working practices (many necessarily moving to remote broadcasting and programme production from home) and the components of show content, newly determined to reflect and represent the concerns of an anxious and mainly quarantined listenership.

Community-Building Approaches Across Community Radio

Diverse remote production practices exemplified how radio’s physical materiality has been exacerbated and excavated during the pandemic across all sectors. Yet when suddenly faced with the requirement to broadcast remotely, the community sector in particular responded with alacrity, devising technical workarounds, reconsiderations of on-air address and shifts in content provision (see Moylan 2022a). In many cases community radio was best placed to provide the first aural port of call for an anxious, confused and (often) misinformed listenership. Workarounds produced by community stations were uniquely suited to the geography and social practices of the given community and built on available resources to develop diverse ways to remain on air. Radio’s overall pivot from the start of the pandemic has revealed its acute new importance: for sourcing and disseminating localized news and information on everything from testing to shopping hours and, later, vaccination clinics; but also for providing familiarity and comfort on an everyday level. The importance of local broadcasting acquired a stark new significance given that in many countries, constituent cities, regions and states were experiencing the pandemic and managing protocols and responses in very different ways. The need for reliable local coverage and reporting therefore became much more urgent. In Josephine Coleman’s (2020) important and comprehensive report into community radio’s responses to and coverage of the pandemic from the first lockdowns, she observes that: community stations have stepped up to provide essential updates to local residents and kept their listeners abreast of important COVID-19 developments and other news with local repercussions … the majority of community radio station teams do what they can to provide important information for their local listeners. (Coleman 2020: 5)

Coleman explains that without their own on-site newsrooms, ‘practitioners consider interviewing community leaders, event organisers, charity and business representatives on magazine-style shows and discussing ongoing issues affecting the area as local news provision.’ The local nature of this coverage was immediately and immensely valuable to many listeners: Arguably, the current crisis has proved that this softer style of information provision has been a really useful and workable solution to the need to keep local residents appraised of the latest happenings as the COVID-19 situation unfolds around them. The community sector seems to be gaining ground in becoming the nation’s trusted local radio provider. (Coleman 2020: 5)

In this crisis context, the intimacy of the radio voice, speaking directly to the listener, became newly valuable, perhaps because more expressive than scrolling onscreen updates. Listening to live radio helped people isolated from one another to feel connected and the act of listening with others helped to reinforce a shared sense of community, as Mann suggests: a crucial element is the copresence of listeners in the act of listening at the same time as others. To respond in sync with others, thinking, exclaiming, commenting, or dancing builds a commonality of feeling among those responding. This shared experience knits people together socially and emotionally. (Mann 2019: 395)

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I suggest this is a crucial moment for recognizing the value of community radio given that its importance has become newly apparent and its reach has significantly expanded. Further research into community radio could additionally amplify Clemencia Rodriguez’s call for ongoing studies of diverse local uses of media in order to theorize ‘how embedded communicators creatively use media to address local needs within the boundaries of existing media ecologies that offer different resources and constraints in each historical situation’ (Rodriguez 2016: 36, italics in original). Below, therefore, I unpack the significance of community radio practices which separately exemplify its ongoing value for inclusive community-building across emotional as well as infrastructural registers and situate these theoretically to enable exploration into the importance of community radio’s continuing work.

On-air community-building during the pandemic While ‘community radio’, characterized here by both community radio stations and standalone community-produced shows, is diverse and culturally specific, community radio practices and content simultaneously embody shared principles, albeit across different spaces. In recognition of the possibilities of community sites of broadcast production, John Downing identifies the historically situated quality of the radical expressive and representative capacities of such ‘media, generally small-scale and in many different forms, that express an alternative vision to hegemonic policies, priorities and perspectives’ and questions ways in which these forms enable exploration of ‘what counts as politically oppositional, as personally expressive, as experimental, as embedded in the cultural present, as heralding the public’s future, as reclaiming the forgotten merits of the past?’ (Downing 2001: v, vii). In their localized scale and through an alternativism defined by and situated in grassroots production practices, community radio shows and stations embody radical possibilities for community-led content to counter normative and reductive representations of marginalized communities circulating in the mainstream. Community itself is a persistent, pervasive concept with multiple connotations which has become ‘fuzzy’ through diverse, and often divergent discursive uses, yet this very fuzziness also means it is commonly used as a convenient catch-all. Broadly, ‘community’ can be used in a geographically specific sense (to refer to a specific neighbourhood ‘community’); in a global sense (as a unifying discursive device: ‘the international community’); as a professional designation (the ‘intelligence community’); and as a top-down signifier of cultural, ethnic and/or linguistic affiliations, employing the definite article to infer singularity: the Black community, the feminist community (Downing 2001). ‘Community’ thus remains ‘one of the most motivating discourses and practices circulating in contemporary society’, argues Miranda Joseph (Joseph 2002: xxx) and it follows from this that self-defined communities can be ‘our sites of hope in a difficult world’ (Joseph 2002: ix); perhaps especially now during these ongoing crisis times. In particular, analysing community-led production processes in turn directs attention to ways in which ‘community’ can be constantly created and

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re-created as a series of collective practices (as argued by Harvey 2001 and Joseph 2002). As a profoundly everyday medium, radio enables such collective cultural practices which can be mobilized to reproduce and reinforce a communal subjectivity. Collective listening is one such practice which reinforces and reproduces a given community’s sense of itself in space as well as time (when listening live), as Mann explains: ‘The synchronous experience of listening and playing radio at a particular moment in time, with others, enhances the ability to reclaim space: Without synchronous listening, the collective experience of radio would be lessened’ (Mann 2019: 393). Community-led radio production practices in themselves facilitate such reproduction of communal subjectivity and locally specific sense of identity. Community radio’s capacities for reproducing locality through such practices became a key resource in the pandemic. In the English city of Leicester, home to diverse communities incorporating African (particularly Somalian and diasporic African), Caribbean and South Asian peoples, multilingual community station EAVA FM reached out to its established listening community to find out what would help people cope with lockdowns and anxiety caused by the pandemic. For the station’s faith-based listeners, devotional music was found to be helpful and comforting. At the same time, along with other UK community stations, EAVA FM was approached to provide localized Covid updates – which was outside its licence remit at the time. EAVA FM, with other stations, was eventually granted a policy extension which allowed them to broadcast crucial health information to their communities (see also Coleman 2020). In the US city of Dallas, Texas, the established Indigenous radio show Beyond Bows and Arrows on community station KNON FM, continued to broadcast from the station’s studio from mid-March 2020. Beyond Bows and Arrows has an established pan-tribal listenership in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and regularly streams via Facebook Live as well as on FM radio. Throughout the first lockdown and into summer 2020, the show included livestreaming video of the presenter–producers preparing the studio by sanitizing all surfaces and distancing from each other within the studio space. From the start of the 2020 lockdowns, the show hosts encouraged listeners to stay at home where possible, to stay safe, and to wear masks and distance when grocery shopping. The summer of 2020 was further unsettled – and electrified – by Black Lives Matter protests across the USA and elsewhere. In many US cities these protests recurred regularly throughout the summer, sometimes several times a week. The Dallas/Fort Worth area was one of several epicentres for the BLM protests that began immediately following George Floyd’s death at the end of May 2020. Dallas in particular hosted protests several days and evenings each week throughout summer 2020. From the start of the protests, Beyond Bows and Arrows demonstrated solidarity by playing political and protest songs. David Harvey describes the importance of ‘processes that produce, sustain and dissolve the contingent patterns of solidarity that lie at the basis of this “thing” we call a “community”’ and insists therefore that community itself be considered as ‘a process of coming together not as a thing’ (Harvey 2001: 192). In mobilizing and broadcasting support and solidarity for local BLM protestors, Beyond Bows and Arrows embodied these community-building processes. For many Indigenous communities in the USA, particularly those located in lands otherwise isolated from services available in towns or cities, tribal stations served as the first and main source of local COVID-19 news, updates and information. In many Indigenous

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reservations, at the same time as most US states faltered in providing solid guidance and information for their constituents, local Indigenous strategies embodied viable approaches for negotiating the pandemic which were reflected in their everyday radio coverage; by ‘exercising their inherent sovereignty, Indigenous Peoples have implemented sometimes parallel and sometimes distinct responses to the pandemic’ (Weaver 2020: 13). From midMarch 2020, tribal stations produced and disseminated local updates and Public Service Announcements (PSAs) reflecting the particularities of the communities they serve. In Oklahoma, the Chickasaw radio network promptly implemented distancing measures in their ongoing production practices at KCNP FM in Ada, Oklahoma and three other radio stations on the Chickasaw lands in southwest Oklahoma. These included a no-guest rule in the station’s studios and mask wearing by all radio DJs unless alone in the studio. Once physical safety protocols were in place, Chickasaw radio remained on air throughout the pandemic; indeed the number of on-air interviews actually increased by utilizing remote technologies such as Zoom. In northwest Arizona, Hualapai tribal station KWLP FM was the primary source of Covid-related news and information from the pandemic’s start. The Hualapai tribal lands are isolated from municipal infrastructures and can experience electricity blackouts and brownouts, which crucially affect local communication networks when the power goes out. Consequently, KWLP also arranged for distribution of portable radios to community members (Moylan 2022b). Hilary Weaver observes that during the pandemic and given ‘many Indigenous people and communities lack adequate access to on-line infrastructure, strategies were developed to meet the needs of different contexts’ (Weaver 2020: 17). Such localized strategies are exemplified by KWLP’s distribution of handcrank radios but also by ongoing culturally specific communicative strategies on tribal radio. Elsewhere in the USA, radio practitioners at Indigenous radio stations were troubleshooting across various registers, developing and broadcasting pandemic updates as well as related activities such as testing availability, elder shopping hours, lockdown guidelines and cancelled graduations and other events. At the same time, fires were ravaging parts of the US southwest, another layer of everyday emergency information provision for many Indigenous communities. Through these and so many other examples of dedicated community-specific pandemic programming across community radio stations and shows, it became evident that community radio was structurally well placed and equipped to provide this essential content. What components and capacities in particular enable community radio to develop and broadcast much-needed programming during this time of crisis? I identify and unpack these expressive, material and structural components below.

Community-building strategies across community radio Community radio’s efficacy and reach during the pandemic was possible because many community stations were already accustomed to doing more with less. Given their nonprofit and inclusive remit, community radio stations and shows regularly reproduce, reinforce and sustain a sense of community through production processes that are

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dialectically informed by both ideals of community (as experienced by the communities on the ground) and requirements of station infrastructure (as determined by legislative and material conditions, from the top down). For community media generally, the designation of ‘community’ has served to define these media in particular ‘as institutions responsive to demands and priorities from below’ (Downing 2001: 39). Joseph points out that ‘to invoke community is immediately to raise questions of belonging and of power’ (2002: xxiii); therefore it follows that ongoing negotiations of power and representation are also central to the community radio project, traceable through work such as maintaining the ongoing flow of resources and balancing representation of diverse groups in the schedule. These negotiations are further shaped by the communal ethos and non-profit structures which characterize many community stations. Many stations and standalone shows rely on volunteers to produce, research and present. Due to the relative lack of resources of many community stations, in many cases a programme’s producer is also the presenter, who is also the researcher. Turnover can be high as volunteers find regularly producing and presenting a programme too demanding to fit in alongside a full-time job for very long. While many volunteers value the experience acquired and enjoy the process of programme-making, many will find doing so long-term unsustainable if they are in full-time employment or have other responsibilities claiming their time. These structural factors are symptomatic of what Kitty Van Vuuren (2006) identifies as an inclusive ‘commons orientation’ embodied by community radio’s community development capacities, often reflected in station materialities: [R]ecognition of their commons orientation suggests that community radio stations are best understood and evaluated from the perspective of their community development functions. These include the quality and management of volunteers, the sector’s training capacity and the nature of the various networks of which community broadcasting is a part. (van Vuuren 2006: 390)

Community programmes produced in this context can transcend the apparent restrictions imposed by fewer resources for production practices, often from necessity. Limited access to studios for further recording or editing, due to heavy studio use, means fewer programmes are pre-recorded. A programme going out live communicates an immediacy which infuses the show with both intimacy and potentially a sense of excitement, because of the possibilities for spontaneity and space for unmediated live debate. A less formal programme structure, typified by a less rigid running order, further allows for such spontaneity; interviewees or other show contributors are less likely to be cut off due to time constraints or the need to broadcast an advertisement at a scheduled time. Community radio’s radioness manifests in particular and specific ways, in direct contrast to the smooth polished delivery style which characterizes both commercial and public service radio; for example, both the BBC in the UK and National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA have distinct presentation styles. In contrast, community radio performs its locality through its voiced delivery, producing a distinct radio vernacular comprised of particularities such as neighbourhood place references or local slang phrases. The informal presenting style which characterizes much of community radio has the capacity to draw in listeners for whom the particularities of the delivery style resonate – whether through

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a shared accent, set of cultural references or familiar phrases. The less formal style which can characterize much of community radio content is often less polished than the standard found on commercial radio. Yet the very slickness of a smooth, professionalized delivery can be alienating for listeners from under-represented communities who seek out voices which are closer to their own. Further, an ‘unpolished’ presenter with a more natural delivery can offer a particularly authentic voice which can be effective on its own terms. In any radio text, sound is the aesthetic element, transmitted live or recorded, and (potentially) shaped and edited creating various and overlapping meanings. It is also the only formal element of the radio text. The opposite of sound is silence: the ‘dead air’ so feared by producers and presenters. Live radio has several aesthetic functions (identified most notably by Paddy Scannell 1991), providing immediacy and the sense of veracity: on one hand contributing to the intimacy of the radio text as spoken directly to the radio listener; on the other hand, suggesting that what is being heard is unmediated, because what is being said is being said ‘now’ – at the moment of broadcast. While community radio incorporates both pre-recorded and live programming, its liveness remains less mediated because of material and structural factors. What is produced in this less polished content is perhaps a greater intimacy, reflective of the more personal conditions of home-based production, and the medium of radio is well situated to produce and sustain such intimacy. Writing about practices of orality, Walter Ong argues for the capacity of sound to create a sense of interiority and immersion in the listener. Through enabling these responses, sound functions as a ‘unifying sense’ for Ong, producing a ‘harmony, a putting together’ (Ong 1982: 72). Technical reliability confers credibility but so too does on-air honesty and reflexivity, which further encourages listener trust. Community radio station schedules as well as licensing requirements for inclusivity facilitate broadcasts of what I call ‘first language radio’, building on John Langer’s term ‘third language radio’ (Langer 2005: 122),2 exemplified in the diverse community language programming in multilingual stations such as EAVA FM in Leicester and KNON FM in Dallas. Peter Lewis (2008) identifies two separate categories of language programming in community media where more than one language is in use: polylingualism, which describes the provision of multiple programmes in a given station, each in a different language, and multilingualism, which refers to the use of more than one language in a single programme. First-language radio lends itself intrinsically to a transnational, interstitial mode of production described by Hamid Naficy (2001) as an ‘accented’ production style, which enables space for ‘expressing, allegorizing, commenting upon, and critiquing the home and host societies and cultures and the deterritorialised conditions of the [producers]’ (Naficy 2001: 4). Through the practice of simply speaking their own language, such practitioners are asserting their national or regional identity, facilitating culturally specific on-air articulations. Benedict Anderson (1991) suggests ‘there is a special kind of contemporaneous community which language alone suggests’ (Anderson 1991: 145). If nation is conceived of through language, language also helps define a community, more deeply and thoroughly than geographical or political borders. Expanding on the possibilities for marginalized communities offered by community radio’s capacities for broadcasting multiple ‘first languages’, Tanja Dreher (2010) identifies

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ways in which what she terms community media interventions enable nuanced selfrepresentation of marginalized communities. These community media interventions work to counter and challenge the expectations which beset and stunt inclusion initiatives, reinforcing Stuart Hall’s (1997) recognition of how the burden of representation shapes contexts in which optics of equitable representation continue to replace representative accountability. Dreher argues that analysis of community media must therefore move beyond representation and foreground analysis of multiple publics. It can be argued that each community station and its listening community comprises a self-defined public through reinforcing community belongingness; this allows for a consideration of community radio which is more holistic, incorporating production, content and listener responses and ways they reinforce each other to (re-)produce community belongingness through the everyday medium of radio.

Affordances of streaming radio for building connections When local community radio content is streamed globally, this offers a sense of connection to the community represented in all its aural complexities and nuances. Peter Lewis and Caroline Mitchell detail how streaming radio enables us to ‘engage with radio in this deterritorialised form’ (Lewis and Mitchell 2021: 6); through platforms like radio.garden we can listen in to community-led radio from diverse regions (and languages) around the world. A need for this sense of connection became more urgent, even acute, from the start of the pandemic lockdowns. The popularity of streaming radio increased notably during the pandemic, as housebound people began to explore radio more. The perennial importance of radio for feelings of belonging and for providing memories alongside sounds and songs from home was intensified, even as many listeners also sought out new stations in remote regions, out of curiosity (Lewis and Mitchell 2021). The connectedness such listening enables and embodies is perhaps particularly necessary in these ongoing crisis times. Streamed community programmes availed of various platforms, including Facebook, as seen above. Early in the pandemic, New Orleans community radio station WHIV FM’s NoiseFilter show expanded its coverage to incorporate coverage of COVID-19. Simultaneously broadcasting locally and streaming from both https://whivfm.org/listen and via Facebook Live, NoiseFilter provided rigorously researched pandemic updates, incorporating news on emerging variants and vaccination developments. Produced and presented by two New Orleanean medical doctors, the show combined scientific coverage with a localized perspective foregrounding New Orleanean and Louisianian experiences negotiating Covid, and enabled localized articulations of anxiety, fear and distrust in real time whilst also providing empathy and comfort. The show’s producer–presenters, MarkAlain Déry and Eric Griggs, are medical doctors specializing in infectious diseases and community health, respectively.

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Several Indigenous radio stations utilized Facebook Live to provide essential coverage of Tribal Council meetings which suddenly had to be held remotely. Facebook has been recognized as a contested and compromised platform; as Adrienne Shaw points out, ‘technologies are not ideologically neutral in their design, in what types of interaction they allow or disallow’ (Shaw 2017: 597). Yet it provides a freely and widely accessible platform which crucially allows listeners tuning in via Facebook to comment in real time. This serves and updates the crucial phone-in function of radio shows and enables these community shows to gather important listener feedback while they are on-air. The comment functionality also facilitates a particular, community-specific form of online community-building across space and time. Facebook’s limitations were countered by its accessibility for streaming NoiseFilter. For shows such as Beyond Bows and Arrows and NoiseFilter, Facebook Live effectively expands streaming radio’s capacities for communitybuilding for remote listeners. Live-streaming capabilities means that content produced by under-resourced community radio stations can be accessed globally, allowing community members living and working far from home to connect with locally-specific elements of everyday life. While a user-led hierarchy persists for mainstream media access at platform interface levels, community radio stations and shows are achieving greater reach than before. NoiseFilter had regular listeners from Japan and the UK as well as elsewhere in North America. At the same time, the importance and persistence of analogue radio transmitting via antenna to local listeners cannot be under-estimated, particularly given the renewed need of and demand for such localized coverage. Christina Dunbar-Hester argues for the metaphorical as well as actual value of Low Power FM radio, stating that this type of community-run radio: as a platform where community members can hear and address one another, that is noncommercial, independent, accountable and autonomous – helps keep alive the notion that media can be this way, rather than commercial and consolidated. Thus, LPFM is a metaphor as well as a material artefact. (Dunbar-Hester 2020: 24, note 2)

She suggests that community radio can function symbolically, to help navigate our interactions and negotiations of a deeply compromised media environment, observing that such community-led radio ‘can help us think through how we might build for and regulate the digital communication environment of the present in order to amplify these values in the future’ (Dunbar-Hester 2020: 24). The value of what we understand ‘community radio’ to be has been amplified by the pandemic and the consequent need for connection, as well as information. Hopefully this value will be recognized in resource terms, and the consistently under-funded community radio sector will be recognized in material terms. At the same time, there’s ongoing scope for further research into community radio. There has been a lack of audience research into community radio listenership, aside from an important, much-cited study into Australian community radio audiences (Meadows et al. 2008); a gap addressed in this collection by Bridget Backhaus (see Chapter 7). Ways in which community radio practitioners have

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developed podcasts to complement scheduled programming also warrant further attention as these two closely aligned media continue to evolve and inform each other. What is demonstrably clear is that whether accessed via a local analogue signal or online, in providing emotional sustenance alongside local information about everything from elder shopping hours to testing and vaccination centres to weather updates, community stations around the world reinforced their importance to their listening communities during the pandemic. The acute value of this community-led and community-facing broadcasting demonstrated, yet again, that community radio can be much more than the material sum of its parts.

Notes 1

2

Radio.garden is both a non-profit radio streaming platform and an app, which enables users to choose from radio stations around the world (see LaFrance 2016). Radio.garden quite quickly became popular after its launch and gained further followers during the pandemic; see Lewis and Mitchell (2021). John Langer observes that the language heard on migrant-produced programmes is often a lingua franca used by migrant communities rather than the ‘first’ language of those speaking. Langer’s analysis of multicultural radio focused on Canadian radio, which is broadcast in two official state languages, English and French; his term ‘third language’ thus assumes migrant or ethnic broadcasters would speak both of these, in addition to their own ‘first’ language, that of their home nation or region.

Works cited Anderson, B. (1991), Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Bonini, T., B. Monclús and S. Scifo (2020) ‘Radio as a Social Media’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 18 (1): 5–12. Coleman, J. (2020), UK Community Radio Production Responses to COVID-19: https://www. brunel.ac.uk/research/Documents/Jo-Coleman-UK-Community-Radio-ProductionResponses-to-COVID-19.pdf (accessed 11 March 2022). Downing, J. (2001), Radical Media, London: Sage. Dreher, T. (2010), ‘Speaking Up or Being Heard? Community Media Interventions and the Politics of Listening’, Media, Culture & Society 32 (1): 85–103. Dunbar-Hester, C. (2020), ‘Not Entirely Analog(ous): Low-Power FM Radio as Community, Relations and Knowledge in Context’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 18 (1): 13–28. Harvey, D. (2001), Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Hall, S. (1997), ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in S. Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London/Thousand Oaks, CA/New Delhi: Sage, pp. 225–39. Joseph, M. (2002), Against the Romance of Community, Minnesota: Minnesota University Press. LaFrance, A. (2016), ‘The Map That Lets You Listen to the Radio Everywhere’, The Atlantic 12 December. Langer, J. (2005), ‘Multicultural Radio in the Global Era: The Canadian Broadcaster Perspective’, Australasian Canadian Studies 23 (2): 113–40. Lewis, P. M. (2008), Promoting Social Cohesion: The Role of Community Media, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Lewis, P. and C. Mitchell (2021), ‘The Radio Garden: Private Pleasures and Public Benefits’, Special Issue: British and Irish Radio: Radio and Audio in the Twenty-First Century in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 12 (1), 1 April: 39–50. Loviglio, J. and M. Hilmes (2013), ‘Introduction: Making Radio Strange’, in J. Loviglio and M. Hilmes (eds), Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–6. Mann, L. (2019), ‘Booming at the Margins: Ethnic Radio, Intimacy, and Nonlinear Innovation in Media’, International Journal of Communication 13: 383–401. Meadows, M, S. Forde, J. Ewart and K. Foxwell (2008), ‘A Quiet Revolution: Australian Community Broadcasting Audiences Speak Out’, Media International Australia 129 (1): 20–32. Moylan, K. (2022a), ‘“Our Hearts Through Our Voices”: Community Building in Hopi Radio During COVID-19’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 21 (1): 20–32. Moylan, K. (2022b), ‘Research Avenues for Amplifying Indigenous Radio’, Open Research Europe, February: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/2-31/v1 (accessed 28 April 2022). Naficy, H. (2001), An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Ong, W. J. (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London: Routledge. Rodriguez, C. (2016), ‘Human Agency and Media Praxis: Re-Centring Alternative and Community Media Research’, Journal of Alternative and Community Media 1 (1): 3–8. Scannell, P. and D. Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, Vol. 1, 1922–1939, Serving the Nation, Oxford: Blackwell. Shaw, A. (2017), ‘Encoding and Decoding Affordances: Stuart Hall and Interactive Media Technologies’, Media, Culture & Society 39 (4): 592–602. Van Vuuren, K. (2006), ‘Community Broadcasting and the Enclosure of the Public Sphere’. Media, Culture & Society 28 (3): 379–92. Weaver, H. (2020), ‘COVID-19 and the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island: Unusual and Familiar Times’, Journal of Indigenous Social Development 9 (3): 13–22.

16 Feeding the Beast What It Means to be a Community Radio Presenter in the UK Josephine Coleman

Introduction The experience of being a radio presenter is under-explored in academic literature, the tendency being to focus on audiences and content (Wolfenden 2014: 7). For popular consumption there are ‘numerous biographies [and] autobiographies’ but little or no critical analysis (Killmeier 2001: 353). This chapter will go some way to redress the situation, taking as its subjects not the glamorous, high profile, celebrity household names that publishers invest in, but the unpaid radio broadcasters in more mundane contexts. There is a rich seam of research on these practitioners in a small number of doctoral theses on community and ethnic minority radio.1 These participants whose stories and opinions are being sought include a growing number of presenters involved in non-mainstream broadcasting in the UK, at a time when the professional radio industry, impacted by market and audience expectations, is seeing continued staffing cuts and resource centralization leading to a dramatic fall-off in employment: to 13,000 at the last count (Statista 2021). The author’s research, conducted between 2014 and 2021 (Coleman 2021: 90–1), indicates that there could be up to twice as many volunteers in the licensed local community radio sector alone, regulated by the government’s Office for Communications (Ofcom). At the time of writing there are 315 of these not-for-profit stations listed (Ofcom 2022), and the roll-out of new small-scale digital audio broadcasting licences has begun. In addition, but beyond this study’s remit, any internet search will reveal a proliferation of unlicensed online stations, licensed webcasters and short-term broadcasters, not to mention the explosion of podcasts. How these are monetized is also beyond the scope of this chapter, but in the licensed local community sector, thousands of practitioners are routinely spending multiple hours each week at home or in studio hubs sourcing, shaping and sharing media content and serving their target communities. Since it is rare for these presenters to be

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paid, their commitment is worth studying for what it might reveal about the allure of radio presenting more generally. It is important to acknowledge and respect the contributions that volunteer practitioners make to society because they are assets in localities often serving under-represented populations, which, as the recent pandemic has proven, can make a significant difference to people’s lives. As Salvatore Scifo found through research earlier this century with presenters on three community stations: ‘Making radio makes them feel more confident, boosts their self-esteem and gives them the possibility to speak about their cultures, their social groups and their lives, and helps to provide a local view on global issues’ (Scifo 2011: 314). There follows an exploration of the emotional and affective aspects of the practice of volunteering as a presenter on local community radio. Although findings from research on Australian community radio implicate narcissism as a primary motivator (Order 2014), other priorities and purposes will be identified. What is it about presenting shows on local community radio that makes the practice meaningful, worthwhile and in some ways compulsive? The intention is not to provide a single definitive explanation; the sheer multitude of experiences would render that impossible. Rather, evidence will be provided illustrating some of the felt, expressed and demonstrated motivations and impacts which will help create a more nuanced appreciation of radio presenting. The aim is to develop an understanding of what factors drive unpaid ‘amateur’ practitioners and what this means for stations’ sustainability and social gain objectives.

Understanding radio presentation and community radio To explore what it means to be a volunteer presenter on community radio, the experiential focus is switched away from the more commonly studied perspective of audience studies and how listeners are affected by station outputs (Tacchi 2009), onto how presenters are affected by their own performances of the practice. The term ‘presenter’ is used to define those volunteers heard on-air and whose names are listed on the radio schedules; for ease it also covers ‘disc jockeys’ (DJs) or music show hosts (Montgomery 1986). The presenting role in the community sector often includes research and technical production too, since the number of additional volunteer helpers may be limited to studio assistants and regular contributors. Two other key terms used interchangeably are ‘show’ and ‘programme’. Practitioners tend to use ‘show’ colloquially, especially when it is music-based. A ‘programme’ tends to be understood as containing more speech content, imbued with intellectual gravitas, although a genre known as ‘talk show’ has become popular around the world as a format for encouraging listeners to phone in and have their say on topical, often controversial, subjects (Ames 2016; O’Sullivan 2005; Turow 1974). This study focuses on the presentation of content that is light, entertaining, magazine-style and considered more ‘human interest’ than headline news, such as conversations about local happenings and interviews with those involved, introducing music and artistes, discussing special interests and creating themed features.

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By flipping Jo Tacchi’s anthropological perspective on how ‘affective rhythm’ impacts listeners’ lives to explore the impact on presenters, we can begin to appreciate how they too are affected by the ‘qualities of radio sound and its capacity for mood generation’ (Tacchi 2009: 171). Presenters are exposed to the music they play and the storytelling they engage in over the airwaves; habitually performing these tasks provides them with a sense of ‘emotional security’ (ibid.: 180–1). Here then, we seek to understand the emotional attachment of practitioners to their practice. Using Theodore Schatzki’s socio-cultural framing for analysing sets of tasks as situated arrays of practice-arrangements (Schatzki 2002), the notion of a ‘teleoaffective structure’ is applied as a schema to help account for what drives and sustains practitioners in pursuit of their practice objectives underlying any consciously articulated personal motivation. This is effectively a normative framework that becomes embodied and enacted upon by practitioners as they learn how to behave in a prescribed role: how to think, speak and act. This embodiedness is akin to and developed from the Bourdieusian notion of ‘habitus’ which has been applied to the work of professional journalists said to have a ‘gut feeling’ for their practice, as they respond preconsciously to the ‘doxa’ of the field (Schultz 2007: 192). When practitioners carry out their tasks unthinkingly, applying tacit or pre-reflexive knowledge, they are influenced by a host of factors: general understandings relating to the field; the practical intelligibility, skills and know-how required; rules and guidelines associated with their role and positionality not only within their specific radio stations but in their wider and overlapping social circles spanning particular yet ever-evolving spatial and temporal contexts (Schatzki 2002: xi). Enacting their practice makes them feel a certain way too; there are emotional rewards. Before proceeding, a note on the voluntary aspect of the practice is required. John Wilson’s definition of volunteering is: ‘Any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group or cause’ (Wilson 2000: 215). Wilson’s ‘ecology’ approach features a range of correlates such as age, gender and race; he finds that an ‘exchange theory’ model applies because those with more [of the resource] human capital are likely to volunteer more (ibid.: 222). He identifies a ‘peculiar moral economy of volunteering’ whereby ‘the normal predictions about the impact of job satisfaction on commitment do not apply’ (ibid.: 230). He cites ‘role overload theory’ (ibid.: 220) and another aspect of volunteering which arises in this chapter, that of burn out. Studies exploring how and why people participate in local life indicate that a phenomenon of ‘voluntary affiliation’ occurs when ‘organizations build membership through the recruitment and retention of homopholis individuals, many of whom come from existing members’ core social networks’ (McPherson 1981 in Stern and Fullerton 2009: 557). This was observed amongst the stations studied for the research informing this chapter, supporting the argument that volunteerism becomes something that is achieved through acting and interacting around shared interests, creating a localized ‘community field’ (ibid.). What any community radio presenter stands to gain will vary from person to person, place to place, and will change over time, but as this chapter will illustrate, there are commonly experienced, non-monetary benefits from engaging in the practice. Practitioners derive a deep sense of satisfaction and pleasure, achieve personal fulfilment and accumulate social capital through giving up their time and energy for the benefit of others. As will be evident, at least as far as the respondents can articulate upon reflection

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and through conversation, presenting can become integral, if not pivotal, to their way of life: a passion if not an obsession.

Radio presenting as two-way communication and relationship building The predominant framings of radio broadcasting centre on audience usage of the medium and content. Research on presentation techniques and the resulting formation of communicative, interpersonal relationships has focused on the listening experiences elicited rather than on those of presenting. As Wolfenden states: ‘In a world that was still emerging into mediated media relationships, Horton and Wohl [writing about parasocial interaction in 1956] had not recognized that this connection was as potentially meaningful for presenters as it was for their listeners’ (Wolfenden 2014: 15). Talk being the ‘primary code’ in this ‘blind’ medium, radio presentation is understood as discursive even when delivered in monologue form (Chignell 2009; Goffman 1981; Killmeier 2001; Montgomery 1986; Scannell, 1991; Theodosiadou 2019). As Crisell outlines, when presenters speak phatically on-air, they are relying on ‘an element of pretence or make believe’; they are ‘at pains to give themselves and their listeners a sense of the latter’s presence on the medium’ (Crisell 1986: 182). They perform as if in a conversation with someone else, pausing for effect, simulating ‘the timing characteristics of dialogue’ (Goffman 1981 in ibid.: 182). Though presenters may use scripts, delivery is more effective if it sounds natural: extemporized and spontaneous (Crisell 1986: 58–9). They must sound convincing when conveying specialist knowledge on a topic, such as music (Theodosiadou 2019). Presenters interact ‘authentically’ with their audiences through acts of ‘self-disclosure’ (Kim and Yang 2019: 337). Indeed ‘sharing testimonials’ is a proven tactic for not only attracting attention but building audience loyalty because the presenter’s performances of personal involvement convey a heightened ‘feeling of social presence’ (Kim and Yang 2019: 340). Presenters recount their own experiences as ‘entertaining stories’ (O’Sullivan 2005: 722). We can again switch perspective to consider that, in the same way listeners participate in a show by calling in and being put on-air to expose themselves for ‘emotive’ or ‘exhibitionist’ purposes (ibid.: 733), so too may presenters experience social consequences when friends or family are listening who later give their opinion as to how it sounded. Thus, their performance is a display which they hope confers status on them by virtue of its perceived success, serving to satisfy their own needs in terms of selfesteem through a therapeutic, empowering process of self-disclosure to a community of listeners or fans (ibid.: 734–5). Airing ‘the small change of the everyday’ is useful currency in imagined conversations with the audience (Montgomery 1986: 423). It is after all, much-needed content. Thus, radio talk can ‘create small moments of culture in the struggle to make meanings’ through dialogue between audience members and a station’s presenters with their ‘manufactured

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personae’ as sociable, affable and friendly hosts (Moss and Higgins 1984: 355–6). The more confident practitioners with sufficient cultural and social capital can influence audiences and even shape the identity, image and symbolic capital of their stations. It is interesting to note that Crisell ventures: ‘What is certainly true is that many popular broadcasters are shy introverts whose personalities seem to be transformed by the presence of a live microphone’ (Crisell 1986: 186). This presumption of shyness will be revisited later in the chapter, but suffice to say, presenters work hard to attract a listener’s focused attention to counteract the tendency for radio to be on in the background as ‘acoustic wallpaper’ (ibid.: 17). Sociologist Erving Goffman is one of the few anglophone researchers to have studied the practitioner experience. His discussion of performativity in radio talk explains that certain occasions give rise to particular character roles being played or routines being performed which are convincing to audiences (Goffman 1981). Montgomery, too, describes how presenters (DJs) dynamically shift their fields of reference when talking to their listeners, from directly identifying ‘specific’ individuals, to segmenting sub-groups, or to more general addressing (Montgomery 1986: 424). He argues that when presenters mention listeners as well as, and in the context of, the immediate environment of the studio, they are effectively treating them ‘as if co-present’ both socially and spatially (Montgomery 1986: 427–9). This aligns with Scannell’s concept of the ‘doubling of place’ when audience members imagine themselves to be where the presenter is speaking from, which Moores extends to ‘pluralizing’ of place through the usage of media (Moores 2012). This notion prioritizes listeners, yet the presenters are integral to the generation of these mediated communicative spaces and therefore the notion of a show becoming a familiar place where the listeners are spending time (Moores 2012) becomes somewhere to which the presenter also develops a sense of belonging. Practitioners become emotionally attached to their shows, their listeners and to their practice and feel a sense of ownership. The act of radio presenting has physical as well as psychological repercussions for the practitioner since the imagined closeness, the potential for quasi-intimacy between a presenter and listeners, has a physiological dimension. Early radio theorist Rudolph Arnheim describes the art of radio as addressing the audience not as a mass but as individuals, proceeding as if ‘à deux’ (Arnheim 1936: 72). He notes: ‘The physical fact that the normal distance between sound-source and microphone is inconsiderable, implies as a normal condition of the art of broadcasting a spiritual and atmospheric nearness of broadcaster and listener’ (ibid.: 77). When speaking into a microphone positioned at one’s nose, close to the lips, there is a resonance. Using headphones enhances the sensory experience and there is a simultaneity – even when imagined – facilitating ‘spatial propinquity of people’ (ibid.: 227). And, today, presenters do not have to rely on imagination to visualize their listeners, because they can engage with them on social media and can meet them through local in-person encounters. Kate Ames, researching Australian radio, describes how presenters ‘work to foster and maintain a sense of listening community by taking on different roles – being a friend, host, counsellor, entertainer’ (Ames 2015: n.p.). They are facilitators aiming to represent community interests by participating in conversations with guests or colleagues ‘for an overhearing audience’ which is like a club with its own ‘rules,

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its rituals, its codes of conduct and its abiding principles, beliefs and values’ (ibid.). This understanding makes complete sense in community radio since it forms the foundation of the sector’s very existence.

Community radio in the UK The principle of community broadcasting is predicated on the Utopian vision for radio which Bertolt Brecht described a century ago. Rather than a ‘one-sided’ distributor which ‘merely hands things out’, he saw the medium’s potential as a two-sided ‘communication system’ for public life (Brecht 1979: 25–7). Community radio promises audience participation in producing a station’s outputs. In the UK, legislation for licensing community broadcasters on renewable five-year terms was eventually introduced in the early 2000s (Scifo 2011). Licences are for analogue FM and some medium wave (AM) frequencies covering limited geographical areas, 5 to 10 kilometres, with local digital multiplexes now emerging too. The primary aim of each licensed, not-for-profit community station, reflected in the ‘key commitments’ to which their volunteers sign up, is to transmit an agreed minimum number of hours of locally produced content each week and, in the process, contribute towards social gain or benefit. In other words, these practitioners collectively help create a sense of community; they have the common good of their target audience at heart. Through their performances, they become part of a global movement, practising community radio broadcasting to represent specific ethnic or cultural ways of life or reflect geographical areas that are otherwise not well catered for by other mainstream radio stations (Bailur 2012; Browne 2012; Moylan 2018). Although each station is uniquely tailored to its own locality and target community, there are sufficient commonalities of practice across the sector to allow shared experiences to be identified; notably the commitment these volunteers make to appear repeatedly in their allotted slots with refreshed shows: to create variety in the sameness, balancing continuity and reassurance with newness. When it comes to programming a station’s broadcast output, some licensees rely more heavily on playing particular genres of music than others but there is a requirement to produce some speech content. Financial constraints mean that the most time- and cost-effective approach is to broadcast live or as-live. Audience expectations and the relentless demand for material to fill programme schedules on an hourly, daily and weekly basis are challenging for a volunteer workforce held to the same standards as mainstream stations under the Broadcasting Code. Some stations benefit from the involvement of current or former broadcasting professionals who have their own shows or are training volunteers. Presenters introduce tracks and share trivia with the unheard listener, and they converse with callers or studio guests to impart meaningful speech that includes information on local happenings, projects, events, fundraisers and so forth. They may share or invite updates and eye-witness accounts for topical discussions qualifying as ‘civic news talk’ (Hutchby 2001: 482). Presenters are constantly planning interviews, discussions, phone-ins and features that will be of interest to their listeners, to

Community Radio Presenting in the UK

attract their attention, entertain them and provide useful information. This on-air output is complemented by websites and social media posts to engage and interact with listeners, to promote shows as well as to source content and potential guests. Ethnographic research findings attest to the benefits of learning to produce and present community radio this way. When incorporated routinely into the everyday lives of volunteer practitioners these activities constitute a practice which, although creating pressure to deliver to deadlines, can also enhance their outlook, mood, self-confidence and motivation. Women broadcasters, for instance, can experience a feeling of empowerment (Mitchell 2000: 6). Nazan Haydari describes how female volunteers at Desi Radio for the Panjabi community of Southall in London, find themselves part of a supportive local broadcasting community that helps provide a sort of ‘therapy’ to cope with the stresses of daily life at home such as retirement and divorce (Haydari 2018: 68–9). Haydari writes about the ‘sense of comfort’ experienced by her respondents and how one of them, involved in the provision of music, poetry, news and discussion, said that: ‘The radio production process facilitated a relationship between her identity as a program [sic] presenter, as a member of Panjabi community, and as a woman’ (ibid.: 71). This volunteer has the power to voice her own opinion, to integrate cultural resonance into the poetry she writes for her show, but also to: ‘re-write the news and pick what is relevant to our community and people, include some news from East and West Panjab, and from here, England’ (ibid.: 70). Most tellingly, the respondent admitted: ‘Now that I am doing the show my mind is always there’ (ibid.: 71). This indicates that she carries her role as radio presenter everywhere she goes.

Community radio for social and personal gain Evaluating the impact of being a community radio presenter requires an exploration of how it feels to perform under the pressure of producing refreshed content to fulfil the station’s programme schedule commitments. The evidence used in this study is derived from the findings of a broader research project which involved six community radio stations covering market towns in four English counties: Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire and Somerset. Whilst not achieving the depth of ethnographic immersion advocated in Robert Watson’s thesis, nevertheless this author did draw on her own volunteering experiences to ‘enter the lifeworld and find out what is going on, identifying how people recognise and share their interests, what it feels like to those involved’ (Watson 2017: 231). Participant observation fieldwork and studio visits were supplemented by online monitoring of the stations and their social media as well as radio industry, community media sector and academic discourse. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two respondents to ascertain how they became involved in community radio and why they continue to volunteer. They were asked to reflect on their practice, what inspires them and what they feel they contribute to their local community. Their responses suggest that certain issues arising, experiences and feelings are common across stations. In addition, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the author conducted an online

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survey and follow-up interviews with twelve of the responding community radio managers about adapting to lockdown (Coleman 2020a). Having been a community radio presenter, she empathized with the respondents and could relate to their expressions of enthusiasm and emotional involvement with their shows and stations. Thematic analysis has been undertaken on the transcripts and other fieldwork data to determine how the role and responsibilities become embodied in practitioners to the extent that their identity as community broadcasters seeps into other parts of their lives and social activities and can become all-consuming. The examples shared below have been selected to illustrate specific, situated and notable instances of practice which provide insights into what it means to volunteer in community radio. Quotes from practitioners at four stations have been highlighted because they help illustrate the author’s points whilst representing the diversity that abounds within relatively close proximity just north of London: Radio Verulam for the general population living in and around the market town of St Albans in Hertfordshire; Vibe FM for young adults in the metropolitan Watford area, also in Hertfordshire; Inspire FM, aimed at the local Muslim community in the industrial Bedfordshire town of Luton; and Radio LaB, the student radio station for the University of Bedfordshire also based in Luton. The information collected on motivations and meaningfulness has been divided according to researcher impressions and respondent expressions of serving others in the community and of the self-serving benefits which, as will become clear, are intertwined.

Volunteering on community radio to serve others The practitioners who participated in this research profess to believing that they give something back to their communities through their shows, by entertaining listeners with conversation, topical features and playing feelgood music, as well as by providing information covering relevant happenings, supporting worthy causes and promoting local businesses. Radio Verulam’s Pat, a retired businesswoman and local councillor, has produced and presented two series for the station: Outspoken, a politics and current affairs show, and Days of our Lives for ‘baby boomers’ like herself. She described the time spent researching as ‘considerable’ which partly explains why she stopped working on the timesensitive Outspoken, requiring two-and-a-half days a week preparation for the hour-long live broadcast of interviews with local spokespersons. Her own subsequent creation, Days of our Lives, designed to be a six-week pre-recorded series, routinely requires over a day a week of preparation. Yet it feels worth it for her, because, in between dealing with her own serious health issues, and being a director of a UK charity raising money for cancer research, she identifies with her intended audience: Now, we actually have some time to do things that we want to do. And that is the whole ethos of the programme … I do holidays you can go on, or activities, University of the Third Age, things like that. I have all those type of guests on the programme but at the same time,

Community Radio Presenting in the UK

you can’t ignore that when you get older there are certain things that you may have to face. Certain health issues, for example … I have a doctor who comes on and talks about some of the nasty things that we can get. But again, the message is always that, actually, there is life after cancer. There is life after heart disease. There are lots of things you can do even if you’ve had terrible illnesses. You know you must never give up. Enjoy life while you’ve got it. (Pat, Verulam, 4 April 2018)

Also on Verulam, the weekly Parents Show addresses difficult issues such as self-image and eating disorders. Consulting local parents like themselves, teachers and community leaders, the presenting team interviews experts and provides opportunities for children and young adults to take part and have their voices aired. One volunteer, Lydia, declared: ‘I love doing this job, I really do’ (Lydia, Verulam, 21 March 2018). She especially enjoys people coming into the studio and capturing ‘beautiful moments’ such as when three teenaged schoolboys movingly praised their favourite teacher during an on-air discussion about self-harm and depression. Lydia used words like ‘amazing’, ‘great’ and ‘fantastic’ to describe how presenting satisfies in her the desire to pursue a range of different interests: Between [me], Kathy and Seema, we’re pretty much tapped into the community, just because we love it. I think it probably stems from [me] being Irish and being used to living in a place where you know people. And I think we try to recreate that here, as much as we can because it makes us feel at home, you know. (Lydia, Verulam, 21 March 2018)

Co-producer and presenter, Kathy, claimed to not ‘particularly enjoy presenting’ (Kathy, Verulam, 3 March 2018). What really motivates her is getting people on-air who lack confidence. ‘It can be completely transformative for them,’ she said and described an occasion when she interviewed a visually impaired child about playing ball sports. The following day ‘the whole school was buzzing about it,’ making the boy feel like a celebrity (ibid.). Down the road at Watford-based Vibe FM, one of the founding volunteer presenters and mentor to new recruits, Lee, emphasized the social value of his breakfast show and how he uses this platform to ‘help out with the community side of things’ (Lee, Vibe, 7 June 2018). Born and raised in the area, he often not only publicizes but participates directly in fundraising events for local charities. The younger presenters interviewed displayed equally impressive levels of positive energy and appreciation of the station’s community focus. Even though this is primarily a contemporary music station, they aim to serve local listener needs. Drivetime presenter, and recent university graduate, Chris, explained: It’s not about me, it’s about, you know, the listener and they wanna get home and they wanna listen to the music as well, but if I can fill in with some interesting stuff I wanna talk about or just some conversational speeches to help them get home after a long day at work, you know, I try and do that as best I can. (Chris, Vibe, 7 June 2018)

A fellow volunteer at Vibe, Nathan, eighteen years old at the time of the research, is equally committed to putting the audience first. Despite voice tracking, which is a system for

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pre-recording vocal drop-ins in advance of transmission, it is important to him that his shows feel real, live and relevant: Being on my feet and being engaged with the air around me is a big part of the energy on the radio and I have to put myself into that time zone. I have to think to myself: ‘Right these guys are on a Friday night, they’ve just had a very long, slog at work. What do they wanna hear?’ They don’t wanna hear some guy sat down on a couch with a cup of tea in his hand having a ramble. They wanna hear that energy and bounce off that … when you’re voice tracking and pretending to be as excited as you are, it is a performance for the listener … I want it to sound organic and like I really care and am excited about it. Hopefully, that comes across. (Nathan, Vibe, 11 June 2018)

Twenty miles north, the Bedfordshire town of Luton is home to Inspire FM and one of their higher profile presenters, Shemiza. As guest speaker on a webinar ‘Lessons from Community Media’ hosted by the Media Reform Coalition, she enthused about community radio, calling it a ‘beautiful space’ (Shemiza, Inspire, on Media Reform Coalition 2021). She said: ‘I feel more love and passion for … community radio, especially in the pandemic … To have a voice that you can actually understand and representative of you is so, so needed’ (ibid.). For Shemiza, part of the attraction to community radio presenting is a conviction that Muslim stories deserve to be ‘fully represented, in a coherent way’ (ibid.) Through her show, she provides ‘a safe space for the community to come together and actually have an opportunity for them to be heard where they may not be able to be heard elsewhere’ (ibid.) She explained: I’ve stayed with Inspire FM for a good ten years and the reason why I do that, I think it’s out of love, it really is out of love. I don’t feel I’ll be able to put my heart and soul anywhere else as much because I just feel that I’m in control of what I’m projecting. I’m in control of the stories I’m able to share, I’m in control of what I feel that my audience wants to listen to and what the audience wants to say. And having that control, having that opportunity to be able to have a space where you can create without an agenda is just a wonderful space to be … I actually value the platform that I have because I do see it’s making a massive, big difference, it’s empowering those voices to have their narrative shared in a safe space. (Shemiza, Inspire, on MRC, 13 May 2021)

Self-serving: community radio for career progression As well as being a platform for expressing under-represented voices, training and mentoring in media and social skills is commonly written into community stations’ key commitments (Scifo 2011: 318). Volunteers and trainees benefit by accruing production know-how and other transferable skills which can equip them for future careers in the communications industry and beyond. Terry, employed by the University of Bedfordshire to teach radio and audio, coordinates the student station Radio Lab. He described feeling privileged to work

Community Radio Presenting in the UK

there, witnessing how often students use radio presenting to boost their self-confidence and to gain experience in socializing, meeting and dealing with people. Terry explained: ‘A lot of the people who volunteer here are quite shy and … they’re doing this to drive themselves to get better at talking and listening’ (Terry, Radio LaB, 4 May 2018). Graduating student Jack is one such success story, having overcome shyness to become one of the station’s four student managers, presenting several weekly shows. He was very dedicated and proud of his contribution: I can safely say I’ve given this everything. There’s not much more I could have given. I’ve literally given blood for this station … When I wake up in the morning I’m straight away working and stuff to usually when I go to bed. (Jack, Radio LaB, 4 May 2018)

This eagerness to invest energy in radio broadcasting echoed that demonstrated by the young recruits at Watford’s Vibe FM. As well as striving to become professional broadcasters, they love the thrill of presenting and enjoy becoming well-known as key figures in their local social or special interest circles. Their on-air and online social media presence earns them recognition and social capital outside of the station. Some of them continue volunteering even as their professional careers are developing. During interviews, they expressed a sense of belonging to the station community having built relationships there that matter to them. The radio station is embedded in their social lives, their enthusiasm palpable. Chris recalled how he started: So, I came in … for two weeks … [to] sit in with a couple of the presenters and see and get a feel for what it was like. Loved it and thought it was great and thought it was something I’d be very keen on trying to do. (Chris, Vibe, 7 June 2018)

This feeling is evidently shared by older, more experienced volunteers, such as those who provide training and shadowing opportunities at Vibe. They value being part of the station as it forms their identity. By demonstrating professional competence, they can put previous achievements or missed career opportunities into perspective. Lee, who has been involved since the launch of the station in 2011, expressed this sentiment: You know, I wouldn’t work at a national station or a commercial station … Cos I like to think I’ve got a bit of a personality about me, and I like that to come across and a lot of stations wouldn’t allow that. So, they wouldn’t have me, so that’s why I’ve never really pursued it cos I believe I’d be wasting so much effort and exhausting myself trying desperately to make it, to fit into some [box]. (Lee, Vibe, 7 June 2018)

The longer serving volunteers at Verulam were articulate about supporting volunteers and trainees as part of their community service remit. Jonny, a teacher at the time of the interview, explained the duty of care he feels a station has: Radio’s all about communication … We need to be pastoral … that whole element about the community and looking after people and community projects. When you’ve got volunteers,

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it is so different from managing people who are being paid … you can’t just say: ‘Oh, your show’s rubbish, you’re gone!’ Which is what will happen in the real world of radio. Once your contract’s up, you’ll be off the air like that. Instead, we’ve got to try and help. (Jonny, Verulam, 4 April 2018)

Jonny referred to the studio as ‘an old friend’ and looked very much at home there. He described the station as slickly run, music-based but with local links. He explained how the management find a place on the schedule for people whose voices might not normally be considered ‘right’ for radio: From 7 o’clock in the evening, you’ve got all these wonderful, more bespoke local shows … Some are really high quality … and then you get other people who perhaps would not get a sniff at anywhere near being on a radio station, presenting shows, and that’s wonderful, playing the music they love. You know, it’s great. And it’s about encompassing that. (Jonny, Verulam, 4 April 2018)

Self-serving: broadcasting as an enjoyable hobby Everyone interviewed for this research enjoys broadcasting, even those with additional, sometimes challenging and frustrating station responsibilities who often feel overworked. Verulam’s founding director and presenter, Clive, explained the need for volunteers to do more than present shows; they need to help keep the station going, since it is a company with a turnover of £60,000. He cited several critical administrative tasks such as paying the bills that need doing on a day-to-day basis and admitted that roles like station manager must be split to avoid individuals taking on too much because they have had ‘some experience of people burning out a bit on that’ (Clive, Verulam, 21 March 2018). The station’s company chair at the time of research, Nick, routinely delivered the first hour of Breakfast Show traffic and travel and described presenting his own show on Thursday mornings. He quickly added: ‘I shouldn’t use [the term] “my show”. I always tell people: “It’s not your show, it’s the radio station’s show!”’ (Nick, Verulam, 13 April 2018). This point of view was reiterated in an interview with programme controller, Andy, commenting during the pandemic on member subscriptions to the station: It’s not membership of a broadcasting club … Some people … feel that they have the right to be on air. And previously I think they’ve been given that impression. But over the last few years, I’ve been correcting that impression … we’re trying to change the mood … they need to realise that they’re lucky to have the opportunity. And with that opportunity comes responsibilities. And if they don’t meet those responsibilities, you know, if someone says: ‘Oh, I’m leaving, then!’ Fine, all the best, you know. And I think that’s a real cultural change. (Andy, Verulam, 17 June 2020)

Community Radio Presenting in the UK

Despite this, the respondents at Verulam appreciated the opportunity to reflect on and talk about their radio volunteering; many expressed a sense of pride at their accomplishments and their passion for the topics they covered. Jonny repeatedly referred to ‘my shows’ in his interview and sounded exceedingly satisfied with his track record, having been with the station ten years already. And even though Pat admitted the commitment to producing Days of our Lives can be ‘very difficult’, she clearly cherishes her time at the station. She feels excited to be there, claiming to love the smell of the studio. Her involvement and the feeling of connection with her show’s audience is life-affirming. Director, Clive, agreed: It’s very important in anything you do, you know, paid work or anything you do voluntarily or out of, in your own time – has to be fun. And this is fun. Sometimes it’s frustrating, sometimes incredibly annoying, sometimes you have problems with people or whatever but at the end of the day – you look back and say ‘Gosh, we went to this great thing, we did this and we did that.’ We have fantastic opportunities offered to us. (Clive, Verulam, 21 March 2018)

Retiree Ian, presenter of Music Memories on Verulam, looks forward to the time he spends each week at his computer, going through his music collection, putting together a playlist, researching and writing a script. When asked if he has a specific listener in mind, he said he prioritizes his own enjoyment and sounding authentic: I want to feel like I’m alive and enjoying it. I don’t actually picture anyone in particular … occasionally you might slip in a mention, you know: ‘My friend Alan is travelling back to Florida and I’m playing this for him.’ But I don’t do a lot of that because some of it sounds a bit phoney. (Ian, Verulam, 31 January 2018)

For the most part, the respondents acknowledged that they find the satisfaction derived from volunteering in community radio outweighs the time commitment and any stress involved. For some, it is enmeshed in their lifelong aspirations. For instance, community radio veteran, Phil, one of Verulam’s founding members, said: I’d love to have done it incredibly successfully and been the next Tony Blackburn … but you know, there’s a certain bit of luck and probably extra talent that you need … It’s wanting to be heard … I just want them to hear the music that I’m playing … I like the presenting, you know, I like to be the man playing it and being the DJ … I absolutely love music. (Phil, Verulam, 29 March 2018)

Verulam’s Jonny also confessed to dreaming about becoming the next household name in radio: I’m a real radio geek … I had this fascination with radio, being in the car going to school with Terry Wogan on the radio, in my dad’s car. Not understanding there were [not] all these bands in the studio, didn’t realise it was records … and really fell in love with it. And I wanted to be on the radio. (Jonny, Verulam, 4 April 2018)

Contrary to Crisell’s assumption that many radio presenters are shy introverts, plenty encountered during this research gave the impression of relishing opportunities to become

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well-known locally. Denise for instance, presenter of The Parsons Knows, a weekly local music show on Verulam, took great delight in recounting instances when she is recognized: ‘I get stopped, you know, it’s ridiculous, literally stopped in the street. People say they listen or whatever. I mean, I was in the dentist the other day, and this bloke walked in and said: “Oh, I know who you are, I listen to your shows”’ (Denise, Verulam, 8 March 2018). Lee on Vibe laughed about being ‘chatted up’ and admitted that offering to do birthday dedications gives him the ‘buzz’ of being thanked for doing so and receiving positive listener correspondence. He seemed genuinely appreciative of anyone listening: ‘They choose to listen day in, day out to me on the breakfast show. I’m quite humbled by that’ (Lee, Vibe, 7 June 2018). He said that his two sons in their early twenties never admit to listening. He suspected: ‘They don’t want to give me too much credit, I think [but] they know, I ’spose, it’s kind of cool.’ He explained how he answers people when they ask him why he does it for no money: Do you get paid for doing your hobbies? No, cos you’re doing something you enjoy doing. And that’s what I say, you know. It’s a hobby to me, that I enjoy doing and helping out and it makes a difference to people sometimes, you know. That’s really in a nutshell why I do it. Sometimes I’m tired and [laughs] I think to myself. Yeah! (Lee, Vibe, 7 June 2018)

As for the younger generation, Vibe’s Chris said he is inspired by the BBC presenter Dermot O’Leary’s retelling of advice from the late Terry Wogan: They either like you or they don’t. The most important thing is to enjoy it. And if you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it. And I love doing it. Cos obviously being a community station and stuff, people say: ‘Ooh, why do you do it?’ I just say cos I just get a great kick out it. I love doing it. I’m given some creative freedom. I get to talk to people I may never get the chance to talk to in anything else. (Chris, Vibe, 7 June 2018)

Understanding community broadcasters as self-serving covers those practitioners who are honing their craft for future employment and strategically building up their social capital for other purposes in their community, as well as those who also or instead enjoy this type of volunteering purely as a hobby. Whatever the initial motivation, whether the energy channelled is enthusiasm for music, the arts, the environment or sport, doing this activity is a way to meet people, make friends and have somewhere special to spend time and belong to, both a physical studio hub and the virtual, communicative space of a radio show. Another by-product of volunteer presenting is the sense of pride it yields. Performing this practice, committing to sustaining a quality show and engaging with listeners in order to successfully represent their interests stimulates a sense of purpose. Connecting and conversing with listeners can be immensely enjoyable. There is the adrenaline rush of being in a live studio, of being in control of the desk whilst at the microphone and yet not quite being certain of what might be said next. Combined with this is the affective pleasure that playing and hearing one’s favourite music inspires.

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Feeding the beast, feeling the buzz The beast in the title of this chapter may first be perceived as representing the voracious demand for fresh material (Keefer 2004), but as the evidence unfolds, it takes on a further meaning – representing the felt need within the respondents, passionate about their craft and their community. ‘Feeding the beast’ corresponds not only to the necessity of aligning with the conventions of radio broadcasting practice and the duty to deliver on audience expectations, but there are more personal urges involved. Local community radio presenters develop an emotional attachment to their imagined audience through mediated engagements, reinforced by in-person encounters and dealing with guest contributors and interviewees. They feel noticed and appreciated, their lives are anchored by the reliable scheduled regularity with which their shows occur. Presenters are at the heart of the sense of community they are facilitating through ‘serving others’ by amplifying news and narratives that listeners can relate to and feel represented in. Thus, there are ‘self-serving’ benefits too; by volunteering in this role, they fulfil their own need for self-esteem, a sense of achievement and recognition for those that would pursue it. Add to this the sense of purpose derived from the pressure of a deadline and the thrill induced by the performative nature of the role. Attachment occurs on a physical level too, as a response to the sensuousness involved in the act of radio presenting. The practitioner feels it through bodily exposure and the senses: the sight of glowing lights, meters, screens and digital devices signifying power and hyper capability, the feel of the faders and clicking buttons conveying control. There is the smell of a familiar radio studio, soundproofed and air conditioned, and the sensation of hearing one’s own voice, reassuring in its vitality, the voices of others and the vibrations of those exchanges as well the music which inspires memories and moods. All these sensual gratifications combine to significant affective impact, especially when things are running smoothly with no technical errors, to produce a deeply pleasurable buzz. Hence the strong inclination, if not compulsion, to reproduce those conditions through routinely presenting on community radio. These findings support the understanding, as corroborated by Simon Order’s research, that part of the social gain delivered by community radio is felt by the practitioners themselves: ‘[It] is as much about the benefits for the volunteers as the benefits for the listening community’ (Order 2014: 148). They benefit emotionally and in various practical ways through their loyalty and commitment to producing and presenting shows to suit the tastes of, and through dialogue with, their target audience, be that a specific ethnic community, demographic or interest group focusing on a specialist music genre or specific issue such as ageing, parenting or the environment. Though personal motivations vary, engaging in the practice involves a complex relationship between self-serving and serving others and yields a sense of personal satisfaction and pride. As well as providing a purpose to life, helping build a sense of identity and belonging for the presenter which can enhance mental well-being, the role can also generate an enthusiasm verging on becoming a compulsion: little wonder then it can lead to burn out. Recognizing this and fairly

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managing presenters’ contributions is important in order to ensure a station’s sustainable future as a community asset by retaining a competent volunteer workforce whilst making space for new voices on-air.

Note 1

Examples include: Josephine Coleman (2020b); Annette Rimmer (2019); Salvatore Scifo (2011); Eleanor Shember-Critchley (2012); Robert Watson (2017). All these and more are available at https://ethos.bl.uk/

Works cited Ames, K. (2015), ‘Kyle Sandilands: Examining the “Performance of Authenticity” in ChatBased Radio Programming’, M/C Journal 18 (1). DOI:10.5204/mcj.932. Ames, K. (2016), ‘Talk vs Chat-Based Radio: A Case for Distinction’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 14 (2): 177–91. DOI:10.1386/ rjao.14.2.177_1. Arnheim, R. (1936), Radio, London: Faber & Faber. Bailur, S. (2012), ‘Who is the Community in Community Radio?’, Economic and Political Weekly 47 (17): 92–9. Brecht, B. (1979), ‘Radio as a Means of Communication: A Talk on the Function of Radio’, trans. S. Hood, Screen 20 (3–4): 24–8. DOI:10.1093/screen/20.3-4.24. Browne, D. R. (2012), ‘What is “Community” in Community Radio? A Consideration of the Meaning, Nature and Importance of a Concept’, in J. Gordon (ed.) Community Radio in the 21st Century, Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, pp. 153–73. Chignell, H. (2009), Key Concepts in Radio Studies. London: SAGE Publications. Coleman, J. F. (2020a), UK Community Radio Production Responses to COVID-19, London: Brunel University: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/21156 (accessed 4 May 2022). Coleman, J. F. (2020b), Talk of the Town: Exploring the Social Site of Local Content Production for Community Radio, London: Birkbeck, University of London. Coleman, J. F. (2021), Digital Innovations and the Production of Local Content in Community Radio: Changing Practices in the UK, London; New York: Routledge. Crisell, A. (1986), Understanding Radio, London: Methuen. Goffman, E. (1981), Forms of Talk, Oxford: Blackwell. Haydari, N. (2018), ‘Desi Radio by and for the Panjabi Community: Citizens’ Media, Gender, and Participation’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, pp. 65–72. Hutchby, I. (2001), ‘“Witnessing”: the Use of First-Hand Knowledge in Legitimating Lay Opinions on Talk Radio’, Discourse Studies 3 (4): 481–97. DOI:10.1177/1461445601003004009. Keefer, B. (2004), ‘The Beast Must Be Fed’, Columbia Journalism Review, 13 December: https:// www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_beast_must_be_fed.php (accessed1 June 2021).

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Killmeier, M. A. (2001), ‘Voices Between the Tracks: Disk Jockeys, Radio, and Popular Music, 1955–60’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 25 (4): 353–74. DOI:10.1177/0196859901025 004003. Kim, J. and H. Yang (2019), ‘How Does a Radio Host’s Testimonial Influence Media Experiences? The Indirect Effect of Social Presence’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26 (2): 336–50. DOI:10.1080/19376529.2018.1509217. Media Reform Coalition (2021), Lessons from Community Media: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=G4jpPamSc6Q (accessed 17 January 2022). Mitchell, C. (2000), Women and Radio: Airing Differences, London; New York: Routledge. Montgomery, M. (1986), ‘DJ Talk’, Media, Culture & Society 8 (4): 421–40. DOI:10.1177/01634 43786008004004. Moores, S. (2012) Media, Place and Mobility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Moss, P. and C. Higgins (1984), ‘Radio Voices’, Media, Culture & Society 6 (4): 353–75. DOI:10.1177/016344378400600404. Moylan, K. (2018), ‘Accented Radio: Articulations of British Caribbean Experience and Identity in UK Community Radio’, Global Media and Communication 14 (3): 283–99. DOI:10.1177/1742766518780180. Ofcom (2022), ‘List of Community Radio Stations’ 21 January: http://static.ofcom.org.uk/ static/radiolicensing/html/radio-stations/community/community-main.htm (accessed 21 January 2022). Order, S. (2014), ‘Narcissism in Western Australia’s Community Radio Sector’, in M. Oliveira, G. Stachyra and G. Starkey (eds), Radio: The Resilient Medium, Sunderland: University of Sunderland, pp. 139–54. O’Sullivan, S. (2005), ‘“The Whole Nation is Listening to You”: The Presentation of the Self on a Tabloid Talk Radio Show’, Media, Culture & Society 27 (5): 719–38. DOI:10.1177/0163443705055732. Rimmer, A. (2019), Breaking the Silence: Community Radio, Women and Empowerment, Manchester: University of Manchester. Scannell, P. (ed.) (1991), Broadcast Talk, London; New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Schatzki, T. R. (2002), The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schultz, I. (2007), ‘The Journalistic Gut Feeling’, Journalism Practice 1 (2): 190–207. DOI:10.1080/17512780701275507. Scifo, S. (2011), ‘The Origins and Development of Community Radio in Britain Under New Labour (1997–2007)’, PhD Thesis, University of Westminster. Shember-Critchley, E. (2012), Ethnic Minority Radio: Interactions and Identity, Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University. Statista Research Department (2021), ‘Radio Broadcasting Employment in the United Kingdom (UK) 2011–2019’, 8 January: https://www.statista.com/statistics/383593/radiobroadcasting-employment-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ (accessed 17 January 2022). Stern, M. J. and A. S. Fullerton (2009), ‘The Network Structure of Local and Extra-Local Voluntary Participation: The Role of Core Social Networks’, Social Science Quarterly 90 (3): 553–75. Tacchi, J. (2009), ‘Radio and Affective Rhythm in the Everyday’, The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 7 (2): 171–83.

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Theodosiadou, S. (2019), ‘From DJ Talk to Music Journalism’, Social Semiotics 29 (2): 172–85. DOI:10.1080/10350330.2018.1425319. Turow, J. (1974), ‘Talk Show Radio as Interpersonal Communication’, Journal of Broadcasting 18 (2): 171–80. DOI:10.1080/08838157409363732. Watson, R. (2017), Participation and Advocacy in Community Media, De Montfort University, Leicester. Wilson, J. (2000), ‘Volunteering’, Annual Review of Sociology 26 (1): 215–40. DOI:10.1146/ annurev.soc.26.1.215. Wolfenden, H. (2014), ‘“I Know Exactly Who They Are”: Radio Presenters’ Conceptions of Audience’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 12 (1–2): 5–21.

17 Daring to be Different! Ethnic Community Radio as a Space of Inclusion Gloria Khamkar

Introduction I define ethnic community radio as a ‘Space of Inclusion’, where ethnic communities freely cherish their culture and identity. It is a space that showcases difference. It helps shape the existence of ethnic communities by offering them a shared space. It supports them to dare to be different. It creates space to communicate, connect as well as to celebrate culture in their limited and sometimes hostile cultural environment. If the ethnic communities are endorsed and encouraged to utilize the space of inclusion, they can thrive to retain their ethnic cultural identity while assimilating in a multi-cultural society. This chapter is a historical enquiry into the UK’s ethnic community radio as the space of inclusion and community engagement. It is a detailed analysis of the key development stages, including various radio broadcasting trials and the successful Access Radio experiment in 2002 in the UK.

Concept of community radio Community itself is an adaptable notion. It can be defined by geographical boundaries as well as by shared common interests. Hayden Roberts (1979: 11) defines a community ‘as a group of people who, having become aware of a problem – through the tensions caused by it – learn about its circumstances and then form a commonly agreed upon objective to overcome it’. There is no ‘universally accepted definition of the word community as applied to community radio’, although place usually appears on the list as a significant factor; but so are communities of language, ethnicity, gender, generation, sexual orientation, and topic of interest (Browne 2012: 153). Community radio is an independent and non-profit medium

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for public dialogue, which contributes significantly to a pluralistic media sector, alongside commercial and public service radio broadcasting (Reuter et al. 2019). Universities have been pivotal in the early development of radio broadcasting technologies and later in the founding of community radio stations in a number of countries. According to McCain and Lowe (1990: 94), community radio often arises ‘as a response to a perception that commercial radio cannot serve the needs of small populations’. These stations have ‘extended and challenged the range of radio output for listeners and frequently offer a rich and varied content not offered by commercial stations’ (Gordon 2012: 364). It is valued for its ability to correct the distortions inherent in majority-controlled media. How did community radio in the UK start catering to the local communities in general, and ethnic minority communities in particular?

Ethnic community radio According to Stuart Hall (1996: 447), the term ethnicity acknowledges ‘the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity’. Ethnic community media can be defined as the media by and for an ethnic community in their own languages including in English. It can be any sort of media platform such as television, radio, online, print, magazine catering to a specific ethnic community. It could be in one language or it could be bilingual that reaches a very specific community. The content of ethnic media may be focused on the life of a particular ethnic community, the news from a home country, or both. This applies to ethnic radio too. As defined by Stephen Harold Riggins (1992), ethnic minority radio aims to promote the development of cultural identity, be an instrument of participation and inclusion in the development of local life, to increase the flow of information between the population and its institutions and to facilitate learning techniques and methods of communication. Ethnic radio helps its listener community to actively participate in their own radio station’s programming output even more easily compared to other forms of ethnic media. Ethnic radio offers an essential service to communities and plays a central organizing role in community life, it helps people to maintain social networks. This is possible due to the less complicated nature of the medium. It allows its participants to be ordinary people and communicators as against the mainstream radio stations’ professional style of presentation and delivery (Forde et al. 2007; Khamkar 2017). Ethnic minorities in Britain now have a wide choice of media sources, including domestic and overseas-based ones containing major television and web-based sources (Eatwell 2006). It can be seen that these communities are transforming from merely consuming media to collaboratively producing different types of media as per their needs. Community radio can either be produced by and for people in small-scale geographical, interest-based communities or virtual communities. Community media has become a platform to inform audience communities with useful information and entertain them in their own language. It is a platform for discussion and exchanges of ideas within the minority communities as well as between the minority and the majority communities. Given its participatory and

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non-professionalized nature, community media offers a voice to different communities and encourages diversity (Reuter et al. 2019). However, the most inspiring way to understand the success of all kinds of media is to look at the ways in which such media act to include people’s voices as participants, rather than trying to represent their voices as audiences. Ethnic media provides news and information in the audience’s own languages, as well as helping to foster and maintain cultural unity and identity. The ethic radio station is a platform for identifying and analysing problems and their solutions, thereby determining development inputs that truly meet local needs. It facilitates a sense of community cohesion and helps ethnic communities to integrate into the larger society. It reduces as well as increases cultural complexity in terms of a community’s identity-formation process. Media producers and community leaders highlight the role that ethnic media play in fostering this cohesion, believing that they not only play a role in bringing people together and creating harmony between different communities, but are also seen as being at the heart of the community. It seems clear that ethnic groups use media in various ways to simultaneously become parts of and to distance themselves from other groups. Therefore, ethnic community radio becomes part of the media diet of people without necessarily replacing other, existing mass media on offer (Deuze 2006; Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada 2002; Lay and Thomas 2012; Riggins 1992). Forde et al. (2007) refer to it as social glue.

Development of ethnic community radio in the UK So, how did ethnic community radio begin in the UK? To be able to understand the inception of the UK’s community radio, we need to understand the sociocultural factors of the post-war period, which witnessed the beginning of the revolutionary transition. The UK saw a huge surge of migrants from various parts of the world. These migrants were diverse, including Irish, Europeans and people from all over the world, as well as people from the Commonwealth. In the late 1940s, most migrants came from the Caribbean islands, while migration from the Indian sub-continent started after 1950 and peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Castles 2009). Migration of workers from the New Commonwealth (former British colonies in the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent and Africa) was a result of recruitment by London Transport as well as the labour demand due to the industrial labour shortage. These migrants were able to enter freely as British citizens. This phenomenon of migration started to bring in a change to existing British society. This was a unifying experience because it brought different ethnic minority communities together making them part of British society (Hall 1992). However, migration to Britain generated resentment, discrimination and racism in the indigenous population. The ‘coloured migration’ as it was universally called became the focus of growing grassroots racism and political unrest (Husband and

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Chouhan 1985: 272). The question of what to do to counter racial discrimination emerged as a major dilemma in debates about migration and race relations. Racist attitudes in Britain were not uncommon. They were part of the ‘national characteristics of insularity’ and a continuation of attitudes from Britain’s colonial rule, which created a belief within British society that Britons were ‘superior’ to the people they colonized (Jones 1982: 7). The famous provocative ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech delivered in 1986 by the Conservative MP Enoch Powell added to these racial tensions. Powell believed that the Commonwealth migrants would not integrate into British society (Bleich 2003). Powell’s nationalism and outright racism provided a basis for this. Although Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet, his ‘long-term legacy was an encouragement of a narrow white nationalism and suspicion of migrant communities’ (Tomlinson 2008: 24). Therefore, ‘in this hostile atmosphere the possibility of supporting immigrants, helping them to integrate and to develop positive interactions with the host community was extremely difficult’ (Cantle 2008: 35). There was not much recognition that ‘the national life was in fact made up of a complex class system with a plurality of values’ (Tomlinson 2008: 25). Thus, a general consensus developed throughout all levels in England, which regarded ‘further coloured immigration as an anathema and viewed the current coloured population as representing a problem’ (Husband 1975: 18). By the late 1960s, the realities of colour and cultural differences had penetrated official thinking and a language of ‘integration and pluralism had superseded assimilation’ (Tomlinson 2008: 25). The Race Relations Act of 1968 had been instrumental in introducing new measures to improve community relations through the establishment of the Community Relations Commission (CRC), with a network of local Community Relations Councils. The Act had at least begun to recognize that Britain had become ‘a multicultural community and that, as a consequence, the host community and the minority communities had to establish a rapport’ (Cantle 2008: 36). The CRC was now in a position to pull together the practical measures in order to aim for integration.

Race relations and tensions There was an obvious need for having radio programmes to serve immigrant communities. Ethnic radio broadcasting helps to break down stereotypes about ethnic community in the non-ethnic population. It plays an important role in cross-cultural dialogue (Khamkar 2017; Forde et al. 2007). However, it also brings along challenges in terms of the relationship between immigrant communities and media. This was the case in the UK too. The first worrisome issue was the misrepresentation of immigrants in the media and the second issue was the limited possibility this community had to use the media as a platform to assimilate in their new country of arrival. There were no language radio programmes targeted at immigrant listener communities, which they desperately needed to acquire information and advice related to their daily life while settling in the UK. This was especially necessary for the first generation of immigrants for whom English was not their first language. It was also crucial for many immigrants who could speak English fluently and confidently

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but longed for their mother-tongue language radio programmes as cultural reinforcement. Hence, having ethnic language radio programmes became a necessity. Ethnic radio broadcasting was not only relevant for the ethnic minority communities, but also pertinent for the host society. The objective of the ethnic radio broadcasting was twofold: to integrate the ethnic minority listener communities, and to educate the wider British society about their new neighbours. The aim was to improve race relations. The major theme of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theoretical framework (Vygotsky 1978) is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotskian thinking indicates that the origin of knowledge construction should not be sought in the mind but in the social interaction co-constructed between a more and a less knowledgeable individual (Lantolf and Thorne 2006). This equation was applied while identifying the importance of ethnic radio medium in the UK during this time. There was not much recognition of the diversity and plurality of values that existed in British society in the 1960s. Therefore, a general consensus developed throughout all levels which regarded migration as a ‘problem’ (Husband 1975: 18). For a tolerant, diverse society like Britain, there needed to be an understanding amongst the communities in the society. Good race relations and equality of opportunity depended on the foundation of tolerance towards ethnic minorities from the majority community. At this point, the British government began to put pressure on the BBC to create programming output that could help reduce the race relations tension and support the assimilation practice of the ethnic minority communities. Initially the BBC was not convinced about creating separate provision for the ethnic communities due to a fear of possible racial conflicts and tensions. However, the government continued to lobby for ethnic radio programmes. It realized the potential of this powerful medium to facilitate the integration of ethnic communities as well as to educate British society more sympathetically through multi-cultural education through the media and education sector. In multi-ethnic societies, media plays a significant role in educating both the minority and the majority population; the aim of the government was to use radio to play this role. During this period, the BBC had begun to appreciate the potential of a local radio service to include radio programmes specifically aimed at migrant communities to help them integrate and understand British life and culture (Khamkar 2017; Lewis and Booth 1989). This was an indication that centrally the BBC was attempting to coordinate its provision to make sure it accurately reflected local needs and demands and not just the prejudices of the station managers through its local radio stations during the 1960s and 1970s. Hence, there was a shift towards more integration across output within the BBC. The BBC considered that it had a particular duty to represent and serve ethnic minority audiences. Thus, the BBC started catering to ethnic minority communities through its radio output, either in the languages spoken by the migrants or in English. However, there was a growing sense that the ethnic minority communities were not generally well represented on mainstream radio. In multi-ethnic societies, media could have the potential to ‘manipulate and, indeed, generate conflict between ethnic minorities and the indigenous population and in this way either encourage the integration of ethnic minorities into society or force them to isolate themselves’ (Anwar 1978: 9). These

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concerns could be negated through the actual participation of ethnic minorities in broadcasting. When ethnic minority communities are employed in media organizations, they themselves are in control, more or less, in portraying the real, and not stereotyped, image of ethnic minority communities. Thus, there was a frustration growing within the industry and within the listener communities, especially amongst the ethnic minorities, about the lack of representation and mis-representation on mainstream media, including radio. During the 1980s, the Black and Asian population of Britain reached over two million people. The Black, Asian and other ethnic communities were becoming increasingly critical of their perceived marginalization in the media, which was alienating the communities they were supposed to address. Racial tensions were visibly rising. In April 1981, Britain saw the worst urban riots in modern British history in Brixton in South London. The Brixton riot of 1981 was a confrontation between the Metropolitan Police and protesters in Lambeth in South London that involved up to 5,000 people in the area. The Brixton disturbances arose because many members of the Black community felt they were being excessively racially targeted by the police. Lord Scarman led an inquiry into the events in Brixton, calling it the worst outbreak of disorder in the UK to date. The report of Lord Scarman’s inquiry was published on 26 November. The report concluded that racial disadvantage was a fact of British life and urgent action was needed if it was not to become endemic and threatening to society (Cook 2021). The report elicited a remarkably swift response from the government. It led to the introduction of many measures to improve trust and understanding between the police and ethnic minority communities and to prevent large-scale uprisings in the inner cities. One significant development was the designation of a specific minister – Sir George Young – as Britain’s first Minister for Race Relations (Young 1982). Although the minister responsible for solving the problems faced by Black communities in Britain’s cities started many initiatives, there was anger, disagreement and confusion among those involved in what had become known as the ‘race relations industry’ as successive governments were apparently reluctant to take a convincing lead in race relations work, and were insulating the politicians from the needs of the people; they were more interested in immigration control than in racial harmony. At this time, a number of bodies, including the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), lobbied for a major reorganization of the administration of race relations policies and for a stronger central government lead (Solomos 1989). As a result, the Broadcasting Research Unit (BRU) carried out a research survey in the Greater London area between January and April 1985. In this survey, geographical, ethnic-based and interest-based communities were recognized and two attitudes towards community radio emerged: exclusive and inclusive. The exclusive attitude imagined each group of interest having its own station, the inclusive attitude envisaged integration and the sense of belonging in each community (Scifo 2011). At the same time, radio broadcasting piracy had a strong increase. Ethnic minorities such as Asians, Greeks and West Indians managed to start successful radio stations that attracted funding from their own ethnic group’s businesses in the mid-1980s. This successful involvement of these smaller stations in their local communities in the early years of BBC local radio and of Independent Local

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Radio (ILR) was one of the reasons for the slow recognition of the case for community radio in the minds of the authorities. However, the abandonment of this involvement by mainstream radio later provided a strong part of the rationale for the campaigners for a community radio sector (Lewis and Booth 1989).

Amplification of the concept of community radio By 1979, the Community Communications Group – COMCOM as it became known, had drawn up a Community Broadcasting Charter, which described the function, process and structural aims of community radio. According to this Charter, Community Broadcasting needed to serve recognizably local communities and/or communities of interest. It needed to have a non-profit distributing nature, having its general management and programming policy made by a governing board. This would be democratically representative of the various interests in the community and thus provide, with this democratic, non-profit structure, a service of information, education and entertainment. It would enable the twoway communication of diverse opinions; it would also provide equal opportunities for women, and for ethnic and other significant social minorities in its programming as well as its employment policy (Partridge 1982). The intention of this community radio concept was that there would be a minimum of regulation on these stations. By the mid-1980s, interest in community radio was such that the Conservative government allowed for a network of experimental stations using low-powered VHF transmitters. This idea, too, undoubtedly resulted from pressure within the community media movement. Drawing together the existing community radio operators – student and hospital closed-circuit networks and radio workshops for example, the Community Radio Association used several conferences and feasibility studies to highlight the benefits of non-commercial community radio (Hind and Mosco 1985; Shingler and Wieringa 1998). Thus, during this time, the community radio lobby had intensified. The Home Office had started receiving many representations calling for a community service. As a result, by 1984 the government appeared keen to introduce what would be a new third tier of radio licensing in the UK ‘which would have established a new tier of deregulated commercial stations, operated for an experimental period by the Home Office, not the IBA [Independent Broadcasting Authority]’ (O’Malley 1988: 39). In July 1985, Leon Brittan, a Conservative MP and Home Secretary at this time, announced plans for an initial twenty-one community radio stations, ranging from the Shetland Isles to five stations in London, for what was to begin as a two-year experiment. The Home Office received a total of 245 applications for the twenty-one licences by the revised closing date of 31 October 1985. The number and quality of applications suggested a strong potential for services that appealed to very local or specialized interests; for example, services which met the needs of the local community including the ethnic minority communities, or those for whom English was a second language. The applications

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suggested that there was a demand. A panel was set up to select the first stations, which submitted their recommendations to the Home Secretary early in 1986. However, there was a silence for a few months. It was rumoured that there was a division within the cabinet and opposition from the Foreign Office, having concerns over the public order aspect of community radio and about broadcasting by enemies of the state (Stoller 2010; Wray 2009). Consequently, Douglas Hurd, who had taken over as Home Secretary in September 1985, issued the announcement accordingly in June 1986. The project did not continue. The community radio campaigners were outraged, calling it ‘an example of insensitive political incompetence by the government. To start a scheme, to encourage widespread participation and then, on dubious grounds, ditch the whole effort at the last moment is almost incredible’ (Stoller 2010: 10). At the same time, a number of would-be radio station owners were pressing the government for a change in the licensing process and rules, so that they could provide more generic or locally focused commercially funded radio services. Under the pressure to respond to this demand, the IBA’s Radio Division came up with the idea of an experiment of additional radio services. This new form of community radio service was called incremental radio stations (Blackmore 1989; Brown 1988; McCain and Lowe 1990; Stoller 2010). Since these new stations ‘would increase choice, they would be referred to as “incremental” stations’ (Starkey 2015: 114). These were additional radio stations in the areas where independent local radio stations already existed, and not only that, but strongly too. By December 1988, the IBA received approval from the Radio Authority for the advertisement of a total of twenty-one licences. Some of the biggest ethnic communities in England such as Asians, Greeks and West Indians applied for the incremental radio contracts. Apna Radio, Eastern Melody, Midland Asian Community Radio, Multi Sound Radio, Sound of Bradford Ltd. were amongst the applicants for the incremental radio contracts who received tremendous support and recommendations from the local community members as well as from the local politicians to start community radio services.1 Some of these ethnic minority community applicants were later successful in starting radio stations that attracted funding from their own ethnic group’s businesses (Lewis and Booth 1989). A total of 266 applications were received. The IBA awarded twenty-one incremental radio licences across the country. Sunrise Radio was launched in November 1989 to broadcast first for West London’s Asian community, then across Greater London and the Midlands. It was the first twentyfour-hour Asian radio station to begin in Britain. London Greek Radio (LGR) got a licence for North London. On the AM dial, Spectrum International, a multicultural station, formed by activists of different ethnic communities, got a licence in June 1990 (Scifo 2011). The incremental contracts awarded in 1989 included stations directed both at specific ethnic minority audiences, such as Sunrise Radio and LGR and others with a more multi-ethnic, multicultural approach, notably Spectrum Radio, with a remit to serve a number of different ethnic groups in Greater London on a time-share basis and Harmony Radio in Coventry. Others, such as Choice FM in Brixton and Sunset Radio in Manchester, were aimed primarily at African–Caribbean listeners but also attracted a younger white audience through their music content.

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Another development that strongly facilitated ethnic community radio broadcasting was of the Restricted Service Licences (RSL). In 1991, the Radio Authority developed mostly ‘short-term’ Restricted Service Licences (Stoller 2010: 160). These RSL licences permitted local groups to broadcast to a very small geographical area, through low power transmitters, for a short period of time and were used by students, groups of ethnic minority communities, or by the arts or religious groups to run the stations usually for four weeks or so, often coinciding with a local event or festival (Street 2009). This new sector of RSL radio services became an established independent short-term local radio sector, having a ground-breaking effect on ethnic and local radio broadcasting.

Re-emerging community radio movement Community radio campaigners and unregulated radio station activists were constantly battling ‘against the regulatory and technical constraints’ (Lewis 2008: 7). Though the Conservative government abandoned the plans for a community radio experiment in the late 1980s even before the services had commenced, the idea of community radio re-emerged on the policy agenda after the 1997 election of the Labour government. The effort to establish an independent community radio sector had been ‘undermined by the extremism of its proponents, which marginalized it from the seventies onwards, and then let down by its supporters in the government when they abandoned the community radio experiment in 1986’ (Stoller 2010: 313). In the early 2000s, the idea of Access Radio – Community Radio – was again being discussed. The agreed-upon definition of a community radio service was that of a station run as a small-scale neighbourhood project, either as a community of geography or interest. The idea of this potential Access Radio was completely different from the mainstream radio services at that time. Access Radio was to be a third tier of services, essentially distinctive from existing BBC and ILR stations. Therefore, in June 2000, the Radio Authority approached this new idea with enthusiasm and recommended to the government an experiment with Access Radio as a precursor to establishing the full-scale third tier of community radio. The government recommended this pilot project. As the government was fully convinced of the potential of this concept of Access Radio, it announced the setting up of community radio stations as a pilot scheme for a period of one year in 2001. As a result, the Radio Authority introduced the Access Radio project in its pilot phase, which later became an official community radio sector in the UK. It established a sub-committee, which worked along with Radio Authority’s staff Tony Stoller and Susan Williams to scrutinize these applications on the lines of the Radio Authority’s previously discussed principles for the potential community radio services. Out of these applications, a total of sixteen applicants were chosen as the Access Radio Pilot group covering the whole of the UK. These stations were urban and rural, religious and ethnic, mainstream and marginal, both on FM and AM and also both on a full-time and short-time basis.

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The Access Radio project was launched in August 2002 initially with a year-long licence. Access Radio provided an opportunity for ethnic community groups to test the waters to see if they would be able to sustain a regular independent radio service in future. These community groups were feeling themselves ‘to be marginalized by most of the mainstream media and welcomed the opportunity provided by Access Radio’ (Everitt 2003: 44). This pilot project included several ethnic community radio services such as Awaz FM in Glasgow, Desi Radio in Southall and Radio Faza in Nottingham (Everitt 2003; Stoller 2010; Street 2006). Awaz FM saw itself ‘as a much-needed channel of communication between Glasgow’s Asian community and the public and voluntary sectors’ (Everitt 2003: 44). Desi Radio wanted ‘to reconcile the different religious and social strands of Punjabi culture in Southall’ (Stoller 2010: 322). Radio Faza in Nottingham was an alliance between the Asian Women’s Project and the Karimia Institute. These two community organizations came together to run this radio station under the Access Radio project in partnership. This service aimed to help community development, by addressing the social and economic exclusion of migrant women from society and mainstream services through positive action (Everitt 2003).

Space of inclusion The Access Radio project was intended to serve the local community by creating spaces of inclusion and by making the provision of sound broadcasting services to individuals who were otherwise underserved by such services. It created spaces of inclusion for facilitating discussion and the expression of opinion. It created space of inclusion by making a provision, either by means of its programmes or otherwise, of education or training to individuals. The project created space of inclusion by encouraging better understanding of the ethnic communities and by strengthening links within themselves. These very local communitybased radio services had potential to encourage active community involvement and social inclusion. They all were successful in their own ways. Most of these pilots later continued to broadcast as community radio stations. This experiment was intended ‘to test the sustainability of a separate tier of small-scale community radio services’ (Everitt 2003: 4). Notably, the Access Radio project helped in encouraging communities and volunteers to use their own language and style, who were otherwise not comfortable using radio due to linguistic constraints. Those who were ‘disempowered and disheartened’ due to their inability to be fluent and confident in expressing themselves benefitted from this project. Everitt (2003: 6) emphasizes that ‘many languages, especially from the Middle East and the Asian sub-continent, which are seldom heard on radio in the United Kingdom, have been accorded substantial air-time’. For ethnic communities, community radio cannot be constrained as a tool of entertainment in their own language, but can also be a means of education and information, which can lead to their development. It is a medium of participatory communication. As Meadows and Foxwell (2011) state, these culturally diverse local broadcasting services

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have the potential to play a significant role in reaching specific audiences for specific purposes, including providing information that might contribute to improving the state of community emotional and social well-being. Therefore, community radio has the potential to act as a tool for social development. Similarly, the aim of Access Radio was to assist the social integration process, which later remained the significant feature of the thirdtier broadcasting service of community radio. The concept of social gain ‘had appeared in the original Radio Authority submission to the government’, and later, after testing it in the Access Radio pilot project, it was ‘cherished in the parliamentary order that enabled the start of community radio’ (Stoller 2010: 321). The Access Radio project also highlighted an important new aspect of communities of interest, which was lacking until then in the radio medium. Radio had always concentrated on the aspect of communities of place, either nationally or locally. Radio’s listener community was defined by the physical space that it occupied in the 1960s and 1970s by the community development pioneers. This pilot project adopted both of these approaches – communities of interest and communities of place. Therefore, it also reflected the cultural diversity within wider British society. The sound-broadcasting spectrum needed to be utilized for specific social gain, especially in areas of ethnic, cultural and social deprivation (Everitt 2003). In March 2003, Anthony Everitt produced a report, New Voices that was an evaluation of fifteen Access Radio projects. Everitt stated very strongly and favourably ‘this is not radio simply for the people, but by the people’ (Stoller 2010: 324). Everitt (2003: 8) claimed that ‘Access Radio promises to be a positive cultural and social development and should be introduced as a third tier of radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom.’ It can be emphasized that the similar issues of access, participation, representation, training, employability, social exclusion, social gain, social development, linguistic expression, self-confidence, community spirit and a need for a separate independent notfor-profit community-oriented radio platform were being identified and discussed by the community radio campaigners, British and ethnic community radio enthusiasts and race advocacy organizations from the 1960s (Khamkar 2017). Through its consistent efforts to promote and foster good race relations and equal opportunities in multicultural Britain by making a positive use of radio, the CRE had published a report that recommended that a greater diversity of representation was needed on local radio advisory councils and that the location of any new stations should reflect the concentration of ethnic populations. Everitt identified similar needs and notions in his evaluation report (2003). The need for better access, participation, representation on radio, and thus the need for having a separate, independent radio platform for the ethnic listener community was consistently identified and expressed during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and it was still relevant in the 2000s. Everitt in his evaluation predicted that this third tier of British radio would ultimately prove itself to be ‘one of the most important cultural developments in this country for many years’ (Everitt 2003: 3). Everitt recommended ‘Access Radio should become a permanent third tier of not-for-profit radio for communities in the UK’ (Stoller 2010: 323). The Access Radio experiment demonstrated the ability of regulators and broadcasters to innovate and experiment. Everitt’s recommendations became the basis for the 2004 Community Radio Order and its implementation by the current regulatory body, Ofcom.

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In 2004, after over twenty-five years of campaigning by grass roots and specialist interest groups, the first full-time licenses were advertised by Ofcom, to run for five years. This was a shift from Access Radio to Community Radio. This was ‘radio as social action once again, mirroring in a new time the aspirations of independent radio in the seventies and eighties’ (Stoller 2010: 325). The Radio Authority introduced the Access Radio project in its pilot phase, which later became an official community radio sector. The agreed-upon definition of a community service was that of a station run as a smallscale neighbourhood project, either as a community of geography or interest. It received a massive response of nearly 200 submissions to its invitation for licence applications. Out of those, sixteen groups were chosen as the Access Radio Pilot group covering the whole of the UK (Street 2009). Everitt evaluated this project positively and his recommendations became the basis for the 2004 Community Radio Order and its implementation by the current regulatory body, Ofcom – Office of Communications. This was the beginning of the ethnic community radio wave in the UK. As of February 2022, Ofcom has licensed more than 300 radio stations, including ethnic community radio stations catering specifically to the ethnic communities of the UK. Unity FM in Birmingham for the Muslim community, Unity101 in Southampton for the Asian and ethnic community, and Kohinoor FM in Leicester for the Punjabi community are some examples of the UK’s successful ethnic community radio services.

Continuing relevance of ethnic community radio Community media, which includes ethnic community radio, connect individuals and communities. They are considered as ‘a meeting ground where citizens engage in broader media landscapes and contribute to a more colorful and pluralistic media ecology’ (Purkarthofer 2018: 59). While mainstream media tend to mask the mutually dependent character of social relations and community engagement, community media work to uncover this vital facet of human communities (Howley 2009). Ethnic community radio enables ethnic-minority listener communities to build harmonious race relations and community cohesion through its shared space of inclusion. When our lives are constantly influenced by the moving population and migration, we must accept the basic requirement of mutual dependencies within our local communities. Given the complex process of migration, relocation, interaction and integration among people, we have a critical relationship with our neighbours, people across town and city. The Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) is a European umbrella organization. It actively lobbies for community media at a European level. It emphasizes the social value of community media ‘as a source of local content, cultural and linguistic diversity, media pluralism, inclusion and intercultural dialogue and recommend that member states give legal recognition, access to spectrum (analogue and digital) and funding to the sector’ (Purkarthofer 2018: 60).

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One can argue that the importance of a place to belong to and the space of inclusion are irrelevant in an era of the World Wide Web and thus losing their significance. Modern communication systems are enabling geographically dispersed communities to interact with a sense of intimacy and immediacy as never before (Howley 2009). Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Joshua Meyrowitz (1986) makes a compelling argument that media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is with us. Although this is true to some extent, this cannot detract from the importance and relevance of ethnic community radio platforms in providing a space for inclusion. Space and places still have enormous relevance to human existence and experience. Migration and relocation movements intensify their significance in our everyday lives. Space provides a foundation for individual and community identity formation. It contributes to shaping our sense of an individual as well as of community sharing common interests, beliefs, culture and characteristics. Ethnic community radio provides such shared sense of place and space through its mother-tongue or English language programming output for local communities. It is a common shared space for inclusion and communication within a local community, which contributes towards a great sense of belonging to that place and space. Therefore, the relevance of ethnic community radio is much greater than before in today’s multicultural UK and Europe, which has been a continual destination for immigrants, refugees and re-settlers.

Note 1

IBA Archive file: A/D/0480/28: 1989, A/D/0474/34: 1989.

Works cited Anwar, M. (1978), Who Tunes in to What: A Report on Ethnic Minority Broadcasting, London: Commission for Racial Equality. Blackmore, T. (1989), ‘A Quiet Revolution’, Airwaves (Quarterly Journal of the IBA) Spring: 7. Bleich, E. (2003), Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking since the 1960s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P. (1988), Action Stations. Airwaves (Quarterly Journal of the IBA) Winter 1988–9: 19. Browne, D. (2012), ‘What is “Community” in Community Radio? A Consideration of the Meaning, Nature and Importance of a Concept’, in J. Gordon (ed.), Community Radio in the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 153–73. Cantle, T. (2008), Community Cohesion: A New Framework for Race and Diversity, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Castles, S. (2009), Indians in Britain, Presentation at the International Conference on ‘India–EU Partnerships in Mobility: Data, Agreements, and Policy in International Migration’, February 21–23, 2009: IMDS Working Paper Series, New Delhi, India.

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Commission for Racial Equality (1988), Annual Report 1987, London: CRE. Cook, S. (2021), ‘Scarman Report into Brixton Riots Published – Archive, 1981’, Guardian, 26 November: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/26/scarman-report-intobrixton-riots-published-archive-1981 (accessed 18 February 2022). Deuze, M. (2006), ‘Ethnic Media, Community Media and Participatory Culture’, Journalism 7 (3): 262–80. Eatwell, R. (2006), ‘Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in Contemporary Britain’, The Political Quarterly 77 (2): 204–16. Everitt, A. (2003), New Voices – An Evaluation of 15 Access Radio Projects, London: Radio Authority. Forde, S., J. Ewart, K. Foxwell and M. Meadows (2007), Community Media Matters: An Audience Study of the Australian Community Broadcasting Sector, Brisbane: Griffith University. Fraser, C. and S. Restrepo-Estrada (2002), ‘Community Radio for Change and Development’, Development 45 (4): 69–73. Gordon, J., ed. (2012), Community Radio in the Twenty-First Century, New York: Peter Lang. Hall, S. (1992), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds), Modernity and Its Futures, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 274–316. Hall, S. (1996), ‘New Ethnicities’, in K. H. Chen and D. Morley (eds), Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 442–51. Hind, J. and S. Mosco (1985), Rebel Radio: The Full Story of British Pirate Radio, London: Pluto. Howley, K., ed. (2009), Understanding Community Media, London: Sage Publications. Husband, C. (1975), ‘Racism in Society and the Mass Media: A Critical Interaction’, in C. Husband (ed.), White Media and Black Britain, London: Arrow Books, pp. 15–38. Husband, C. and J. Chouhan (1985), ‘Local Radio in the Communication Environment of Ethnic Minorities in Britain’, in T. A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse and Communication: New Approaches to the Analysis of Media Discourse and Communication, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 270–94. Jones, C. (1982), Race and the Media: Thirty Years’ Misunderstanding (No. 1), London: Commission for Racial Equality. Khamkar, G. (2017), ‘The Evolution of British Asian Radio in England: 1960–2004’, PhD Thesis, Bournemouth University. Lantolf, J. and S. Thorne (2006), Sociocultural Theory and Genesis of Second Language Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lay, S. and L. Thomas (2012), ‘Ethnic Minority Media in London: Transition and Transformation’, Media, Culture & Society 34 (3): 369–80. Lewis, P. (2008), ‘Finding and Funding Voices: The London Experience’, Information, Society and Justice Journal 2 (1): 5–20. Lewis, P. and J. Booth (1989), The Invisible Medium: Public, Commercial and Community Radio, Basingstoke: Macmillan. McCain, T. and G. Lowe (1990), ‘Localism in Western European Radio Broadcasting: Untangling the Wireless’, Journal of Communication 40 (1): 86–101. Meadows, M. and K. Foxwell (2011), ‘Community Broadcasting and Mental Health: The Role of Local Radio and Television in Enhancing Emotional and Social Well-Being’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 9 (2): 89–106.

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Meyrowitz, J. (1986), No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, New York: Oxford University Press. Ofcom (2022), ‘Community Radio Stations’, Ofcom: http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/ radiolicensing/html/radio-stations/community/community-main.htm (accessed 25 February 2022). O’Malley, T. (1988), Switching Channels: The Debate over the Future of Broadcasting, London: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. Partridge, S. (1982), NOT the BBC/IBA: The Case for Community Radio, London: Comedia Publishing Group. Purkarthofer, J. (2018), ‘You Can’t Tell My Story for Me! Community Media as a Means of Expression in Multilingual Local and Globalized Contexts’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 59–64. Reuter, A., T. Bartindale, K. Morrissey, T. Scharf and J. Liddle (2019), ‘Older Voices: Supporting Community Radio Production for Civic Participation in Later Life’, in Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 1–13. Riggins, S. (1992), Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective, London: Sage. Roberts, H. (1979), Community Development: Learning and Action, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Scifo, S. (2011), ‘The Origins and Development of Community Radio in Britain under New Labour (1997–2007)’, PhD Thesis, University of Westminster. Shingler, M. and C. Wieringa (1998), On Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio, London: Arnold. Solomos, J. (1989), From Equal Opportunity to Anti-Racism: Racial Inequality and the Limits of Reform (No. 17), Coventry: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations: University of Warwick. Starkey, G. (2015), Local Radio, Going Global, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Stoller, T. (2010), Sounds of Your Life: The Rise and Fall of Independent Radio in the UK, New Barnet: John Libbey. Street, S. (2006), Historical Dictionary of British Radio, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Street, S. (2009), The A to Z of British Radio (Vol. 64), Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Tomlinson, S. (2008), Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978), Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wray, E. (2009), ‘Commercial Radio in Britain Before the 1990s: An Investigation of the Relationship Between Programming and Regulation’, PhD Thesis, Bournemouth University. Young, K. (1982), ‘An Agenda for Sir George: Local Authorities and the Promotion of Racial Equality’, Policy Studies 3 (1): 54–70.

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18 The Changing Context of Community Radio Lawrie Hallett

Introduction The modern-day concept of community radio, as a subset of wider community media (sometimes referred to as alternative media), relates to an international phenomenon with roots dating back to the immediate post-war period. Over time, its objectives and defining characteristics have evolved through practice and have gradually come to be codified though the work of a combination of practitioners, academics and regulators. Predating the digital and social media era (see Lewis 1984), community radio, particularly in the twenty-first century, has witnessed not only a variety of evolving challenges, but also a range of emerging opportunities within a changing media landscape. Here, the inter-relationships between community radio and society are considered, particularly in relation to how community services can justify their existence through the provision of a broad range of community benefits. This chapter also considers the relationship between community radio and other forms of broadcast radio. It summarizes the evolution and wider positioning of the sector and considers a number of issues of relevance to today’s community broadcasting services, including economic viability, and the challenges and opportunities resulting from digitization and multi-platform operations. Today, around the world, community radio takes various forms and is regulated in a variety of ways. However, there are some key, broadly universal, regulatory concepts that underpin the sector as a whole. In recognition of the international nature of community radio, the World Association of Community Radio (known internationally by its French acronym, AMARC) has been active in the field of supporting the sector since its foundation in 1983; indeed, it has been instrumental in codifying what the term ‘community radio’ means both in theory and in practice. Just as with public service broadcasting (PSB), community radio’s role is defined by objectives that extend well beyond mere broadcasting alone. At the heart of community

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radio practice is the notion of improving people’s lives, not only in terms of providing opportunities for individuals, but also, more broadly, through the involvement in, and improvement of, community structures and processes, with the intention of enhancing community capacity and cohesion. In essence community radio can be thought of as a tool for development, delivering community benefits and in pursuit of positive change. Understanding the changing context within which community radio services operate is therefore an essential prerequisite, needed to facilitate clear understandings of the current nature and position of the sector. Examining this operational context is the overarching remit of this chapter. It can be considered from three perspectives, those of: the broader socio-political environment; the relevant policy regime; and the available technological framework(s). In general terms, these three perspectives can be thought of as being on a continuum that shifts from the general to the specific, moving from wider societal considerations to narrower industry-specific ones. Breaking down the context in this way allows particular impacts on community radio services to be explored in useful detail as this chapter attempts to do. However, before addressing such explorations it is helpful to consider one further element of context, that being the historical, specifically in relation to why and how community radio emerged as the, so-called, ‘third-sector’ of broadcasting. In light of the above, this chapter begins by very briefly summarizing relevant history before not only examining some theoretical approaches to community media itself, but also by considering the wider theoretical concepts of media development (sometimes referred to as ‘MD’) and media for development (sometimes referred to as ‘M4D’). It argues that the framework of these approaches, intersecting with the notion of participatory communication, can be used to contextualize the operational structures and practices of community radio regardless of the perceived state of ‘development’ prevalent where such services operate. As Sonia Livingstone observed as far back as 2004, arguably, it is not enough to take a purely media-centric view of individual media – understanding their broader role in society is important too: ‘When considering how the medium matters – is the message, perhaps – the medium must not be understood solely in terms of technology, it must also be “read” in cultural and political terms’ (Livingstone 2004:11).

A (very brief) historical overview This chapter does not attempt to trace the history of community radio – to do so would be, at the very least, to create a chapter in its own right! As Gretchen King notes in her wideranging history of community radio: Existing research on the history of community radio starts in different places and time periods. Some scholars define the beginnings of community radio practices geographically,

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while others begin in specific communities, and more recent historical work focuses on the policies that regulate community broadcasting. (King 2017: 19)

Perceived wisdom has tended to trace the origins of community radio back to the immediate post-war period of the late 1940s and early 1950s with the Americas being considered the birthplace of the concept (see, for example, Lewis 1984). Radio Sutatenza (1947, Columbia) and Radio Mineras (1949, Bolivia) as well as the first Pacifica network station, KPFA in New York (also 1949) are often-cited examples of early community radio services. Simon Partridge, an early advocate of such services, suggests that the term itself was first used in 1965, within a paper entitled ‘Possibilities for Local Radio’ by Rachel Powell (Partridge 1982: 10). Histories examining broadcast radio prior to the Second World War have tended to depict the medium as comprising two distinct sectors, those being for-profit commercial concerns, alongside their non-commercial PSB counterparts. However, such binary categorizations of early radio broadcasting are perhaps best considered as being neat rather than accurate, since they singularly fail to account for a wide range of unlicensed broadcasting activities, not to mention student and hospital radio services that came into existence early on. Indeed, King’s brief history of community radio notes, as but one example, the continued existence of CFRC in Kingston, Ontario, a campus-based radio station (King 2017), which began broadcasting as early as 1923. Other examples of early broadcasting which fell outside the parameters of the commercial/PSB duopoly model are numerous; for example, including amateur broadcasting (as opposed to amateur radio) activities in the mid-1930s, one example from Norwich (UK) even being captured on film at the time (British Pathé News 1934). In some parts of the world there also existed some examples of unlicensed broadcasting that might be considered to have possessed limited ‘community-esque’ characteristics and, because of technological limitations, the earliest of all broadcast radio stations in the early 1920s were intrinsically limited to the provision of local-only coverage. As with many new technologies, the first few decades of broadcasting were characterized by a combination of rapid expansion and experimentation. From the 1920s to at least the 1960s radio broadcasting was a major element of the international cultural zeitgeist. What we now term community radio emerged over this period with similar approaches evolving in different locations as stations and audiences sought to explore liminal areas around mainstream concepts of radio broadcasting. Gradually, an increasing recognition of compatible structures and aspirations began to coalesce into a set of broadly agreed norms and practices. By 1994, this process had reached a point at which the European wing of AMARC Europe was able to agree a ten-point charter, ‘The AMARC Community Radio Charter for Europe’ (AMARC Europe 1994), which remains in use today (AMARC 2022). Amongst other things, this document calls for community radio services to be independent, to operate on a not-for-profit basis, to serve a defined community, to have ownership representative of that target community and to promote the right to communicate. For example the Republic of Ireland has chosen to import directly the AMARC Europe code into legislation, other

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jurisdictions have chosen to broadly adopt its fundamental principles, but through the application of locally developed frameworks. Recognition of the sector and its objectives was central to early campaigning; however, some of the other challenges faced by community radio might be considered as being driven by technological factors. For example, throughout the majority of the twentieth century the political battle over access to limited FM or AM frequencies was key to almost all community radio operations. Today, however, in many jurisdictions, such scarcity is rapidly becoming immaterial as additional digital broadcasting capacity becomes available and other, typically less regulated, delivery channels increasingly become mainstream. It might be argued that, at least where the sector is recognized, the challenge for today’s community broadcasters is as much about the economics of ensuring availability and viability across multiple-broadcast and non-broadcast platforms as it is about official recognition, legislation and regulation. If adapting to changing consumption habits and platform use by listeners is essential for the future success of the community radio sector, equally, if not more important, is the task of maintaining the relevance of the sector through its unique ‘rhizomatic’ qualities and consequent abilities, which are explored later in this chapter. The ‘narrowcasting’ approach of the community radio sector, with its specific foci on communities of place and communities of interest, offers the potential for its services to develop levels of interaction with target communities that public service and commercially driven models are either unable or unwilling to achieve. The sector’s potential in this respect is underpinned by those key, broadly universal, regulatory concepts referred to above. However, there is no doubt that some of these requirements, such as providing benefits for members of the target community (in the UK context, through the delivery of ‘social gain’) and not-for-profit operation, can result in economic and operational challenges and, consequently, lead to calls from some within the sector for a relaxation in the rules governing its activities. The risk, it is argued here, is of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. The very requirements that some see as limiting the financial viability (or, indeed, commercial freedoms) of community radio are also fundamental to the underpinning of the sector’s unique position and as bulwarks against political and commercial interference. Finally, in this introduction, it is perhaps useful to note from the outset that the emergence of community radio in the UK occurred somewhat later than it did in many other jurisdictions. Whilst this chapter does draw upon the British experience, it also attempts to consider community radio within a broader international context, in the hope that elements of the materials provided may have as wide a relevance as possible.

Defining and positioning community radio Definitions of community radio are concerned with the attributes of such services but are also framed by its positioning within wider media and within society as a whole. Such definitions can also be framed in relation to what community radio is not, that is to say in relation to the differences between it, public service broadcasting (PSB) and commercial radio.

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As Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone observe ‘a key feature of community radio is its diversity of forms’ (2012: 161) and there is no doubting that the community radio sector comprises a broad range of services, varying from place to place and from community to community in order to meet specific community needs. Being ‘generally driven by a positive vision of media produced by the people for the people’ (ibid.), it is: ‘Different from both commercial and public service radio … it is socially embedded in particular ways’ (ibid.). These include specific locales (towns, cities or rural areas), or dispersed groups with a common interest or identity (often, ethnic or linguistic minorities) or short-lived channels developed for particular purposes (for example Radio Ramadhan [sic], radio stations for music festivals) or, last, a specific institution such as a hospital or university. (ibid.)

Over the years, a great deal has been written on the topic and, perhaps not surprisingly for such a diverse sector, the range of definitions that have emerged is somewhat broad. Here then, it is perhaps useful to establish a baseline of principles that are generally accepted as being integral to the concept of community-based broadcasting. At the international level, UNESCO, drawing heavily on earlier work by AMARC, provides a relatively simple, but useful, baseline definition of community broadcasting, arguing that it is based on three guiding principles: ●

●

●

Independence: Not-for-profit in nature and independent of government and commercial forces. Governance: Owned and/or managed by the community, who participate in policy, programming and operations. Service: They focus on issues of local concern and represent the interests of all in the community (Unesco Policy Brief).

The organization observes that there is ‘no universally approved definition of community broadcasting, in part due to the huge range of different “on-the-ground” situations around the world’ (ibid. n.p.). It also notes, however, that any locally applied definition ‘should be designed to ensure that the sector which evolves from it will serve the goals for which it is being recognised’ (ibid.: n.p.). If community radio is to mean anything, it has to be relevant to wider society. Just as in the cases of PSB radio and commercial radio broadcasting, community radio can be recognized through an analysis of its structures, outputs and purposes. Like its PSB and commercial counterparts, community radio is a product of the society within which it is based and, necessarily, finds itself fulfilling roles defined by the nature of that society. When considering reasons for the introduction of community radio, a useful starting point might therefore be to ask what it provides in terms of ‘additionality’? What does community radio offer in order to justify its existence? This question can be asked not only in terms of what such services add to radio broadcasting in the round, but also in terms of the wider societal benefits they might provide. Predominantly operating at the nation-state level, PSB can be seen as providing ‘access to information and knowledge through quality and diverse content’ (UNESCO 2005: 5) and is, arguably ‘one of the most

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important powerful instruments for promoting citizens’ democratic participation’ (ibid.). A key difference between community radio and PSB is the greater degree to which the former reflects the specific interests and needs of sub-divisions within a particular society, these taking the form of geographical communities of place as well as of communities of interest, such as minority languages, faiths, music, arts and so on. Because it emerged after PSB and commercial radio, community radio is often referred to as the ‘third sector’ of radio broadcasting. This means that, to some extent at least, its place within the wider medium has always been defined by the pre-existing activities and, some might suggest, the privileges of established radio broadcasters. An obvious example here would be relative access to broadcast frequencies. In many jurisdictions, the degree to which broadcast frequencies had already been allocated to PSB and commercial radio broadcasters has left the community radio sector with constricted access to the airwaves, with individual stations coverage often being highly limited. Obvious examples include Low Power FM (LPFM) operations in the USA, Nærradio services in Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and Norway as well as community services in the UK. Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier (2008) provide a particularly detailed exploration of various theoretical approaches to defining and understanding the third sector of media, also including some useful radio-related international case study materials. The authors note the diverse range of alternative terms for third-sector radio services, which include: ‘associative radio, free radio … neighbourhood radio, alternative radio and community radio’ (ibid.: 6–7) and suggests that it is the diversity and breadth of the sector that makes the construction and application of a single all-encompassing theoretical approach so challenging. Taking the above into account, the authors propose a multi-theoretical approach, discussing four specific definitional elements and the interrelationships between these. Firstly, services are considered in the context of what it is that they seek to achieve, for instance what they seek to provide in terms of broadcasting to a defined community. Thereafter (secondly) they are considered in comparison to other services, for example as an alternative to so-called mainstream media. Both of these approaches can be thought of as being media-centric – an essentialist model, followed by a relationalist model. Moving from media-centric approaches, the authors then propose two further approaches, which consider services in terms of how they might relate to wider society. The third approach considers services as comprising part of civil society, whilst the fourth and final approach proposes that such services should be considered as being rhizomatic in nature. Whilst the third approach (considering media as part of civil society) might be said to straddle both the essentialist and the relationalist perspectives, the fourth (employing the metaphor of the rhizome) might be thought of as embodying a purely relationist model, one which perhaps requires a little more clarification here. The concept of the rhizome1 as it relates to theories of community (alternative) media, pays particular attention to the way in which such media act as a place of interaction ‘as the crossroads of organisations and movements linked with civil society’ (ibid.: 27). ‘Like rhizomes, alternative [community] media tend to cut across borders and build linkages’ (ibid.: 28). Such linkages also expand beyond civil society to ‘(segments of) the state and the market’ (ibid.).

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In essence the four theoretical models proposed by Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier can be said to encompass both the simple and the complex, each approach has its merits and, as the authors note: ‘None of the four approaches discussed … can be considered as giving a sufficient overview when applied independently’ (ibid.: 30). However they do suggest that the concept of the rhizome may well be the most useful, offering as it does a ‘society centred approach to media’ (ibid.): Media studies and communications sciences as a whole have a very long tradition of media centrality, which in a way has to be valued, but at the same time must be considered to be reductionist as it leads to an artificial separation between media and society. (ibid.)

Dealing with contributions to the range of radio broadcasting services available, more often than not, community radio services are established to meet particular needs that are not already served by existing broadcasters. As the relevant British legislation (The Community Radio Order 2004) puts it, a key justification for the existence of community radio services is ‘the provision of sound broadcasting services to individuals who are otherwise underserved by such services’ (Her Majesty’s Government 2004: 2). However, legislation enabling the provision of community radio is typically also concerned with wider societal benefits. Here, the relevant British legislation employs the phrase ‘social gain’ (ibid.), an almost ‘catch-all’ term, which, aside from the provision of broadcasting services, amongst other things includes ‘the facilitation of discussion and the expression of opinion’, ‘the provision of education or training’ and ‘the better understanding of the particular community and the strengthening of the links within it’ (ibid.). Moreover, it may also include the achievement of other objectives of a social nature and in particular: (a) the delivery of services provided by local authorities and other services of a social nature and the increasing, and wider dissemination, of knowledge about those services and about local amenities; (b) the promotion of economic development and of social enterprises; (c) the promotion of employment; (d) the provision of opportunities for the gaining of work experience; (e) the promotion of social inclusion; (f) the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity. (ibid.) In light of such wide-ranging objectives potentially being assigned to community radio, as Carpentier (2011: 96) alludes to, other forms of ‘community and alternative media’, can also be considered ‘as part of civil society’ (ibid.). Thus, it can be argued that suitable conceptual lenses through which to view community radio practice can be those of both media development and media for development, as discussed further below. Emerging out of the previously dominant concept of development communication, sometimes otherwise known as communication for development (or ‘C4D’), historically, media for development has tended to be primarily associated with wider aspects of international development. Thus, it has historically been perceived as being primarily associated with projects in the Global South, rather than in the, so-called, developed world.

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However, if the premise is accepted that development, in its broadest sense, encompasses ongoing processes that seek to facilitate and deliver positive social, political and economic change, then the notion that there is some sort of intrinsic limit on where in the world such development is needed begins to appear arbitrary and difficult to justify. Rory Horner (2020) recently explored such concerns and changing conceptions in detail noting the observation of Kate Raworth, that ‘we are all developing countries now’, because ‘no country in the world can say that it is even close to meeting the needs of all of its people’ (Raworth 2018).

Media development Media development concerns the state of media in a given jurisdiction but defining it is difficult. Martin Scott suggests the task is akin to ‘nailing jelly to a wall’ (Scott 2014: 75). That said, at the heart of any definition of media development lies a concern for media freedom (ibid.: 77), which is also intrinsic to the operation of community radio services, independent of state and commercial interests. Plurality of ownership is a second definitional aspect of media development and this too is intrinsic to the operation of community radio services that are typically owned and operated by members of their target community (see for example Ofcom 2017: 5). Where media development perhaps becomes more challenging for community radio is in relation to the issue of ‘professionalism, capacity building and an enabling environment’ (Scott 2014: 80), which is seen as another key definitional element of the term. On the one hand, operating on a not-for-profit basis and involving a high degree of volunteer inputs may be seen as imposing limits on the ability to deliver professionalism. However, volunteers on community radio stations often move on to take up a professional career in PSB or commercial broadcasting, and even where this is not the case well-run community radio services do provide a broad range of training, indeed they are often required to do so (see for example Ofcom 2017: 6). The enabling environment referred to here concerns not only the facilities available within a particular broadcaster, but, crucially, also to the legal and regulatory frameworks that exist and the degree to which these support media independence (Scott 2014: 82). Thus, legislation and regulation in support of the provision of community radio services can be seen as an indicator of media development in its own right. A further indicator of media development is that of economic sustainability (ibid.: 85). For many community radio services and across a variety of jurisdictions, ensuring such economic sustainability can be an ongoing struggle. The very elements of community radio that mark it out as being distinct from both PSB services and commercial stations (notfor-profit operation, independent ownership, multiple sourced funding for example) and which protect it from outside political and commercial influences, can also militate against viability and sustainability. The final indicator of media development discussed here is that of media literacy, a term that can be defined both in narrow terms and more broadly. Narrow definitions

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centre on the ability of members of the public to consume media on the basis that ‘ordinary people are regarded as receivers but not senders of messages’ (Koltay 2011: 218). Broader conceptions of media literacy also include the creation of content: for example, the European Commission states that media literacy is ‘the ability to access the media, to understand and to critically evaluate different aspects of the media and media content and to create communications in a variety of contexts’ (European Commission 2007: 3). Livingstone goes further, noting the interrelatedness of consumption and production: four components – access, analysis, evaluation, and content creation – together constitute a skills-based approach to media literacy. Each component supports the others as part of a nonlinear, dynamic learning process: Learning to create content helps one to analyze that produced professionally by others; skills in analysis and evaluation. (Livingstone 2004: 5)

This broad observation highlights not only the potential of media literacy to enhance the functioning of democracy, but also its value as a tool for enhancing the capabilities of community media to deliver against its underlying objectives. As Scott observes: [The] ability to create media is seen as increasingly fundamental to democratic participation and empowerment in modern information societies. It is necessary for the functioning of community media, which in most contexts, rely almost entirely on citizens who are not professional[s] … More fundamentally, a media-literate citizenry must also have the ability to physically access the media and to use them. (Scott 2014: 88)

As summarized above, in the context of media development, the provision of community radio services, within the wider gamut of broadcast radio services, can provide a range of elements that can be said to enhance the degree of demonstrable media development within a given jurisdiction. Effective community radio services are complementary to the provision of public service broadcasting. They can also offer specific media development benefits to members of their particular target community, albeit often within a framework of limited economic capabilities that tend to be an unintended consequence of legislation and regulation that are designed to ensure the delivery of services that are both distinctive and complementary to other forms of broadcast radio.

Media for development Whilst media development can be said to focus in general (and at the macro level), on the structures and capacity of media across a particular jurisdiction; it is intrinsically mediacentric and, indeed, essentialist in nature. By comparison, media for development can be said to focus on specifics, on individual developmental projects. Its remit is also wider, acting to a greater or lesser extent as an adjunct for a diverse range of developmental objectives, which have broad socio-economic impacts stretching beyond the narrow sphere of media alone. At its simplest, the role of media for development techniques is

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‘as a channel for delivering information to the public’ (Scott 2014: 13). In more detail the objective is for it to act ‘as the strategic tool for delivering positive change in individual’s knowledge, attitude and practice in order to achieve development results’ (ibid.). Beyond the basic provision of information, the objectives around an individual’s knowledge, attitude and practice have clear echoes of the well-known ‘inform and educate’ elements of the public service broadcasting remit. The media for development approach draws on various theories of behaviour change and media effects (ibid.: 20) and is based on the premise that the specific changes that are sought through its application are ‘planned in advance, targeted at particular audiences, limited in scope and aimed at measurable outcomes’ (ibid.: 21). Given the nature of community radio, as far as these elements of media for development (above) are concerned, it would seem highly likely that such services would tend to be well placed to play a positive role in development projects relevant to their target communities. Media for development may be ‘a very appealing approach because it presents itself as logical, apolitical, and based on persuasive quantitative evaluations of impact and cost effectiveness’ (ibid.: 46). However, all that said, it also has its weaknesses not least because, in its basic form, it ‘fails to recognise or utilise the agency of audiences’ (ibid.: 36). As Scott notes, projects can often be top-down in nature and be driven by outside experts, both such approaches being antithetical to the stated ambitions of community media. As can be seen from the above, theories of media development and media for development are deemed to be distinct from each other, at least in terms of objectives; nevertheless they can also be complementary to each other. Poorly developed media is unlikely to be effective in terms of delivering wider development. Thus, as can also be seen from the above, in practice, community radio has the ability to contribute to the objectives of both. Not only can community radio make a strong contribution to the state of media development as a whole, but it can also provide practical support for specific developmental interventions linked to the community a particular station seeks to serve.

Participatory communication It is relevant to briefly consider the concept of participatory communication in terms of how this can be applied to the activities of the community radio sector. The summary of the arguments above is that, whereas community radio benefits media development by dint of its very existence within the wider media landscape, the relationship between media and development and community radio is primarily relevant to the particular activities of individual community radio services. Assuming this to be the case, what is it about the sector that facilitates the effective delivery of such benefits? Here it is argued that it is community radio’s adherence to the broad principles of participatory communication, in particular the fact that it eschews top-down uni-directional approaches that provide the sector with such capabilities. Fundamentally, the application of participatory communication approaches can, it is argued, overcome some of the

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issues related to media for development that are summarized above. As has already been amply demonstrated in this chapter, precise terminological meaning can be elusive when it comes to defining media-related theories, a point addressed directly within the definition of participatory communication provided below: Participation and communication are terms with broad and multifaceted connotations, trying to define them specifically is a difficult task. Even harder is providing a widely acceptable definition of participatory communication … participatory communication is an approach based on dialogue, which allows the sharing of information, perceptions and opinions among the various stakeholders and thereby facilitates their empowerment, especially for those who are most vulnerable and marginalized. Participatory communication is not just the exchange of information and experiences: it is also the exploration and generation of new knowledge aimed at addressing situations that need to be improved. (Mefalopulos and Tufte 2009: 17)

In addition to the above and specifically concerning the broad concept of participation, Nico Carpentier makes a point that can be applied specifically to the community radio sector, which is that the: ‘difference between participation on the one hand and access and interaction on the other is located within the key role that is attributed to power and to equal(ized) power relations in decision making processes’ (Carpentier 2011: 131). Clearly, the underlying ethos of community radio suggests that genuine participation, rather than mere access and interaction should be the sector’s objective (see for example the UK’s legislation, the Community Radio Order 2004, which specifically requires ‘that members of the community … are given opportunities to participate in the operation and management of the service’ (HMG 2004: Section 3 (4)) and that the provider of the service is ‘accountable to the community that the service is intended to serve’ (ibid.: Section 3 (5)). Readers with an interest in history will already be aware of Bertold Brecht’s ‘radio theory’ that has long been linked by others to the activities of community radio broadcasting (see for example, Turner 1973: frontispiece; Lewis and Booth 1989: 186). Mefalopulos and Tufte note the way that Brecht envisioned radio as ‘a dialogical instrument for change’. They observe that, although for a time: radio lost its dialogic potential as it developed into a mass mediated broadcasting instrument … today’s rapid spread of community radio, as well as the growth of digital radio and interactive radio program [sic] formats, revives the participatory potential of radio technology. (Mefalopulos and Tufte 2009: 9)

Such ‘participatory potential’ can be argued as being central to the explorations of community radio as a part of civil society and as a rhizomatic facilitator of change as discussed earlier in this chapter. Here it is important to note that ‘participatory potential’ is just that – potential. As Carpentier rightly observes: ‘Participation should remain an invitation – permanently on offer and embedded in balanced power relations – to those who want to have their voices heard’ (2011: 359). Although the link between Brecht and community radio has long been claimed, it is interesting

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to note that Mefalopulos and Tufte also entwine Brecht’s writings directly with the notion of participatory communication itself: Brecht’s work contains the two core visions still inherent today in participatory communication: first, technologies possess the potential to improve the lives of many people by giving them a voice; second, his groundwork laid out the educational principles inherent in many of today’s participatory communication models – dialogical communication. (Mefalopulos and Tufte 2009: 9)

Thus, as the preceding few paragraphs have shown, the concept of participatory development can be seen not only as intrinsic to elements of both media development and media for development, but also as providing fundamental underpinnings to the structures and activities of community radio itself.

Community radio – the ‘third sector’ of broadcasting Having established the broad societal positioning of community radio, where then do such services fit within the specific field of radio broadcasting and how does the sector relate to other forms of the medium? As has previously been noted (above) a key objective of community radio services is to serve those groups and individuals who find themselves underrepresented or marginalized by other forms of broadcasting. Thus, the community radio sector is comprised of: broadcasters which are distinguished from public service and commercial broadcasters inasmuch as they are specifically tailored in their design and function to serve the voice and information needs of rural, grassroots and/or minority groups. (Unesco Policy Brief n.d.)

Changes to the context within which community radio services now operate result, at least in part, from the ongoing evolution of wider broadcast radio, in both its PSB and commercial forms. In essence, community radio seeks to provide services that the PSB and commercial sectors are either unable and/or unwilling to provide. This means that as another broadcast radio sector evolves, so to do the opportunities open (or close) to the community radio sector. In support of this hypothesis, some supporting examples might be useful here. Firstly, fairly recent history from the Republic of Ireland bears scrutiny. The longstanding monopoly of Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) was substantively broken, first by unlicensed ‘pirate’ broadcasters (both commercial and community-based in nature) in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by the arrival of licensed commercial stations under the Radio and Television Act (1988). On paper, the 1988 Act provided for the introduction of both commercial radio and community radio services, but the then newly established broadcast radio regulator in Ireland (The Irish Radio and Television Commission (IRTC)) elected to proceed only with the introduction of commercial operations. This despite the fact that

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when the Act was being debated in Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament) ‘the Government also announced that up to 100 neighbourhood (community) radio stations and a number of “community-of-Interest” stations would be licensed’ (Truetzschler 1991: 27). In fact, permanent community radio services did not emerge in Ireland until 1994 when some fifteen services were licensed (Day 1999: n.p.) ‘probably in order to ensure the economic survival of the existing private radio stations before licensing any additional competitors for radio audiences’ (Truetzschler 1991: 27). This sequence of events is recounted here as being a representative example of similar decisions made by various media regulators in numerous jurisdictions throughout the late twentieth century and, indeed, more recently (see also the introduction of community radio in the UK and/or Low Power FM services in the USA as but two other examples). This common pro-commercial bias can be framed in terms of the degree to which regulators (perhaps reflecting perceptions of relative levels of political support and consideration of measurable economic impacts) tend to implement a hierarchy of importance, typically considering the interests of community radio as being subservient to those of its PSB and commercial counterparts. The previously mentioned term ‘third-sector’ has numerous connotations here. Wolfgang Truetzschler’s observations about the situation in Ireland will ring true to anyone involved in the campaign for community radio in the UK during the same period or indeed those involved in the slightly later campaign for the introduction of Low Power FM radio in the USA. In both cases, regulators (the UK’s IBA, followed by the Radio Authority and the USA’s FCC) consistently argued that the best use of scarce frequency resources was for yet more commercial radio. A press release from the IBA in 1985 not only railed against proposals for a community radio experiment, but also displayed a remarkable degree of hubris, not to mention a complete lack of understanding of what constituted, even at that time, the established concept of community radio: The IBA is anxious that this new development is not introduced to the detriment of the existing Independent Local Radio system. In any case, the IBA believes that ILR already provides an effective and self financing form of local community radio … [the new stations] should be required to operate under similar financial and general obligations to the ILR companies; otherwise they will constitute unfair competition. (IBA 1985)

Allegations of possible ‘regulatory capture’ are, unsurprisingly, difficult to prove, but, nevertheless, there is little doubt that regulators in both countries had developed close relationships with the operators of the commercial stations, which they were already regulating. In the UK at least, a narrow focus on broadcasting alone, with scant regard for the wider potential developmental benefits of a more diverse radio sector, was perhaps not surprising given the nature of the relevant legislation of the time. It is perhaps also worth noting the relatively narrow demographic and educational backgrounds of those responsible for driving the decision-making processes involved in framing regulatory interpretation of the law so as to put it into practice. The lack of understanding of the concept of community radio, apparent within sections of the IBA and, later, the Radio Authority, was problematic

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for those campaigning for its introduction, but, equally, not surprising. An early major role of the UK’s Community Radio Association (now the Community Media Association) was to build awareness and understanding amongst politicians and regulators alike. A broader, more subtle example of the shifting industry milieu impacting upon community radio is revealed by an examination of the evolution of commercial independent local radio stations in the UK and, in particular, of their gradual retreat from the provision of various forms of public service content as they transitioned to fully commercial remits following the introduction of the Broadcasting Act in 1990. There is a perception that current commercial radio broadcasting tends towards the maximization of audiences through the delivery of low-cost, populist programming. It does so in order to maximize profitability, this being its primary, overarching objective: ‘Commercial programming is driven by one purpose and ambition alone, which is to maximize advertising and other revenues by targeting the largest possible audiences through the most sensational, popular, and attractive content with no respect for public interest’ (UNESCO 2005:17). Regulators in market-based economies, acting in the name of commercial freedom and in support of the maximization of profit, tend towards regulatory approaches that, wherever possible, take a light-touch approach. It can certainly be argued that in relation to the evolution of the UK commercial radio sector, such neoliberal, free market arguments have long won the day. The transition from the early days of heavily regulated independent local radio contractors, to the lightly regulated networks of today, with their inherent lack of material links to any sense of place, has certainly provided opportunities for community radio services that would not previously have been so obvious. For clarity, when it comes to the regulation of commercial radio broadcasting, there is nothing intrinsically inappropriate about such an approach, just as there is arguably nothing intrinsically wrong with the notion of commercial radio itself. That said, difficulties arise when neoliberal ideology appears to prioritize narrow market-driven approaches to the detriment of wider public policy objectives that both PSB and community media have the capacity to both support and nurture. Whereas light-touch approaches to the regulation of commercial radio may have real benefits to operators and shareholders, the same cannot be said for other forms of radio broadcasting. By comparison to commercial radio broadcasting, the objectives of both PSB radio and community radio are driven by a more complex, often overlapping, range of motivations, which require much more than the single-minded pursuit of economic gain, achieved through the maximization of profitable audiences. It is precisely because the objectives of both PSB and community radio services are complex, that greater levels of regulation are required. Such regulation applies not only in relation to outputs (programming content for instance) but also encompasses elements of inputs (sources of funding, structures and commissioning processes). PSB radio broadcasting has the privilege of access to licence fee support (or, in some jurisdictions, to other forms of direct and/or indirect public funding). Commercial radio broadcasting may lack such privileges, but conversely is intrinsically designed to provide services that maximize audiences and which can therefore be inherently attractive to a variety of businesses that may wish to promote their goods and services. Community

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radio can receive some limited core funding, but this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and most services are expected to cultivate their own sources of operational funding support.

Community radio today So far, this chapter has considered the history and wider positioning of community radio within society, seeking to explain how the sector’s characteristics have evolved to assist in the delivery of its broadcasting and developmental objectives. Thereafter, this chapter has also considered the positioning of community radio within wider broadcast radio. At this point, the focus shifts away from contexts to the workings of community radio itself, meaning that this section of the chapter is concerned with the specifics of community radio as it operates today. Many of the issues explored below have international relevance; however, the primary lens applied here is to the activities of the community radio sector as it operates in the UK. As has been mentioned earlier, full-time community radio services have only been in operation in the UK for a little short of twenty years with the first full-time services being introduced in the early 2000s. For the UK and, indeed, internationally, the intervening period up to the present day has been one of fundamental change for radio broadcasting as a whole and, in some ways for the community radio sector in particular. The drivers of such change include a variety of elements, social, political and economic, often stemming from external events and policy developments. However, it should be noted that technology is not, of itself, an independent ‘driver’ of such change, rather technological evolution is itself driven by those wider social, political and economic factors. In broad terms, many of the greatest of these change factors have a basis in technology and stem from developments with a genesis dating back to the latter years of the twentieth century. Internationally, the mid years of the twentieth century, from approximately the 1960s to the 1980s, saw a period of steady growth in radio broadcasting using relatively stable technologies. During that period, the technology underpinning the medium was honed and consolidated in the analogue domain. However, starting in the closing years of the twentieth century and as with other electronic media, a comprehensive shift from the analogue to the digital domain has occurred in audio distribution and in the associated field of radio broadcasting. Initially, this process focused on the production elements of audio production with vinyl records, analogue tapes and cartridges being replaced. Firstly, this was through the introduction of replacement physical digital media formats, such as the mini-disk and compact disc; these themselves being replaced thereafter by platform agnostic file formats, such as the ubiquitous MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III, or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) (see, for example, McCullough 2015). Digitizing the production elements of audio media was, however, only the first part of what was to become a more comprehensive shift to the digital domain for broadcast radio. During the 1980s broadcasters also started to

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examine ways of bringing the benefits of the digital domain to all aspects of the medium including the final steps of transmission and reception. Predating the establishment of the Internet, the key design criterion was that any new digital transmission system should be capable of acting as a comprehensive international replacement for the existing analogue (AM and FM) transmission platforms. In the event a worldwide digital transmission system did not emerge, but across most of Europe, it is DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and its more recent variant, DAB+, which have, to an increasing extent, become the defacto replacements for AM and FM transmissions. Although early implementations of DAB were more relevant to large-scale commercial and PSB broadcasters, the more recent arrival of so-called small-scale DAB, along with the arrival of DAB+ have, between them, demonstrated the technology’s potential to overcome the perennial problem of frequency scarcity that has limited the sector’s ability to provide services in areas where broadcasting spectrum had previously become fully occupied by PSB services and commercial radio stations. Recent developments in DABrelated technologies certainly offer potential benefits for community radio. However, in terms of technological evolution, it is the maturing of the Internet and of associated Internet Protocol (IP) mobile phone networks which fundamentally change the nature of the community, and in the long term, are likely to have a greater impact. There is no doubt that over the past couple of decades radio broadcasting has become fundamentally more complicated, due to the way in which IP technologies increasingly act as an alternative medium for the delivery of broadcast radio. The key point here is that, in some ways at least, the Internet offers capabilities beyond those of traditional broadcast technologies (analogue or digital). Not only can Internet-based platforms and technologies offer opportunities for timeshifted delivery of content, but they can also overcome the coverage restrictions inherent in traditional broadcasting. In traditional broadcasting increasing transmission costs are associated with increasing range, regardless of how many or how few people are actually listening. Internet-based technologies are location agnostic, there is no material add-on cost to the broadcaster regardless of where a listener might be located. However, increasing costs of IP transmission are related to listener numbers – the more people that listen, the greater the costs involved. For community radio, breaking the coverage limits of traditional broadcasting can fundamentally change the nature of the community being served, such that it can include those with an affinity but lack of physical proximity. Moreover, the arrival of IP also allows time-shifted listening, podcasting and, more recently, the ability to reach audiences through smart speakers. The opportunities offered through such technologies are clear, but, inevitably, they come at a cost, not just in terms of the additional expenditure required to access and operate such platforms, but also in terms of the organizational capacity involved. A final point about IP delivery is that it offers opportunities for prospective community broadcasters to develop their offerings before being awarded a traditional broadcasting licence. As a result, new community radio services can take to the air more ‘fully formed’ than might previously have been the case. At present, the notion that holding a broadcast licence defines a station as a ‘real’ broadcaster remains, materially at least, unquestioned.

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However, it should be recognized that such a correlation is not intrinsic and at some point being a ‘real broadcaster’ may no longer involve access to the airwaves. Today, technological advances provide opportunities to counter the limits that community radio stations have encountered in terms of access to audiences and, more specifically, the airwaves. However, coverage restrictions placed upon community radio services are not the only impacts of being ‘late to the party’. The degree of support for the sector can, as has previously been shown, also be impacted by concerns about protecting the interests of pre-existing commercial stations. Partly because of such concerns, the availability of funding can become perhaps the greatest challenge to the viability of community radio services. Regulations vary by jurisdiction, and the British example given here is arguably towards the more complex end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, it does highlight some of the broad issues around operational independence and freedom from commercial influence as well as regulatory concerns about the protection of, apparently fragile, commercial broadcasters. To begin with, the relevant community radio legislation requires that services obtain funding from multiple sources and that no one source can contribute more than 50 per cent of the costs of operation in any financial year (HMG 2004: 7). Furthermore, in order to protect the interests of existing commercial radio stations: Ofcom must, in each licence, include conditions as to the proportion of income that the licensee may derive from remunerated advertising and programme sponsorship. These must be such conditions as appear to us appropriate to ensure that a community radio service does not unduly prejudice the economic viability of any other (non-BBC) local commercial radio service. (Ofcom 2017: 8)

Such protections go further where community radio services broadcast to areas also served by smaller commercial stations broadcasting to ‘a potential audience of no more than 150,000 persons who have attained the age of 15 years or older’ (ibid.). In such cases generating income from commercial advertising and sponsorship is prohibited beyond a ‘fixed revenue allowance’ of up to £15,000 per year (ibid.). Income from advertising and sponsorship has always been a contentious issue within the community radio sector. Some stations use it extensively, whilst others are disinclined to on the basis that dependence on commercial sources risks limiting their editorial independence. In any event, the Community Radio Order imposes limits and requires that revenue from such sources ‘does not exceed 50% of the total relevant income’ (HMG 2015: 3). When I worked at Ofcom, I developed the regulator’s policy on ‘volunteer inputs’ (Ofcom 2008), which allows community radio services to include the value of such contributions as part of turnover, something that had not previously been permitted. For stations wishing to make use of commercial funding, an increase in the total funding ‘pot’, facilitated by the inclusion of volunteer inputs, allows a greater amount of commercial income to be received without breaking the 50 per cent limit. However, as Ofcom notes: Community radio station operators may wish to count volunteer inputs as part of their turnover because by offsetting volunteer input against other sources of income it allows for

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greater revenues to be obtained from on-air commercial sources. However, a community radio station cannot take ‘income’ only from a combination of on-air advertising and sponsorship, and volunteer inputs … a minimum of 25% must come from sources other than on-air advertising and sponsorship revenues and the value of volunteer inputs taken together. In other words, for all income in excess of the fixed revenue allowance, at least 25% must come from ‘other’ sources (such as grants, donations, service level agreements etc.). (Ofcom 2017: 15–16)

The regulation of community radio income also covers sources such as ‘donations and philanthropic support’ as well as ‘service level agreements’ (ibid.: 15). The key point here is that, as can be seen in the previous few paragraphs, the regulations around the funding of community radio tend to be somewhat complex and, as a result, can present real challenges, particularly for smaller, often volunteer-led, organizations.

Conclusion The preceding sections of this chapter have, it is hoped, provided an overview of the context within which community radio operates. Justifications for the existence of such services, which, as with PSB, extend well beyond the narrow confines of commercial profitability and broadcast radio policy alone, have also been considered. The context within which community radio services operate is, as hopefully this chapter has shown, both multi-faceted and changing. Fundamentally, context underpins both the objectives of the community radio sector and their subsequent delivery. It follows, therefore, that as this context changes, so too does the nature of community radio services and, potentially, the degree of their effectiveness and relevance. As Stephen Barnard so succinctly observed back in the late 1980s: ‘To assume that all communities of taste [and] interest can be served adequately and fairly within the existing two-tier system is naïve’ (Barnard 1989: 170). Today, the two-tier system referred to is now firmly a thing of the past. However, despite (or indeed in some instances because of) the wide-ranging and often fundamental changes that have happened in broadcasting and across society as a whole, issues of adequacy and fairness in relation to content provision and access remain important elements of media policy debates today. Around the world, the community radio sector can certainly be said to provide a wide range of beneficial services for a wide variety of minority and interest groups; however, although issues of frequency scarcity may have been ameliorated and other routes of access to audiences have become available, broader resource imbalances continue to constrain the degree to which such benefits can be effectively delivered. Reducing community benefits and/or seeking to embrace the profit motive through reduced regulation might bring short-term advantage for individual stations. However, inevitably such moves would also fundamentally degrade the unique characteristics of the sector, those that allow its members to integrate with and provide so effectively a wide range of benefits to their particular target communities.

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Perhaps a longer term solution, one with the potential to enhance the sector’s status and capabilities, might be to consider funding community radio, not for the act of broadcasting itself, but, instead, in support of its underlying developmental potential and ability to deliver diverse types of community benefit. Whilst this certainly does happen in various jurisdictions and on a project-by-project basis, it is a lack of centralized recognition of such capabilities that is perhaps most problematic and limiting to the potential of the sector today.

Note 1

Rhizome is a term that stems from the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Works cited AMARC Europe (1994), The AMARC Community Radio Charter for Europe: https:// amarceurope.eu/the-amarc-community-radio-charter-for-europe/ (accessed 05 June 2021). AMARC International (2022), About AMARC, Brussels: AMARC International: https:// amarceurope.eu/the-amarc-community-radio-charter-for-europe/ (accessed 11 March 2022). Bailey, O. G., B. Cammaerts and N. Carpentier (2008), Understanding Alternative Media (Issues in Cultural & Media Studies Series), Maidenhead: Open University Press. Barnard, S. (1989), On the Radio: Music Radio in Britain, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. British Pathé News (1934), ‘Nineteen Year Old Wilfred Barker and his Brother Gerald Detected as Mystery Broadcasters’, London, British Pathé Limited: https://www.britishpathe. com/video/VLVA1WAEWJR6MA7IDV8RTK7CPVLUX-UNITED-KINGDOMNINETEEN-YEAR-OLD-WILFRED-BARKER-AND-HIS-BROTHER (accessed 19 January 2022). Carpentier, N. (2011), Media and Participation: A Site of Ideological-Democratic Struggle, Bristol: Intellect. Day, R. (1999), ‘Community Radio’, Dublin, The Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/ culture/community-radio-1.143320 (accessed 11 March 2022). European Commission (2007), A European Approach to Media Literacy in the Digital Environment: https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/news/european-approach-media-literacydigital-environment (accessed 19 March 2022). Her Majesty’s Government (2004), Broadcasting: The Community Radio Order 2004 (Statutory Instrument, Number 1944), London: Her Majesty’s Government. Her Majesty’s Government (2015), Broadcasting: The Community Radio (Amendment) Order 2015 (Statutory Instrument, Number 1000), London: Her Majesty’s Government. Horner, R. (2020), ‘Towards a New Paradigm of Global Development? Beyond the Limits of International Development’, Progress in Human Geography 44 (3): 415–36. DOI:10.1177/0309132519836158.

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IBA (1985), ‘IBA Press Statement 25th July 1985’ in Tony Stoller (ed.) (2010), No Such Thing as Society: Independent Local Radio in the Eighties: http://www.nosuch-research.co.uk/pdfs/ PaperILR.pdf (accessed 12 April 2022). King, G. (2017), ‘History of Struggle: The Global Story of Community Broadcasting Practices, or a Brief History of Community Radio’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 12 (2): 18–36. DOI:10.16997/wpcc.227. Koltay, T. (2011), ‘The Media and the Literacies: Media Literacy, Information Literacy, Digital Literacy’, Media, Culture & Society 33 (2): 211–21. Lewis, P. (1984), ‘Community Radio: The Montreal Conference and After’, Media, Culture & Society, 6: 137–50. DOI:10.1177/016344378400600205. Lewis, P. M. and J. Booth (1989), The Invisible Medium – Public, Commercial and Community Radio, Basingstoke: MacMillan Education. Livingstone, Sonia (2004), ‘Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies’, Communication Review 7 (1): 3–14. Lunt, P. and S. Livingstone (2012), Media Regulation: Governance and the Interests of Citizens and Consumers, London: Sage. McCullough, B. (2015), On the 20th Birthday of the MP3, an Interview with the ‘Father’ of the MP3, Karlheinz Brandenburg, Internet History Podcast (Article), Brooklyn, New York: Amalgamated Internets: https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2015/07/on-the-20thbirthday-of-the-mp3-an-interview-with-the-father-of-the-mp3-karlheinz-brandenburg/ (accessed 27 January 2022). Mefalopulos, P. and T. Tufte (2009), Participatory Communication, Washington DC: World Bank Group. Ofcom (2008), Community Radio: Volunteer Input – Guidelines for Community Radio Stations that Wish to Use Volunteer Time as Part of Station Turnover, London: The Office of Communications: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/23966/ volunteerinput.pdf (accessed 5 March 2022). Ofcom (2017), Notes of Guidance for Community Radio Licence Applicants and Licensees, London: The Office of Communications: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0016/101860/Community-radio-guidance.pdf (accessed 5 March 2022). Partridge, S. (1982), Not the BBC/IBA – The Case for Community Radio, London: Comedia Publishing. Raworth, K. (2018), ‘Doing the Doughnut at the G20’, Exploring Doughnut Economics Blog: https://www.kateraworth.com/2018/12/01/doing-the-doughnut-at-the-g20/ (accessed 5 April 2022). Scott, M. (2014), Media & Development, London & New York: Zed Books. Truetzschler, W. (1991), ‘Broadcasting Law and Policy in Ireland’, Irish Communication Review 1 (1): 24–45, Dublin, Technological University: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1006&context=icr (accessed 11 March 2022). Turner, N. G. (1973), Community Radio in Britain: A Practical Introduction, Bottisham: Whole Earth Tools. UNESCO (2005), Public Service Broadcasting – A Best Practice Sourcebook: https://unesdoc. unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000141584 (accessed 17 April 2022). UNESCO (n.d.), Defining Community Broadcasting (Policy Brief – Community Media Sustainability Policy Series), Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation: https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/unesco_cmedia_sustainability_ policy_1_defining.pdf (accessed 11 March 2022).

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Section V Democracy

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The relationship between the media and politics was once the bedrock of media studies. Was the media biased? Did media owners use their powers to influence elections and attack trade unions? Such questions now seem less pressing as citizens have access to such a plethora of news sources including still-respected public service broadcasters and well-established mainstream commercial broadcasters all the way to the extremes of Fox News and conspiracy theory-driven social media. The debate has moved on, but radio remains an important source of news information and it has a rich and fascinating history. Anya Luscombe looks at 100 years of radio news in the Netherlands. She examines how radio news has developed and shows a transition from censored, targeted public service radio to more objective, critical and inclusive modern radio news. Remarkably, 85 per cent of Dutch citizens still listen to broadcast radio and their consumption of news provides Dutch democracy with a well-informed electorate. This is an essential contribution to democracy and contrasts with the ‘information bubbles’ of the conspiracy-obsessed online news providers. The BBC depicts itself, with some justification, as a key provider of news in the UK and Katy McDonald examines the way two different BBC news programmes cover two stories. The programmes are the solid afternoon PM on Radio 4 and the more youthoriented Newsbeat from Radio 1. The news stories cover the 2020 US presidential election and the second lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BBC’s provision of news, in the hundredth anniversary of its launch, remains the subject of endless criticism for being biased – a criticism which comes from both the political left and the right. Using detailed textual analysis, McDonald shows how news targeted at different audiences can differ but without being compromised in its impartiality. The long news extracts in her chapter demonstrate that sometimes there is no substitute for analysing radio transcripts, and these are particularly valuable. The Spanish scholar, Pilar Dobón-Roux describes a fascinating moment in the history of radio news. The dictator General Franco died in 1975 having ruled Spain for thirtysix years. This created a democratic moment in the so-called ‘transition years’ from 1975 to 1982. This new freedom was exploited mainly in the privately run media outlets and

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commercial television and radio became symbols of independence and freedom. In fact, commercial organizations wanted to launch new television stations but obtaining television broadcasting licences was too difficult and as a result radio stations, most notably Antena 3, pioneered post-dictatorship news. As Dobón-Roux reveals, the success of Antena 3 was largely due to the energy and enthusiasm of just a few experienced journalists.

19 Dutch Radio News From Public Polarization to Public Service Anya Luscombe

The media landscape and the place of radio within it is subject to constant remediation: new forms of media continually challenge the old making them focus more on their inherent qualities; in the case of radio this is ‘the power of audible, non-visual content to induce imagination and the possibilities for immediate connection to live music and news for all possible preferences’, as well as its social function of ‘creating and cultivating identities’ (Kuitenbrouwer, Luscombe and Wijfjes 2019: 3). Concerns about the quality and accuracy of journalism and audience tastes in news stories are nothing new, but with increasing use of unregulated social media that use algorithms that promote particular stories and opinions, keeping people in information bubbles and enabling fast dispersal of disinformation and conspiracy theories, journalism’s essential contribution to democracy by reporting factual information and informing citizens is evermore crucial. Although the weekly reach of radio has dropped by approximately 6 per cent in the last eight years, still around 85 per cent of the Dutch population (aged ten and over) listens to radio sometime during the week, and listeners are tuning in increasingly via the Internet or DAB+. Podcasting is becoming increasingly popular too with nearly half the Dutch population indicating they listen to podcasts, of whom a quarter tune into podcasts about news and politics (Markteffect 2021; RAB). It is not just broadcasters but also Dutch newspapers who appear to be investing heavily in podcasts (Mediamonitor 2021: 23). The story of radio news and current affairs in the last 100 years in many countries is characterized by tensions: radio versus the printed press; radio versus television and versus social media; and public versus commercial broadcasting. This chapter will focus on the Dutch story which, in addition to the above tensions, is also one of the public broadcasting organizations pitted against each other and one of programming that changed from being targeted at the specific socio-economic and religious audiences that made up Dutch society (known as ‘pillars’) – programming that was more often than not censured by government

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– to programming that slowly became more objective, critical and inclusive. Technological developments, changes in the culture of journalism and growing interest from listeners for news and analysis about national and international events led to an increasing share of airtime for news and current affairs. Some stories mentioned in the broadcasting organizations’ radio guides and annual reports or that caused controversy in the past 100 years are used to help explain the role that radio in the Netherlands played and continues to play in creating an informed citizenry.

The start of radio news and information: 1919–33 The first regular wireless radio programmes in the Netherlands (and arguably the first in the world) started on 6 November 1919 when Hanso Idzerda began his ‘Soirees Musicale’ from his studio in The Hague (Wijfjes 2019: 49). The beginning of radio as mass media coincided with the start of what Jo Bardoel and Huub Wijfjes have termed the ‘political– societal’ phases of Dutch journalism, the second of a total of four phases (Bardoel and Wijfjes 2015: 14). In Idzerda’s musical broadcasts there was neither much room nor much need for the spoken word, although the radio pioneer did answer his listeners’ questions, mostly about ways to improve reception. On Sunday afternoons, in addition to the concerts, Idzerda broadcast talks in English which were paid for by the Daily Mail, as the broadcaster had many listeners across the North Sea. These came to an end in February 1923 because Idzerda’s broadcasting licence did not permit speech-based radio. In September 1924 Idzerda went bankrupt; he stopped broadcasting altogether in 1935 (Boer 1969: 31, 78–80). Idzerda was not the only one who broadcast information. In 1920 the society for stock trading in Amsterdam installed a transmitter to send financial information to subscribers throughout the country (Wijfjes 2019). On 21 February 1922 press agency Vaz Dias used that transmitter to send news to its newspaper customers: this was the first radio news agency in the world (Hemels 2013). Mozes Vas Dias (1881–1963) had started a press agency in 1904 and had offices in Amsterdam and Brussels and correspondents in New York, London and Paris. The press agency’s most important scoop was undoubtedly the news of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, which signified the start of the First World War. Vaz Dias was the creator of the so-called ‘trainletter’ whereby a messenger boy took news copy to the first train of the day after which envelopes containing the copy were distributed by train to places all over the Netherlands. The service which continued to exist until the 1960s was referred to as the ‘bare feet express’ as the messenger boy who delivered the first copy had often not had time to put on his socks (Meijer 2004). When Vaz Dias started his ‘wireless telephone news service’ for customers in 1922, he also introduced a time signal, i.e. the sound of a gong at 10.15 am and 4.30 pm official Amsterdam time, for people to set their clocks to (Hemels 2013; Meijer 2004; Taylor 2004). Initially Vaz Dias used code to broadcast messages via the radio to his newspaper

Dutch Radio News

customers and only those subscribers who had the code could understand the message. When the code proved too easy to decipher, Vaz Dias resorted to a different system: everybody could listen to the announcements but only subscribers were allowed to publish them. Occasionally the press agency sent a secret memo to its customers warning them that a false radio message would be going out. When the false message was published, Vaz Dias could catch the perpetrator and send them a bill. In 1925 Vaz Dias signed a contract with the HDO (Hilversumsche Draadloze Omroep: Hilversum’s Wireless Broadcaster) to provide radio news bulletins for the public at home. From 1 October that year listeners could hear the news at 8 pm and 10 pm, only after the evening papers had appeared, as newspaper owners were concerned they would lose readers if they had heard the news on the radio any earlier. The radio news bulletins were also preceded by the warning: ‘publication of all these announcements in whatever form is prohibited’ (Hemels 2013). The first news reader was Ies Goudeket, a man with a ‘sonorous voice […] who read the news in a very prominent manner’ (Persbureau Vaz Dias 1965). There is no record of what the first radio news bulletins sounded like or which stories were covered, but the front page of the evening edition of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant newspaper of 1 October 1925 has a royal visit to the province of Limburg, the price of milk, and wage agreements in the metal industry. Besides the news bulletins, the radio also broadcast weather forecasts and police messages. The latter, which went on air at noon and at 7 pm, were intended for police officers and the announcer spoke extra slowly so that they could copy down the details. The HDO was not happy about these messages as they were of little use to ordinary listeners but felt it had no option but to broadcast because the Minister of Justice very much valued the ‘Spoken Policepaper’ (HDO Jaarverslag 13039: 10). From its start in 1923 the secular, ‘independent’ HDO (as of 1927 the AVRO) had included radio talks and informative programmes aimed at specific audiences in its output. In 1924 the Christian (Protestant) broadcast association, the NCRV, rented airtime, soon followed by the Catholic KRO, the Socialist VARA and the liberal-Protestant VPRO. So by then all the various groups, or ‘pillars’, in society had their own radio evenings where they could inform, educate and entertain their listeners (although not too much entertainment for the religious ones!). Each broadcasting association had its own listener guide in which it published technical information, question and answer columns and photos of musicians, singers and speakers. The combination of radio broadcasts and radio guides was in essence a form of cross-medial output based on target audience marketing, decades before the concept of ‘cross-media’ was coined. Listeners were asked to become paying members of the broadcasting associations and pay for a radio guide subscription. In addition, the broadcasters staged publicity tours, fundraising drives and sold merchandise (Wijfjes 2019: 71). Three quarters of the associations’ broadcasting time was devoted to music, except in the case of the VPRO that dedicated nearly 88 per cent to speech (Wijfjes 1985: 33). The best way for the public broadcasters to show their cultural, political, social and religious identities to their own group of listeners was through the church services, educational and children’s programming, and through the kind of speakers and topics they chose to cover (Wijfjes 2012: 81). Nevertheless, as radio was a mass medium the

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‘identity’ broadcasters – while happy to attract listeners from other pillars – worried that ‘their’ grassroots listeners might sample output from outside their ‘pillar’. Dutch society at this time was also characterized by rather conservative values and prudish attitudes and the Dutch government wanted to ensure that the broadcasts were not in their eyes indecent or a threat to public order and national security. It therefore created The Radio Broadcast Control Committee (Radio Omroep Controle Commissie) which had to approve all programmes before they were allowed on air and also checked whether there was any commercial advertising. The socialist broadcaster VARA was especially hard hit by government censorship: of the approximate 1,000 broadcasts partially or wholly banned by the government during the period 1930 to 1940, 70 per cent involved VARA programmes (Historie Radio 1930–39; Wijfjes 1988). In censoring programmes the government evidently did not think that freedom of speech was an important element of democracy.

Growth of news and current affairs on the radio: 1933 to 1959 Partly because of the strict government controls on controversial topics in the first half of the 1930s, news on radio mainly involved trivial domestic stories, in particular those items that the broadcasting associations thought would be relevant to their target audiences. Indeed, there was not much on radio of what we would now deem newsworthy important events, or ‘current affairs’. For example, the KRO stated in its 1933 annual report that it devoted a mere 0.7 per cent of airtime to topics that were current (Rodenburg 1984: 6). However, in the following years, news and current affairs became increasingly important as outside broadcasting vehicles and lighter recording equipment became available. In 1934 the AVRO was the first broadcaster to introduce a special weekly current affairs programme: the Radiojournaal, with reporters recording interviews and descriptions of what they saw. In 1935 the AVRO’s reporting vehicle covered 60,000 kilometres; a year later this had nearly doubled (Wijfjes 2012: 84). The broadcasting associations considered news reporting a means to attract more paying members. In an internal memo following the arrival of the Pelikaan airplane at Schiphol Amsterdam airport on 30 December 1933, KRO programme producer H. Schaffers wrote: Reports more than any other type of broadcast are of interest to Dutch listeners […] people who are fundamentally opposed to [the Catholic] KRO had to acknowledge that this report showed correct judgment of what interested listeners. The interest and sympathy of [our] own people is hereby encouraged and those who doubt us are often won over. (Wijfjes 2012: 7)

The arrival of the Pelikaan, ‘the great airbird’, that had completed its journey from the Dutch Indies in a record-breaking four days, was in fact considered such an important national event for all listeners, whatever their denomination, that the Dutch government had given

Dutch Radio News

the KRO permission to broadcast after midnight if necessary, something that was normally forbidden (Katholieke Radiogids, 6 January 1934, as cited in Rodenburg 1984: 89). As international tensions increased in the mid-1930s, so did the interest in foreign news and current affairs. The radio news bulletins, however, were still limited to twice daily in the evenings due to continuing concerns from the written press about unfair competition. Radio current affairs programmes also competed with the press. In 1934 press agency Vaz Dias complained to the ministry about a KRO report on the funeral of Queen Emma: The habit of the broadcasting associations to send out eyewitness and verbal accounts of all kinds of events and to bring the news as extensively as possible to the public well before daily newspapers can do so must have a detrimental effect on the work of the press agencies and newspapers. (Rodenburg 1984: 11)

Another bone of contention between the written press and broadcasters was that the papers did not appreciate the radio guides competing with them for advertising, while the broadcasters in their turn were highly critical of the way newspapers published radio listings. Vaz Dias was taken over in 1935 by the Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (anp), which had been founded the previous year by the Association of Dutch newspapers (Koedijk 1996: 13). After a series of difficult negotiations the ANP started distribution of news copy and broadcasting radio bulletins on 1 July 1935. The AVRO assured its listeners that the voices and the style, which after all were very popular, would remain the same (De dag waarop). It took another fifteen months before the ANP and the broadcasting organizations signed a formal agreement, requiring the help of the Dutch Home Secretary to make it happen (Koedijk 1996: 14). It was agreed that the broadcasters could make special content and style requests if they felt it was necessary to appeal to their supporter base. In practice this meant that news bulletins often differed per station (Koedijk 1996: 15; Wijfjes 2012: 85). The public’s hunger for more international news was only met with more radio news bulletins after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, when the number of bulletins increased from two to four a day (Wijfjes 2012: 85; VARA Jaarverslag 1939: 46). Then in May 1940 the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. The ANP and the broadcasting associations became closely regulated earning the ANP the nickname ‘Adolf ’s Newest Parrot’. In March 1941 the individual broadcasting association were disbanded and remaining staff (Jewish personnel had been sacked previously) and equipment were appropriated by the newly established Rijksradio De Nederlandsche Omroep (‘National Radio’) which filled its programming with Nazi propaganda, the most famous of which were the talks by journalist Max Blokzijl. His radio talks were deemed to have been so influential in sowing doubts among the Dutch population that he was convicted of collaboration and executed in March 1946. The German occupation force also introduced a listening fee. Much of the ‘national’ programming failed to attract listeners, however, and many chose to listen instead to the BBC Dutch Service and Radio Oranje (‘Radio Orange’), a station under the auspices of the Dutch government in exile in London.

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Radio Orange which started on 28 July 1940 was, however, not seen as particularly trustworthy. The Dutch government in exile, particularly Prime Minister De Geer, was still so attached to its pre-war policy of neutrality that it worried about too heavily critizing the Germans and being seen as a puppet of the British government (Blankenstein 1999: 257; Sinke 2009: 29). Because it was difficult to obtain accurate information from occupied territory and because all broadcasts had to be checked in advance by the Dutch ministers in exile, as well as ensuring BBC directives were not contravened, major news developments were often late, incomplete or missing entirely (van den Broek 1947; Sinke 2009). Nevertheless, Paul Koedijk asserts that despite the criticism about the quality of the broadcasts, the popularity of Radio Orange contributed to the ‘position of radio as a news medium’ (Koedijk 1998: 63). Radio Orange’s service improved when it merged in October 1942 with the Brandaris, a radio station for Dutch seamen that had been formed the previous year in cooperation with the BBC. However, as Sinke (2009: 85) and van den Broek (1947: 172) describe, it remained complicated to balance the desire to shore up the morale of the Dutch with broadcasting facts that could harm the Allies’ cause and give the enemies a strategic advantage. Following the liberation of the south of the Netherlands in the autumn of 1944, the station Radio Herrijzend Nederland (‘Radio Reborn Netherlands’) started broadcasting from the Philips factory in Eindhoven to the Dutch population in parts of the country still occupied. At the end of the war several parties argued there should not be a return to the pre-war system of ‘pillarized’ broadcasting. Although the former individual Dutch broadcasting associations still severely disliked each other, they got together to coordinate their opposition to plans for a new national system. They got their way when the newly elected government gave them back their full autonomy in 1946, although it did ask them to cooperate closely on broadcasting facilities and on so-called programmes of national interest in an organization called the Dutch Radio Union or NRU (Omroep in de Tweede). The ANP was keen to reassume responsibility for all the news bulletins, not least because of the growing worldwide importance of radio and increased interest in news. Surveys in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany showed that listeners felt news was the most important part of radio programming. Coverage of current affairs also continued to be popular, although naturally done in such a way as befitted the audiences’ worldview and cultural tastes, this was after all a time that was classified as ‘restrained modernization’. Measured purely in terms of minutes broadcast daily, news broadcasts would not be considered among the most prominent types of radio programmes, but in terms of listenership they definitely were. Audience research from 1953 suggested that the news bulletins had the highest ratings: 1.365 million, equivalent to 31 per cent of the population at home (Radio en vrijetijdsbesteding 1954: 33; Witteboon 1954). Listening figures peaked during the bulletins of 8 am, 1 pm and 6 pm and the appetite for news was particularly prominent during times of international tension, which given events of the time such as the Cold War, the Korean War and Indonesian War of Independence were more frequent than not. Radio journalism became increasingly professional, aided by technological developments and increased budgets. The broadcasting associations employed a growing number of

Dutch Radio News

national and international correspondents. Even the Christian broadcasting association NCRV that had long resisted covering a broader range of subjects acknowledged they now had to include foreign reporting: ‘Whether we want it or not, more and more of our broadcasts will also need to be internationally oriented. The danger of being caught up in humanist, more of less socialist waters, is real. Everything points to the fact that we will have to make ourselves understood as Christians everywhere in the world’ (NCRV Jaarverslag 1948: 4–5). Most of the new correspondents were men as the broadcasters felt that the role of an adventurous reporter was one better suited to men than women. Men such as Jan de Troye for the VARA, newspaper journalist, photographer, children’s author and former Japanese war prisoner, Alfred van Sprang for the NCRV, and Paul de Waart, considered by the KRO to be trusted to ‘pay particular attention to Catholic events’ (KRO Jaarverslag 1950: 71). Although the KRO appointed Mia Smelt to make field recordings, as a reporter she was only assigned to tasks such as reporting on the clothes that the royal family wore during the coronation of Queen Juliana in 1948 (Mia Smelt n.d.). In this stereotypical view of gender the Dutch radio was no different from its counterparts in other countries (Skoog and Badenoch 2020). In its 1946 annual report, the KRO said its correspondents needed to be ‘craftsmen’ (Rodenburg 1984: 18), while the AVRO argued that good radio reporters needed to be able to tell a ‘juicy story’and be able to manage their emotions if something unexpected happened while out on the job (AVRO Radiobode 1953: 3). One of the most profound radio news events of the Netherlands in this period was the flood of 1953, the largest natural disaster of the second half of the twentieth century. Many miles of poorly maintained dykes in the provinces of Zeeland and Zuid-Holland broke during the storm and spring tide of 31 January 1953, killing 1,835 people. Tens of thousands of animals died, 100,000 people needed rescuing and 45,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The previous evening’s weather forecast had mentioned that there would be a heavy storm but nothing more serious had been predicted (Slager 1999: 373). The news of the dyke failures was first announced during the following morning 8 am ANP radio news bulletin; there were no newspapers on Sunday. The extent of the disaster was not at all clear and communication with the areas affected was difficult, if not impossible for days. The ANP bulletins became the conduit for all kinds of official announcements from government agencies and private citizens. The chief editor of the ANP, D. J. Lambooy, said later the agency had simply done its public duty: ‘by allowing itself to be used for other communication besides purely journalistic, [the ANP] broke the Postal Law and formal radio agreements, but in such a way that we not only did not get prosecuted but that we fulfilled our task […]: the press exists to help people’ (Toespraak D. J. Lambooy 1953). The Dutch Postal and Telegraph Service (PTT) also noted that much was owed to the radio amateurs who had used ‘Channel 3700’ to pass on messages from councils, the army, navy, government agencies and the Red Cross (Kanaal 3700 1954) The radio broadcasts in those first few days after the great floods became legendary for the reporters’ dramatic tone in which they tried to keep their emotions under control, such as that by Jan van Troye on 5 February: ‘deserted, desolate, in the rain, the farms appear above the grey water that covers all of the islands of Duiveland and Schouwen. And when we witness this, we ask ourselves: how will this ever work out?’(cited in

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Noyons 2002: 51). It took the radio correspondents’ eyewitness reports to make clear how perilous and unprecedented the disaster was in the flood-hit areas, as if war battles had been fought, as correspondent Arie Kleywegt described: ‘A frontline […] behind the green dyke there was no more island, the dyke had become a mirage, a façade, nothing more, […] calm, babbling water’ (Woord, VPRO 2015). The reports from the disaster area showed the power of storytelling on the radio and also proved that the separate broadcasting associations, the ANP and other parties could set aside their conflicts when really necessary to create a sense of national community. The broadcasters gave up their airtime to the ANP which during the first week of February 1953 filled fiftyfive-and-a-half hours of airtime in comparison to its normal sixteen. Newspapers and broadcasting organizations praised the ANP for keeping their bulletins ‘warm […], sober and calm’, which was very different from the criticism levelled in the British press at the BBC (Engelse bladen; broadcast of flood warnings). All the praise received by the ANP radio service led ANP’s chief editor to write somewhat peevishly to the Telegraaf newspaper to point out that the success of the reports was not only down to its radio service, but that reporters, editors, photographers, translators, stenographers, telephone, telex and wireless operators from the whole agency also deserved to share in the credit (Lof voor het ANP). It took many years before critical questions were asked why the winter storm of 1953 had caused such devastation and why the media and politicians showed little long-term interest in those who had survived. It was already known before the Second World War that the dykes were in need of repairs and the government had been in no hurry to tackle further damage caused by the war (van der Ham 2003). Journalist and radio producer Kees Slager blames journalists’ mentality at the time for failing to ask policy makers pertinent questions: ‘a gentleman wearing a hat, that he doffs to those in authority’ (Slager 1999: 374). However good the commentary at the time, radio cannot be absolved of its lack of decisiveness. The Dutch Met Office, the KNMI, failed to persuade the radio authorities to broadcast very high water warnings before midnight on Saturday 31 January, nor to stay on air in the crucial early hours of Sunday morning. The ANP radio news service, alerted to high flood water by a local mayor at 5 am, wanted to broadcast an extra bulletin but those who had to give the technical staff their approval to do so could not be reached (Slager 1999: 379). The success of the cooperation between the public broadcasters and between them and the ANP, acting in the national interest rather than for individual ‘pillars’ only, as witnessed during the 1953 disaster, was not long-lived. The chief editor of the ANP, Sal Witteboom, compared the ANP news bulletins with those of the BBC Home Service and lamented that while the ANP included more foreign news stories, BBC news was ‘more alluring’ and that Dutch news lacked depth and breadth because of the ‘pillarization’ of society: ‘If a large national organisation here, say of employers, workers or entrepreneurs, or say in the religious or social domain, speaks out, then usually that is a group that represents a quarter or a fifth of such people’, he complained, whereas ‘[i]n England an organisation that represents the whole country can then be heard’ (Enige Vergelijking 1962).

Dutch Radio News

Rivalries Until 1960 radio was a medium enjoyed by the whole family, but as television gradually took over that role, radio increasingly became something people listened to on their own. In 1962, the year of the worst railway disaster in Dutch history (eighty people were killed) and the year of Queen Wilhelmina’s death, the NCRV said in its annual report after broadcasting 3,000 hours of radio compared to 200 hours of television that radio and television were ‘moving towards a state of interaction where both forms of powerful mass-media communication were equally important’. The broadcaster even argued that people who were among the first groups of television viewers had now ‘rediscovered the radio as a source of entertainment, musical enjoyment and relaxation in the broadest sense of the word’(NCRV Jaarverslag 1962: 35). If radio and television in the early 1960s did compete for audiences, that tended to affect the evening radio programmes and not the morning ones nor the news bulletins. In fact, the number of ANP radio news bulletins increased steadily from seven per day in 1957, to ten in 1964, and forty-five per day in 1978 (ANP). Current affairs programmes also increased the number of topics they covered, for example the KRO programme Echo tripled its number of items between 1954 and 1960 (Rodenburg 1984: 31). With news and current affairs available on radio several times a day, and if necessary through news flashes (for example the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 which was on the radio already three minutes after the agency copy came in), radio was much faster than television which only had one news broadcast a day (Koedijk 1998: 72). Audience research of 1968 showed that the average Dutch person watched two hours of television and listened to two-and-three-quarter hours of radio a day, with news bulletins accounting for spikes in listening (Jaarboek KLO/NOS, 1968: 23). Special events like the American presidential elections during the night of 5 November 1968 and the moon landing in the night of 20 July 1969 attracted large numbers of listeners, with surveys reporting that many audience members had both the television images and the radio reports on at the same time. By 1970 audience research reported that the 6 pm radio news bulletin had lost listeners because people preferred to tune into the TV news at 7 and 8 pm: ‘Radio is seen by the public as Cinderella, next to the prettier sister that is television. This more favourable image of TV is undoubtedly also why the public indicates somewhat more often that television is the most reliable news medium rather than the radio’ (Jaarboek KLO/NOS 1969/70: 43). People did, however, praise the speed at which radio news and special reports could get to them, up to forty-five minutes before the television could (Jaarboek KLO/NOS 1968: 24, 34; Jaarboek KLO/NOS 1969/70: 46). Radio reporters armed with portable Nagra recording equipment could race around the country and increasingly contribute from abroad. A 1971 analysis of the current affairs programmes of the four large broadcasting associations showed the AVRO had the most programmes, the KRO broadcast quite lengthy items and three times as many national subjects compared to international and the VARA predominantly covered social and environmental issues. Of the foreign coverage, the NCRV focused on Western Europe, the KRO on other western countries, the VARA on

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developing nations (then called ‘the third world’) and the AVRO was the only broadcaster to pay any significant attention to Eastern Europe (Jaarboek KLO/NOS 1971/72: 22–3). From the 1960s onwards radio journalism, in line with what was occuring in the Dutch journalism profession at the time, became somewhat more critical (Bardoel and Wijfjes 2015). This was about time too: although the government censorship system as it operated in the 1930s had been formally abolished in 1947, the broadcasters had continued to operate a system of internal self-censorship, which entailed deference to those in authority (Wijfjes 2012: 83). For example, in 1957 the ANP had still argued: ‘there should be no contradictions with other powers that seek the greater good, but there should be trust and mutual understanding while each undertake their responsibilities’ (cited in: Koedijk 1998: 68). The news provider said this meant that its radio news was ‘neutral’, but as, for example, the lack of questioning over government actions in the Indonesian War of Independence (1945–9) shows, in practice it meant that the news dutifully followed the government line. Public discussions about Dutch military action in its former colony were virtually absent at the time and criticism only really become acceptable following a controversial 1969 television interview in the VARA programme Achter het Nieuws (‘Behind the News’) with former soldier Joop Hueting who had witnessed what he called war crimes (Hoffenaar 1987: 175; Kapteyn 1980: 14; Prenger 2014). To stay ahead of the competition from newspapers, radio current affairs programmes in the mid-1960s shifted their focus from immediate news stories to more explanation and analysis of the news and were broadcast more often (Rodenburg 1984: 32); for example the AVRO RadioJournaal in 1965 added an edition at 1 pm and 6 pm to its usual 10.30 pm slot (AVRO Jaarverslag 1965: 57). Listeners showed great appetite for such programmes as witnessed by the nearly 13 per cent share in listening for the radio column De Toestand in de Wereld (‘The Situation in the World’), presented by G. B. J. Hilterman, a journalist who would become one of the icons of news analysis on radio. In addition to competition from television from the mid-1960s, radio news and current affairs on the public radio channels also faced a new challenge from commercial radio station Veronica. The pirate station that broadcast popular music (rarely heard on the public broadcasters) from a ship off the Dutch coast decided to relay ANP radio news copy without permission. Chief news editor Sal Witteboon tried to prove that Veronica was stealing news by adding a fake story about a fire in a chicken farm in the imaginary village Withuizen to the news bulletin of 13 January 1966. Veronica broadcast the exact same message two hours later. Witteboon had his evidence but was severely reprimanded by the ANP management that did not condone distribution of fake news: ‘fictitious stories, however innocent they might be, have no place in the news services of the national news agency’, they insisted (Baggerman and Hemels 1985: 95). Under the 1967 Media Law, the Dutch Radio Union, NRU, and its TV counterpart, the NTS, merged into one Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, or NOS (the Dutch Broadcasting Trust). The NOS was keen to take over radio news bulletins from the ANP press agency which led to significant tensions between the two organizations (ANP Radionieuwsdienst). Disagreement remained until June 1974 when it was finally agreed that the bulletins would be announced with ‘Radio news service provided by the ANP’ instead of ‘Radio news service

Dutch Radio News

from the ANP’ (ANP Radionieuwsdienst). The truce between the parties was broken in 1994 when the NOS decided that it would definitely provide the radio bulletins itself after ANP made a deal with the commercial radio channel Sky News (Radionieuwsdienst niet meer). Besides the frosty relationship between the NOS and the ANP, the rivalry between the separate broadcasting associations continued throughout the years and there was also little warmth between them and the NOS. The associations were not amused when the nonreligious, non-political TROS, primarily interested in broadcasting entertainment, was admitted to the public broadcasting system in 1967 as its growth in membership meant they lost airtime to the new upstart (nru collection). In 1971 during the State visit by Queen Juliana to Indonesia there was a big falling-out between the national NOS and several ‘pillar’ broadcasters. Because of the visit’s national importance, the NOS was charged with organizing all the broadcasts: twelve-and-a-half hours of radio and fourteen hours of television (NRU collection). The visit involved the first direct television connection by satellite between Indonesia and the Netherlands and live radio broadcasts from reporters who sent their observations while driving through Jakarta and Bandung (NOS persbericht n.d.).The operation also saw the first instance of bi-medial working, with correspondents from the various broadcasters filing for both radio and television. Although this was out of necessity rather than desire, there were otherwise not enough correspondents to cover radio; according to the NOS both forms of media saw the new way of working as very promising for the future (De NOS in Indonesië). Large quantities of technical equipment needed to be shipped to Indonesia resulting in overall costs of some 700,000 guilders, causing outrage in many Dutch newspapers. The KRO and NCRV were livid that the NOS used the associations’ allotted air time to not only broadcast reports but also documentaries, prompting the NCRV to criticize the NOS during one of its radio current affairs programmes (NCRV en KRO willen; Hier en Nu). The NOS, however, insisted it was not the associations’ air time but rather ‘floating air time’ which the NOS could choose to give to the broadcasters or to use itself. The rivalry between the broadcasters and even among editorial teams of the same broadcaster is also evident from a letter by the Head of Current Affairs at NOS radio, Kees Buurman to his superiors, following the news reporting of hostage takings in Beilen and Amsterdam in 1975: ‘Seldom have I encountered such an uncoordinated mess […] a stain on the whole of broadcasting […] stupidity, jealousy and a complete lack of craftmanship […] such a poor display of radio journalism and so far beneath the ability of everyone, that I feel ashamed to have been involved’ (Buurman 1975). Two years later, during the sieges of a primary school in Bovensmilde and a train in De Punt (which were first reported during the 10.30 am radio news bulletin of 23 May 1977), cooperation between the various radio parties was better. The hostage takers were trying to force the Dutch government to back their calls for an independent republic of South Molucca and demanded the release of a number of prisoners. Those who had attacked the school gave themselves up after three weeks; the train siege was ended when marines were sent in and two passengers and six hostage takers were killed. According to audience research, the news events that year resulted in 2 per cent more listeners (KLO-NOS 1977).

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In 1976 the NOS started with the first daily current affairs programme Met het Oog op Morgen (‘With an Eye on Tomorrow’), broadcast each evening at 11 pm. The AVRO complained that this NOS programme, together with the introduction of what was known as ‘colours assigned to radio channels’ (i.e. each radio channel in Hilversum would have different types of offerings) made it impossible for the AVRO to continue with its evening current affairs programme (AVRO Jaarverslag 1980: 38). ‘Pillarization’ was becoming less prominent in society and consequently support for very different current affairs programmes waned; the designation of Radio 1 as the ‘news channel’ in 1991 meant the end of the divisions in radio journalism altogether (Wijfjes 2005: 10). As competition from television channels including 24/7 outlets like CNN, from regional public radio stations and from teletext grew, it was seen as essential to have just one clear news and current affairs national public radio station. At the same time, the public broadcasting system was facing increasing cuts in public funding. In 1998 the commercial Business News Radio (BNR) started in an attempt to lure listeners from public Radio 1, and while it currently still operates, its listenership has never reached much more than half a million.

A new century, a new type of radio news and current affairs? The twenty-first century has already witnessed many newsworthy events where radio news played a crucial role in getting information to people quickly and factually, for example the explosion of a fireworks factory in Enschede on 13 May 2000 in which 23 people died and 947 were injured, the attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, wars in Aghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the downing of plane MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. The assassination of Dutch populist politician Pim Fortuyn on 6 May 2002 was a prime example of news broken first by the radio. Fortuyn was shot as he was leaving public music station Radio 3 FM in Hilversum where he had just been interviewed. The shooting was announced with a newsflash on Radio 1, followed by a telephone interview with a 3 FM disc jockey whose colleague had seen the shooting take place. The assassination shocked the nation and many blamed public broadcasters for what they saw as unfair treatment of the politician and his right-wing populist views. At the NOS this led to much soul searching on whether their news was objective enough (NOS Jaarverslag 2002: 4). In the first two decades of this century traditional radio news has faced new competition from news on Internet and social media (even if much of the ‘news’ on those two forms of media display would not fit traditional definitions of news, let alone news in the public interest). But the Internet and social media have also afforded radio journalism more opportunities to promote and rediscover its informational role. Cross-medial working, such as that pioneered by the NCRV in 2000 when its journalist Heidi Iepema reported on Rwanda for radio while also keeping an internet diary, providing photographs and writing an article for the printed NCRV magazine, is now common fare for broadcast journalists.

Dutch Radio News

News consumers now have myriad ways of accessing and sharing content, but traditional radio with its traditional news bulletins and current affairs programmes remains popular and continues to fulfil an important social role. Millions enjoy listening to the radio every day; the most listened-to Dutch radio station according to audience research in December 2021 was NPO Radio 2, a pop music station aimed primarily at thirty-five- to fifty-fiveyear olds that achieved an overall market share of 16.6 per cent and weekly reach of 19.0 per cent (RAB 2021). The share of listening to news and current affairs public broadcaster NPO Radio 1 has seen a steady decline in the past two years and currently stands at a market share of 6.9 per cent overall and a weekly share of 14.5 per cent (RAB 2021). The market share of regional public broadcasters that are a major provider of news and information speech-based programmes (6.9 per cent in December 2021) has also fallen. However, it should be taken into account that, as Olij argues, listening to radio is often not recognized as news consumption because the radio is used as a secondary activity while for example driving a car (2016: 40). Moreover, people who may have tuned in to radio to hear for example a sports commentary or music will also pick up some news from the bulletins or headlines. Although the average age of radio (and tv) audiences is increasing, for example the average age of an NPO Radio 1 listener increased from sixty in 2014 to sixty-four in 2020 (NOS Jaarverslag 2020: 10), the Dutch population as a whole is ageing too. Media analysts believe radio listening in 2020 was more negatively affected by national lockdowns as part of measures to deal with COVID-19 than use of other media, most likely because people were not listening on their way to work or school. It does not mean that people are not interested in news or in audio. Indeed, research suggests interest in news remains pretty stable, 94 per cent of the Dutch population as a whole said in 2020 that they were somewhat or very interested in news and although older age groups tend to show more interest than young people, among the latter it is still 87 per cent (Mediamonitor 2020: 11). Thirty-six per cent of the Dutch population use radio news bulletins and programmes as a news source; 39 per cent use social media, 61 per cent use television (Mediamonitor 2020: 14). Podcasts related to news and current affairs which started in 2018 are attracting ever more listeners. Commercial broadcaster BNR was the first with its programme called ‘Newsroom’ on 8 January 2018, followed by ‘De Dag’ from public broadcaster NPO Radio 1 three weeks later. The newspaper NRC’s programme NRC Vandaag began on 28 April 2019 (NOS podcast viert). All took their inspiration from the New York Times’ news podcast The Daily which started on 1 February 2017 (even if this was by no means the American newspaper’s first foray into audio: in the 1940s it had a radio programme called ‘What’s on your Mind?’) broadcast over WQXR (see for example Downes 1947: X9). Audience research shows more than half the Dutch regularly listen to podcasts, with the most popular genres being humour (29 per cent), news and current affairs (28 per cent) and science (18 per cent) (NOS podcast viert). Whether listeners, media professionals and scholars consider podcasting to be radio or not (Chan-Olmsted and Wang 2020), the enthusiasm for news podcasts does show that people are interested in current affairs told, explained or discussed in audio form.

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There is still a significant place for news events and stories reaching people via radio. Radio news has always been fast and cheap to deliver, and if it stays reliable, whether provided by public broadcasters or by commercial news agencies that have journalistic codes of practice, can act as a counterweight to the enormous amounts of disinformation, hyperbolic language, filter bubbles and polarization of opinions created by the Internet and social media as well as provide balance to image-driven coverage of stories on Internet or television. Recognizing the importance of local journalism to democracy in the Netherlands, the Dutch government recently announced that it would fund projects aimed at strengthening cooperation between community radio, regional public service broadcasters and the national public service news provider NOS. Up to sixty journalists throughout the country will be appointed who will obtain news and skills training at the regional broadcasters to work with the unpaid volunteers that make up community radio stations in order to unearth more stories that are relevant to national and local audiences and in particular to report on local politics (Start Project 2021). There are very few local papers in the Netherlands that have enough resources to keep local government accountable, a particular problem since in recent years local governments have acquired more tasks from central government, e.g. care of the elderly and youth services. As the managing director of the regional public broadcaster Omroep Zeeland, Monique Schoonen, says: ‘Especially in areas where news provision is under pressure and the community stations hardly play a role in the provision of daily news it is vital to strengthen local journalism’ (2021: 4). Much of the extra news provision will find its way onto radio, although as befits the age of convergence, the items are also expected to be broadcast on television and there will be extra investment in online and social media. While welcoming the extra funds and manpower, the regional broadcasters worry about the temporary nature of the scheme and warn that if local journalism and democracy for all citizens is to be a reality, then there must be more structural government funding for public broadcasters (Stuurgroep 2020). During its first hundred years, radio news in the Netherlands moved from being in a system polarized by programme makers’ and listeners’ religious and socio-cultural backgrounds and subject to significant government interference to a system of impartial service aimed at the whole of the public beyond ‘pillars’. In its next hundred years, faced by a society increasingly polarized and subject to significant threats to democracy from content on tech platforms, it must find ways to maintain its relevance and preserve its public role.

Works cited ANP Radionieuwsdienst’, documentatie Melkpad 34, 15-2-1937 t/m 31-12-1991,0413.01, map ANP 1937–1970 and 1971–1994, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. AVRO Jaarverslag (1965), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. AVRO Jaarverslag (1980), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. AVRO Radiobode (8 maart 1953), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Baggerman, J. A. and J. Hemels (1985), Verzorgd door het anp. Vijftig jaar nieuwsvoorziening, Utrecht: Veen.

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Bardoel, J. and H. Wijfjes eds (2015), Journalistieke cultuur in Nederland, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Blankenstein, van E. (1999), Dr. M. van Blankenstein: een Nederlands dagbladdiplomaat 1880–1964, The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers. Boer, de P. A. (1969), à Steringa Idzerda. De pionier van de radio-omroep, Bussum: De Muiderkring. Broek, van den H. (1947), Hier Radio Oranje, Amsterdam: Vrij Nederland. Buurman, K. (1975), ‘Memorandum 16 December 1975’, 1-9, in: programmainfo NOS 1974–1986, 299.02 255 (D135-038203), file Programmainfo NOS 1974–1977, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Chan-Olmsted, S. and R. Wang (2022), ‘Understanding Podcast Users: Consumption Motives and Behaviours’, New Media and Society 24 (3): 684–704. ‘De dag waarop veel kwam en ging’ (1935), AVRO Radiobode, 5 July: 8, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. ‘De NOS in Indonesië’, programmainfo nos, 299.02 252, file Staatsbezoek Indonesië (1971), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Downes, O. (1947), ‘Music and Politics’, New York Times 9 March: X9. ‘Engelse bladen hebben critiek op de B.B.C.’ (1953), Friese Koerier, 5 Feburary: 4: www. delpher.nl (accessed 22 January 2022). ‘Enige Vergelijking tussen de nieuwsuitzendingen van de BBC Home Service en die van de Radionieuwsdienst ANP gedurende vijf dagen (8–12 oktober 1962)’, ANP Radionieuwsdienst, 7, collectie Sal Witteboon, doos 13, 13102, map 13.01, archives Beeld and Geluid, Hilversum. Ham, van der W. (2003), ‘Watersnood van 1953 was te voorkomen’, Tijdschrift voor Waterstaatsgeschiedenis 12: 21–31: http://www.jvdn.nl/Downloads/WG/2003/ TWG2003_021-031.pdf (accessed 23 January 2022). hdo Jaarverslag over het derde omroepjaar, hdo-collectie 1924 t/m (1927), nr. 13039, map 1, archief archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Hemels, J. M. H. J. (2013), ‘Vaz Dias, Mozes (1881–1963)’, in: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland (12 November 2013): http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn/BWN/lemmata/ bwn3/vazdias (accessed 20 January 2022). Hier en Nu (1971), [Radio programme] NCRV, 17 July, in programmainfo nos, 299.02 252, file Staatsbezoek Indonesië (1971), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. ‘Historie Radio 1930-39’ (n.d.), Beeld en Geluid Wiki: https://wiki.beeldengeluid.nl/index.php/ Historie_radio_1930_-_1939 (accessed 22 January 2022). Hoffenaar, J. (1987), ‘De Indonesische kwestie (1945–1949). De Nederlandse inbreng nader bekeken’, Militaire Spectator 156 (4): 172–9. Jaarboek KLO/NOS 1968, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Jaarboek KLO/NOS, 1969/’70, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Jaarboek KLO/NOS, 1971/’72, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Kanaal 3700 Vereniging voor experimenteel radio-onderzoek in Nederland (veron), (1 February 1954), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Kapteyn, P. (1980), Taboe, ontwikkelingen in macht en moraal speciaal in Nederland, Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers. KLO-NOS, map NTS-NOS 77-089 (26 October 1977), archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum. Kleywegt, A. (1953), [Radio] 5 February, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum.

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Koedijk, P. (1996), Hier is de radionieuwsdienst … Rapport over de culturele en wetenschappelijke waarde van de collectie bulletins van de radionieuwsdienst anp, Amsterdam: Stichting Film en Wetenschap. Koedijk, P. (1998), ‘Gericht op het belangrijkste nieuws: de politiek-sociale betekenis van radionieuws’, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis (1): 60–77. KRO Jaarverslag (1950), archives Beeld and Geluid, Hilversum. Kuitenbrouwer, V., A. Luscombe and H. Wijfjes (2019), ‘Developing Radio Histories’, TMG Journal for Media History 22 (2): 1–7. Lof voor het ANP (1953), De Telegraaf, 6 February: 5: www.delpher.nl (accessed 22 January 2022). Markteffect (2021), ‘Lichte stijging aantal luisteraars podcasts, maar intensiviteit luisteren neemt af ’: https://markteffect.nl/nieuws/206/lichte-stijging-aantal-luisteraars-podcastsmaar-intensiviteit-luisteren-neemt-af (accessed 20 January 2022). ‘Mediamonitor’ (2020), Digital News Report Nederland 2020: https://www.mediamonitor.nl/ wp-content/uploads/Reuters-Digital-News-Report-2020.pdf (accessed 24 January 2022). ‘Mediamonitor’ (2021), Commissariaat voor de Media: https://www.mediamonitor.nl/wpcontent/uploads/Mediamonitor-2021.pdf (accessed26 January 2022). Meijer, R. (2004), ‘Vaz Dias 100 jaar. Een Grand Seigneur zegt nooit nee’, Joods Nu, Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom. ‘Mia Smelt’ (n.d.), Beeld en Geluid wiki: https://wiki.beeldengeluid.nl/index.php/Mia_Smelt (accessed 22 January 2022). ‘NCRV en KRO willen eigen man naar Indonesië sturen’ (1971), Trouw, 17 July: 1: www. delpher.nl (accessed 24 January 2022). NCRV Jaarverslag (1948), Archives Beeld & Geluid, Hilversum. NCRV Jaarverslag (1962), Archives Beeld & Geluid, Hilversum. NOS Jaarverslag (2002), Archives Beeld & Geluid, Hilversum. NOS Jaarverslag (2020): https://over.nos.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/1.-NOS-Jaarverslag2020-ter-publicatie.pdf (accessed24 January 2022). NOS persbericht (n.d.), NOS programmainfo 299.02 252, file Staatsbezoek Indonesië 1971, Archives Beeld & Geluid, Hilversum. ‘NOS-podcast De Dag viert duizendste aflevering’ (2021), NOS Nieuws 28 December: https:// nos.nl/artikel/2411099-nos-podcast-de-dag-viert-duizendste-aflevering (accessed 24 January 2022). Noyons, Kirsten (2002), ‘De stemmen van de Watersnood. Hilversumse radio en de Zeeuwse stormramp van 1953’, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis, 5 (2): 35–63. NRU collection, box 1, 391.02, file nru Algemeen 1947–1969, Archives Beeld &Geluid, Hilversum. Olij, M. (2016), Nieuwsbehoeften. Een NOS-boek over nieuwsgebruik, Amsterdam: Boom. ‘Omroep in de Tweede Wereldoorlog’ (n.d.), Beeld en Geluid WikiS: https://wiki. beeldengeluid.nl/index.php/Categorie:Omroep_in_de_Tweede_Wereldoorlog (accessed 12 January 2022). ‘Persbureau Vaz Dias’ (1965), Het Vrije Volk, 2 October: 3: www.delpher.nl (accessed 20 January 2022). Prenger, M. (2014), Televisiejournalistiek in de jaren vijftig en zestig. Achter het nieuws en de geboorte van de actualiteitenrubriek, Diemen: AMB.

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RAB (Radio Advies Bureau), Figures for November–December 2021: https://rab.radio/clo/clo. php (accessed 20 January 2022). ‘Radio en vrijetijdsbesteding’ (1954), CBS, Utrecht: De Haan. ‘Radionieuwsdienst niet meer “door het anp”’ (1994), Het Parool, 21 December: 27: www. delpher.nl (accessed 24 January 2022). Rodenburg, H. (1984), Niets nieuws onder de zon – vijftig jaar actualiteiten KRO, Hilversum: KRO. Schoonen, M. (2021), ‘Omroep Zeeland doet ertoe’, Jaarverslag Omroep Zeeland: https:// omroep-zeeland.foleon.com/jaarverslag-2020/jaarverslag-2020-omroep-zeeland/omroepzeeland-doet-ertoe/ [acccessed 24 January 2022]. Sinke, O. (2009), Verzet vanuit de verte: de behoedzame koers van Radio Oranje, Amsterdam: Augustus. Skoog, K. and A. Badenoch (2020), ‘Women and Radio: Sounding out New Paths in Women’s History’, Women’s History Review 29 (2): 177–88. Slager, K. (1999), ‘De Watersnoodramp van 1953’, Groniek Historisch Tijdschrift, 373–82, University of Groningen Press: https://ugp.rug.nl/groniek/article/view/15905 (accessed 22 January 2022). ‘Start project “Versterking lokale journalistiek door samenwerking”’ (2021), Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, letter 15 January. ‘Stuurgroep Versterking Lokale Journalistiek door Samenwerking’ (15 December 2020), OCW, NOS, RPO en NLPO. Taylor, C. (2004), Een korte biografie van Mozes Salomon Vaz Dias, Amsterdam: Vaz Dias Advertising. ‘Toespraak D.J. Lambooy 22 februari 1953’, collectie Sal Witteboon, doos 2, map 2.01, 13102: Watersnood 1953, Archive Beeld and Geluid, Hilversum. VARA Jaarverslag (1939), VARA, Archives Beeld and Geluid, Hilversum. Wijfjes, H. (1985), Hallo, hier Hilversum. Driekwart eeuw radio en televisie, Weesp: Unieboek. Wijfjes, H. (1988), Radio onder restrictie. Overheidsbemoeiing met radioprogramma’s 1919– 1941, Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer iisg. Wijfjes, H. (2005), ‘De journalistiek van het journaal. Vijftig jaar televisienieuws in Nederland’, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis, 8 (2): 7–29. Wijfjes, H. (2012), ‘Gesproken woord en nieuws’, in B. Hogenkamp, S. de Leeuw and H. Wijfjes (eds), Een eeuw van beeld en geluid. Cultuurgeschiedenis van radio en televisie in Nederland, Hilversum: Beeld en Geluid. Wijfjes, H. (2019), De Radio: een cultuurgeschiedenis, Amsterdam: Boom. Witteboon, S. (1954), ‘Lezing voor de Radioraad 16 juni 1954’, collection Sal Witteboon, box 2, file 2.02, 13102, archives Beeld and Geluid, Hilversum. Woord (2015), [Radio programme] VPRO, 28 November, archives Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum.

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20 Still Serving the Public? News Provision on BBC Radio Katy McDonald

This chapter provides a detailed comparison between two BBC radio news broadcasts taken from different stations on the same day. It uses linguistic and semiological approaches to develop insights into the implied audiences of these programmes and understand how far the BBC still fulfils its public service commitment to serve its diverse radio audiences. For reasons of space, this chapter focuses on just two programmes – PM on BBC Radio 4 (5–6 pm) and Newsbeat on BBC Radio 1 (5.45–6 pm) – broadcast on Wednesday 4 November 2020. These programmes lend themselves to comparative analysis because they are at opposite extremes of the news spectrum but part of the same over-arching organization. They are both national programmes catering to broad audiences across the UK. Selecting programmes that were broadcast at the same time of day enables meaningful evaluation of the editorial choices the news teams have made because they are at the same point in the daily news cycle. Therefore, in considering the structural and creative elements, such as story selection and treatment, running order and interview clips, it is possible to conclude that these are conscious choices made at the same time of day by news teams who had, broadly speaking, access to many of the same sources of information. This will enable a cleaner comparison. This single news day was chosen because it contains three big stories that test to the full the BBC’s techniques of news reportage and presentation: the US presidential election; the Covid pandemic; and to a lesser extent, the aftermath of Brexit. When the first Director General of the BBC, John Reith, first outlined his vision for the BBC (at that time, the British Broadcasting Company, later the British Broadcasting Corporation) in the 1920s it was premised on a single, cohesive audience. The first Charter in 1927 committed to ‘educate and entertain’ its two million licence fee holders. There is no other reference to audiences in that first Royal Charter except a single paragraph: in view of the widespread interest which is thereby shown to be taken by Our People in the Broadcasting Service and of the great value of the Service as a means of education and entertainment, we deem it desirable that the Service should be developed and exploited to the best advantage and in the national interest. (BBC Royal Charter 1926)

News Provision on BBC Radio

However, Reith had written that broadcasting should not only be a service that leads to the betterment of society through introducing the masses to high culture and new ideas, but as Hendy stresses, it must also ‘appeal to every home’ (quoted in Hendy 2013: 23). Since then, there has been a massive proliferation of media and media organizations, and a reconceptualization of society. Society is no longer seen as a coherent, seamless whole but fragmented into different cultures, different communities of interest. The BBC is no longer a broadcasting monopoly: it is obliged to be consumer-conscious and competitive. But everyone who pays the licence fee is entitled to a service. The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which ‘inform, educate and entertain’ (BBC Royal Charter 2016: 3). The BBC is a public service broadcaster based in the UK. Its media are not state-run or state-owned and it therefore has operational independence from government. However, it operates under a Royal Charter agreed by parliament which allows for some input on funding and governance but no editorial control. The Royal Charter is accompanied by an Agreement document, between the BBC and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which further details this working relationship and the BBC’s independence. It outlines the BBC national radio outputs as follows: .

(a) Radio 1: principally a popular music service aimed at young audiences, with a commitment to the best new music, but also containing significant speech output; (b) 1Xtra: a service of contemporary Black music, with a focus on new and live music, alongside significant speech output for young audiences; (c) Radio 2: a service providing a broad range of popular and specialist music, and speech output including news, current affairs and factual programming; (d) Radio 3: a service centred on classical music, alongside other music and art forms and speech output, and with a strong focus on live and specially recorded music; (e) Radio 4: a speech-based service including news, current affairs, factual programmes, drama, readings and comedy; (f) BBC 4 Extra: a speech-based service offering comedy, drama and readings, mainly from the BBC archive; (g) BBC Radio 5 live: 24-hour coverage of news and sport; (h) BBC Radio 5 live sports extra: a part-time extension to BBC Radio 5 live providing additional live coverage of sporting events; (i) BBC 6 Music: a service of popular music outside the current mainstream, together with speech output which provides context for that music; and (j) BBC Asian Network: a service bringing a wide range of news, music and factual programming to audiences of British Asians. (BBC Royal Charter Framework Agreement 2016: 49–50) It is important to comprehend the breadth of the BBC’s radio provision and see how the potential audience is segmented with the intention that no single station will cannibalize audience from another. In addition, there are hundreds of commercial radio stations across the UK vying for their own share of the audience. Radio 1 has an ongoing struggle to

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appeal to young audiences in the face of increased competition from streaming platforms and gaming and has seen its average audience age rise to thirty-two although its intended audience is fifteen to twenty-nine. It is in understanding this context that we are able to consider the paradigmatic choices that are made by Newsbeat journalists and editors in the composition of the programme to make it as engaging and entertaining as possible, and to claim their share of the audience. Radio 4 sits quite comfortably as the most established speech-based station available, with little commercial competition since it is more expensive to produce a variety of news, current affairs, drama and comedy than phone-ins or music programming. According to the BBC it has no formal target audience but is aimed at those with ‘curious minds’ (Hendy 2013). By comparing the news output on two of its stations this chapter seeks to understand to what extent BBC radio continues to fulfil its public service duty and serve all sectors of the nation.

Analysis The aim of this analysis is to identify the implied publics that the programmes are addressing and to show that their tone, techniques and presentation are broadly analogous to the popular and quality newspapers. In order to establish which event out of the unlimited number of potential stories will make it into the bulletin or programme, journalists will apply a series of filters which many will call journalistic instinct, but which have material in common. Harcup and O’Neill (2017) build upon previous work (Galtung and Ruge 1965) to outline the key identifiers in modern news stories as ‘exclusivity, bad news, conflict, surprise, audio-visuals, shareability, entertainment, drama, follow-up, the power elite, relevance, magnitude, celebrity, good news and the news organisation’s agenda’ (Harcup and O’Neill 2017: 1482). Stories may have only one, or many, of these identifiers. In scrutinizing the differences in structure between PM and Newsbeat, the first observation is the duration; at an hour long, PM is four times the size of Newsbeat. By acknowledging that the station’s target demographic is educated, middle-aged, and looking for speech-based content on news and current affairs it is possible to infer that PM is able to take for granted an audience which is interested in the programme. This is reinforced by analysis of the content itself, which has a focus on the depth of understanding of the stories it tells. The programme doesn’t ignore the listener, in fact there is strong evidence of listener consciousness in both PM and Newsbeat, but it can assume there is a collaboration or agreement between both broadcaster and listener to focus on the content. By contrast Newsbeat concludes that its audience are de facto not interested in the news, even fifteen minutes of it, with only 12 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds using Radio 1 as a source for news (Ofcom News Consumption Survey 2020). Therefore Newsbeat spends a great deal of time focusing on the interests of the listener, and drawing some of those interests (pop culture including food, festivals, weddings, drag shows) into the programme. It seeks to grab and retain its audience’s attention through exciting and impactful sounds;

News Provision on BBC Radio

music beds, sweepers, jingles and a high tempo of speech, editing and actuality. There is a much greater demonstration of audience consciousness than in PM. This is because on Radio 1, a network for whom news and current affairs are not the listeners’ priority, the gratification of the listeners has to be more of a consideration to make it appealing and keep them interested enough to stay for the next quarter of an hour. As Starkey and Crisell explain, ‘News is not simply new information, but only that new information that audiences wish to hear – and different audiences wish to hear different things’ (2009: 132). Structure is important for providing scaffolding to any programme or bulletin. In broadcast news there are recognized conventions with which audiences are familiar and which would seem jarring if ignored. There is flexibility within structures, but it is fair to expect that the biggest, most important or most shocking story will appear at the top (start) of a bulletin, and that they will decrease in importance thereafter, ending with sport, entertainment or a ‘soft’ news story. If this expectation fails to be fulfilled, the audience is unsettled. Table 20.1 is a transcript of Newsbeat/PM which shows that the US election was the main news story Table 20.1a  Newsbeat, Broadcast 5.45 to 6 pm Wednesday 4 November 2020 INTRO – Music presenter Pete Tong introduces Newsbeat presenter Ben Mundy (BM) TEASE STORY 1 – US election. Presenter (BM) live SWEEPER1 ‘Newsbeat’ HEADLINE 1 – US election HEADLINE 2 – COVID: Lockdown announcement. Last-minute wedding angle with AUDIO of the groom. SWEEPER ‘This is Newsbeat’(28 seconds) STORY 1 – US ELECTION part 1 – LIVE TWO-WAY2 between presenter and reporter in the USA (3 minutes 38 seconds) US ELECTION part 2 – PRE-RECORDED PACKAGE from a New Orleans drag show (2 min 3) SWEEPER ‘BBC Newsbeat’ LIVE LINK (BM) A promise to return to the USA for more later, ‘but first, back here and over to our reporter Eleanor Roper (ER) at Westminster’. STORY 2 – COVID: LIVE INTRO (ER) – ‘Parliament have just approved a one-month lockdown from midnight tonight.’ AUDIO of UK Prime Minister (17 secs) LIVE LINK (ER) INTO AUDIO of listener-generated content (3 min 20) SWEEPER Newsbeat LIVE LINK (BM) (10 secs) SPORT – LIVE Betty Glover (BG) with AUDIO from Paul Pogba and Timo Werner (1 min 25) SWEEPER ‘This is BBC Newsbeat’ STORY 1 – US election LIVE TWO-WAY between presenter (BM) and politics editor Daniel Rosny (DR) including AUDIO from a Trump supporter (1 min) STORY 1 – US election LIVE TWO-WAY between presenter (BM) and ‘Newsbeat’s Callum Lesley’ to look at the results on the BBC app. (2 min 20) OUTRO – BM ‘That’s us done it’s 6pm.’ STAB ‘Newsbeat’

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Table 20.1b  PM, broadcast 5 to 6 pm Wednesday 4 November 2020 INTRO – Continuity announcer ‘It’s 5 o’clock, time for PM, with Evan Davis.’ (ED) BBC Pips (6 electronic beeps to mark the seconds up to the top of the hour) TEASE STORY 1 – US election. Presenter (ED) live. Includes AUDIO of Biden (6 secs, Trump 17 secs, Gov. Pennsylvania 12 secs). Signposts upcoming interviews (1 min 19) ED Introduces the news, read by Andrew Peach (AP) BULLETIN – AP (4 min 12) consisting of: STORY 1 – US election VOICER.3 ‘Our correspondent in Washington, Will Grant, has the latest.’ STORY 2 – Covid angle 1: 4-week lockdown. VOICER – ‘Jonathan Blake reports’, summarizing the Prime Minister’s comments Covid angle 2: Care homes. VOICER ‘Social affairs correspondent Alison Holt has the details.’ Covid angle 3: NHS pressure. COPY.4 Summary of Head of NHS England’s comments STORY 3 – Austria terror attack. COPY STORY 4 – John Lewis job cuts and Lloyds job cuts. COPY Return to presenter (ED) STORY 1 – US election. ED thanks newsreader before returning to the top story with extended AUDIO cuts of the same three interviewees (5 min) ED LIVE TWO-WAY with North America editor Jon Sopel (3 min 40) ED LIVE INTERVIEW with Sidney Blumenthal (journalist, former Advisor to President Bill Clinton) (6 min 40) Teases upcoming interview 5.15 pm HEADLINES. AP: COPY only for headlines – STORY 1 – US election and STORY 2 – COVID MP’s approve lockdown (20 sec) ED LIVE INTERVIEW with former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly (7 min 43) ED Update on a new development, with AUDIO from a press conference with Republican Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell (45 sec) Half-past-five time check signposts the ‘Moral Maze’ later that evening on Radio 4 (45 sec) 5.30 pm HEADLINES: COPY only for headlines, consisting of: STORY 1 – US election president casting doubt on vote, STORY 2 – Covid MP’s approve lockdown. Numbers who voted for or rebelled. Care homes. NHS. STORY 3 – Austria. Gunman tried to buy ammunition. STORY 4 – Job losses. STORY 5 – Horse Woman breaks lockdown rules with 320-mile round trip to buy a horse (2 min 5) STORY 1 – US election. LIVE INTERVIEW – ED and Ryan Matsumoto, contributing analyst at Inside Elections (4 min) then cuts him off to move to next interviewee LIVE INTERVIEW Anthony Scaramucci ‘A man who helped get President Trump elected in 2016, but lasted just 11 days as director of comms in the White House before being fired’ (3 min 30) LIVE INTERVIEW Jennifer Kearns former spokesperson for the Republican Party in California (4 min 30) 5.45 pm Headlines (22 sec) consisting of: STORY 1 – US election Joe Biden has a ‘razor thin lead’. Trump ‘casts doubt on the validity of the vote via Twitter’. STORY 2 – Covid. England lockdown from midnight. STORY 2: COVID VOICER Nick Eardley BBC correspondent (2 min) Return to STORY 1: US Election LIVE INTERVIEW former Foreign Secretary William Hague (6 min 35) LIVE TWO WAY Special correspondent James Naughtie in Washington, DC (2 min 40) TRAIL: PROMO for programme on The White Helmets in Syria (40 sec) ED ‘weather, Chris Fawkes’ WEATHER CF 1 min ED ‘Thanks Chris, that’s PM. Our studio director was Sharmini Ashton Griffiths, editor was Fiona Leach. Thank you for listening.’

News Provision on BBC Radio

While there are stylistic differences in the approach these programmes take there is consensus in what will be the top story of the day. On another day the Covid story could easily have led, particularly as it was breaking at the time of broadcast. However, it had already been thought likely that a second lockdown was imminent, and the parliamentary vote was fairly certain, so much of the discussion was broadcast in the preceding days. In addition, vast resources had been deployed to tell the story of the presidential election and so the authoritative character of the guests and the imaginativeness of the content were given precedence in the bulletin over the approach of the lockdown. Unlike newspaper readers, audiences are typically engaged in another activity while listening to the radio. Because audio is often consumed in a secondary way the programmemakers employ techniques to try to pull the listener towards their content. However, on PM they do not do this by resorting to music beds or jingles: their listeners might consider this to be intellectually insulting. Instead, they play with the pace and create a moment at the top of the programme before settling into the rhythm. In the opening sequence of PM the audience is enticed by a ping-pong-style rally between the presenter’s speech and excerpts of audio from Joe Biden, Donald Trump and the Governor of Pennsylvania. Each element, whether presenter link or interview cut, lasts for just seven to thirteen seconds. It is punchy and fast by Radio 4 standards, a tease of what is coming over the course of the hour and with equal time given to each of the opposing political sides. The audience is told they will cross over to the steady hands of the news bulletin and on returning to the PM presenter, Evan Davis, the pace has slowed considerably. Each person is heard for almost a minute at a time and there is intellectual breathing room to allow us to ponder what we are hearing. The Newsbeat audience is being called to attention right from the first sentence: Down to the wire. It’s neck and neck. It’s a photo finish. It’s too close to call. Pick your cliché.

Delivered in an engaging, upbeat, exciting style this dramatic opening is designed to grab the listener by the throat and pull them in. The self-awareness of the clichés is appealing to a demographic who, audience research tells us, want authenticity. There is something of the showman – the circus ringmaster almost, in the initial attention-grabbing burst by the presenter – which is reminiscent of the exhortation to ‘roll up, roll up’. This example goes beyond the ‘rule of three’ that is common in literature and political speeches and pushes that convention one stage further as if to emphasize the self-awareness of the cliché, the use of which is typically forbidden in radio news writing (Chantler and Stewart 2013; Hudson and Rowlands 2012; Thompson 2010). The sentences are staccato in rhythm, and none contains more than five words of two syllables per word: the words are like bullets from a gun; ‘bang-bang-bang’. There are structural analogies to be drawn between broadsheet newspapers and tabloids on the one hand and PM and Newsbeat on the other. Each may cover the same top stories, but the depth and storytelling modes are quite different. Starkey and Crisell (2009) invite us to draw comparisons between radio news and newspapers, arguing that the output of The World at One on Radio 4 is comparable to that of a broadsheet, or quality newspaper, whereas Morning Report on the now defunct Channel 4 Radio was more populist. The same

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case could be made with the texts we are addressing here. If we were to imagine PM as a newspaper, it would consist largely of written text, whereas through the use of immersive sounds Newsbeat offers an aural equivalent of photographs and cartoons: music, actuality, effects, and the pictorial style of the scripting. In both programmes the scripting avoids the more obviously ‘literary’ qualities because radio news is fleeting and must be instantly assimilated. The distracted radio audience has to be able to hear and understand the content on first hearing: it doesn’t have the luxury of pondering and re-reading a complex sentence as it would in a newspaper. As a starting point there are essential differences between the programmes in terms of their target audiences. They may share some editorial decisions on the key thematic stories of the day, but it is clear in almost every element of the programmes that they are speaking to different people. The use of the sweeper (like a jingle, but less flamboyant) serves as aural punctuation, like a paragraph break, transitioning the listener from one part of the programme to the next. It is used five times in Newsbeat, and if the audience’s attention has wandered, this will sound like a call to attention. By contrast PM does signpost the station’s identity but it is the presenter who announces it. This only happens twice; at the start and the end of the hour-long programme. The PM bulletin has a distinct spot in the programme, lasting for four minutes twenty seconds on the hour, with a shorter two-minute version at half past, and headlines that are shorter still at a quarter past and quarter to the hour (twenty seconds). These segments are demarcated by an introduction and are read by a different (but also male) newsreader. Within the bulletin structure there is an opportunity to ensure that the audience’s needs are met in a controlled way. In a bulletin the components are largely pre-recorded and certainly scripted, whereas in the broader PM programme, where contributors are enabling a wider exploration of the themes, the latter are talking extempore. Throughout the programme, even (especially) when opinionated people are being interviewed, there is a constant return to the facts. One example appears during a two-way between Evan Davis and Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News and NBC News anchor: MK: I think if the Democrats don’t have a real session of soul searching on their absolute unwillingness to understand America, and who really is in this country in between the coasts. (overlapping) ED: Well hang on. Megyn, Megyn, Megyn, wait, wait, wait, they’ve won the popular vote in presidential elections in seven of the last eight. I mean, yeah, but it’s not such a bad record, is it? I mean, compared to the Republicans. PM 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 4, 4 November

The presenter must be confident and knowledgeable enough to make these interjections and counter-claims that are made by one or other side of an argument. PM’s audience would be frustrated if the programme lacked this depth. As each programme ends we perceive other differences. Newsbeat opts for a return to the top story with an update and summary, followed by a call to action to utilize the BBC News app for more information, a relaxed thank you to one of the contributors and a

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matey ‘That’s us done, it’s 6pm.’ At the beginning and end of Newsbeat there is a minimum discontinuity with the rest of the station’s output and an assumption of technological literacy in the listeners that enables the programme to recommend the app without further explanation of how to do so, or without revealing what might be found there. PM has a slower lead out of the programme, first trailing another programme, then into the weather, then a signoff that acknowledges the producer and editor of the programme and a thank you for listening. This is followed by the Big Ben bongs5 and the news at 6 pm.

Scripting/language There are different methodological approaches to evaluating audio and visual texts: with radio we must explore not only what was said (the script) but the tone and subtext. Newsbeat’s opening line is bold and entertaining, and plays with the conventions of newswriting. Typically an introductory paragraph (also known as an ‘intro’, ‘nutpar’ or ‘top line’) will tell the reader/listener/viewer the ‘five w’s and h’; who; what; when; where; why; how. Radio journalists are taught to lead with the most exciting, relevant, newsworthy aspect of the story and get the key message across in a single sentence. If the listener misses a reporter’s detailed explanation they should still have been able to understand it from the newsreader’s cue. With its fast-paced, theatrical intro, what Newsbeat is telling us is that it knows its audience are not here for the story as much as the drama. Unusually, PM too is caught up in the drama: though its opener is more closely tied to convention, it is still catchy and concise. It begins, ‘Twenty-four hours of extraordinary election drama in the US. It starts with this man …’, before going into a cut of Donald Trump. We hear two short sentences from a presenter, then movement to another voice. This is a pace that is equally attentiongrabbing but is not maintained. PM knows it, too, needs to pull its listeners in to the programme, but once they are engaged the pace can relax. Nevertheless, the programme is not unmindful of the intellectual comfort of the listener: the producers know that they may be listening distractedly. Through its scripting Newsbeat shows us how immersed it is in pop culture, and in an attempt to entice those listeners who are tuned in for the programming around the news rather than for the news itself, the journalists attempt to absorb popular culture into their own content. Reporter Daniel Rosney: Well the only way I can describe it is like when you come back from a festival, you get into your bed for the first time and when you wake up you don’t really know what day it is, but you’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours and then you just think that ‘did all that just happen? Did I watch all of that?’ That’s very much the scene right now that’s been where we are. I’ve got an iced latte in front of me because that’s the only thing keeping Newsbeat going – it’s a boiling hot day. Newsbeat 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 1, 4 November

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This quite explicitly illustrates who the journalists think their audience is. The way of bringing to life an experience of being up all night to cover news that is happening thousands of miles from home through the metaphor of a drunk festival camping experience is very effective storytelling. It embodies a particular kind of ‘cool’ that the station perpetuates and promotes through its music, presenter links and coverage of live events such as the Glastonbury music festival, where there is crossover between the station’s presenters and TV or online coverage. This storytelling technique, the making of meaning for the audience, is transferable to many situations, and is a powerful and effective tool for amplifying the newsworthiness of a story for the audience. Meaningfulness and relevance (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill 2017) can be created by a reporter drawing comparisons between news events and the listener’s own life, or by explaining the impact a story might have on them, thus both justifying editorial choice and fulfilling the audience’s needs. The interaction here is stylistically very similar, drawing on pop-culture references and colloquial language: BM: And we should point out, we’ve got all the TVs on in the studio on US coverage, so if anything happens between now and six we’ll let you know straight away. Now Daniel you spent a pretty dramatic night out in New Orleans, didn’t you, watching the results come in? DR: I wouldn’t call it a night out-out, out-out, I was working hard Ben – stash of Oreos, some crisps with Cardi B on the front of them, which tasted pretty decent actually, making all my notes basically trying to work out the maths of who can win this election. Because of Coronavirus restrictions we did have limited options to where we could watch it. BM: Stop teasing us … Come on … Where did you actually go? DR: Ha alright! Calm down! We went to the only one that we could find that stayed open later. It was outside – 100 people socially distanced, all wearing masks, there were really, really nice hotdogs with dripping cheese, couple of people have nachos on the go as well. Now voters there said normally election night is a proper night out. Think Eurovision party levels of drinking games, and it was a bit like that actually watching all the states declare their points, but instead of forty-one acts there were just two. And I didn’t think it was possible, but this show seems to be going on for a lot longer than Eurovision. So we’re in New Orleans now, which is an area that did support Joe Biden in this election and many didn’t expect Donald Trump to get as much support second time around as he has done. Newsbeat 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 1, 4 November

The conspicuousness of the consumption of an iced latte in an earlier clip, and the Oreos and crisps here denotes a performative presentation that may well be accurate, but that speaks to a particular set of values. It is younger and ‘cooler’ to say you’re eating American biscuits and drinking expensive iced coffee than a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of pop from the corner shop. The Cardi B reference is an important one because she carries a huge amount of cultural capital as a celebrity whose music is on high rotation on the Radio 1 playlist. The way these products are advertised carries a set of values and connotations that Rosney is able to borrow as shorthand for his piece. It anchors him geographically and paints pictures of what he is experiencing while also drawing on references that have meaning for the Radio 1 audience.

News Provision on BBC Radio

The informality of language between the presenter and reporter feels like friendly banter, and although it is surely scripted it is delivered in a style not dissimilar to the one used by the presenters on Radio 1’s main music programming, for example ‘I wouldn’t call it a night out-out, out-out, I was working hard Ben!’. The response to the question is delivered in mock indignation at the idea he might have been ‘out-out’; a phrase popularized by British comedian Micky Flanagan to distinguish the difference between nipping out for a modest and short night of amusement and going out for a prolonged night of fun. Linguistically obscure, the meaning is conveyed when it is decoded by culturally connected individuals, who perceive the intended connotations through a combination of the words and the pace and tone of delivery. It is highly likely the UK audience will know of this reference, and enjoy being in on the joke. It has gained traction beyond its initial audience and become a common idiom, however it wouldn’t be easily accessible to an international audience. It is even mainstream enough to be familiar to many PM listeners: it is not edgy or particularly aimed at teenagers but recognizable across a broad audience. The references to Eurovision further ground this political story in pop cultural comparisons that make meaning for the audience, and entertain them. It also suggests a breadth of audience that is being targeted and an awareness that while the audience is not a homogenous group they are highly likely to have encountered certain foods or pop culture references. The use of ‘you’ embraces the Radio 1 listener: it feels like a ‘we’. ‘We’ (the audience as a community) recognize this experience, this is who ‘we’ are, these are the things ‘we’ are part of. The anchor continues this approach, using ‘us’ to strengthen this implied community between journalist and audience. This is an effective technique if not over-used and can be traced back to the significant contributions of Hilda Matheson, the first BBC Director of Talks, who favoured an ‘intimate mode of address’. In his analysis of twentieth-century public radio in Britain, Chignell notes the impact of early broadcasts of Postscripts to the News where presenter J. B. Priestley ‘had clearly learned the lessons of Hilda Matheson’s intimate style of talk’, beginning by addressing the audience directly with ‘I wonder how many of you feel as I do’ (Chignell 2011: 45) and ending ‘And our great-grandchildren, when they learn how we began this War by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious’ (Hendy 2022: 197). There are nuanced differences in the modes of address used by Priestley and Rosney in these examples. Priestley’s words, ‘how many of you’, imply he is well aware of the mass audience to whom he speaks, however, Rosney more directly addresses a single person. Although he is obviously engaged in a two-way verbal interpersonal communication with the presenter, he is acutely aware of the purpose of this which is for a much broader mass audience to hear it and he pulls them in to the conversation through the storytelling. The modes of listening are likely to be different between Priestley and Rosney’s listeners too. While Priestley’s audience would tend to be assembled in small groups around a large valve radio attentively absorbing his contextual analysis of the day’s wartime news, Rosney’s are more likely to be passively consuming his broadcast on mobile devices or laptops through headphones or alone in cars. Both draw on one of the most enduring and endearing qualities of radio – that it is, paradoxically, an intimate mass medium.

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PM uses similar forms of inclusive language: for instance when Davis signposts the upcoming interviewees he simply lists them, ‘It was a long night, it’s been a long day. On PM, all the news and comment and analysis. We’ll hear from Megyn Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, William Hague, just to name a few.’ There is no need to explain the job titles, political leanings or relevance of these guests to the PM audience. They will feel as validated by that assumed knowledge as will Radio 1’s listeners by the assumption they know who Cardi B is. To this end, both programmes are fulfilling their public service duty to explain current events in a way that is interesting and entertaining. They are utilizing mechanisms of storytelling that are appropriate and well-crafted for the intended audiences of the two stations. However, neither programme attempts to cater ‘for all’, and while the language can feel inclusive for PM’s existing community of listeners, it can feel very exclusive for outsiders who find it difficult to penetrate. The programmes engage with different linguistic registers, except that PM is also obliged to be colloquial because of the constraints of the medium. Thanks again to the influence of Hilda Matheson (Chignell 2011: 14) radio scripting is written ‘for the ear’ rather than the eye, so that it can be totally acceptable to write sentences that are ‘ungrammatical’ and thus unsuited to print. To achieve an intelligible fluency we see a higher than normal usage of colloquial elisions, such as ‘he’s’ and ‘she’s’. Colloquialisms are less common, though by no means unknown on Radio 4 (‘boy, it’s nice’; ‘he’s not backtracking either’), so there are stylistic familiarities that go right across the audience spectrum: but in general Radio 4 is more speech-based which implies that its listeners demand discourse at a more sophisticated level. Newsbeat, on the other hand, does not talk down to its audience or give them inferior content. The matey, approachable register should not be mistaken for dumbed-down content. When they seek to give a balanced perspective on Trump’s claims of voter fraud, the ‘popular’ Newsbeat and ‘quality’ PM are clearly comparable. DR: As you said at the start of Newsbeat, Ben, it really is too close to call. There are hundreds of thousands of votes left to count and this is going to come down to a few vital states. If either man wins enough of those they’ll become President but it’s not going to be simple. Both sides claim they’ve won which is just making it so much more complicated, and Donald Trump is claiming there’s been fraud. No evidence being produced to back that up though, but he’s already talking about a legal challenge. Newsbeat 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 1, 4 November ED: Joe Biden speaking in the early hours, and he seems more likely to prevail this afternoon, as the votes continue to come in. But nothing is certain and this was the initial Trump response (Trump AUDIO). And he’s not backtracking either. This afternoon, he’s tweeted inflammatory and unfounded suggestions of voter fraud. PM 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 4, 4 November.

The register is informal, leaning towards the vernacular, in both links. Both are presented by men with no discernible accent, an attribute that is still often associated with a certain level of education. They are confident but conversational, making it easy to follow on the first time of listening. Although the presentation style seeks to portray some spontaneity

News Provision on BBC Radio

these are scripted links and the words have been carefully chosen to denote an intended set of meanings. Care has been taken to be impartial and in these links the same time is allocated to each presidential candidate. The scripting has some nuances, but in these examples they could almost be interchangeable. Davis’s use of ‘and he’s not backtracking either’ has the comfortable conversational style of Newsbeat, though ‘prevail’ is less likely to make it onto a Radio 1 script. Rosney’s script is just as balanced as the PM one, and gives the listener a very clear sense of the latest developments in the action. Impartiality today requires a greater subtlety in covering and counterpointing the varied shades of opinion – and arguably always should have done. Whereas opinion used to be balanced in simple alternatives – and could be measured in tilts of the seesaw or swings of the pendulum – nowadays a more appropriate metaphor might be the many spokes of the wagon wheel … One opinion is not necessarily the exact opposite of another, nor do they all reach the extremity of available argument. (BBC Trust, 2007 in Wahl-Jorgensen et al. 2017)

If neutrality and/or impartiality are to be achieved by presenting arguments without any authorial voice but to enable listeners to create their own sets of meaning, then they do need to be provided with information which empowers them to do that. So while the drag night storytelling on Newsbeat is engaging, entertaining and does inform us about some things, it is little more than an extended vox pop when it comes to understanding the themes and issues of the election-night process. In elevating the views of ordinary people, in aiming for a wagon-wheel approach to news reportage, there is an inevitable loss of ‘expertise’ in the programme. However, the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story have been answered, the audience is up-to-date with the latest developments and they have been given an insight into the process and the context. They have not been exposed to the same level of ‘strutting’ from correspondents and pundits, neither have they needed to extrapolate fact from posturing. What the Newsbeat production team have achieved in a creative way is to make their news interactive and representative of its listeners, without denying them the level of detail they need to be informed and educated as well as entertained. It may not have been Reith’s vision that public service broadcasting should include drag queens commenting on the US election, or that Amy and Connor having a great time at Alton Towers would help explain a national lockdown during a pandemic, but it is nevertheless effective storytelling which educates and informs its audience by stealth. The lockdown story, which would perhaps lead the bulletin on any other day, gives us the strongest indicator in either programme of who Newsbeat’s audience really is, because it is they whom we are hearing. Firstly the presenter promises we will return to the USA for more election coverage, thus signposting the unfolding drama for those listeners who are uninterested in the impending lockdown in England. After all Newsbeat is catering to an audience that includes the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who are untouched by this lockdown update. The presenter introduces a female reporter in Westminster where the decision has ‘just’ been made. The use of ‘just’ signifies the immediacy and liveness of the report, ensuring the audience is absolutely clear they are

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being given the most up-to-date information. The reporter summarizes the key points of the story, then cuts to the prime minister to provide authority, authenticity and expertise before resuming the narrative, and then over to what sounds like a user-generated vox pop from listeners who tell us how they are spending their last day before lockdown. This includes a variety of activities including a pair at a theme park, someone going out for cocktails, a hairdresser and her client at work, and another who will be spending time with family having hot chocolates and marshmallows. The blend of activities is interesting as there is a real spectrum of low-key relaxed family times through to more expensive or occasional events. They are also representative of differing levels of responsiveness to the Covid threat, with some people seeking company with others at a bar and others staying away from busy spaces whilst those who have to work are taking on extra hours to meet their commitments. These are experiences that are relatable, and easily understood by a broad range of listeners but they are not presented with any kind of value judgement, they are a mirror reflecting the audience’s experience. It is worth noting that this was the second national lockdown England had experienced in 2020, although regional variations had been in place for many areas. There was less public sympathy for abiding by rules that had begun to feel confused and illogical, for instance a government subsidized ‘Eat Out’ scheme for restaurants encouraged the public to restaurants and bars in the summer, whilst bowling alleys and theatres remained forcibly closed. It is in this context that listeners feel comfortable expressing their enthusiasm for going out ‘while they can’ whereas in the first lockdown it is unlikely that this would have been heard on air. Newsbeat needs to be attuned to its audience’s shared values to get the tone right before broadcasting such content, and gathering user-generated vox pops provides some insight. Vox pops are an effective way of adding light and shade, variety and regionality to a bulletin. Typically, reporters would take to the streets to find some range of public opinion: they are not meant to be a survey or be representative of the whole population but to give a snapshot of opinion. Radio feature and documentary-maker Olive Shapley pioneered the inclusion of the voices of working-class people in the North of England in the 1930s and beyond, recognizing the power of hearing people tell their own stories and challenging the belief that regional accents would not be understood on air (Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 345). This legacy continues as the BBC seeks to include under-represented voices in programming today. In Covid times reporters had to change their practices and for non-essential interviews a greater use of online platforms developed. It is possible that on Newsbeat the listeners have been encouraged to submit their own voice memos to the station, something that increasingly happens in music programming as a way of enhancing interaction between the station and its listeners. It is a reminder that Radio 1 knows its audience have a good level of digital literacy and are able to navigate the technology confidently. If their content is good the Newsbeat team are then able to call them back for longer interviews. This is likely to have been the case in this broadcast, since the extended piece on the wedding party includes a number of voices in different locations who are linked by this single event. It is an expedient way of getting listener contributions and encourages audience engagement that transcends mere passive listening. In addition, it allows access to a larger number of

News Provision on BBC Radio

geographical locations since it does not depend on reporters at each place. Whether this strategy will continue post-Covid is yet to be seen. Hi my name is Karen, I’m Alex’s mum and she’s busy getting ready as you would for your wedding day. But today she gets married after four failed attempts, would you believe it, due to Covid. Alex is currently having her makeup done as we speak, we’re busy getting hair done. And as you can imagine it’s a bit manic here. Her wedding should have been on Friday but again due to lockdown restrictions we’ve had a little to shuffle around like you do. We wish her all the luck in the world Unknown voice: So where’re we going, Luke? (Luke) To my wedding! (woo!) fourth time lucky! So we’re heading to Houchins in Essex. Courtesy of my brother-in-law’s BMW, with some beautiful purple bows on the car and everything looking the part. Yeah nerves it’s starting to kick in. Obviously, very happy, relieved, bit emotional to be honest. Can’t wait to see her, it’s been a long time coming. Newsbeat 2020 [Radio programme] BBC Radio 1, 4 November

It is difficult to identify the demographic of the contributors with any certainty, although with the exception of the mother who is preparing for her daughter’s wedding they all sound to be in their teens or twenties. This would place them in the target audience of Radio 1 and enables them to hear themselves represented on air. They are immersed in a mixture of activities which range from enjoying treats like cocktails to making a trip to a theme park, to less expensive but meaningful visits to see family. They are all ‘good news’ items and the tone of the callers is upbeat, enthusiastic, vibrant. It would seem unlikely that in a cross-section of society the majority of people would be doing enjoyable things on that particular day, and we are reminded that in their role as gatekeepers, journalists have been making editorial selections and taken the conscious decision to keep it light. International accents are absent from this report, although there is a range of regional ones and a balance of male and female as per the BBC’s commitment to the 50:50 Equality Project.

Conclusion This chapter set out to understand whether, using contrasting expressions of the same genre, these programmes fulfil their public service duties to inform, educate and entertain. Broadly, the analysis shows that PM focuses on the news content itself, because it can take for granted its audience’s interest therein. It does not neglect their needs or motivations and this is clear through the choice of guests, the highly structured character of the broadcast, and the conversational yet informative scripting. It maintains a balanced analysis that challenges its guests while maintaining continuity and flow. Newsbeat focuses on its audience – on wooing listeners who are immersed in youth culture and for whom news and current affairs are not the primary preoccupation – and adopts a personal and subjective tone. However, it does not neglect another public service duty of the BBC which lies largely outside the scope of this article: the need to be impartial in its news coverage. It

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is therefore reasonable to conclude that both stations continue to fulfil their public service duty to provide for their audiences while avoiding editorializing. The concept of public service broadcasting has partly evolved in the 100 years of the BBC’s existence. The BBC no longer conceives of its audience as a single, unitary entity but maintains its provision of a universal service by (at least in part) addressing different publics. What has not evolved, however, is the obligation to provide truth and balance. What is of interest, as this article shows, is how this is done in Newsbeat, not by ‘talking down’ to the listeners but by inflecting balanced and truthful news through their own cultural preoccupations, values and interests. Without distorting or debasing the news it is subtly placed within the subjectivity of the listeners. Moreover, in all kinds of BBC radio news the audience is given an audible presence on the medium which was unknown in Reith’s time. It is an unprecedented attempt to make the medium two-way or interactive, to persuade all listeners that they ‘own’ the Corporation in a way that they never did when they were preached to as listeners by a kind of priesthood of programme makers and producers. It is this combination of the need to be truthful and objective on the one hand and empathic with the listeners on the other that is so fascinating.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5

Sweeper – a station identifier that is used to segue between items or songs. Two-way – an interview between presenter and reporter, usually live and at least semi-structured. Voicer – a written voice piece that is pre-recorded by a reporter with no sound effects or actuality and is played during a radio bulletin or programme to add depth to the storytelling. Copy – written script. The chimes from Big Ben, the largest bell in the Palace of Westminster, are typically broadcast live on Radio 4 to indicate the start of the 6 pm and midnight news bulletins.

Works cited BBC Royal Charter (1926), London: HMSO: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/ resources/twenties-britain-part-two/royal-charter-for-BBC/ (accessed 16 February 2022). BBC Royal Charter Framework Agreement (2016): www.gov.uk/government/publications (accessed 16 February 2022). Chantler, P. and P. Stewart (2013), Basic Radio Journalism, Oxford: Focal Press. Chignell, H. (2011), Public Issue Radio: Talks, News and Current Affairs in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Galtung, J. and M. Ruge (1965), ‘The Structure of Foreign News: The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers’, Journal of International Peace Research 2: 64–90.

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Harcup, T. and D. O’Neill (2017), ‘What is News?’ Journalism Studies 18 (12): 1470–88. Hudson, G. and S. Rowlands (2012), The Broadcast Journalism Handbook, Abingdon: Routledge. Hendy, D. (2013), Public Service Broadcasting, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hendy, D. (2022), The BBC: A People’s History, London: Profile Books. Ofcom News Consumption Survey (2020), London: Office for Communications. Scannell, P. and D. Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, Oxford: Blackwell. Starkey, G. and A. Crisell (2009), Radio Journalism, London: SAGE. Thompson, R. (2010), Writing for Broadcast Journalists, Abingdon: Routledge. Wahl-Jorgensen, K., M. Berry, I. Garcia-Blanco and L. Bennett (2017), ‘Rethinking Balance and Impartiality in Journalism? How the BBC Attempted and Failed to Change the Paradigm’, Journalism 18 (7): 781–800.

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21 Spanish Radio in the Early Years of Democracy Antena 3 Radio Pilar Dobón-Roux

Introduction With the death of the dictator Francisco Franco on 20 November 1975, Spain began the historical stage known as the Transition to Democracy. The political reform in the country was carried out mainly from the reformist sectors from the political class of the Franco regime. It was a gradual process in which, despite the persistence of some Francoists, there was also an adaptation of a large part of the political personnel to the new democratic conditions that were being established in the country. Thus, the democratic conversion of the political class helped ensure that it was not a traumatic process, but rather a peaceful one, although with some complicated episodes (Barrera 1997). The media, especially newspapers, contributed to education and the consolidation of democratic culture, by ending information censorship in 1977. The press was baptized as ‘the paper parliament’, a metaphor used by Faus when referring to the radio of the eighties as ‘the parliament of the airwaves’ (Fernández and Santana 2000: 265). The Transition to Democracy ended with the political change in power, when in 1982 the Socialist Party won the general election. During that decade, Spain experienced the consolidation of media groups, the development of broadcast radio and the birth of commercial television channels. Since the appearance of radio in 1923 (Balsebre 2002: 32), a public broadcaster (Radio Nacional de España) and a commercial one (SER, Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión) with national coverage and a large audience have coexisted in Spain. Although the first had a monopoly on information, both were very popular. The rest were local stations with little reach. Thus, in the 1980s the large networks were consolidated, and competition grew and despite the unequal conditions in which they competed with public radio, the commercial

Antena 3 Radio

broadcasters maintained their popularity during the 1980s and 1990s. Radio was partly responsible for democratic culture in Spain. The credibility of Antena 3 Radio, SER, COPE (affiliated to the Catholic Church), Intercontinental and RATO was established at that time. Thus, radio became ‘an essential element in the lives of many citizens’ (Fernández Santana 2000: 265). This chapter will discuss the main characteristics of Spanish radio in the 1980s, when production and consumption habits changed, and the offer of commercial broadcast radio was diversified. We will pay special attention to Antena 3 Radio, the most relevant and successful radio of the time. This broadcaster appeared with a new radio formula in which information occupied a preferential place, and consolidated radio as an information media (Alcudia Borreguero 2006: 40).

Spanish radio in the early years of democracy In Spain, the 1980s were characterized by the continued rise of FM, which in 1985 surpassed AM in audience size. It became a revolution, but with some negative consequences, such as ‘poor reception, overlapping stations (overlapping each other) and difficulties in locating a certain program’ (García González 2006: 64). This growth of FM was caused largely by the Technical Plan of 1979, which meant 300 new station concessions. Previously, the Franco regime had approved two decrees to favour the development of FM in Spain. The first in 1958, to force the transformation of local frequencies from AM to FM; and the second, a year later, required that the new radio sets incorporate the modulated frequency band from 1 October 1960. These decrees were followed by the Transitory Plan for AM in 1964. With these measures, it was intended that the broadcasts in AM were replaced by FM. Instead, those who had AM concessions kept these and launched FM frequencies. Then came the need to produce low-cost content to broadcast on FM, and SER devised a formula for great success: Los 40 Principales, with contemporary music and hits.1 Other radio networks imitated this model, creating FM music stations. However, with the concessions from the Technical Plan of 1979, FM ceased to be exclusively for music stations (Legorburu 2017). Years later, requests to the government for licences for radio and television stations multiplied, protected by the fact that Article 20 included the right to freely communicate or receive truthful information by any means. Several private companies were created for this purpose, but since the exploitation of private television channels required a longer process and the centrist UCD governments planned to grant a total of 300 new licences for FM radio between 1981 and 1982, the interest began to focus on the radio sector. The new network of radio stations changed the media landscape. According to Armand Balsebre (2002: 483), information from radio after 1977 and the promise of private television together with the already mentioned Temporary FM

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Technical Plan of 1979 were decisive. Two orders of 28 August 1980 and March 25, 1981 put out to public tender 120 and 180 concessions (Fernández and Santana 2000: 143–65). The distribution of the concessions was a process lacking in transparency on the part of the government (ibid.: 160). Several stations were given to news companies or companies linked to publishing. The aim of the government was to offer them the opportunity to become multimedia organizations, and avoid ‘irresponsible candidates’ (El País, 21 January 1982). However, the path that awaited the news companies was not easy because, as a journalist highlighted at the time, ‘they are going to step on really attractive ground, but … perhaps with some risks, because companies will have to undergo profound transformations to accommodate their structures to a new world and new rhythm of radio’ (Beaumont 1982: 61). Only companies that were technically well prepared could get ahead. Ángel Faus (1990: 134) celebrated the ‘revitalizing effect’ of the new stations for Spanish radio, due to the creation of new national networks, the strengthening of some existing ones and the birth of municipal or regional broadcasts. Also, from a qualitative point of view, because ‘the main national AM networks renewed their programmes and strategies because of the emerging competition, which brought new forms and modes, fresh ideas and bold strategies’ (1990:134). After the growth of the radio offer in FM, the commitment to broadcast conventional programming in FM was consolidated. In 1985 FM was first able to equal AM in audience size (Anuncios, 7–13 January 1985: 5) and finally surpass it (Anuncios 1985: 1). FM achieved an audience advantage of 10 per cent over AM, 9,031,000 listeners compared to 7,982,000 (La Vanguardia, 9–15 September 1985: 34). Between 1984 and 1989, FM gained 1,968,000 listeners (24.49 per cent more) while AM lost 2,983,000, losing 32.57 per cent. As Faus (1990: 144) commented, ‘the crisis of Spanish AM is reflected in the crisis of the AM at a world level (…) a change of direction in the process of technological innovation in radio’, after which FM became ‘the radio of consumption’. It was not, therefore, a crisis of conventional radio but the progressive transfer of its listeners from AM to FM.

The radio phenomenon of the 1980s: Antena 3 Radio Of the networks created following the creation of new freedoms and rights, Antena 3 Radio was the one that stood out the most, a radio station that began broadcasting in May 1982. The promoters aspired to become a commercial television channel, but legal and political obstacles forced them to rethink the operation and start a radio network. In any case, it is a story of innovation from a professional and business perspective that involved at the same time a clash with the socialist government by applying its foundational principles of independence and freedom to programming. According to Alcudia Borreguero (2006: 40) ‘the definitive consolidation of radio as a news media took place from 1982 with the appearance of Antena 3 Radio, which was born as a new radio formula in which news occupies a preferential place.’

Antena 3 Radio

From the beginning, Antena 3 Radio had a diverse shareholding that brought together prominent people in the world of the media and the Spanish public sphere. The presence as partners of consolidated groups in the press meant that the big newspapers publicized every movement of the company in its promotion (Costa 1986: 330). The main promoters of the project were the journalist Manuel Martín Ferrand and the jurist brothers Manuel and Rafael Jiménez de Parga. From the business point of view, the Godó Group, the Zeta Group (the two most important communication groups in Barcelona), Prensa Española (publisher of ABC, the oldest newspaper in Spain, of a conservative nature) and the news agency Europa Press. ‘We always understood that a certain specialisation of capital is the first point of coherence in a journalistic company.’ That was the reason why they put together ‘the most seasoned old Spanish newspapers in the information war and in the battle for freedom’ (Martín Ferrand 1991: 23). From a professional point of view, the management clearly corresponded to Martín Ferrand (1940–2013). But he was also the soul and engine of the incorporation of other news companies into the business. Javier Gimeno, Deputy General-Director of Antena 3 Radio, recognized years later that Martín Ferrand ‘was a leader and the great catalyst for business and professionally’.2 Martín Ferrand was a multimedia journalist, with a career in radio, television, newspapers and magazines, although here we will focus on his career in commercial radio prior to the birth of Antena 3 Radio. He was the first director of Matinal Cadena SER between 1962 and 1964, still under the Franco regime. This programme was the first attempt at information on Spanish private radio since 1939. It meant for the Spanish audience a contact with information on the radio, different from the official Radio Nacional. That contact was only superficial, due to political control (Faus 2007: 874). It was also on SER where he managed and presented the programme that consecrated him as a radio journalist: Hora 25. At midnight on Monday, 31 January 1972, this newscast was broadcast for the first time. He knew how to take advantage of the gap that was beginning to open for information, and that would become especially notorious after the political crisis that followed the assassination of Carrero Blanco3 on 20 December 1973 (Balsebre 2002: 391). Ángel Faus (2007: 888) has described it as ‘the most ambitious news project on Spanish radio’. For the Antena 3 project, the journalist convinced different shareholders to launch a private television channel but like so many others, given that it was not possible in the short term, they diverted efforts towards radio. In 1981, Martín Ferrand highlighted the novelty in Spain of integrating such diverse and even rival actors into the same project: The union has been easy: first of all, because it has been understood that this cannot be a solo effort. Second, because we share a conjunction of civic intentions, more than a strictly business project (even it is a business project). And third, because all the companies that have been integrated have something in common: they have faced the market, they have accepted its risks, they have triumphed, and they have a long history of defending freedoms. (IP-Mark 1981: 47–70)

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This shareholding arrangement was seen as a source of professional credibility, objectivity and independence (Guindal 1982: 10). One of the main novelties introduced by Antena 3, which was later imitated by all the channels, was the use of FM to offer conventional programming as opposed to AM. According to Faus (2007: 900): ‘We owe Manuel Martín Ferrand the conversion of FM into AM.’ Until then, the FM was practically reserved for music radio, so this bet was a great upheaval in traditional radio broadcasting models. When Antena 3 Radio started FM was a second-tier radio, which was used to support the coverage of AM (IP-Mark, 1983: 47). Antena 3 Radio burst onto the Spanish radio scene in the 1980s with a new, young and casual style. Initially based on the popularity of some well-known journalists, although they sometimes came from other media, as in TV. Ángel Faus wrote that FM exploded the classic structure of broadcasting in Spanish radio, since between 1981 and 1982 ‘AM radio went from being the undisputed queen to minority partner of the new era’ (1990: 137). FM, and especially Antena 3, dismantled the traditional technical–administrative concept of this band by introducing into it programming hitherto considered typical of AM. In this way, the unity of the radio concept was demonstrated – also in Spain – regardless of the technique used. Obviously, not all were successes. In accordance with this approach, Martín Ferrand understood that ‘technical broadcasting systems cannot conform to expressive modes (…) we set up a radio that intended to be, according to the slogan, “well made commercial radio”, with “a special emphasis on news services”’ (1991: 29–30). The option of broadcasting conventional programming, and its business aggressiveness, its language and its professional effort were – according to Lorenzo Díaz (1998: 96) – the keys to its success. For Rosa Franquet (2001: 279–80), Antena 3 Radio’s strategy was correct, when Manuel Martín Ferrand ‘challenged the laws followed until then’ on Spanish radio, offering attractive programming, capable of competing with the other networks and with morning television.

First broadcast From the beginning, Antena 3 Radio’s slogan was well-made commercial radio, and the concepts of freedom and pluralism were in its DNA. One of the first advertisements, under the slogan ‘Our declaration of independence’ and with the image of Agustina de Aragón, summed up its mission as follows: News is the daughter of freedom. There are radio stations that are totally owned by the State. And others where the State acts as an important shareholder.4 Luckily there is also Antena 3. The only wholly private radio station. The first totally free radio station. To say. To comment. To ask. To investigate. To report. To criticise. To congratulate. To practice, through the news, a daily declaration of independence. This is the information from Antena 3 (La Vanguardia, 11 November 1984: 90).

Antena 3 Radio

On 4 May 1982, Antena 3 Radio began its broadcasts with only five stations in operation. From then on it grew in audience and presence throughout Spain. As Ferrand (1991: 24) recalled years later ‘through what was then pompously called the Antena 3 Network, the inaugural message from His Majesty King Juan Carlos was broadcast and the programmes began.’ In the speech, the monarch highlighted the importance of the media, while at the same time underlining that ‘freedom is the health of the soul’ (La Vanguardia, 5 May 1982). He also stated that ‘A modern nation must have a shared heritage of news, information and opinions. The freedom of citizens expands as the number of options offered to them grows … At the service of this Spain of well-informed men and women, of free citizens, I am very pleased to greet everyone cordially at the inauguration of the radio network Antenna 3.’

The team of journalists Another of Antena 3 Radio’s innovations was to combine renowned journalists with young professionals. The most important signing was undoubtedly the sports journalist José María García. García was an essential part of Antena 3’s professional project. It was, in some way, as he himself has recognized, the engine of that adventure.5 First of all, he provided his name, since he was the most popular radio journalist of the time. His popularity led to high degrees of recognition, as a former colleague of his said, ‘he was the most popular Spaniard in any category in which he was placed, and year after year he was considered one of the ten most influential characters in our society’ (Rodríguez 2013). García also brought with him the audience that had followed him on SER, and of course the advertising portfolio. However, he has always recognized that ‘the patron of that ship was the great Manuel Martín Ferrand’ (El Mundo, 9 February 2006). Ferrer Molina attributes another merit to García’s radio: While making sport rule at night, García gives it a presence during the day like never before. The prominence that he has ended up achieving on the grid of all the stations is due, to a large extent, to his work. He is also the one who dignifies sports journalism, considered of lower rank in newsrooms for decades. (2016: 15)

His new space was programmed in the midnight slot, which was named Supergarcía, and with which he would obtain a lot of popularity. The use of his personal brand in the superlative speaks of the initial prominence that they wanted to give him. The audience of his programme pulled Antena 3 Radio in the first moments, when it was most needed. Apart from José María García, other popular voices joined Antena 3 Radio, although they came from other media, such as television. The Director of Programming defended this policy ‘the rest of the stations had not considered that people who were not traditionally in radio could join radio’. If they had been successful in other media, why not on radio? Most of the professionals recruited on Antena 3 came from other media ‘and, therefore,

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without the traditional tics, which has provided that freshness and spontaneity’ that made Antena 3 different from other radio stations (IP-Mark 1983: 45–8). When asked about their information philosophy, the Director of Programming stated that he intended to ‘make radio with very brief but very intense, informative programmes. We want to make very Anglo-Saxon radio, telling only the facts and giving as little opinion as possible’ (Guindal 1982: 10). For his part, Martín Ferrand celebrated mixing young professionals with veteran journalists, because ‘this is how the best of each is spread to others’. However, he also acknowledged that the prestige of older journalists helped the station to achieve its audience (La Vanguardia, 28 May 1983: 78). There was a creative, pioneering spirit in the air, which galvanized many of those working in Antena 3 and facilitated the testing of new products in a different way from other consolidated broadcast stations, especially in the early years. Antena 3 also played a very important role as a school for young journalists. Many found their first job, or at least one of their first, on this broadcast station and thus began their journalistic careers and became very popular, such as Antonio Herrero or Luis Herrero, or the humorous duo Gomaespuma.

Programming To analyse the impact of Antena 3 on Spanish radio in the 1980s, it is necessary to study its programming. The news was its backbone. According to Miguel Ángel Nieto, one of the veteran journalists, Martín Ferrand used the structure of the aforementioned programme Hora 25 and extended that scheme of an hour-and-a-half of information, debate and sports on the programming schedule of twenty-four hours of broadcast on Antena 3.6 Consuelo Sánchez-Vicente, a young journalist in 1982, has highlighted the innovation that took place on the radio thanks to the Antena 3 news, by dispensing with newsreaders: ‘it was the same journalist who covered the information who read the news, the news marked the priority.’ In tune with this idea, she recalled that Martín Ferrand use to say that news ‘were the backbone; the hourly bulletins the vertebrae and the informative ones the marrow’ (in Alcudia Borreguero 2006: 40). It has been written that with Antena 3, radio was created that was ‘more flexible, livelier, less stagnant, a more open, fresher and freer radio, without any threat of censorship’, and all this despite the small number of its staff (Andrés de la Morena & Muñoz Gimeno, 2002: 242). As Pedrero Esteban (2002: 272–3) has written, the radio station broke the informative model in Spanish radio. It went from a formula that respected ‘the requirements of objectivity and gender neutrality to the fusion between pure informative treatments and those that combine the exposition of data with analysis, interpretation and opinion’. Esteban attributes the Antena 3 magazines to the ‘germ of the political talk shows and participation as dominant genres in the treatment of current affairs’, and the trigger for the paradigm shift. Antena 3 was the first intertwining opinion and facts.

Antena 3 Radio

Antena 3 opted for radio network programming, with certain local disconnections. They were looking for a friendly, cheerful radio and had a large budget. The Director of Programmes justified this strategy claiming that: Today what people are looking for is fun. We are all tired of being told that we are going through a critical moment and what is sought is a radio space that transmits joy. Of course, programmes of this type need large budgets and a local radio station cannot afford it. On the other hand, I don’t think there is enough material of interest for only local coverage. (Cenalmor 1984: 58)

It has already been said that the two pillars of Antena 3 Radio’s programming were information and sport. It was probably the most important FM channel for sports radio in Spain and in terms of information it followed its slogan of ‘true news, independent opinions’. Next, we will see some of the programmes on Antena 3 Radio, to try to explain why it was a novelty. The day began with The First in the Morning. Another of the innovations that Antena 3 introduced was to adapt the programming to the Spanish schedule. According to a study commissioned by the radio network, the majority of citizens got up at 6 am. For this reason, the start of the morning news was brought forward, and this schedule was later imitated by other competing channels (ABC, 7 February 1983: 79; La Vanguardia, 8 September 1984: 36). After the morning news, the programming continued with a magazine, ¡Viva la gente!, which included interviews, phone-ins, contests, reports and topics of interest especially for housewives, such as health, shopping and education (La Vanguardia, 25 January 1983: 31). For example, at 11.30 am the contest Tres por tres began, where listeners had to recognize the voice of a character, either in a speech or in a song; identify a sound, like a typewriter; answer a question about the biography of a historical figure or about a popular person. Listeners could win up to half-a-million pesetas (ABC, 23 February 1983: 94). After ¡Viva la gente!, from 12.00 to 14.30, local information returned, accompanied by curiosities and contests, as decided by each station (La Vanguardia, 25 January 1983: 31). Evening programming offered information, gossip and music (La Vanguardia, 15 November 1983: 12). In the programme You Ask, for example, the presenter subjected a current character to phone-in questions contributed by the listeners (ABC, 13 February 1983: 103). This programme disappeared in September 1984, and in its place, from 3.00 pm to 3.30 pm Pending Subject, about cinema, with the Oscar-winning film director, José Luis Garci, was broadcast (La Vanguardia, 14 September 1984: 54). From 16.00 to 17.30 the programme Good Afternoon was broadcast. Every afternoon a different topic was discussed on the air: education on Mondays, health on Tuesdays, money on Wednesdays, love on Thursdays and entertainment on Fridays (La Vanguardia, 12 April 1983: 66). In the evening, starting in February 1983, some thematic talk-shows were introduced as a novelty from 9.30 pm to 10.00 pm: on Mondays Revista de toros (about bullfighting); on Tuesdays, they talked about gastronomy A mesa y mantel; on Wednesdays, a historian

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hosted Cultura Nuestra; Thursdays The Lyrics of the Music; and on Fridays, On the Go, dedicated to the car (ABC, 7 February 1983: 79). At night Antena 3 offered news, sports and cinema. Thanks to José María García, and as has already been stated, most of the audience and advertising revenue was accumulated in this time slot. From 1983 Health Is What Matters was broadcast at 10.00 am. It was presented by a doctor, with the aim of solving specific problems and completing the education of citizens on health issues. In addition, the programme aroused interest among health professionals; in May 1986 it was followed by between 15,000 and 25,000 rural doctors, medical students and guards in hospitals throughout the country (La Vanguardia, 5 May 1986: 44). At 11.00 pm the main news of the night began, Zero Hour (ABC, 18 July 1983: 79). This space wanted to give another approach to the news, with stories of human interest (Amela 1984: 54). At midnight, from Sunday to Friday, the most popular programme on the network began, Supergarcía at Midnight, dedicated to sports with comments, interviews and news presented by José María García (Anuncios 1983: 11). After García’s daily programme, Stardust ran, from 1.00 to 3:00 in the morning. This programme about cinema, with a live phone-in of listeners, was gaining success, according to La Vanguardia (18 November 1983: 70), for its ‘live interviews, critical comments on films of all kinds and sense of humour’. Weekend programming included classical music (ABC, 28 May 1983: 111), magazines (Anuncios 1983: 16), motoring and motorsport (La Vanguardia, 21 December 1983: 50), political talk-shows (ABC, 11 June 1983: 111), Latin music (ABC, 28 May 1983: 111), jazz (La Vanguardia, 11 February 1984: 46), humour (ABC, 6 February 1983: 103) and cinema (Anuncios 1983: 11). Of course, they did not leave sport to one side, with special coverage of football on Saturday and Sunday afternoons: García presented Football on Antena 3, which from 4.00 pm covered football news from the Spanish stadiums, in addition to international championships, pools and retransmission of matches (ABC, 18 December 1982: 47). In addition to the usual programming, in the summer considerable coverage was given to the Cycling Tour of Spain (La Vuelta), a very popular sporting event in the country. The programming was interrupted to provide the last hour of La Vuelta live, and a special programme was also broadcast from 7.00 pm to 7.30 pm from the studio and a helicopter (La Vanguardia, 13 April 1984: 62).

The audience Antena 3 quickly obtained a defined audience profile. The typical listener was male (63.4%); by family role, head of family (45.8%), housewife (21.9%); by their social situation, upper class (13.0%), upper-middle (20.8%), middle-middle (24.9%), middle-low (21.8%) and low (19.5%); by age, half of the audience was between 19 and 34 years old; 56.7% were married. Almost half of its audience was concentrated in Madrid (42.7%), followed by Andalucía

Antena 3 Radio

(15.8%), Castilla-León (13.4%) and Comunidad Valenciana (11.5%). In addition, it was a mainly urban audience, since 73.6% lived in cities (Anuncios 1983: 11). Antena 3’s profitability depended on its ability to obtain a national broadcasting network. In the spring of 1983, a year after it began with five stations, it already had thirty-three operating on its network and planned to reach fifty-four in the following twelve months. In a self-promotion advertisement of the time, they boasted about its growth and about having created 400 jobs, billing more than one billion pesetas in advertising, attracting six thousand local advertisers and becoming the only ‘wholly private radio station’ with the largest audience in Spain (La Vanguardia, 28 May 1983: 20). By affirming that, they played with the fact that the State, due to Francoist regulations, owned 25 per cent of SER and a percentage of Cope. For the second anniversary, Antena 3 Radio already had fifty stations operating (La Vanguardia, 6 June 1984: 25). The same year, Antena 3 Radio bought Radio 80, a radio station that had been born at the same time but had economic and audience problems. At that time, Antena 3 Radio was consolidated as a national network.7 The purchase of Radio 80 by Antena 3 was viewed as ‘a substantial change in the Spanish radio map, where the newly minted stations, born under the protection of the democratization process, have been gaining ground in audience compared to the traditional networks’ (Anuncios, 27 February 1984: 7). With the duplicate stations, Antena 3 created Radio 80 Serie Oro, a musical radio station (Martín Ferrand 1991: 27). Radio 80 Serie Oro began broadcasting on 28 January 1985. The new network mixed musical programming from the last thirty years with news and weather summaries (ABC, 29 January 1985: 71). The expansion of Antena 3 did not stop during the 1980s and early 1990s. In May 1990, Antena 3 Radio acquired 20 per cent of Rádio Nova in Porto, together with three regional newspapers from the north of Portugal. From the Portuguese station, which aspired to be a private television channel, they pointed out that the reasons for this participation were the exchange of professional experiences and the contribution of technology (ABC, 13 May 1990: 156). Antena 3 Galicia and Rádio Nova broadcast a joint programme, thus achieving the first cross-border broadcasting experience in Spain (Noticias de la Comunicación, 3–9 February 1992: 8).8 In an Antena 3 Radio document to celebrate the tenth anniversary it was claimed that the key to success lay in the company’s team: The workers of this Company feel their activity as their own, forming part of their work and personal concerns. Employees identify with the objectives, approaches and interests of the Company. They don’t see their jobs as just a means of earning a living; they value it as something beyond a job.9

After ten years of hard work, in 1992 Antena 3 managed to be the audience leader, according to data from the EGM.10 In the wave of February to April, this study calculated an audience of 2,900,000 listeners for Antena 3, compared to 2,890,000 for the conventional SER. SER maintained the leadership through Los 40 principales, with 3,106,000 listeners. (Díaz 1995: 477) The EGM data for May to June 1992 confirmed Antena 3’s advantage over SER: 2,889,000 listeners versus 2,602,000 (Noticias de la Comunicación 21–27 September 1992: 24).

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This was the first and only time that Antena 3 Radio was the audience leader. Shortly after, a change in the shareholding of the radio station would lead to its disappearance, in a controversial process in Spain at the time, due to its lack of transparency. The Prisa group, the main shareholder of the SER network, became a shareholder of Antena 3 Radio. This operation caused some of the professionals loyal to Martín Ferrand, as well as himself, to leave the radio station, and caused a profound division in the media landscape of the time. It is not the objective here to explain the tense end of the radio network, but rather the success and the novelty that it represented in the Spanish radio scene of the 1980s. Suffice it to say that in the summer of 1992, Antena 3 Radio lost its most popular journalists, who went to work for competing radio stations, with the consequent loss of audience, and Antena 3 went from being the leader to being fourth, in number of listeners (Revista La Vanguardia, 29 December 1992: 5). The new owners of Antena 3 maintained a general programming, until in 1994 the radio station became Sinfo Radio-Antena 3, a classical music station, with the motto of ‘the number ones of the last 500 years’, and also offered updated news (Albillo Torres and Sánchez Aranda 1995: 284). Thus ended the singular and brief history of Antena 3 Radio – barely twelve years – but important from the journalistic, business and political point of view.

Conclusions Antena 3 was a radio station that first wanted to be television. In the meantime, the radio network that started broadcasting in the spring of 1982 became an unexpected journalistic and business success. It is not risky to say that Antena 3 Radio became the greatest achievement in the Spanish media landscape during the 1980s in terms of audience and influence. Manuel Martín Ferrand was the soul and leader of Antena 3 Radio, unanimously recognized as such from within and outside the broadcast station. A man with broad experience in radio and television, he was the one who had the idea and developed it from all points of view: business, managerial, journalistic and commercial. His was the first impulse to fight for a commercial TV channel; the efforts to form a company with a diverse shareholder base of competing newspapers, something unheard of in the history of Spanish journalism; the main decisions for managing the start-up and expansion of the broadcast radio network; the day-to-day management of newsroom and programming; and the transmission and keeping of the founding spirit to the rest of the newsroom staff and management team. Antena 3 Radio was the only wholly private radio station. That fact led them to insist on the ideas of independence and freedom as an attractive introduction letter for listeners at a historical moment in which those notes acquired a greater value. Its initial motto of ‘well-made commercial radio’, continually repeated in print advertising and in the station’s jingles, reinforced this approach. It was the only broadcast station with nationwide coverage resulting from the two public tenders for FM stations in 1981 and 1982, despite the fact that other newspaper companies also tried it. Association agreements with broadcast stations,

Antena 3 Radio

belonging to local newspaper companies or private individuals, promoted the expansion of the network in record time. The innovative nature of the new broadcast station made the business riskier. Its revolutionary approach consisted of offering conventional radio programming in FM, with the subsequent difficulties due to the technical limitations in range and power to broadcast in network and covering all the country. Nobody had tried it until then, hence the idea of Martín Ferrand was carried out in an atmosphere of general scepticism. He argued that the differences between medium wave (AM) and FM were only technical. The success achieved in just a few years accelerated the upward trend of FM in such a way that in 1985 the number of radio listeners was already higher than in AM in Spain. Another significant innovation, similar to the former, was the programming offered both in format and contents. The current structure of large programming blocks in the morning, afternoon and night was put into practice for the first time by Antena 3. In addition, there was the commitment to offer updated news on a regular and constant basis every thirty minutes. At first, because of commercial reasons, Antena 3 took advantage of its successful star José María García, who was the locomotive of the project in terms of advertising, audience and public prestige. Over time, other programmes and journalists provided the broadcast radio station with solidity, stability and balance. Both news and entertainment programmes were different in style from those commonly known in Spanish radio: the public-service broadcaster Radio Nacional de España (RNE) and the commercial SER. The freshness of a new, young and casual air prevailed in the newsroom atmosphere and in the ways of doing radio journalism and became hallmarks of Antena 3 that soon set it apart from the rest. This was favoured by the fact that the average age of the reporters was very young, as well as by the ample freedom given to news managers and programme anchors by the general director Martín Ferrand. The newsroom staff was quite heterogeneous. While young graduates with little training prevailed, a number of experienced journalists – not always on radio – were the card played at the beginning to attract audience and advertising. Antena 3 Radio became a school for new journalists under the leadership of Ferrand, whom they all considered to be their master. The heterogeneity, however, did not raise internal differences between the most experienced and the youngest; rather, the relationship was enriching for both groups, based on the virtually unanimous testimony of all. In short, Antena 3 Radio represented an outstanding contribution to the renewal of Spanish radio in the 1980s thanks to several factors: an unusual but effective design of the business project; an idea of ​​doing radio that broke established moulds from technological (the use of the FM) and professional (programming) perspectives; a team spirit characterized by a familiar atmosphere, the enthusiasm generated, and capacity for work and unity that was spread in all departments of the company. They all took place in unique circumstances of place and time. Antena 3 Radio set trends in Spanish broadcasting and changed the ways of doing radio journalism that were later adopted by competitors. Surprisingly, all of this was accomplished in just under twelve years, which makes the achievement more praiseworthy. It was a brief but intensely successful chapter in Spanish radio, marked by an ending that would give way to a long period of journalistic conflict in Spain.

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Notes 1 Los 40 principales is a Top 40 musical radio network and radio station brand. It is still a very popular music station in Spain. 2 Author interview with Javier Gimeno, 17 November 2016. 3 Luis Carrero Blanco was a Spanish Navy officer and politician, who served as Prime Minister from June 1973 until his assassination in December of that year. 4 Before 1975, 25% of radios belonged to the state. 5 Author interview with Miguel Ángel Nieto, 20 March 2015. 6 Author interview with Consuelo Sánchez-Vicente, 29 March 2017. 7 Author interview with Rafael Jiménez de Parga, 23 February 2017. 8 Portuguese and Galician are very similar languages. Therefore, joint broadcasting was easier. 9 Antena 3 Radio network, 1992, Personal archive of Manuel Martín Ferrand. 10 The General Media Study or EGM is a study on media consumption in the world carried out by the Association for Media Research (AIMC). In the methodology used until 2005, 43,000 personal multimedia interviews were conducted.

Works cited ABC. ‘Fútbol en Antena 3’. 18 December 1982: 47. ABC. ‘Gomaespuma: un programa diferente’. 6 February 1983: 103. ABC. ‘Nueva programación de Antena 3’. 7 February 1983: 79. ABC. ‘Usted pregunta, de Antena 3’. 13 February 1983: 103. ABC. ‘¡Viva la gente!’. 23 February 1983: 94. ABC. ‘La música en Antena 3’. 28 May 1983: 111. ABC. ‘López Rubio, medalla de Antena 3’. 11 June 1983: 111. ABC. ‘Jesús Hermida vuelve a Antena 3’. 18 July 1983: 79. ABC. ‘Ayer comezó a emitir Radio 80 Serie Oro’. 29 January 1985: 71. ABC. ‘Antena 3 y el grupo Sonae firmaron un acuerdo en Portugal’. 13 May 1990: 156. Albillo Torres, C. and J. J. Sánchez Aranda (1995), Historia de la radio en Navarra, Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra. Alcudia Borreguero, M. (2006), Los boletines horarios radiofónicos, Madrid: Fragua. Amela, V. M. (1984). ‘La hora cero de Hermida se mantendrá en la nueva programación de Antena 3’, La Vanguardia, 13 September: 54. Amela, V. M. (1990). ‘Entrevista a Antonio Herrero, periodista de Antena 3 Radio’, Revista La Vanguardia, 14 October: 7. Andrés de la Morena, S. and C. Muñoz Gimeno (2002), Medio siglo de radio en Soria (1952– 2002). De la estación Escuela nº 2 a RNE, Soria: Soria Edita. Antena 3. (1989). ‘Antena 3 Corporate Memory’. Antolín, M. (2004). Antonio Herrero. A micrófono cerrado. Madrid: Libros libres. Anuncios. (1983). ‘Informe: la oferta radiofónica en España’. No. 133, 14–20 November: 11–16. Anuncios. (1984). ‘Antena 3 y Radio 80 operarán conjuntamente tras su fusión’. N. 147, 27 February–4 March: 7.

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Anuncios. (1985). ‘FM iguala a OM en audiencia, según el EGM’. N. 186, 7–13 January: 5. Anuncios. (1985). ‘La FM aventaja en más de un millón de oyentes a la OM’. N. 215, 9–15 September: 1. Balsebre, A. (2002), Historia de la radio en España II (1939–1985), Madrid: Cátedra. Barrera, C. (1997), ‘Poder político, empresa periodística y profesionales de los medios en la transición española a la democracia’, Comunicación y sociedad 10 (2): 7–46. Beaumont, J. F. (1982), ‘De las emisoras FM a las empresas “multimedios”’, AEDE 6 (1): 61. Bustamante. (2013). Historia de la radio y la televisión en España: una asignatura pendiente de la democracia. Madrid: Editorial Gedisa. Cenalmor, I. (1984). ‘Descenso de la audiencia de las emisoras públicas’, La Vanguardia, 2 May: 58. Costa, P. O. (1986), La crisis de la televisión pública, Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós Ibérica. Díaz, L. (1998), Años de radio: recuerdos y semblanzas de los protagonistas del dial, Madrid: Temas de Hoy. Díaz, L. (1995), La radio en España: 1923–1993, Madrid: Alianza. El Mundo (2006), ‘Encuentros digitales. José María García’: http://www.elmundo.es/ encuentros/invitados/2006/02/1892/ (accessed 14 February 2022). El País (1982), ‘La primera fase de concesión de emisoras de FM favorece a los medios informativos’. 21 January: page numbers unavailable. Faus, Á. (1990), ‘La radio privada’, Situación: revista de Coyuntura Económica 1 (1): 133–50. Faus, Á. (2007), La radio en España (1896-1977): una historia documental. Madrid: Taurus. Fernández, I. and F. Santana (2000), Estado y medios de comunicación en la España democrática, Madrid: Alianza. Ferrer Molina, V. (2016), Buenas noches y saludos cordiales: José María García, historia de un periodista irrepetible, Barcelona: Córner. Franquet, R. (2001), Història de la ràdio a Catalunya al segle XX (de la ràdio de galena a la ràdio digital), Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya. García González, A. (2006), ‘La radio en la democracia (1982–2005)’, in M. Arroyo and M. Roel (eds), Los medios de comunicación en la democracia (1982–2005), Fragua, Madrid, pp. 60–90. Guindal, M. (1982). ‘Antena 3 empezará a emitir en mayo’, La Vanguardia, 1 April: 10. IP-Mark. ‘¿Oligopolio en lugar de monopolio?’. N. 215, November 1981: 47–60. IP-Mark. ‘Entrevista a José Luis Orosa, director de Programas de Antena 3’. N. 236, October 1983: 45–48. La Vanguardia. ‘El Rey: La información libre nos proporciona bienestar’. 5 May 1982: 13. La Vanguardia. ‘¡Viva la gente!’. 25 January 1983: 31. La Vanguardia. ‘Toda la radio’. 12 April 1983: 66. La Vanguardia. ‘En un año solo nos ha dado tiempo a…’. 28 May 1983: 20. La Vanguardia. ‘Sesión de apertura: resumen analítico’ 25 September 1983: 86. La Vanguardia. ‘Muy buenas tardes’. 15 November 1983: 12. La Vanguardia. ‘Antena 3: un aniversario y un Oscar de comunicación’. 18 November 1983: 70. La Vanguardia. ‘Premio para Especial motor en marcha’. 21 December 1983: 50. La Vanguardia. ‘Antena 3: información propia y diferenciada’. 25 January 1984: 54. La Vanguardia. ‘Jazz porque sí el fin de semana en Antena 3’. 11 February 1984: 46. La Vanguardia. ‘Despliegue de Antena 3 para la vuelta ciclista’. 13 April 1984: 62.

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La Vanguardia. ‘Nuestro segundo aniversario nos lo hemos ganado’. 6 June 1984: 25. La Vanguardia. ‘El primero de la mañana: informativo de Antena 3 con criterios propios’. 8 September 1984: 36. La Vanguardia. ‘Antena 3 introduce algunos cambios e incluye un programa de Garci en su programación’. 14 September 1984: 54. La Vanguardia. ‘Nuestra declaración de independencia’. 11 November 1984: 90. La Vanguardia. ‘Entrevista a José Cavero, jefe de informativos de Antena 3’. 24 November 1984: 40. La Vanguardia. ‘Nuestra declaración de independencia (por la mañana)’. 2 December 1984: 94. La Vanguardia. ‘Según un estudio, la FM supera a la OM en un diez por ciento’. 23 August 1985: 34. La Vanguardia. ‘Gran audiencia en espacios mediáticos’. 5 May 1986: 44. La Vanguardia. ‘Antena 3 ficha a Santiago Carrillo, Ernest Lluch y Miguel Herrero a partir de hoy’. 19 October 1988: 36. Noticias de la Comunicación. ‘Programa conjunto de Antena 3 en Galicia y Radio Nova’. N. 35, 3–9 February 1992: 8. Noticias de la Comunicación. ‘La junta de accionistas de Antena 3 de Radio eligió un nuevo consejo, tras el acuerdo entre Godó y Prisa’. N. 62, 21–27 September 1992: 24. Legorburu, J. M. (2017), ‘La llegada de la radio FM a España. La historia que va desde la imposición hasta el boom’: https://eldebatedehoy.es/comunicacion/radio-fm-espana/ (accessed 14 February 2022). Martín Ferrand, M. (1991), ‘Presente y Futuro de Antena 3’, in Á. Faus (ed.), Radio y Universidad, Pamplona: Servicio de publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, pp. 21–31. Pedrero Esteban, L. M. (2002), ‘Programación informativa en la radio generalista’, in M. P. Martínez Costa (ed.), Información radiofónica: cómo contar las noticias en la radio hoy, Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 263–86. Revista La Vanguardia. ‘La cadena SER consolidó en noviembre su liderazgo en la radio española’. 29 December 1992: 5. Rodríguez, J. de D. (2013), ‘Confidencias de madrugada con José María García. Nunca estuve en NY. Mis años de radio y algo más’:http://leyendaviva.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/nunca78-confidencias-de-madrugada-con.html (accessed 14 February 2022).

Section VI Studying Radio

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

The study of radio raises some challenging but not insurmountable problems and each of these four chapters includes different approaches to the problem. Fortunately, there are no strict guidelines to which radio researchers need to adhere and most successful researchers seem to improvise and are prepared to use whatever method seems to work. Richard Legay clearly confronted challenges in his research on 1960s commercial radio in Europe. He sensibly focused his research on the two well-known broadcasters and rivals: Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1. Legay’s historical research was hampered by the familiar problems of a lack of existing programme recordings and challenges using institutional archives, in addition to which was a lack of existing literature about European commercial radio at that time. He managed to find enough material in recordings and, a crucial source for media historians, magazines of different types. His research is clearly framed using concepts of the transnational and intermediality which gave additional focus. Kate Murphy is a historian of women working at the BBC and here she looks at the years before the Second World War. She had the advantage of being able to use the BBC’s written archives but found the record of women’s work to be random and incomplete. There was a lot of relevant information, women were a very important part of the BBC’s workforce, but it tended to be hidden in programme and administration files. Her research relied upon other sources of information including magazines of the time (such as the Radio Times and the BBC staff magazine Ariel) as well as memoirs written by some of the more senior women and press cuttings archived by the BBC. Another far more recent resource for her and all BBC historians has been the BBC Programme Index (previously the BBC Genome) which is a database of all Radio Times magazines making it possible to search for named individuals involved in programme making. There are obvious similarities in Murphy and Legay’s research, but Kylie Sturgess and her co-authors had both a very different approach and a very different subject. One of the most striking features of podcasting is its use as an educational tool. This is particularly true of education institutions and Sturgess’s research was carried out with students at Murdoch University, Australia. An ‘edu-taining’ podcast was designed which featured a story set in space and which illustrated concepts, skills and proficiencies related to the

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radio production unit. A survey was then used to assess levels of engagement resulting from the podcast and assessing its ability to teach and entertain. Andrea Medrado uses ethnographic research to study community radio in Brazilian favelas in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. She is right in her belief that community radio has tended to ignore community radio in the Global South and her research has produced a vivid account of unique community media. As part of her research, she entered the favelas to observe and talk at length to residents. What emerged was an often highly organized form of communication, including the ‘lamp post radio’. She found that community radio was located in the ‘daily rhythms’ of life and was used by residents to create boundaries and seize space in the very cramped conditions.

22 Studying 1960s Commercial Radio Richard Legay

Introduction In his 1990s song ‘In The Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Van Morrison – down on his knees, at the wireless knobs – remembers, back in the 1960s, ‘searching for Luxembourg, Luxembourg’ on his Telefunken radio set. Broadcasting in various languages, including French, German and English, Radio Luxembourg was a popular station in both the British Isles and in mainland Western Europe. With its sponsored programmes, adverts and focus on popular hits, the commercial station sounded quite different from the national broadcasters dominating Europe in the 1960s. In the French-speaking market, Europe 1, another commercial station, which started to broadcast in 1955, was its fierce competitor. With their transmitter sites installed in Luxembourg and in Saarland in Germany to avoid State monopoly, these two stations, known as radios périphériques in French, were rather discordant actors within the European broadcasting landscape. It is because of this discordance that this chapter studies Europe 1 and Radio Luxembourg – its French (renamed RTL in 1966) and English services, both as separate institutions and as a whole, coherent group, due to their proximity as commercial radio stations. The nature of these stations make them quintessentially transnational actors (Berg and Jehle 2016), who worked hand-in-hand with other media, notably magazines. As such, they constitute ideal objects of study for recent scholarly calls appealing to more research going across borders and media. This is why this chapter focuses on how to study their history, through various approaches and by relying on different kinds of historical sources, such as radio programmes, magazines and institutional archives. These are only a few examples of sources available to radio historians. Indeed, many scholars use oral interviews, in addition to other documents, to study, for instance, night-time radio in France (Beccarelli 2021). This chapter’s aim is threefold. First, to show why the study of commercial radio stations is relevant for radio history. Then, to plead for further research exploiting their rich potential. Finally, to detail methods and perspectives to study these broadcasters, which are perfect vessels for transnational and cross-media studies. To do so, this chapter first establishes an assessment of the literature on the topic, before detailing three approaches (through

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(1) sound studies, (2) transnationalism and (3) intermediality) to deal with the historical analysis of commercial radio stations.

Literature review The historical literature on commercial radio in Europe is not particularly rich, especially in comparison to the history of public broadcasters. This mirrors their French name – radios périphériques – as if they are still on the periphery of the dominant historiography. This is partly explained by the fact that they are usually written as ‘outsiders’ in most narratives on radio history in Europe, often relying on national frameworks. Stations such as Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1, based in countries other than those they broadcast to (notably France and Britain), just do not fit in such a framework. Accessing relevant archives can also be challenging, which is another explanation developed later in this chapter. It is crucial to note, right from the start, that there is a discrepancy in publication about the stations. This imbalance is clearly illustrated by this fact: only one monograph has been published about the history of Europe 1. This book (Bernard 1990), written by a former journalist at the station – though a detailed account of its history – is not academic, and is over thirty years old. So-called ‘grey literature’, however, offers some alternative insights. For example, an illustrated dictionary about Europe 1 was published (Olivennes, Ferrand and Labous 2015), as well as several books dealing specifically with Salut les Copains, an iconic show of the station in the Sixties.1 Grey literature about Radio Luxembourg is rather abundant, and the station, particularly the French service, has been studied by radio scholars to a larger extent. The historiography of Radio Luxembourg can be divided in two. First, there is an ‘old guard’, made of a trilogy of books by Denis Maréchal and David Dominguez Muller (Dominguez-Muller 2007; Maréchal 1994, 2010) which represents a milestone in the understanding of the station’s history, especially its creation and early days. Then, there are books published by Anna Jehle about the French service (Jehle 2018), and Katja Berg about the German one (Berg 2021), which are at the core of the ‘new wave’ of historical inquiry, coming from Germany. When Europe 1 and Radio Luxembourg appear in histories of media and/or radio, especially in France, it is often as the ‘alterity’, the radios périphériques, those that do not completely belong to national historiographies. A similar dynamic can be found in the British context, where Radio Luxembourg is often portrayed as an outsider and challenger to State monopoly, especially in its early days, which have been studied in more detail (Street 2006). Furthermore, the two stations have rarely been studied together, with the exception of their role during the events of Mai 68 in France (Legay 2017, 2018). Therefore, while the last years have seen a resurgence of their historical study, there is still a lot to do at a European level. The historical study of Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 can draw from other fields, notably the history of material culture and technology, which indirectly contributes to it. In this regard, the work of Elvina Fesneau (Fesneau 2014) regarding the history of the transistor set is particularly useful to understand the radio experience, as the transistor became a

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predominant tool all around Europe in the 1960s, especially for younger generations who were a large share of listeners of commercial radio. Due to the importance of going beyond borders to study commercial radio stations, the history of transnational broadcasting is crucial, notably because it involves the ‘basic political, technical, economic and social conditions and contexts’ in addition to the act of communication via radio and television across borders (Classen 2016: 7–22). This call to pursue transnational radio history was recently answered in a special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, which offered a series of case studies covering a wide range of regions, perspectives and actors (Hochscherf, Legay and Wagner 2019). Due to their nature, commercial radio stations benefit from this development of transnational broadcasting history, to which they can easily contribute in return.

Challenging archives One explanation concerning the lack of literature on commercial radio in Europe in comparison to national broadcasters might be found in accessing primary sources. Language plays a role here, for archival material is usually in multiple languages, reflecting the international history of the stations. Furthermore, as businesses, the contemporary institutions behind Europe 1 and Radio Luxembourg do not have to grant access to scholars to their archives. While archivists at the headquarters of RTL Group in Luxembourg have always welcomed historians, it is not possible to say the same for their counterpart in France for instance, nor for the other station. Bypassing this situation is not impossible, as other institutions, such as the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, have collections pertaining to commercial radio stations; however, they are still perceived there as outsiders and as marginal. The nature of radio – an ‘ephemeral medium’ (Cohen, Coyle and Lewty 2009: 1–7) – itself plays a role in the difficult access to sound archives. While accessing radio recordings from the 1960s is a lot easier than in the previous decades, here again, the private nature of the broadcasters complicates the situation. In France, the holy temple of media historians is the INAthèque, located in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.2 There, they can access vast collections of audiovisual source material, however, mostly for public broadcasters. Some recordings from Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 still found their way into the collections of the INAthèque,3 but their numbers pale in comparison with public broadcasters, reinforcing this marginal position. Fortunately for the author of this chapter, it was possible to access the audio archives of Europe 1, although this took a few years of negotiation. Alternatively, some former listeners of commercial radio have been able to gather vast private collections, especially in the case of Radio 208, the English service of Radio Luxembourg. A rather large number of digitized recordings are shared through social networks and audio distribution platforms like Soundcloud. As shown in this section, accessing commercial radio station archives, whether paper or audio, can be rather challenging, which might explain why they are less studied than their public counterparts. Nevertheless, once a corpus is assembled, many possibilities for research open up.

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The sound studies approach One way to study commercial radio stations in the 1960s is to turn to sound studies and to treat sound as a historical resource. Focusing on hearing makes it possible to circumvent the predominance of sight and the ‘shackles of visual evidence’ (Goodale 2011: 5). Quoting the works of scholars such as Michele Hilmes, R. Murray Schafer and Jonathan Sterne, Goodale explains that ‘the viability of a specific method for reading sound is not as important as the greater argument that sound can be read’ (Goodale 2011: 12). Reading sound can be done by treating historical recordings as ‘radio texts’, in order to ‘seek an understanding of the aesthetic and formal qualities at stake in radio and relation to meanings, in particular cultural forms’ (Crook 2012: 151–2). Therefore, scholars can work on both the form (the type of programme, the sound design, etc.) and the content (what is said, which songs are played, etc.) of the recordings used. Radio studies have always underlined the importance of the voice, notably for its power over imagination (Smati and Fiévet 2017), in addition to what is said. Although historical recordings may not inform researchers on the entire aural and cultural experience of radio, as it is impossible to be exhaustive. Indeed, to take one example, the French service of Luxembourg broadcast, on average, for 7,900 hours per year between 1964 and 1971 (Legay 2020: 121), meaning that a comprehensive study would be humanly impossible. Nevertheless, carefully selected sources provide insights as to what was offered by commercial radio stations. The methodology used to study these audio sources can be summarized in a series of steps. The first step consists of identifying the context in which the recording was made. Whether the audio sources come from archival institutions or were made available by former listeners, the first question should be to know if the document was recorded by the broadcasting side or the listening side. This impacts not only the quality of the recording, but also its content, as sources from radio stations are likely limited to a specific radio show, while amateur recordings potentially include other elements, such as advertisements. The second phase of work consists of using a method inspired by ‘thick description’, which is an in-depth description, meaning that – in the case of audio documents – it is necessary to write down not only ‘obvious’ characteristics and to transcribe what is said, but also to turn into words other sonic elements (among those: tone of voices, rhythm and speed of speeches and dialogues, background noises, emotion carried, transitions between audio elements, such as monologues, advertisements, songs, etc.). An historical recording should be understood as a multi-layered document that necessitates an appropriate and detailed description, in order to be used in historical analysis. The next step is to isolate the various elements of the recording and cut it in various segments according to their nature, the most common being jingles, advertisements, songs (live or recorded), and speech (one or more speakers, phone-ins, etc.), and to their function, as keynote sounds, soundmarks, sonic icons, and other categories of radio studies. What a host says on-air is important, but it is only one aspect of the sound of commercial radio. It should never overshadow other audio elements. Attention should also be put on non-verbal elements when analysing what is said on-air, for changes in the voice and the tone of the speaker influence the perception of its

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listeners. It also influences the creation of a relationship between them and the host (Hupin and Simon 2007: 103–21). Finally, the best way to tackle the challenge of a large corpus of recordings treated as historical texts is to combine two approaches operating on different scales. The first one is to conduct an in-depth analysis of a sample of sound documents, the second one to conduct a large-scale analysis of the whole corpus.

Qualitative approach Commercial radio stations Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 had a different sound from public broadcasters, notably through their focus on light entertainment programmes and their use of advertisement. To fully understand this difference, a qualitative approach can be conducted by building an in-depth analysis of a sample of historical recordings in order to describe what these stations ‘sounded like’, and how this specific sound evolved throughout the 1960s. In a previous work (Legay 2020; 121–43), nine recordings were chosen: three for the English service of Radio Luxembourg,4 three for its French service,5 and three for Europe 1.6 To show the historical evolution, three recordings are from the 1958 to 1964 period, three from 1964 to 1968, and from the end of the Long Sixties, between 1968 and 1974. The reasons leading to this selection are multiple. First, the recordings are representative of light entertainment programmes for each station and each period, and they were often on air at popular times. They include entertainment programmes, such as record shows, programmes about musical performances, etc., while news programmes – a more standardized format – are not among the chosen sources. Second, the sources were chosen for their sound quality and sufficient duration. This facilitates the writing of the aforementioned detailed description. Such a sample has obviously some limits. It does not allow for an exhaustive description of everything broadcast on the studied radio stations, however, it is made in a way that makes it representative. The analysis of the sample reveals elements that tie the different commercial stations together, as they share similar norms and practices. It also highlights their differences, as well as their evolution throughout the period. Based on these nine sources, the importance of music contemporaneous to the time period should be noted first. Popular records are central to most of the programmes studied, and they are often linked to rankings and hitparades, based on partnerships with magazines, such as the New Musical Express for Radio Luxembourg’s Top 20, and on internal calculations for Salut les Copains. The place and importance of these records in the programmes is what clearly changed over the course of the decade; pauses between records and other elements of the radio programme can be heard in Pour ceux qui aiment le jazz and in Your Record Show. This phenomenon disappears in later shows, where elements are more blended together; one clear example being the recurrent case of the host speaking over the first and last notes of a record. There is also a growing reduction of silences and pauses in radio programmes throughout the studied decade. In Kenny Everett’s Esso Show7 for instance, the host speaks particularly fast, and modulates his voice to make a variety of human sounds (i.e. moaning) and electronically

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generated sounds (i.e. honking) to complement his comments, something that was not present earlier in the period. Therefore, one can see the value of a qualitative approach to sound recordings, illustrated by the example of working on a sample of documents.

Quantitative approach The second approach is the quantitative one. It can be done by relying on a wider corpus of audio sources. In the case of the French and English services of Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 during the Long Sixties, the corpus includes 161 recordings lasting around 84 hours total. Building on a similar descriptive method, analysing this corpus reveals other common characteristics between the stations and their programmes. The characteristics are already present in the qualitative approach, but the careful examination of a wider corpus shows that at least five key features are present in almost all the recordings. First, commercialism is central and makes up the fabric of the radio programmes, through sponsorships, adverts, links to other media, such as magazines, which are all integrated into the programmes. Second, playfulness, understood here as the tendency to bend radio norms for amusement purposes, is a key characteristic of commercial radio of this period, something that is particularly striking in the aforementioned Kenny Everett’s Esso Show on Radio Luxembourg. Playfulness on radio has a long history (Rikitianskaia 2018: 133–40) and appears to be linked to the stations’ long-standing pride of their supposed freedom (in opposition to public broadcasters). Throughout the 1960s, many shows used a form of playfulness, sometimes leaning towards irreverence.8 Third, interactivity is a strong component of commercial radio, whether it is the presence of an audience at a musical performance, phone-ins by listeners to request songs or invitations by radio hosts to interact with them and the stations by mail and phone. Fourth, liveness – understood as the sense of radio being live, whether it actually is or not (Antoine 2016: 237) – plays a crucial role in commercial radio. For instance, an amateur recording from 1971 captured the switch from the Dutch programmes of Radio Luxembourg to the English ones, including a brief exchange between the hosts, Felix Meurders and Paul Burnett, the latter taking over the chair of the former.9 Last, commercial radio stations developed a wide range of sonic icons to define their sound. While almost all stations did so, the stations studied here developed particularly strong efforts in this endeavour. For instance, the French service of Radio Luxembourg hired in 1964 the already famous composer Michel Legrand to write a jingle for the station; one that is still used today. By opening the analysis of the soundscape of commercial radio stations to the wider corpus of audio sources, this section has made apparent a series of features specific to Europe 1 and the French and English services of Radio Luxembourg. While characteristics such as liveness and interactivity are present in other radio stations, other features, such as playfulness and commercialism, are specific to commercial radio. It is, however, the combination of all the features which constitutes the fabric of the ‘sound’ of commercial radio stations. As such, this ‘sound’ plays an essential role in differentiating commercial stations to public broadcasters.

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Diegetic and non-diegetic audio elements In addition to the qualitative and quantitative approaches, it is also important to remember that while radio might be a medium relying on airwaves and the experience of radio might appear as an immaterial one, it is actually strongly anchored in materiality, and the sound documents play a part in the understanding of this phenomenon. This presence of materiality is understood as audio references, whether speech or sound, that point to the physical production and reception of radio waves. The references can be through objects and devices (transistors and radio sets) used in this regard, but also the spaces of production and reception, such as studios. This presence is separated into two categories, based on the nature of the sounds. On one hand, there are diegetic elements; elements which originally belong to the programme. They might be calls by the host to the listener to come closer to the radio set or to turn the volume up for instance. Alternatively, these elements can inform researchers about the recording conditions, such as technical issues and noises, whether they are a voluntary part of the radio programmes or not. On the other hand, some recordings offer non-diegetic elements, ‘whose apparent source is not the space-time of the scene depicted’ (Chion 2012). They can enrich researchers’ understanding of the sounds surrounding and modulating programmes of commercial radio stations (e.g. interferences, background sounds such as a cough by the listener and clicks on the radio set). These elements are external to the radio programmes themselves but are a part of the radio experience nonetheless. Both diegetic and non-diegetic categories are useful to further the understanding of the very experience of listening, through which the soundscape takes place. The analysis of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound elements indeed anchors the sources in the materiality of their context of reception and of production. While an impromptu and disruptive phone call on air10 points to the ways radio is done, recordings where another station can be heard in the background shed some light on what listeners actually may have heard at the time.11 It is hoped that this section has revealed the potential of sound studies when it comes to commercial radio stations in the 1960s, by showing some methodological tools, a few examples of results, and ways to treat historical recordings as texts, by analysing all forms of sounds.

The lens of transnational history Another way to study commercial radio stations in the 1960s is to approach them through the lens of transnational history, which is about ‘circulations and connections’ (Iriye and Saunier 2009: xvii–xx), and by doing so, analysing the broadcasting space in which commercial radio stations operated and how they appropriated it. Furthermore, the entry for ‘broadcasting’ in the Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History states that transnationalism is an inherent quality of broadcasting due to the very nature of radio waves (Fickers 2009: 106–8). To apply this lens to the topic at hand, it is necessary to use a variety

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of source material. Two types of documents were particularly useful: listenership surveys and maps drawn by commercial stations. With surveys, the focus is clearly put on France, where the competition between Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 was the fiercest. An increase in scope and details is clearly noticeable throughout the decade and surveys then allow researchers to learn about listeners, notably through social geographical information. Regarding maps, the perspective of Europe 1 is central here, due to the access gained by the author to its transmitter archives in Saarland. There, it was possible to consult and digitize a large number of maps and working documents. These archives reflect the evolution of the transmitter and its power, the zones the airwaves could reach in various European countries, and the varying degrees of sound quality as the waves travelled. Conducting this approach through transnational history revealed commercial radio stations’ broadcasting space is split into three interlaced so-called layers: (1) technical; (2) commercial; and (3) imagined, through which they operated. These layers allowed the stations to appropriate this broadcasting space, which was a crucial stake for them, echoing the ‘Western project of the appropriation and control of space, place, and the other’ (Bull 2004: 173–90). The first so-called layer revealed by this transnational approach is the technical one; a layer focusing on radio waves and the stations’ power to broadcast to a large transnational space. Transmitter sites are at the centre of the space studied as the very origin of radio waves, therefore enabling the commercial and imagined layers. Commercial radio stations were highly dependent on the spaces they could reach, and needed a good understanding of them, as well as those of their competitors. To do so, they relied, among other things, on the aforementioned maps. Analysing said maps reveals that, in this technical layer, the relationship between stations and space is strongly rooted in the transmitters. As such, the technical layer is not uniform, as distance, direction and physical obstacles (like mountains) had an impact on the quality of broadcasting. Through this technical lens, the transnational nature of commercial radio appears strongly as national borders are overlooked to focus on information such as signal strength and geographical obstacles. In this layer, technology is crucial, as it directly influences transmitters and their reach over time, revealing an evolution throughout the period. The analysis also reveals the existence of margins, where the signal is barely heard, which operate as the ultimate boundary of the technical layer. This brings out another key characteristic of this layer, which is the fact that it is unified, although not uniform. Unified in the sense that the broadcasting space is a whole, from the point of origin to the end. Not uniform in the sense that the strength of the signal – and, by extension, the comfort of listening – is directly impacted by the natural geography, the direction of the transmitter and, therefore, distorting distances and representations of the space. Moreover, through the technical layer, maps become essential tools, which are particularly revealing of the broadcasting competition, the guerre des ondes, which occurred between the various radio stations of the period. Therefore, even if maps are focused on a specific station, they are formidable sources to understand the wider broadcasting landscape of the period. The second layer revealed by this approach focuses on the transnational space as a market, a space of both actual and potential consumption of the stations’ programmes. The nature of commercial stations makes this layer a vital one as their audiences – who

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can be understood as a market (Crisell 1994: 203) – are at the heart of their revenue streams. Therefore, the radios périphériques appear to have put a great deal of effort into the understanding and expansion of their listenerships, seen as a market to conquer. This is notably revealed in archival documents discussing the results of listenership surveys.12 In this layer, the previous technical one still plays a role, but is further deepened by socioeconomical aspects that are often discussed by the directions of the stations and are at the heart of audience surveys. This market layer is the most competitive one, in which the different actors are attempting to expand their reach and presence. Languages, cultures and political context represent elements that bind this layer, so does the signal, a central feature of the previous one. It is also a layer that is of specific importance to commercial broadcasters, separating them from many other radio stations of the period. The third layer found through this approach concerns the self-image put out by the stations. Both Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 used the fact that they were transnational actors to brand themselves as international broadcasters and institutions, building on the first two layers to shape this image. While the flows operating with the commercial stations were indeed transnational, they were translated – when disseminated – into different forms. Among the images spread by the stations, the idea that they were international regularly came back. Moreover, this internationalism can be refined, at times, as European and as global. For instance, a painting by French artist Jean Dunand was rediscovered at the Villa Louvigny, where Radio Luxembourg had its studios, during restoration works. The painting depicts Earth, floating in space, with Europe facing forward. On top of it are white concentric circles, with Luxembourg more or less at their heart, reaching the entire world and beyond. It is rather easy to assume that this is supposed to be Radio Luxembourg broadcasting all over the globe, and representing itself as a world actor with a global reach. Moreover, the painting was hung on the wall of the board of directors’ meeting room in the Villa Louvigny, in a strategic spot. This is but one example of the ways through which commercial radio stations carefully shaped their image as international actors. The second approach revealed how commercial radio stations appropriated the transnational broadcasting space through three layers which balanced technical elements with commercial considerations, while maintaining and shaping a carefully crafted image. The approach also established that the broadcasting space is not uniform, and that core markets, margins and edges are shaping it. The three layers revealed what bounds the space (signal strength, language, etc.), and how it was integrated into a wider broadcasting space, through interactions with other actors, such as public broadcasters (the French (O)RTF and the British BBC for instance) and smaller actors (such as offshore stations and Radio MonteCarlo). The heterogeneity of those relations reveals the existence of a complex transnational entwined radio ecology (Föllmer and Badenoch 2018: 12), which still deserves further investigation. The wider broadcasting space is not limited to Western European actors, this approach revealed interactions with Scandinavia (notably Sweden), the USA and the Eastern Bloc for instance. The competition between Europe 1 and Radio Luxembourg is a key factor throughout the second approach, pushing the stations to respond and adapt. Overall, the second approach through transnational history is the one that best connects the study of commercial radio stations to other historical actors of the period.

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Intermediality The third approach focuses on intermediality and undertakes the unearthing of interrelations between commercial radio stations and other media. This is done in response to a call made in media history to move away from the single-medium perspective (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017: 130–41). Indeed, radio – especially in the context of the topic discussed – is more than just broadcast; the medium belongs to an entwined ecology at the intermedial level. As a result, Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1 were involved in a highly visual form of cultural production, operating across media, notably with magazines, which are ideal vessels of visual culture and the example of the cross-media interrelations for this third approach. More precisely, the magazines Salut les Copains (a collaboration with the eponym show on Europe 1) and Fabulous 208 (a collaboration with the English service of Radio Luxembourg) were selected as sources because they most clearly embodied the links with radio. As items of popular culture, the magazines studied contributed greatly to inscribing the commercial radio stations into wider popular culture, and notably furthered endeavours to represent radio personalities as stars and celebrities. Magazines represent a rich source for media and cultural historians (Blandin 2018: 11), and both the magazine and the show Salut les Copains were analysed as a youth cultural product (Blandin 2013: 134–42). Furthermore, scholars of periodical studies rely on interdisciplinarity (Van Remoortel et al. 2016: 1–3), as magazines are themselves at the crossroads of multiple fields, which reinforces their relevance in this third approach. In terms of methodology, the concept of ‘entanglements’ in media history is useful to address the ‘blind spots’ in media history, particularly when different media influence one another. Entanglements are defined as ‘intended or unintended, obvious or hidden, structured or chaotic interrelation(s) in space, knowledge or time’ (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017: 130–41). Building on the Franco–German traditions of histoire croisée and Verflechtungsgeschichte, the concept of entanglements allows one to go towards an integrated media history, rather than a succession of parallel histories of particular media (Nicholas 2012: 379–94). Salut les Copains was a monthly periodical and Fabulous 208 weekly, which means that a focus on a sample of issues per magazine is necessary. In this case, two issues per year were picked, especially as they were digitized to allow optical character recognition, which is a lengthy and costly process. Furthermore, two notions – intertextuality and intermediality – come into play to further analyse the entanglements between media. These notions have different focus and are used to conduct analysis on Fabulous 208 and Salut les Copains on various scales. The first concept, intertextuality, was first used by Julia Kristeva in 1966. It suggests seeing a text as ‘a dynamic site in which relational processes and practices are the focus of analysis instead of static structures and products’ rather than as a closed and autonomous object (Martinez Alfaro 1996: 168–85). Through intertextuality, researchers find, in a text, connections to other preceding texts. Intertextuality is an ideal concept to analyse magazines at a close scale, to look primarily into editorials, letters and articles, and to see how specific sentences and references create bridges with radio. The second notion, intermediality, was developed

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in the late 1980s, notably around Jürgen Ernst Müller, and it looks into the relations and interactions between media. It is defined as a ‘concept that points at processes of transfer and migration, between media, of format and content’ (Gaudreault 1999: 175). Moreover, it was developed to complement intertextuality (Müller 2000: 105–34) by looking at interactions between media at a larger scale, by distancing oneself from a single text to look at a wider corpus. ‘Text’ is indeed understood in a large sense, as ‘humanistic scholarship gradually came to recognize texts as any vehicle of meaning, for example images, conversations, or everyday artefacts’ (Jensen 2016: 972–82). From a pragmatic point of view, Irina Rajewski developed a useful definition of intermediality based on three subcategories understanding the concept (Rajewski 2001): (1) as ‘medial transposition’, such as adaptations from one medium to another; (2) as ‘media combination’, such as the combination of different media; (3) as ‘intermedial references’, such as moments when a medium ‘thematizes, invokes, or imitates elements or structures of another’ (Rajewski 2005: 43–64). Therefore, intermediality applies to magazines as well as programmes broadcast by commercial radio stations. In the context of this approach, this is used – alongside Rajeswki’s subcategories – to look at recurring sections of magazines, or wider interrelations between the periodicals of the stations. Among the first category of apparent interrelations, the shared name of Salut les Copains for both the magazine and the radio show represents a good example. More subtle interrelations can be found in articles, writing styles, photo reportages and other sections of the magazines which reveal how some features found in the sound were also present in the pages of the magazines. The investigations of the entanglements between commercial radio stations and Fabulous 208 and Salut les Copains analyses a series of characteristics shared by both media; based on the work conducted in the first approach. One shared characteristic between the two media is playfulness. This is particularly striking when looking at issues of Fabulous 208 and listening to shows of the English service of Radio Luxembourg. The playful, and sometimes irreverent, tone of the commercial station clearly found an echo in the pages of the magazine. This can be done, for instance, by integrating a two-page photo reportage about some of the resident disc jockeys going for horse-riding lessons which did not go well.13 The reportage includes rather unflattering pictures of the radio hosts and even a comment from one of the horses. It builds on traditional representations of male celebrities on horseback, which were not uncommon in other issues of Fabulous 208, creating intertextual references, and echoed the overall tone of the radio shows and the ways the hosts portrayed themselves. Commercialism is another characteristic entangled between the two media. The inclusion of adverts on-air is a defining feature of commercial stations, while magazines are excellent advertising media and include printed advertisements in their pages (Dakhlia 2018: 51–65). The magazines often advertised the stations they were collaborating with, while the magazines were regularly mentioned on-air. Furthermore, many issues of Salut les Copains and Fabulous 208 advertised transistor sets, promoting a larger commercial radio culture. Through this type of advertisement, researchers can see how radio, understood as both a medium and an object (Fickers 2014), is promoted through these commercial references operating on both form and content.

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A third shared feature is interactivity, as both the stations and the magazines created a feeling of interaction between them and their listeners and readers. This is especially striking when looking at Salut les Copains, both the show and the magazine, for there was a strong will to create an ‘imagined community’ (Hilmes 2012) of consumers, notably by regularly addressing both listeners and readers as copains (or mates). This is particularly developed in the magazine through two sections. First are letters. As many other periodicals, Salut les Copains published letters (allegedly) sent by their readers, but, in this case, these letters regularly mentioned previous issues as well as the radio show, bridging the two media through intermedial references. Then is the pen-pals section. Salut les Copains regularly published, from October 1962 onwards, a section including profiles of readers wishing to get in touch with other readers. The profiles included name, age, gender, interests and hobbies, and personal address. While most of them were from France and French-speaking European countries, many were from Britain, Germany and Northern African countries. The section was introduced by the following text: ‘We are thousands of boys and girls who are listening every day to the same show, who are reading every month the same magazine, who have the same tastes and Daniel as a mate, but who are living without knowing one another.’14 This reveals how the pen-pals section was envisaged as a way to create a sense of community across media around the consumption of Salut les Copains; both the magazine and the radio show. The third approach focuses on intermediality and entanglements between media. The methods and conceptual tools used in this section revealed how many features found in the sound of commercial radio stations were also present in the pages of magazines collaborating with them. The question of entanglements in media history is rather prominent in current discussions, and the case of commercial radio stations offer a fertile ground for further research. Apart from the two magazines studied in this section, other entanglements can be found, notably with television. Indeed, the renaming of the French service of Radio Luxembourg into RTL was a way to include télévision in its name, hinting at the research potential of such an entanglement.

Conclusion As indicated by recent publications on Radio Luxembourg, commercial radio stations still offer a vast potential for further historical study. Just like Van Morrison, numerous listeners across Europe were looking for these stations on their radio sets, for they were major actors of popular culture in the 1960s. Their multilingualism and the challenges to access their archives are obstacles to their study, however, this can also be seen as chances. Indeed, the necessity to turn, among other things, towards audio recordings, maps and magazines, represent chances to develop different approaches to study commercial radio stations, which echoes Kate Lacey’s definition of radio which includes ‘material, virtual, institutional, aesthetic, experiential’ elements (Lacey 2018). This chapter briefly developed three potential approaches, through the lens of sound studies, of transnational history,

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and of intermediality. The development of these approaches includes some methodological aspects as well as some results, which hopefully contributes to show the relevance and potential of an historical study of Radio Luxembourg and Europe 1. Developing the understanding of these stations will further our understanding of the overall European historical radio landscape, and the approaches presented previously can easily be applied to other actors and other periods than the 1960s. By doing so, researchers will answer current scholarly calls to go across borders, whether these are borders between countries or borders between media.

Notes 1 See Quillien 2009 and Jouin 2012. 2 The experience of researching radio archives at the INAthèqe has been particularly well analysed in Loriou 2018. 3 For instance, through the Fonds Gaston L’Herbier, who was a technician at Radio Luxembourg who deposited his personal archives. 4 Your Record Show, presented by Brian Matthew, 1963, Radio Luxembourg 208, 00:25:44, personal archives of Marius Zuiraitis.Top 20, presented by Barry Alldis, 26 June 1966, Radio Luxembourg 208, 00:56:12, personal archives of Stuart Busby.Esso Show, presented by Kenny Everett, Radio Luxembourg 208, 13 November 1970, 00:29:07, personal archives of Mick Capewell. 5 Balzac 10-10, 1963, Radio Luxembourg, 00:50:24, INAthèque, Paris.Extract from Disques sur 20, 23 September 1968, RTL, 00:26:08, INAthèque, Paris. RTL non-stop (with Tino Rossi), 1972, RTL, 00:31:08, INAthèque, Paris. 6 Pour ceux qui aiment le jazz, 29 March 1957, Europe 1, 00:19:17, Archives of Europe 1, Paris. Salut les Copains, 21 May 1965, Europe 1, 01:45:55, Archives of Europe 1, Paris. Hubert, 1970, Europe 1, 00:31:34, Archives of Europe 1, Paris. 7 Kenny Everett (1944–95) was a British radio and television host, famous for his eccentric and irreverent on-air persona. He began his career on the pirate station Radio London, worked for the English service of Radio Luxembourg, and was among the first to work on BBC Radio 1. 8 One example is a show from 1961 during which Francis Blanche, Europe 1’s famous host, did a series of phone pranks. Canular téléphonique, Europe 1, 1961, 00:01:24, Archives Europe 1, Paris. 9 Felix Meurders, Paul Burnett, Radio Luxembourg 208, 2 September 1971, 01:03:38, personal archives of Marius Zuiraitis. 10 Such an example can be found in Dans le vent, Europe 1, 17 December 1963, 01:48:46, Archives Europe 1, Paris. 11 In a recording for 1963, for instance, a second male voice from another station can be faintly heard in the background of the main programme. Journal parlé d’Europe 1, Europe 1, 31 July 1963, 00:22:03, INAthèque, Paris. 12 In 1967, the newly appointed director of RTL Jean Farran reckoned in a meeting that the drop in listeners was contained, basing his comments on surveys from the previous years. Minutes of the ‘Comité de direction’, 21 July 1967, RTL Group Archives, Luxembourg.

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13 Fabulous 208, 12 July 1969. 14 Salut les Copains, no 3, October 1962.

Works cited Antoine, F. (2016), Analyser la radio. Méthodes et mises en pratique, Louvain-la-Neuve: De Boeck. Beccarelli, M. (2021), Micros de nuit. Histoire de la radio nocturne en France, 1954–2012, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Berg, K. (2021), Grenzenlose Unterhaltung: Radio Luxemburg in der Bundesrepublik 1957– 1980, Göttingen: Wallstein. Berg, K. and A. Jehle (2016), ‘Through the Air to Anywhere: Radio Luxembourg – A Transnational Broadcasting Station?’, in Christoph Classen (ed.), Transnational Broadcasting in Europe 1945–1990, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 23–44. Bernard, L. (1990), Europe 1: La Grande histoire dans une grande radio, Paris: Centurion. Blandin, C. (2013), ‘Radio et magazine: une offre plurimédia pour les jeunes des Sixties’, Le Temps des Médias 21 (2): 134–42. Blandin, C. (ed.) (2018), Manuel d’analyse de la presse magazine, Malakoff: Armand Colin. Bull, M. (2004), ‘Sound, Proximity, and Distance in Western Experience’, in Veit Erlmann (ed.), Hearing Cultures. Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, Oxford: Berg, pp. 173–90. Chion, M. (2012), ‘100 concepts pour penser et décrire le cinéma sonore’, October: www. scribd.com/doc/204046183/100-concepts-pour-penser-et-decrire-le-cinema-sonoreMichel-Chion (accessed 7 February 2022). Classen, C. (ed.) (2016), Transnational Broadcasting in Europe 1945–1990, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Cohen, D. R., M. Coyle and J. Lewty (eds) (2009), Broadcasting Modernism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Crisell, A. (1994), Understanding Radio, 2nd ed., London: Routledge. Cronqvist, M. and C. Hilgert (2017), ‘Entangled Media Histories. The Value of Transnational and Transmedial Approaches in Media Historiography’, Media History 23 (1): 130–41. Crook, T. (2012), The Sound Handbook, Abingdon: Routledge. Dakhlia, J. (2018), ‘Propriétés et fonctions de la presse magazine’, in Claire Blandin (ed.), Manuel d’analyse de la presse magazine, Malakoff: Armand Colin, pp. 51–65. Dominguez Muller, D. (2007), Radio-Luxembourg: Histoire d’un média privé d’envergure européenne, Paris: L’Harmattan. Fesneau, E. (2014), Le Transistor à la conquête de la France. La radio nomade (1954–1970), Paris: INA Editions. Fickers, A. (2009), ‘Radio’, in Akira Iriye and Jean-Yves Saunier (eds), Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 870–3. Fickers, A. (2014), ‘Neither Good, Nor Bad; Nor Neutral: The Historical Dispositif of Communication Technologies’, in M. Schreiber and C. Zimmermann (eds), Journalism and Technological Change: Historical Perspectives, Contemporary Trends, Frankfurt: Campus, pp. 30–52.

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Föllmer, G. and A. Badenoch, eds (2018), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript. Gaudreault, A. (1999), Du littéraire au filmique: Système du récit, Malakoff: Armand Colin. Goodale, G. (2011), Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hilmes, M. (2012), ‘Radio and the Imagined Community’, in J. Sterne (ed.), The Sound Studies Reader, Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, pp. 351–62. Hochscherf, T., R. Legay and H. Wagner (2019), ‘Radio Beyond Boundaries: An Introduction’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 39 (3): 431–8. Hupin, B. and A.-C. Simon (2007), ‘Analyse phonostylistique du discours radiophonique. Expériences sur la mise en fonction professionnelle du phonostyle et sur le lien entre mélodicité et proximité du discours radiophonique’, Recherches en communication 28: 103–21. Iriye, A. and J.-Y. Saunier (eds) (2009), Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jehle, A. (2018), Welle der Konsumgesellschaft: Radio Luxembourg in Frankreich, 1945–1975, Göttingen: Wallstein. Jensen, K. B. (2016), ‘Intermediality’, in K. B. Jensen, R. Craig, J. Pooley and E. W. Rothenbuhler, The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 972–82. Jouin, G. (2012), Salut les Copains, Paris: Ipanema Éditions. Lacey, K. (2018), ‘Up in the Air? The Matter of Radio Studies’, The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 16 (2): 109–26. Legay, R. (2017), ‘The Role of Commercial Radio Stations in the Media Vacuum of Mai 68 in Paris’, VIEW Journal of European Television History & Culture 6 (12): 1–11. Legay, R. (2018), ‘RTL & Europe no 1 as Central Actors. The Importance of Mobility for Commercial Radio Stations During the Parisian Events of Mai 68’, Rundfunk & Geschichte 3 (4): 41–50. Legay, R. (2020), ‘Commercial Radio Stations and their Dispositif. Transnational and Intermedial Perspectives on Radio Luxembourg and Europe no 1 in the Long Sixties’, PhD Thesis, University of Luxembourg. Loriou, C. (2018), ‘Faire de l’histoire, un casque sur les oreilles: le goût de l’archive radiophonique’, in F. Clavert and C. Muller (eds), Le Goût de l’archive à l’ère numérique: https://bibliopiaf.ebsi.umontreal.ca/bibliographie/TS3PU2JL (accessed 7 February 2022). Maréchal, D. (1994), Radio-Luxembourg 1933–1993, un média au coeur de l’Europe, Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Maréchal, D. (2010), RTL. Histoire d’une radio populaire: De Radio Luxembourg à RTL.fr., Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions. Martinez Alfaro, M. J. (1996), ‘Intertextuality: Origins and Developments of the Concept’, Atlantis 18 (1–2): 268–85. Müller, J. E. (2000), ‘L’intermédialité, une nouvelle approche interdisciplinaire: perspectives théoriques et pratiques à l’exemple de la vision de la télévision’, Cinémas 10 (2–3): 105–34. Nicholas, S. (2012), ‘Media History or Media Histories? Re-addressing the History of MassMedia in Inter-War Britain’, Media History 18 (3–4): 379–94. Olivennes, D., F. Ferrand and B. Labous (2015), Europe 1: Le Dictionnaire amoureux illustré, Paris: Plon.

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Quillien, C. (2009), Nos Années Salut les Copains 1959–1976, Paris: Flammarion. Rajewski, I. (2001), Intermediales Erzählen in der italienischen Literatur der Postmoderne von den giovani scrittori der 80er zum pulp der 90er Jahre, Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Rajewski, I. (2005), ‘Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality’, Intermédialités/Intermediality 6: 43–64. Remoortel, M. Van, K. Ewins, M. Koffeman and M. Philpotts (2016), ‘Joining Forces: European Periodical Studies as a New Research Field’, Journal of European Periodical Studies 1 (1): 1–3. Rikitianskaia, M. (2018), ‘A Transnational Approach to Radio Amateurism in the 1910s’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 133–40. Smati, N. and A.-C. Fiévet (2017), ‘A la radio, la voix donne à écouter et à voir’, 4 December: INAglobal.fr (accessed 7 February 2022). Street, S. (2006), Crossing the Ether: Pre-War Public Service Radio and Commercial Competition, 1922–1945, Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing.

23 Studying Radio Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC Kate Murphy

In October 1932, the producer of the BBC’s Morning Talks, Margery Wace, was on the lookout for someone who could write and present a new radio series that she had in mind, about books. This was to be different from the more highbrow book programmes that were broadcast on the evening schedule at that time; her series was to be about books that her audience, predominantly housewives, actually liked to read. And she was convinced that she had found the perfect person – the popular female novelist E. M. Delafield. Delafield was eager to take part and Wace was certain that her scripts would be brilliant (they were), but before the BBC could prepare the contract, there was a final hurdle, as Wace explained (BBC WAC 1): It would, I am afraid, be necessary for you to come here [to Broadcasting House], because we must try your voice at the microphone before making a final commitment. You will, I am sure, sympathise with us when we say that we have to think of voices as well as people’s materials in talks and that often a good talk is spoilt by what proves to be a bad microphone voice. The odd thing is that it is quite impossible to tell what is a good microphone voice until one has actually heard it coming over.

The ‘we’ that Wace was referring to were those at the BBC who made speech-based radio, which at this time was predominantly in the form of pre-scripted talks, and this chapter is about what it took to produce this sort of programming prior to the Second World War. With few extant recordings or obvious books or guides, how can we understand the processes that were involved in putting a radio programme together and how it might have sounded? In particular, it uses the lens of women to unpick the ways that, for example, staff and contributor files, programme documentation, Radio Times listings and contemporary press articles, can throw fresh light on this issue. Although broadcasting and communication technologies have developed beyond compare in the hundred years since the BBC was founded, many of the basics of making radio such as coming up

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with ideas for topics and speakers; imagining and creating a programme’s framework; overseeing running-orders and scripts; taking responsibility for the ‘live’ production, remain essentially the same. The chapter draws on my twenty years of research into BBC women, which began with an internal BBC report in 2002. I also worked at the BBC for twenty-four years (1987–2011) mostly as a producer on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, which means I have an added level of understanding and a producer’s eye through which to view archive material. The historiography of the BBC is vast, it must be the most written-about broadcasting institution in the world, including a five-volume institutional history by Asa Briggs, of which the first two volumes (1961, 1965) are concerned with the interwar years. A number of contemporary memoirs written by former male employees (drawn on by Briggs) provide rich details of what it was like to make radio before the war, for example Burrows (1924), Lewis (1924), Goatman (1938) and Gielgud (1947); however, when it comes to more recent academic writing, most of the focus has been on content, rather than production. So, for example, Jones’s illuminating article (2012) about Mary Adams and her role as a producer of the BBC’s early science programmes includes some discussion on format and style, but little on the actual mechanics of their making, while Purcell’s comprehensive biography (2020) of the BBC comedy star, Mabel Constanduros, centres predominantly on the characters she created and played, rather than the technique of bringing them to life. This lack of emphasis on production techniques has been rectified by Hendy’s magisterial The BBC: A People’s History (2022), published during the writing of this chapter, which has placed the producers’ role centre stage. Hendy has long been mindful of this, for example evoking Lance Sieveking’s pioneering 1928 radio feature Kaleidoscope, and the way he ‘played’ the dramatic control panel, a new technical innovation that enabled output from different radio studios to be mixed live (2013: 185–6). Carter (2021), in her work on Rhoda Power, also gives a sense of the making of programmes, describing Power’s ‘oral vision’ for school broadcasts which, through the inclusion of dramatic interludes and sounds, brought wireless history lessons vividly to life (7–8). As I have written elsewhere, the interwar BBC buzzed with women (Murphy 2016). These were predominantly in secretarial and clerical jobs, but also in positions of administrative responsibility and in creative roles. Three women held director-level posts: Hilda Matheson (Director of Talks, 1927–32); Mary Somerville (Director of School Broadcasting, 1931–47); and Isa Benzie (Foreign Director, 1933–8). My research, which began as an exploration of women’s experiences of employment in the BBC, has increasingly focused on women as programme makers and this chapter starts with a brief summary of some of the sources I have used. It then uses three fresh case studies (on the social documentary maker, Olive Shapley; the drama producer, Barbara Burnham; and the talks assistant, Margery Wace) to flesh out a particular research method, showing how a close focus on Radio Times listings and articles, features in the popular periodical Radio Pictorial and correspondence files held at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre at Caversham in Reading, England (BBC WAC) can expand our understanding of the ways that radio was made.

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Sources for research into early BBC radio production BBC WAC is the starting point for all researchers of BBC history with its hundreds of thousands of documents which, with the digitization of indexes, are becoming increasingly easy to navigate. While this is an astounding resource there are many gaps, particularly for the years prior to 1932, which was when the archive was set up (with Kathleen Edwin as the first ‘archivist’). The BBC also produced a wide range of its own publications including Radio Times (from September 1923), The Listener (from January 1929) and the staff journal Ariel (from June 1936) all of which offer insights into programme making. Radio Times, which is now available online as part of the BBC Programme Index, is the most significant in terms of what we can learn about production techniques and will be considered in more detail below. In addition to these publications, BBC Year Books or Handbooks were released each year, from 1928, alongside a plethora of leaflets, pamphlets and brochures that provided support material for programmes, much of which was written by women. As well as written archives, the BBC has other archives, of sound and photographs. From 1930, when the first Blattnerphone (an early commercial recording machine) was installed, it became possible for the BBC to record its broadcasts. However, it was not until 1936 that the rudiments of a Sound Archive were established, by a quick-witted Marie Slocombe, who was then a temporary secretary (Slocombe would head the Sound Archive from 1941–72). Some glimpses into the work of early BBC women can be found here such as a three-minute extract from the drama producer Mary Hope Allen’s 1936 historical play Louisa Wants a Bicycle which recreated ‘The Fight for Women’s Freedom’ and two of Olive Shapley’s social documentaries from 1939, The Classic Soil which compared contemporary life in Manchester with how it had been 100 years ago and They Speak for Themselves about the work of Mass Observation. A library of photographs was set up in 1925, again an archive that was started and initially headed by a woman, Kathleen Lines. One of the functions of the photo library was to provide images of BBC staff and the most tantalizing, in terms of women as programme makers, are two of Ursula Eason, Children’s Hour Organiser for Northern Ireland. In the first, from 1935, she sits intently at the dramatic control panel, script before her, while her hands work fades and dials. In the second, from 1937, she stands at a bank of gramophone players, one hand perched to place the needle on a disc, the other on a sound control. While the Photograph and Sound Archives can provide important insights into women’s roles in radio production unsurprisingly, as with most of the documentation in BBC WAC, the bulk of what is available to researchers is the work of men, an issue explored by Moseley and Wheatley (2008) in ‘Is Archiving a Feminist Issue?’ There is a similar difficulty with the BBC’s Oral History archive which was set up by Frank Gillard in 1972 and which has now been digitized as part of the Connected Histories project. The main purpose of the archive was to capture the recollections of BBC grandees

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as they left the Corporation. However, this means that out of the approximately 600 interviews in the original collection, fewer than eighty are with women, of whom just nineteen have links with radio. Of these, only three are linked to the BBC pre-1939, none of whom were then in producer roles. What this means is that to trace the working lives of women who worked in BBC production in the interwar years requires a deeper level of research and resourcefulness, seeking their presence in a wider range of less obvious materials. The BBC is not the only custodian of its history. Right from the start, it was the subject of enormous interest in newspapers and magazines and, helpfully, the BBC kept press cuttings (BBC WAC 2). These often refer to women in production roles and are particularly plentiful from the early 1930s following the establishment of a new post at the BBC, that of Women’s Press Representative which was created specifically for Elise Sprott in 1931 (Murphy 2014a: 38). Private records are also important. In terms of women, the most significant are the letters of Hilda Matheson to her lover Vita Sackville West. Written over a number of months in 1928/29, these give a brilliant evocation of her life and work as Director of Talks at Savoy Hill, the BBC’s first home prior to its move to Broadcasting House in 1932 (Carney 1999: 31–47). So how can these varied and diverse resources give insights into how radio was made? The role of the producer was something that evolved; in fact, it is rare to see the term used prior to 1929, when it became attached to Drama, and from 1933, to Variety. ‘Producers’ were initially called ‘Assistants’, those who made speech radio being ‘Talks Assistants’. Because the role of producer was one that gradually developed, there are no job specifications or easy guides. Rather, the requirements and aptitudes of the role are found tangentially, they have to be teased out of programme documents, personal memos, journal articles and so on. So, for example, the multi-faceted nature of Doris Arnold’s production role in the Variety Department in the mid-1930s (which included doing chorus arrangements, finding musical numbers and performing on the piano) is laid bare through the letters she wrote to request a pay rise (Murphy 2020). This is similar to Joan Gilbert whose position as a clerk on the popular light entertainment radio show In Town Tonight is revealed to be much more akin to that of a producer, through a 1936 job application (Murphy forthcoming). One aspect of Janet Quigley’s first BBC job from 1930, as an Assistant in the Foreign Department, involved organizing transmissions to and from the USA, which are elaborated upon in dozens of Relay files (Murphy 2019). Mary Somerville’s introductory article to the book School Broadcasting in Britain (1947), provided a heartfelt description of major changes to the way programmes for schools were made following the Kent Experiment in 1927, which had observed the ways in which children learnt through radio. The above examples, then, show something of the potential richness of source material for women’s production work in the pre-Second World War BBC. The following three case studies, using fresh research, take these observations a step deeper.

Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC

Olive Shapley and Radio Times Radio Times has been in existence for almost as long as the BBC – the first issue was published by the BBC on 28 September 1923. The weekly periodical always included features and articles on, for instance, arts and culture, up-and-coming radio stars, new technological innovations and BBC gossip; however, its main purpose was to provide programme listings, a digitized version of which became available in 2014 through the BBC Genome Project (now BBC Programme Index) which used OCR technology to generate searchable schedules. In 2017, the digitization of complete issues of Radio Times began, enabling researchers and other interested parties to thumb through the periodical in its entirety (at the time of writing this had reached the 1950s). This first case study uses listings and articles in Radio Times to enhance what we already know about Olive Shapley’s radio features and how they were produced. It also casts new light on her radio plays. Olive Shapley’s radio career is fairly well researched. She featured prominently in Scannell and Cardiff ’s A Social History of British Broadcasting (1991) and has most recently been written about by Masden (2017) and Lewis (2020). In 1996, Shapley published her own memoir Broadcasting a Life, the only woman to write a substantial autobiography that reflected on a pre-Second World War BBC radio career. The book gives a highly candid account of her early years based in Manchester, vibrantly portraying her work, firstly, from December 1934, as Children’s Hour Organiser for the BBC’s North Region and then, from January 1938, as a North Region producer of what were then called features and what would now be described as social documentaries. Shapley was proud to be acknowledged as the pre-war pioneer of ‘recorded actuality as the basis of the radio feature’ (Shapley 1996: 51 citing Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 345), and she quoted widely from Scannell and Cardiff, the first academic book to acknowledge the significance of her production work. Shapley was not the first to use ‘actuality’ in her programmes – the sound of real people and places recorded away from the studio – but she made ‘actuality’ her hallmark, much of which was gathered using one of the BBC’s first mobile recording units (this was a huge lorry full of technical equipment). In her memoir, Shapley recalled with razor sharpness the process of creating many of her most noted documentaries: £.s.d: A Study in Shopping (£.s.d. was the currency of pounds, shillings and pence in use at this time); Canal Journey; Broadcasting with the Lid Off; Night Journey; Homeless People; Miners’ Wives; Hotel Splendide; The Classic Soil; The Quiet House at Haworth; They Speak for Themselves and Health for the Nation. It is an impressive list, but in no way does this encapsulate her full output of documentaries, nor the radio plays and other miscellanea that she produced. According to Radio Times listings, in addition to the eleven documentaries itemized above, she produced six other ‘actuality’-based programmes as well as fourteen radio plays. And within the listings are tantalizing tasters of what listeners would hear. The first of her ‘documentaries’, The First Five Years, broadcast on 6 February 1938, was a topic close to Shapley’s heart. Billed as ‘a dramatic discussion on nursery schools’ with recordings made at the Rachel Macmillan Nursery School in London, this was the nursery where

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Shapley had pursued a one-year postgraduate course (Shapley 1996: 31). For her next programme Dramatis Person/e, broadcast on 26 February 1938, the Radio Times column ‘Next Week in the Regions’ explained how Shapley would be taking listeners ‘behind the scenes of the Manchester Repertory Company … to get an impression of all that goes on by means of recordings of rehearsals and of interviews with the various people concerned with production.’ The Changing School, on 22 May 1938 was billed as ‘presented’ by Olive Shapley, along with Roger Wilson, but the nature of the programme, with its recordings at a progressive senior school in Alford, Lincolnshire, bears all the traits of Shapley’s style. For Rucksacks, broadcast on 12 August 1938, which was about the ‘fellowship of the road’ recordings were made at youth hostels, with commentary spoken by one of the walkers. Thus, Radio Times, by focusing on the use of recordings as well as the outside, non-studio, ‘real people’ nature of these productions, highlights the novelty and excitement of this new method of making radio, something that is also applicable to Shapley’s Manchester-based colleague D. G. Bridson. To date, little attention has been given to Shapley as a producer of radio plays but this was also an important aspect of her early BBC work and like her features, many of the plays that she produced were on social – and historical – topics. Her first, a production of Phyliss Crawford’s Plague at Eyam, aired on 30 August 1936, while she was still Children’s Hour Organiser. Described in Radio Times as based on true events from 1665, it is the only play that Shapley mentioned in Broadcasting a Life, where she wrote of how the actors became totally absorbed in the drama, so much so that she arranged for the cast to visit the Derbyshire village, ‘a most emotional experience’ (1996: 47). Radio Times billings also provide insights into other dramas that Shapley made. Incorporate Your Borough: A WarCry from the Manchester of 1837–1838, broadcast on 9 May 1938, made use of contemporary records to tell the story of a group of activists who ‘attacked the inefficiency, stupidity, corruption and confusion of the old government of the city’, leading to its reformation. A Seventeenth Century Court Leet (21 June 1938), which was broadcast from the Bayle Gate at Bridlington, on the Yorkshire coast, was similarly reconstructed from papers found in an old town chest. Shapley’s innovation in mixing ‘real’ history with drama, and her bravado in tackling provocative themes, is also evident in The Blackleg which was broadcast on 1 February 1939. Co-written by the social reformer Mary Stocks with John Orchard, someone who, according to Radio Times ‘had himself known long periods of unemployment’, it was about an out-of-work man who got a ‘black-legging’ job at a mill and his dilemma about taking it – ‘a true picture of industrial depression’ (Radio Times 17 January 1939: 54). The contemporaneous nature of Radio Times listings gives an extra dimension to our understanding of Shapley’s work and how it was presented to the public by the BBC at the time. This is especially pertinent as so few programmes from this era exist in the sound archive. But it is not just the listing themselves that can add to our appreciation of her work. Shapley also wrote a number of articles for Radio Times about how she made her social documentaries. Because the publication deadline was several weeks in advance of the actual broadcast, these articles would have been written while the production process was still being completed, which gives them a refreshingly active voice. So, for example, writing about her ‘adventures in gathering material for Homeless People’, (broadcast 6 September

Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC

1938), she described a host of different institutions she had visited to gather her materials, including a Casual Ward, a Seaman’s Institute, a Children’s Garden Village and a school for young tramps, in places as far apart as the Yorkshire Dales, Durham, South Shields and Manchester (Radio Times 2 September 1938: 13). Although this collecting of material had taken time, it had been ‘full of interest’, she explained, and it would enable her to create vivid scripts of bleakness, resilience and compassion (Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 346–7). Night Journey, broadcast on 31 October 1938, also warranted an article in Radio Times, describing the ‘fascinating background’ to a programme that would evoke a night-time ritual experienced by thousands of lorry drivers as they transported goods around Britain (Radio Times 28 October 1938: 8). ‘You may say that this is a visual thing’, Shapley concurred, ‘but we think it can be brought to your ears too’ (‘we’ being Shapley and the BBC engineer who would accompany her, although this was not specified). As she went on to explain: We shall spend a good deal of our time making sound recordings – of lorries thundering along the new straight roads, of lorries grinding up the steep side of Shap, of lorries leaving a depot under the echoing railway arches and setting off over Manchester cobbles on an eleven-hour run.

In Broadcasting a Life, Shapley wrote that in the making of Night Journey, she had ‘left no stone unturned in my quest for a full picture’ (Shapley 1996: 52). She also related an amusing anecdote about her engineer who, crouching beside her in a ditch to record the rumble of fish lorries, expressed relief that he would be on holiday for her next venture. The Radio Times article also included striking descriptions of how she was conducting her research and gathering sounds – spending ten hours, for example, in fine rain, in the cab of a twenty-six-foot-long lorry which had ‘eight wheels, seven gears and weighed eight tons’ in addition to its fourteen-ton load. As well as painting a picture with sound, Shapley was determined ‘to give some idea of the lives of the men who operate this intricate road service’. Radio Times readers were informed that, in order to do this, she would be spending two nights in a transport café, ‘recording conversations all the time’. She confessed that ‘not more than ten minutes of this will be used in the completed programme’, but because none of it could be rehearsed, they [i.e. she and the BBC engineer] may have to ‘“shoot” for an hour or so before we get anything useful’. Shapley also disclosed that, to help put the lorry drivers at ease and to prompt appropriate questions, they would be taking with them an ‘Unofficial Interviewer … someone who has had experience of road-transport work, and, at the same time, has a clear idea of what we want for this broadcast.’ Shapley’s description of her preparations for Night Journey remains the stuff of radio features today: the creation of visual imagery through actuality mixed with candid, unrehearsed, personal stories. Shapley wrote a final article for Radio Times about the making of her feature programme, Miners Wives (broadcast 29 March 1939), which was described in the strapline as ‘another moving “human document” of Northern life’ (Radio Times 24 March 1939: 6). In Broadcasting a Life she wrote stirringly about the week she spent gaining insights into the subject by living in the mining village of Craghead in County Durham with the Emmerson family (he was the checkweighman for the pit) and how the local women had spoken ‘very eloquently’ for her recordings (Shapley 1996: 53). In Radio Times, with the experience fresh

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in her mind, she provided more detail of how, sitting round the fire in the kitchen-cumliving-room, the checkweighman and his wife ‘began to answer my questions’. Neighbours dropped by and stayed to talk and ‘soon I had the feeling that the whole village was going to co-operate’. ‘Gradually’, she elucidated, ‘we began to hack out the form of the programme: what were the points we should raise, what were the peculiar problems the wife of a miner had to face; who should take part in the programme.’ And there was extra interest: in one respect the programme was to be ‘experimental’. As Shapley outlined, ‘Members of the BBC often go abroad to collect material, but I think this is the first instance of a member of the public being taken abroad to help in the compilation of a broadcasting programme.’ Although not mentioned in the article, the ‘member of the public’ was Mrs Emerson, who would spend a week with Shapley in a mining village in the North of France. According to Radio Times, the purpose of the trip was to find out ‘how they [the French miners’ wives] spend their money and what they do in their leisure time, and later her [Mrs Emerson’s] impressions will be worked into the programme’. This is indeed what happened; Mrs Emerson appeared ‘live’ in the actual broadcast, recounting her observations of the two mining communities. Olive Shapley is acknowledged as the pioneer of social documentary on BBC radio. These Radio Times listings and articles, then, can amplify our understanding not only of her motivation and practices, but also the ways in which she and her programmes were presented to the British public in the late 1930s. The second case study, of the drama producer Barbara Burnham, shows how articles in the periodical Radio Pictorial can substantially add to our knowledge of speech-based production practices. They also reveal how one of the BBC’s ‘acclaimed’ women was portrayed in the press.

Barbara Burnham and Radio Pictorial Barbara Burnham had joined the BBC’s Drama Department in March 1929, initially on a part-time contract as a play reader and adapter and then, from December 1933, in a production role. In April 1936, now hailed as one of the department’s ‘best producers’ (BBC WAC 3), she was offered a full-time staff position as a drama producer. The details of Burnham’s BBC career are evident in her staff file, which offers important insights into her BBC career as well as some inklings of her work as a drama producer. However, it is only through Radio Times listings, now easily trackable through the BBC Programme Index, that it is possible to gauge the amount and breadth of her output. This indicates (bearing in mind the vicissitudes of OCR technology) that prior to the Second World War, her name is linked to ninety-two separate productions, eighty-two as a producer. These include works by Shakespeare and other ‘greats’ such as Marlow, Ibsen and Chekhov as well as modern and sometimes controversial playwrights like Noël Coward and female playwrights such as Aimee Stuart. Burnham also worked with many of the notable actors of the day including Flora Robson, Leslie Howard, Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson. While Radio Times might list Burnham’s many productions, and indeed in a special

Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC

‘Drama’ edition (30 August 1935: 6) include a short piece by her about adaptation, it is Radio Pictorial that brings the making of her plays persuasively to life. Radio Pictorial burst onto the UK’s newsstands in January 1934, a glossy weekly magazine full of news, gossip and glamour, much of it about the BBC (Taylor 2013: 153–86). It was aimed predominantly at a female readership and the personal stories of radio women, both behind and in front of the microphone, were frequent fare. Barbara Burnham’s name often appeared in small snippets but, more significantly, she was the subject of three fullpage articles, in 1935, 1936 and 1938, which are remarkable in the level of detail they give about her work as a drama producer. As with any articles in the press, these need to be viewed with caution, but their style and nature do indicate a high level of veracity. The first appeared in the 8 March 1935 issue under the strapline ‘the art of re-writing plays for the radio by Barbara Burnham, play producer and adapter at Broadcasting House’ (17). The ensuing interview (with an unnamed reporter) gave an absorbing look at how a stage play or book was transformed for the airwaves. Making clear from the start that a radio play was a ‘new form of entertainment’, and so very different from what you would experience at the theatre, the article used quotes from Burnham to give a graphic account of how such productions were made. This included details of the ‘weekly meetings of the drama director, producers and adapters at which plays are suggested and discussed’ and the fact that they worked three months in advance, ‘to give us plenty of time for working on the script and getting a cast together’. In terms of casting, Burnham was thankful that this was left to the producers themselves, who wrote down who they ideally wanted for each part (with one or two alternatives) and it was then left to ‘the man whose job it is’ to secure and contract the actors. Rehearsals happened intensely at the end of the production period, usually eight or nine three-hour sessions, some working separately on little scenes, some practising dramatic effects. As the performances themselves were broadcast live, the technical side was very important, with the ‘balance and control men who do all the fading, mixing and amplifying’. Unlike some producers, ‘Lance Sieveking, for instance’, who worked the control panel themselves, her productions involved ‘working together’ with the engineers. The article also included a more personal account of how Burnham approached the process of adaptation, describing how her chance reading of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon, was the starting point for its journey to becoming a radio play (first broadcast 27 June 1934). Having got enthusiastic about the book, she had contacted Hilton and the two of them had ‘worked at it together – flinging different drafts of the play backwards and forwards between us’. This method had proved highly successful, she declared, and had led to their working together again on Goodbye Mr Chips (first broadcast 21 January 1935). This brief description of her work with James Hilton, a highly popular novelist, belies the fact that Burnham would become absolutely central to his success on radio, and would lead on to Hilton adapting his works for film. Hilton’s contributor file reveals the incredibly close working relationship that developed between him and Burnham and how her talent for translating action and scenes into radio imagery, coupled with his skill for dialogue, created masterful productions that were incredibly well received. And she offered further insights into her working relationship with Hilton in her second interview for Radio

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Pictorial (17 July 1936: 18). Now credited as ‘one of the BBC’s foremost producers’, in the article, written by Whitaker Wilson, Burnham was asked specifically about producing Lost Horizon, something that she had had ‘great fun with’. The start, she divulged, had been ‘suggesting the shape of it’ to Hilton, using what she described as a ‘fading-back technique’ which made one of the characters the narrator. This had made the play ‘more like a story related – something in the Arabian Nights fashion’. Hilton then worked on the dialogue and once he was happy with this, it was agreed that Burnham would do the rest in production. ‘Gradually it took the shape you heard’ she explained. She also revealed that she was in the process of adapting a third Hilton book: ‘We are calling it “And Now Goodbye!”’, enticingly adding: ‘But it is rather too early for me to talk about it.’ Asked about the artistic nature of her job, Burnham expressed her certainty that: the simpler a play is in construction the better it goes over. It is all very well having a great number of characters, but you mustn’t let them do too much. Make a show of colour with them, if you like, but your main characters should be few and good.

The article also offers glimpses into her other recent work; with Philip Wade, for example, for his radio play The Game (first broadcast 16 April 1936) for which he had left most of the production ideas to her, as well as her production of J. B. Priestley’s Eden End (first broadcast 12 November 1935). Most evocative, though, were her reflections on producing Murder in the Cathedral, the verse-drama about the death of Thomas à Becket by T. S. Eliot, which had its first radio broadcast on 11 January 1936. Honing-in on the unison-speaking part of the play (the Chorus of Women of Canterbury had been trained by the eminent voice teacher Elsie Fogerty), she disclosed that, in terms of radio, this was ‘something in the nature of an experiment’. As she explained further, ‘To get nine people to speak lines together is no small matter’, adding that the play had created ‘a deep impression’. However, although she had enjoyed working on Eliot’s play ‘immensely’, it had been relatively unaltered for radio. For Burnham, one of the greatest joys of her job was to be involved in the entire process of production – from reading the novel to thinking about each scene as it gradually formed into a play, to its final broadcast. As she enthused, ‘the great thrill comes when the time arrives for me to try to make it go over just as I have imagined it should. Of course, it doesn’t always come off, but when it does, I really feel my job is an artistic one.’ A final full-page feature on 10 June 1938 (9), headlined ‘BBC’s Ace Woman Producer’, used the ‘risk’ that Burnham had taken to get married (the BBC had introduced a ‘semi’ marriage bar in 1932 (Murphy 2014b)) as a reason to tell ‘the story of her amazing career’. As Radio Pictorial stressed, the BBC made exemptions for ‘exceptional’ married women to continue in their jobs which, in Burnham’s case, was plainly vindicated. Much of the article was about Burnham’s early life and the circumstances that led her to the attention of Val Gielgud, the Head of the Drama Department, and so to her joining the BBC. It also dwelt – in language many might find inappropriate today – on her personality and appearance. There were some references to her production work: how Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was one of her early successes as an adaptor, ‘Then Shakespeare was entrusted to her, and The Ringer and Children in Uniform followed’. With ‘dozens of plays of all kinds to her credit’, she shared with Val Gielgud ‘a soft spot for Tchekov [sic]’. And it was her temperament as a

Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC

‘first-class “mixer”’ which had led her to sit down with James Hilton to adapt ‘three of his greatest successes for the microphone’ (this is inaccurate, there were actually four). One of these was We are Not Alone (broadcast on 6 April 1938) which had proved ‘such a hit with listeners that it was repeated within a few weeks’ (25 June 1938). The significance of Barbara Burnham’s work is clearly evident in these colourful Radio Pictorial interviews, something that is backed up by her BBC staff file. Yet, her work as one of the foremost producers in the Drama Department is rarely acknowledged in standard histories of the BBC. Olive Shapley’s pioneering work is recognized, but again the programme listings and articles in Radio Times increase our understanding of the breadth of her work as well as the production techniques she used. This final case study, of the Talks Assistant Margery Wace, reveals how correspondence with a contributor can enhance our understanding of how a series of Talks programmes was made.

Margery Wace: contributor correspondence and producing ‘Talks’ When Margery Wace joined the BBC Talks Department in September 1930, it was already a well-oiled machine under the directorship of Hilda Matheson. ‘Talks’ were the mainstay of spoken-word output on the BBC and, prior to the Second World War, were nearly always broadcast ‘live’. Along with Mary Somerville in School Broadcasting, Matheson is credited as being amongst the first to fully comprehend that preparing and giving broadcasts required very different skills from public speaking and the written word; for radio, the intimate voice was key. This meant that broadcasters needed careful guidance as to how to prepare their manuscripts and address their audience, as laid out, for example, in Matheson’s December 1927 leaflet: Broadcast Talks and Lectures: Suggestions to Speakers (BBC WAC 4). It was the BBC’s Talks Assistants, such as Margery Wace, who produced the talks output and who oversaw the process of getting a talk, or talks series, to air and the Talks Department’s programme files are brim-full of documents that reveal the generation of ideas. These include, for example, Elise Sprott’s proposals for Housewives’ News (BBC WAC 5); Janet Quigley’s input into Men Talking (BBC WAC 6); and Margery Wace’s plans for How I Keep House (BBC WAC 7). Another type of file, the contributor file, can throw a different level of detail into how broadcast talks were produced and that of EM Delafield is scrutinized here, showing how the process unfolded for a particular series of talks, on books. On 29 September 1932, the BBC Talks Department received a letter from Delafield’s literary agent suggesting a series of talks based on her highly popular novel Diary of a Provincial Lady (BBC WAC 8). The initial response, from a male Talks Assistant, was dismissive: there was ‘little likelihood of our being able to avail ourselves of it’ (BBC WAC 9). This was evidently not the view of Margery Wace. Within weeks, she was appealing to Delafield as the ideal broadcaster for her upcoming twelve-part books series.

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In the opening of her first letter to the novelist, on 21 October 1932 (BBC WAC 10), Wace posed the question, ‘we wonder whether you are interested in broadcasting?’ going on to divulge that there was a plan for early January, ‘on which we should very much like your help and advice’ (it seems that Wace was unaware Delafield’s agent had already written to the BBC). Wace then explained the premise of the series where she acknowledged that, while the BBC had ‘constant talks on new books’, there was a feeling, ‘that we do not cater sufficiently for those people – and they are indeed in the majority – who are not able to obtain the newest books’. The twelve talks she had in mind were to be on ‘novels that have already been out a year or two, which can be obtained from small lending libraries and public libraries. We want to talk about the kind of books that people like reading, i.e., we don’t want to concentrate on “good” books.’ Having received Delafield’s positive response, Wace’s expansive second letter, on 27 October (BBC WAC 1) throws a spotlight on a range of production issues. These include a clear understanding of her audience (predominantly ‘the ordinary working-class housewife’); the importance of a good title for the series as well as sub-titles for each individual talk; the need for information to reach Radio Times in time for publication – which was several weeks in advance; suggestions for the scriptwriting process; the requirement for rehearsals; and, as we saw at the start of this chapter, the necessity to be tested for a ‘microphone voice’. The letter also reveals the skill and art of reassurance and persuasion. These were essential qualities in any good radio producer and was something at which Wace was highly adept. In terms of the nuts and bolts of production, the letter includes an illuminating section on word count and delivery. Although a fifteen-minute talk would usually be ‘between seventeen to eighteen hundred words’, because each book mentioned would have to be repeated, ‘slowly, at the end of the talk’, Wace suggested that instead of this, ‘1650 words is a good limit at which to aim’. The convoluted system of BBC publicity, which embraced both the spring schedules and Radio Times, also had to be elucidated. Despite the first broadcast, on 4 January 1933, being more than two months away, the final date for copy to reach the Publicity Department was 9 November 1932, in less than two-weeks’ time. This meant that the title and sub-titles had to be agreed by then, even though Delafield’s contract had yet to be confirmed. (In fact, the timescale was too short – the first broadcast was billed in Radio Times as The Provincial Lady and her Books, the third, Books to Read Aloud before settling down to the simple title Books.) The reason for the delay with Delafield’s contract was the lack of knowledge about how she might sound and the necessity to conduct a studiobased voice test, as we have seen. Wace, fully aware of the awkwardness of requesting that Delafield work on the titles of the series before a final decision had been made, appealed to her directly: ‘Are you therefore prepared to gamble with us?’, concluding on a note of flattery: ‘We are quite sure that you are the right person to do it, if, as we hope, your voice proves suitable.’ This letter, then, fleshes out our knowledge of the early stages of a BBC production, in this case for a series of fifteen-minute talks, details that are not easily available in more standard documents and texts. Prior to the first manuscript being received on 6 December 1932, which Wace and her manager were delighted with and considered ‘brilliant’ (BBC WAC 11),

Researching Women in Radio Production in the Early BBC

there are other letters which deal with the negotiation of fees with Delafield’s agent (BBC WAC 12); the booking of studios in Plymouth, which was the nearest to Delafield’s home (BBC WAC 13); as well as disappointment with Delafield’s initial suggestions for titles such as The Non-Leisured Reader or Everyday Reading, which were considered to be ‘a little dull’ and which, it was felt, would benefit from being more ‘Delafieldish’ (BBC WAC 14). The subtitles including, ‘Books with Happy Endings’, ‘Very Old Favourites’ and ‘Reading without Tears’ were, however, liked. This particular letter, from 2 November, also provides a glimpse of the frantic workload of a BBC Talks Assistant with Wace offering to help with suggestions for titles, but with the caveat, ‘I don’t guarantee we shall have any brain-waves, for we are trying to get a hundred talks to press these two days.’ And Wace was busy. Alongside her books series she was preparing a range of other weekly programmes as part of Morning Talks including the series Cookery with Mrs Arthur Webb; The Week in Westminster, where invited MPs explained current goings-on in parliament; and From a Doctor to a Mother about children’s health. Once Books had begun, it is not too surprising, then, to see amongst the correspondence with Delafield a series of letters from BBC administrators in which Wace was castigated for forgetting to cancel the Plymouth studio (Delafield had decided to give all her talks from London). Delafield’s file also includes details about listener reaction to the series. This is important because, prior to the Audience Research Department being set up in 1936, there was no formal channel through which listener reaction could be gauged, rather it was gleaned in two ways: from letters written to individual producers and programmes and from letters published in the ‘What the Other Listener Thinks’ section of Radio Times. In the case of Books, a memo from the Talks Executive from 19 April 1933 (BBC WAC 15) suggests that around forty letters had arrived for the programme, all showing appreciation (BBC WAC 15). A letter of approval also appeared in Radio Times (24 February 1933: 459): As no one in ‘What the Other Listener Thinks’ has yet mentioned Miss E M Delafield’s talks on Books, I wish to say what a lot of pleasure they have given to one listener. Her voice is always delightful to listen to even apart from what she says, and I look forward to Wednesday morning the whole of the rest of the week. I have just two complaints to make. One, that the talk is not longer; at the end of quarter of an hour we have just got going, so to speak. The other, that it is impossible to talk to Miss Delafield as well as listen to her.

This brief account of the preparations for a talks series demonstrates how correspondence between a producer and contributor can materially add to our knowledge of radio production, making real the toing and froing that would bring the production to life. These can be augmented by scripts, (which, in the case of Books, are available on microfiche), from the programme file (which, in this case, does not exist) and also from the billings – and letters – that were published in Radio Times, bringing our case studies full-circle. As the nation’s broadcaster, the early BBC employed an ever-increasing production staff to create and oversee its radio programmes and this chapter has offered an insight into research techniques that can help us to recreate and understand how those programmes were made. As has been shown, by revisiting the letters, press reports, Radio Times articles and so on, that were generated at the time, it is possible to capture the detail of the processes

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and the thrill and excitement of the work. Through the lens of women alone, there is so much more to learn: in terms of the wider history of radio, unfathomable treasures still wait to be discovered.

Works cited (BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.) BBC WAC 1: Elizabeth M Delafield (EMD) contributor file: Wace to Delafield, 27 October 1932. BBC WAC 2: P/565-576: Press Cuttings, Personal Publicity, 1924–39. BBC WAC 3: L1/589/3, Barbara Burnham Staff File, 7 April 1936. BBC WAC 4: R13/419/1: Departmental: Talks Division: Talks Department 1923–9. Matheson to Station Directors, 22 December 1927. BBC WAC 5: R51/241 Talks, Housewives News, 1930–2. BBC WAC 6: R51/319: Talks, Men Talking, 1937. BBC WAC 7: R51/240: Talks, Housekeeping, 1934. BBC WAC 8: EMD file, Peters to Rose Troup, 29 September 1932. BBC WAC 9: EMD file, Ackerley to Delafield, 6 October. BBC WAC 10: EMD file, Wace to Delafield, 21 October 1932. BBC WAC 11: EMD file, Wace to Peters, 19 December 1932. BBC WAC 12: EMD file, Talks contract, 11 November 1932. BBC WAC 13: EMD file, Programme Routine to Plymouth Representative, 29 November 1932. BBC WAC 14: EMD file, Wace to Delafield, 2 November 1932. BBC WAC 15: EMD file, Wolferstan to Wace, 19 April 1933 Briggs, A. (1961), The Birth of Broadcasting. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 1., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Briggs, A. (1965), The Golden Age of Broadcasting. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 2., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burrows, A. (1924), The Story of Broadcasting, London: Cassell and Company Ltd. Carney, M. (1999), Stoker: The Biography of Hilda Matheson O.B.E., 1888–1940, Llangynog: Michael Carney. Carter, L. (2021), ‘Rhoda Power, BBC Radio, and Mass Education, 1922–1957’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXVI-1. DOI:10.4000/rfcb.7681. Gielgud, V. (1947), Years of the Locust, London: Nicholson and Watson. Goatman, W. (1938), By-Ways of the BBC, London: P.S. King and Son, Ltd. Hendy, D. (2022), The BBC: A People’s History, London: Profile Books. Hendy, D. J. (2013), ‘Painting with Sound: the Kaleidoscopic World of Lance Sieveking, a British Radio Modernist’, Twentieth Century British History 24 (2): 185–6. Jones, A. (2012), ‘Mary Adams and the Producer’s Role in Early BBC Science Broadcasts’, Public Understanding of Science 21 (8): 968–83. Lewis, C. (1924), Broadcasting from Within, London: George Newnes Ltd.

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Lewis, P. (2020), ‘“A Claim to Be Heard”: Voices of Ordinary People in BBC Radio Features’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXVI–1. DOI:10.4000/rfcb.7681. Masden, V. (2017), ‘Innovation, Women’s Work and the Documentary Impulse: Pioneering Moments and Stalled Opportunities in Public Service Broadcasting in Australia and Britain’, Media International Australia 162 (1): 19–31. Moseley, R. and H. Wheatley (2008), ‘Is Archiving a Feminist Issue? Historical Research and the Past, Present, and Future of Television Studies’, Cinema Journal 47 (3): 152–8. Murphy, K. (2014a), ‘From Women’s Hour to Other Women’s Lives: BBC Talks for Women and the Women who Made Them, 1923–1939’, in M. Andrews and S. McNamara (eds), Women and the Media. Feminism and Femininity in Britain, 1900 to the Present, London: Routledge, pp. 31–46. Murphy, K. (2014b), ‘A Marriage Bar of Convenience? The BBC and Married Women’s Work 1923–1939’, Twentieth Century British History 25 (4): 533–61. Murphy, K. (2016), Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Murphy, K. (2019), ‘Relay Women: Isa Benzie, Janet Quigley and the BBC’s Foreign Department, 1930–38’, Feminist Media Histories 5 (3): 114–39. Murphy, K. (2020), ‘Doris Arnold: The Making of a Radio Star, 1926–1939’, Women’s History Review 29 (5): 784–800. Murphy, K. (forthcoming), ‘“In on the Ground Floor”: Women and the Early BBC Television Service, 1932–1939’, Critical Studies in Television. Purcell, J. (2020), Mother of the BBC: Mabel Constanduros and the Development of Popular Entertainment on the BBC, 1925–57, New York and London: Bloomsbury. Scannell, P. and D. Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922–1939, London: Basil Blackwood. Shapley, O. (1996), Broadcasting: A Life, London: Scarlet Press. Somerville, M. (1947), ‘How School Broadcasting Grew Up’. in R. Palmer (ed.), School Broadcasting in Britain, London: British Broadcasting Corporation, pp. 9–16. Taylor, J. (2013), ‘From Sound to Print in Pre-War Britain: The Cultural and Commercial Interdependence between Broadcasters and Broadcasting Magazines in the 1930s’, PhD Thesis, Bournemouth University.

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24 ‘Podcasting Radio on Podcasts’ Edutainment Podcasting Pedagogy for Radio Students During COVID-19 Kylie Sturgess,Lauren O’Mahony, Kathryn Trees and Simon Order

Introduction At the time of writing, the global pandemic COVID-19 is an ongoing world health crisis. One of the many ramifications of the pandemic is the impact on universities and colleges worldwide (Leung et al. 2020; UNESCO 2020; WHO Regional Office for Europe 2020). The disruption to classes that would usually involve face-to-face learning, the discontinuation of exchange programmes and the spread of the virus, in general, has led to alternative methods of education using distance or online learning. The effort to continue educational provisions at the tertiary level is of great concern to educational providers worldwide, as according to UNESCO (2021): At the peak of the crisis, UNESCO data showed that over 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries were out of school. Over 100 million teachers and school personnel were impacted by the sudden closures of learning institutions. Today, half of the world’s student population (more than 800 million learners) is still affected by full or partial school closures. In 29 countries, schools remain fully closed.

The educational experience for students varies depending on the socio-economic and political circumstances within their country. This chapter focuses on the importance of teaching strategies to ameliorate the negative effects of changes to classroom learning and teaching. It does this through an example of research conducted in a Western Australian university during the 2020 pandemic.

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In mid-April 2020, due to the Western Australian Government’s lockdown strategy, the state had eliminated community transmission of COVID-19 and, in the process, became one of the few places in the world to do so (Stobart and Duckett 2022). However, a few positive cases still existed in the state (being treated in quarantine or isolation). Furthermore, there was always potential for cross-border transmission due to either legal or illegal entry. With news broadcasts and anecdotal experiences of the global pandemic circulating in everyday discourse, from mainstream to social media, it was not unusual for Australian students and staff to feel stressed or confused (Aristovnik et al. 2020; Brooks et al. 2020; Pelikan et al. 2021). For instance, at Murdoch University, where this research is situated, students and academics had to be ever-ready to move to a wholly online distance education platform with little to no warning. The ability to facilitate teaching and learning online quickly, efficiently and satisfactorily required changes in teaching strategies. Here we explain an example on adapting to suit the teaching and learning context through a discussion of the Introduction to Radio unit for first-year undergraduate students for whom access to radio studios, edit suites and audio recording equipment was suddenly not possible. This chapter thus describes a research project examining the influence of instructional radio production practice edutainment podcasts for students as part of the pedagogical strategy.1 It was potentially a serendipitous instance of ‘radio on radio’ learning research, backgrounded by the challenges of conducting higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter includes an overview of podcasts’ contribution to education more widely, the codes and conventions underlying podcast structure, what this means for educational podcasting, and how this contributed to the creation of a podcast series for teaching radio. It includes a summary of the survey, data collection and results of student responses to podcasts as a teaching strategy with recommendations for future related studies.

Podcasts in education Education in Australia has included audio texts as teaching tools since the 1950s. The Australian ‘School of the Air’ used a range of resources, including two-way radio transmission, television, print, video and audio texts until the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s, when remote and distance education moved to online correspondence and e-learning (Kentnor 2015). Educational providers of this kind include Western Australia’s School for Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE), the UK’s Oxford Open Learning and the Mauritius College of the Air (Dhurbarrylall and Visser 2005; Holmberg 1994). Significant advances via online and audio technology integration in learning have continued to make education accessible to people who might otherwise have limited opportunities. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the online education market was predicted to earn approximately AU$350 billion by 2025 (Koksal 2020). Post-pandemic, the popularity of online education will boom even further. There will be increased education opportunities for students in remote and distant locations, away from traditional brick-and-mortar teaching institutions, as for those seeking additional training while balancing work and home commitments.

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‘Blended learning’ refers to the combination of face-to-face and online learning environments, which encompasses the integration of e-learning (or electronic learning, such as multimedia, videos and computer graphics), online learning and ‘traditional’ faceto-face teaching and learning (Garrison and Kanuka 2004). Blended learning increases student engagement opportunities because students can work at their own pace, it is cost effective and can produce in-depth discussions (Boyle et al 2003; Brennan 2003; Singh and Matthees 2021). In higher educational institutions (or HEIs), blended learning can be practised in many ways across different academic disciplines, allowing access to training for people who might otherwise have limited or no opportunities. As the Internet replaced School of the Air’s use of two-way radio in the late 1980s to 1990s for education, podcasts have emerged to supplant lectures, lessons and instructional texts. This change is evident in the wake of online learning during COVID-19 (Wake, Strong and Fox 2020), where many classrooms across a wide range of ages will have adopted blended learning to continue educating their students (Singh, Steele and Singh 2021). Vogel and Gard (2006) have identified three categories of podcasts popularly used in higher education, which remain useful guides for teachers and researchers. These three categories are administrative podcasts (e.g., general information guides to a college or school), special lecture series (such as guest lectures provided to the public, etc.) and classroom podcasts (with curriculum lectures or recorded tutorial sessions for students). While each of these categories of podcasts is useful, informative and provides educational materials, Lonn and Teasley (2009) noted that classroom podcasts are often treated as ‘transparencies or uploaded lectures’ (‘coursecasting’). Podcasts can however contribute to passive learning experiences with no details beyond a review of student learning. However, digital media technology can have myriad engaging and active learning applications that reflect teachers and students challenges and interests Drennan and Maguire 2007; Lazzari 2009; McLoughlin, Lee and Chan 2006; Nie, Cashmore and Cane 2008). Therefore, the evolution of education podcasting beyond coursecasting to content with a more ‘nuanced discussion of design practices’ (Drew 2017) is a valuable contribution to the field of blended learning education. There are positive and negative elements to learning via audio instruction. Incorporating podcasts into educational instruction provides students the opportunity to relisten to content by pausing or stopping and coming back to the podcast as they want, including for revision or assignments. As Lindgren has pointed out, podcasting also encourages creative producers to design and hone audio products so that they ‘can be sought out, returned to, listened to more than once’ (Lindgren 2014). As Llinares, Fox and Berry emphasize, this crafting element ‘generates a deep sense of connection’ (2018). The use of podcasts decreases a sense of isolation often experienced in distance learning by promoting a sense of inclusivity (Chan and Lee 2007). Despite this, research into the disadvantages of podcasts shows faculty concerns about providing consistent audio quality (including recording and editing), content, the style of communication and the distribution of podcasts (Lazzari and Betella 2007). Podcasting is now synonymous with the distribution of recorded lectures, including unedited, unaugmented recordings of lectures that might range in audio quality and content (e.g., Abt and Barry 2007; Lazzari 2009). Reproducing existing teacher-centred

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models through ‘coursecasting’ has benefits, including helping students with notetaking, producing content for distance learners and supporting revision (Brittain et al. 2006; Evans 2008).2 Educators use coursecasting for a ‘particular group of learners at a particular moment’ (Draper and Maguire 2007). Further, educational podcasts are low-cost, easy to produce and utilize modern teaching tools, as well as being a finely tuned resource that could tap into specific domains of learning. Despite the research into podcasting’s trends and application (particularly as an educational tool), there are several gaps in this body of research in terms of consistent structure, application and use beyond first-year university classes (or ‘undergraduate level’). For example, research by McNamara and Drew questions why there does not appear to be a ‘theoretical framework to guide instructional design’ (McNamara and Drew 2019). Research also demonstrates results limited to specific learning circumstances (Clark 2009; Fernandez, Sallan and Simo 2015; Heilesen 2010; Kennedy et al., 2014). Few longitudinal studies have analysed the learning effects of podcasting, with studies often conducted at the undergraduate level and thus difficult to extrapolate to professional or business industries (Fernandez, Sallan and Simo 2015; Heilesen 2010). Therefore, this research on educational podcasting at Murdoch University considered the long history of educational audio podcast structure and how best to apply it.

Entertaining podcasts in education With podcasts growing in popularity worldwide and increasing from year to year, they are neither unfamiliar nor unusual to the target cohort of the study. McHugh (2016) states that personal audio storytelling, in particular, is growing in popularity and is part of the ‘manifestation of the audio medium’s oft-noted capacity for intimacy’. She expands on the powerful nature of podcasting to connect with listeners with examples of award-winning Australian and British journalistic podcasts that typify an ‘intimate listening experience’ (McHugh 2016). Her proposed ‘Pillars of Podcasting’ further emphasizes what she considers to be key elements, such as authenticity and intimacy, host connection and empathy in the construction of audio voices in podcasts (McHugh 2022). However, McHugh’s ‘Pillars of Podcasting’ diagram does not seem to take into consideration how scripting, acting and (particularly) sound manipulation and editing could also influence listeners’ sense of connection with a host/s. In addition, Drew proposes, based on the popularity and variety of forms, that podcast designs in ‘independent rather than institutional learning, would transfer over to more structured learning environments’ (Drew 2017). Research suggests that digital storytelling is a student-centred method that allows learners to combine their own experiences with learning content (Emert 2014; Hew 2008; Torres, Ponce and Pastor 2012). As a result, the research not only focused on the benefits of popular podcasting but also explored structural design elements in podcasts to ascertain how to maximize the perceived educational benefits (Kidd 2011) whilst tapping into a familiar medium for most students.

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In the production of podcasts, the narrative structure is vital for engaging the listener/ viewer. The narrative structure takes listeners/viewers across disciplines by seamlessly connecting the story of an event, the music, tone, images and other elements. The structure is then curated intentionally and purposefully, potentially extending beyond the producer’s initial goals, whether they be instructing teachers (Barber 2016), promoting good health through exercise (Alderman 2012), or promoting critical reflection on the American judicial system (Haugtvedt 2017). The notion of ‘narrative’ comes from the broader field of narratology or ‘la narratologie’, which Herman (2005) attributes to Tzvetan Todorov. Todorov coined the term ‘to designate what he and nine other structuralist theorists of story […] conceived of as a science of narrative modelled after the “pilot-science” of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics’ (Herman 2007). The narrative is unpacked scientifically as ‘a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process and change … of what happened to particular people – and of what it was like for them to experience what happened – in particular circumstances and with specific consequences’ (Herman 2007). Herman describes story and narrative as elements independent of the text in which they occur (e.g., computer games, podcasts, novels, films, etc.). Applying the tenets of narratology to a podcast is a valuable strategy for analysing their production/content and audience engagement. Narratology assists in making apparent the ‘narrative hooks’ the producer uses to engage and guide the listener. In everyday communication, listeners often take these ‘hooks’ for granted: we do not articulate to others or ourselves how they are engaged and how they engage others through their stories. Investigation of the structure that underlies podcasts helps understand why and how production occurs. For example, the podcast series Serial (USA 2014) follows in the tradition of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida in the way it ‘challenge[s] … stable, logocentric meaning as illusory and perceives text as radically plural, embodying a process of deferred significance rather than representing stable objects of meaning’ (Stanley 2017). Through the audio talk segments, the use of music, the ordering of the story through flashback, the producer’s commentary and other structural choices by Koenig, listeners of Serial are encouraged to doubt the guilt of accused murderer Syed and, more widely, fear for the fate of the incarcerated (Stanley, 2017). As Haugtvedt suggests, ‘Sarah Koenig3 doesn’t chronicle characters; she chronicles people – and the tension between these two categories produces … ethical dilemmas at the heart of Serial’ (Haugtvedt 2017). Similarly, the structural choices in 99% Invisible’s ‘The Broadcast Clock’, episodes of Welcome to Nightvale and even the exercise app Zombies, Run demonstrate similar structural elements in their production. It is important to consider the use of voice in constructing educational audio as a part of podcasts. Wissmann and Zimmermann (2010) present two additional elements for audio drama relevant to this discussion: dialogue and the storyteller. Dialogue is the conversation held between two or more characters in a story. Dialogue enables the plot to progress and familiarize the listener with characters, ‘providing references to the environment of the persons in the story’ (Wissmann and Zimmermann 2010). As such, dialogue enables the ‘double articulation’ described by Scannell (1996), involving discussions held with

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an awareness of a listening broadcast audience (Chignell 2009). The second element explained by Wissmann and Zimmermann of audio drama is the storyteller. They define the storyteller as the narrator who can present a story, providing opportunities to recap or preview events, interrupt the action and even provide descriptions. As Wissmann and Zimmermann note, ‘A storyteller also lends a hand in creating the world by verbally describing the places of action’ (Wissmann and Zimmermann 2010). Numerous elements, including spoken delivery, can influence the popularity of podcasts. Delivery can affect popularity because audible content is necessary for listeners to comprehend the sounds and make meaning, particularly if distortions or disruptions are limited (Newman and Schwarz 2018). Therefore, clear recording, coherent scriptwriting and a focus on editing to ensure clear and coherent dialogue and story are essential to podcasting and, therefore, educational podcasting. While not a prescriptive element, voice is crucial in constructing audio narratives. Voice includes a wide variety of discussions, tones, word choices and volumes. For Crisell, speech is vital to contributing meaning (1994), with the primary codes or signs of audio texts ‘linguistic, since words are required to contextualise all other codes’ (1994). Shingler and Wieringa (1998) also suggest that speech is the primary code of radio. Hendy asserts, ‘talk … is almost always described as the “primary code” of radio, which contextualises all other sounds’ (2000). Just as the visual is vital to film and television, talk and voices are essential to the radio and other audio-centred formats. However, radio talk differs markedly from everyday conversational speech. Radio is a broadcast medium and has certain expectations inherent in delivery. Radio listeners expect typical vocabulary and grammar, modes of address (such as ‘direct address’, using ‘you’, ‘we’, ‘I’ and so on), and a heightened awareness of accent, speech pace and noise levels (Chignell 2009; Spinelli 2006). Broadcast talk, in particular, is meant to be overheard. Scannell describes this quality of being ‘overheard’ as a ‘double articulation’. The double articulation involves two simultaneous forms of communication, firstly between the presenter and the person they are talking to, and secondly, between the pair of presenters and the listening audience (Scannell 1996). Moreover, Huwiler (2016) writes that speech (or ‘voice’) involves idiolect (linguistic choices and idiosyncrasies), pronunciation (accents and dialects) and intonation (the structure of emphasizing words or so-called melodies within the sentences uttered). Voices (while not a prescriptive element) and the wide variety of discussions, tones, emphasis, word choices and volumes, therefore, play an essential part in constructing audio narratives. The academic field of sound studies has also considered what makes an ‘entertaining’ narrative-driven podcast. Podcasts may include narrators, dialogue, sound effects, music and even binaural sound (that involves recording audio to create a surrounding impact on the left and right ears, thereby imitating live hearing) in the creation of stories, whether fiction or non-fiction. Research into technological advancements of narrative in sound studies, termed audionarratology, aided the identification of these elements (Huwiler 2016; Mildorf and Kinzel 2016). Audionarratology analyses how ‘sounds and noises contribute to the creation of real and imagined spaces and worlds’ (Mildorf and Kinzel 2016). As

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Huwiler proposes, ‘Other sign systems that can create narrative meaning in a radio piece are voice, music, noise, fading, cutting, mixing, the (stereophonic) positioning of the signals, electro-acoustic manipulation, original sound (actuality) and silence’ (Huwiler 2016). Although audio tracks can run concurrently, the technique of fading signifies a relationship (of connection or distance) between two different levels of space, time or reality, which can allow for the creation of a sense of movement, position or even transition between audio segments for audio listeners (Schmedes 2002). Previous research in sound studies and sign systems includes categorizing the environment into three types of sound: ‘keynote sounds’, ‘signal sounds’ and ‘soundmarks’ (Schafer 1994/1977). Keynote sounds are the often-unacknowledged background sounds in everyday life, such as the buzz of traffic. Signal sounds are considered an example of a sound that captures attention (such as an alarm siren). In contrast, soundmarks occur in specific places, including ‘sonic landmarks’ (such as a bell in a local church). (Schafer 1994/1977; Truax 1984). Numerous academics have also discussed these kinds of environmental sounds and their contribution to audio narrative works (see, for example, Chignell 2009; Huwiler 2016; Shingler and Wieringa 1998 Wissmann and Zimmermann 2010). While all of these individual terms and elements are useful, no pre-existing model draws together these studies to date to guide the production of educational podcasts. As both an art form and means of cultural expression, music is in performance spaces, broadcast across many mediums and often divisive in terms of how different audiences appreciate it. Chignell (2009) says that ‘Music is one of the codes of radio and a universally important content of radio programming.’ Such a sentiment is also applicable to podcasting in many cases. Despite copyright restrictions for the use of music by podcast creators in Australia, music in podcasting is generally akin to its use in radio broadcasting. Music on the radio includes jingles or music to introduce a show, which Shingler and Wieringa (1998) describe as ‘the most radiogenic form of music heard on the radio’. For Shingler and Wieringa, jingles involve reflecting on and blending with a radio station’s style. Moreover, jingles may act as a form of ‘aural punctuation’ that influence the mood and emotion of segments (Shingler and Wieringa 1998). This form of punctuation appears, for example, in popular storytelling podcasts such as Welcome to Nightvale and Serial. The non-verbal component of music aids the narrative portrayed in podcasts in many ways, such as helping to create a particular emotional response, providing tension, indicating a break in content, etc. These components have both semantic and syntactic functions in a narrative. Semantic functions include music that accompanies the story or illustrates emotion or meaning, such as commentary, contrast or alienation (Abumrad 2012; Huwiler 2016; Schmedes 2002). An example of a syntactic function is the soundframe, a musical insert. Unlike narrative background music (or ‘music bed’), a soundframe provides an introduction and epilogue to the audio production to ‘underline the events or the change in timeframe or place of action’ (Wissmann and Zimmermann 2010). Music is a helpful value-add within podcasting, artistically and creatively, much like its use in radio broadcasting. Its application can be just as appealing or discouraging to a listening audience.

Edutainment Podcasting Pedagogy During COVID-19

A new framework for podcasting Drawing on the above literature, this research proposes a new framework, consolidating the audio codes of speech, music, soundscape, electro-acoustic manipulation, stereo positioning and silence. This guide, whilst not prescriptive, informed the creation of the edutainment podcasts implemented in the Introductory Radio unit in this research. Table 24.1 lists the audio codes and their different elements with supporting references. The elements within Table 24.1 exist separately in other research. However, combining and organizing codes into their separate elements provides a new framework to guide the creation of edutainment podcasts. Furthermore, the framework follows the work of Drew’s ‘edu-taining audio’ podcast design framework of analysis (2017). In essence, Drew argues that podcast design is multifaceted, culminating in the type of content, the length, the author (or presenter/s/narrator/s) style, purpose, voice/mode of address, fit with course materials, pedagogical approach and the subject matter. Notably, Drew’s element, voice/ mode of address, combines both storytelling/narrative structure (drawing on research by Lindgren 2014) and ‘voice’ (as suggested by Fernandez, Sallan and Simo 2015) in terms of engaging style and clarity. Despite the presence of sonic narrative research in popular podcasting, scant attention has been paid to the creation of edutainment podcasts. The new framework in Table 24.1 consolidates previous knowledge and guided the entertaining, educational podcast research conducted at Murdoch University in 2020.

Table 24.1  Framework of Sound Audio Codes and Elements in Edutainment Podcasts Audio Codes

Elements

References

Speech

Dialogue

Wissmann and Zimmerman (2010); Shingler and Wieringa (1998); Chignell (2009); Scannell (1996)

Storyteller

Wissmann and Zimmerman (2010); Shingler and Wieringa (1998); Chignell (2009)

Semantic

Huwiler (2005; 2016)

Syntactic

Wissmann and Zimmerman (2010); Shingler and Wieringa (1998); Chignell (2009)

Signal

Truax (1984) and Schafer (1994)

Keynote

Truax (1984) and Schafer (1994)

Soundmark

Truax (1984) and Schafer (1994); Wissmann and Zimmerman (2010)

Cutting

Huwiler (2016) and Schmedes (2002)

Fading

Huwiler (2016) and Schmedes (2002)

Mixing

Huwiler (2016) and Schmedes (2002)

Music

Soundscape

Electro-acoustic manipulation

Stereophonic positioning of signals

Verma (2012) and Huwiler (2016)

Silence

McWhinnie (1959) and Shingler and Wieringa (1998)

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Methodology: edutainment podcasts to teach radio This research created a supplementary educational online podcast series for the first four weeks of a first-year introductory radio unit, Introduction to Radio. The four-episode podcast series used a fictional scenario (involving radio stations in space), whereby characters discussed and demonstrated concepts, skills and proficiencies related to the radio production unit learning outcomes for the first four weeks. In addition to the podcasts being a teaching resource, they were designed to test the research idea: that podcasts could be entertaining as well as educational (or could be ‘edu-taining podcasts’, Drew 2017). The podcasts contained narrative devices, sound codes and conventions from this research’s new framework of podcasting to value-add to a ‘listening classroom’. This study tested the efficacy of this new podcasting framework through creation of edutainment podcasts for teaching radio. Could this model of podcast creation and subsequently produced edutainment podcasts about radio production, improve student engagement with their radio production studies?

A four-part podcast series to teach radio As Markman (2012) discovered with her research into independent podcasters, the lure of being radio-makers is a part of the appeal for podcast-makers. Therefore, why not have characters in an educational podcast ‘do radio’ and, in the process, demonstrate how to both ‘do radio’ and reflect the successes, failures, encouragement to retry, and the general free-wheeling style which are a standard of many co-hosted podcasts? This study involved a class of fifty-three undergraduate students, aged eighteen to thirty-two, enrolled in a class called Introduction to Radio at Murdoch University. Week One introduced the unit and student participants to the research podcasts. A short video outlined the purpose of the podcast series, namely as a resource available to listen to at the start of each of the first four lessons of the unit and additionally available via the learning management system. Student participants were informed they could give feedback on the podcasts at the conclusion of the fourth week. A sheet of instructions was made available for every tutorial, with a similar PowerPoint slide on the main screen of the classroom visible for the entire session. Provision of instructions via letter and PowerPoint helped orientate students to the correct website (SoundCloud) for the listening sessions. Students received each link via the learning management system and in an email sent to them to listen and relisten if they missed a class, chose not to listen during the class time, or wished to relisten to the audio in their own time. An independent tutor, not associated with the research, facilitated the students’ listening to the podcasts in the classes. The researcher was at arm’s length from the students they were teaching and minimized the ‘halo effect’ and ‘double agency’. This independent tutor was a member of the university

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technical staff who was not a teacher of the unit or involved with the research. This tutor sat with the classes during the listening time to provide individual headphones and help with any technical issues as needed. The first podcast (as with all the podcasts) supplemented the weekly standard lecture and tutorial activities. It introduced students to the podcast series and familiarized them with the narrative world. It also prepared them for the more detailed unit content addressed in the lectures, readings and workshops. The concept of the educational podcasts does not relate to the unit learning outcomes directly as the podcasts used the fictional milieu of a space station broadcasting studio. The central aim of the first podcast was to introduce students to using the podcasts as a part of the everyday learning experience for the next four weeks. The podcast suggested a guiding question to discuss in class – ‘why is radio still relevant – even in times where we are much more technologically advanced than when it was first introduced?’ In its construction, the podcast introduced students to soundscape and structure in audio works. Doing so prepared them for using such elements in an interview assignment they would submit at the end of the semester. In the second week, the unit examined using voice in broadcasting, looking after their voice and breathing for presentation purposes. The podcast for this week discussed these elements and provided examples of vocal exercises. The demonstration in the podcast included how voices change and improve after warming up for broadcast, techniques for projection, and the correct seating and standing for radio presenting. The podcast provided links to the available resources, in the lecture notes, through questions such as ‘What makes you comfortable with your voice?’ and ‘When are you happiest hearing yourself speak?’. The podcast posed questions as either a self-reflection exercise or an opportunity for further class discussion. As participation in radio broadcasting can also make students more aware and reflective of their level of confidence in oral presentations (Tello and Consuelo 2012), the podcast content encouraged students to reflect on improving and being more effective as public speakers in general and as radio presenters. The third week of the unit addressed ‘writing for radio’. Writing for radio is different in several ways from ‘writing to be read’, akin to comparing oral reports or speeches to writing an essay. Structure, tones and motivations require careful consideration to ensure audience appeal. The third podcast episode provided a comparison between a general radio script and a news report text to demonstrate how to transform a news item and prepare it to be ‘radio-worthy’. For this week, the key learning outcomes were writing a radio script, writing for the ear, and writing for an audience. The podcast unpacked how to make a radio script powerful and engaging, using production techniques such as structuring and pace, marking up a script and involving the listener. The podcast characters modelled writing skills, and in the process showed how scripting engages radio listeners. The podcast encouraged students to reflect on the concluding question for the week: ‘What is it that makes you want to listen to a radio presenter?’ In the fourth and final week on ‘Radio Presenting’, the podcast wrapped up the series by comparing different presentation styles. In radio, style guide expectations exist for broadcasters when they are writing a script in terms of their target audience/demographic, in terms of language content or linguistic complexity. The podcasts demonstrated how

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radio broadcasters use language differently according to whether their tone is formal (e.g., station announcements) or conversational (discussions between characters), or even casual (the banter and debates characters have on topics raised during the podcast episodes). This week aimed to identify various presentation styles and apply them depending upon the station and audience. For this final episode, the podcast encouraged listeners to reflect on one last question – ‘what kind of presenter do they consider themselves to be?’ The actors’ characterizations in the podcasts modelled different styles – formal, casual, comedic, newsreading – and raised questions about whether radio listeners felt they related to certain voice/s more than others and why. By incorporating the learning objectives and concepts from the first four weeks of the unit, the podcasts covered the required content while testing the ‘New Framework of Sound Audio Codes and Elements of Edutainment Podcasts’.

Data collection In the final week of the unit’s podcasts, the students completed a survey about their experience of the research podcasts. The survey had three parts: the first four questions related to ethics permission, demographic questions (gender, age, whether any listening issues might prevent the survey taker from taking part in this research). The second part contained Likert scale quantitative questions about their podcast listening experience. The questions asked about the effect of the podcasts on their understanding of the unit learning outcomes, their levels of engagement, and what podcast elements aided their learning. The final part of the survey featured an open qualitative question requesting further feedback about the podcasts and the effect on their learning. Students were allocated thirty minutes to complete the survey questions at the end of the fourth week and after the final listening session with the podcasts. The tutor encouraged students to use as much time as they wished in class or fill in the survey online via the learning management system before the end of the week. An online software program, Qualtrics, was used to host the survey and tabulate the results. As data collection required confidentiality, the online survey anonymized responses and limited or prevented raw data belonging to individual participants from being made available to others without their consent. Students could withdraw their participation by opting out when they were offered the final survey, with no consequences due to the anonymous nature of the data collection software.

Discussion Responses from forty-seven students fulfilled the criteria of wishing to be surveyed and had listened to all podcasts. Their feedback about the podcasts was largely positive. The feedback on the episodes trended towards the ‘moderately engaged’ in terms of interest in the podcast content, with ‘agree’, the most common response to the questions on how well the podcasts helped with understanding the unit concepts and assisted with developing

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skills relevant to the unit. The cohort responded to all the podcast episodes favourably; however, they found the fourth episode (‘radio presenting’) the most applicable in helping them understand and engage with the unit’s content. The least popular podcast was episode three (‘writing for radio’), which still averaged between ‘slightly agree’ and ‘agree’ in both categories of helping to understand and engage with unit content. In terms of the narrative and sound elements in the podcasts, ‘storytelling’ was the most popular aspect, ranked as ‘agree’ to ‘strongly agree’ by most students in terms of engaging content, followed by ‘sound effects’ and ‘characters’. The least popular element (with ‘slightly agree’ the most common response) was the music used in the podcasts. However, as the use of music was primarily limited to introduction and conclusion tunes (‘intros and outros’), this factor may have contributed to the less-popular response. Qualitative comments provided by students in the survey generally revealed favourable responses to the podcast series, with statements such as: ●

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●

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The podcasts were a good length, not too long and not too short. These were funny! … I can see how the information is important after seeing how the characters went through the experience. Good practical tips. They do help, it makes points [on] why radio is important in everyday … a good form [of] getting the message across, such as emergencies or the weather. Good for [a] COVID-19 study … would help more if [I] couldn’t go to classes regularly.

More critical comments gave insights into why episode three was ranked as the least popular episode. Students commented on the length of episodes; the structure of the interactions and expressed various opinions about humour in the plot. Sample comments included: ●

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Very engaging characters and unique voices. Worked well using the Technician as a stand in for the audience. I feel though some concepts could have benefited from a few more minutes of runtime to just clarify and flesh out details. Very humorous. Good fun although didn’t find episode three as interesting. The final episode was the best and had a good end to the story. Good descriptions of the way to use radio. Although some information felt spoon fed, the podcasts were engaging and a good summary to follow for that week’s unit topic. Would’ve enjoyed them for the rest of the semester. These were good but having time in the studios is best but these were a good guide could hear where you could improve or work further by the examples given. Music could be better but was that a copyright issue? Very funny characters.

Conclusion This research indicated that there were pedagogical student engagement benefits to the inclusion of the edutainment podcasts in this Introductory Radio unit. The audio content incorporated research findings on podcasting, blended learning and audio narrative,

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thereby contributing to the creation of a framework which guided the creation of the study’s podcasts. Such a framework may require further clarification and refinement to be useful in the planning, designing and implementation of other educational podcast series. For example, the elements of voice could better delineate features such as accent, pace and timbre in terms of their appeal – there does not currently seem to be a framework that examines voice in this fashion. In terms of teaching cost and benefit, the tutor for the subject and the creator of the podcast was experienced in crafting podcasts and employed a quartet of Radio and Drama graduates who provided their voices for the series. This enabled the creation of the podcasts to be a solo effort. A less-experienced podcast creator might outsource the technical and editing elements. However, this does mean that in conjunction with a more-experienced podcast maker and a willing team of voice talent, a podcast series for subject areas other than Introduction to Radio could be created, using the framework as a guide. In addition to the benefits the study reveals for student comprehension and skill application in radio broadcasting, it proposes creating a new kind of educational podcast for university-level students across different subject areas and possibly other levels of education.

Notes 1 2

3

‘Edu-taining’ is a portmanteau term first proposed by Drew (2017), which combines the words ‘educational’ and ‘entertaining’. For example, the cohort of students (fifty-three undergraduate students, aged eighteen to thirty-two) who attended this fifteen-week long Introduction to Radio unit included students of various levels of university experience, including students new to tertiarylevel learning. Different learning needs are not unusual with a large cohort of students, particularly with a subject like Radio which best fits in the Creative Arts and/or Media subject areas. Sarah Koenig is an American journalist, public radio personality, former producer of the television and radio programme This American Life, and the host and executive producer of the podcast Serial.

Works cited Abdous, M., B. R. Facer and C. Yen (2015), ‘Trends in Podcast Download Frequency Over Time, Podcast Use, and Digital Literacy in Foreign Language and Literature Courses’, Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 13: 15–33. Abt, G. and T. Barry (2007), ‘The Quantitative Effect of Students Using Podcasts in a FirstYear Undergraduate Exercise Physiology Module’, Bioscience Education 10 (1): 1–9. Abumrad, J. (2012), ‘The Terrors and Occasional Virtues of Not Knowing What You’re Doing’, Transom Review 8: 1–22. Alderman, N. (2012), Zombies, Run! [Mobile Application], London: Six to Start.

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Aristovnik, A., D. Keržič, D. Ravšelj, N. Tomaževič and L. Umek (2020), ‘Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students: A Global Perspective’, Sustainability 2020 12: 8438. Barber, J. (2016), ‘Digital Storytelling: New Opportunities for Humanities Scholarship and Pedagogy’, Cogent Arts & Humanities 3: 1. Boyle, T., C. Bradley, P. Chalk, R. Jones and P. Pickard (2003), ‘Using Blended Learning to Improve Student Success Rates in Learning to Program’, Journal of Educational Media 28 (2–3): 165–78. Brennan, R. (2003), One Size Doesn’t Fit All, Pedagogy in the Online Environment – Vol. 1, Leabrook: Australian National Training Authority. Brittain, S., P. Glowacki, J. Van Ittersum and L. Johnson (2006), ‘Podcasting Lectures: Formative Evaluation Strategies Helped Identify a Solution to a Learning Problem’, Education Quarterly 3, 24–31. Brooks, S. K., R. K. Webster, L. E. Smith, L. Woodland, S. Wessely, N. Greenberg and G. J. Rubin (2020), ‘The Psychological Impact of Quarantine and How to Reduce it: Rapid Review of the Evidence’, The Lancet 395 (10227): 912–20. Chan, A. and M. J. W. Lee (2007), ‘Reducing the Effects of Isolation and Promoting Inclusivity for Distance Learners Through Podcasting’, Turkish Online Journal of Distance EducationTOJDE 8 (1): 85–105. Chignell, H. (2009), Key Concepts in Radio Studies, SAGE Publications Ltd. Clark, R. E. (2009), ‘Translating Research into New Instructional Technologies for Higher Education: The Active Ingredient Process’, Journal of Computing in Higher Education 21 (1): 4–18. Crisell, A. (1994), Understanding Radio, New York: Routledge. Dhurbarrylall, R. and I. Visser (2005), ‘Development of Distance Education in Mauritius’, Quarterly Review of Distance Education 6 (3): 185–97. Draper, S. W. and J. Maguire (2007), ‘Exploring Podcasting as Part of Campus-Based Teaching’, Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 2 (1): 43–65. Drew, C. (2017), ‘Edu-taining Audio: An Exploration of Education Podcast Design Possibilities’, Educational Media International 54 (1): 48–62. Emert, T. (2014), ‘Interactive Digital Storytelling with Refugee Children’, Language Arts 91: 401–15. Evans, C. (2008), ‘The Effectiveness of M-Learning in the Form of Podcast Revision Lectures in Higher Education’, Computers & Education 50 (2): 491–8. Fernandez, V., J. M. Sallan and P. Simo (2015), ‘Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting in Higher Education’, in M. Li and Y. Zhao (eds), Exploring Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Berlin: Springer, pp. 305–30. Garrison, D. and H. Kanuka (2004), ‘Blended Learning: Uncovering Its Transformative Potential in Higher Education’, The Internet and Higher Education 7: 95–105. Haugtvedt, E. (2017), ‘The Ethics of Serialized True Crime’, in Ellen McCracken (ed.), The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, New York: Routledge, pp. 7–23. Heilesen, S. B. (2010), ‘What is the Academic Efficacy of Podcasting?’, Computers & Education 55 (3): 1063–8. Hendy, D. (2000), Radio in the Global Age, Cambridge: Polity.

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Herman, D. (2005), ‘Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments’, in J. Phelan and P. J. Rabinowitz (eds), A Companion to Narrative Theory, Malden: Blackwell, pp. 19–35. Herman, D. (2007), ‘Introduction’, in David Herman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, New York: Cambridge University Press, 3–22. Hew, K. F. (2008), ‘Use of Audio Podcast in K-12 and Higher Education: A Review of Research Topics and Methodologies’, Educational Technology Research and Development 57 (3): 333–57. Holmberg, B. (1994), Theory and Practice of Distance Education (2nd ed.), London: Routledge. Huwiler, E. (2005), ‘Storytelling by Sound. A Theoretical Frame for Radio Drama Analysis’, The Radio Journal International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 3: 45–59. Huwiler, E. (2016), ‘A Narratology of Audio Art: Telling Stories by Sound’, in Jarmila Mildorf and Till Kinzel (eds), Audionarratology, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 99–116. Kennedy, M. J., S. Aronin, M. O’Neal, J. R. Newton and C. N. Thomas (2014), ‘Creating Multimedia-Based Vignettes with Embedded Evidence-Based Practices: A Tool for Supporting Struggling Learners’, Journal of Special Education Technology 29 (4): 15–30. Kentnor, H. E. (2015), ‘Distance Education and the Evolution of Online Learning in the United States; Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue’, Information Age Publishing, Charlotte 17 (1): 21–34. Kidd, W. (2011), ‘Utilising Podcasts for Learning and Teaching: A Review and Ways Forward for E-Learning Cultures’, Management in Education 26 (2): 52–7. Koksal, I. (2020), ‘The Rise of Online Learning’, Forbes Online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ ilkerkoksal/2020/05/02/the-rise-of-online-learning/?sh=68e6d71672f3 (accessed 23 April 2022). Lazzari, M. (2009), ‘Creative Use of Podcasting in Higher Education and its Effect on Competitive Agency’, Computers & Education 52: 27–34. Lazzari, M. and A. Betella (2007), ‘Towards Guidelines on Educational Podcasting Quality: Problems Arising From a Real-World Experience’, in M. J. Smith and G. Salvendy (eds), Human Interface and the Management of Information: Interacting in Information Environments, Symposium on Human Interface, Part II. HCI II 2007, Berlin, Germany: Springer, pp. 404–12. Leung, N., D. Chu, E. Shiu, K-H. Chan, J. McDevitt, B. Hau … B. Cowling (2020), ‘Respiratory Virus Shedding in Exhaled Breath and Efficacy of Face Masks’, Nat. Med. 26 (5): 676–80. Lindgren, M. (2014), ‘This Australian Life: The Americanisation of Radio Storytelling in Australia’, Australian Journalism Review 36 (2): 63–75. Llinares, D., N. Fox and R. Berry (2018), ‘Introduction: Podcasting and Podcasts – Parameters of a New Aural Culture’, in D. Llinares, N. Fox and R. Berry (eds), Podcasting, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 1–13. Lonn, S. and S. D. Teasley (2009), ‘Saving Time or Innovating Practice: Investigating Perceptions and Uses of Learning Management Systems’, Computers & Education 53 (3): 686–94. Markman, K. (2012), ‘Doing Radio, Making Friends, and Having Fun: Exploring the Motivations of Independent Audio Podcasters’, New Media and Society 14 (4): 547–65. McHugh, S. (2016), ‘How Podcasting is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre’, The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 14 (1): 65–82. McHugh, S. (2022), The Power of Podcasting – Telling Stories Through Sound, Sydney: Newsouth Books.

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McLoughlin, C., M. Lee and A. Chan (2006), ‘Using Student Generated Podcasts to Foster Reflection and Metacognition’, ACEC Australian Educational Computing 21 (2): 34–40. McWhinnie, D. (1959), The Art of Radio, London: Faber and Faber. Mildorf, J. and T. Kinzel (eds) (2016), Audionarratology: Interfaces of Sound and Narrative, Berlin: DeGruyter. Newman, E. J. and N. Schwarz (2018), ‘Good Sound, Good Research: How Audio Quality Influences Perceptions of the Research and Researcher’, Science Communication 40 (2): 246–57. Nie, M., A. Cashmore and C. Cane (2008), ‘The Educational Value of Student-Generated Podcasts’, in N. Whitton and M. McPherson (eds), Rethinking the Digital Divide, Research Proceedings of the 15th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2008). Held 9–11 September 2008, University of Leeds, UK. Pelikan, E., S. Koriat, J. Reiter, J. Holzer, M. Mayerhofer, B. Schober … M. Luftenegger (2021), ‘Distance Learning in Higher Education During Covid-19: The Role of Basic Psychological Needs and Intrinsic Motivation for Persistence and Procrastination – A Multi-Country Study’, PLoS One 16 (10): e0257346. Scannell, P. (1996), Radio, Television and Modern Life, Oxford: Blackwell. Schafer, R. M. (1994) [1977], The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Reprint, Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Schmedes, G. (2002), Media Text Radio Play: Approaches to Radio Play Semiotics Using the Example of Alfred Behrens’ Radio Works, Munster: Waxmann. Shingler, M. and Wieringa, C. (1998), On Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio, London: Arnold. Singh, J. and B. Matthees (2021), ‘Facilitating Interprofessional Education in an Online Environment During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Method Study’, Healthcare 9 (5): 567. Singh, J., K. Steele and L. Singh (2021), ‘Combining the Best of Online and Face-to-Face Learning: Hybrid and Blended Learning Approach for COVID-19, Post Vaccine, & PostPandemic World’, Journal of Educational Technology Systems 50 (2): 140–71. Spinelli, M. (2006), ‘Rhetorical Figures and the Digital Editing of Radio Speech’, Convergence 12 (2): 199–212. Stanley, S. K. (2017), ‘“What We Know” – Convicting Narratives in NPR’s Serial’, in Ellen McCracken (ed.), The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, New York: Routledge, pp. 7–23. Stobart, A. and S. Duckett (2022), Australia’s Response to COVID-19, Health Economics, Policy, and Law 17 (1): 95–106. Tello, L. and N. Consuelo (2012), ‘“On Air’: Participation in an Online Radio Show to Foster Speaking Confidence. A Cooperative Learning Based Strategies Study’, Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development 14 (1): 91–112. Torres, A. R., E. P. Ponce and M. D. G. Pastor (2012), ‘Digital Storytelling as a Pedagogical Tool within a Didactic Sequence in Foreign Language Teaching’, Digital Education Review 22 (Dec.): 1–18. Truax, B. (1984), Acoustic Communication, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing. UNESCO (2020), COVID-19 Impact on Education: https://en.unesco.org/covid19 (accessed 8 August 2021). UNESCO (2021) ‘‘One Year into Covid-19 Education Disruption: Where do we Stand?’ UNESCO Clearinghouse on Global Citizenship Education: www.gcedclearinghouse.org/

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news/one-year-covid-19-education-disruption-where-do-we-stand (accessed 11 February 2022). Verma, N. (2012), Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Vogel, C. and E. T. Gard (2006), ‘Podcasting For Corporations and Universities: Look Before You Leap’, Journal of Internet Law 10 (4): 3–13. Wake, A., K. Fox and C. Strong (2020), ‘Pandemic Podcasting: From Classroom to Bedroom’, Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication 10 (1): 29–33. WHO Regional Office for Europe (2020), Mental Health and Psychological Resilience During the Covid-19 Pandemic: http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/ coronavirus-covid-19/news/news/2020/3/mental-health-and-psychological-resilienceduring-the-covid19-pandemic (accessed 10 August 2021). Wissmann, T. and S. Zimmermann (2010), ‘From Hear to There. Sound and the Cognitive Construction of World in Popular Audioplays’, Erdkunde 64 (4): 371–83.

25 The Place of Radio in the Soundscapes Everyday Listening and Producing Sounds in Marginalized Communities of the Global South Andrea Medrado

Introduction: studying radio and soundscapes from a Global South perspective This chapter proposes a broader understanding of radio as emmeshed in soundscapes and auditory culture. This proposition stems from a Global South perspective, considering the circumstances of reception amongst marginalized communities in Brazil. The Global South does not refer to geographical location; we can find Global South(s) in Global North countries and vice-versa. Rather, these plural South(s) feature as metaphors for oppression and suffering, representing a solidarity project between oppressed peoples (Mignolo 2008; Santos 2016). By focusing on the Global South as a contextual but also conceptual tool, this chapter focuses on marginalized peoples’ need to be heard within and beyond the borders of their communities. Here, I am particularly interested in how soundscapes (and community radio as embedded in them) might help us understand, analyse, and connect to issues of inequality and injustice. Such focus on how marginalized communities’ collective agency manifests in the soundscapes also challenges the ‘coloniality of power’ (Moosavi 2020; Moraña, Dussel and Jáuregui 2008; Quijano 2008). Paying attention to marginalized communities’ voices and dialogues is a way to oppose the racial, political and social hierarchies that prescribe

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value to some groups, parts of the world, and parts of cities – as in the case of favelas1 – but not to others. Indeed, the voices, sounds and stories that echo from the favelas of the plural Souths of the world communicate knowledge that should be valued rather than delegitimized (Santos 2016). Here, I propose to relocate the margins at the centres as sites of struggle (Rodriguez 2017) and contradictions, but also solution and agency. This perspective leads to embracing an understanding of marginality that shifts from problem, fatality and apathy (Abujamra 1967) to solution, participation and agency (Mangin 1967; Perlman 1976). Focusing on the margins as centres of pluriversal (or stemming from multiple sources of) knowledge, this chapter draws from empirical data obtained in two previous ethnographic studies in Brazilian favelas. The first study (Medrado 2010) focused on the everyday listening to community radio by residents of Pau da Lima, a working-class neighbourhood in Salvador. I asked: to what extent community radio and – from a broader perspective – community sounds represented a public (social, political or familial) resource for its audiences? The second study (Medrado and Souza 2017) explored the ways in which the transformations that Rio de Janeiro experienced prior to hosting the Olympics, in 2016, echoed in the soundscapes of Maré, a large network of favelas. The main question was: how were favela residents making themselves heard in the preparations for the mega-events? The research unveiled the ways in which the Brazilian authorities’ oppressive impositions on favela residents’ daily lives manifest through the suppression of their sounds. The recognition that radio needs to be understood as being enmeshed in complex soundscapes provides an important theme throughout the chapter. Here, I argue that community radio needs to be situated in sets of daily rhythms. The research demonstrates that residents of favelas play the role of aural architects, using sounds and radio as tools to create boundaries and seize space in the cacophonous favela. I also emphasize the need for paying attention to residents’ circumstances of listening and producing sounds as forms of daily resistance, even if such sonic manifestations are not linked to a particular medium such as radio. In a context where authoritarian policies were being imposed, the media produced at the grassroots level acquired a much broader, non-medium-centric meaning. By being attentive to soundscapes and auditory culture, the chapter brings to the fore the need to recognize the importance of aurality for marginalized communities in the Global South.

Understanding community radio as situated within complex soundscapes In this study, I analyse a variety of mediated listening experiences and practices drawing from different areas of enquiry. These areas can be broadly identified as: a) community media studies; b) studies of listening (from a Global South perspective); and c) auditory culture. I argue that studies of community radio, specifically, would benefit from attending to the circumstances in which listening experiences take place in marginalized communities of the Global South.

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Here, before delving into community radio, I provide a brief definition of community as being ‘conventionally identified with a relatively limited geographical region – a neighbourhood, village, town, in some cases a city’ (Jankowski 2002: 5). However, ‘community’ might also be a ‘community of interest’, where members have cultural, social or political interests in common (Jankowski 2002: 5). Conveniently, both favela areas in which my research was conducted – Pau da Lima and Maré – are circumscribed within geographical boundaries. Therefore, it is possible to argue that Pau da Lima and Maré both represent communities of neighbours. Additionally, both areas are communities in a sense that residents share many socio-demographic traits. These are marginalized communities where residents are denied basic human rights, such as adequate housing, sanitation and access to health and quality education. At the same time, while communities are perceived as expressions of ‘commonality’, they are also expressions of ‘difference’. This means that communities are situated in symbolically constructed boundaries of practices (such as language, dress, customs and rituals) that both ‘contain’ and ‘differentiate’ (Cohen 1985). This connects to this study’s analysis of the favelas as heterogeneous environments where diverse groups will make use of their own codes, which are often expressed through sounds, to differentiate themselves. As for ‘community media’, the general assumption is that they differ from commercial or public service media because they are concerned with the needs of a specific community, whether a geographical and/or community of interest. Unlike public service broadcasting, their aim is not to serve society as a whole and, unlike commercial media, they are not business or profit orientated. The premise is that community media are capable, better than mainstream media, of addressing their audience’s needs because of the shared relevance that community issues have for both senders and receivers, producers and audiences, given that they are all part of the same community (Hollander and Stappers 1992). In addition to issues of locality and shared relevance, community media play important social, political and cultural roles. These roles can be summarized as: a) creating a public sphere (Hollander and Stappers 1992; Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier 2008) by providing residents in a particular community with a local forum where they can discuss important issues and maybe agree on the necessary steps to bring change for the community; b) representing a counter-hegemonic media practice (Downing et. al. 2001), challenging the dominant ideologies and focusing on the politically, socially or culturally radical; c) contesting media power (Couldry and Curran 2003) by giving social movements and disenfranchised groups of people the opportunity to be in control of society’s representational sources (the media); d) empowering the community (Freire 1972) by allowing audiences to become producers and actively participate in their local media, putting an end to the dichotomy between audiences and producers. While insightful, these perspectives have contributed to an account of community media that is somewhat celebratory in flavour, both among academics and practitioners (Medrado 2007: 124). One of the issues is that the literature often gets trapped in its focus on prescriptive notions on what community media are (or ought to be), do (or ought to do) for their audiences. Paradoxically, the audiences themselves, what they think about and do with community media, become somewhat neglected (Downing 2003). There have been,

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however, interesting developments in the field of community media audience studies, such as Meadows et.al.’s (2007) wide-ranging national study of community media audiences in Australia, my own previous ethnographic study of community radio listeners in a favela (Medrado 2010) and Backhaus’s (2019) research on how community radio broadcasters in India listen to their audiences and how these interactions influence broadcast content. After all, to cite the last author, if community radio gives a voice to the voiceless, ‘what good is a voice if no one is listening?’ (Backhaus 2019: 2). Indeed, this inattention to listeners might prevent us from asking important questions such as: What are community radio’s listening experiences like? How do listeners interpret the programming? To what extent do these stations represent a social, political, or familial resource for its listeners? When turning our attention to listening, further challenges emerge. One of them is that studies of radio audiences and radio listening often (and problematically) borrow their conceptual frameworks from television audience studies developed in the Global North. De Oliveira, for instance, discusses the limitations of the British domestic approach to audiences (2007: 202). When the author started carrying out her fieldwork in impoverished neighbourhoods in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, she realized that the ideas that derived from television audience studies did not apply to the dynamics of radio listening in these areas. She then felt the need to be attentive, not only to the homes and families, but also to the streets and neighbourhoods, to the groups and crowds. Thus, when researching radio listening (and, particularly, in the context of the favela as I will demonstrate) it is crucial to consider the wider social spheres: the streets, corners, houses and bars as spaces where media reception intensively takes place (De Oliveira 2007: 200). Similarly, in this chapter, I emphasize the need to examine the use of community radio in a way that does not neglect the wide setting of the streets of the favela and the collective dimension of listening experiences. One of the key arguments is that the architectural and social blurring of the domestic and the ‘public’ in the favela and the fugitive, spaceexpanding, nature of sound, mean that in the context of the favela everyday life must be taken to mean something much wider than domestic. This understanding of listening as a collective public experience prompts us to another need: to attend to the conditions of reception to which the audiences are subjected. I argue that this demands an examination of the sonic landscape in which these listening audiences conduct their daily lives. This is important because different sonic environments lead to different types of listening. Here, Raymond Murray Schafer’s (1994) concept of the soundscape is particularly useful. A soundscape can be defined as a particular environment’s composition of sounds. It refers to both the natural acoustic environment (such as the weather, for example) and sounds created by humans and human activity (such as conversation or industrial technology). Schafer elaborates on the notion of the soundscape in comparison to a landscape: ‘the soundscape is any acoustic field of study. We may speak of a musical composition as a soundscape, or a radio programme as a soundscape or an acoustic environment as a soundscape. We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape’ (1994: 7). Both notions of landscapes and soundscapes are based on ideas of territoriality. Moreover, just like landscapes are more than a collection of visible features of an area of

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land, soundscapes are much more than products of random sounds, noises and silences. Indeed, when producing sounds, we are usually well-aware of sound’s ability to conquer physical spaces. Thus, controlling the soundscape might be an indication of controlling (or revealing an intention to control) physical space as well, even if acoustic and physical territories do not coincide. Martin Oosterbaan’s (2009) study of a favela in Rio de Janeiro illustrates the tensions in using sounds as tools to obtain control of physical and acoustic territories. The author focuses on the way electro-acoustic technology allows for the representatives of different favela groups to ‘claim space in the urban density of the morro’ (hills of the favela) (2009: 86). To cite him: ‘as people loudly amplified their own music, they seized hold of the soundscape of the entire favela’ (Oosterbaan 2009: 86). Thus, Oosterbaan’s main premise is that ‘sound and music are essential to the constitution of identities and powerful tools to exercise a politics of presence in the favela’ (2009: 82). In the densely populated favela, ‘different groups try to exercise a politics of presence through the sounds they produce’ (Oosterbaan 2009: 82). Such politics of presence through sounds often manifest in sonic battles and struggles. This happens, for example, when the ‘godly’ sounds of pastors and followers singing in Evangelical Churches oppose the ‘worldly’ sounds of funk parties. These are indications of ‘the complexity of life in favela-like neighbourhoods’ (Oosterbaan 2009: 97). As I discuss later in the chapter, this also challenges the common idea that favela residents form one homogeneous group as they are, in fact, ‘made up of many different social groups’ (Oosterbaan 2009: 97). Thus, Oosterbaan’s (2009) research on the soundscapes of a favela in Rio de Janeiro offers useful insights into how music and sounds can express identity and social boundaries between the very diverse groups of the favela. In what follows, I provide context on favela life as well as the two favelas where this research was conducted – Pau da Lima, in Salvador, and Maré, in Rio de Janeiro.

Towards a more nuanced understanding of the favelas According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE 2010 Census2), in the city of Rio de Janeiro alone, close to 1.5 million – around 23–24 per cent of the population – live in favelas (Galdo 2011). From a distance, favelas often look like an indistinguishable mass of brick-coloured small boxes, built on top of each other. However, favelas are far from homogeneous. Each favela has its own unique demographic and topographic characteristics as well as history. Some favelas are completing almost 120 years of existence, as is the case with Favela da Providência in Rio de Janeiro. Others are recent settlements. Favelas’ migration and settlement patterns also vary significantly. Many favelas in cities in Brazil’s Southeast region, such as Rio and São Paulo, have historically attracted migrants from the poorer Northeast region of Brazil. However, there has also been an influx from the countryside to

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the cities, and within cities themselves. In many of Brazil’s state capitals, favela areas have also experienced a process of gentrification, particularly in Rio in the years prior to hosting the 2016 Olympics, becoming expensive for its long-time inhabitants, and attracting higher – income residents. Despite this heterogeneity, studies of the favelas have been marked by a recurring sense of binary oppositions, as is noted by scholars such as Valladares (2005). On the one hand, the favelas have been problematized, being deemed chaotic and unhygienic (Abujamra 1967). On the other, they have been described as places where mutual solidarity is frequent. Further, a significant amount of the scholarly work as well as media discourses place the favela in the ‘margins’ in relation to the city, neglecting the ways in which the favelas represent the core for the lives of thousands of people. A common view is that of the ‘divided city’ (Ventura 1994) in a reference to how the favelas represent a separate and detached part of city life. The ‘divided city’ is filled with descriptions that are expressed in the form of dualisms: the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’ city, the ‘official’ city and the ‘unofficial city’, ‘violence’ and ‘solidarity’, ‘drug dealing’ and ‘honest life’ (Ventura 1994: 11). Such dichotomized views give legitimacy to a black and white view of the ‘favela versus the city’, as if the favela represented a parallel city with a separate set of rules and codes of conduct. This does not do justice to the multiple colours of reality (Ribeiro and Lago 2001: 144–5). Generally, Brazilian mainstream media portrayals are also characterized by binary oppositions between the ‘formal’ versus the ‘informal’ city and the ‘good’ citizens versus the criminals that inhabit these two contrasting areas. In this way, media representations otherize favela communities as the State’s enemies that need to be eliminated, marginalizing poverty, and normalizing daily killings. In line with this discourse, they perpetuate the idea that ‘bandido bom é bandido morto’ (‘a good criminal is a dead criminal’). Inherent in these policies is a project in which the political, economic elite work towards cleansing the urban landscape of what does not fit in a modern neoliberal model (Villalobos 2019: 41). Therefore, media representations of favelas often frame ‘heavy-handed policing of poor, working-class, informalised areas as the sole solution to their respective security issues’ (Villalobos 2019: 41). These cultural representations become central to shaping an ideology, belief and value system of militarism (Enloe 2000) and a process of militarization of daily life. Organized around notions of preparations for war, this militarization appears disguised as common sense, being used to legitimize police interventions in lower income communities. The term ‘militarization’ describes the adoption of military tactics, concepts, procedures and personnel. In this way, everyday issues acquire a military character (Valente 2014: 211). From a militarism perspective, the deaths of favela residents that occur with police operations represent no more than ‘collateral damage’. Indeed, being subjected to oppressive treatment by the police and other authorities is a frequent occurrence for people who live in favelas. Opposition to racist police brutality has seen people unite around community media and media activism in favela areas, particularly in the period of preparations for and hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Involved in movements such as

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the Popular Committee for the World Cup and the Olympics, favela residents denounced some of the negative implications of the mega events for their daily lives such as: 1) the intensification of policies of segregation, with the construction of physical barriers, such as the wall built on the expressway ‘Linha Vermelha’ to cover the sights of Favela da Maré; 2) the gentrification of poor areas, with rising prices in several favelas; and 3) the militarization of everyday life that has caused a significant expansion of the police state in several Brazilian cities (Popular Committee for the World Cup and the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro 2015: 102). In this context of oppression and marginalization, but also solidarity and creativity, this chapter delves into the circumstances in which listening experiences take place in two favela communities – Pau da Lima, in Salvador, and Maré, in Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, the word ‘favela’ has been re-signified by residents, challenging its pejorative meanings associated with criminality and poverty, and conveying a sense of agency and pride. In Salvador, this has not happened to the same extent. Lower-income areas, such as Pau da Lima, are sometimes referred to as ‘popular’ (as of working class) neighbourhoods rather than favelas as ways to avoid pejorative meanings. Yet, the housing arrangements in Salvador look similar to that of a Rio de Janeiro favela in terms of their precarious access to public infrastructure such as electricity, water and sanitation. Pau da Lima, specifically, is situated in the geographical ‘core’ of Salvador (miolo central), which comprises forty-one neighbourhoods and 35 per cent of the city’s surface. Pau da Lima is located between some of the city’s busiest avenues, Avenida Luiz Viana Filho and Avenida Paralela, and an interstate motorway, the BR-324. According to the Federal University of Bahia Observatory of Neighbourhoods (Observatórios de Bairro 2010), Pau da Lima has approximately 24,693 residents. In terms of income, 41.5 per cent of the heads of household earn less than the minimum wage of 1,212 Reais (approximately £181) per month. The average earnings are 1,000 Reais (approximately £149) per month. Maré is a network of favelas located in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Maré’s population was estimated at 135,989 inhabitants by the 2010 IBGE Census. Here, it is worth noting that the IBGE favela estimates tend to be inaccurate because they do not consider some of the populations in their surrounding areas, particularly if these are recent settlements. Maré consists of seventeen communities named as: Parque União, Vila Pinheiros, Parque Maré, Baixa do Sapateiro, Nova Holanda, Vila do João, Rubens Vaz, Marcílio Dias, Timbau, Conjunto Esperança, Salsa e Merengue, Praia de Ramos, Conjunto Pinheiros, Nova Maré, Roquete Pinto, Bento Ribeiro Dantas and Mandacaru. If compared to Pau da Lima, residents’ incomes in Maré are higher – approximately 26 per cent of the population has monthly household earnings of 1,000 Brazilian Reais (approximately £149), 50 per cent has a monthly household earning of between 1,500 and 2,500 Brazilian Reais (approximately £223 to £372) whilst 24 per cent earn 3,000 Brazilian Reais or more (£447) (Silva and Heritage 2021: 142). Having provided contextual details, in the next section I discuss the ethnographic approaches that embed us in the cultures of everyday listening in favela communities.

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Ethnographic research of soundscapes in the favelas This chapter draws from ethnography as a core methodological approach for its intrinsic sense of embeddedness in people’s daily lives. In general terms, ethnography is described as ‘the empirical description and analysis of cultures based on intensive and extensive fieldwork in a selected social setting’ (Gillespie 1995: 1). As Hammersley and Atkinson (1995: 1) put it, the method involves ‘the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions – in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research.’ An important trait of ethnographic studies is that they aim at knowing very much about a very small world. The focus is on ‘the smallscale processes rather than the large-scale products, of people’s perceptions, thoughts and actions’ (Gillespie 1995: 1). Specifically, this ethnographic approach entailed the following: a. Sonic walks: I took sonic walks in several areas of Pau da Lima and Maré, being guided by residents/research participants. The aim was to produce a description of the places’ social and cultural dynamics based on their acoustic characteristics. At the time of research, and in both favela communities, I used a portable digital audio recorder to capture all the environment sounds around us. b. Family visits: In Pau da Lima, I visited a total of nine families on a regular basis (once a week with each family) for the duration of the fieldwork, which lasted three months. The fieldwork also included participant observations in the homes and streets of Pau da Lima as well as one-time in-depth interviews with radio owners and presenters, and neighbourhood association leaders. In Rio de Janeiro, I conducted a smaller scale project and visited two families on a regular basis, once a week, for one month. During these visits, I produced detailed fieldnotes for an ethnographic diary. I also recorded an in-depth interview with Renata Souza (who became a co-author in some of our writings – as I will explain later). For the Pau da Lima research project, I obtained ethics approval from the University of Westminster Ethics Committee, where I was based at the time of research. For the Maré Project, I submitted my project to Plataforma Brasil, and the project was approved by the Federal Fluminense University’s (where I was based at the time) Ethics Committee. Whenever possible, I obtained written informed consent by the participants. For participants with little formal schooling, particularly in Pau da Lima, I obtained (and recorded) their verbal consent because they found the written consent forms somewhat intimidating. All the names, except for Renata Souza’s, were substituted to protect participants’ identities. The projects were driven by a philosophy of reciprocity, with my offering of a creative writing course to local youth in exchange for the community’s participation in the project. I have written elsewhere about some of the principles of conducting ethical research with marginalized communities and these include: being transparent and clear; helping echo marginalized people’s own voices; being protective

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of each other’s identities and rights; finding a moral compass with empathy and care; providing residents from marginalized communities with paid work opportunities whenever possible; creating collective outputs with the communities; helping create equal and diverse environments and being accountable and giving something back to the communities (Medrado and Rega 2019). Having discussed the methodological procedures, I will now provide justification for the choice to focus on the sounds of the favela and on the sense of listening. First, aligned with auditory culture authors, such as Bull and Back (2003), this chapter questions a hierarchy of senses in which vision comes first and hearing is considered an inferior sense. When producing his classic work on soundscapes, Schafer (1994) had already expressed his concern with mankind’s loss of its ability to hear in an age of predominantly visual stimuli. Other scholars, such as Erlmann (2004), have tried to propose that ethnographers adopt ‘an ethnographic ear’. The premise here is that ethnography ‘needs more dialogue, more sensitized ears’ and that it is possible to gain a deepened knowledge of a culture by considering the ways in which people relate to each other and to their environment through the sense of hearing and through sounds (Erlmann 2004: 3). Moreover, listening is fundamentally an act of attention. It is an act that demonstrates a strong willingness to come closer and to engage in mutual understanding (Husband 2009: 441). Finally, the decision to conduct an ethnography of listening is particularly well-suited to the Latin American context, given the central role played by oral culture. Paradoxically, I have noticed that patterns and symbolic practices of listening have generally been accorded a low priority in Latin American media research, despite the audience-centred rhetoric. Therefore, I call attention for the need to take into consideration not only what audiences make of the media but also their sensorial circumstances of production and reception. In this way, I argue that the media can be better understood if situated in a complex soundscape and set of daily sonic rhythms.

Pau da Lima’s soundscapes, listening to the lamp post radio and to the sounds of commerce It was a hot November afternoon.3 Regina, one of my research participants, and I were about to start our sonic walk in Pau da Lima. Our starting point was the Ponto Alto Shopping Mall, in the São Rafael Avenue. After walking past the São Rafael Hospital, the pavement became narrower, and we started to compete with people, cars and buses for space. The sonic elements consisted of sounds of traffic: bus engines, cars and motorcycles accelerating, horn noises. Regina and I approached the commercial areas of São Marcos. The number of small shops increased as I was struck by the variety of goods being sold: the street became a mini market with vegetable stores, furniture and clothing shops, churches and internet cafes, restaurants and bars.

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The sounds of the São Rafael Avenue gave us an acute sense of daily competitiveness. Because the pavements were so narrow, people had to physically compete for space. Consequently, they produced sounds that competed, but, at the same time, coexisted in chaotic harmony. Loudspeakers filled the air with music and voices, announcing events, delivering messages or promoting the local commerce. In a context of strong oral tradition and auditory appeals, it was not surprising that the appeals of the avenue, with its competition between market vendors, loudspeakers and people, were mostly sonic appeals (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado 2010: 139). In this way, Regina spoke of loudspeakers and people ‘shouting’ to sell things as the ‘sounds of what moves Pau da Lima’ or an integral part of the neighbourhood’s economic dynamics. This echoed auditory-culture authors’ observations on how sounds communicate progress, economic activity and industriousness (Smith 2003: 139). Thinking about Pau da Lima’s weekly sonic routines, Regina described that: On Sundays, the shops are closed, so this is the only day of the week when the avenue is real quiet. Then, in the afternoon, when it’s not so hot anymore, it gets louder in other parts of Pau da Lima and the noises are no longer for bread-winning but for fun-having. Then it’s pagode, arrocha, car drivers blasting music and drunk people. (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado 2010: 139)

Regina established a clear distinction between the work-days’ sounds of ‘bread-winning’ and commerce, and weekend-like sounds of ‘fun having’ and parties. Thus, sounds not only served as time markers for the days and times of the week but were an indication of the community’s shifting from work mode to leisure mode. As we reached what Regina described as ‘the commercial heart of Pau da Lima’, I started to notice speakers placed on lamp posts next to bus stops, grocery stores and churches. ‘This is our community radio, the lamp post radio’, said Regina. This ‘lamp post radio’ was called Pop Som, and it had been founded in 1998 by a long-term resident, Elson Simão Rocha (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado 2010: 123). Pop Som consisted of twenty-two loudspeakers strategically placed in busy places along the avenue. By starting a ‘lamp post radio’ station rather than an FM radio station, Elson wanted to avoid the bureaucratic and time-consuming community radio licensing process. Instead of applying for an FM radio station licence through ANATEL, the national regulatory agency that centralizes all the decisions at a federal level, for the ‘lamp post radio’ he only needed an authorization from the City Hall, which was cheaper and easier. At the time of research, Pop Som employed three residents of Pau da Lima and was on-air Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 12 pm and 3 pm to 6 pm, and Saturdays from 9 am to 12 pm. The station played eclectic music genres, such as Brazilian country music, Música Popular Brasileira4 (MPB) and dance music. The station’s DJ played different styles according to, in his words, ‘the moods of the day’ (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado 2010: 123). As we finished our sonic walk, Regina took me to her house, not too far from the main avenue, where we met her son Nelson. As we started talking about my impressions of Pop Som, Nelson shared some interesting points on how the lamp post radio provided what he called ‘a soundtrack to the streets’:

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I always remember listening to good songs on the lamp post radio when I came back from school last year, around five or six o’clock. They had a programme, something about slow romantic songs. The music was good, calm, soothing, not noisy, usually Música Popular Brasileira and it made me feel good coming home from a day at school. (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado 2010: 146–7)

In the main avenue’s overwhelming soundscape, a ‘calm’ MPB song represented a marker of Nelson’s end of the day, creating a smoother transition from school to home. Therefore, when it played a soothing song at the end of a working day, Pop Som displayed a good knowledge of the daily local routines and thus played the role of community media, as I discussed earlier in the chapter (Hollander and Stappers 1992). The difference here was that this dailiness did not refer to the listeners’ experiences in a domestic setting but rather on the streets. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that, just as it happens with radio at home, dailiness was a key element of lamp post radio in Pau da Lima. This seemed to confirm some of the residents’ perceptions that to be considered ‘community’, it was important that people who worked in ‘community radio’ knew intimately the rhythms and characteristics of the neighbourhood. This demonstrated that the concept of community radio needed to be rooted on the streets. Radio (particularly with its lamp post radio presence) featured as a medium that was listened to collectively rather than individually. After having passion fruit juice in Regina’s house, we headed to Pop Som’s premises on the main avenue. The station was located on the second floor of what looked like an ordinary favela house. After clapping our hands, Elson came downstairs and opened an iron gate, which led us to some narrow steps and to a small studio where he worked with the radio staff. The first topic of our conversation revolved around how Pop Som was described as Pau da Lima’s ‘community station’, even though it was not an FM station. Elson proudly stated that: Yes, it’s a community station because Pop Som addresses issues that are of interest to Pau da Lima, such as how to prevent dengue and leptospirosis, which are common problems here. I know about these issues because I’ve lived here all my life and have raised my children here. However, if you ask me: ‘whose radio is this’, I’ll tell you: ‘it is mine’. I pay the bills, right? (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado 2010: 145)

The statement sounded paradoxical. On the one hand, Elson referred to Pop Som as Pau da Lima’s station. The lamp post radio was the result of the initiative of community media practitioners like himself: someone who has always lived there and was knowledgeable about the local issues. On the other hand, he made it clear that the station was indeed his own (almost in an individual level). Ultimately, he was the one ‘paying the bills’. In any case, Elson’s efforts seemed to have been recognized by many residents of Pau da Lima. Dona Rosa, a friend of Regina’s, was one of these residents. She lived close to one of Pop Som’s loudspeakers. However, whilst she perceived Pop Som as a community radio, she also reflected on of the tensions involved in listening to the lamp post radio: Lamp post radio is a form of community radio because it works for the benefit of the people. It brings information and it helps residents when they need. But sometimes the songs are annoying. On the good side, they do open-up for the community. My son, Guilherme, is

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involved in Stage Art, the community theatre group and they’re always chasing Elson, asking for him to mention stuff about Stage Art. They always air stuff about the church as well, they don’t charge. They just charge for the adverts of the local shops, that’s fair enough. If the radio is just about adverts, then that’s bad but it also serves to inform the community, that’s OK. (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado 2010: 145–6)

Firstly, Dona Rosa confirmed that Pop Som served as a community radio station even though it did not conform to many of the academic definitions of community media. As I discussed earlier, the station was not broadcast via FM. Additionally, it did rely financially on adverts paid for by local shop owners, which contradicted the community media ethos of not having a commercial model (Couldry and Curran 2003; Downing et al. 2001; Hollander and Stappers 1992). Therefore, this ethnographic research on community radio listening from a (Global) Southern perspective suggests that business models of stations did not matter so much for listeners. What earned Pop Som the denomination of ‘community radio’ was its presence, and this presence manifested sonically. As a listener (and mother), Dona Rosa was happy about Pop Som ‘opening-up for the community’ and ‘airing stuff ’ about her son’s community theatre group. She also seemed quite understanding that ‘it was fair enough’ for the station to run adverts for local shops and businesses. Realistically, this was simply how things had to work in Pau da Lima. Given the Brazilian context in which local community radio stations received no government subsidies or subscription fees, airing adverts for local shops seemed like a logical solution. At the same time, the station needed to have a community-orientated side to be perceived positively. This unveiled the challenges of applying rigid definitions to community media initiatives in marginalized communities in the Global South. On the one hand, Pop Som was about Elson as an individual, his passion for radio and his resilience to keep paying the bills in an unfavourable scenario. On the other hand, it would be unfair to say that it was not about Pau da Lima as a community.

Favela da Maré and the suppression of sounds in the context of mega events in Rio My first sonic walk in Favela da Maré took place on 31 May 2013. This walk was guided by Renata Souza, a key research participant who later became co-author in some of my writings (Medrado and Souza 2017).5 It started in the Teixeira Ribeiro Street, close to Passarela 9, one of Avenida Brasil’s several numbered footbridges. As soon as I set foot there, and similarly to what I experienced in Pau da Lima, I was immediately struck by the sounds of commerce: people shouting, selling all kinds of items. Only one sound could stand out amongst the sounds of commerce: that of the loud motorcycles. In Maré, like in Pau da Lima, sounds and people coexisted and superimposed on one another through dynamics of sonic spatial competition (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 294).

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Renata and I kept walking as we were immersed in soundscapes with various layers of voices – chatting, shouting, laughing and crying, and music – whose genres included funk, forró and pagode. Once again, I noticed a sonic resemblance with the ‘sound salad’ that I heard in Pau da Lima’s Coroado area (Medrado 2010: 156–7). The different sounds and music genres were so mixed that it became difficult to distinguish where a sound started or ended. We then arrived at Renata’s house and exchanged a few impressions. We commented on the loudness of the main street’s sounds. Coming from a middle-class background, I was wary that such observations about the favela soundscapes would result in potentially problematic interpretations, as if making noise and/or living in noisy places were the sole preserve of poor communities (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 295). However, according to Renata, living a noisy life was indeed part of favela life, and one that most residents grew accustomed to. Interestingly, my ethnographic research in Favela da Maré exposed some of the connotations of silence: ‘When things are too quiet in the favela, something is definitely wrong’, I remembered Renata saying. Here, it was revealing that for favela residents state violence – particularly (as I discussed earlier) in a context of preparations for the mega events – manifested precisely through the suppression of their everyday sounds and music. Yet, auditory-culture authors who have written about sounds from European and/or North American perspectives have displayed a tendency to associate noise with negative connotations: noise is generally considered a pollutant (Schafer 1994). According to these perceptions, noise translates into lack of civilization, lack of quality and lack of good taste. In this chapter, I have attempted to engage critically with such ideas, situating this study within decolonial epistemologies of the South (Santos 2016). Indeed, these ideas have been contested by authors such as María Angeles Durán (2008). Referring to Latin American cities, Durán notes that perceiving urban noises as elements that must be cleaned up is to misread the dynamics of spaces. For her, such noises might epitomize the variety, diversity and richness of cities, their communities, and to express a joy of living. During my family visits in Maré, Renata, for instance, described how she would always celebrate her birthday parties on the streets. This blurring between the home and the street, the private and the public constitutes a strong trait of daily life in Maré. On the weekend days, this was even more noticeable as the streets became extensions of people’s houses. Walking through the alleys, I saw colourful inflatable swimming pools of all sizes in front of each house with entire families cooling off during the hot summer days. The sidewalks were taken by chairs and stools so that people could sit down, have a chat, drink beers or have a meal. Sometimes, families would also have larger celebrations such as birthday parties for teenagers. During such occasions, the streets were closed to traffic and became the stage for assembling festive decorations. Speakers were then placed along the streets, forming sonic walls. Local DJs begin to run the parties by playing high-volume music and trying to cater for various ages and tastes. In this way, the street featured as spaces for real and symbolic exchanges, enabling residents to share their routines, discuss issues, celebrate special occasions and to meet each other (Ethnographic field notes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 297).

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It was telling that the soundscapes of Maré were marked by significant transformations after the favela was occupied by the military forces in July 2014 as Rio de Janeiro prepared to host the Fifa World Cup. Renata would often talk about the humiliation of waking up to the sight of an armed soldier standing in front of her house. On one occasion, the occupying forces changed the soundscape of her neighbouring area by interfering in the ways in which people organized local celebrations. The military forces started to require that people asked in advance for an authorization to hold street parties. This was what Fernanda, Renata’s cousin, had done: she had written a formal request to celebrate her oneyear-old son José’s first birthday party on the street, right in front of their house. However, this procedure seemed rather unnatural because favela residents have often made use of the streets as private spaces. Due to small-sized and sometimes quite precarious living spaces, private parties often need to be held outside people’s homes (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 297). With the papers in hand, Fernanda organized her son’s party and filled the street with guests who were dancing to the sound of funk music and children’s songs. However, a few hours later, approximately twenty heavily armed military officers arrived at the party scene. Holding rifles, which seemed out of place at a party full of young children, they asked if they could see the authorization. The officers then ordered the party’s organizers to lower the volume of the music and marched on (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 298). In my visits to Renata’s family, I also heard much more dramatic stories of silencing favela residents’ daily social and cultural life. Renata told of me another story when soldiers paid another visit to a birthday party whose organizer was unaware of the partyauthorization rule. The neighbour was told that the party had to end immediately, and as he tried to negotiate, the soldiers started destroying his loudspeakers. Stubbornly, the guests reacted and soon the street became a war zone. On one side, the officers used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowd, also shooting bullets into the sky. On the other side, residents responded by throwing glass bottles, sticks and stones. People started running to seek protection in their neighbours’ homes. Some of the alleys became packed with people pressing themselves against walls. Children cried while their parents ran out in search of the younger ones (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 298). The dramatic incident can also be linked to issues of sound and presence. In Pau da Lima, the lamp post radio had echoed its community-oriented nature through the sonic presence of loudspeakers with their locally relevant voices and messages. In Maré, the military imposed its presence and authority by silencing the sounds of daily life which were so integral to Maré’s social and cultural dynamics. Here, as we have noted in our previous study, class and sound issues are associated with the military’s repressive tactics of ‘lowering the volume’ of favela residents’ music, sounds and voices. In the Brazilian context, social discrimination constitutes an important tool for simply excluding poor people from public spaces and entertainment options (Ethnographic fieldnotes, Medrado and Souza 2017: 298).

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Concluding thoughts The soundscapes of the Brazilian favelas echoed the blurred boundaries between the notions of public and private given the physical traits of favela areas and the complexities of everyday life in these communities, as I demonstrated earlier in the chapter. The silencing of loudspeakers by the military forces sent a clear message: there was no choice but to obey. In his book Noise, David Hendy (2013) asks a relevant question: ‘Whose sounds are considered noises?’ As Hendy shows us, noise is a sound that someone somewhere does not want to be heard (Hendy 2013: ix). Further questions emerge here: Who gets to make a noise and who does not get to make a noise? Who gets their voices heard and who does not get their voices heard? Who gets to listen and who does not get to listen? Historically, there have always been social, economic and political dimensions to these dynamics. The elites have often regarded the sounds of the working classes as ‘noises’. In the context of militarization, it becomes evident that those in power disregard as mere noise the rich layers of sounds that are produced by those who live in favelas and marginalized communities. Whether in Pau da Lima – with the sounds of commerce and the lamp post radio – or in Maré – with the sounds of party and the sounds of homes that are moved to the streets – favela residents played the role of aural architects. They did this by using sounds and music as tools to establish ownership, to affirm their identities and presence (Oosterbaan 2009), and to create a spatial and temporal pattern in their daily lives. This is consistent with this chapter’s choice to relocate the margins to the centre, focusing on agency. Enmeshed in the soundscapes, community radio represents a consequence of people’s yearning for making their own media. Dismissing the cacophony of the favela as noise and ignoring media initiatives like the lamp post radio as valuable expressions of community radio manifest a coloniality of power that this research wishes to contest. Adopting a Global South perspective, I have analysed how tensions and celebrations, stories of achievement and survival echoed in the soundscapes, revealing residents’ knowledges and skills as comunicadores populares (communication agents). These stories, in turn, echoed the legacies of those who experience marginalization and fight for social justice in the favelas, peripheries and shantytowns of the world. Sharing stories from the margins can be connective and transformative, offering a pluriversal (Parekh, 2000) contribution to how historical knowledge about cities and their inhabitants can be preserved and constructed.

Notes 1 2

Favelas – the Portuguese word for slums or shantytowns – are usually densely populated and located on hilly areas or on the outskirts of a city. IBGE carries out a population census in Brazil once every ten years. The most recent census should have been conducted in 2020. However, it has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, IBGE has suffered severe funding cuts promoted by the Bolsonaro Government.

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3 4 5

The descriptions for this chapter section draw from ethnographic fieldnotes produced on 10 November 2007. Known by the abbreviation MPB, it is a classy type of Brazilian music, usually poetic, with elaborate lyrics, often associated with a more ‘elite’ musical taste. At the time of research, Renata Souza was a doctoral student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Souza was my main point of entry and contact when I started conducting research in Maré, in Rio, in 2013. The relationship soon evolved to a friendship and research collaboration with Souza becoming my co-author in several academic articles and chapters. After she completed her doctoral research, she decided to start a career in politics, motivated by the killing of Marielle Franco. At the time of writing, Renata Souza is a State Deputy for Rio de Janeiro. I am not anonymizing her real name here because Souza has given full consent to publish her name and has published extensively on the dynamics of street culture in Favela da Maré, where she was born and raised.

Works cited Abujamra, W. (1967), A Realidade Sobre o Problema Favela, São Paulo: Indústria Gráfica Bentivegna Editora. Backhaus, B. (2019), ‘Listening to the Listeners: Intersections of Participation, Voice, and Development in Community Radio’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Westminster. Bailey, O. G., B. Cammaerts and N. Carpentier (2008), Understanding Alternative Media, Maidenhead: McGraw Hill, Open University Press. Bull, M. and L. Back (2003), The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg. Cohen, A. (1985), The Symbolic Construction of Community, Cambridge: Tavistock. Couldry, N. and J. Curran (eds) (2003), Contesting Media Power. Alternative Media in a Networked World, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. De Oliveira, C. M. F. (2007), Escuta Sonora: Recepcao e Cultura Popular nas Ondas das Radios Comunitarias, Rio de Janeiro: E-papers. Downing, J. (2003), ‘Audiences and Readers of the Alternative Media: The Absent Lure of the Virtually Unknown’, Media, Culture and Society 25: 625–45. Downing, J., T. V. Ford, G. Gil and L. Stein (2001), Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Durán, M. A. (2008), La Ciudad Compartida: Conocimiento, Afecto y Uso, Santiago: Ediciones Sur. Enloe, C. (2000), Maneuvres: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, Berkeley: University of California Press. Erlmann, V. (ed.) (2004), Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, Oxford: Berg. Freire, P. (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum. Galdo, R. (2011), ‘Rio é a Cidade com Maior População em Favelas do Brasil’, O Globo, 21 December: https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/rio-a-cidade-com-maior-populacao-emfavelas-do-brasil-3489272 (accessed 29 March 2022). Gillespie, M. (1995), Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change, London: Routledge.

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Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson (1995), Ethnography: Principles in Practice, London and New York: Routledge. Hendy, D. (2013), Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening, London: Profile Books. Hollander, E. and J. Stappers (1992), ‘Community Media and Community Communication’, in N. Jankowski, O. Prehn and J. Stappers (eds), The People’s Voice: Local Radio and Television in Europe, London, Paris, Rome: John Libbey, pp. 16–26. Husband, C. (2009), ‘Between Listening and Understanding’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23 (4): 441–3. Jankowski, N. (2002), ‘The Conceptual Contours of Community Media’, in N. W. Jankowski and O. Prehn (eds), Community Media in the Information Age: Perspectives and Prospects, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 3–16. Mangin, W. (1967), ‘Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution’, Latin American Research Review 2 (3): 65–98. Meadows, M., S. Forde, J. Ewart and K. Foxwell (2007), Community Media Matters: An Audience Study of the Australian Community Broadcasting Sector, Brisbane: Griffith University. Medrado, A. (2007), ‘Community Media: Important but Imperfect’, in N. Carpentier, P. Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, K. Nordenstreng, M. Hartmann, P. Vihalemm, B. Cammaerts and H. Nieminen (eds), Media Technologies and Democracies in an Enlarged Europe, Tartu: Tartu University Press, pp. 123–36. Medrado, A. (2010), The Waves of the Hills: Community and Radio in the Everyday Life of a Brazilian Favela, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Westminster. Medrado, A. and I. Rega (2019), Working with Marginalised Communities: Let’s Talk About Ethics, E-Voices Ethics Guide for Practitioners (E-Voices Network). Medrado, A. and R. Souza (2017), ‘Sonic Oppression, Echoes of Resistance and the Changing Soundscapes of Rio’s Favelas in the Build-Up to the Olympics’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 24 (2): 289–301. DOI:10.1080/19376529.2017.1336766 Mignolo, W. (2008), ‘The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference’, in M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. Jáuregui (eds), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 225–8. Moosavi, L. (2020), ‘The Decolonial Bandwagon and the Dangers of Intellectual Decolonisation’, International Review of Sociology 30 (2): 332–54. DOI:10.1080/03906701.2 020.1776919. Moraña, M., E. Dussel and C. Jáuregui (2008), ‘Colonialism and its Replicants’, in M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. Jáuregui (eds), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 1–20. Observatórios de Bairro Salvador (2010), Pau da Lima: https://observatoriobairrossalvador. ufba.br/bairros/pau-da-lima (accessed 20 March 2022). Oosterbaan, M. (2009), ‘Sonic Supremacy: Sound, Space and Charisma in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro’, Critique of Anthropology 29 (1): 81–104. Parekh, B. (2000), Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Perlman, J. (1976), The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, Berkeley, London: University of California Press. Popular Committee of the World Cup and the Olympics (2015), ‘Olimpíada Rio 2016, os jogos da exclusão’, Megaeventos e Violações dos Direitos Humanos no Rio de Janeiro,

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November: http://www.childrenwin.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/DossieComit%C3%AA-Rio2015_low.pdf (accessed 6 December 2021). Quijano, A. (2008), ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America’, in M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. Jáuregui (eds), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press pp. 181–224. Ribeiro, L. C. Q. and L. C. Lago (2001), ‘A Oposicao Favela-Bairro no Espaco Social do Rio de Janeiro’, São Paulo em Perspectiva 15 (1): 144–54. Rodriguez, C. (2017), ‘Studying Media at the Margins: Learning from the Field’, in V. Pickard and G. Yang (eds), Media Activism in the Digital Age, London, New York: Routledge, pp. 49–61. Santos, B. S. (2016), ‘Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide’, London and New York: Routledge. Schafer, R. M. (1994), The Soundscape: The Tuning of the World, Rochester: Destiny Books. Silva, E. and P. Heritage (2021),Construindo Pontes, Rio de Janeiro: People’s Palace Projects to Brasil: https://peoplespalaceprojects.org.uk/wp/content/uploads/2021/07/LIVRO_01_ CONST_PONTES_ONLINE_com-capa.pdf (accessed 20 March 2022). Smith, M. (2003), ‘Listening to the Heard Worlds of Antebellum America’, in M. Bull and L. Back (eds), The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, pp. 137–63. Valente, J. (2014), UPPs: ‘Observações Sobre a Gestão Militarizada de Territórios Desiguais’, Revista Direito e Práxis 5 (9): 207–25. Valladares, L. do P. (2005), A Invenção da Favela: Do Mito de Origem a Favela.com (1st ed.), Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV. Ventura, Z, (1994), Cidade Partida, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Villalobos, C. (2019), Decolonizing Security and (Re) Imagining Safety in Rio de Janeiro and Nairobi, Master’s Thesis, Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA).

Section VII Futures

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Introduction Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell

The future of the radio (and audio) industry is frequently deliberated from a regulatory or technological viewpoint, often to justify or plan for potential change or to adapt to political circumstance. We cannot of course find a way to look into the future to predict what may happen, but what we can present here is a combination of industry and academic intuition about innovative ways radio is, or will be created, delivered, researched or consumed. To do so we have invited industry practitioners and scholars to contribute to this section and welcome their thought-provoking ideas. Three of the authors are writing from a professional and contemporary viewpoint (Ella Watts, Lucia Scazzocchio and Phil Maguire), sharing with us their lived experience of making and producing content. These chapters sit alongside Alexander Badenoch and Richard Berry who share their academic viewpoints as established scholars. We start with a detailed look at the creation of modern podcast fiction in ‘Queer Networks Versus Global Corporations: The Battle for the Soul of Audio Fiction’ by Ella Watts. Much has changed in the eighty years since the first radio plays were broadcast and this chapter considers those who consume and make fictional podcasts, particularly those created by marginalized producers, featuring marginalized characters, for marginalized audiences. From her viewpoint as a podcast producer, consultant, presenter, writer and director Watts discusses the current climate of production, indicating what the future might hold for independent and mainstream drama podcasts. Watts introduces an array of international examples, questioning their constructions of inclusivity, disability and sexuality, she also addresses the debates on funding, storylines, audience engagement and international trends. She critically assesses where we are and what might lie ahead. Next, we turn to matters of digital preservation and retrieval. In Alexander Badenoch’s examination of the contemporary archive landscape in ‘Recalling Radio: An Archival View from Radio’s Second Century’, he considers online repositories, sound collections and large archives at spaces like the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV). Badenoch, like many researchers, views the radio archives as a place to preserve, reflect and support academic research. He takes us through the complexities in classifying our audio heritage in terms of sound, speech, music, noise and silence in the archive or elsewhere

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in recorded media, asking how the past (recordings, stories, voices) might be used in the future. What types of stories will we be able to tell with and about radio? What traces of it will be available, findable and accessible? And what indeed even constitutes radio? New and different ways of defining broadcasting is also considered by Lucia Scazzocchio, in ‘Hyperlocal Radio – Reclaiming Conversation through Social Broadcasting’. In a career spanning print journalism, sound and new media, Scazzocchio has worked across many formats, leading her to experiment with how radio production and broadcasting techniques can be adapted and how listeners may consume, relate to and participate with audio. Using case studies drawn from her own work, Scazzocchio looks at community radio-making in a hyperlocal context, illustrating social engagement in micro-settings such as audio portraits, sound installations and research projects. She outlines how ‘Social Broadcasting’ moves beyond classifications of radio or podcasting to promote a reflective space for interactive communication, where narratives can be non-linear. Scazzocchio invites us to consider new ways for marginalized groups and under-represented communities to be heard and to tell their own stories, a subject also shared in our next chapter: ‘Making Waves Behind Bars: The (Past, Present and) Future of Prison Radio’. Phil Maguire is the founding Chief Executive of the Prison Radio Association, a UKbased charity. He showcases historical and present-day examples of radio (and audio) made by, for and about prisons and prisoners. This is a relatively niche area, both of broadcasting and of academic research which has gained more attention in recent decades, following on from Bonini and Perrotta’s examination of inmate listening experiences in 2007. In this chapter we are offered a more personal perspective, where Maguire shares with us examples of international projects (from India, USA, Australia, Poland, Scotland, Ireland, Hungary and Trinidad and Tobago), the involvement of the BBC, the launch of National Prison Radio and the recent challenges of working in this type of broadcasting space during a pandemic. His discussion sheds light on the history of prison radio content, the potential of radio to offer a role in rehabilitation and his thoughts about what the future might hold for those involved in projects around the world. In our final chapter of this section (and indeed of our Handbook) we are presented with a reflective account by Richard Berry, who debates our understanding of just what radio now is. One-hundred years on from the formation of the BBC, radio continues to be a medium that is evolving, adaptable and resilient. It has lived through wars, the introduction of new technologies and political and social change, now competing more than ever for the attention of generations of listeners in an extensive and varied audio landscape. In ‘Radio in the Round: Reflections on the Future of Sound Media’, Berry explores the interactions between newer platforms, content forms and technologies. He ponders the definitions of radio and wonders what the future might look (or sound) like.

26 Queer Networks Versus Global Corporations The Battle for the Soul of Audio Fiction Ella Watts

Introduction Since its popular rebirth into the American consciousness following the advent of podcasting circa 2004, audio drama – and specifically what will hereafter be referred to as podcast fiction – has experienced a wild and colourful adolescence. Of course, the first radio drama broadcast in the UK was aired in 1924, and audio drama itself was nothing new around eighty years later when one of the first majorly successful fiction podcasts, The Thrilling Adventure Hour (USA, 2005–15), began releasing in 2005.1 But the defining trends of this twenty-first-century renaissance were profoundly different, in social makeup and creative objective, from those experimental and educational dramas first broadcast by the BBC. Now, as the free market curls one finger of its monkey’s paw, we are seeing an attempt to consolidate and exploit this new industry. Built on the backs of marginalized creators and succeeding only due to their enthusiastic response from marginalized audiences, much like any number of artistic subcultures before it when faced with the constraints and demands of capital, podcast fiction finds itself in a battle for its very soul.

A short history of podcast fiction How did we get here? We’re Alive, a zombie apocalypse serial, began releasing in 2009. Across the course of 143 episodes from 2009 to 2014, it garnered several hundred million downloads and multiple awards, leading to an international cult following. The show

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was, arguably, one of the first major successes of the modern podcast fiction era, and its creator Kc Wayland has gone on to enjoy ever-more accolades, most recently announcing a sequel series to We’re Alive, Descendants (USA 2022–present), which he’ll be making in partnership with British independent podcast production company Rusty Quill.2 We’re Alive was by no means the only fiction podcast of its day, or indeed the first. The aforementioned The Thrilling Adventure Hour is a notable predecessor and peer, albeit of a profoundly different genre.3 It’s interesting to note that producer Fred Greenhalgh started the aptly named Radio Drama Revival (USA 2007–present) to survey and celebrate the rebirth of the medium in-between the launches of these two landmark shows. Whilst Radio Drama Revival has since changed hands and host, it continues to be one of the most consistent pillars of the international podcast fiction community.4

Welcome to Night Vale After We’re Alive came Welcome to Night Vale (USA 2012–present), a slow-starter by wellestablished New York comedians Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor and Cecil Baldwin. It wasn’t until 2013 that Welcome to Night Vale truly began to snowball in popularity – rapidly matching and then outpacing its closest competitors at the time. Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor have consistently attributed the show’s success to fan response on Tumblr, as well as the success of the official Night Vale show account on Twitter (Carlson 2013). It’s at this point that we see the first flush of social radicalism enter the podcast fiction DNA. Joseph Fink, a Jewish man, has openly explained that he deliberately wrote Night Vale to satirize conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists – both often violently antisemitic.5 The protagonist of Night Vale, Cecil Palmer, is an openly gay Jewish man who declares his love for another man in the first episode. Consistently, fans have attributed their enthusiastic responses to Night Vale to its radical diversity. The mayor of Night Vale is always a Black woman. Cecil’s niece Janice uses a wheelchair. His boyfriend, now husband, Carlos, is Latin American and heavily implied to be autistic.6 The current town sheriff Sam is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. And so on. Whilst fans certainly adore the show’s humour, its wit, its lyricism, its originality and its poignancy, Night Vale’s primarily teenage and young-adult fans were not interested in its roots in historic local radio (though they certainly exist – see Bottomley 2015), they were interested in Cecil and Carlos. That was what was meaningful to them: that was what they illustrated, that was what they wrote fanfiction about, that was what they cosplayed. This is neatly encapsulated by Tumblr user ‘edgarallennope’, in a post from 2019 which has since received 6,324 notes from like-minded young people: So yeah, Night Vale is, by definition a dystopia. But what does that say, that in spite of that so many of us found a home there because we knew we would be accepted? A whole community of queer kids who felt so rejected and were bullied and marginalised by the people that raised them that they fantasised about moving to a desert town where you would

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probably die in a freak accident. And there’s something tragic but also absolutely beautiful about that to me.

It is perhaps especially crucial to note that gay marriage had not been legalized across the USA when Night Vale began releasing, though it had been legalized in New York shortly before the podcast began. Cecil and Carlos got married in the show’s 100th episode, ‘Toast’, in 2016. As is often the case throughout the podcast, Cecil and Carlos’s romance is used as a milestone: from their first meeting in episode one, to their first date one year later, celebrated at Night Vale’s first live show and the show’s one year anniversary. To both its creators and its audience, the queer romance at the heart of the podcast is fundamental to its charm.

Podcast fiction’s Serial moment Following the enormous and ongoing success of Welcome to Night Vale, podcasting experienced the seismic shift that was Serial (USA 2014–present). Fiction, as all other areas of the medium, was not unaffected by this, and we saw a trio of soundalikes released in quick succession. First, Paul Bae and Terry Miles’s The Black Tapes (Canada 2015–17), then Two-Up Productions’ Limetown (USA 2015–present), followed by The Message (USA 2015), produced by Panoply in collaboration, oddly, with GE Podcast Theater.7 All of these podcasts starred female protagonists, imitating Sarah Koenig’s role in Serial but also marking an ongoing trend in podcast fiction to favour female leads.8

Increasing diversity of representation in podcast fiction After these came an era I have characterized previously as the ‘second phase’ of podcast fiction (Watts 2018). Here we saw the rise of a number of shows from variously marginalized creators, platforming marginalized voices to enormous success. In 2014 we get Wolf 359 (USA 2014–17), a series written by a Costa Rican American writer (Gabriel Urbina) that would go on to explore themes of immigration, disability and queerness. The next year we see The Bright Sessions (USA 2015–18), about queer superheroes with mental illnesses, written, directed, produced and led by a bisexual woman with clinical anxiety. Lauren Shippen continues to be a leading light in the podcast fiction industry. In the same year we get Ars Paradoxica (USA 2015–18), produced by a disabled, nonbinary person (Mischa Stanton) starring a lesbian woman (Kristen diMercurio) playing an asexual main character. Also, in that year we get Wooden Overcoats (UK 2015–22), a podcast very much in the style of British broadcast radio sitcoms, but written by a bisexual working-class man and starring a bisexual protagonist (Georgie Crusoe, as played by Ciara Baxendale.)

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Then in the next year we get another major fiction podcast, this time Marc Sollinger writing Archive 81 (USA 2016–present), which stars a lesbian woman and her wife. We get The Penumbra Podcast (USA 2016–present), written by a transgender, mixed-race person and a queer man, about a bisexual protagonist.9 In 2016 we see the beginning of The Magnus Archives (UK 2016–22), a podcast which remains the world’s most successful fiction show at time of writing, more on which anon. But it is notable that, again, The Magnus Archives was written by and starred a bisexual man, playing a biromantic, asexual character who enjoys a long-term slow burn romance with his male colleague. Again, this queer romance and asexual representation has repeatedly and explicitly been recognized by fans as a major reason for their love of the show (see Brown 2021).10 All of these podcasts would go on to generate cult followings, and many would secure adaptation deals in other media: notably Archive 81 adapted for Netflix as a TV show which released in 2022, and The Bright Sessions enjoying not only a podcast commission from Luminary for The AM Archives, but also a trilogy of young adult novels set within the universe of the podcast for Tor Teen (see Moore 2022).11

Podcast fiction fandom as self-conscious social radicalism It is around this time that listeners move beyond the silos of individual shows and begin to characterize themselves as ‘podcast’ fans – by which very specific communities, especially young, queer communities on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Tumblr, specifically mean podcast fiction fans. This is especially interesting to note given that it bucks the wider trend within the podcast community, industry and academia to treat fiction as a somewhat embarrassing younger cousin, not to be spoken of in mixed company. I’m sure it would surprise many to learn that there are swathes of young people who mean ‘audio drama’ when they say ‘podcast’, leading to sweeping statements like this 2017 Tumblr post: ‘Yeah, my favourite podcast is the one about how The Gays try to destroy capitalism’, by Tumblr user justgalactic. As this quote suggests, podcast fiction fans define themselves as such specifically because of the diverse representation they’ve found in podcast fiction. Take for example this 2019 post from Tumblr user uselessgaywhovian, riffing on the much-loved Monty Python joke: ‘What have audio dramas ever done for us? […] Well obviously the queer content, that goes without saying. Apart from the creative freedom, […] diversity of casts and creators, and breathing new life into the art of radio theater, what have audio dramas ever done for us?!’ John Downing (2000) examines how an active audience engages with radical media outside of traditional commercial outlets as a form of self-conscious identity construction through consumption; while Bruns (2008) notes how participatory communities can be seen in podcasting as listeners who not only consume but create. We can identify a clear

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social trend of marginalized audiences choosing to support independent podcast fiction as a deliberate social, moral, radical choice. Again, fiction podcasts garner surprisingly massive audiences (see Night Vale’s multiple world tours) specifically because they are by, for, and about traditionally marginalized communities.12 This is even the case when podcast fiction producers are not themselves from marginalized backgrounds. Take for example The Adventure Zone (USA 2014–present) by Griffin, Travis, Justin and Clint McElroy. Beginning in 2014, The Adventure Zone’s most popular arc by far was its so called ‘Balance’ arc – which starred an openly gender nonconforming, gay man; his Black boyfriend; a Black woman; a trans woman; a non-binary person; and multiple bisexual and lesbian characters. This is a formula the McElroys have clearly tried to imitate in subsequent series, with each new arc of the podcast starring characters from variously marginalized communities, though they have yet to recreate their original success. Again, the fans of The Adventure Zone have stated repeatedly, publicly and at length that their love of the podcast is a direct result of its representation of marginalized characters (see Hibbard 2017).

The onset of ‘big budget’ podcast fiction To return then to 2016. This was also the year we saw a major American podcast company enter the podcast fiction space: specifically, Gimlet Media with Homecoming (USA 2016–17), starring Catherine Keener, David Schwimmer and Oscar Isaac. Despite the podcast’s enthusiastic response, especially from non-fiction podcast listeners, it failed to make a clear cultural mark, in as much as these things can be defined. It was picked up for adaptation by Amazon Prime, starring Julia Roberts in her first major small-screen role. This piece of media news passed largely unnoticed, however, even when the series aired in November 2018. It might be contested that one reason for the show’s lukewarm reception from existing podcast fiction fans was its lack of diverse representation in the manner of the above examples. If a podcast fan wanted a drama about a straight white woman falling in love with a US army veteran, they would not have to look far. From 2016 onwards, we see the entry of more and more major media companies and existing podcast networks into the fiction space. At time of writing, none yet has successfully secured the loyalty of the existing podcast fiction audience, though many have been successful with wider podcast listeners. Commercially, these shows have performed with moderate success. But they have yet to secure a fandom in the way that has economically and artistically fuelled shows like Night Vale for a decade. Among the laundry list of companies and networks which have thrown their hats into the ring are: Gimlet, Maximum Fun, the BBC’s various networks, Marvel, Disney, Panoply, Spotify, Audible, Netflix, Storyglass, Hat Trick, iHeartRadio, AXN Asia, QCode, Realm (formerly SerialBox), Stitcher, Luminary and many more. Meanwhile, podcast fiction communities have begun to consolidate. Notably, the Fable and Folly Network, and the Rusty Quill Network, have joined groups like The Whisperforge

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in an attempt to secure greater success through coordinated efforts, advertising and crosspromotion.13 This is in no way a surprise to anyone familiar with the technique in the world of non-fiction, but is nonetheless a welcome development in podcast fiction, and in some ways a necessary one, as the independent industry competes with ever-more sophisticated, ever-more highly funded competition from the likes of companies such as QCode, Realm, Audible, Spotify, Marvel and DC in particular.

The alleged adaptation goldmine The reason for this growing investment and interest in the world of podcast fiction from major media companies has, of course, very little to do with the diverse representation of marginalized communities in the existing corpus, and a great deal to do with the possibility of film and television adaptation, not to mention the monetary windfall that comes with it. Again, this will not be unfamiliar to scholars and professionals within the world of non-fiction, with the wider podcast industry experiencing a similar though perhaps less dominant trend. Of course, we’ve yet to see a truly successful fiction podcast to TV adaptation (not including the much-lauded history of radio drama). Perhaps the closest recent effort was Netflix’s Archive 81, but despite extremely positive critical reception, the show has been cancelled after just one season.14 As in so many areas of podcasting, the mythic hope that developing a podcast drama is a much cheaper way of piloting and safety-testing new talent and ideas than a TV pilot or a feature film may well collapse under the weight of its own promise. Certainly, the smooth, profitable reality of the idea has not yet materialized. There are all manner of theories for this. Homecoming simply wasn’t a good adaptation. Very few people use Facebook Watch, and even less were aware that Limetown was available to view on it. Archive 81 was an excellent adaptation but made the controversial decision to make its lesbian protagonist heterosexual, a decision received very poorly by existing podcast fans.15 It seems unlikely that it is simply impossible to translate one medium into another: see again the long, successful history of radio drama adaptation to film and TV.16 But it is certainly the case that no major company has found commercial success with the model in podcast fiction yet. Why is that?

The appeal of podcast fiction I would contest that there continues to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what draws audiences, especially young people, especially fandoms, into podcast fiction. It is not the originality of the ideas. Certainly, this is appealing, but there is no shortage of original creative ideas to be found in all artistic media, and especially in the worlds of genre fiction,

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comic books, and cartoons. The most popular genres of podcast fiction are science fiction, fantasy and horror; these are hardly under-populated in other mediums. The appeal of podcast fiction is also not celebrity voices. Whilst celebrities are often a draw for non-fiction podcast listeners, again and again we have seen their star appeal greatly diminished simply by the removal of a visual aspect. John Boyega has starred in an audio drama to very little fanfare. So have Kelly Marie-Tran and Matthew McConnaughey. So have Kesha, Bill Nighy, James McAvoy, Kat Dennings, Gwendolyn Christie, Cynthia Erivo, Kristen Wiig, Stephanie Beatriz, Shohreh Aghdashloo and many more besides.17 The greatest success in celebrity casting thus far has been Audible’s The Sandman (UK 2020–present), and even there it’s interesting that the show’s cast was not used as its primary appeal in visual marketing materials. In many ways, Neil Gaiman’s authorship itself was the greatest draw, followed by the cast, Dirk Maggs’ production and James Hannigan’s score. Even then, whilst enormously successful and very well received, The Sandman has not been met with the obsessive, creative fan response still enjoyed by podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale nearly ten years after it first aired. In many ways, that doesn’t seem to have been the commercial goal of The Sandman, which is, regardless, a seminal piece of audio drama (and debatably a podcast, locked as it is behind a subscription wall). But from an industry and academic perspective, it is interesting to note nonetheless: despite high budgets, celebrity casts and major marketing campaigns, we have yet to see a show like this truly loved by the obsessively loving podcast fiction fandom.

Podcast fiction versus commercial interest What does this mean, in the context of media history? Perhaps very little. Marginalized communities and their consumption of media that represents their stories has historically gone understudied, undervalued and without recognition, often despite massive popular success and, one could easily contest, major social value (see McMurtry 2019 and Wang 2018).18 Perhaps the early history of the podcast fiction renaissance, built by and for marginalized communities, will also fade into oblivion. Certainly, with major news outlets claiming the reinvention of audio drama by ever-wealthier companies every year,19 it seems that we are in the process of watching an ongoing and deliberate act of historical revisionism. The contemporary popularity of podcast fiction: the popularity that sees book deals, TV shows and world tours, was built on the backs of Jewish people, and queer women, and Korean people, and queer men, and disabled people, and transgender people, and Latin American people, and Black people, and women (Watts 2020). It was received, lovingly, enthusiastically and creatively, by audiences from those communities. Yet now, in an uneasily colonial act of artistic flag planting, we are seeing these efforts erased, these factors neglected in analyses of success, these audiences snubbed and dismissed as insignificant, despite numbering in the multi-millions (Podcast Network Aims to Sell Out 2020).20

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It may be the case that much like punk and rock music, the artistic trend of podcast fiction to vehemently reject capitalism,21 loudly proclaim inclusive social values – especially around issues of transgender and disability rights,22 harshly critique political and religious corruption,23 as well as western imperialism,24 is anathema to any kind of public recognition or commercial success from the institutions these dramas, their creators and their audiences, are so keen to dismantle. If this is the case then perhaps, as in the case of punk and rock music, what we will see is a trend of lookalikes and independent sell-outs softening their messages in a way more palatable to advertisers and investors in exchange for budgets, celebrity casting, and marketing campaigns the likes of which they are simply not capable of achieving on their own.25 But fascinatingly, this has happened once before. Indeed, the over-commercialization of radio and censoring of radical, inclusive and progressive social issues in broadcast radio drama was what put the medium into a coma in the USA in the first place. As eloquently expressed by McMurtry: ‘Broadcast network executives somewhat naively saw an opportunity to approach the new medium of television with artistic ambitions they believed had been frustrated by the over-commercialisation of radio’ (2019: 115). Indeed, as outlined above, commercial outfits attempting to censor or sanitize these themes in podcast fiction have simply not yet imitated the success of independent productions with far smaller budgets and far greater creative ambition.

What next? So, what will happen next? In fiction, as in all podcasting, the ongoing ghoul that haunts the success of all productions is the issue of podcast discoverability. Independent podcast fiction is seeking to solve that issue with networks: Rusty Quill, Fable and Folly. Spotify is attempting to solve that with an algorithm. Other apps – notably BBC Sounds – are attempting to solve that with a combination of coding and real human curation. An interesting development in this vein recently was the release of the Apollo app, an app designed exclusively for podcast fiction (Podnews.net 2021). Journalists and publications from the Guardian to Polygon release vast quantities of articles curating and recommending series in an attempt to match the existing mechanisms already in place for film, TV, literature and radio. In regards to journalism, it seems likely that creating these structures is only a matter of time. Apps on the other hand are less clear. Netflix has proven it’s certainly possible to algorithmically recommend dramatic content to some extent. But will these algorithms fail, as so many major networks and production companies already have, to identify the core appeal of social radicalism in podcast fiction? And what effect, if any, will this have on the podcast fiction audience? Following the end of The Magnus Archives in 2021, the podcast fiction community finds itself in something of a limbo – with no show, independent or otherwise, having appeared yet to fill that space and garner the massive international fanbase that Rusty Quill enjoyed at its peak.

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It’s always possible that that space will be filled by a commercial production, at last. Certainly it seems that a Marvel film-like fandom built around podcasting would not be unwelcome to Marvel itself, or indeed DC, Spotify, Netflix, iHeartRadio and Audible in particular.26 Indeed, it might even be likely, given the far greater ease of access to and discovery of these highly budgeted, highly marketed productions than tiny independent podcasts with a few hundred, or even a few dozen, followers on social media. The question, it seems, is whether podcast fiction audiences will continue to try and prioritize the quality of the content they listen to over its convenience to discover and access. At present dozens of young, often queer, individuals run a variety of blogs on Tumblr and accounts on Twitter for the express purpose of facilitating fiction podcast discovery.27 Accounts exist to explicitly promote and support Black Audio Dramas; newsletters focus exclusively on podcast fiction by, for and about transgender people. There is not yet, to my knowledge, a newsletter or social media account focused exclusively on celebrity audio drama news – though there is little need for one with billboards in New York,28 priority placing on things like Spotify carousels, and BBC radio and TV advertisements. Still, it reflects an interest from the listening community in specifically seeking out content by and for marginalized communities. Furthermore, what podcasts we have seen achieve a shadow of that success enjoyed by shows like Welcome to Night Vale, and The Magnus Archives have shared their thematic and artistic interests too – namely a violent disinterest to open critique of capitalism, a unifying and passionate focus on community action, a profound mistrust of global corporations, a deep scepticism around socially conservative politicians and, increasingly, the police. Examples of this include The Silt Verses (UK 2021–present), Camp Here and There (USA 2021–present) and Old Gods of Appalachia (USA 2019–present).

Case study: Lauren Shippen Those high-budget podcasts that have achieved a modicum of success with the existing podcast fiction audience all notably have their roots in independent podcast fiction and share many of their interests and themes. The work of Lauren Shippen in particular is notable here. As a queer writer and director who started out in the independent industry, Shippen has gone on to enjoy enormous success on various shows including: Panoply’s Passenger List (UK/USA 2019–present) starring Kelly Marie Tran29; Netflix’s Rebel Robin (USA 2021) starring Maya Hawke; Aaron Mahnke and iHeartRadio’s Bridgewater (USA 2021–present); and most recently iHeartRadio’s Maxine Miles (USA 2022–present).30 As is often the case, her career is a useful weathervane for the wider podcast fiction industry: from the growing trend in podcast musicals, reflected by her company Atypical Artists’ In Strange Woods (USA 2020) starring Patrick Page, to the more recent vogue for choose-your-ownadventure dramas in Maxine Miles and Studio Ochenta’s Adventure in Atacama (France 2022–present).31

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Above and beyond these interesting content trends, however, Shippen’s work and career indicate one possible avenue forward for podcast fiction, and specifically queer networks in competition with major global companies. This path is one of symbiosis. In many ways, again to draw comparison with the rock and punk music scenes, the path of assimilation is a betrayal of various core values of the current podcast fiction movement. However, it is a reality that must be faced nonetheless in an economy driven by capital. Ideologies alone will not keep creators employed, or, ultimately, sustain their projects. Whilst it’s always promising to see state-funded efforts to maintain the form,32 this will not be enough. Shippen’s career thus far is some concrete proof that these progressive social values and themes can be maintained even in cooperation with major global companies which do not always share those values.33

The future of podcast fiction Alexander Danner, creator of Greater Boston (USA 2016–present) and one of the founders of the Podtales podcast fiction festival, once speculated that podcast fiction would likely follow the route of comic books: with a mainstream and a small set of key players emerging, as well as an ongoing, thriving independent market. His speculation was that this independent market, as in the comic industry, would continue to enjoy far greater creative freedom in terms of themes addressed and communities represented, and that occasionally independent writers and artists would make their way into the higher budget properties, with higher budget writers occasionally dropping into the independent space in search of that creative freedom. It continues to be the most convincing and probable future for podcast fiction I’ve encountered. There are many factors currently at play: the issue of discoverability, the issue of platform, the question of celebrities, the question of film and TV adaptation,34 the question of languages and localization (which I haven’t touched in this chapter),35 the question of monetization and consolidation in a fractured, disparate industry. It is always possible that the future of podcast fiction will simply be consolidation, assimilation and amalgamation into pre-existing media hierarchies. But I do not think that is the case. Podcasters like Aaron Mahnke have identified fiction as one of the fastestgrowing spaces in the wider podcast ecosystem.36 Research has shown that the most popular genre of podcast among young women is fiction.37 Fiction is growing exponentially – and if it is to follow the trend of audiobooks, it may even one day outpace non-fiction, as improbable as that now seems to both academics and practitioners in the podcast space. In the end, it seems the trend in modern media is so often towards multiplicity, not singularity. Perhaps we will have our cake and eat it: seeing more investment into the industry and more serious efforts at producing dramas that are good audio dramas, first and foremost, as well as the ongoing expansion of podcast fiction into ever-more diverse and creative communities. Discoverability and curation will haunt fiction, as they do all of podcasting, as will platform choice.

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But I doubt the ‘soul’ of podcast fiction will disappear. A soul that is queer, and colourful, disabled, and anti-capitalist. A soul that is rude, and defiant, satirical and vivacious. For as long as we exist, we need grounds for hope, and stories that can give us new ways of seeing things. Podcast fiction, and audio drama, are just one vessel for those stories. Until we stop needing that, there will always be people making them. In that respect, podcast fiction is no different from its peers in literature, and theatre, art, music, film, television, and sitting around a campfire telling stories in the dark. People will make these stories: however small the audience, however strong the competition, because other people need to hear them. And until every voice and every community has a seat at the figurative table, the work will not be done.

Notes See also We’re Alive (USA 2009–14). Note that both The Thrilling Adventure Hour (TTAH) and We’re Alive have enjoyed afterlives in the 2020s in the forms of remasters, acquisitions, sequels and specials. 2 Rusty Quill is, by some distance, Britain’s most successful independent podcast fiction network, and one of the most successful networks of its kind in the world – thanks in no small part to its two now completed flagship shows: The Magnus Archives (UK 2016–21) and Rusty Quill Gaming (UK 2015–22). 3 The oft-quoted opening of TTAH, ‘the world’s favourite new time podcast in the style of old-time radio’, says a great deal about the podcast’s aesthetic style: larger than life pastiche, and its OTR roots. 4 I work as a freelance podcast producer, audio fiction consultant, radio presenter, writer and director. 5 Despite Night Vale’s by-line as ‘a town where every conspiracy theory is true’, Fink (2021) has openly criticized the real-world harm that such theories can do. 6 Carlos frequently explicitly misses social cues, experiences sensory overload, has very powerful sensory preferences, finds reassurance in special interests like science and mathematics, and has trouble emoting with his expressions and body language, preferring to use words or actions. 7 GE Podcast Theater was an arm of the General Electric Company, briefly reviving the company’s twentieth-century General Electric Theater (somewhat infamously hosted by Ronald Reagan), to produce two podcasts: The Message and LifeAfter (USA 2016) before disappearing once again without fanfare. 8 Although male leads feature disproportionately in the most successful podcasts. The Adventure Zone (USA 2014–present), The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale, Archive 81 (USA 2016–present), The Penumbra Podcast (USA 2016–present), TANIS (USA 2015–present), SAYER (USA 2014–present), and We’re Alive all have male leads, as opposed to The Bright Sessions (USA 2015–18), The Black Tapes, Ars Paradoxica (USA 2015–18), Rabbits (USA 2017–present) and a great deal of smaller independent podcasts with female leads. (This is not to mention notable successes with a more even gender 1

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split, like Wooden Overcoats (UK 2015–22), and the fact that Archive 81’s mixed-gender third season was by far its most successful and best received.) 9 Representation in The Penumbra Podcast is not, however, uncomplicated – with the white Joshua Ilon playing a character consciously illustrated as Black, in what some have called digital blackface. See this Twitter thread by the show’s first official artist, Mikaela Buckley, ‘If anyone is wondering about the Penumbra situation’ on Twitter.com, (2020). 10 See also fanworks like this by tumblr user ‘kowbojki’, posted in 2021 with 11,024 notes at time of writing. 11 The AM Archives (USA 2019), was originally commissioned by Luminary and exclusive to that platform, before becoming available to the general public in 2021 on The Bright Sessions podcast feed. Tor Teen commissioned three spin-off novels of the podcast from its creator Lauren Shippen: The Infinite Noise (2020), A Neon Darkness (2021) and Some Faraway Place (2021). All have received decent critical success. 12 The Bright Sessions is explicitly inspired by Lauren Shippen’s own struggles with mental illness; Judaism is woven throughout Welcome to Night Vale; Caroline Mincks wrote Seen and Not Heard (USA 2020–present) to explore their deafness; James Kim wrote Moonface (USA 2019) about a Korean American man coming into his sexuality; Erin Kyan is a disabled, transgender, queer man who wrote Love and Luck (Australia 2017–20) with his husband Lee Davis-Thalbourne specifically about and for Australian LGBTQ+ communities; and Morgan Givens is a Black transgender artist who made Flyest Fables (USA 2018–21) for their nephew and Black children across the USA – to name but a few. 13 Fable and Folly and Rusty Quill are perhaps the two most notable players in the independent fiction space at time of writing, with F&F launching in May 2020, and Rusty Quill reinventing itself as a network one year later in May 2021 (not coincidentally, shortly after the end of its most successful series, The Magnus Archives.) See ‘Podcast Network Aims to Sell Out’ (2020) and ‘RQ Network' (2021). 14 Another matter of complicated representation: the Netflix series made the podcast’s white protagonist, Dan Powell, a Black man, and explored themes of Black family relationships. However, it also made the podcast’s lesbian protagonist, Melody Pendras, a straight woman – something that was met with a highly negative reaction from existing fans of the podcast. See Upadhyaya (2022). 15 Ibid. 16 Not least Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Mighty Boosh and more recently, BBC Radio 4’s Ladhood. 17 Variously: Tomorrow’s Monsters (USA 2021–present), Passenger List (USA/UK 2019–present), Hank the Cowdog (USA 2020), Electric Easy (USA 2021), The Sandman (UK 2020–present), Carrier (USA 2019), Sandra (USA 2018), Solar (USA 2022–present), Tejana (USA 2021) and The Two Princes (USA 2019–20). 18 Particularly in reference to serialized dramas like Welsh Rarebit by Mai Jones, which ran from 1938–49. 19 See this thread by podcast fiction archivist Rob Christopher, AKA ‘The Cambridge Geek’, ‘A quick thread on the invention of audio & radio drama’, on Twitter.com, (2022). The author’s particular favourite for its sheer, unintentionally Dadaist inanity, is ‘the world’s first audio-only anime’, Sky Brother Force (USA 2021–present). See Chase (2022). 20 The Magnus Archives, for example, boasted at least four million downloads a month by July 2020, averaging a million downloads per episode.

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21 See Wolf 359, The Magnus Archives, The Penumbra Podcast, What Will Be Here (USA 2020 –present), Breathing Space, Fading Frontier (USA 2021–present), Midst (USA 2020–present) and The Silt Verses (UK 2021–present) among many, many others. 22 See Love and Luck, Welcome to Night Vale, The Adventure Zone, The Penumbra Podcast, What Will Be Here, Where the Stars Fell (USA 2021–present) and many more. 23 See Midst, The Silt Verses, The Magnus Archives, Old Gods of Appalachia, The Black Tapes, The Pasithea Powder (USA 2019–present), Second Star to the Left (USA 2021) and Give Me Away (USA 2021) among others. 24 See The Penumbra Podcast, Welcome to Night Vale, The Silt Verses, The Magnus Archives, Khôra Podcast (USA 2020–present) and The Anansi Chronicles (USA 2020–present) among others. 25 Certainly QCODE seems to be trending in this direction, given the startling similarity between the independent Alice Isn’t Dead (USA 2016–18) and its own, later production, Carrier, as well as between Night Vale Present’s Dreamboy (USA 2018–19) and QCODE’s latter The Edge of Sleep (USA 2019), and the independent podcast Rabbits and QCODE’s The Left Right Game (USA 2020). Interestingly, whilst all of these QCODE productions are aesthetically similar enough to their independent predecessors to border on plagiarism, they have unanimously made a creative decision to remove major LGTBQ+ characters and themes and replace them with heterosexual characters and romances. 26 See Marvel’s slate of audio dramas, DC and Spotify’s Batman Unburied (USA 2022–present), and here: ‘Audio Brings New Dimension to the DC Comics Universe’ (2021). Note also Batman Unburied knocking Joe Rogan out of his top spot-on Spotify, as here: ‘The Podcast Academy Removes a Governor’ on Podnews.net (2022). 27 For example, Tal Minear’s Podplane newsletter, exclusively for fiction podcasts by and about transgender people and the Twitter account Black Audio Dramas Exist, run by Xperience Jay for Black audio drama creators and audiences. 28 Notably, Audible’s The Sandman, though Ochenta Podcast’s Mija (France 2019–present) also holds this honour thanks to a Spotify programme platforming Latin American creators. See ‘Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales in Audio Drama’ (2022). 29 Originally commissioned by Panoply, the podcast is currently housed on the Radiotopia network. 30 There is also the upcoming Mirage Diner (USA 2022–present), which seeks to emulate twentieth century American radio drama with a continuous weekly release schedule. See Shippen (2022). 31 Though in truth, choose-your-own-adventure audio drama is nothing new, not least thanks to the highly successful Zombies, Run!, an audio drama and fitness game hybrid app which has been dynamically incorporating listener movement since 2012. 32 The UK’s Arts Council, ABC, CBC and the BBC have all variously engaged with and supported independent fiction podcasts. The Arts Council funded The Ballad of Anne and Mary (UK 2021) and Land Skeins (UK 2021); ABC has revived its interest in weekly radio drama with Radio National Fictions; CBC has variously spotlighted independent creators and made its own podcast fiction: like Limited Capacity (Canada 2021–present), and The Shadows (Canada 2018) among others; and the BBC regularly recognizes independent podcasts in the BBC Audio Drama Awards (with independent American production Unwell, 2019–present, a notable winner of its Best Podcast category in 2021).

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33 Indeed, iHeartRadio’s controversial Transgenesis, was rebranded as Second Oil Age (USA 2019) in an attempt by the company to escape the controversy it inspired in the podcast fiction community. Its themes are in direct opposition to Shippen’s powerfully pro-LGBTQ+ corpus of work. See ‘A forgotten controversy’ (2019). See also Lucy Valentine’s twitter thread on the subject, ‘So @iheartradio’s new #AudioFiction show @transgenesispod …’ (2019): https://twitter.com/severelytrans/ status/1116092063781539840. 34 See Spotify’s First Look Partnership with Chernin Entertainment (Chernin 2022) and William Morris Endeavour’s various movements in this space. 35 Studio Ochenta characterizes itself as ‘the leading multilingual podcast studio’; The Sandman like many of Audible’s original dramas, is available in multiple languages, including Hindi; and Batman Unburied was launched in nine languages on Spotify, in an interesting historical moment for the localization of podcast fiction (very much innovated by Studio Ochenta). 36 See ‘Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales in Audio Drama’ (2022). 37 See Triton Digital (2022).

Works cited ‘Audio Brings New Dimension to the DC Comics Universe’ (22 February 2021), on Newsroom. Spotify.com: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/audio-brings-new-dimension-tothe-dc-comics-universe/ (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘Black Audio Dramas Exist’: https://twitter.com/BlkAudioDramas (accessed 13 May 2022). Bottomley, A. J. (2015), ‘Podcasting, Welcome to Night Vale and the Revival of Radio Drama’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (2): 179–89. Bruns, A. (2008), Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, New York: Peter Lang. Brown, T. (2021), ‘Can You Hear Us? A Content Analysis of Queer Representation in Audio Dramas’, Senior Capstone Projects, 1098: https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_ capstone/1098 (accessed 13 May 2022). Buckley, M. (2020), ‘If anyone is wondering about the Penumbra situation’ on Twitter.com, 15 July: https://twitter.com/EmKayDraws/status/1283522641005953024?s=20&t=bZ8yE95aC z4MWiOcxi-L-Q (accessed 13 May 2022). Carlson, A. (2013), ‘America’s Most Popular Podcast: What the Internet Did to “Welcome to Night Vale”’, on TheAwl.com, 24 July: https://www.theawl.com/2013/07/americas-mostpopular-podcast-what-the-internet-did-to-welcome-to-night-vale/ (accessed May 13 2022). Chase, R. (2022), ‘I’m excited to finally share …’, on Twitter.com, 22 February: https://twitter. com/RayChase/status/1496204236396572673?s=20&t=Z9f4pULMJ8ea06pwFhLRoA (accessed 13 May 2022). Chernin, P. ‘Spotify First-Look Deal to Adapt Podcasts for TV, Film, Variety’ (accessed 29 August 2022). Downing, J. (2000), Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, London: SAGE Publications.

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‘Edgarallennope’ (2019), ‘Y’all i could write a whole E S S A Y about young queer folk who dreamed of living in Night Vale’, on Tumblr.com, 17 November: https://edgarallennope. tumblr.com/post/189139373157/yall-i-could-write-a-whole-e-s-s-a-y-about-young (accessed 13 May 2022). Fink, J. (2021), ‘I guess I have trouble finding …’, on Twitter.com, 3 February: https://twitter. com/planetoffinks/status/1356810270388142080 (accessed 13 May 2022). Hibbard, L. (2017), ‘You’re Going to be Amazing: The Adventure Zone and Crowd-Sourced Representation’, on NYMGamer.com, 21 August: http://www.nymgamer.com/?p=16709 (accessed 22 May 2022). ‘Justgalactic’ (2017), ‘Yeah, my favourite podcast is the one about how The Gays try to destroy capitalism’, on Tumblr.com, 7 September: https://justgalactic.tumblr.com/ post/165093855849/yeah-my-favorite-podcast-is-the-one-about-how-the accessed 13 May 2022). McMurtry, L. (2019), Revolution in the Echo Chamber: Audio Drama’s Past, Present and Future, Bristol: Intellect Press. Moore, T. (2022), ‘Why Archive 81 Was Cancelled – and the Chances of a Season 2’, on DigitalSpy.com, 31 March: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a39593798/archive-81cancelled-season-2/; (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales in Audio Drama’ (11 March 2022), on Podcast Radio Hour: https://podnews.net/podcast/i6xl/listen/episode/ dXJuOmJiYzpwb2RjYXN0Om0wMDE1NHh6 (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘Podcast Network Aims to Sell Out’ (7 May 2020), on Podnews.net: https://podnews.net/pressrelease/fabric-folly-ad-representation (accessed 13 May 2022). Rob, C., AKA ‘The Cambridge Geek’ (2022), ‘A quick thread on the invention of audio & radio drama’, on Twitter.com, 31 March: https://twitter.com/CambridgeGeek/ status/1509615145986711552?s=20&t=Z9f4pULMJ8ea06pwFhLRoA (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘RQ Network: Introducing Our New Shows’ (10 May 2021), on RustyQuill.com: https:// rustyquill.com/2021/05/10/rq-network-introducing-our-new-shows/ (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘Rusty Quill Signs with WME in Trailblazing Move’ (28 July 2020), on Podnews.net: https:// www.podnews.net/press-release/rusty-quill-wme (accessed 13 May 2022). Shippen, L. (20 November 2019), ‘A forgotten controversy’, on Reddit.com: https://www. reddit.com/r/audiodrama/comments/dyxxtk/a_forgotten_controversy/ (accessed 13 May 2022). Shippen, L. (2022), ‘I’m incredibly excited to announce …’ on Twitter.com, 21 April: https://twitter. com/laurenshippen/status/1517191046098079746?s=20&t=NUnA9HBHQfOuAaTS0dvDKg (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘So @iheartradio’s new #AudioFiction show @transgenesispod …’ (10 April 2019): https:// twitter.com/severelytrans/status/1116092063781539840 (accessed 13 May 2022). Tal Minear’s ‘Podplane newsletter’: https://podplane.crd.co (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘The Podcast Academy Removes a Governor’ (9 May 2022), on Podnews.net: https://podnews. net/update/tpa-djl (accessed 13 May 2022). Triton Digital’s, ‘Celebrating International Women’s Day: What Women Are Listening To!’ (7 March 2022), on Blog.TritonDigital.com: https://blog.tritondigital.com/ internationalwomensday (accessed 13 May 2022).

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Upadhyaya, K. K. (2022), ‘I Loved “Archive 81” – Then I Found Out Melody Got “Straightwashed”’, on Autostraddle.com, 26 January: https://www.autostraddle.com/archive81-review/ (accessed 13 May 2022). ‘Uselessgaywhovian’ (2019), ‘Hi, my name is Rina and I have a lot of salt …’, on Tumblr.com: https://uselessgaywhovian.tumblr.com/post/174639030883/apart-from-the-creativefreedom-hundreds-upon (accessed 13 May 2022). Wang, J. (2018), ‘Complicating the Recent Past: Activism in the Collection and the Writing of Early Media History’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 16 (3): 481–8. Watts, E. (2018), ‘Drama Podcasts: An Overview of the US and UK Drama Podcast Market’, BBC Sounds Commissioning, December: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio/ commissioning/Drama-Podcast-Research-Dec2018.pdf (accessed 13 May 2022). Watts, E. (2020), ‘The Gays Destroy Capitalism in Space’, on InternationalPodcastMonth. com, 30 September: https://www.internationalpodcastmonth.com/blog/the-gays-destroycapitalism-in-space (accessed 13 May 2022).

27 Recalling Radio An Archival View from Radio’s Second Century Alexander Badenoch

When was radio? What was radio? Finding Manfred Bilitza ‘Bilitza, Manfred, geboren 22. 4. 42 in Königsberg, letzte Heimatanschrift Heuhausen, Ostpreussen … ’. In the early hours of 29 January 1947, a calm, dispassionate, yet distinctly tired-sounding voice read out the name of a missing little boy over the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), the British-occupied station in Hamburg. The announcement was one part of the German Red Cross’s long-running missing persons service on radio in occupied Germany, a daily feature of life for those many scattered by multiple aspects of the Second World War (Wagner 2014). Little Manfred’s loss – and possibly his finding – would have stopped being radio and gone back to the medium of paper alongside millions of others in the (now-digitized) card index of the German Red Cross were it not rebroadcast a few months later as part of Ernst Schnabel’s groundbreaking collective diary feature ‘Der 29. Januar 1947’ (29 January 1947) in which actors voiced listeners’ diary entries, occasionally interspersed with clips from the radio programmes from the NWDR. Bilitza’s announcement even went out in English when Schnabel’s feature was subsequently translated into English by the BBC and broadcast the following year.1 It is not public knowledge whether Manfred Bilitza was ever found – I hold out some hope as I type this in the Spring of 2022 that he has celebrated his eightieth birthday. The story of his loss, however, has been constantly reborn through the radio – and through the radio archive. This brief moment of radio sound, and the radio feature in which it reemerged, have had substantial afterlives. The feature was later collected and commercially released on cassette by the German publisher Klett-Cotta as part of a short-lived

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experiment in audio publishing (Schnabel [1947]1988). It can be difficult to find a copy now, but Chicago’s Harold Washington Library happened to have one, which led to my own first scholarly engagement with radio as an MA student. Manfred Bilitza reappeared again on a CD published by the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA, German Broadcasting Archive) (Überleben im Nachkriegsdeutschland 2000). Schnabel’s feature turned out to be an important archival resource for the sounds of everyday radio that had otherwise been erased. Now in the digital age, if you google these opening words, it will get you both to stories about the radio feature and the era from which it emerged. Manfred Bilitza’s story reminds us, if not necessarily of the power of radio, then certainly of the multifaceted nature of radio in its first century. The sound comes to us again and again as a myth of radioness in Germany’s post-war crisis years, in Roland Barthes’ sense of the term: a possibly tragic history that is present but held at bay and subsumed into signification at another level (Barthes 1972). Beyond this, however, this sound fragment is a good reminder of the paths through which radio from the past can come to us. It was preserved at random, but not by accident; not to preserve Bilitza’s specific past for posterity, but to serve the needs of future production. It has been transcribed, transduced, transcoded, transferred, and circulates now in multiple formats (digital and analogue) and as multiple things: both a public service as it is in the archive of the NDR, but also a sound commodity, made available once as art and once as documentation. This is also typical: far from being a single discrete phenomenon, radio is always fundamentally entangled with other media (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017); it is impossible to make sense of radio without understanding these entanglements. As a historian faced with radio’s multiple and multiplying pasts, trying to make any statement about its future seems impossible. But what will we do with all of these pasts? Just as radio has been multiply reinvented in the first contested century of its existence, so the stories that can be told with it and about it have been reinvented with the growth and reinvention of its archives, not least with the processes of mass digitization of heritage, including radio. Already from their earliest inceptions, recorded sound archives were tied up with fantasies both about the past and future (Birdsall and Tkaczyk 2019), and indeed all archives tend to invite us to look back from the future (Landwehr 2016). So here I want to think in the future perfect tense as we move into radio’s second century: what will radio have been? What traces of it will be available, findable and accessible? What mental and digital tools will we have to understand them? What questions will we be able to ask and what stories will we be able to tell with what we have? In asking these questions, I embrace Kate Lacey’s caution against essentializing any particular age or form of radio (Lacey 2009). As Jo Tacchi asserted at the beginning of radio’s digital transformation, it: ‘has no essence since it has already taken, and continues to take, different forms. Radio is what it is at a given time, in a given context of use and meaningfulness’ (Tacchi 2000: 292). As we approach what we might call the radio archive, we find a similar multiplicity and flux as we find in radio. Some of this is the long-noted nature of archives as troublingly inbetween places: half-open, half closed off, seemingly ordered but in fact filled with ‘material which has only been loosely classified, material whose status is as yet indeterminate and stands between rubbish, junk and significance; material which has not been read and

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researched’ (Featherstone 2006: 594). The meaning of the ‘radio archive’ is growing steadily towards the digital, as both the contemporary meaning of radio coalesces around digital content and distribution, and analogue traces of what was once radio are the subject of mass digitization campaigns. For this chapter, I will focus on the presence, absence and nature of radio in digital archives rather than the identification and preservation of analogue radio, although with the understanding that the latter is a necessary prerequisite for the former (Seubert 2020). This chapter is not about what to call radio, but about how we might re-call radio. As opposed to remembering, which can connote both bringing back to mind but also (re-)committing something to memory, recalling is a momentary action of retrieving specific traces from the past. It helps us avoid an all-too-metaphorical conception of archives as memory (Ernst 2004) and think concretely about what we get when we look into the collections. For the most part, we find digital archival material via ‘calls’: search queries in an archival interface, whether it is an ‘official’ archive of a broadcasting or heritage institution or the broad catch-all of an internet search engine. What we can re-call of radio in the digital age depends on a series of other ‘re-’s: re-collecting, recognizing and recommending. Like the acts of recalling, all of these acts have roots in the analogue world (Balbi et al. 2021), and analogues with what we often know as radio. Re-collecting I have discussed elsewhere as the reassembling and networking of digitized traces of radio into searchable collections (Badenoch 2018). Digitally re-collecting radio echoes radio broadcasting’s calling upon, gathering and re-aggregating content into our present: ‘Like a museum or library,’ as William Uricchio argues about television, radio ‘is a space of endlessly recombinatory artefacts’ (Uricchio 2010: 30). When they are consigned to the archive, digitized and digital traces of radio are not merely moved, they are transformed and translated into a new system of knowledge via metadata schemes such as Dublin Core or Linked Open Data as used in Europeana. It is only through this re-collecting that we have a digital archive at all to which we can make our call, and it forms a ‘necessary condition for digital humanities researchers to search across different digital collections and find relations between collections or records, not known as such before’ (de Leeuw 2018: 176). Digital recollection comes with expansive promises, allowing content that was once ‘local’ to be gathered into national or transnational collections such as the European heritage aggregator Europeana and the European Television history portal EUScreen. These promises are not always met, however (Jensen 2015; Seubert 2020), and we must also be aware that this process can also have diffusive effects, as some parts of collections are re-assigned to different collections, not digitized, or not recognized. In the digital realm, recognizing can be understood as how records are matched to queries. Whether and as what things are recognized in a digital catalogue generally depends on the metadata that accompanies them. But ‘recognition’ also carries the important double meaning of ‘identifying’ and ‘accepting as legitimate’. When we turn to the archive, the seemingly ‘mere’ technical issue of recognizing a search query is in fact steeped in ideological questions of what is considered legitimate at any given time. This begins with the ‘tacit’ process of ‘archivalization’ by which something is recognized as worth archiving in the first place (Ketelaar 2001). Archivalization in radio institutions is often driven by

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production considerations; these in turn are often driven by ideas of who or what will be, or should be, recognized as of important in the future. The ideological work then continues as specific traits of the object are highlighted for recognition. Besides these structural conditions that have their roots in analogue collecting and cataloguing, our digital tools for finding archival traces – like algorithms in our society more generally – can also create or reinforce selection biases in what they recognize related to a search term. Especially looking from the future, we should consider how radio is recommended to us from the archive. This is a core function of many digital interfaces: from YouTube to Twitter feeds, we don’t simply get what we ask for, but also what an algorithm thinks what we might also want to see. As Nanna Bonde Thylstrup notes: ‘our cultural memories and the way we access no longer concerns our relation to our past, but also attains a future dimension in the form of probabilistic outcomes: “If you like this, you might also like”’ (Thylstrup 2018: 188). In the first instance, this seems antithetical to our traditional view of archives, to the extent that we think of them as repositories. A glance through the acknowledgement section of many history books, however, will give an impression of the important role that archivists often play in locating and recommending sources in analogue archives. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly stepping into this space. But this, too, has long been a role of radio. From top-ten lists and much format radio to a wide range of cultural programming, into the era of automatic streaming, radio comes to us continually as a recommendation system.2 My focus on these acts of recalling in relation to the archive serves a reflexive purpose: it highlights that what we recall of radio from the archive is not solely determined by the archive, but by how we call to it. What Hoyt and Morris argue of podcasts is of course equally true for their closest cousin: ‘the work of preserving […] is inseparable from how we conceptualize the medium’s histories, meanings, and definitions’ (Hoyt and Morris 2021: 4). As a historian, my hope for radio archives is that they will be able to preserve, reflect and support research into, the protean and multifaceted meanings of what has been called radio as well as the incredibly diverse communities of reception and practice that have made it their own. Given the nebulous and often inchoate meaning of ‘radio’, I draw on the work and teaching of anthropologist James W. Fernandez, who explores how tropes help master inchoate aspects of culture (Fernandez 1986). I will repurpose his thought here as an experimental method: making a series of calls to the digital archive, each based around one widely recognized conceptualization of radio: radio, sound, speech, music, noise and silence. This exercise resonates with Michael Austin’s consideration of radio as interface to help us reimagine what access to radio in the future might be (Austin 2016). This is both a critical exercise, aimed at understanding how the current state of digital archives might limit our understanding of radio pasts, and also a playful and creative one: how might we imagine radio archives of the future that are as vibrant and multifaceted as we have known radio – at its best – to be? While this chapter draws on my broader scholarly and personal engagements with radio, it draws specifically on my current attachment to the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (hereafter NISV). This is the official repository for the audiovisual collections of public service broadcasters in the Netherlands, but with a broader collection remit from

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across the Dutch media landscape, 70 per cent of Dutch audiovisual heritage. As such, it stakes the most hegemonic claim to being ‘the radio archive’ in the Netherlands and it is to this I will make my critical calls. I will also draw from my work in another role on the Clariah Media Suite, the portal for supporting digital humanities media research in the Netherlands, through which most digitized collections of the NISV are accessible to researchers from Dutch universities. Designed as a closed research environment, it allows researchers to access and search, inspect and analyse archival material. My role is to think about the ways that this environment might support more international research and researchers, and as such forms an ideal place to make these calls to the archive. This offers some ways to critique the present when thinking about accessing radio archives, as well as considering the tools and archives we want for the future.

Recalling radio as radio When, how and why should we recall radio as radio at all? Just because something was preserved as radio does not mean it will be recalled as radio, nor, conversely, will what was once called radio necessarily be preserved as such. Radio’s re-emergence in public digital collections makes this abundantly clear: the BBC’s public-facing archived radio is findable as ‘BBC Sounds’. Similarly, the aggregation of radio at European level took place under the aegis of the ‘Europeana Sounds’ project, where radio collections were simply one – relatively small – part. This archival grouping has also been followed in scholarship as well. The titles of the two most prominent journals in Anglophone radio studies, The Radio Journal: A Journal of Radio and Audio Media and the Journal of Radio and Audio Media, are careful not to stop at radio. More recently Michele Hilmes’s broader conception of radio as part of ‘soundwork’ as ‘media forms that are primarily aural, employing the three basic elements of sonic expression – music, speech, and noise – to contribute to a lively economy of sound-based texts’ (Lacey and Hilmes 2015: 2; see further Hilmes 2020). While allowing some detailed consideration of the nature of sound texts, this term’s highlighting of work offers insights into the industry and economy of sound as well. Again, it invites us to step away from recalling radio in isolation from other media, or necessarily as radio at all. I will discuss the trope of radio as sound more specifically in the next section, but here I want to stress John Ellis’s point that: ‘digitisation does not simply re-present […] programmes. It remakes them’. Stripped of their original ‘sense of presence’ in a nowabsent media landscape, they become data in need of interpretation (Ellis 2012: 3). In fact, we can learn much about radio by observing how radio traces get disentangled and re-entangled when they enter the archive and how they re-emerge transformed. At NISV, the successful Re:vive programme has been dedicated to the reuse of archived sound, including radio, in new sound art. By engaging artists with themed ‘sample packs’ from the archives, the programme has generated a range of new sound works, often in the form of music. These place sound in different flows, often to dance rhythms, that deliberately and creatively dissolve what was once radio. Sometimes this output was once more in the

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form of radio but just as often not. Archived radio can also come to us as oral history, as evinced in online WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive’s wealth of interviews between the eponymous author and broadcaster and ‘people from every profession and walk of life’ (Kowalczyk and Holmes 2020: 96). Similarly, the BBC’s long-running programme Desert Island Discs, where prominent people tell their life stories in connection to a number of records, is described by the editors of the first scholarly volume on it as: ‘a massive research project’ and that ‘the creation in 2011 of the online archive has created the opportunity for researchers to exploit [it]’ (Brown, Cook and Cottrell 2017: 19). We can lament the loss of some forms of radio-ness in these examples, but to do so misses the point. What we lose in the sense of radio presence we gain back in other forms of richness: as accents and language use, as evidence of the effects of ageing on voices, perhaps as a million conversations about the weather that might help us think about our changing environment. These aspects were already entangled with radio. In thinking about radio’s future, we should embrace the irony (another important trope) that we can learn most about the value of radio archives, and the nature of radio itself, when we stop thinking so much about their being radio and instead follow their paths of meaning into new contexts.

Recalling radio (as) sound It seems obvious now that radio is sound. That is to say, it seems obvious now that radio is distinct from radiotelegraphy and consists of more than mostly morse code blips, now that radio is more clearly distinct from television broadcasting, now that ‘radio’ can refer equally to an analogue transmission, a digital stream or an algorithmic order of sound. Sound seems to be not only an essential part of radio, but the quintessential part. In scholarship, this was not always the case. In a number of histories of radio and broadcasting, the sounds themselves play a limited role in favour of institutional histories, partly because access to the sound traces could be very difficult to get, and it is their digitization that was meant to open up and democratize access to the past. In the Netherlands, much of this was done under the auspices of the Beelden voor de Toekomst (Images for the Future) project (2007–14), in which NISV participated with two other major national archives to digitize Dutch audiovisual heritage, including approximately 100,000 hours of audio (van Exel et al. 2017: 22). Precisely because sound seems the most obvious aspect of radio, this relationship bears closer scrutiny. Thinking with Fernandez, to equate radio with sound is not so much to state a fact as to employ a trope, though not always the same one. Sound is perhaps the most important metonym of radio, the part that stands in for the whole, but sounds are also important metaphors of radio, where specific aspects of sound are mapped onto the whole apparatus of radio. The placemaking sounds of bells like Big Ben or local cathedrals become markers of region and empire through the radio (Badenoch 2005; Robertson 2008). As we have already seen, radio is increasingly being re-collected both in national and transnational initiatives under the general heading of ‘sounds’, and it

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is important to consider the implications of these tropes for the way we think about and access radio from the archive. Just as it is seemingly baked into our consciousness, sound as metonym for radio has been multiply baked into what we call the radio archive. For example, NISV’s published collection policy from 2013 makes a clear distinction between the ‘core collection’ of audiovisual material and the ‘context collections’ of equipment, photographs, scripts and other written records which ‘support and deepen our understanding of the content and production of the audiovisual collections’ (Lauwers 2013: 59). As the media landscape and the institution evolve, this distinction and implied hierarchy becomes less important and is not visible in more recent policy (de Boer 2019). Nevertheless, when we go to make our call to the radio archive, we normally find that the decision to recall radio as sound has been made for us. The description in NISV’s radio collection says it contains 421,325 items as of May 2020 – and it takes for granted that these items are audio traces of radio programmes (Wigham n.d.). These figures are thrown into sharp relief, however, when we also look at the published overview of what is available per year and discover that well over half of the programmes in the archive are from after the year 2000. This obvious archival bias towards the present is not the only one to emerge from recalling radio as sound. For much of their existence, institutional sound archives have existed mostly to serve the needs of production, and so the collections are geared towards content that was useful for reuse at any given moment (Birdsall 2018). Rather than being necessarily systematic, it is often the result of the decision of the moment: ‘unlike film and television which were recorded for exhibition, radio recording was often captured sound of broadcasts as they aired’ (Battles and Patterson 2018: 415). The further effects of this are not always easy to sum up. The preservation of a programme like Desert Island Discs is largely owed to radio producers seeing it as an invaluable source of radiogenic oral history material. By contrast, in my own research on post-war Germany, recording was on scarce magnetic tape, which has meant an unfortunate bias towards preserving the extraordinary at the cost of the everyday: Manfred Bilitza was only ‘found’ through re-use. Too often, institutional gender bias is reflected in the archives as well: programmes for women were very seldom singled out for institutional preservation, and often survive only in manuscript form and/or in the personal collections outside of the official broadcasting archives (Badenoch and Skoog 2019). In the case of the prominent Dutch broadcaster and feminist Lilian van der Goot, her voice is mostly findable in the archive not from her own radio programmes, but in retrospective programmes where she was interviewed about her role in the feminist movement. Her substantial collection of manuscripts are not held at the NISV, but at the Atria centre on Gender Equality and Women’s History which she helped to found. Indeed, one of the few sound documents of her as a broadcaster is not in the Netherlands at all, but in the UNESCO archive.3 In spite of the volume we have preserved and digitized, if we recall radio only as sound traces of broadcasts, we are likely to find more silence than sound when we call to the archive for something specific. But there was always more to radio than sound, and there must be more to the radio archive than sound recordings. Josephine Dolan has long since warned against ‘collaps[ing] the distinction between the specificity of the sound archive

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and the more general terms of the radio archive’ to insist on the value of paper archives for radio research (Dolan 2003: 65). She argues that sound traces ‘cannot be isolated from the voices of the written policy statements about audition, selection criteria, scripts and performance standards that are anterior to the moment of transmission’ (ibid.: 69). Questioning the quintessential relationship between radio and sound makes us continually and fruitfully question what we consider ‘the radio archive’ to be (Keeler 2011). Similarly, Shawn Vancour of the US Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) warns that we should avoid ‘privileging sound recordings at the expense of contextualising paper documentation, and stress the need to consider non-broadcast forms of radio content’ (VanCour 2016: 400–1). Monica de la Torre has gone further and suggested that we do not need to have sound traces to hear the archive. Via a method she calls ‘sonic bridging’ she suggests that we can ‘listen for sound in unconventional places like photographs, newspapers, quarterly station reports, and in the disorganized filing cabinets at radio stations and home archives’ (Torre 2018: 449). So: if we are to make sense of radio sound, we must recall more than sound, and work harder towards a more transmedial re-collection of radio. The heavily metaphorical use of bells is a case in point: the sounds of the bells themselves are possibly the least important thing to preserve if we want to understand the power and meaning of radio invested in them. ‘Silent’ programme guides and logbooks tell us far more about their meaning than sound traces could. In fact, the sound traces would better serve as triggers of human memory than necessarily heritage in their own right. Radio has always been a multi-sensory medium, leaving traces in multiple media, including its material interfaces (Austin, 2016; Fickers 2007; Hilmes 2013), but also programme guides, popular magazines and newspapers, and film and television (Badenoch and Hagedoorn 2018; Komska 2015). To the extent these traces are digitized at all, they are often accessed separately from the sound archives, to make cross-referencing from the rich material in repositories such as the Dutch Delpher database, or the Media History Digital Library a painstaking effort.4 The BBC Genome, which takes the listings in the programme guide Radio Times as the backbone for presenting archival material is a wonderful example of how bringing these sources into dialogue can fruitfully contextualize radio from the past.5 Currently, much of the interaction and interpretation of radio and sonic events is now on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which both challenge our idea of where radio starts and stops, but also raises new questions about where ‘the radio archive’ actually is, and how it may be preserved when stored on ephemeral, privately-owned social media platforms. A further irony in treating archival sound traces as the quintessence of radio is that what we normally mean when we talk about the ‘sound’ of radio is quite different from the sound we tend to find in the archive. ‘Radio sound’ refers less to the sound of any discrete programme than the way sound is shaped by and for the radio (Föllmer 2016). To some extent, this means the sound of the radio receiver itself. A nostalgic sense of radio sound even gave rise to an app called Retro-Fi which would recreate the sound of AM radio on a smartphone. Its creators, Onyx, argued that: ‘The music of that time included many styles and sounds, but the way the music sounded was always the same, owing to the limitations of the medium’ (‘Retro-Fi’ n.d.). The sound of radio can also refer to an

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aggregate feel and identity of a station, over and above any language qualities. In their works ‘Formal Radio’, which condensed twenty-four hours of Germany’s public service broadcasts to fifteen minutes, and ‘Formal Radio Extra Cheese’, which explored twentyfour morning shows across the globe, German sound artists Christian Berner and Frank Schültge have attempted to distil this sound essence.6 The result makes no linguistic sense – and yet is instantly recognizable as radio. While Berner and Schültge’s pieces are the product of painstaking manual editing, they present us with new possibilities for how we might develop digital tools for sonic ‘distant readings’ of the radio archive, where the rhythms, repetitions, emotional registers and sonic horizons of expectations begin to become apparent.

Recalling radio as speech Speech and voice remain the most compelling and complex tropes of radio, involving us once more in the tropological slippage between metonym and metaphor. The multiple voices that sound through a radio receiver make radio intelligible as the voice of home or exile, of a local community or social movement, of nation or empire. Katie Moylan has highlighted how community radio makers produce accented radio that highlights diasporic communities’ multiple belongings and multi-sited concerns (Moylan 2014). Voices produce speech, which can designate any human linguistic expression, but, not least through the radio, becomes representative of participation in public spheres and discourse. Like radio itself, the radio archive can and should call us to listen in to and listen out for our diverse pasts (Lacey 2013). Shepperd, Keeler and Sterling (2016) have argued compellingly that radio archives can potentially open up to us a far wider array of voices from the past. Both the literal and metaphorical importance of speech and voice highlight the importance of recognition when we call to the radio archive for traces of their literal antecedents. In the digital era, recognition is a function often carried out by specialized digital tools to enrich the metadata of digital files, recognizing such elements of broadcasts as named entities, speakers and speech. Working with the Media Suite, Willemien Sanders and her team have begun to delve into gender divisions in Dutch broadcasting, showing an enduring gender disparity in presenters of Dutch programmes. Zooming in on political debates, the team was also able to get a closer look at who was allowed to speak and who was interrupted (Sanders 2021). In the Media Suite, automatic speech recognition (ASR) is being applied to the bulk of the audiovisual collections, including most of the radio collection, which renders the spoken text (with exceptions I will discuss below) searchable and pinpointable to the time in the broadcast where it occurred. ASR offers the potential to open up new and fruitfully democratic explorations of the radio archive by rendering every word spoken with no hierarchies of social position or judgements of worth. Further, we are no longer reliant on archival authority and authorized metadata to try to find mention of the topics that concern us. From a decolonial perspective, such capability may indeed help us to read against the ‘archival grain’ (Stoler 2010) to recognize voices or names that

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the archive routinely ignores. At the same time, having such speech transcripts available is likely to confront us in new ways with the racist language and knowledge that have been part of white ‘cultural archives’ (Wekker 2016). We must also be aware that actually existing ASR has a tendency to marginalize voices that were already marginalized: ‘language recognisers have difficulty with the speech of children, dialects, or Dutch people with a migration background’, writes Clariah’s chief technical officer Roeland Ordelman (2021), stressing the need for an inclusive ASR. Looking at results, it is difficult to assess the inclusivity afforded by digital recognition like ASR: it is hard to grasp what is not recognized and why. In exploring how the Media Suite captures transnational aspects of radio, I explored whether searching for non-recognized content would generate a useful overview of these margins of the archive. Generally speaking, accuracy is measured in terms of word-error-rate (a percentage of false-word transcriptions) and confidence scores (ibid.), meaning there is no simple way to search for the boundaries of recognition. Instead of results, we can look at the parameters of digital tools to explore how they shape how we recognize radio. In the Media Suite the most important parameter is the choice only to recognize the Dutch language, as broadly as that can be understood. This seemingly pragmatic decision has ideological effects, retroactively suggesting a monolingualism in the past that does not reflect the transnational circulation of radio sounds, nor the multilingual listening publics of the Netherlands. At the level of accent, the sonic marker of identity, ASR has a mixed effect: the inclusive ASR is quite good at recognizing words in a number of accents, and so recognizes words of a broad diversity of speakers. On the other hand, speech transcripts render accents more or less invisible, and so it is a less-effective tool for recognizing the very diversity it makes available. In the Media Suite, making ‘international’ content visible has involved developing a series of search strategies (van der Deure 2022). For example, through the simple discovery that numbers were available in multiple languages, we stumbled upon a series of local radio broadcasts in Turkish, specifically aimed at helping newly arrived migrants settle in to life in the Netherlands. Recognizing diversity can never be entirely left to automatic tools.

Recalling radio as music Since the big millennium celebrations in the year 2000, Dutch radio has carried out an annual ritual of recalling music through radio: national public service broadcaster counts down the ‘Top 2,000’ greatest songs of all time, as tallied by an annual vote of listeners. This on-air countdown comes literally from the archive: a temporary ‘Top 2,000 café’ set up in NISV’s foyer. A website now publishes the countdown along with a number of core statistics from every year.7 This offers us extremely valuable data on the way music forms, shapes and mediates memories (van Dijck 2009). There can be no doubt that radio archives offer some of the richest repositories of music we have. Glancing through the lists of 2,000 songs is already somewhat overwhelming – and they barely scratch the surface of radio’s musical output and potential archive. The Media Suite radio collection has 106,368

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programmes labelled ‘music programme’ (20,656), ‘music performance’ (6,892), or ‘music broadcast’ [muziekuitzending] (78,820), each of which may well contain multiple musical works. Radio has played and forgotten more music than any of us will ever remember. On the public-facing website of the Top 2,000, however, it points away from the archive and offers access to the songs only via buttons for Spotify and YouTube. This seems natural in the age of music on demand, but why isn’t it natural to recall music from the radio archive? Playing music, particularly from records, is one of the most iconic and natural-seeming gestures on radio. It was integral radio’s institutionalization in many places; the Netherlands’ claim to having the ‘first’ radio broadcast also stems from the ‘famous Dutch concerts’ broadcast by the engineer Hanso Idzerda from his station PCGG starting November 1919 (Mutsaers 2019: 175; Wijfjes 2019: 55). Nevertheless, music has played a disproportionately small role in historical scholarship on radio (Michelsen 2018). Some of this is due to longstanding politics of radio archives. Music comes to the radio in multiple media: as scores for radio ensembles to play, as live performances, perhaps recorded at the moment of output, or as commercial recordings (traditionally records) played out over the airwaves or digital stream. And when music is transmitted via radio, somebody usually wants to get paid: composers, performers, publishers. From the earliest years of institutionalized broadcasting to current debates surrounding artists’ royalties for streaming services, questions of the rights to broadcast music have been a site of constant struggle at national and international levels. The distinct forms of music are normally archived very differently in institutional radio archives, and this tends to mean diffuse digitization as well. The Netherlands offers a good illustration of this. The archive of recorded programmes including music has, where possible, been digitized and is available via the Media Suite radio collection. Here are a great number of classical music performances; a simple search of the word ‘orkest’ (orchestra) gets 7,500 programmes of music genres. The inventory of industry records (handelsplaten in Dutch) – though not the sounds themselves – held by NISV are in the Media Suite, but not included in the radio collection. To find these, one must search the entire NISV collection. From 1941 to 2013, public service broadcasters had a single music library, the Muziekbibliotheek van de Omroep (broadcasting music library) which held broadcasting scores, both printed and handwritten, of broadcasting music, from classical to light, to incidental tunes, jingle melodies and background music for radio drama. Though now precariously funded, a large quantity of their scores are now digitized and online on the website Muziekschatten (‘music treasures’).8 Finally, the library of broadcasters’ recorded music (as opposed to recorded programmes), can be found on a separate repository, Muziekweb, which is also connected to NISV.9 While once an integral part of radio production, and mercifully still preserved, we do not currently have the infrastructure to recollect them in the same frame. Because music archives remain such an active and integral part of radio’s characteristically recombinatory production, it can be hard to distinguish either legally or aesthetically, between recalling radio as music and (re)producing radio. As such, music is where barriers of copyright, which have been highlighted by scholars and archivists alike as the greatest barrier to archival access (de Leeuw 2018; van Exel et al. 2017; Thylstrup 2018), are most keenly felt. The Desert Island Discs and Studs Terkel online collections deal with this by

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shortening or removing music from the programmes. The Media Suite approaches this problem by limiting access: audiovisual files only play out within the password-protected environment. As such, in the Media Suite one can listen to the full Top 2,000 countdown as it was aired, and hear how the songs are framed by announcements, commercials and news. Muziekweb, by contrast, like the Top 2,000 sites listed above, instead offers links to Spotify and YouTube. It is precisely this sequence and flow that is most characteristic of hearing music on the radio, and its programming and recommendation are one of the core functions of radio institutions. Muziekweb has stepped into the latter role, offering ‘musical advice’ and a number of curated playlists that offer some introductions to radio sounds. For the most part, however, the documentation of past sequence and flow are kept separately, if at all, in the form of programme guides or logbooks. The sequence and flow of music is not only a core aspect of how radio shapes music, it is a trope for radio itself, as the term now describes algorithm-recommended music streaming like Spotify. In the realm of heritage, too, music is beginning to come to us in this form of ‘radio’. Europeana radio, a product of the Europeana Sounds project, is an online music player offering music in three broad categories, ‘classical’ ‘folk and traditional’ and ‘popular’ which are streamed from some of Europeana’s aggregated music collections, all of which have cleared copyright.10 In the first two categories, the fact that works are by ‘unknown’ or deceased authors surely plays a role in these collections being available. The latter seems to be largely live performances rather than studio recordings. The NISV has similarly made their (rights-cleared) music content available via Groef, a new interactive phone app by studio Superposition that mimics not a ‘passive’ radio receiver, but spinning tunes queued up like a DJ – one literally needs to spin the phone.11 Such apps all echo the function, if not the mechanism or specific ideologies of taste, of radio stations in recommending and formatting music. Indeed, being able to recognize and recommend music based on its own musicological terms is a core aspect of the digital archive (Ernst 2004: 52). But there must be more to recommendation than algorithms based solely on formal properties of sound, genre markers or even random guesses when we begin to consider the conditions under which music from outside national boundaries has been gathered and used in the radio archive (Western 2019). Emily Hansell Clark has recently argued, looking at the ways that natural metaphors structure our understandings of heritage, that it is important to consider the metaphorical implications of music archives becoming a ‘resource’ to be extracted, used and depleted (Clark 2021: 10–11). Developing tools and protocols for recommending radio’s past must at the same time involve considerations of what should not be recommended for general consumption or reuse, and for what should be removed from circulation.

Recalling radio as noise When radio is recalled in art, it is often as noise. At the Tate Modern in London, ‘Babel’ by Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles presents us with the noise of multiple voices at once: a tower of analogue radio receivers tuned to a multitude of different stations. Each is ‘adjusted to the

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minimum volume at which they are audible’ and together they: ‘create a cacophony of low, continuous sound, resulting in inaccessible information, voices or music’ (Barson 2011). In ‘Nocturne’ a ‘bedtime podcast’ composed for the 2016 Radio Conference Transnational Forum, radio artist Anna Friz rejects the ‘forced intimacies’ of ‘the anechoic voice of radio’ altogether to focus attention instead on the radio tower visible from her house: I’m in the intense electromagnetic shadow that is the amplitude spike produced by that tower’s function. Electromagnetic fields exert influence. Towers transmit power. Even as I wilfully detune the radio in the house, the surplus station spills out across the dial. Small signals struggle to hold their own against it. (Nocturne 2016)

Then slowly, the static-y noise of the towers interferes. Noise is a social construct: often conceived of as sound that is ‘out of place’ akin to Mary Douglas’s famous conception of dirt as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1966). It is: ‘a sound that someone somewhere doesn’t want to be heard’ (Hendy 2013: ix). To explore noise is to discover social boundaries and the power dynamics that surround them: towers transmit power. The regulation of the radio-frequency spectrum in Europe has been carried out in the name of reducing the noise of radio interference; eliminating the literal and figurative noise and ‘chaos’ of interference also strongly entrenched in the territorial claims of public service broadcasters (Badenoch 2013; Lommers 2012; Spohrer 2008). On the receiving end, radio was born into an era of noise, where the increasing mechanization of modern life was met by a growing concern that sounds would increasingly spill over a number of boundaries and tolerances (Bijsterveld 2008). While radio enabled a new form of mass intimate listening, bringing public life as an invited guest into intimate spheres (Lacey 2013), it has also routinely come through neighbours’ walls and windows as an intruder, or deliberately used as a sonic curtain against prying ears. The radio archive itself offers some overview of the associations and cultural values of noise, as well as some hints of where we might go to find sonic documentation of it. A simple search in the Media Suite for the term ‘lawaai’ (noise) yields just over 2,000 hits, and includes reporting on street protests, airplanes, and campaigns to clean urban environments, as well as more general reflections on the noise of modern life. As can be expected, references specifically to radio as noise in the radio archive are harder to find, though telling when they appear. A hit in the ASR layer of the archives brings us to the moment Joost den Draaier, who introduced American-style DJ’ing to the Netherlands on the offshore station Radio Veronica (1960–74), tells listeners approvingly that the ‘Dave Clark Five has a lot more noise at number sixty-four’ (‘nog veel meer lawaai op vierenzestig’) (Joost mag het weten 1964). This quip underlines Hendy’s point that we must not have an entirely negative conception of noise. The case of Retro-Fi above reveals a nostalgic attachment to radioas-noise. It forms a generation marker for those who experienced the work of tuning in analogue radio, and the moment when the static became signal. My stereo as a teenager had Sellotape marks to help me find the elusive and wandering spots ‘left of the dial’ where college radio stations could be found, and my personal archive still bears the sonic marks

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of those weak signals.12 If sound becomes noise when it is out of place, to recall radio as – or through – noise is to re-place radio, in the sense that it reminds us of places of reception, of materialities of transmission and recording, and of the social embedding of these places and sounds. More importantly, recalling radio as noise also reminds us how radio involves, entangles and doubles these places (Moores 2012; Scannell 1996). In considering the analogue phenomenon of radio interference, Evi Karathanasopoulou argues that: ‘Interference carries with it the “grain” the dust of the journey of the broadcast through space’ and ‘creates a conceptual duality within which “radio” and “a radio programme” are somewhat differentiated’ (Karathanasopoulou 2014: 98). The vast stock of QSL cards held at the Dokumentationsarchiv Funk in Vienna attests to this distinction and doubleness of radio.13 This resonates with Sandra Lori Peterson’s point that noise is sound not so much simply ‘in’ or ‘out’, but creates a ‘multipleness’ that transcends places to ‘afford space’ (Petersen 2021: 139). There is always something noisy about radio, if we know how to listen for it. This brings us back to the radio archive: it seems as if the only place radio is not noise is in the archive. As sound, it is most often captured during or prior to transmission without logging its potentially noisy arrival in other places. To the extent possible, it is cleaned so that the intended sounds are recovered. It is removed from circulation and assigned a single, findable place within a single system. It is silenced until authorized to resound. The material traces of paper and machines that would attest to the literal and figurative noise of radio are held separately, often unavailable for digital recollection. As we think of archived radio in terms of noise and silence, though, we make a fruitful slip into a sonic metaphor for the ways in which radio traces are disordered, jumbled and messy. For instance, my literal search for noise (‘lawaai’) in the Media Suite speech transcripts returns a load of metaphorical noise: a great jumble of 14,449 records from sixty-two different broadcasters, representing seventy-one genres, according to the metadata tags. Half-a-century presented at once, this is a cacophony not unrelated to that of Meireles’s ‘Babel’, overwhelming and yet also compelling. Lacey suggests that this kind of overabundance of information is aptly understood as noise. It demands new skills and ethics of listening, to direct our attention not only towards what is familiar, but also towards the unknown and what is at first seemingly noisy (Lacey 2013: 193–4). The abundance in digital archives can offer us an opportunity to sit with the noise, listen out and hear things we were not looking for, and to perceive unexpected harmonies or dissonances in adjacent tones. As we step closer to the records, other forms of noise also appear. Inspecting the data on the records, as the Media Suite allows, one begins to see how many metadata fields, such as ‘broadcaster’ or ‘genre’, are not filled in. Ironically, these moments of silence generate archival noise: records appearing where they are not wanted, or harder to place or include in our searches. When we listen to the oldest record related to ‘lawaai’ it turns out that it is mislabelled, and the anti-noise campaign mentioned in the metadata do not appear in the associated sound clip (DE ZONNEBLOEM 1953). These silences and mistakes are a mark of the automatic processes by which digital records are harmonized into a single catalogue. I have referred to them elsewhere already as dissonant, but

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here I want to bring them specifically into dialogue with Karathanasopoulou’s notion of interference outlined above. Like its literal analogue counterpart, this digital noise hints at archived radio’s journey from one place to another, in this case their passage into the archive itself. Paying attention to archival noise makes us notice the work of the archive, and how archival action and knowledge has come to shape radio traces. Perceiving noise, whether sonically or figuratively, is ultimately an act of recognition by those who go to the archive. As Lacey suggests, hearing this noise is both a skill to be learned and an ethical imperative. In attempts to create and present ‘clean’ data, archives often seek to erase such dissonant aspects of archival traces, but we can instead view them as points of opening and dialogue where community can enter and to help re-place radio.

Conclusion: recalling the archive as radio Like most technical transformations, digital and digitized radio archives come with dream and nightmare scenarios. The dream is of an accessible abundance where the stories of all lost children like Manfred Bilitza will be found again; the voices, accents, emotions and interactions that were committed to radio will still be there, somewhere, to re-sound as something vital and larger into our presents. I would argue that the nightmare is not loss per se. To some extent, loss seems written in to the very now-ness of how we have perceived radio; silence and gaps are intrinsic to archives, and a consciousness of loss can guide us towards a better exploration of what traces remain. My nightmare is that instead of acknowledging loss, we will mistake a few large (like the NISV radio collection in the Media Suite) or massive (like YouTube or Spotify) online repositories for all there is of ‘the radio archive’; that we will consider such repositories permanent, stable and as having self-evident meaning and worth; that radio will only re-emerge from these repositories in commercially viable, limited canons of familiar pasts. Neither scenario will be wrought by digital technologies alone. I hope to have shown here how recalling, recollecting, recognizing and recommending radio demand our sustained attention and care if the radio archive is going to fulfil even some of the dreams we have for the coming century. Thinking playfully through some core tropes of radio has helped us here to think through some of the issues facing the radio archive as well as reflect on the multifaceted nature of the medium itself. Wolfgang Ernst has argued that the physical storage space of archives has also become an increasingly inept metaphor for digital archives, given the actively generative nature of digital archives (Ernst 2004). Sonja de Leeuw has suggested that we can best understand archives in the digital era as networks, linking knowledge beyond formal institutions (de Leeuw 2012). I will add to these notions here by suggesting that analogue radio can offer us a fruitful metaphor for what an archive can be in the digital age: transmitting out in all directions, crossing borders in airwaves shared by multiple institutions of multiple sizes, reminding us of our shared time.

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Notes 1 You can view its listing for 29 January 1948 in the Radio Times. 2 I am grateful to discussions in the Studienkreis Rundfunk und Geschichte’s working group ‘Music and Radio’ – notably Tom Wilke and Karin Pfundstein – for highlighting recommendation systems as central to understanding radio in both analogue and digital contexts. 3 ‘International Women Broadcasters Roundtable’, 1955: https://digital.archives.unesco. org/en/collection/sound-recordings/detail/a7a0e1d0-5554-4388-b6ce-eb0239c7c0a4 (accessed 14 May 2022). 4 Delpher is a partnership between the Dutch Royal Library and several university libraries in the Netherlands. See https://www.delpher.nl/; Media History Digital Library: https:// mediahistoryproject.org/broadcasting/ (both accessed 7 June 2022). 5 See: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ 6 Both pieces are currently available on the sound-sharing site Bandcamp: Formal Radio (2015) https://rebreschblumm.bandcamp.com/album/formal-radio-24-hours-in-15minutes and Formal Radio Extra Cheese: https://rebreschblumm.bandcamp.com/album/ formal-radio-extra-cheese (both accessed 15 May 2022). 7 See: https://www.top2000top.nl/home (accessed 7 June 2022). 8 See: https://www.muziekschatten.nl/(accessed 7 June 2022). 9 See: https://www.muziekweb.nl/(accessed 7 June 2022). 10 See: http://radio-player.europeana.eu/(accessed 7 June 2022). 11 See: https://superposition.cc/project/groef(accessed 7 June 2022). 12 Non-commercial college stations in the USA broadcast on mostly low power in the ‘reserved band’ of 88.1–91.9 MHz, found at the far left of a linear tuning dial. ‘Left of the Dial’ is a 1985 song by The Replacements that takes the margins of the dial as a potent metaphor for the ephemeral margins of the music scene. 13 See: https://www.dokufunk.org/index.php?lang=EN (accessed 7 June 2022).

Works cited Austin, M. (2016), ‘Experiencing Radio at the Interface: Preserving the Past and Designing the Future of Radio’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23 (2): 335–40. Badenoch, A. (2005), ‘Making Sunday What it Actually Should be: Sunday Radio Programming and the Re-invention of Tradition in Occupied Germany 1945–1949’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25 (4): 577–98. Badenoch, A. (2013) ‘Between Rock and Roll and a Hard Place: “Pirate” Radio and the Problems of Territory in Cold War Europe’, in A. Badenoch, A. Fickers and C. HenrichFranke (eds), Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War, BadenBaden: Nomos, pp. 303–26. Badenoch, A. (2018), ‘Radio-Diffusion: Re-collecting International Broadcasting in the Archive of Radio Netherlands Worldwide’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds),

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Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 209–22. Badenoch, A. and B. Hagedoorn (2018), ‘TV on the Radio/Radio on Television: European Television Heritage as a Source for Understanding Radio History’, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 7 (13): 97–113. Badenoch, A. and K. Skoog (2019), ‘Lessons from Lilian: Is Transnational (Media) History a Gendered Issue?’, Feminist Media Histories 5 (3): 9–35. Balbi, G., V. Schafer, N. Ribeiro and C. Schwarzenegger (2021), ‘Digging into Digital Roots. Towards a Conceptual Media and Communication History’, in Gabriele Balbi, Nelson Ribeiro, Valérie Schafer and Christian Schwarzenegger (eds), Digital Roots: Historicizing Media and Communication Concepts of the Digital Age, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, pp. 1–16. Barson, T. (2011), ‘”Babel”, Cildo Meireles, 2001’, Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ meireles-babel-t14041 (accessed 7 June 2022). Barthes, R. (1972), Mythologies Translated by Annette Lavers, New York: Hill and Wang. Battles, K. and E. Patterson (2018), ‘Special Forum: Radio Preservation as Social Activism’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 16 (4): 415–19. Bijsterveld, K. (2008), Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Birdsall, C. (2018), ‘Worlding the Archive: Radio Collections, Heritage Frameworks, and Selection Principles’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 197–208. Birdsall, C. and V. Tkaczyk (2019), ‘Listening to the Archive: Sound Data in the Humanities and Sciences’, Technology and Culture 60 (2S): 1–13. Brown, J., N. Cook and S. Cottrell (2017), ‘Introduction: Desert Island Discs in Context’, in J. Brown, N. Cook and S. Cottrell (eds), Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context, Oxford: British Academy, pp. 1–28. Clark, E. H. (2021), ‘Introduction: Audibilities of Colonialism and Extractivism’, The World of Music – New Series 10 (2): 5–20. Cronqvist, M. and C. Hilgert (2017), ‘Entangled Media Histories: The Value of Transnational and Transmedial Approaches in Media Historiography’, Media History 23 (1): 130–41. de Boer, T. (2019), Scherper En Breder, Hilversum: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision: https://publications.beeldengeluid.nl/pub/683 (accessed 7 June 2022). de Leeuw, S. (2012), ‘Het Archief Als Netwerk. Perspectieven Op de Studie van Online Televisie-Erfgoed’, Tijdschrift Voor Mediageschiedenis 14 (2): 10–28. de Leeuw, S. (2018), ‘Transnational Radio Research and the Digital Archive: Promises and Pitfalls’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 171–81. DE ZONNEBLOEM: ‘Anti Lawaai’-Campagne (1953) [Radio programme], KRO, 28 November. van Dijck, José (2009), ‘Remembering Songs through Telling Stories: Pop Music as a Resource for Memory’, in K. Bijsterveld and J. van Dijck (eds), Sound Souvenirs. Audio Technologies – Memory and Cultural Practices, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 107–19. Dolan, J. (2003), ‘The Voice That Cannot Be Heard’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 1 (1): 63–72.

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Douglas, M. (1966), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Ellis, J. (2012), ‘Why Digitise Historical Television?’ VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 1 (1): 27–33. Ernst, W. (2004), ‘The Archive as Metaphor: From Archival Space to Archival Time’, Open 7: 46–53. Exel, T. van, P. Keller, J. Oomen, M. Brinkerink, W. Swagemakers and L. Keijser (2017), ‘Images of the Past. 7 Years of Images for the Future’: https://publications.beeldengeluid.nl/ pub/498 (accessed 7 June 2022). Featherstone, M. (2006), ‘Archive’, Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2–3): 591–6. Fernandez, J. W. (1986), Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fickers, A. (2007), ‘Design Als “mediating Interface” Zur Zeugen- Und Zeichenhaftigkeit Des Radioapparates’, Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 30 (3): 199–213. Föllmer, G. (2016), ‘From Stationality to Radio Aesthetics Investigations on Radiophonic Sounds’, in J. G. Papenburg and H. Schulze (eds), Sound As Popular Culture: A Research Companion, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 301–12. Hendy, D. (2013), Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening, London: Profile Books. Hilmes, M. (2013), ‘The New Materialty of Radio: Sound on Screens’, in M. Hilmes and J. Loviglio (eds), Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era, New York and Oxford: Routledge, pp. 43–61. Hilmes, M. (2020), ‘Soundwork: Something to Work with’, Resonance 1 (4): 340–3. Hoyt, E. and J. Morris (2021), ‘Introduction: The Inseparability of Research and Preservation Frameworks for Podcasting History’, in J. Morris and E. Hoyt (eds), Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 1–25. Jensen, H. S. (2015), ‘Doing Media History in a Digital Age: Change and Continuity in Historiographical Practices’, Media, Culture & Society 38 (1): 119–28. Joost mag het weten – Hits Uit de Amerikaanse Top 100 (1964) [Radio programme], Radio Veronica 17 June. Karathanasopoulou, E. (2014), ‘Ex-Static but Not Ecstatic: Digital Radio and the End of Interference’, in M. Oliveira, G. Stachyra and G. Starkey (eds), Radio: The Resilient Medium, Sunderland: University of Sunderland, pp. 95–100. Keeler, A. (2011), ‘Only the Sound Itself?: Early Radio, Education, and Archives of “NoSound”’, Sounding Out! (blog), 24 October: https://soundstudiesblog.com/2011/10/24/thesound-itself-early-radio-education-and-archives-of-no-sound/ (accessed 7 June 2022). Ketelaar, E. (2001), ‘Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives’, Archival Science 1 (2): 131–41. DOI:10.1007/BF02435644. Komska, Y. (2015), ‘Sight Radio: Radio Free Europe on Screen, 1951–1965’, in Anna Bischof and Zuzanna Jurgens (eds), Voices of Freedom –Western Interference? 60 Years of Radio Free Europe in Munich and Prague, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 55–75. Kowalczyk, S. T. and A. Schein Holmes (2020), ‘The Studs Terkel Radio Archive: A Journey to Enhanced Usability for Audio’, Journal of Archival Organization 17 (1–2): 1–18. Lacey, K. (2009), ‘Ten Years of Radio Studies: The Very Idea’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 6 (1): 21–32. Lacey, K. (2013), Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Lacey, K. and M. Hilmes (2015), ‘Editors’ Introduction: Women and Soundwork’, Feminist Media Histories 1 (4): 1–4. DOI:10.1525/fmh.2015.1.4.1. Landwehr, A. (2016), Die Anwesende Abwesenheit Der Vergangenheit: Essay Zur Geschichtstheorie, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. Lauwers, M. (2013), Collectiebeleid Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Lommers, S. (2012), Europe – On Air: Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Michelsen, M. (2018), ‘Music Radio Research’, in M. Michelsen, M. Krogh, I. Have and S. Kaargaard Nielsen (eds), Tunes for All? Music on Danish Radio, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 15–29. Moores, S. (2012), Media, Place and Mobility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Moylan, K. (2014), Broadcasting Diversity: Migrant Representation in Irish Radio, Chicago; Bristol: University of Illinois Press; Intellect Ltd. Mutsaers, L. (2019), ‘De Grootste Gemene Deler. Van Populaire Radiomuziek Naar Popmuziekradio’, in Huub Wijfjes (ed.), De Radio. Een Cultuurgeschiedenis, Amsterdam: Boom, pp. 173–212. Nocturne by Anna Friz (2016), [Podcast Mp3]: http://www.transnationalradio.org/node/72/ (accessed 7 June 2022). Ordelman, R. (2021), ‘Spraakherkenning Voor Onderzoek in AV-Archieven – Twintig Jaar Ontwikkeling in Nederland -’, AVA_NET, 15 April: https://www.avanet.nl/ spraakherkenning-voor-onderzoek-in-av-archieven-twintig-jaar-ontwikkeling-innederland/ (accessed 7 June 2022). Petersen, S. L. (2021), ‘Noise Is Sound Not in Place’, in S. Krogh Groth and J. G. Mansell (eds), Negotiating Noise Across Places, Spaces and Disciplines, Publications from the Sound Environment Centre at Lund University, Lund: Lund University, pp. 137–42. ‘Retro-Fi.’ n.d. http://onyx3.com/Retro-Fi/ (accessed 31 March 2022). Robertson, E. (2008), ‘”I Get a Real Kick out of Big Ben”: BBC Versions of Britishness on the Empire and General Overseas Service, 1932–1948’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28 (4): 459–73. Sanders, W. (2021), ‘“Ladies and Gentlemen…”. Female and Male Presence in Dutch Popular Media’, 19 March 2021: https://mediasuitedatastories.clariah.nl/gender-research-intro/ (accessed 7 June 2022). Scannell, P. (1996), Radio, Television, and Modern Life: A Phenomenological Approach, Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Schnabel, Ernst ([1947]1988), Der 29. Januar 1947 [Cassette], Stuttgart: E. Klett. Seubert, D. (2020), ‘Preserving Radio Broadcasts: Thoughts on Future Directions’, Journal of Archival Organization 17 (1–2): 13–18. Shepperd, J., A. Keeler and C. Sterling (2016), ‘Sound Recognition of Historical Visibility: The Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress: Introduction’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23 (2): 229–32. Spohrer, J. (2008), ‘Ruling the Airwaves: Radio Luxembourg and the Origins of European National Broadcasting, 1929–1950’, Thesis, New York: Columbia. Stoler, A. L. (2010), Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tacchi, J. (2000), ‘The Need for Radio Theory in the Digital Age’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 3 (2): 289–98.

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Thylstrup, N. B. (2018), ‘Cultural Memory in the Digital Age’, in G. Föllmer and A. Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 183–95. Torre, Monica de la (2018), ‘Sonic Bridging: Locating, Archiving, and Preserving SpanishLanguage and Bilingual Radio in the United States’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 16 (4): 446–53. Überleben Im Nachkriegsdeutschland (2000) [CD], Stimmen Des 20, Jahrhundert: Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv. Uricchio, William (2010), ‘TV as Time Machine: Television’s Changing Heterochronic Regimes and the Production of History’, in Jostein Gripsrud (ed.), Relocating Television. Television in the Digital Context, London: Routledge, pp. 27–40. VanCour, Shawn (2016), ‘Locating the Radio Archive: New Histories, New Challenges’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23 (2): 395–403. van der Deure, M. J. (2022), ‘Curated Playlist: Finding and Understanding International Radio in the Media Suite’, CLARIAH Media Suite Subject Tutorials: https://mediasuite.clariah.nl/ learn/subject-tutorials (accessed 7 June 2022). Wagner, H.-U. (2014), Vermisstenmeldungen im NWDR‘, Die NDR Chronik, 1 April: https:// www.ndr.de/der_ndr/unternehmen/chronik/Suchmeldungen-im-Radio-nach-demKrieg,suchdienst101.html (accessed 7 June 2022). Wekker, G. (2016), White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. Western, T. (2019), ‘Start the Forgetting Machine! A Review of Online Sound Archives of European Traditional Music’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 51 (November): 325–30. Wigham, Mari, n.d. ‘Sound and Vision Archive – Radio’, CLARIAH Labs Dataset Registry: https://mediasuitedata.clariah.nl/dataset/radio-collection-daan (accessed 30 March 2022). Wijfjes, H. (2019), ‘Archeologie van Radio-Omroep’, in H. Wijfjes (ed.), De Radio. Een Cultuurgeschiedenis, Amsterdam: Boom, pp. 19–57.

28 Hyperlocal Radio Reclaiming Conversation through Social Broadcasting Lucia Scazzocchio

Introduction Recent developments have contributed to a transformation in broadcasting: a shift to mainstream podcasting as large corporations now begin to dominate this space, the homogenization of local broadcasting and a reinforced polarization through personalized programming and newsfeeds. These changes have created a demand for what I am calling ‘social broadcasting’; an authentic interactive means of social engagement dedicated to micro-communities, a new category of broadcasting with its own set of devices. In this chapter, I demonstrate how social broadcasting enables a reclaiming of conversation at source in micro-communities, providing a counterpoint where these communities can control their narrative. I will show how social broadcasting takes community radio-making into a hyperlocal context based on case studies drawn from my own work in London over a decade. Each case study illustrates social engagement in micro-settings that present different challenges, but also reveals the multi-faceted potential of social broadcasting: ●

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Kings Cross connections (Interaction with strangers); Chrisp Street on air (Mobile micro-radio); Beyond the babble (A public recording booth at Tate Modern).

The hyperlocal radio format that underpins these case studies provides a recognized framework for communication between active participants, a safe platform where a process of co-creation activates and strengthens a collective imagination. This framework responds to participants’ aspirations. It allows and promotes a space for interactive communication amongst people, including those who believe they do not have a voice.

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David Hendy predicted that the introduction of digital technologies would democratize the airwaves enabling marginalized voices to access the airwaves as ‘microbroadcasters’ (Hendy 2000: 218) which we have seen happen twenty years after that article was written with the proliferation of podcast creators. Ironically, the very technologies and changes in society that enable and democratize audio broadcasts also create the need for them as a means of human connectivity, with people becoming more isolated and searching for human-to-human ways of communicating. As Kate Lacey suggests: This is because the proliferation of voices and sounds is not in and of itself a sign of a well-functioning democratic public space, for not only does proliferation not equate straightforwardly to plurality, but it might also erode any sense of a collective public forum. (2013: 17)

Situating social broadcasting in the audio media landscape The objective of social broadcasting is to document and present real everyday experiences and conversations in relation to specific spaces, inviting reflexivity both from participants in real-time and listeners in the future. Rather than recording interviews to tell a predetermined story for a prescribed audience, these conversations are themselves as much the purpose of the social broadcast as the final audio output. Since coining my practice as social broadcasting in 2015 and laying the foundations for an emergent genre, there has been a visible shift towards community micro-broadcasting. Local organizations, arts institutions and charities for marginalized people have understood the benefits and relatively low cost of creating podcasts, audio dramas and sound works specifically for and about the communities they are connected to. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 have engendered a surge of this type of audio output currently under the podcast label. Technically they are podcasts (as these are generally downloadable speech-based audio formats), but as I demonstrate in this chapter, this hyperlocal radio-making would benefit from having a distinguishable label and its own set of conventions. The year 2021 also saw the rise and fall of the audio social networking app Clubhouse, which at its peak in 2021 became a community broadcasting space where in theory anyone (invited members of the app), could join a live discussion (Dixon 2021). Like many, I wondered if this was where radio broadcasting was heading, but it seems that this was a pandemic-inspired flash in the pan. It has, however, motivated Amazon, LinkedIn and Twitter to add audio tools to their social networking gambit (Pardes 2020). Something that shouldn’t be overlooked as these platforms compete to be key players in audio broadcasting in the future. Social broadcasting has emerged from an amalgam of contemporary radio making, community engagement and participatory art practice, setting it apart from community

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radio, oral history recording and podcasting, although it does draw from these formats. To understand what differentiates social broadcasting from existing radio/audio production and broadcast formats, some of the similarities, differences and overlaps are outlined below.

Isn’t this community radio? The emergence and popularization of community radio has democratized radio making and broadcasting, enabling non-media professionals to become involved participants. It remains a vital part of the radio landscape, galvanising linguistic and cultural minorities and recognized as a means of promoting their values of democratic empowerment and societal development (UNESCO).1 However, as Josephine Coleman observes (2021: 30–2) community radio in the UK, despite the ease of entry provided by digital technologies, has become formatted to studio-based-presenter-led programmes with community participation often limited to ‘experts’ or (local) celebrities interviewed in the studio, or public participation via the phone-in. When community members are recorded in the field, there is often a meta-narrative guiding the production with a presenter using these recordings as voiced illustrations of a topic. This has been my personal experience of volunteering at community radio stations and in her analysis of four community radio stations, Coleman (2021) also notes very little location recording, with an emphasis on studio presenting for music shows, internet news gathering and some in-studio interviews in both the training side for volunteers and staff and the broadcasts. Even though conversations are guided, social broadcasting involves a co-creation process to facilitate open-ended conversations rather than what is traditionally described as an interview. Rather than inviting community members into the studio, radio is taken out of the studio into spaces of encounter, levelling out the hierarchy that inevitably happens even in a community radio context.

Sounds like oral history … Social broadcasting overlaps with oral history methodology by recording voiced memories, experiences and opinions. However, interviews recorded as oral history are often based on personal interpretations, they are recorded as factual rather than exploratory documents. There is little space for conversation and no room for affect: ‘The final objective is not to interpret, but to record factual evidence and, thereby, to create primary documents from which historians can reconstruct the past.’2 Social broadcasting gains from not needing to adhere to established conventions for creating historical documents. Oral history interviews are usually created as closed documents to be archived with minimal editing, as this would be tampering with a

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historical document. Their unedited ‘pure’ nature means that the listener has to filter through long non-curated interviews. Social Broadcasting does borrow from this method of direct line of inquiry, but leaves interpretation open to create authentic recordings that can then become part of an evolving living archive. Examples of this methodology can be observed in StoryCorps (now the largest collection of human voice recordings archived at the US Library of Congress with a selection of these recordings edited and made available to a general audience as an NPR radio show and podcast)3 and an online archive with themed compilations made available for public listening. The Listening Project (The BBC’s version of this format inspired by StoryCorps), delivers edited and compiled versions of recorded conversations on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds and the unedited recordings are archived at the British Library (BBC 2012). My social broadcasting practice takes this further by collating these recordings into montages more akin to radio feature making, which according to John Biewen (2010), creates something true by synthesizing chaotic material into a cohesive idea, allowing something closer to the real to come through. The montage of diverse voices around a theme inspires more open interpretation. Multiple perspectives and testimonies instil a deeper understanding of narratives in their social and historical context.

Just call it podcasting Since Ben Hammersley introduced the portmanteau word podcast in 2004, referring to downloadable speech-based audio content, this term has since become more synonymous with particular formats; expert/celebrity conversational interviews and chatty-style social commentary between presenters. The ease of access and low-cost nature of production means that the majority of podcasts produced by non-broadcast professionals have become a substitute or companion to the blog, sitting comfortably alongside other social media propagation. There has been a distinct shift away from the amateur podcasters seemingly motivated to build communities through ‘altruistic affective labour’ (Sullivan 2019), towards a professionalization of the medium. Mainstream media interest in podcasting has resulted in expert or celebrity interviews and chat, neatly labelled by Martin Spinelli as ‘chatcasts’ (2019: 1–17), now dominating the space.4 However, the advancement and accessibility of high-quality, low-cost and light digital portable recording equipment, easily accessible editing software and the accessibility of digital platforms, have also generated adoption by micro-communities underrepresented by news outlets as they delocalize. The participation from community members and this hyperlocal storytelling outweighs concerns about output distribution around audience numbers. A US-wide example has been initiated by the Public Radio Exchange – PRX Gateways Cities Audio Project launched in 2020, inviting local residents to podcasting workshops in ten underrepresented cities across the USA. According to Kerri Hoffman

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(CEO at PRX) ‘Podcasts can be successful even if they don’t have a massive audience. They can just reach the right audience’ (Scire 2021). This community podcasting adopts and uses the tools and platforms of podcasting to disseminate and share audio works and productions, moving beyond the conventions that have developed around podcasts over the last decade, experimenting with both form and content. It could not exist without these new technologies. These enable active participation in a familiar space (taking radio out of the studio) and allow for a co-creation process where participants can play an active role in recording and production. This adheres to my definition of social broadcasting.

Why social broadcasting? Social broadcasting follows social interactions at source, where they happen. This implies reflexive social elements, which invariably shed a light on the gaps and the margins in society. The social is made up of everyday encounters with all their complexities and contradictions enabling the representation of social exclusion in its lived reality as a social phenomenon. The social that I am considering here points to a more authentic version of a shared lived experience than what is represented through social media, for example. Any space of social encounter is a nexus of relationships that can potentially expose social paradoxes and trends through lived experiences. Conversations in these spaces not only reveal present opinions and attitudes but can also hint at strategies of coping and adaptation to the social context, therefore acting as potential novel conduits for conviviality. Seemingly mundane or everyday conversations implicitly provide insights into wider society. As theorized by Erving Goffman in his study of encounters as social arrangements, these involve ‘A mutual and preferential openness to verbal communication’ (1961: 10). Some of the devices that I have developed or adapted for recording in social spaces of encounter to encourage and record these types of conversations are as follows; recording in a predefined space as a place of interaction (such as a train station, a church or a bus stop, a mall, and these encounters are random and I encourage this even though research has been done beforehand about the place), creating a dedicated place for conversations as an installation or mobile radio studio, establishing the space as a set (a social stage where people will interact, there is still an element of randomness but they are invited to enter this constructed space and providing participants with the tools and training to record each other in private).5 Whether accessing a defined space of interaction or creating a ‘stage’ for a space of interaction, taking the recording process out of the conventional radio studio invariably shifts the power dynamic. This shift gives ownership and agency to participants, having a profound impact on what is said and how it is said.

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Case study: King’s Cross connections Accessing a space This montage piece is comprised of conversations recorded over a day at King’s Cross Station, London (Scazzocchio 2018). The train station as the space of encounter offers a live example of a spatial nexus. Here I interacted with people’s involvement with the space as they were waiting (for a train or a person), using the station as a stage with a predefined set of props (seats, signs, ticket barriers, etc.) creating a catalyst for connection by encouraging conversations between strangers that inevitably established points of connection. Woman 1: ‘So where are you travelling to today?’ Woman 2: ‘I’m going to Leeds.’ Woman 1: ‘Is it the 1 o’clock to Leeds?’ Woman 2: ‘It’s 12.35.’ Woman 1: ‘Ah so that’ll be t’one before me, so I could tell that you were kind of from that way.’ Woman 2: ‘Really?’ Woman 1: ‘Yeah.’ Woman 2: ‘I’m amazed actually.’ Woman 1: ‘I don’t know I just kind of had a feeling because I thought, she’s sat here waiting and I thought she would be going that way towards Leeds, do you know what I mean? I don’t know.’ Woman 2: ‘Yeah well I’m only Yorkshire ’til I was 8, I mean I was born there.’ Woman 1: ‘I’ve been in Yorkshire all my life so …’

In this case, the microphone held by me as the facilitator initiates a conversation that may not have happened spontaneously. There is implicit reflexivity about social connection between two women sitting side-by-side in the waiting area. This is the beginning of their realization of shared experiences in their Yorkshire lives far from London. By introducing themes in conversation around serendipity, luck and chance, connections between participators were made both directly and indirectly. It is important to note that this method of ‘in the field’ recording, where participants have not agreed to be interviewed or recorded in advance, needs careful consideration with regards to consent and use of recordings. Typically, with pre-arranged interviews for oral history recording and audio (podcast and radio) broadcast, participants will have time in advance to consider their options, will be asked to sign a consent form after the interview and will have the possibility to revise this consent in the future. This consent will clearly state how the recordings are being used and waive any rights to compensation in the future. I have developed a simple strategy to manage consent and privacy for placed-based impromptu interactions, where time restrictions like needing to catch a train are part of the challenge. I do not turn on the recording equipment until I have given a full explanation of what the project is, where it will be broadcast and clearly stating that it will be available

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online (if this is the case). After our conversation or interaction, I will ask them on tape if they are happy for this recording to be used, to give me the name they wish to use or if they prefer to remain anonymous and then ask them to sign a very simple consent form with these points outlined clearly. I also leave a business card for them to contact me if they change their mind. Unless it is important within the context of the project, I take out names and identifying information in edited work.

Case study: Chrisp Street on air Micro-radio making In this example the set was a mobile radio station built to resemble a market stall to engage communities and enable discussion around the future of Chrisp Street Market (Poplar, East London), an area struggling in the face of rapid urban regeneration (Scazzocchio 2014). The installation in the market square was central to a series of events encouraging unity and engagement amongst local businesses and residents with local councillors, politicians and property developers. The radio stall generated a space for candid and open discussion, providing insights rarely attainable through more linear formats such as public forums and meetings. The parameters created by this prop – as a functioning radio studio without walls – were conducive to enabling nuanced and sophisticated group discussion between community members who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t engage in respectful and thoughtful conversation. Creating a radio-studio environment can initiate and facilitate local conversations, benefitting from the understood social conventions of radio. This enables a ‘live’ broadcast through localized speakers broadcasting to the near environment. The audience are passers-by or an invited audience, with the possibility of broadcast to a wider audience online. It is these conscious and unconscious rules and conventions of the radio-studio environment taken out of context and placed into another setting that encourage contributors to listen deeply to one another and feel listened to when they express themselves. The use of headphones and microphones locks and connects the contributors into an intimate space even if they are in a public setting. The prop-like feel of the mobile radio station (it looks like radio but isn’t as daunting), alleviates anxiety; the use of a microphone creates a sense of empowerment. The rules of radio and the role of the conversation facilitator (rather than presenter/host) establish fluid conversation where contributors are compelled to listen and respond. There is also an element of spectacle, creating a show. Yet unlike the traditional radio roadshow elevated on a stage with studio equipment hidden from view, the stage in this context is the radio-studio itself. The ephemeral nature of this type of mobile radio is more accessible to those who might be intimidated by a formal radio studio and who would possibly never consider speaking publicly on local or community radio. Here they feel open and relaxed enough to participate.

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The social context of the space also plays a part in generating the radio form. Two elements influencing the form of the broadcast are the environmental soundscape and the timeframe, both of which create their own methodological challenges. If the space is an actant, the soundscape is part of the space; the soundscape defines and draws in participants, either at the time of recording or the time listening, contextualizing the conversation. In King’s Cross Connections, the station soundscape with speaker announcements, becomes another character in the piece. The space also defines the timeframe, for example there is a limited timeframe at a railway station where participants are engaged in conversation whist they are waiting. The timeframe can be open-ended or determined in advance (radio set or created space). When it is predetermined, the time of interaction itself becomes a feature of the social nexus influencing the conversation. As a nexus captured in a lived present moment that potentially becomes a contemporary archive, the social of social broadcasting is by definition open-ended. Understandings, interpretation and affective reactions are deferred to the listener.

Case study: Beyond the Babble (Tate Modern, London) Social broadcasting as a dialectic space for social participation and transformation Techniques used in social broadcasting draw on conventional radio practices, yet can also cross into the realm of participatory art practice, as the recording equipment and setting become a stage to both initiate and record interactions. This offers scope for reaching multi-layered audiences in-situ or through further broadcasts. The participatory sound installation Beyond the Babble (Scazzocchio and Alevizou 2017) was devised as three separate experiences: participatory self-reflection through the act of conversation via the constructed audio booth; an onsite sound installation to encourage audiences to tune-in to each narrative through the babble of noise created by the surrounding exhibition space; finally, taking the audio out of the exhibition space into the public realm through the sending of ‘audio postcards’ via Twitter (audio tweets).6 The recording booth represents another type of mobile radio studio, designed to initiate private one-to-one conversation rather than open group discussion. Built to be mobile and soundproofed to some degree (in that it creates a separate space from the public space), it can be used for multiple participatory interventions to record personal narratives and voiced expressions around a given theme within the context of an immersive public experience. These broadcasts imply the use of Active Listening, developed as a therapeutic practice to convey a mutual understanding between speaker and listener (Rogers and Farson 1957). This is a central concept in both the creation of the broadcast as a creative

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process and the dissemination to involved and non-involved audiences. The open-ended character of the social broadcasting contrasts with the guided narrative and interpretive style that is dominant in radio and podcast feature or documentary making. This recording-booth structure was designed to explore notions of public and private space, self-reflection and what we choose to reveal about our identity and private self. Participants were drawn into a private conversation in what appeared to be a private space, yet the experience was public and visible. The conversations couldn’t be overheard as they were recorded but became available for public listening afterwards. Once inside the structure, the participant facing a mirror and me as the facilitator were not visible to each other and had no eye contact. The focus was entirely on the speech transmitted through microphones and listened to through headphones, again locking both participant and facilitator into the interaction. Participants were guided into a private, self-reflective conversation about notions of identity: ‘Who am I?’ whilst hearing their own voice through headphones and seeing themselves in a mirror, resulting in a slightly uncomfortable, yet on the whole revelatory experience. Many entered into a stream-of-consciousness monologue. Who I am is a very fleeting notion … what’s mostly surprised me of who I am, is that I’ve decided who I’ve become, what I am just exists in my own perception … and not of solid notions of identity … I find it much easier to flit through existence. (Felix, participant)

As the participants were taken through this guided conversation, they were asked to reflect on notions of home, belonging, citizenship, their contribution to society and finally to reflect who they are at this moment in time. It’s the first time I defined citizenship in terms of emotions. I haven’t thought about citizenship like that before; I have thought about it before in terms of metaphors. (Eugenia, participant)

Edited versions of these conversations were then broadcast in three different ways; edited recordings were added to a sound installation throughout the week as a growing babble of noise, transmitted through directional speakers around the exhibition space. Here a wider exhibition audience could tune in to each participant’s self-reflective monologue. A series of 24-second audio postcards or ‘audio tweets’ were posted throughout the week as a live representation and synthesis of the piece to reach an audience beyond the walls of Tate Modern. The final manifestation of Beyond the Babble was the recreation of the sound installation in digital form, emulating the act of being able to tune in and out of the noise and listen to edited versions of each participant’s reflections synthesizing what they had revealed in the ‘booth’ (Alevizou 2017). This reached multiple audiences, ranging from the direct participants engaged in personal reflection within the recording booth, visitors to the exhibition experiencing the onsite audio installation and audiences engaging with the audio postcards via Twitter during the week of the exhibition, to wider ongoing audiences via the digital archive on the dedicated website. The concluding impact can be defined both by the personal and the

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collective, at a moment in time as part of current debates and social transformations. As a social broadcast, Beyond the Babble created a multi-layered dialectic space of participation and transformation.

Social broadcasting: creating spaces where the power of authentic conversation can be claimed Both radio broadcasting and podcasting (chatcasts) are dominated by the interview format rather than providing a space for conversation. It is important to understand the difference and why creating a genuine space for conversation is increasingly relevant in the audio broadcast space. Philosopher Theodore Zeldin defines conversation as ‘a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, engage them in new trains of thought’ (1998: 14). In the rare moments when a radio presenter or podcast host relinquishes control and allows the chat or interview to move beyond banter or an exchange of facts into a more authentic and vulnerable space of conversation, this is applauded, yet it remains unusual. Imagine what would happen if the narrative wasn’t controlled and conversations could be claimed or indeed reclaimed? Multiple voices, narratives and points of view inevitably arise through spaces of encounters, whether they are random or engineered. A unique feature of Social Broadcasting is its ability to multiply participants and audiences through layered methods of engagement. Yet this multiplicity also echoes the emphasis on authentic social engagement in micro-communities, empowering them to control their narratives, whether the audience is localized or networked. In summary, the intersecting layers of audiences are as follows: 1. Directly involved participants who listen to themselves as well as to other participants. 2. The on-site audience listening to the conversations as they happen (as is the case of the mobile radio station). 3. A localized audience listening to an edited synthesized version in the form of an audio installation. 4. Shared listening experiences in-situ (where possible) of the finished audio output for participants as facilitated by the Social Broadcaster. Here people affected and included can commonly participate, leading to further conversation. 5. Networked audience listening via a digital or terrestrial radio platform broadening the scope yet limited to the audience of this platform. 6. Wider audience, potentially global via podcast formats or online archives. The case studies I have presented in this chapter are London-based, but I have worked with communities across the UK to create social broadcasts, which become even more relevant

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in areas with very little media coverage or interest (Micro-broadcasts in underrepresented areas of Stoke on Trent, The Wirral – Merseyside, Peterborough and North Yorkshire were particularly well received). The first two decades of the twenty-first century have brought about the democratization of the airwaves through digital technologies that Hendy announced in 2000 (2000: 218). The proliferation of podcast creators, however, has simultaneously created a greater demand for reclaiming conversation at source. The need for marginalized groups and under-represented communities to be heard and to be able to tell their own stories has been acknowledged in the Digital Radio and Audio Review (Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport 2021) as something that merits investment and support. The BBC has also reacted to this by launching the Indie Development Fund as a way to motivate and train smaller independent production companies to help them reach their diversity targets. Whether this will create any audible change in BBC Radio broadcasting remains to be seen.7 The activation of true human connectivity requires more socially reflective forms of broadcasting to allow interactive communication amongst, rather than just with, people in hyperlocal contexts. What I have described as social broadcasting has the potential to develop as a logical response to commonplace misrepresentations of marginalized voices in mainstream radio and the solipsistic conversations that have come to dominate podcasting. Futures are not linear, and neither are their narratives. Co-creative frameworks, both hyperlocal and delocalized, allow new experiments with both form and content beyond current podcasting and radio broadcasting conventions. In the space of conversation and interaction that social broadcasting cultivates, narratives can be non-linear because of the deliberate shift in the power dynamic that gives participants the ownership and agency they need to engage their personal reflexivity. This not only creates a living archive of the many ways in which people imagine, integrate and explain their experiences but also defers interpretation to listeners in multi-layered audiences in space and time. This open-ended format is perfectly suited to the more flexible and cross-platform audio/radio broadcasting of the future where multiple narratives and perspectives can share the same space.

Notes 1

UNESCO created World Radio Day in 2011 as a recognition of radio as a low-cost and popular medium which can reach the remotest areas and the most marginalized people. 2 Oral History Society UK Guidelines: https://www.ohs.org.uk (accessed 2 November 2021). 3 See: https://www.storycorps.org; https://www.npr.org/series/4516989/storycorps; and NPR podcast StoryCorps. 4 Chartable Apple Podcast charts top five are all ‘chatcasts’: 1. Kermode & Mayo’s Take; 2. That Peter Crouch Podcast; 3. Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombes’ Parenting Hell; 4. The Diary of a CEO with Steve Bartlett; 5. Sh**ged Married Annoyed: https://chartable. com/charts/itunes/gb-all-podcasts[1]podcasts (accessed 4 April 2022).

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An example of this co-creation process is ‘Radio Diaries’ founded by Joe Richman (1996) where participants are given recording equipment encouraged to tell their story in the form of an audio diary, edited to create personal audio portraits: http://www.radiodiaries. org (accessed 7 October 2019). In 2017 an app called Clammr (no longer available) enabled audio recordings to be turned into a video format and shared on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SOCIALBRDCSTS/ status/841989664563204096 posted 15 March 2017 (accessed 22 April 2022). These are now called ‘audiograms’ and a number of apps offer this, such as Headliner or Wavve. Twitter integrated ‘audio Tweets’ in 2021 but these are voice recordings and memos straight to Twitter rather than pre-recorded material. ‘The BBC Radio Indie Development Fund will see £250,000 annually allocated to back talented independent production companies, specifically supporting the BBC’s strategic priorities, with a current focus on its Across the UK plans and ambitious diversity targets’, (16 November 2021): https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/radio/ indie-development-fund

Works cited Alevizou, G. (2017), ‘“Beyond the Babble”: Social Broadcasting and Digital Citizenship’, London: Open Democracy, Open University: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/historythe-arts/visual[1]art/beyond-the-babble-social-broadcasting-and-digital-citizenship (accessed 22 April 2022). BBC (2012 to today), ‘The Listening Project’, BBC Radio 4, London: British Library. Biewen, J. (2010), ‘Introduction’ Reality Radio: Telling Stories in Sound (Documentary Arts and Culture), Chapel Hill, Durham, NC: University of Norh Carolina Press, published in association with the Centre for Documentary Studies. Coleman, J. F. (2021), Digital Innovations and the Production of Local Content in Community Radio, Oxon: Routledge. Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport (21 October 2021), ‘Digital Radio and Audio Review 2021’ Policy Paper: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1027206/Digital_Radio_and_Audio_ Review_FINAL_REPORT_single_view.pdf (accessed 22 April 2022). Dixon, G. (12 April 2021), ‘Is Clubhouse the New Talk Radio’: https://www.redtech.pro/isclubhouse-the-new-talk-radio/ (accessed 22 April 2022). Goffman, E. (1961), Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, London: Penguin University Books. Hammersley, B. (2004), ‘Audible Revolution’, Guardian 12 February. Hendy, D. (2000), ‘A Political Economy of Radio in the Digital Age’, Radio Studies Journal 7: 213–34. Lacey, K. (2013), ‘Listening in the Digital Age’, in J. Loviglio and M. Hilmes (eds), Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era, New York, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 19–30. Pardes, A. (16 December 2020), ‘The Future of Social Media is All Talk’: https://www.wired. com/story/the-future[1]of-social-media-is-all-talk/ (accessed 22 April 2022).

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Rogers, C. R. and R. E. Farson (1957), Active Listening, Chicago, IL: Industrial Relations Center of The University of Chicago. Scazzocchio, L. (2014), ‘Chrisp Street On Air’, commissioned by The Decorators, London, 14 March to 16 May 2014. Scazzocchio, L. (2018), ‘King’s Cross Connections’ commissioned for King’s Cross Story Palace, by The Building Exploratory and History Pin, London, 5 May 2018: https:// storypalace.org. Scazzocchio, L., G. Alevizou (2017), ‘“Beyond the Babble”, Who Are We?’ Open University, Counterpoint Arts, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London, 14–19 March: http://www. beyondthebabble.co.uk. Scire, S. (4 November 2021), ‘With Gateways Cities Project PRX Brought Podcasting to Massachusetts Cities Ready to Tell a New Story’: http://www.iemanlab.org (accessed 22 April 2022). Spinelli, M. and D. Lance (2019), Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Sullivan, J. L. (2019), ‘Platform Tastemakers: The Rise of Cultural Intermediaries in Podcast Discovery’, 6th ECREA (European Communication Research Association) Radio Research Section Conference, 19–21 September, Sienna. Zeldin, T. (1998), Conversation, London: The Harvill Press.

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29 Making Waves Behind Bars The (Past, Present and) Future of Prison Radio Phil Maguire

Introduction I am Phil Maguire, founding chief executive of the Prison Radio Association, a UK-based charity that runs National Prison Radio, the world’s first national radio station for people in prison. I am also co-founder of Prison Radio International – a growing global movement of people using audio for social good in criminal justice settings. My love of radio started early in life. BBC Radio 2 was a staple in my childhood home in Manchester. I loved the warm, familiar voices introducing golden oldies and easily digestible pop music. But it was late at night, under my bed covers and under the cover of darkness, that I relished the company of my ‘wireless’. Radio phone-in shows were a lifeline to me during something of a tumultuous childhood. The real voices of real people – expressing opinions or concerns, being challenged or being challenging, answering or asking big, important questions – this is what I really loved listening to. It made me feel part of something bigger than me. Late-night radio brought the world into my bedroom. It was my friend. I went to university a few years later than expected, to study International Development. During and after my studies I spent time travelling, working and living in the Global South, including a year managing an international volunteer project in Bolivian orphanages. While overseas, my tiny yellow plastic shortwave radio was my constant companion. In those pre-internet days, it was my link to the wider world. It was particularly exciting because I never knew what the tiny, crackly transistor was going to be able to pick up! Before properly embarking on a career in radio, I worked in the fields of social work and education; in children’s homes and a Pupil Referral Unit in Manchester. I loved this work, but in the back of my mind, I think I always knew that radio was calling me. At the age

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of thirty, I sold my house in order to fund my way through a Master’s degree in broadcast journalism. Learning how to tell stories in radio – stories of real people expressing opinions or concerns, being challenged or being challenging, answering or asking big important questions – this felt like coming home. I had found my niche. This post-graduate study led me to producing my first radio documentary for BBC Radio 4 and to landing a proper radio job at BBC Radio 2 – where my listening journey as a child had begun. It was a dream realized. I worked as a producer and occasional reporter on the station’s Jeremy Vine Show – the most listened to news radio show in Europe. During my time at the BBC in London, I learned of the most intriguing radio station, in the most unexpected of places. Radio Feltham had been on-air for about a decade when I first heard of it, in 2004. It was a radio station in a prison, actually a Young Offender Institution. I couldn’t get it out of my head. What a brilliant idea, I thought; a radio station set up to help young people, when they need help more than ever. Imagine my delight when the BBC advertised an internal job opportunity – nine months managing a pilot partnership prison radio project. In September 2005 I took up the temporary position of BBC Prison Radio Project Manager. It involved building on the work of Radio Feltham and exploring the potential for prison radio nationally. After nine months in post, the pilot project concluded successfully with the launch of two new prison radio projects and a growing interest in prisons around the country in radio as a rehabilitation tool. I’m not sure when it was exactly that I realized I wouldn’t be going back to my permanent role at the BBC. But the longer I worked creating radio with people in prisons, the more potential I saw in this medium to do more than just inform, educate and entertain. I knew prison radio had enormous potential to change and even to save lives. So, instead of returning to my job as a producer at the most listened to news radio show in Europe, I took a chance on leaving the BBC to help establish a little charity with big ambitions. I became the first employee of the Prison Radio Association in June 2006 and I am still in the same role sixteen years later – and I have never been more excited about the potential of prison radio than I am today. My main focus now is building a global movement of people using audio in criminal justice settings; to help people through their prison sentences; to help prisons become more effective places of rehabilitation; to stimulate public debate about the way we manage our prisons; and to make society safer for everyone. In this chapter I attempt to do something that feels rather counterproductive; to look ahead to the future, while telling something of the history of prison radio. The chapter focuses on a range of examples of radio (and audio) made by, for and about prisons and prisoners. It starts with the earliest known example of prison radio (Texas in 1938), then moves to the birth of prison radio in the UK (Radio Feltham in 1994). It shines a light on the involvement of the BBC and of the launch of the Prison Radio Association, before looking at the birth of the UK’s National Prison Radio. It looks at some recent challenges (Covid) and achievements of prison radio in the UK, before concentrating on some examples of prison radio from around the world. By any measure, prison radio is a fascinating corner of the radio world. It is radio trying to do something different, something rather specific. It is attempting to do something about how people in prisons are treated and offered rehabilitation support.

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Prison radio sets out to do something about how people who are not in prison are impacted by those who are. It also aims to address how those on the ‘outside’ view both those on the ‘inside’ and the manner in which they are held. Although the earliest known example of prison radio was in the USA, today the UK is seen globally as a ‘world leader’ in this rather niche field. But I’ll come back to that. Let’s start with where I believe it all began. The first prison radio content was produced in Texas State Prison in Huntsville in 1938. Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls was broadcast every Wednesday evening on Texasbased radio station WBAP. It was a variety show featuring incarcerated men and women performing songs and being interviewed about life behind bars. It seems this pioneering prison radio show was rather popular. The show was performed in front of a live audience of hundreds of Texans, permitted to enter the prison for the recordings. It is reported that at its peak it had as many as five million listeners and received 100,000 listener letters over the course of a year. Looking back – quite a long way back in terms of the history of radio – WBAP’s Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls seems like a remarkably progressive initiative. Enlightened state officials used the show to promote rehabilitation. Although no recordings are known to exist, there are some transcripts. Wilbert Lee ‘Pappy’ O’Daniel was a prominent radio personality in the 1920s and 1930s who later became a Democratic Party politician, elected as the 34th Governor of Texas in 1938. In 1939, speaking on Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls, O’ Daniel declared: Before the advent of radio, prisoners were exiled; citizens outside paid little attention to them … but now you hear them talk; you hear them sing; you find out they are sons and daughters of good mothers. You find out they made mistakes, thus proving that they are human. (Blue 2012: 140)

Perhaps surprisingly, little is known about what, if anything, happened in the world of prison radio in the fifty-something years following the groundbreaking Huntsville activities. However, we do know that something rather special happened on 1 February 1994 at Her Majesty’s Prison Feltham in London – the launch of Radio Feltham – the UK’s very first prison radio station. Feltham is a young offender institution (YOI) holding up to 800 boys and young men aged fifteen to twenty-one. In response to a spate of well-publicized incidents of suicide, self-harm and violence at the prison, advertising executive Mark Robinson developed the idea of a radio station to support young prisoners. Robinson wanted to bring some comfort to those living inside Feltham, especially when they were at their most vulnerable, alone or lonely, in a prison cell at night. He hoped to empower those young people by developing the radio station – their radio station – as a platform through which they could have a voice. He wanted to give those living in the prison a sense of ownership of something positive and an opportunity to engage in constructive activities in order to develop skills and confidence. Robinson convinced the prison to allow him to develop this initiative, but he couldn’t persuade them to fund it, due to the Prison Service’s concerns about whether the impact of the station would be positive and measurable. He therefore sought the support of his friend, experienced fundraiser, Roma Hooper.

Making Waves Behind Bars

Radio Feltham’s launch was viewed widely as successful. Crucially, this rather unusual initiative continued to be supported by the prison authorities, in large part due to an astute schedule of programming that was developed. Radio Feltham’s programming not only put the young people living in the prison at its heart, but it also supported the Prison Service’s own ‘reducing reoffending’ agenda. Radio Feltham’s success is in no small part due to the fact that it set out to help those living in the prison and those running the prison. In the years that followed, a handful of other UK prisons followed Radio Feltham’s model and developed their own radio projects. In the mid 2000s, Roma Hooper contacted the then Director General of the BBC, requesting support in developing prison radio in the UK. This eventually led to a nine-month partnership pilot project involving the Radio Feltham founders, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the BBC and others. Together they agreed to explore the potential for prison radio initiatives to be developed more widely. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, I managed this pilot for BBC Radio. It was based in the UK’s West Midlands and led to the launch of prison radio projects in two prisons in the region, HMP Birmingham and HMP Hewell Grange. Although this pilot was deemed a success by the project’s main sponsors (BBC and HM Prison Service), it seemed neither had any sort of plan for the future, beyond the pilot. However, given the momentum building around the idea of prison radio, and the growing interest from prisons around the country, it became clear that a genuine opportunity had presented itself. A new organization – the Prison Radio Association – was launched with the aim of maximizing the potential of prison radio to make a positive difference. The Prison Radio Association (PRA) was established as a charity in 2006 by Radio Feltham founders, Roma Hooper and Mark Robinson and Kieron Tilley, a manager at the BBC who was instrumental in getting the corporation involved in the previously mentioned partnership project. Its founding Chief Executive was me, Phil Maguire. The charity set out to offer guidance and expertise to prisons interested in developing radio projects. During the first eighteen months of operation, the charity visited and advised more than fifty prisons around the country. The charity accepted an invitation from Paul McDowell, the Governor of Her Majesty’s Prison Brixton, to make that prison its headquarters and, in 2007, recruited radio producer Andrew Wilkie to launch Electric Radio Brixton, the first prison radio station in the world to broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Electric Radio Brixton launched in November 2007. The launch programme was presented by serving prisoners alongside BBC Radio 1’s Bobby Friction. The first studio guests were renowned singer songwriter Billy Bragg and guitarist and a vocalist of The Clash, Mick Jones. The launch programme was broadcast in front of a live audience, including the future Prison Service Chief Executive, Michael Spurr. The PRA described the station as a ‘by prisoner – for prisoner’ initiative, with incarcerated people presenting all the output and being involved in every aspect of production and station development. Learning from earlier experiences at Feltham, the PRA team understood the importance of having the Prison Service on side as a strategic partner and worked hard to add value to the work of the prison authorities. The station’s output demonstratively supported the Prison Service’s Seven Pathways to Reducing Reoffending. All of the station’s output attempted to help incarcerated people take responsibility for their own lives and the impact

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their actions had on the lives of those around them, as well as providing information about support services available in prison. In 2009 the PRA and Electric Radio Brixton gained significant national and international media attention after winning four (two gold, two bronze) Sony Radio Academy Awards, at the time the most prestigious UK radio industry awards. The Prison Radio Association used the success of its award-winning radio station inside Brixton Prison to convince the UK Ministry of Justice of the potential value of a national radio station for prisoners. In 2009 Electric Radio Brixton began broadcasting as National Prison Radio – the world’s first national radio station for people in prison. The station was launched as a partnership between the Prison Radio Association and the Prison Service. The charity took responsibility for content production and running the station on a day-to-day basis. It also took legal responsibility for the output, as the holder of the Ofcom broadcasting licence. The Prison Service assumed responsibility for the technical broadcast infrastructure – ensuring people in prisons across the country could tune into the station from within their accommodation. Since its launch, National Prison Radio has grown, in terms of its output and influence. In addition to its base in HM Prison Brixton, the charity opened studios in HM Prison Styal (a prison holding women in the North West of England) in 2009 and regularly produces content from prisons around the country. Its partnership with HM Prison Service has strengthened throughout this period. In 2014 the PRA received the first annual grant from the Prison Service of £300,000 towards the cost of running National Prison Radio. During the Covid pandemic, the role of National Prison Radio became even more crucial, providing a vital lifeline to people confined to their cells. Services provided in prisons were greatly restricted. Education and training, visits with loved-ones, legal and probation appointments, chaplaincy services and a host of other support were curtailed. Many people were locked in their cells for up to twenty-three hours per day. In response, and through collaboration with dozens of partners, National Prison Radio developed the most ambitious schedule in the station’s history, providing crucial education and information during lockdown. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak a National Prison Radio Freephone line (available to everyone in prison) was launched. It offered a quick and easy way to talk to the radio station. During the first three months of lockdown the station received almost 10,000 calls, allowing its team to understand what was happening on the ground in prisons, and to put people’s concerns directly to key senior people, including the Secretary of State for Justice and the Chief Executive of the Prison Service. As we approach what we all hope is a post-Covid situation, the Freephone line remains in place and continues to attract more than 3,000 calls each month. And the Director General of Prisons continues to make a weekly appearance on the station – responding directly to questions from incarcerated people. Today, the Prison Radio Association’s activities have expanded. It continues to make life-changing media to support people in the criminal justice system, and beyond. It aims to provide information and inspirational stories, both valuable commodities in reducing a person’s likelihood of offending. In 2021 the charity’s research showed

Making Waves Behind Bars

that 76 per cent of people in prison listen to the station for an average of 11.1 hours each week. Each year the charity works in partnership with approximately 200 organizations to deliver information about their work to people in prison. National Prison Radio carries programmes that help develop a mutually supportive community within prison, promoting changes in attitudes and behaviour, encouraging interaction between prisoners and inspiring positive action by individuals during their time inside. Programmes often address issues that resonate with specific groups within the prisons, raising awareness and understanding on an individual level, and tolerance and support amongst the wider prison community. Today, the Prison Radio Association has a staff of twenty-two people and a financial turnover in excess of £1m. The Prison Radio Association’s activities have diversified but running National Prison Radio remains at the heart of its work.

Prison radio international Around the world there is a growing movement in using radio as a force for good in criminal justice settings. Today, content is being produced in many different languages, in prisons across the globe. Those working in prison radio are making a remarkable impact; their work is changing and even saving lives of incarcerated men, women and children. They are influencing how criminal justice systems operate. The movement is contributing to a growing public dialogue and interest in restorative justice policies and rehabilitative approaches in prisons. Radio is a low-cost way of providing education, building positive skills and connections, all of which are vital to routes away from crime. Leading prison radio programmes are lauded for the high quality of their work, receive positive media coverage, and have earned widespread recognition from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, Webby Awards, Peabody Awards, New York International Radio Awards, D&AD, Rose d’Or Awards, Sony Radio Academy Awards, Audio & Radio Industry Awards (ARIAS), British Podcast Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. Below I highlight prison radio case studies from ten countries in four continents.

Australia – Prisoner Radio Network The Prisoner Radio Network is an informal network of like-minded people dedicated to broadcasting prisoner voices in Australia. Prisoner radio in Australia is represented by a mixed bag of programmes. This is because the Australian prison system does not operate at a national level – each state and territory has its own system of incarceration, which means different legislation (and government departments) for each of those jurisdictions. The unifying factor for prisoner radio in Australia is its well-established, nearly fifty-year-old, community radio sector and this is where most prisoner radio can

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be heard. The Prisoner Radio Network operates a website and social media platforms that act as places to promote, network and share prison-related radio and audio production. A volunteer, grassroots organization, the Prisoner Radio Network launched in 2018 at the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia’s national conference. It does not produce prisoner radio itself but acts as a central networking point for broadcasters across the country. The Prisoner Radio Network is coordinated by Dr Charlotte Bedford and Dr Heather Anderson, who are dedicated to action research projects that further knowledge and understanding of the benefits of prisoner radio, in Australia and internationally.

Australia – Beyond the Bars Beyond the Bars is a project founded by 3CR Community Radio in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. It began with a single live radio broadcast in 2002 from Port Phillip Prison, and since 2004, a Beyond the Bars highlights CD has been produced and audio made available online. Singer–songwriter, broadcaster and Mutti Mutti man Kutcha Edwards, and Aboriginal broadcaster and community advocate the late Gilla McGuinness helped found the programme and drive its annual presentation. The project is a series of live radio broadcasts featuring the voices, songs, poetry, opinions and conversations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison. Its purpose is to give voice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members within the prison system in Victoria and to include them in the annual National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) celebrations. Each year Beyond the Bars broadcasts from six prisons and features approximately 100 incarcerated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Australia – Jailbreak Australia’s first prison radio programme, Jailbreak, launched locally on Sydney’s 2SER 107.3 FM community radio as a thirty-minute weekly programme in November 1997. Jailbreak’s aim at that time was to support the families and communities of people in custody. Jailbreak is supported by the New South Wales (NSW) Health Department and now aims to provide support to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and their families, as part of the state’s strategy to minimize the spread of blood-borne viruses and promote healthy lifestyles among people in prison. The Jailbreak Health Project (JHP) is funded to produce ninety-minutes of weekly music and storytelling, including three minutes of health information. Jailbreak broadcasts locally on Redfern’s (Indigenous) community radio Koori Radio 93.7 FM and nationally and on Australia’s digital Community Radio. The project aspires to a future based on the Prison Radio Association’s UK-based station, National Prison Radio.

Making Waves Behind Bars

Hungary – Adj Hangot Egyesület (Speak Out Association) A Hungarian prison radio charity was founded in 2013 by a small group of Budapestbased radio presenters and psychologists. They set out to adapt and implement the initiative of the UK’s National Prison Radio to the Hungarian prison system. Bars FM launched initially at Vác Penitentiary, a middle- to high-security prison for men, with the charity later opening two more radio stations, one at a remand prison and another at a prison for women. The radio programmes were produced by and for prisoners. Participation in the projects was voluntary and open to all prisoners. Volunteers received training in editing and journalism and took part in team-building activities. In 2017, the work of Adj Hangot Egyesület (Speak Out Association) was abruptly terminated by the prison authorities, as part of a wider clampdown on charity activity behind bars. The founders are hopeful of reinitiating the projects if Hungary sees a change of government. During its four years of operation, Adj Hangot Egyesület describes its achievements as including the following: ●

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Two years after the launch of the radio project almost half (48.6%) of the prisoners tuned in to Bars FM several times a day and another quarter (24%) daily. A Bars FM radio reporter won the special prize award for human rights reporting in both 2016 and 2017. Several talks, human library projects with prisoners or ex-prisoners at schools, universities and festivals. First press conference in Hungary, where prisoners, prison officers and charity members sat at the same table. First prison radio conference in Hungary, organized and led by prisoners and charity members together. Participation at a week-long popular festival three years running, where visitors could familiarize themselves with prison life. Photovoice project – prison radio presenters described what freedom meant for them in photographs. Exhibitions and talks were held in five cities.

India – Tinka Tinka Foundation Tinka Tinka Foundation is an Indian Public Charitable Trust which works on prison reforms by supporting rehabilitation through art, culture, literature and media. Prison radio is an important part of the foundation’s work and in July 2019 it launched its first prison radio project in District Jail Agra, situated in the largest state of India, Uttar Pradesh. This prison is one of the oldest surviving prison buildings in India. At the time of writing (May 2022), Tinka Tinka has launched nine prison radio projects across three Indian states. The work of the foundation has inspired the launch of prison radio in several

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other states. Tinka Tinka is also responsible for launching Tinka Jail Radio Podcasts, the only podcasts produced inside Indian prisons. Dr Vartika Nanda (Tinka Tinka’s founder, a prison reformer and media educator and head of the Department for Journalism at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi University), describes prison radio as an awareness-raising internal communication system which has been particularly useful in supporting people in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Israel – Radio Focus Radio Focus is the first and only rehabilitation radio station in Israel and the second national prison radio in the world, after the UK. It was founded by social entrepreneur Karine Obadia Rap. Located within the walls of detention facilities in Ayalon prison (Ramla) and now in Neve Tirza women’s prison, where prisoners transmit their voices to other prisoners. Prisoners learn to use their voice with confidence and respect for positive purposes. The Radio Focus team say of the station: ●

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Radio Focus is the voice of prisoners in Israel; it is their radio station. It is a channel for conveying constructive messages to prisoners by prisoners about a range of issues, for example regarding health and crime prevention. Radio Focus provides vocational training and work experience in the field of audio production. Radio Focus gives prisoners the opportunity for personal expression, to take initiative and responsibility, and to express themselves creatively. The radio station helps its audience and prisoner production team with personal development through the promotion of dialogue, discussion, listening, understanding and reflection. Participating prisoners develop a range of life skills, including working as part of a team, working under pressure, mathematics, computing and language literacy. Radio focus offers prisoners the opportunity to succeed at something positive and tangible – and to have that success recognized and celebrated.

Norway – RøverRadion RøverRadion is an award-winning weekly radio programme that has been made by incarcerated people inside Norwegian prisons continuously since 2014. The RøverRadion team currently produce radio in studios in five prisons: Agder Prison (Froland Unit); Bergen Prison; Bredtveit Prison; Indre Østfold Prison (Eidsberg Unit); and Oslo Prison. Since its inception, more than 160 incarcerated people have spoken into a RøverRadion microphone. In 2017, RøverRadion became the only prison radio programme in the world to broadcast nationally, outside the prison walls, through a collaboration with Norway’s national public broadcaster, NRK. As well as a growing loyal audience inside prisons,

Making Waves Behind Bars

today RøverRadion is listened to by tens of thousands of people across Norway. These broadcasts not only give a voice to people inside, but they are changing the conversation about crime and the criminal justice system across the country. RøverRadion works as a bridge between prison and society on the other side of the wall. The organization is concerned with freedom of speech and it works to help prisoners’ voices be heard in society. RøverRadion has received multiple awards for shows about subjects including drug use, mental health, sexual health, rehabilitation, questions of justice and life in general behind bars. RøverRadion is also an important source of information for people who are incarcerated. It provides information about prisoner rights and about service available to support people inside prison and after release. ●

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In 2017 RøverRadion became the first prison radio in the world to broadcast regularly on a national radio station, NRK Since it was founded, RøverRadion has worked with approximately 150 inmates as editorial staff, across six different prisons. RøverRadion also broadcasts inside prisons through various channels. The goal is to create a single system for all prisons in order to be able to directly reach every prison cell in Norway. RøverRadion carries out multiple projects and campaigns targeted towards the prison population. The organization also works with the editorial staff on a diversity of projects, after release. The show has received multiple nominations and also won three Prix Radio Awards – Norway’s ‘radio Oscars’. RøverRadion is actively working towards influencing Norway’s criminal justice system by meeting with government politicians, the justice minister, prime minister and other central decision makers. RøverRadion wishes to increase its representation in the Norwegian prison population, and is constantly working towards visiting every prison in Norway, to make radio or to establish autonomous departments in different prisons.

Simen Iskariot Larsen, former prisoner and participant in RøverRadion in 2015 and 2016 said: After living many years on the edge of society, it was easy to think I didn’t belong there to begin with. When your self-worth and self-esteem is low, taking drugs can seem like the only solution. That someone thought I had something to say that was worth hearing, turned my world around. Joining RøverRadion made me look at the world and see that not all my bridges were burned down. Without RøverRadion, I would probably be sitting somewhere with a needle in my arm, be in prison, or worse. Now I no longer burn the candle at both ends. I am studying criminology, meeting with community leaders, helping others with the same experiences as me, and having talks in front of hundreds of people. And I am mastering it!1

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Poland – University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn Prison radio stations are located in almost every correctional institution in Poland. These stations can only be heard within the prison confines and concentrate mainly on retransmitting programmes of popular radio stations; however, they also share news from inside prison and support the rehabilitation process through educational programming. All of them use the closed-circuit cable system of broadcasting. This is mainly connected to the fact that this way of transmitting the radio signal was widespread in Poland after the Second World War. The new communist regime was interested in the development of radio as a tool of propaganda. They were created in housing estates, workplaces, dormitories and prisons. ●

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There are around 150 prison radio stations active in Poland; There is no formal network between the different prison radio stations; They distribute their programmes using closed circuit cable system; Most of the time they re-transmit programmes of popular radio stations; A core element of every programme are announcements with an obligatory menu for the day; Every year there is a contest organized ‘Living History – My Small Homeland – My Family – Me’, for the best broadcast prepared by prison radio journalists, hosted by pre-detention centre in Koszalin; Primary goal of every prison radio is taking part in the rehabilitation process of prisoners; Prison radio is the most egalitarian medium in prisons – not everyone has a TV-set in the cell, but everyone has a radio loudspeaker.

Republic of Ireland – Inside Radio Inside Radio is a new initiative being developed by the founder of the Irish Prison Radio Network, Davin O’Callaghan. It aims to present and produce talk- and music-based content for the inmates in the Republic of Ireland via a dedicated channel on the in-cell television streaming service. During 2020 Davin began developing this prison radio service remotely, but with full support of the governor of Midlands Prison – the largest prison in Ireland. Inside Radio has been piloting a series of three-hour music-based radio programmes for weekend evening broadcast, to offer companionship and late-night entertainment after lights out. As soon as conditions allow, Inside Radio intends to work on-site with the prison’s education department to train prisoners in production – adding to the station output. As soon as is possible, the station hopes to broadcast prisoner-produced content across the weekends, complemented by automated content during the week. Within three years Inside Radio plans to broadcast 24/7 to all of the 4,000+ prisoners in the Republic of Ireland’s twelve prisons.

Making Waves Behind Bars

Scotland – shmu Station House Media Unit (shmu), established as a charity in 2003, is one of the core cultural organizations in Aberdeen, and is at the forefront of Community Media development in Scotland, supporting residents in the seven regeneration areas of the city in radio and video production, traditional and online publications, music production and digital inclusion. The organization also supports other disadvantaged communities, both geographic and communities of interest, with an employability and training arm and a programme for offenders, both pre and post release. shmu has been supporting programmes in prisons for over ten years and runs a Creative Media Unit in HMP Grampian in North East Scotland, which includes a radio station (Con Air) which supports both adult male and female prisoners to produce and present shows which are broadcast through the prison’s TV system in cells across the prison. In addition to support within the prison, shmu also provides support through-the-gate and offers training and long-term volunteering opportunities within the community. ●

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Providing the first cross-platform, peer-led, Creative Media Unit (CMU) within a UK prison and the only Scottish Prison to broadcast National Prison Radio. Supporting 646 prisoners to take part in 2,500 sessions of radio, film, music and magazines and 143 prisoners to receive post-release support and engagement. Supporting male prisoners, female prisoners, young offenders and protection prisoners to engage in accredited courses and have a voice through their prison radio. Building meaningful and sustained relationships with prisoners – allowing successful transitions back to the community and ongoing engagement and participation. Some of our top achievements: 79 full SQA awards (level 5) & 45 partial SQAs (level 5), 42 Koestler Awards, including 3 platinum awards, 7,222 pre-release volunteering hours, 1,454 hours of prison radio, 823 original songs, 48 films and 10 TV shows & 5 magazines producing 3,000 copies. Getting the word out there – we presented at multiple events, including Social Work and SPS conferences and had two articles published in the Inside Times. Some of our prisoner films were also part of National Campaigns to highlight key topics such as Mental Health and Substance Misuse. Creating employment opportunities for prisoners in the CMU as Peer Mentors and Media Assistants. Delivering our project outcomes successfully: 80% of participants reported an improvement in their self-confidence and confidence speaking in a group; 85% of participants reported an improvement in their self confidence in a oneto-one setting;  74% of participants reported an improvement in their skills; 73% of participants reported an improvement in their motivation; ¡¡

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74% of participants reported an improvement in their engagement with support services; 84% of participants who engaged with MAP services in the community have not been reconvicted.

Ali started attending the Creative Media Unit to continue her passion for music. She quickly became involved in other media activities, taking part in film and radio training. This led to having her own weekly radio show and producing a number of films. She gained her media qualifications and two platinum Koestler Awards. Ali worked with our support team to plan for her release and continued engaging with this support in the community. Ali worked hard with her supports from shmu and other agencies to address issues relating to her offending and to build a positive life for herself. She faced many challenges and had setbacks, but she persevered and utilized the support she had and the creative opportunities available at shmu. Ali took part in groups and continued to create radio shows. She took on the role of peer-mentoring others on their release and is an active representative of shmu, taking part in meetings and events and working with us on the overall development of Adult Services and our prison work. Ali is settled in her life; she engages with all her support networks and is pursuing her own business as well as continuing her peer mentoring. Ali still has issues she needs to manage and her own struggles, but she is thriving in the life she has created for herself.2

Trinidad and Tobago – RISE Maximum Radio RISE (Rehabilitating Inmates Seeking Empowerment) Maximum Radio was launched in Trinidad and Tobago’s Maximum Security Prison in September 2012 to much fanfare and the involvement of then Minister of Justice Hon. Herbert Volney and then British High Commissioner HE Arthur Snell. The project first germinated in 2009 when the hosts of the award-winning radio show Eye on Dependency – Garth St Clair and Natasha Nunez – visited the UK and discovered the work of the Prison Radio Association (PRA) and its radio station, National Prison Radio. The PRA then assisted in selling the concept to government and prison officials. RISE Maximum Radio is a hybrid set-up involving prison officers and prisoners, who at the onset were trained in radio arts together and since the on-air launch, share broadcasting and programming duties.

USA – University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative The University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI) generates creative and collaborative learning experiences across the state of Colorado, in order to empower incarcerated individuals to improve the quality of their lives and support them as they prepare to make positive changes in their communities upon release. In 2022, DU PAI launched the firstever statewide prison radio station in the USA, created by and for incarcerated artists. The core radio leadership team is composed of residents at Limon Correctional Facility, working in collaboration with staff in the Colorado Department of Corrections, and with

Making Waves Behind Bars

the support and mentorship of DU PAI and consulting experts from the field. DU PAI’s radio initiative is led by Creative Producer and Radio General Manager Ryan Conarro. DU PAI also produces With(In), a podcast committed to shifting the conversation about who is in prison through meaningful, complex conversations with incarcerated people and others in and around the system. With(In) is led by DU PAI Executive Director Ashley Hamilton, with a team of co-producers inside and outside Colorado prisons.

USA – Ear Hustle Launched in 2017, Ear Hustle from PRX’s Radiotopia was the first podcast created and produced in prison, featuring stories of the daily realities of life inside California’s San Quentin State Prison, shared by those living it. Ear Hustle was co-founded by Bay Area artist Nigel Poor alongside Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams – who were incarcerated at the time. The podcast now tells stories from both inside prison and from the outside, post-incarceration. In 2019, Rahsaan ‘New York’ Thomas joined Ear Hustle as a co-host inside San Quentin. Episodes have been downloaded over sixty million times, and today, several prisons around the world are sharing Ear Hustle stories internally. ●

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Ear Hustle came to public media organization PRX and the Radiotopia podcast network in 2016 through an open call to creators around the world. The show emerged as the winner from more than 1,500 international entries. Ear Hustle challenges stereotypical narratives of the incarcerated and humanizes the effect of mass incarceration on individuals. With stories ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary: from cellmates, to food, to birthdays, to caring for pets, the episodes push audiences to re-think how to wrestle with judgement and empathy. By including perspectives from correctional officers, prison staff and family members, the show adds depth, context and texture missing from many commercial podcasts with more sensationalized crime stories. In November 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown commuted Earlonne’s 31 years-to-life sentence after 21 years of incarceration. Gov. Brown cited Earlonne’s work with Ear Hustle in the commutation. Ear Hustle has grown into a team of eight, including formerly incarcerated producers John ‘Yahya’ Johnson and Antwan Williams, who now contributes sound design and original music from the outside. Ear Hustle prioritizes engagement with the public, via social media and a monthly newsletter, The Lowdown, which is distributed to 20,000+ people around the world. In 2019, Ear Hustle collaborated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York City Ballet dancer and choreographer Silas Farley, on ‘Songs From the Spirit’ – a live performance which featured recordings of new spirituals and original music by musicians featured in the podcast.

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Ear Hustle enjoys a large and dedicated listener following outside of prison. But we’re also dedicated to getting the show played inside as many prisons as possible. In 2018, after lengthy negotiations with administration, the show started airing in thirty-five California prisons operated by the California Department of Corrections. Ear Hustle has been acknowledged, recognized and the recipient of some of the most sought-after accolades in the industry, including recognition from the Peabody Awards, DuPont Awards, and being named a 2020 finalist for the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting in 2020.

USA – KALW/Uncuffed KALW, a public radio station in San Francisco, has led classes in San Quentin State Prison since 2012, and Solano State Prison since 2018. Participants learn how to make powerful audio stories. They record honest conversations about the struggles and triumphs of people behind prison walls. Then, they edit those interviews themselves, using industrystandard equipment and software. The finished product goes out on KALW’s airwaves, kalw.org, prison TV systems, and the award-winning podcast Uncuffed. The producers say: ‘Uncuffed is vulnerable and personal. If you can see the humanity in us, you can see the humanity in everyone. We’ve got the mic, and we’re telling our own stories.’ Uncuffed’s goal is to transform the criminal justice system by elevating the voices of incarcerated people. ●

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In March 2020, the Uncuffed producers at Solano recorded a special episode about COVID-19, which had begun to spread in California. Their memories of previous disease outbreaks shed light on what a new lockdown would mean. The conversation was featured in Reveal and other national media. This was the last story we were able to record inside before the coronavirus lockdown. In July 2020, Uncuffed released a special episode featuring people with loved ones in prison. They recorded heartfelt letters addressed to their sons, fathers, partners and friends whom they hadn’t been able to visit in months as the pandemic threatened their lives. Highlights appeared in the podcasts Snap Judgment and The California Report. Two Uncuffed producers were released from prison in July, after having contracted coronavirus. They shared their experiences on the podcast, describing the horrors of the pandemic, and the struggles they faced returning to a closeddown world. In the past twelve months, the Uncuffed podcast has been downloaded 45,139 times by 26,874 listeners. Uncuffed provided correspondence courses to old and new participants at San Quentin and Solano. The courses include listening assignments to KALW stories

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and other radio and podcast programmes. They provide exclusive interviews with the producers of KALW stories, asking them about their process. Uncuffed partnered with an institutional TV programme to broadcast captioned Uncuffed stories throughout the California state prison system. Uncuffed formed a Community Advisory Board of formerly incarcerated artists, writers, journalists and advocates to guide our decision making. Uncuffed were named finalists for the national Local That Works Award.

Greg Eskridge is an award-winning journalist and a founding member of San Quentin Radio, where he currently serves as a facilitator and mentor. His stories have aired on KALW’s Crosscurrents, on Life of the Law, and on Crooked Media. He co-produced Life of the Law’s live storytelling event Stand Up San Quentin, which won a local Emmy with KQED. Greg is a member of the Northern California chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists. He is also pursuing a college degree and is a facilitator of many self-help groups. As a journalist, his goal is to give incarcerated people a platform to express themselves as well as give the public an accurate account of prison life. When he is not producing, Greg is living out his basketball dreams. Despite twenty-six years of incarceration and being fortyseven years old, Greg still has a little game left.

USA – Pelican Bay UNLOCKED Pelican Bay UNLOCKED is a production of the Audio Journalism classes at Pelican Bay State Prison in California. The classes are part of the Arts In Correction initiative funded by the William James Association. Since 2019, fifteen inmates in the highest security prison in California have been recording their thoughts, discussions, interviews and poetry in order to ‘dispel the negative images attributed to prisoners, while displaying the redemptive qualities of our humanity in furtherance of rehabilitation and re-entry’ (‘Big’ Mike Swanigan, B-Yard, PBSP). The changes that have transformed California’s prisons over the last six years began with the hunger strikes in the Secured Housing Unit at Pelican Bay. Along with offering inmates a (relatively) unfettered vehicle for general expression, it is very much part of the mission of UNLOCKED to record an oral history of this transformative ‘awakening’ by collecting the stories, voices and remembrances of the men who were there. Producing segments highlighting some of the programming available to inmates gives the team the chance to work as journalists – researching, interviewing, editing, writing and presenting.

Conclusion The future of prison radio is bright. International cooperation between prison radio producers and experts in the field has been growing steadily during the last decade. Together, individuals and organizations around the world are building the case for prison radio – and sharing what works. Together we are greater than the sum of our parts.

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A mutually supportive global community is developing. People in the sector are sharing challenges, accomplishments and achievements. A body of knowledge and best practice is being captured and documented. A range of different approaches across borders is being illuminated. It is the diversity and exchange at the heart of this global movement that excites those involved the most. These differences serve as an opportunity for learning, for sharing best practice, and ultimately, for delivering impact. While prisons around the world became even more isolated in 2020, prison radio expanded, hosting the first online International Prison Radio Conference – Making Waves Behind Bars. Delegates represented non-profits, academic institutions, community radio, public radio and podcast networks. All those organizations/projects are at different stages of development – some established for more than two decades, with others with projects in their infancy. And there is significant variety in the work they do. Examples of this work included: full-time national radio stations exclusively for people in prison; content produced with people inside criminal justice settings for broadcast on national/public/community broadcasters; content produced with people inside criminal justice settings for release as podcasts; content produced in community settings (often with formerly incarcerated people) for broadcast both inside and outside prisons. Motivations for prison radio vary, from supporting people through their prison sentences, to changing public opinion about prisons and those who live and work in them. For some, freedom of speech and offering people inside a voice is at the centre of their work. Others are working to provide a platform to promote and support human rights and create a dialogue about our criminal justice systems. Many are motivated by the desire to help prisons become more effective vehicles for rehabilitation. Helping people to succeed when they leave prison is important to all involved. All involved aim to affect positive social change through their work. Enormous value is placed on individual people’s lived experience. All involved put experts through experience at the heart of their work and their storytelling. So finally, what does prison radio tell us about the power of radio itself? Think about how good radio is at delivering much-needed information to people. Now think about how valuable the transmission of information is in institutions where there is no freedom of movement, no access to the Internet, where telephone calls are a luxury and even newspapers are hard to come by. Think about how important radio is to the isolated and the lonely – how it can help people feel they belong to a community. Now think about how isolated and lonely many people in prison are, and what a sense of community and a lifeline prison radio can offer them. Prison radio is a niche form of broadcasting which responds to a particular audience with very specific needs. It is said that prisons represent a microcosm of broader society. I believe the power and potential that is inherent in prison radio reflects and indeed amplifies the very nature of radio itself. The future of radio is bright. The future of prison radio is brighter.

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Notes 1 2

Quote taken from the International Prison Radio Impact Report 2021: 17: https://prison. radio/prison-radio-international/ (accessed 6 June 2022). Quoted in the International Prison Radio Impact Report 2021: 23: https://prison.radio/ prison-radio-international/ (accessed 6 June 2022).

Work cited Blue, E. (2012), Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisons, New York: New York University Press.

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30 Radio in the Round Reflections on the Future of Sound Media Richard Berry

Finding ‘radio’ in the twenty-first century I can remember my first radio. It was a small battery-powered set with a big chunky tuning dial and a strap. Eventually, the antenna snapped, and the set was replaced but what it did was to open up a world of sound, from local radio to the distant sounds of Radio Luxembourg. It was my first electronic device, and it left an indelible impression. Of course, other devices followed, including an early Walkman that would slow down if you pressed the back of it too firmly. This was an analogue world where books were in libraries and music came from a record store, or maybe the local public library. By comparison, my children grew up in a different world and despite my attempts to convince them of the joys of broadcasting their media is online and on-demand. The changes are not restricted to how we listen to radio. Indeed, the very fabric of the radio studio and the political economies at work within them have also changed. A lot has changed and a lot has remained the same, but as a report on the future of the medium in the UK notes: ‘Traditional radio including DAB is being challenged by new forms of IP-based listening, including on connected audio devices. This raises a significant risk that listeners may face greater complexity and encounter new barriers in discovering or accessing radio services even while the radio industry is investing more in new radio stations and content’ (DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) 2021: Para. 3.37). I opened this chapter with a sense of the personal to illustrate where we have come from and where we are. Radio has and continues to change over time. In her discussion of the future of radio Michele Hilmes documents the move from the radio of the 1930s where the lack of recordable media dictated that programmes were not only (mostly) live and: ‘only the most historically or economically important broadcasts were preserved’ (2013: 45).

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As time went on, more of what we heard was recorded and music played an increasingly dominant role by the 2000s. The Internet ensured that even local stations had a global reach. This move required radio stations to think about not only what their radio stations sounded like but what they looked like online. Radio has become a screen medium and a different experience from the one I outlined at the start of this chapter, one in which my old battery-powered looks a little dated. This is a dynamic that Hilmes suggests has created a new materiality for radio which: ‘embraces an enormous range of sonic forms and practices as a screen medium’ (ibid: 59) in which radio: ‘is becoming a mix of websites, social media interactions, podcasts, customisable experiences, videos, and hybrid radios’ (Berry 2014: 10). If the traditional delivery systems of linear analogue broadcasting constrained radio, then digital forms widened the scope of it. Despite attempts to claim the death of radio, the medium remains alive but has been: ‘recast in a more complex media environment’ (Brown 2020: viii) of global multimedia content where adaption is becoming an imperative. As Kate Lacey points out: ‘this single word, radio, is called upon to describe any number of different things – material, virtual, institutional, aesthetic, experiential. And, in turn, each of these meanings unfolds over time and in different contexts’ (2018: 110), suggesting that radio might be seen as an experience, where videos, podcasts, etc. become products created by the radio industry to achieve specific goals allied to radio programmes, brands or institutional goals. In a study of New Zealand radio practitioners, Rufus McEwan notes that his interviewees referred to ‘brands’ rather than radio stations (2017: 263), thus reflecting the wider sense that radio stations have now become locations where radio broadcasting is but one form of output. In studies spanning ten years a team of radio academics mapped the present, past and future(s) of radio in five different nations, examining what radio would look and sound like in the future (Ala-Fossi et al. 2008; Jauert et al. 2017). In both articles, the authors considered the changing technologies associated with radio and how professionals are using them or could use them in the future as the medium migrates into a digital future. They knew the future will be digital but then, as now, choices exist. Radio is and always has been a medium in flux. For Andrew Bottomley radio is: ‘a set of cultural relations that is identifiable by a composite of textual codes and representational strategies, cultural and industrial structures, and production and listening practices’ (2020: 12). In this framing, we could argue that just as turntables shaped the radio studio of the past, the modern studio and the output it generates is shaped by the Internet (and the need to move content into and out of it), whether this is using video calls to add visuals, engaging with audiences via social media, or creating exclusive digital content for subscribers. The changes seen to the radio industry are not purely a result of technology, as Raymond Williams suggests: ‘new technology is itself the product of a particular social system’ (1990: 135). In other words, the digital products produced by radio stations are made possible by technologies but are responses to the prevailing social contexts. As technologies and economies change, radio programmes and radio stations have responded by growing their online presence (Berry 2014), viewing their brand as a franchise that can be exploited off the air (Patterson 2016), or reflecting on the functionality of their buildings (Cwynar 2020). In this new era broadcasters are redefining themselves

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as producers of interactive multi-media content as ‘the audience is, in turn, redefining its relationship with the broadcaster’ (Sinton 2018: 74). When this shaping happens, it is not the medium that makes these changes but those who work within it (as producers, managers, technologists, regulators, etc.) and the prevailing conditions that shape institutional policy. Over time, one can see an evolution of approaches as they develop from experimental projects, through to fully-fledged institutional projects (BBC Sounds, ABC Listen, iHeartRadio, etc) that are integrated into corporate strategies and identities. Although there are many ways of reflecting on the future of radio, the remainder of this chapter will focus on three trends that might be indicative of some of these futures.

Visuals in radio In January 2014 BBC Radio 1 (the UK national radio station for 15–29-year-olds) became the first radio station in the world to reach one million subscribers on YouTube. It marked a milestone in a journey for the station in finding ways to deliver content online (BBC 2014). Although webcams became a regular fixture in radio studios during the late 1990s and early 2000s, this was more of a novelty feature and was rarely integrated into the production flow of a programme or network. For BBC Radio 1, YouTube growth represented a wider desire to reinvent ‘radio’ for their young audience and ensure that key content was delivered to them in the right place, which might not be on an actual radio (Berry 2013). More widely we can see this as both a recognition that content should be in as many places as possible and a sense that these new spaces offer the opportunity to reach audiences who may not be listening to the radio. As Bonini et al. note, there is a drive to work out where listeners are and: ‘then, start colonizing’ (2014: 99) those spaces with content. For public broadcasters even contact via social media with hard-to-reach audiences can be seen as important. These elements have been described as breadcrumbs that can be laid as a trail to the radio station (Scott 2015) produced within a clear strategy of producing digitally native and responsive content (Zax 2014). As Douglas Ferguson and Clark Greer point out, visual outputs are not new for radio (the radio station I went to as a teen had postcards of all the presenters in reception), but through easily generated posts on platforms like Instagram, radio stations are able: ‘to characterize themselves as personable, emotionally connected to their listeners’ (Ferguson and Greer 2018: 128), which it be could be argued deepens the bond that is at the heart of successful radio. It is clear from this and a subsequent study (Ferguson and Greer 2021) that this aspect of radio opens not only new areas of economic exploitation but also offers tools that radio stations can use to build trust with their audiences. In his work Tal Laor positions this as a: ‘bilateral mode of communications’ (2021: 1044) where listeners: ‘experience the broadcasters, the station, and the content as being more authentic and more accessible’ (1046). These can be taken as strategies that can underpin the key qualities of radio, as an authentic and intimate medium in which listeners feel part of an imagined or real community (Chignell 2009: 81–4). For most radio stations

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the addition of cameras adds a shareable layer to programmes, one which is interwoven into the production process and that is, in most cases, secondary to the primary aural experience. These videos might act as paratextual assets that create a mesh of content that places radio brands into visual and social spaces that either enhance the radio experience (by adding pictures) or extend them by placing content into other spaces (Berry 2013) that might never appear on-air. When videos are posted or go live on most platforms, users can receive alerts or see the streams in a public section as such videos can drive trials and foreground sections of programmes that they might otherwise have missed. This adds a new skillset for new entrants to the radio industry, where producers are as adept at video editing as they are audio editing. The presence of cameras now has a profound effect on the design of radio studios, where studios make bold use of design, branding and LED screens to add visual impact on camera, either for video capture or Instagram snaps. Elsewhere visual content such as live music content from BBC Radio 1 provides a valuable point of contact with audiences and generates a point of connection between the radio station and the people it wants to reach. This was demonstrated when the radio station BBC Radio 1 assembled a group of artists to record a charity cover of ‘In Times Like These’, a track by the American band Foo Fighters (BBC Radio 1 2020) during the 2020 lockdown. The video touched an emotional note around the world and whilst it was ostensibly a music video, the production was credited to BBC Radio. In citing the success of the LBC1 radio host James O’Brien, David Lloyd notes that whether you listen or not: ‘his monologues can be compelling. You grow to know him through watching. You recall who he is and the station name and may subsequently make the effort to try and listen, or at least, feel instantly at home next time you catch him by accident on the radio’ (2019: 198). As O’Brien himself notes, the cameras were put in to capture interviews with politicians, with his subsequent cultural standing being an unexpected consequence (Segal 2019). Because the live programme can be easily clipped by production staff and shared online, sections of the programme can go viral (Champion 2016) as these video clips are passed from person to person or reused by news websites. This creates a level of visibility and sociability that would not have been possible in previous iterations of the radio phone-in. In the visualized space, the nature of radio as an auditory medium remains unchanged, as most listeners will continue to listen in this way – at least for the time being. The videos discussed above of James O’Brien are well-lit and branded but static and lack the dynamism of television. However, visualization adds awareness, reach, generates creative opportunities for producers and allows radio stations to add commercial or public value by using current assets (the programmes) in new ways. This might allow for programmes to be shared or repurposed using static cameras and video calls, such as The Media Show (BBC Radio 4 2008 to present), the live YouTube stream of TalkRadio in the UK (which is set to be shared by a new TV channel),2 or the more televisual approach of RTL 102.5 in Rome (see Zelenkauskaite 2014). The traditional radio qualities of audience co-presence, intimacy and the emphasis on listening remain (Berry 2013), however, this hybridization allows for radio stations to position themselves in screen-based environments (Suetu, Gambaro and Ramos 2015) and although in some instances presenters make use of tv earpieces,

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rather than bulky studio headphones, the workflow of production and the structure of programming remains radio-focused, if not wholly radiogenic – not least because most visualized systems are automated.

Digital and internet radio A small piece of radio history happened in a former water tower in north-east England on 10 December 2021, when the UK’s first permanent Small-Scale Digital Audio Broadcasting Multiplex was turned on for the first time. This marked a process that had started with trials in 2015 to provide opportunities for the: ‘400 local commercial and community radio stations on analogue radio which are not currently carried on DAB’ (Ofcom 2016: 6). This approach sought to address the infrastructural problems with the original organization of digital radio in the UK that favoured national and regional broadcasting, that effectively bypassed small commercial and community radio. As Lawrie Hallett observes, without such access: ‘the risk for smaller broadcasters is that a failure to follow larger stations on to digital platforms may mean being left in an “analogue backwater” where audiences decline because most listeners have migrated with the larger stations to the digital domain’ (2017: 51). Given that almost all new cars sold in the UK have DAB radio as standard (DCMS 2021) it seems appropriate that operators would want to be on the platform most easily available to potential listeners. When critically considering the status of digital radio, it is worth sidestepping claims of digital broadcasting offering near CD-quality sound and instead focus on the political economy of the Multiplex approach used in DAB. The UK uses a system (Eureka 147) where signals carry multiple services on one frequency, where the number can be varied depending on the coding used.3 Small-Scale DAB (SSDAB) addresses some of the inherent issues in the original plans for DAB as a system that favoured larger incumbent commercial brands covering counties and regions, rather than towns, smaller cities or parts of metropolitan areas (see Rudin 2006 and Anderson 2012). In a series of trials conducted before the formal licensing process, Ofcom noted that ‘Of the 67 unique radio stations currently on small scale DAB … 33 stations are new to terrestrial broadcast radio’ (Ofcom 2016: 19). The legislative framework for SSDAB was specifically designed to favour small services, as it seeks to prevent quasi-national networking and offers guaranteed carriage for local community radio stations. To some degree, small-scale DAB in the UK swims against the tide of wider developments, where consolidation is the name of the game. In this sphere national and regional broadcasting is an ever-decreasing stable of radio brands that subdivide the audience through cross-promoted narrowcast services that accentuate the main brand using musical allied formats (dance, country, etc.), stations for specific decades (1980s, 1990s and so on) and genres (for example soul, chill or musicals). This presents a different model from the past, where rather than listeners being encouraged to remain where they are, there is a process of overflow where presenters: ‘steer, guide, and manage listeners’

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movements through the multiplatform environment … to keep audiences under the umbrella of their brand operations’ (Stiernstedt 2014: 295). A similar necessity is present in other digital radio formats, where a study of American radio stations concluded that: ‘by transmitting more than one program stream, a station broadcasting in HD can participate in program competition at multiple levels’ (Greer and Ferguson 2008). We can see this not only in the way stations cross-promote spin-off brands but also foreground options to listen via apps or smart speakers to keep listeners within their own ecosystem. The developments in DAB demonstrate a sustained interest to make and consume radio. However, one problem is that many of the recent additions to DAB in the UK target older audiences, which poses challenges for the industry as fewer young people pick up the radio habit. As a UK government report notes: ‘Using a device specifically for radio is not an established behaviour among younger audiences. They do not see the relevance/ need for a specific radio device’ (DCMS 2021: Section 3.11). In a presentation to the UK radio industry, consultant Matt Deegan dismissed the notion that radio was something that listeners grew into and that what we consume as a teenager stays roughly the same in later years (Deegan 2021). This highlights a challenge for the industry, one which requires some attention through the development of both content and delivery systems. In their study of younger audience needs Stefan Hirschmeier and Vanessa Beule note that: ‘While the traditional kitchen radio might still exist in 50 or 100 years, consumption patterns evolving through the emergence of music-streaming services remain important for future radio consumption’ (2021: 231). A quick audit of any undergraduate class will soon confirm that students are owning fewer and fewer radios, meaning that rather than competing with other local stations on a radio dial, the modern station competes for attention with streaming music, social media, games, video and podcasts. Although broadcast platforms like FM and DAB remain relevant, data in the UK ‘Future of Radio and Audio’ report suggests online delivery could account for as much as 40 per cent of live radio listening in the UK by 2035 (DCMS 2021: Section 2.16) up from 18 per cent in 2021 (RAJAR 2021). However, the report adds that: ‘even in the most aggressive scenario … broadcast platforms are still expected to account for more than half of all radio listening by 2035’ (DCMS 2021: Section 2.16). Searches on websites such as TuneIn or Streema present an abundance of choices from traditional services hoping to compete for local audiences and niche services with a global audience, such as worldwide.fm, The Lot Radio or Soho Radio. The latter highlights the differences between radio that has online delivery and radio created for internet delivery, where: ‘net-radio dramatically breaks the domestic spatial and temporal boundaries of traditional radio’ (Baker 2012: 181). Internet Radio can appear open, democratic and free from the burden of rules or requirements to serve a mass audience, as one station writes: ‘we’re not looking to increase our audience by playing more mainstream music. We look for music and formats that aren’t available on commercial radio’ (soma.fm n.d.). This presents one of many challenges for the future of radio, as broadcast radio is not only more efficient (Bowie, Murphy and Mason 2019), but infrastructural and licensing costs effectively limit the development of online streams (Hendy 2000), as every listener adds cost that not every station can absorb (Ortved 2014). Although reaching global

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listeners holds excitement, as John Allen Hendricks and Bruce Mims (2015: 144) suggest the internet stream is often more about capturing local listeners who do not own a radio than it is reaching listeners at the other side of the world who cannot be monetized. The political economy of radio streaming continues to constrain and shape the online radio experience, even though the direction of travel is becoming clear. When it comes to radio, rather than talking about GAFAM platforms (Nieborg and Poell 2018) we should talk about STAAG (Spotify, TuneIn, Amazon, Apple, Google) as the global digital gatekeepers for audio; either as destination platforms for listening or the manufacturers of smart speakers and other devices. In this space platforms will need to extract commercial value from users, either through capturing their data, advertising or payment. The further challenge faced by broadcasters is noted by the UK Government report, which highlights the challenges of connected cars (where the car itself can access the Internet), where data is retained about a user that might not be passed back to content creators (DCMS 2021: Section 4.18). This is a dilemma that leads stations to hold back content from third parties or migrate online consumption from open spaces to their own services. In recent years, the BBC have pulled content from both Google and TuneIn over rights disputes (Clifton 2019) and currently ‘window’ some podcasts, making them only available on their Sounds app for a period before wider release. In 2021 the UK division of the Bauer Media Group announced that it was launching a premium service where listeners could also skip tracks, hear ad-free versions, or listen to additional stations (Cooper 2021); whilst in other apps listeners can restart or pause a live programme (BBC Sounds) or skip out of a live stream into a customized stream in the same station format (Global Player). Over time, stations will experiment and blur the boundaries between live radio and on-demand. In his evaluation of the development of the iHeartRadio platform in New Zealand, McEwan describes these shifts in thinking as: ‘the technological convergence of many diverse radio platforms, including both analogue and digital broadcasting, music aggregators and streaming services, podcasting and onsite promotions in the form of live concerts and music festivals’ (2017: 269), where such apps allow stations to develop new products without constraint to grow revenue and/or listening. This positions radio once again as a screen medium (Hilmes 2013: 48–52) but where this materiality was once dispersed across websites and third-party platforms, it is now consolidating inside platforms owned or managed by the radio brands. Delivery online disrupts notions of flow as they have been traditionally applied to radio; since listeners might have the ability to skip unfavourable elements, or to listen on-demand to full or partial programmes (Laor 2022) through the same interface. In the radio station itself, digitization of the radio studio and the use of computerized playout systems allows for programmes to be recorded via a process called voicetracking, where each presenter link (or bit) is recorded within a computer system, allowing one person to present on multiple stations or to assign links to specific transmitters in a network. Given that programmes are created in this way, it may only be a matter of time before listeners can fully control the online experience. The Internet also enables what is known as ObjectBased Media, where media can be broken into chunks that are assembled at the listener’s end; thus, offering radio that can use AI to customize content to match your surroundings,

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your location or your immediate needs (BBC Research and Development n.d.). This could be viewed as a listener-centric third age of internet radio, where the first age was about the novelty of global listening and the second was about using the Internet to develop new stations or offer on-demand listening. The downside is that such developments require: ‘new infrastructure, new devices, and audience buy-in’ (McEwan 2017: 272) in which we may lose the serendipity of discovering new content by accident and risk excluding those who cannot keep up.

Podcasting: Schrodinger’s radio One site of academic debate in contemporary radio studies is podcasting. In this space, there are claims and counterclaims over whether podcasts are a form of radio. For some, podcasts are another stage in the history of radio, one which challenges definitions of what radio is, or is for (Bottomley 2020: 10–15) where we might consider technical, cultural or institutional matters. In this presentation podcasts are a form of radio, where the medium is in a fluid dialogue between competing elements and is constantly being shaped by environmental shifts in technologies, economics and audience demands. What is not in doubt is that podcasts are part of the radio economy representing a new area of growth for the industry and a revitalization of radio genres (Bottomley 2015; DCMS 2021; McHugh 2016). However, we must be cautious here and note that podcasting emerged as an alternative to radio, and this is a status that independent podcasters see as relevant (Berry 2018). As Matt Deegan notes, although radio helped incubate podcasting: ‘there’s a new wave of podcasters who don’t have radio as their progenitor but instead have YouTubers’ (2022), which may not be surprising as he notes that 20 per cent of podcast listeners are using YouTube as their preferred app and many shows (such ‘The Diary of a CEO’ and ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’) are also videos. Although the boundary between radio and podcasts is fluid, it is there. In a guide for producers the BBC highlight this nuance, noting that whilst for the younger listeners who will never own a radio, podcasting is their radio: ‘A podcast is not a radio programme even if radio programmes can be made available to the public as podcasts’ (BBC Sounds n.d.). In other words, although some radio shows are also available as podcasts, it does not mean that all podcasts are radio, even if the audio content fulfils a similar function in the lives of the listener. While many podcasts are produced by radio stations or companies that also make radio (Berry 2022), this does not mean that all podcasts are produced by the radio industry. As podcasting developed, many radio stations soon appreciated the opportunities and they became central to the growth of the medium (Berry 2016a; Bonini 2015) as an: ‘opportunity for genres, formats, and narratives that do not have space on radio broadcast schedules’ (Sellas and Solá 2019: 70) to create branded content with clients and explore new forms of economic hybridity (Patterson 2016). Podcasts and radio do share a common palate of skills (editing, recording, scripting, etc.) but they are becoming allied yet diverging forms of media, where each serves a different purpose.

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Just as the increased capacity that DAB offered (Berry 2004), podcasts have allowed for a growth in niche and speech services. This status is highlighted in the ‘Future of Radio and Audio review’, which suggests that podcasts: ‘offer a greater breadth of content, that it is hard for a fixed number of live radio stations to replicate’ (DCMS 2021: Section 2.23) and this might explain the movement of (especially younger) listeners from radio to podcasting, not least as podcast advertising revenues are expected to more than double over the next few years (Section 2.07). These are shifts where podcasts offer space to develop new speech content for music brands or use podcasting to develop new markets. For a public broadcaster like the BBC, the ‘Sounds’ platform offers a delivery space and a means to reach audiences who were not engaging with the mainstream radio and tv brands (Berry 2020), where the podcast offer comprises of remediated radio shows and podcasts produced either for radio stations or the ‘Sounds’ brand. Similar modes are seen at other public and commercial broadcasters where podcasts act as another means through which radio stations can achieve their respective public or commercial goals. For radio stations, a podcast might be better able to reach sub-sections of the audience, deepen knowledge or develop other genres away from the limited capacity of a linear radio station; thus allowing the creation of lifestyle, investigative, or client-partnered podcasts where listeners opt into the content they want. In their discussion, Sterne et al. (2008) suggest that: ‘Podcasting is not an alternative to broadcasting, but a realization of broadcasting that ought to exist alongside and compete with other models’, and so rather than viewing podcasting as a form of radio, we could view it as a means of dissemination with the same aims – reaching audiences.

Conclusions In 2013 the ECREA Radio Research conference was held in London under the title ‘Radio: The Resilient Medium’, papers from which were later published in a book of the same name (Oliveira, Stachyra and Starkey 2014). The book reflected the state of flux and the many ways in which radio continues to evolve and adapt in a changing landscape. Many of these themes around the use of social media (Sellas and Bonini 2014) and how stations connect with audiences remain relevant today, as do the caveats about expressing caution over the implications of change. Many of the opportunities promised for radio have yet to be realized and we can expect similar patterns in the future as: Despite technological shifts, the product at the centre of the experience will still be the live presenter sequence, the drama, or the documentary. The wrapping around of other practices in this hybrid future presents producers and managers with fresh opportunities and places to maintain and build audiences. (Berry 2014: 11)

If we consider that at the heart of the radio experience is a desire to reach and connect with listeners, then many of the elements that are discussed here do just that; they connect people and build communities (Wielpolska-Szymura 2014). This connection might be to a

Reflections on the Future of Sound Media

host or a station via a video, a brand via an interactive stream, or a brand extension station on DAB+. There is no doubt that radio listening is declining, especially amongst the young and this poses challenges for the industry, those who study, and those who hope to enter it. As parts of the industry shrink, others emerge and offer some suggestion that radio, or at least audio has a future. When it comes to audio online, there are lively debates as to whether streaming services are forms of radio (Baker 2012; Black 2001); in his extensive exploration of internet radio, Andrew Bottomley contends that it is, noting that if we held onto previous notions of radio as something where presenters spoke in real time from real studios (2020: 170–1) this model would now preclude stations that do neither. It is increasingly the case that radio stations have no buildings or operate services in which presenters are almost, if not totally absent. However, these stations do remain as passive and shared experiences thus retaining many of the key tenets of radio-ness as outlined by Chignell (2009). In closing their book on the radio industry, Alan Albarran and Gregory Pitts note that radio holds a special place in the lives of listeners and that if the medium continues to develop it should appreciate the relationship to its audience and community (2001: 176). It is this relationship that is at the heart of radio and may go some way to explain the growth of live audio spaces such as Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces; where users can listen to and engage in roundtable discussions and events. Although some of these sessions might be captured as a podcast, the general aim is to operate as a virtual campfire that draws on the intimacy of audio (Radcliffe 2021) consumed live. These meet some definitions of radio, including the notion of co-presence; not least as other listeners are visible on the display. These iterations of radio-like experiences pose questions about what radio is and what it might become. In an early study of internet radio, David Black notes: ‘calling an Internet practice “radio” effectively puts a lid on some of the options as to where it can go and what it can become’ (2001: 403) and this remains a valid note of caution. Authors such as Lacey (2008, 2018) suggest that the development of such forms adds to the ‘slipperiness’ of radio as a concept. In many cases, the term ‘radio’ is applied to products to help explain them, or out of convenience, or even homage but we should be sceptical about whether they are indicative of the state of the medium. Although technology and society go through periods of change, the same prevailing conditions remain; factors which were outlined for the radio industry by David Hendy at the turn of the century, where: ‘for most of us most of the time, radio is a predominantly passive experience’ (2000: 232). Hendy also cautions us that: ‘digitalization’s claims to usher in more democracy, more choice, and more interactivity, are a little inflated, to say the least’ (232). Despite more than fifty years of competition, other forms of media or delivery systems have yet to fully upend traditional forms of radio. In his autoethnography of working for an internet radio station, Harry Criticos also outlines the challenges of new services competing in: ‘a large pool of media … competing for revenue sources that favor incumbents with a track record’ (2021: 2). We do not know what the impact will be if social media platforms change their position on broadcasters using their platforms or decide to make that same content for themselves. We have already seen Apple launch a radio station to help them curate their platform (Berry

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2016b) and Spotify has spent millions of dollars signing exclusive podcast deals (Sullivan, Fox and Berry 2021) to create radio-like experiences. In this new digital space, the tensions between big tech and creators often centres on data and who owns it, and as such the STAAG platforms will retain a role in the future for many of these audio experiences and how listeners receive them. Just as projects such Radio Garden4 offer a different model of transnational listening (Lewis and Mitchell 2022) corporate entities like TuneIn have become subject to copyright tangles and so whilst technologies may open doors to new experiences, legal structures and domestic laws may push content inside self-managed apps which limit what listeners hear. Although domestic regulations on issues such as bias or offensive language do not apply to online radio, the rules on copyright do and this often prevents some streams from being available internationally. As such, although listening has migrated online it does so mostly on a domestic level and only for those able to access the devices and networks (Bowie, Murphy and Mason 2019). It would be fair to say that the practices of production and listening that I experienced on my first visit to a radio station in the 1980s have been reshaped by digital technologies. It is more likely that my listening is on a digital device and that the content produced there is consumed on platforms other than a radio. Radio producers need to juggle social media content (Bonini 2014), video cameras (Berry 2013) and bonus-content pushed out to listeners via apps or podcasts, but at the heart of it all lies the sense that radio is about human connection. I am writing this in the 100th anniversary year of BBC Radio, in that time listening devices have changed, the content it delivers still shapes our experiences and marks out our daily routines (Dubber 2013: 180) and it will likely continue to change and exercise debate about what it is and is not, for those who worry about such things. Radio remains deeply personal, and the core features will probably remain the same; albeit surrounded by a ring of associated products that seek to enhance the experience or add value to the radio station. The radio industry will continue to experiment with different technologies, modes of delivery, and experiences that may enhance, extend, customize or change the process of listening. These changes bring challenges around how listeners find content or manage relationships with these platforms, although a traditional AM/FM radio can receive all signals, internet devices might demand subscriptions, thus leading to fragmentation as content becomes less universally available. This moves radio into a post-broadcast era in which we are considering two futures. One future is about what we understand as radio in an age where content is moving online (at least in western nations) and the other is about the institutions we call radio stations. Changes in technology and media consumption patterns might mean that radio studios become more visual, as stations add video streams or share content with television or streaming partners. Digital and internet platforms will continue to digitize the delivery systems, thus creating space for more services and innovation (Gambaro and Becker 2018). Podcasting will continue to be a feature in many businesses as a route to produce speech-based content or try out innovative ideas. Although technologies and societal shifts might nudge the radio experience in one way or another, the core of what radio does will probably remain fairly static. When we close our eyes, radio will still be radio, even if the building it comes from is radically different and has a wider array of outputs.

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Notes 1 2

3 4

LBC is a nationally available commercial talk radio station in the UK. In early 2022 TalkRadio announced they would launch a TV channel under a common brand. At the same time, the competing TV channel GB News began simulcasting nationally on digital radio, meaning both services are available on national TV and radio. Stations operating in high quality take up more space, but a typical multiplex might carry twenty different radio stations. Radio Garden presents the listener with a globe in which stations are marked with a dot that users access by spinning the globe. It was developed by the Transnational Radio Encounters research group in coordination with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision: https://www.radio.garden (accessed 28 April 2022).

Works cited Ala-Fossi, M., S. Lax, B. O’Neill, P. Jauert and H. Shaw (2008) ‘The Future of Radio is Still Digital – But Which One? Expert Perspectives and Future Scenarios for the Radio Media in 2015’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 15 (1): 4–25. Albarran, A. B. and G. G. Pitts (2001), The Radio Broadcasting Industry, Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon. Anderson, J. N. (2012), ‘Radio Broadcasting’s Digital Dilemma’, Convergence 19 (2) 2013: 177–99. Baker, A. (2012), Virtual Radio GaGa. Youths and Net Radio. Exploring Subcultural Models of Audiences, New York: Hampton Press. BBC (2014) Radio 1 Becomes First Radio Station in World to Reach 1 Million Subscribers on YouTube [Online]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/r1-youtube-1m (Accessed 6 September 2021). BBC Radio 1 (2020), Live Lounge Allstars – Times Like These (BBC Radio 1 Stay Home Live Lounge) [Online]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GElP4YdrBE (accessed 7 January 2022). BBC Radio 4 (2008 to present), The Media Show, London: BBC. BBC Research and Development (n.d.), Object Based Media, London: BBC. BBC Sounds (n.d.) Commissioning Brief No. 103003 [Online]: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/ radio/commissioning/PodcastCommissioningBrief_DiscoverExplain.pdf (accessed 3 January 2022). Berry, R. (2004), ‘Speech Radio in the Digital Age’, in A. Crisell (ed.), More than a Music Box, Oxford: Beghahn, pp. 283–96. Berry, R. (2013), ‘Radio with Pictures: Radio Visualization in BBC National Radio’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 11 (2): 169–84. Berry, R. (2014), ‘The Future of Radio is the Internet, Not on the Internet’, in G. Starkey, G. Starchyra and M. Oliveira (eds), Radio: The Resilient Medium. Papers from the Third Conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section, Sunderland: University of Sunderland – Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, pp. 3–16.

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Berry, R. (2016a), ‘Part of the Establishment: Reflecting on 10 Years of Podcasting as an Audio Medium’, Convergence 22 (6): 661–71. Berry, R. (2016b), ‘Worldwide Always On: Beats One as Transnational Radio’, Utrecht: Paper at The Radio Conference. Berry, R. (2018), ‘“Just Because You Play a Guitar and Are from Nashville Doesn’t Mean You Are a Country Singer”: The Emergence of Medium Identities in Podcasting’, in D. Llinares, N. Fox and R. Berry (eds), Podcasting. New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 15–33. Berry, R. (2020), ‘Radio, Music, Podcasts – BBC Sounds: Public Service Radio and Podcasts in a Platform World’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 18 (1): 68–78. Berry, R. (2022), ‘No Longer the Only Game in Town: British Indies, Podcasts and the New Audio Economy of Independent Production’, Interactions 12 (1): 51–64. Black, D. A. (2001), ‘Internet Radio: A Case Study in Medium Specificity’, Media, Culture & Society 23 (3): 397–408. Bonini, T. (2014), ‘Doing Radio in the Age of Facebook’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 12 (1–2): 73–87. Bonini, T. (2015), ‘The Second Age of Podcasting: Reframing Podcasting as a New Digital Mass Medium’, Quaderns del CAC 41 (18): 21–30. Bonini, T., E. Fesneau, J. Perez, C. Luthje, S. Jedrzejewski, A. Pedroia … F. Stiernstedt (2014), ‘Radio Formats and Social Media use in Europe – 28 Case Studies of Public Service Practice’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 12 (1&2): 89–107. Bottomley, A. J. (2015), ‘Podcasting, Welcome to Night Vale, and the Revival of Radio Drama’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (2): 179–89. Bottomley, A. J. (2020), Sound Streams. A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bowie, A., A. Murphy and S. Mason (2019), The Technical Future of Radio [Presentation], Radio TechCon, London [Online]: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=j5t7e6HTIDs&t=3079s (accessed 6 February 2022). Brown, M. (2020), ‘Forward’, in J. A. Hendricks (ed.), Radio’s Second Century. Past, Present and Future Perspectives,New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. vii–ix. Champion, M. (2016), The Man Who Made Radio Viral. Buzzfeed [Online]: https://www. buzzfeed.com/matthewchampion/james-obrien-the-man-who-made-radio-viral (accessed 22 December 2021). Chignell, H. (2009), Key Concepts in Radio Studies, London: Sage. Clifton, K. (2019), ‘Changes to Access of BBC Live Radio Streams on Selected TuneIn Platforms in the UK’ [Blog]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/37e4e3f6fbd2-4c14-8d72-7f7139641582 (accessed 12 February 2022). Cooper, B. (2021), ‘Reinventing Radio’ [Conference Presentation], London: The Radio Festival. Criticos, H. (2021), ‘The Constrabling Effect of Internet Radio’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media. DOI:10.1080/19376529.2021.1937629. Cwynar, C. (2020), ‘Brick, Mortar, and Screen: Networked Digital Media, Popular Music, and the Reinvention of the Public Radio Station’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 27 (1): 74–92.

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DCMS (2021) Digital Radio and Audio Review, London: Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Deegan, M. (2021), ‘Surviving Radio’s Youthquake’ [Conference Presentation], London: The Radio Festival. Deegan, M. (2022), Why Podcasters Will Be Stuck Doing Video [online]: https://onaudio. mattdeegan.com/p/why-podcasters-will-be-stuck-doing? (accessed 15 April 2022). Dubber, A. (2013), Radio in the Digital Age, Cambridge: Polity. Ferguson, D. A. and C. A. Greer (2021), ‘Conversational Style of Personality Radio Station Posts on Twitter: Applying Hall’s Proxemics to Digital Communication’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media [Online] DOI:10.1080/19376529.2020.1850731. Ferguson, D. A. and C. A. Greer (2018), ‘Visualizing a Non-Visual Medium through Social Media: The Semiotics of Radio Station Posts on Instagram’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 25 (1): 126–41. Gambaro, D. and V. Becker (2018), ‘The Audiovisual Design as a Methodological Option for Radio Production’, Matrizes 12 (3): 297–317. Greer, C. F. and D. A. Ferguson (2008), ‘Factors Influencing the Adoption of HD Radio™ by Local Radio Station Managers’, The International Journal on Media Management 10 (4): 148–57. Hallett, L. (2017), ‘Apples and Oranges – Duplicating Existing FM Coverage with DAB’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 24 (1): 45–60. Hendricks, J. A. and B. Mims (2015), Keith’s Radio Station. Broadcast, Internet, and Satellite (9th ed.), Oxford: Focal Press. Hendy, D. (2000), ‘A Political Economy of Radio in the Digital Age’, Journal of Radio Studies 7 (1): 213–34. Hilmes, M. (2013), ‘The New Materiality of Radio’, in J. Loviglio and M. Hilmes (eds), Radio’s New Wave. Global Sound in the Digital Era, New York: Routledge, pp. 43–61. Hirschmeier, S. and V. Beule (2021), ‘Characteristics of the Classic Radio Experience Perceived by Young Listeners and Design Implications for Their Digital Transformation’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 28 (2): 231–53. Jauert, P., M. Ala-Fossi, G. Föllmer, S. Lax and K. Murphy (2017), ‘The Future of Radio Revisited: Expert Perspectives and Future Scenarios for Radio Media in 2025’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 24 (1): 7–27. Lacey, K. (2008), ‘Ten Years of Radio Studies: The Very Idea’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 6 (1): 21–32. Lacey, K. (2018), ‘Up in the Air? The Matter of Radio Studies’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 16 (2): 109–26. Laor, T. (2021), ‘How Does it “Sound”? Audiences, Broadcasters, and Managers on Visual Radio in Israel’, Convergence 27 (4): 1038–54. Laor, T. (2022), ‘Radio on Demand: New Habits of Consuming Radio Content’, Global Media and Communication, pp. 1–24. DOI:10.1177%2F17427665211073868. Lewis, P. M. and C. Mitchell (2022), ‘The Radio Garden Private Pleasures and Public Benefits’, Interactions 12 (1): 39–50. Lloyd, D. (2019), Radio Secrets, Fritton: Rethink Press. McEwan, R. (2017), ‘Digital Radio Platforms in the New Zealand Context: Implementing the Wireless and iHeartRadio’, Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 15 (2): 259–77.

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McHugh, S. (2016), ‘How Podcasting is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14 (1): 65–82. Nieborg, D. B. and T. Poell (2018), ‘The Platformization of Cultural Production: Theorizing the Contingent Cultural Commodity’, New Media & Society 20 (11): 4275–92. Ofcom (2016), Small Scale DAB Trials. Final Report, London: Office for Communications. Oliveira, M., G. Stachyra and G. Starkey, eds (2014) Radio: The Resilient Medium, Sunderland: University of Sunderland – Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies. Ortved, J. (2014), ‘The Death of East Village Radio’ (online) New Yorker: https://www. newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-death-of-east-village-radio (accessed 10 February 2022). Patterson, E. (2016), ‘This American Franchise: This American Life, Public Radio Franchising and the Cultural Work of Legitimating Economic Hybridity’, Media, Culture & Society 38 (3): 450–61. Radcliffe, D. (2021), ‘Audio Chatrooms like Clubhouse have Become the Hot New Media by Tapping into the Age-Old Appeal of the Human Voice’, The Conversation, 25 February (online): https://theconversation.com/audio-chatrooms-like-clubhouse-have-becomethe-hot-new-media-by-tapping-into-the-age-old-appeal-of-the-human-voice-155444 (accessed 10 February 2022). RAJAR (2021), RAJAR Data release: Quarter 3 2021, London: RAJAR. Rudin, R. (2006), ‘The Development of DAB Digital Radio in the UK. The Battle for Control of a New Technology in an Old Medium’, Convergence 12 (2): 163–78. Scott, C. (2015), ‘BBC Radio 1 uses a “trail of breadcrumbs” to engage with listeners’ (online) Journalism.co.uk: https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/bbc-radio-1-uses-a-trail-ofbreadcrumbs-to-engage-with-listeners/ (accessed 10 February 2022). Segal, D. (2019), ‘Fighting Brexit, One Caller and 100,000 YouTube Clicks at a Time’, New York Times, 7 February: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/business/brexit-radiohost-james-obrien.html (accessed 22 December 2021). Sellas, T. and T. Bonini (2014), ‘Masters of Brand: A Study of Social Media Workers in the Italian and Spanish Radio Industries’, in M. Oliveira, G. Stachyra and G. Starkey (eds), Radio: The Resilient Medium. Papers from the Third Conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section, Sunderland: University of Sunderland – Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, pp. 65–82. Sellas, T. and S. Solá (2019), ‘Podium Podcast and the Freedom of Podcasting: Beyond the Limits of Radio Programming and Production Constraints’, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 17 (1): 63–81. Sinton, M. (2018), ‘No Longer One-to-Many: How Wen 2.0 Interactivity is Changing Public Service Radio’s Relationship with its Audience’, Journal of Radio and Audio Media 25 (1): 62–76. soma.fm (n.d.), soma fm (online): https://somafm.com/about/history.html (accessed 11 February 2022). Sterne, J., J. Morris, M. B. Baker and A. M. Friere (2008), ‘The Politics of Podcasting’, Fibreculture 13: FCJ-087 (online): https://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-087-thepolitics-of-podcasting (accessed 22 December 2021). Stiernstedt, F. (2014), ‘The Political Economy of the Radio Personality’, Journal of Radio & Audio Media 21 (2): 290–306.

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Index

A Social History of British Broadcasting (Scannell and Cardiff) 387 AARP see American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) AAVE (African American vernacular English) 165 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australia 492 ‘accented’ production style 252, 461 Access Radio, UK 275, 283–6 Access Radio Pilot group 286 New Voices report 285 shift to Community Radio 286 acoustic film 102, 103, 105 acoustic storytelling 236–7 action research 155 active audience theories 121 Adams, M. 384 Addyman, D. 80, 87, 88 Adj Hangot Egyesület (Speak Out Association), Hungary 493 administrative podcasts 400 The Administrator (MacNeice) 90 Adorno, T. W. 120 The Adventure Zone (US fiction podcast) 441, 447n8 affective rhythm 259 affects 105–106 African Americans 13–17, 24, 164 see also Black American radio listenership; Black Lives Matter; race relations; racism African American vernacular English (AAVE) 165 Ahern, S. 213 Albarran, A. 513 Alberti, D. 177 Albertson, E. 63, 65

algorithms public service value of, questioning 139–41 women, algorithmic discrimination against 45 The All Negro Hour 163 All That Fall (Beckett) 80, 88 Allen, M. H. 385 Allô Macha show (Béranger) 183, 187 Alpert, Herb 54 alternative media 121 see also community radio Alvesson, M. 155 The AM Archives (US fiction podcast) 440, 448n11 Amazon Echo (smart speaker) 51 Mechanical Turk 48 Amazon Music 52, 53, 54 American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) 44, 45, 48, 50, 51 Spotify 54 American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 24n1 Ames, K. 261 AM/FM radio 50, 53 Amos ‘n’ Andy (US radio programme) 14 analogue radio 33, 36, 254 ANATEL (regulatory agency) 424 Andersch, A. 107n2 Anderson, B. 252 Angles, M. 427 ANP (Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau) 319–25 Antena 3 Radio (1980s), Spain 314, 349, 350–2, 355 see also Spanish radio acquisition of Rádio Nova, Porto 357 audiences 356–8 Director of Programmes 355 establishment on radio scene 352 first broadcast 352–3

Index The First in the Morning 355 Good Afternoon 355 Health is what Matters 356 Prisa group, shareholder of the SER network 358 private 358 programming 354–6 Stardust 356 team of journalists 353–4 Viva la gente 355 AOD see Audio-on-Demand (AOD) Apple Music 45, 50 Essentials 53 archivalization, radio institutions 455–6 Archive 81 (US fiction podcast) 440, 442, 447n8, 448n8 archives 369, 467 ARD Audiothek (ARD) 136 Arnheim, R. 261 Arnold, D. 386 Ars Paradoxica (US fiction podcast) 439 Artaud, A. 102 artificial intelligence (AI) 49 The Arts Show 210 Artur, J. 179, 180 Aschero, J.-C. 185 Ashitey, A. 76n2 assisted living technologies 49 Association of Dutch newspapers 319 atelier création radiophonique 105 Atkinson, P. 422 Atton, C. 121 Auden, W. H. 81 audiences 119, 123, 125, 191, 222, 261 active audience theories 121 agency of 121 Black/ethnic minority 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 282 blurred boundaries between producers, and 121 and community media 417 conditions of reception subjected to 418 individual 79 Latin American media research 423 loyal radio 142 mass 79, 97 music 45, 53, 54 streaming 44, 46

new 72, 101, 140 niche global 32 older adults 44, 46, 49, 509 radio drama 81–2 Spanish radio 356–8 sports talk radio 72 targeting 10, 53, 76, 137, 166, 271, 278, 509 target communities 257, 262, 292, 293, 297, 298, 299, 307 traditional radio 53, 238 wartime/civilian 7, 10 younger 45, 53, 133, 140, 163, 166 audio engineering 158 audio media 226, 227, 229, 238, 304, 474–5 audio storytelling 7, 9, 95, 96, 226–40 ‘on-the-air’ sound 226, 228, 229 context, defining 227–8 intimacy intimate fiction 229–32 performative 228 technological 227–8 audionarratology 236, 403 Audio-on-Demand (AOD) 133, 135, 137, 138, 140 Auer-Krafka, T. 107n2 Aufderheide, P. 28 Austin, M. 132, 456 Australia Beyond the Bars 492 Community Broadcasting Association 492 community radio 258 doctoral case study 153 education in 399 Jailbreak 492 The Messenger podcast 149 Prisoner Radio Network 491–2 School for Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) 399 ‘School of the Air’ 399, 400 two-way radio 400 Western Australian Government 399 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) 213 Local Radio Network 208, 211 autobiographies 257 automatic speech recognition (ASR) 461, 462 Avery, T. 83 AVRO (Dutch broadcasting association) 317, 318, 319, 323 Awaz FM, Glasgow 284

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522

Index Baade, C. 2, 8 baby boomers 49, 51 Bachelard, G. 109n18 Back, C. 122, 123, 423 Back, L. 423 Backhaus, B. 115 Badenoch, A. 1, 194, 435–6 Bae, P. 439 Bailey, O. G. 125, 295, 296 Baldwin, C. 438 Balsebre, A. 349 Bardoel, J. 316 Barlow, W. 14 Barna, E. 37 Barnard, S. 307 Barnes, Sir G. 82 Barthes, R. 402, 454 Bauer Media Group 510 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) see also drama, radio; United Kingdom 50:50 Equality Project 345 BBC Sounds 444 BBC Talks 293–6 and Bloomsbury Group 82–3, 93n1 Drama Department 390 early radio production research sources 385–6 women in 383–97 Editorial Guidelines 198 ethnic community radio 279–80 experimental work 83–4 Features Department 103, 107n8 Genome Project 387, 460 Indie Development Fund 483 local radio 280 Mission of 333 modernism at 82–3 Music Magazine 31 news provision 313, 332–47 analysis 334, 335–6t, 337–9 scripting/language 339–45 Programme Index 1, 365, 387, 390 public accountability 82 radio features 238n4 Royal Charter 333 The Story of Pop (1973) 8, 31 Written Archives Centre, Caversham 369, 384 Beccarelli, M. 2, 196

Beckett, S. 8–9, 84, 86, 87, 92 All That Fall 80, 88 Embers 86 Words and Music 8, 80, 81, 88–9, 91 writing for the BBC 88 Beckstead, L. 8, 150, 152 Bell Laboratories 64 Benjamin, L. 22 Bennett, A. 46, 47, 50, 56 Benzie, I. 384 Béranger, M. 2, 182, 183, 185, 187 Berg, F. S. A. 151 Berg, K. 368 Berkman, D. 163 Berner, C. 461 Berry, R. 2, 32, 133, 148, 228, 400, 436, 512, 514 Berthelot, D. 176 Best, E. 8 Beule, V. 134, 135, 509 Beyond Bows and Arrows (Indigenous radio show) 249, 253 Beyond the Bars, Australia 492 Beyond the Bubble (Tate Modern) 480–2 Bickford, S. 119, 124 Biewen, J. 476 Bilitza, M. 453–7, 459, 467 Billiot, T. 75 biographies 257 Birdsall, C. 124 Black, D. 513 Black, G. 15 Black American radio listenership 162–74 see also African Americans Black radio as the pillar of the Black community 163–5 Black-oriented programming block 163 deejays 164–8 experimentation 173 future approach 168 nostalgia for Black radio 165–7 public service aspects 163 success of Black radio 164 Telecommunications Act (1996) 167 Urban Contemporary 167 Black Americans see Black American radio listenership Black and Asian population, UK 280 Black Audio Dramas 445

Index Black Lives Matter protests 243, 249 Black Radio: Telling It Like It (radio documentary) 164 The Black Tapes (fiction podcast) 439 Blackman, L. 118 Blank, G. 56 blended learning 400 Blokzijl, Max 319 Bloomberg, M. 238n1 Bloomsbury Group 82–3, 93n1 Blue, E. 488 Blum, J. 10 Bogle, D. 16 Bonilla, E. 191, 202 Bonini, T. 134, 209, 246 Booth, J. 84 Boothby, H. 152 Borreguero, A. 350 Bottomley, A. 505, 513 Bourdieu, P. 153, 259 Braun, P. L. 96, 102, 107n2, 107n7 Brause, S. R. 56 Bray, B. 101 Brazil cities 419, 421 favelas see favelas, Brazil FIFA World Cup (2014) 428 state capitals 420 Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics 419 Brecht, B. 117 Bridson, D. G. 97, 106 Briggs, A. 82 The Bright Sessions (US fiction podcast) 439 British Broadcasting Corporation see BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Brittan, L. 281 Broadcast (podcast) 76 broadcasting see also public service broadcasting (PSB) American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 24n1 community radio ad ‘third sector’ of 301–4 as an enjoyable hobby 268–70 local services 284–5 social see social broadcasting Broadcasting a Life (Shapley) 387, 388, 389 Broadcasting Code 262

Broadcasting Research Unit (BRU), UK 280 Bronnenberg, B. 47 Bruce, T. 63 Bruns, A. 440–1 Bublé, M. 53 Buck, P. 12 Buell, J. 12 Bull, M. 423 Burgess, J. 138 Burn It All Down (podcast) 76 Burnett, P. 372, 379n9 Burnham, B. 384, 390–3 Burns, L. 210, 213, 214, 215, 216, 222 Burton, R. 104 Business Wire 50 Butor, M. 107 Cammaerts, B. 125, 295, 296 Camp Here and There (US fiction podcast) 445 Campbell, J. 84–5 Canada see also sports talk radio, women in National Film Board (NFB) 107n10 Radio Canada 98, 107n10 sports talk radio 8, 65, 66 Capparelli, E. 140 Cardiff, D. 387 Cariker, M. 230 Carmi, E. 124 Carpentier, N. 125, 295, 296, 300 Cayton, H. 14 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UK 205n4 Champeix, R. 175 The Changing School (Shapley) 388 Chan-Olmsted, S. 133, 143 Chapman, C. C. 33 Chappell, T. 217, 218, 219, 220, 222 chatcasts 476 Cheen, Bishop 49–50, 51 Chen, G. 70 Cheney, R. 96 Chicago Defender (Black newspaper) 15, 25n5, 164 Chickasaw radio network, Oklahoma 250 Chignell, H. 87, 341, 404, 513 Chilton, K. 15 China to America (US radio play, 1943) 11, 12, 23

523

524

Index Chion, M. 226, 228, 230, 232, 235, 236 Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen 229 Choice FM, Brixton 282 Cholodenko, M. 181 Chomsky, N. 119 Chrisp Street Market, East London 479–80 Christopher Columbus (MacNeice) 80, 86 cinema noir 38 cinema verité 97, 98 citizens’ media, community media as 121, 122, 126 CKUA, music-educational programming history 29 Clariah Media Suite 457 Clark, E. H. 464 Classic FM 36 classroom podcasts 400 Cleverdon, D. 96, 103, 104, 107n8, 107n15 Coakley, C. G. 118 Cobb, L. J. 11 Cocteau, J. 175, 178 Coleman, J. 244, 247, 475 Coleridge, S. T. 91, 92 Collins, B. 54 Collins, R. 17–18 colloquialisms 342 colonial rule, British 278 commercial radio in the 1960s 367–82 archives, challenging 369 diegetic and non-diegetic audio elements 373 intermediality 376–8 literature review 368–9 qualitative approach 371–2 quantitative approach 372 radio stations 305, 306, 333, 367–78 sound studies approach 370–1 soundscapes 372, 373, 415 transnational history, lens of 373–5 commercialism 377 Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), UK 280, 285 communication see also Community Communications Group (COMCOM); Federal Communications Commission (FCC) community radio 299–301

participatory 299–301 radio presentation as two-way communication 260–2 communication for development (C4D) 296 community, concept of 248, 275, 417 Community Broadcasting Association of Australia 492 Community Communications Group (COMCOM), UK, Community Broadcasting Charter 281 community media 121–2, 276, 417 Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) 286 community media studies 416 interventions 252–3 community radio 245–56 see also community, concept of; community media boundaries between broadcasters and audiences 117, 121–2 for career progression 266–8 changing context 290–309 as citizens’ media 121, 122, 126 community-building strategies 250–3 complex soundscapes, situated within 416–19 concept 275–6 amplification of 281–3 contemporary position 304–307 defining and positioning 293–7 ethical practice, listening as 122–4 ethnic 275–89 favelas, Brazil 418 ‘feeding the beast’ 271–2 future directions for listening research 124–6 Global South perspective 416–19 historical overview 291–3 intersections of voice and listening in 117–30 and listening 120–2 live programming 252 media development (MD) 291, 297–8 media for development 298–9 origins of 292 participating communication 299–301 pre-recorded programming 252 and radio presentation 258–60 radio stations 120–2, 124–7, 247, 248, 250–4, 263, 276, 281, 283, 284, 286, 297, 302, 306–7, 328, 426, 475, 508

Index self-serving 266–70 situating 120–2 for social and personal gain 263–4 and social broadcasting 475 as ‘third sector’ of broadcasting 301–4 in the UK 262–3 and volunteerism 124, 259, 264–6 Community Radio Association, UK 281, 303 Community Radio Order, UK 285, 296, 300, 306 Community Relations Commission (CRC), UK 278 Community Relations Councils 278 community service, defining 286 community theory 165 Concord Music Group 51 Connell, R. W. 63 Constanduros, M. 384 Consumer Electronics Daily 52 Cook, D. 214 Cook, I. M. 152 Cooper, S. 109n18 Copeland, S. 149 Corey, J. 158 corporations, radio 31 Corwin, N. 9, 96, 103 Cory, E. 152 Costa, F. 56 coursecasting 400, 401 COVID-19 pandemic 243, 247, 313, 398, 487 care gap 8 community radio 263–4 on-air community-building 248–50 edutainment podcasting see edutainment podcasting localized updates 249 lockdowns 55, 162, 246–8, 399 news provision 250, 337, 344–5 and older adults 45 online learning 400 and prison radio 490 and social broadcasting 474 suicide risk 195 Coyle, R. 196 Cranor, J. 438 Crawford, P., Plague at Eyam 388 Crisell, A. 196, 260, 261, 269, 337, 403 critical ear 147, 148, 152, 154, 158 making a podcast 156–7

Criticos, H. 513 Crook, T. 231 Radio Drama 229 cultural capital 261 Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament) 302 Dang, T. 167 Dann, L. 30, 33, 115, 150–1, 227, 231 Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution 32 Danner, A. 446 The Dark Tower (MacNeice) 97 Dassa, A. 56 Datta, H. 47 Davis, E. 22, 338 Days of our Lives (pre-recorded series) 264 De Boise, S. 56 De la Cretaz, B. 64 De la Morena, A. 354 De la Torre, M. 460 De Leeuw, S. 467 De Oliveira, C. M. F. 418 De Parga, M. 351 De Parga, R. J. 351 De Plaige, D. 185 De Saussure, F. 402 De Waart, P. 321 Deckers, J. 96, 107n4 Deegan, M. 511 Delafield, E. M. 383, 394, 395 Diary of a Provincial Lady 393 Deleuze, G. 125 Deloitte (investment company) 54 Delroy, T. 211 den Draaier, J. 465 Denmark 30 Denning, M. 11 Derrida, J. 402 Déry, M. 253 Descendants (US fiction podcast) 438 Desert Island Discs 210, 459 Desi Radio, Panjabi community (Southall) 263 dialogic approach 118–19 Diaspora United (podcast) 76 Díaz, L. 352 diegetic and non-diegetic audio elements 373 difference, in communities 417 digital archive 456

525

526

Index Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB/DAB+) 305, 315, 504, 508, 509, 512, 513 Small-Scale DAB (SSDAB) 508 digital dilemma 131 Digital Radio and Audio Review (Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport) 483 digital radio formats 36 Distributed Cognition theory 209, 211, 216, 223 Dobón-Roux, P. 313, 314 documentaries editing 209 poetic 107n8 by Shapley 387–8 social 385, 387, 388 sound 101, 184 television 35, 97, 99 Dodds, E. R. 85 Dominguez-Muller, D. 368 Douglas, M. 465 Downing, J. 122, 248, 440–1 DR Lyd player 139 drama, radio 79–94, 96, 233 see also audio storytelling commissioning 87–9 contradictions 79 early audience concerns 81–2 experimental work 83–4 experimentation 82–7, 93n2 expressing conditions of expression 87 interruption 91–2 scheduling 89–91 Third Programme see Third Programme Dramatis Person/e (Shapley) 388 Dreher, T. 119, 252–3 Drew, C. 405, 410n1 Dryden, J. S. 231 Dublin Core 455 Duguay, S. 138 Dunand, J. 375 Dunbar-Hester, C. 254 Duras, M. 109n18 Durham, R. 163 Dutch radio news see The Netherlands, radio news Dutta, M. J. 123 Dworkin, A. 123

ear buds 51 Ear Hustle (PRX’s Radiotopia), United States 499–500 earwitnessing 149 Eastly, H. 152 EAVA FM multilingual radio station, Leicester (England) 249, 252 EBU 136, 137 Echo (smart speaker) 51 ECREA Radio Research conference 512 Edison Research Infinite Dial 49 education blended learning 400 and podcasting 28–30 entertaining podcasts 401–4 pedagogy for radio students 398–414 podcasts in education 399–401 public service broadcasting providing 7 educational music radio 30–1 edu-taining 365, 405, 406, 410n1 edutainment podcasting 398–414 data collection 408 four-part podcast series to teach radio 406–8 new framework for 405 podcasts in education 399–401 entertaining 401–4 teaching of radio 406 Ek, D. 33 Electric Radio Brixton 490 Eliot, T. S. 82, 392 Ellis, J. 457 Embers (Beckett) 86 EML 37 emotion and audio 233 co-creating emotional tone 217–18 emotional labour defining 212 with guests 218–19 and trust 212–14 emotion-led research 1 night-time radio eliciting 175 entertainment 7, 8 see also edutainment podcasting educational music radio 30–1 and podcasting 28–30

Index entertaining podcasts in education 401–4 Entertainment Retailers Association, UK 45 Erickson, S. 107n14 Erlmann, V. 423 Ernst, W. 467 Eskridge, G. 501 essentialism 118 Esslin, M. 8, 79, 88, 101 Estabrook, H. 11, 21 Esteban, P. 354 ethics algorithms 139 listening, as ethical practice 122–4 and making of podcasts 156–7 ethnic community radio 244, 275–89 amplification of concept 281–3 concept of community radio 275–6 continuing relevance 286–7 development in the UK 277–8 experimentation 281, 283–5 race relations and tensions 278–81 re-emerging community radio movement 283–4 spaces of inclusion 284–6 ethnic minorities 257, 279–83 see also African Americans; Black American radio listenership; Black Lives Matter protests; ethnic community radio; race relations; racism Asians, UK 280 Black and Asian population, UK 280 ethnic community radio in the UK 276–7, 280 Greeks, UK 280 West Indians, UK 280 ethnicity 17, 20, 276 ethnographic research 2, 263, 366, 416, 426, 427 ethnographic ear 423 family visits 422 listening 423 sonic walks 422 of soundscapes in the favelas 422–3 Euritt, A. 152 Europe 1 367–9, 371, 374–6, 379 Los 40 Principales 349, 357, 360n1 European Commission 298 Europeana radio 464

EUScreen (European Television history portal) 455 Everett, K. 371, 372, 379n7 Everitt, A. 285 experimentation 34, 302, 436 audio and emotion 233 Black American radio listenership 173 ethnic community radio 281, 283–5 future of sound media 506, 514 night-time radio 184, 188, 196 phone-ins and suicide callers 196 practitioner-researcher framework, podcast studies 151–3, 155–8 radio app strategies 140, 144n2 radio drama 82–7, 93n2 recalling radio 454 social broadcasting 483 women in radio production (early BBC) 390, 392 Fable and Folly Network 441, 444, 448n13 Fabulous 208 376, 377 façade of listening 123 Facebook 222 Facebook Live 254 factual production, intimate context 232–4 Serial podcast 232–4 telephone, use of 234–7 This American Life 232–4 fading, technique of 404 Faine, J. 209, 210, 215, 216 Fairchild, C. 40 Farabet, R. 95, 101, 102, 104, 107n1, 108n12, 109n18 Words from Inside 107n12 Farlige toner see The Story about Danish Jazz (Farlige toner – historien om dansk jazz podcast) Farran, J. 379n12 Fass, B. 190, 193, 197, 198–9, 201, 202, 203 Faus, Á 350, 352 Fauske, C. J. 85 Fauteux, B. 29 Favela da Maré see Maré (favela network), Rio de Janeiro favelas, Brazil 2, 416 see also Maré (favela network), Rio de Janeiro; Pau da Lima (favela region), Salvador

527

528

Index cities 419, 420 ethnographic research of soundscapes in 422–3 geographical boundaries 417 nuanced understanding of 419–21 soundscapes 419, 423, 425, 427, 428, 429 Fears, L. 166 features 34, 95–111 acoustic film 102 atelier création radiophonique 105 cinéma direct 97 cinema verité 97, 98 documentaire de creation 96, 103, 106 forms of radio 95, 98 radiogenic 107n2 ‘wild sound recording’ 97 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 165, 168n2, 302 public service aspects of Black radio 163 Feldman, M. 80, 87 Feltham young offender institution (YOI) 488 Radio Feltham 487, 489 Ferguson, D. 506 Fernandez, J. W. 456 Ferrand, M. M. 351–4, 359 Fickers, A. 139 fiction see also audio storytelling; drama, radio; podcast fiction intimate 229–32 Fidler, R. 213, 214–15, 218, 220, 221 field theory 153 Fiesta (US radio play, 1943) 17–18, 19, 24 Filipinos 7, 12, 13, 23, 24 film sonore 96, 97, 105, 106 Fink, J. 438 first-language radio 252, 255n2 Fisher, M. 163, 164 Flanagan, M. 341 Floyd, G. 249 Foessel, M. 175, 187, 188 Ford, S. 137 Forman, M. 46, 56 forms of radio 95, 98 Forster, E. M. 82 Fox, J. 125 Fox, K. 116 Fox, N. 400

Fox News 313, 338 Foxwell, K. 284–5 France La Marseillaise (national anthem) 177 National Archives 183 night-time radio 175–89 erotic programmes 185 Nuits magnétiques (Magnetic Nights), France Culture 184 pirate radio stations 184–6 prior to the 1950s 176–7 radio stations in 175–7, 182, 184–8 television 186 France Culture 184 France Inter (radio station) 179, 182, 186, 187 Franco, F. 348 Franklin, P. 22 Franquet, R. 352 Frattarola, A. 82, 83 Free World Theatre (FWT), US 7, 10, 11, 17, 20–3, 25n3 see also morale drama programme, wartime (US, 1943) China to America (US radio play, 1943) 11, 12, 23 Fiesta (US radio play, 1943) 17–18, 19, 24 General Armchair (US radio play, 1943) 20, 21 I Have No Prayer (US radio play, 1943) 17, 24 The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (US radio play, 1943) 11 Second Battle of Warsaw (US radio play, 1943) 19, 24 Tomorrow (US radio play, 1943) 20–1 ‘V Day’ (US play, 1943) 21 Your Day is Coming (US radio play, 1943) 12–13, 23–4 Freeman, A. 31 French, C. J. 13, 14, 15, 16, 24 Freytag, D. 139 Frith, S. 46 Friz, A. 465 future of sound media 504–19 digital and internet radio 508–11 finding ‘radio’ in the twenty-first century 504–6 podcasting 511–12 visuals in radio 506–8 FWT see Free World Theatre (FWT)

Index GAFAM platforms 510 Gaiman, N. 443 Gandini, A. 209 Garci, J. L. 355 García, J. M. 353–4, 356, 359 Gardner, A. 46, 47 gatekeeping 194 male 8, 63, 67, 69, 74, 75 Gavi, P. 186 GE Podcast Theater 447n7 Gen Z 45, 49, 57n1 gender male suicide 200, 205n3 and podcasting 34 progress towards parity 62 General Armchair (US radio play, 1943) 20, 21 Germany, public service broadcasting (PSB) 461 Gibson, Jack (disc jockey) 164 Gielgud, V. 84, 392 Gilbert, J. 386 Gill, R. 64 Gillard, F. 385 Gilliam, L. 97 Gimeno, J. 351 Gimeno, M. 354 Gimlet Media 231, 235, 238n1, 441 Glass, I. 238n3 Global North 418 Global South perspective 415–32, 486 community radio, situated within complex soundscapes 416–19 Favela da Maré and suppression of sounds in Rio 426–8 favelas see favelas, Brazil Pau da Lima soundscapes 423–6 studying of radio and soundscapes 415–16 Godó Group 351 Goffman, E. 261, 477 Goodale, G. 370 Goodbye to All This (grief podcast) 152 Google, Nest (smart speaker) 51 Goudeket, I. 317 governance principle 294 GrandPad (tablet)/Grandpad Radio 55, 57 Grandstand 211 Granryd, T. 136 Gray, F. 83 Greater Boston (US fiction podcast) 446

Green, J. 137 Greenhalgh, F. 438 Greer, C. 506 Grégoire, M. 181 Grenier, Line 46 Griggs, E. 253 Grubb, M. V. 75 Guattari, F. 125 Gullette, M. M. 46 Gunn, M. A. 33 Guthrie, T. 83 Habermas, J. 28, 119 habitus 259 Haley, Sir W. 89 Hall, S. 253, 276 Hallett, L. 244, 508 Hammersley, B. 33, 476 Hammersley, M. 422 Hancock, D. 233 Hannigan, J. 443 Hansen, G. 138 Hao, H. 48–9, 55 Harcup, T. 334, 340 Hardin, M. 63, 69 Harding, A. 97 Hargreaves, D. 56 Harlock, K., That Classical Podcast 34, 36–7, 40 Harmony Radio, Coventry 282 Harris, T. 81–2 Harrison, G. 63 Harrison, N. 211 Harvey, D. 249 Harvey, S. 168, 249 Haugtvedt, E. 402 Haydari, N. 263 HDO (Hilversumsche Draadloze Omroep), Dutch Wireless Broadcaster 317 headphone listening 227, 261 hearing aids 51 The Heart (podcast) 30, 149 Hedder, I. 150 hegemonic masculinity 63 Henderson, M. 96 Hendricks, J. A. 510 Hendy, D. 107n13, 196, 384, 403, 474, 483, 513 The BBC 384 Noise 429

529

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Index Herman, D. 402 Hernández Bravo, J. 142 Herrero, A. 354 Herrero, L. 354 Hilmes, M. 14, 22, 76n1, 132, 151, 245, 246, 370, 504, 505 Hilterman, G. B. J. 324 Hilton, J., Lost Horizon 391 Hirschmeier, S. 134, 135, 509 Hirway, Hrishikesh 37 Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 369 Hitler, A. 18 Hochschild, A. 212, 219 Hodkinson, P. 47 Hoffman, K. 476–7 Hoggart, Richard 107n13 Hollywood Fair Play Committee 16 Hollywood Report 51 Hollywood Writers Mobilization (HWM) 10 Editorial Committee 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21–3 Holme, C. 86 Homecoming (US fiction podcast) 231, 232, 235, 238n1, 441, 442 Homeless People (documentary) 388 HomePod (smart speaker) 51 Hooper, R. 488, 489 Hoover, V. 231–2 Horkheimer, M. 120 Horne, L. 15–17 Horner, R. 297 Horowitz, E. 238n1 hörspiel, German 9, 34, 96, 97, 105 House Un-American Activities Committee, US 22 The Howard Stern Show 191 Hoyt, E. 456 Hualapai tribal lands, Arizona 250 Hueting, J. 324 Hughley, D. L. 168 Hungary, Adj Hangot Egyesület (Speak Out Association) 493 Hurd, D. 282 Husband, C. 123, 277 Hutchins, E. 209 Huwiler, E. 403, 404 Hwang, K. 133, 143 HWM see Hollywood Writers Mobilization (HWM)

hyper-intimacy 147, 227 hyperlocal radio 473 I Have No Prayer (US radio play, 1943) 17, 24 Iain Lee’s Late Night Alternative Show, Talk Radio 200 IBA see Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), UK Ibbott, B. 33 identity stripping 46 Idzerda, H. 316, 463 In Strange Woods (US fiction podcast) 445 In The Days Before Rock’N’Roll (song by Morrison) 367 INAthèque, France 369, 379n2 independence principle 294 Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), UK 281, 302 Radio Division 282 Independent Local Radio (ILR) 280–1 in-depth interviews 8 India, Tinka Tinka Foundation 493–4 Indigenous radio stations 250, 254 The Infinite Dial survey 147 information provision educational music radio 30–1 in the Netherlands 316–18 and podcasting 28–30 public service broadcasting 2 scarcity, in a radio play 79 Ingram, Rex 16 Inside Radio, Republic of Ireland 496 intermediality commercial radio 376–8 educational music radio 30 intermedial references 377 music podcasts 33–4 public service broadcasting (PSB) 29 in radio and podcast music education 8 internet 33, 34, 117, 131, 187, 423, 509, 510, 514 broadband 50 Internet Protocol 305 searches 48, 257 Interpersonal Theory of Suicide 197 intersubjective space of otherness 119 intertextuality 376, 377 intimacy factual production 232–7

Index hyper-intimacy 227 intimate fiction and audio drama 229–32 journalism 149 night-time radio 175, 181–4 performative 226, 228 technological 226, 227–8 ultimate 236 Ionesco, E. 80 Irish Radio and Television Commission (IRTC) 301–2 Israel, Radio Focus 494 Iver, B. 37 Jacobson, J. 47, 48 Jailbreak, Australia 492 Jaramillo, D. L. 28 jazz music 30 Jehle, A. 368 Jenkins, G. 23, 137 Jenkins, H. 137 Jennings, R. 46, 47 Jewish people, representing in morale drama programmes 17–19 Johnson, F. W. 163 Jones, D. 87 Jorgensen, B. 115 Jornod, A. 52 Joseph, M. 248, 249, 251 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 162–3 Journal of Radio & Audio Media 162 Journal of Radio Studies 163 journalism 149, 166, 315, 316, 493 audio 150 broadcast 487 Dutch 316, 324 intimate 149 literary 232–4 local 328 news 106 podcast 149 print 96, 436 public affairs 28 radio 233, 320–1, 324, 325, 326, 359 science 27 sports 353 The Journalist and the Murderer (Malcolm) 157 Juzeau, C. 188

KALW (public radio station)/Uncuffed (podcast), United States 500–1 Karathanasopoulou, E. 466, 467 Karpf, A. 64, 65, 196–7 Katriel, T. 197 KCNP FM radio station, Ada (Oklahoma) 250 Keeler, A. 461 Keith, M. C. 175, 196 Kelly, M. 338 Kelly, S., That Classical Podcast 34, 36–7, 40 Kennedy, J. F. 323 Kerr, R. L. 65 keynote sounds 404 Khamkar, G. 2, 244 Killmeier, M. 7 Kim, J. 448n12 Kim, S. 51 King, G. 291–2 King, M. 212, 221, 292 King’s Cross Station, London 478–9, 480 Kinzel, T. 236–7 Kiplinger Retirement Report 56 Klett-Cotta (German publisher) 453–4 Kleywegt, A. 322 KNMI (Dutch Met Office) 322 KNON FM (community station) 249, 252 Knowlson, J. 88 Knox, G. 47 Koenig, S. 238n5, 402, 410n3, 439 Kohinoor FM, Leicester 286 Koppes, C. 15 KPFA, New York 292 Kristeva, J. 376 KRO (Dutch broadcasting association) 317, 319, 321, 323, 325 Kurka, I., Neue Musik Leben 34 Kvasny, L. 164 KWLP FM radio station, Arizona 250 La Marseillaise (French national anthem) 177 La Voix du Lézard, French station 185 Lacey, K. 89, 90, 120, 151, 466, 467, 474, 505, 513 Lambooy, D. J. 321 landscapes 238 see also soundscapes audio 436, 474–5 broadcasting 367, 374

531

532

Index Dutch media 457 fictional 105 media 120, 123, 124, 127, 286, 290, 299, 315, 349, 358, 457, 459 music 40 policy 125 radio 133, 135, 168, 379, 475 radiophonic 99 sonic 418 versus soundscapes 418 technological 244 territoriality 418–19 urban 420 Langer, J. 252, 255n2 Laor, T. 506 Lardon, S. 137 Larsen, S. I. 495 The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (US radio play, 1943) 11 late-night radio see night-time radio, France Latin American media research 423 see also Brazil; favelas, Brazil; Global South perspective Lawrence, J. 20–1 LBC talk radio station, UK 515n1 Le Monde (French newspaper) 181, 187 Le Pop Club, French radio programme 179, 180, 181 Led Zeppelin 54 Lee, I. 191, 197, 198–9, 202 Leeder, N. 87 Lefebvre, T. 183 Legay, R. 194, 365 Legrand, M. 372 Lewis, P. M. 84, 252, 253 Lewis, W. B. 23 LGBTQ2S 46 Lien, S. 55 Light, B. 138 Ligne Ourverte (Open line), French night show 181, 182 Limetown (US fiction podcast) 439 Lin, C. 47, 48 Lindblad, Katarina 56 Lindemann, K. 103–4, 107n2, 107n14 Lindgren, M. 400 Ling, Hsiao-Chi 48 linguistic registers 342

Linked Open Data 455 L’Insomniaque (The Insomniac), French podcast 188 listening 2 see also podcasting; podcasts act of attention 423 analytical 153–4 childlike 149 and community radio see community radio critical 150 defining and problematizing, within media studies 118–20 on-demand 227 as ethical practice 122–4 ethnographic research 423 finding podcasts for 154–5 future directions for research 124–6 headphone 227, 261 individualization 45 listening ear concept 65, 75 older adults see older listeners podcasts 147 on portable mobile phone devices 228 recalling radio as speech 461 situating 120–2 social 123 synchronous 245 The Listening Project (O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher) 119–20, 476 Littlewood, J. 97 live radio 252 Livingstone, S. 291, 294, 298 Llinares, D. 150, 152, 400 Lloyd, D. 507 Lloyd, J. 119 locality 249 Lombardo, M. 28 London Greek Radio (LGR) 282 Longstreet, S. 11, 18, 22 Lonn, S. 400 Loviglio, J. 245, 246 Low Power FM (LPEM) radio, US 168, 254, 295, 302 Lowe, G. 276 LPEM see Low Power FM (LPEM) radio, US Luce, A. 198 Lunt, P. 294 Luscombe, A. 2, 313

Index McCain, T. 276 McCambridge, M. 11 McCracken, E., The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age 233 McCurtry, L. 233 McDaniel, H. 16 MacDonald, J. F. 14 McDonald, K. 210, 218, 313 McDowell, P. 489 McDuling, J. 50 McEwen, R. 47, 48, 510 McGregor, H. 152 McHugh, S. 149, 152, 229, 232–3, 234, 236, 401 McLemore, J. B. 234, 235, 236, 237 McLeod, W. 209, 213, 214, 216, 221 McMillans, David 165 McMurtry, L. 444 MacNeice, L. 8–9, 84, 85, 87, 89, 92 Christopher Columbus 80, 86 The Dark Tower 97 Enter Caesar 90 The Mad Islands and the Administrator 90 Persons from Porlock 8, 80–1, 87, 90, 91, 92 They Met on Good Friday 90 McWhinnie, D. 87, 101 Madsen, V. 9 magazine broadcasts, radio 31 Maggs, D. 443 The Magnus Archives (UK fiction podcast) 440, 444, 445, 447n2, 447n8, 448n20 Maguire, P. 243, 436, 486 Mahnke, A. 446 Malatia, T. 238n3 Malcolm, J. 157 male gatekeeping 8, 63, 67, 69, 74, 75 see also gender; hegemonic masculinity; sports talk radio, women in; women male gaze theory 64–5 Mann, L. 245, 246, 247 Maré (favela network), Rio de Janeiro 416, 421 and suppression of sounds 426–8 Maréchal, D. 368 marginalized communities 252–3, 415 Markman, K. 406 Markovits, A. S. 63, 65 Martin, J. 134, 142, 150 masculinity, hegemonic 63 mass media 86, 87, 277, 316, 323

materializing sound indices (MSI) 226, 228, 229, 232, 236 Matheson, H. 341, 342, 384, 386, 393 Matheson, W., ‘The Power of Music Playlists’ 44–5, 54 Mauruschat, A. 107n2 Mazur, Z. 75 Mazzoli, A. 134 Mead, R. 157 Meadows, M. 284–5 Meckiffe, D. 17 media 2, 8, 10, 22, 27–9, 34, 38, 64, 90, 92, 105 see also future of sound media; media studies alternative 100, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 290, 295, 296 Black 14 broadcast 29 cross-media 317 electric 29 external 30 history 376 internet 34 mainstream 75, 280, 295 mass media 86, 87, 277, 316, 323 media-centric view of individual media 291 mixes of 27 multi-ethnic societies 279 old 29 practices 29 print 29, 31 public service 27 recorded 104 social 32, 34, 38, 53, 66 sports 62, 63, 67, 69, 72–5 texts 17 traditional 27 visual 75 media combination 377 media development (MD) 291, 297–8 media studies defining and problematizing listening within 118–20 traditional 121 Media Suite radio collection 461, 462–3, 464, 465, 466, 467 medial transposition 377 medium wave (AM) frequencies 262 Medrado, A. 2, 366, 416, 424, 426

533

534

Index Mefalopulos, P. 300, 301 Meireles, C. 464 Mellet, G. 211, 216, 217, 219 Meng, C. 48–9, 55 Merlin, M. 13, 14 The Message (US fiction podcast) 439 The Messenger podcast, Australia 149 metadata schemes 455 Meurders, F. 372, 379n9 Meverden, C. 53 Meyers, C. 23 Meyrowitz, J. 287 The Michael Baisden Show (nationally syndicated radio programme) 164 Michelsen, M. 8 Midia Podcast 143n1 migration 286, 377 favelas, Brazil 419 to the UK 277–8, 279 Mildorf, J. 236–7 Miles, T. 439 militarism 420 Millennials 45, 48, 49, 57n1 Mims, B. 510 Mincks, C. 448n12 Minear, T. 449n27 Miners Wives (Shapley) 389 Mirage Diner (US fiction podcast) 449n30 Mitchell, C. 253 Mitchell, D. 97, 98 Mitterand, F. 185 modernist radio drama 82–3 Moe, H. 134, 140, 143n2 Molina, F. 353 Monclús, B. 246 montage 13, 105, 106, 476, 478 Montgomery, M. 193, 261 Moonface (US fiction podcast) 448n12 Moores, S. 261 morale drama programmes, wartime (US, 1943) African Americans/Blacks represented 13–17, 24 Black speech 15 defining morale 14 Double-V Campaign, advocating for 14, 15, 16, 24 Filipino fighters represented 7, 12, 13, 23, 24

and Free World Theatre see Free World Theatre (FWT), US Jewish people, representing 17–19 and leftist ideals 11 propaganda dramas 14–15 Morant Williams, Kesha 165 Morning Report (Channel 4 Radio) 337 Morris, J. W. 132–3, 456 Moseley, R. 385 Mouffe, C. 119 Moylan, K. 243–4, 461 MSI see materializing sound indices (MSI) Müller, J. E. 377 multiculturalism 255n2, 278, 282 in the UK 285, 287 multiple publics, analysis 253 Mulvey, L. 64, 65 Murphy, K. 365 Murray, M. 17 Murray, S. 151, 155 Muse, C. 13–14 music albums 35 art music tradition 30 and Black radio 164 careers of individual artists 35 classical 36 concert form 30 debates 31 educational music radio 30–1 genres 35 gospel 163 jazz 30, 31, 38, 39 jingles 404 podcasts see music podcasts pop 35 punk 444 quality 29, 30 recalling radio as 462–4 record programme 30 rock 31, 35, 37, 46, 444 role in sustaining personal identity 46 ‘serious’ 39–40 soul 163 streaming of see streaming of music Music Business Association 50 music magazines, genre-specific 31 music podcasts 8, 32–9

Index analogue and digital formats 33 categories 34–5 closed forms, programmes 31 country of origin 36 as digital audio files 32–3 educational music radio 30–1 examples 36–9 formats 33–6 genres 34 and ‘Golden Age of Podcasting’ 33 intermediality 33–4 length 33 magazines 35 mixing records and talk 31 versus music radio 32 music radio forms 30 open form principle 31, 33 The Story about Danish Jazz 38, 39 storytelling 35 MusicWatch 50 Muziekweb (repository) 463, 464 Naficy, H. 252 Nahoum-Grappe, V. 175 narcissism 258 narrative journalism 149 narratology 402 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 168 National Prison Radio, UK 487, 493 Freephone line 490 National Public Media, Edison Smart Audio Report 52 NCRV (Dutch Christian broadcasting association) 321, 323, 325, 326 neighbours, communities of 417 neoliberalism 46, 63, 73, 119 Nest (smart speaker) 51 Netflix 34, 195, 204, 440–2, 444, 445, 448n14 Archive 81 442 Song Exploder 38 The Netherlands, radio news 315–31 Atria Centre on Gender Equality and Women’s History 459 Business News Radio (BNR) 326 Delpher database 460 Dutch Postal and Telegraph Service (PTT) 321

Dutch Radio Union 320, 324 growth of news and current affairs on the radio (1933–1959) 318–22 Media History Digital Library 460 Media Law (1967) 324 new type of news and current affairs 326–8 pillarized broadcasting 320, 326 pillars of society 315–16 podcasting 315 political-societal phases of journalism 316 The Radio Broadcast Control Committee (Radio Omroep Controle Commissie) 318 rivalries 323–6 start of radio news and information (1919– 1933) 316–18 wireless radio programmes 316 Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (NISV) 435, 456, 457, 458, 463, 464, 467 published collection policy 459 Nethery, A. 149 New Commonwealth 277 new wave cinema 98 news provision on the BBC 332–47 analysis 334, 335–6t, 337–9 scripting/language 339–45 COVID-19 pandemic 250, 337, 344–5 Dutch radio growth of news and current affairs on the radio (1933–1959) 318–22 new type of news and current affairs 326–8 rivalries 323–6 start of radio news and information (1919–1933) 316–18 television 195 News Values project 141 Newsbeat (BBC Radio 1) 313, 332, 334, 335t, 337, 339, 342, 343, 346 Nieto, M. Á 354 Night Journey (documentary) 389 night-time radio bonds between listeners, callers and hosts 196 comforting voices of broadcasters 196–7 confessions from listeners 175, 181, 196 and eliciting of emotions 175 experimentation 184, 188, 196 France 2, 175–89

535

536

Index erotic programmes 185 Nuits magnétiques (Magnetic Nights), France Culture 184 pirate radio stations 184–6 prior to the 1950s 176–7 freedom of 196 intimate night talks 175, 181–4 mundane and festive nights 179–81 radio voices for night workers 177–9 teenager nights and progressive disappearance of night programmes 186–8 NISV see Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (NISV) noise, recalling radio as 464–7 NoiseFilter show, New Orleans 253, 254 Norway, RøverRadion 494–5 NOS (Dutch Broadcasting Trust) 324, 325, 326, 328 NPO Radio (The Netherlands) 327 NRK 140 Nuits magnétiques (Magnetic Nights), France Culture 184 Nunez, N. 498 NWDR (German station) 96, 107n6 Object-Based Media 510 Oboler, A. 11, 13, 17, 18, 20–1, 22 O’Brien, J. 507 O’Brien, P. 213 O’Callaghan, D. 496 Ockelford, A. 56 O’Connor, R. C. 194 O’Daniel, W. L. ‘P’ 488 O’Donnell, D. 62, 119 OFCOM (Office for Communications), UK 191, 195, 257, 286, 306–307 Office of War Information (OWI), US 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 22 Negroes and the War pamphlet (1942) 22 Old Gods of Appalachia (US fiction podcast) 445 older listeners active ageing and passive listening 45, 47, 51–4 ageism, popular music and technology 45, 46–9 agents of own listening 44 as baby boomers 45 ‘discovering’ older adults 46–9 and music streaming see streaming of music stereotypes 8

O’Leary, D. 270 Oliveira, M. 238 Omroep Zeeland (Dutch public broadcaster) 328 on-air presentation 208, 212 on-demand listening 227 O’Neill, B. 210 O’Neill, D. 334, 340 Ong, W. 252 ‘on-the-air’ sound 226, 228, 229, 258 Oosterbaan, M. 419 oral history 475–6 Orchard, J. 388 Ordelman, R. 462 Order, S. 271 Organista, N. 75 Osgood, K. 38 Outspoken (politics and current affairs show) 264 OWI see Office of War Information (OWI), US Padfield, J. 151, 158 Palmer-Mehta, V. 123 Panetta, F. 105 Paranthoën, Y. 98 para-social bonds 147 Paris Inter (French radio station) 177 Parnall, J. 141 parody 90 Parris, J. J. 204 participant observation 263 participatory communities 440 Partridge, S. 292 Passenger List (Radiotopia) 227, 230, 231–2, 236 Patterson, E. 132–3 Pau da Lima (favela region), Salvador 416, 417, 421, 422–6 ‘lamp post’ radio (Pop Som) 424, 425, 426, 428, 429 São Rafael Avenue 423, 424 soundscapes 423–6, 427 Payton, F. C. 164 Pearlman, K. 209 Pelican Bay UNLOCKED, United States 501 Pelikaan airplane, Schiphol Amsterdam airport 318 The Penumbra Podcast (US fiction podcast) 440, 447n8, 448n9 People Talking (radio series) 97 performative intimacy 226, 228 Perrault, P. 97–8, 99, 107n10

Index Perrotta, M. 115 personal intimacy see performative intimacy Persons from Porlock (MacNeice) 8, 80–1, 87, 90–2 Peterson, S. L. 466 PhDCasting podcast 151 Phillips, M. H. 230, 231, 232 phone-ins and suicide callers 190–207 see also night-time radio, France; suicide breaking down the call 203–4 callers in crisis 200–1 despair and relief 203 disclosure 203 emergency response 198 feeling of duty 199 playing for time 203 post-analysis 204 quest of information 203 researching suicide 192–5 resolution 203 silence on the radio 201–2, 205n10 talking about suicide 197–200 Photograph and Sound Archives 385 Pinter, H. 80 Pitts, G. 513 Pittsburgh Courier 14, 25n5 PM (BBC Radio 4) 332, 334–9, 336t, 341–3 podcast fiction see also podcasting; podcasts adaptation 442 appeal of 442–3 ‘big budget,’ onset of 441–2 case study (Lauren Shippers) 445–6 versus commercial interest 443–4 fandom, as self-conscious social radicalism 440–1 future of 446–7 history 437–8 increasing diversity of representation in 439–40 potential trends 444–5 podcast studies 229 practitioner-researcher framework 147–61 The Podcast Studies Podcast 150, 152 podcasting see also music podcasts; podcast fiction; podcasts; practitioner-researcher framework and audio drama 7

concept of public podcasting 28 in digital age 2 distinctiveness of 32 for education 28–30 entertaining podcasts 401–4 podcasts 399–401 for edutainment see edutainment podcasting for entertainment 28–30 fictional and factual narratives 226–7 future of sound media 511–12 and gender 34 as a hybrid of forms 32 for information 28–30 learning effects 401 as a medium 228–9 and music 8 as a music-educational practice 27–43 The Netherlands 315 new framework for 405 podcatching apps 133 practitioner-researcher in 151–3 public service functions 28 scholarship 149–50 see also podcast studies and social broadcasting 476–7 telephone conversations and voice memo recordings used in 226–7 podcasts see also music podcasts; podcast fiction; podcasting administrative 400 analysing 150–1 classroom 400 in education 399–401 ‘edu-taining’ 390 finding for listening 154–5 genres 27 how getting made 156–7 layered audio tracks in 147 podcast-producer 151–3 production–consumption relationship 2 qualitative analysis 29–30 textual analysis 30 Poland, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn 496 Poole, R. 165 Popular Committee for the World Cup and the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro 421

537

538

Index portability, and technological intimacy 227 post-feminism 63, 73 Powell, E., ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (1968) 278 Powell, R. 292 PowerPoint 406 PR Newswire 55 practice–research 153 practitioner-researcher framework 151–3, 155–8 critical ear of practitioner, adding 156–7 developing, for analytical listening 153–4 doctoral case study, Australia 153 finding podcasts for listening 154–5 how podcasts getting made 156–7 podcast listener 148–50 podcast studies 147–61 Radio Doc Review 152–3 self-reflection 155–6 Prélude aux rêves (Prelude to Dreams), French night-radio programme 177 The Present Stage (Jones) 87 presenters and producers 208–225 see also radio presentation/presenters; radio production being the audience 216–17 co-creating emotional tone 217–18 context 208–9 Distributed Cognition theory 209, 211, 216, 223 emotional labour with guests 218–19 and trust 212–14 functional and relational elements of producer-presenter relationship 209 functional components of producer role 210–12 relational components of producer role 212–14 pre-production checks 217 presenter-producer relationship co-dependent 213 developing 215–16 equated to marriage 214–15 functional and relational elements of see above level of connection 213 relationship problems and power struggles 219 producers wanting to be presenters 220–1

social media, challenge of 222–3 team-building 215–16 veto, power of 221–2 Prest, K. 149 Price, P. 201 Priestley, J. B. 341 print media 29, 31, 96, 117 prison radio 2, 486–503 Australia Beyond the Bars 492 Jailbreak 492 Prisoner Radio Network 491–2 Hungary, Adj Hangot Egyesület (Speak Out Association) 493 India, Tinka Tinka Foundation 493–4 Israel, Radio Focus 494 Norway, RøverRadion 494–5 Poland, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn 496 Republic of Ireland, Inside Radio 496 Scotland, Station House Media Unit (shmu) 497–8 Trinidad & Tobago, RISE (Rehabilitating Inmates Seeking Empowerment) Maximum Radio 498 United States Ear Hustle (PRX’s Radiotopia) 499–500 KALW (public radio station)/Uncuffed (podcast) 500–1 Pelican Bay UNLOCKED 501 University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI) 498–9 Prison Radio Association (PRA) 487, 489, 490–1, 498 Prison Radio International 486 Prison Service, UK, Seven Pathways to Reducing Reoffending 489 Prisoner Radio Network 492 Australia 491–2 Prix Italia 86, 96, 103, 107n6 producers see also presenters and producers; radio presentation/presenters; radio production disinterested 220 dominant 219 hiding of 208–9 incompetent 219–20

Index podcast-producer 151–3 producer–director 105 supporting talk radio presenters 208 wanting to be presenters 220–1 PSB see public service broadcasting (PSB) Public Radio Exchange – PRX Gateways Cities Audio Project 476 public service broadcasting see public service broadcasting (PSB) concept of 27–30 functions 28 obligations of radio 29 programming 28–9 value of algorithms and recommendation, questioning 139–41 Public Service Announcements (PSAs) 250 public service broadcasting (PSB) 98–9, 100 see also BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) commercial/PSB duopoly model 292 community radio 294, 295 education provision 7 entertainment provision 7 Germany 461 information transmission 7 licence fee support 303–304 practices and ideals 29 questioning public service value of algorithms and recommendations 139–41 and radio apps 131–46 continuity and changes in interface affordances 138–9 copy-pasting linear to on demand 137–8 European public service radios 135 literature review 132–4 methodology and survey design 135 universality, with/without gatekeepers 141–2 videos and sound app strategy 136 remediation 29 in West Germany 96 Public Service Media (PSM) 132, 134, 136, 137, 142 public sphere 27, 28, 34, 119, 122, 162, 417, 461 Black 116, 163, 164, 168 contemporary 117 Spanish 351

Purao, S. 48–9, 55 Purdy, M. 118 pychache 193 QCODE 449n25 qualitative research, community radio 371–2 quantitative research, community radio 371–2 queer networks versus global corporations 437–52 history of podcast fiction 437–8 Quezon, M. 13 Quigley, J. 386 race relations see also Black American radio listenership; morale drama programmes, wartime (US, 1943); racism Black Lives Matter protests 243, 249 ‘coloured migration’ 277–8 cross-cultural dialogue 278 and equality of opportunity 279 ethnic community radio 278–81 harmonising 14, 286 Jena Six racial injustice case (2006) 164 Race Relations Act (1968) 278 in the US 14–17 Rachel Macmillan Nursery School, London 387–8 racism 15, 17, 124 grass roots 277 outright 278 systemic 75 in the UK 278 radio see also listening; recalling radio artistic 8 classic experience 134 commercial see commercial radio, in the 1960s community see community radio; ethnic community radio digital and internet 508–11 educational music 30–1 emotion-led research 1 as an ephemeral medium 369 finding ‘radio’ in the twenty-first century 504–6 forms of 30, 95, 98

539

540

Index hyperlocal 473 magazine broadcasts 31 news, the Netherlands see The Netherlands, radio news one-way nature of, as a medium 120 origins of 453–7 podcasts see podcast fiction; podcasting; podcasts presenters see radio presentation/presenters prison see prison radio production see producers; radio production public service obligations 29 recalling radio as 457–8 serious 8 Spanish see Spanish radio speech-based 383 sports talk see sports talk radio, women in streaming see streaming; streaming of music survival of 1 visuals in 506–8 radio art 106 Radio Atlas 99, 107n12, 283 Radio Authority, UK 282, 283, 285, 286, 302 Radio Conference Transnational Forum (2016) 465 Radio Drama Revival (US fiction podcast) 438 Radio Faza, Nottingham 284 Radio Feltham 487 ‘radio films’ (radio de la parole) 97 Radio Focus, Israel 494 radio journalism 320–1, 324 Radio Lab (student station) 266 Radio Luxembourg (RTL) 181, 184, 365, 367–9, 371, 372, 374–7, 378, 379, 504 radio magazine 31 Radio Mineras, Bolivia 292 Radio Nacional de España (RNE) 359 Radio Orange, The Netherlands 319–20 Radio Pictorial 390–3 radio presentation/presenters see also producers on-air presentation 208, 212 community radio 258–60 physical and psychological repercussions 261 producers wanting to be presenters 220–1 supporting talk radio presenters 208 as two-way communication and relationship building 260–2

in the UK see United Kingdom voice of presenters 213, 223 Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF), US 460 radio production see also producers; radio presentation/ presenters ‘accented’ style 252, 461 early BBC, women in 383–97 production–consumption relationship 2 Radio Rai 136, 141, 144n3 radio stations 33, 51, 102, 133, 137, 166, 193, 255n1, 259, 280, 292, 314 see also community radio; night-time radio, France; sports talk radio, women in Black/ethnic minority 163, 165 commercial 305, 306, 333, 367–78 community 120–2, 124–7, 247, 248, 250–4, 263, 276, 281, 283, 284, 286, 297, 302, 306–7, 328, 426, 475, 508 cultural 101 European 115, 131, 135 in France 175–7, 182, 184–8 incremental 282 Indigenous 250, 254 local 279, 282, 303 mainstream/traditional 262, 276 private 181, 302 public 326 public service 135, 238n3 sports talk 63, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74 in the US 168 websites 65 Radio Studies 1, 151, 370 Radio Sutatenza, Columbia 292 Radio Times 383, 385, 387–90, 393, 394, 395 Radio Unnameable (WBAI talk and music show), US 190 Radio Veronica (Dutch radio station) 324, 465 Radio Verulam 264, 265, 267, 268, 269 The Parsons Knows 270 RadioDoc Review 115, 147–8, 152–3 Radio.garden (non-profit radio streaming platform) 255n1, 515n4 Radiolab (science podcast) 27, 30 radiophonic film 105 Radiotopia, PRX 499 Rae, M. 149

Index Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Republic of Ireland 301 RaiPlay 136 RAJAR Midas Audio survey 227, 228 Rajewski, I. 377 Raphealson, Samson 20, 22 Ravetch, Irving 18–19 The Second Battle of Warsaw 19 Rawls, L. 164 Raworth, K. 297 recalling radio 453–72 as archive 467 as music 462–4 as noise 464–7 and origins of radio 453–7 as radio 457–8 recognizing 455–6 re-collecting 455 recommending 456 as sound 458–61 as speech 461–2 recognition 461–2 Reed, B. 233, 234, 235, 236 Reeves, J. 107n15 reflection on action 155 Reith, Lord J. 81, 82, 83, 332, 333, 343 remediation 29, 39, 133, 315 reportage programmes 31, 34 Republic of Ireland AMARC Europe code, importing into legislation 292–3 community radio 301–2 Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament) 302 Inside Radio 496 Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), monopoly 301 The Rescue (West) 97 Restricted Service Licences (RSL), UK 283 Retro-Fi app 460, 465 rhizome concept 295 Richards, I. 150 Richards, J. 82 Riggins, S. H. 276 Rijksradio De Nederlandsche Omroep (Dutch National Radio) 319 RISE (Rehabilitating Inmates Seeking Empowerment) Maximum Radio, Trinidad & Tobago 498 Roberts, H. 275

Robeson, P. 13, 15, 16, 489 Robinson, M. 488 robots 49 Rodenburg, H. 319 Rodger, I. 86, 107n16 Rodriguez, C. 121, 248 Roosevelt, F. D. 11, 14, 17, 25n4 Rosney, D. 339, 340, 341, 343 Rossen, Robert 21 Route de nuit (Road by Night), French all-night show) 177, 178, 179 RøverRadion, Norway 494–5 RPTF see Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF), US RTE (Irish public-service broadcaster) 210 RTF, Radio France 107n9 RTVE 136 Russell, E. K. 149 Rusty Quill (UK podcast production company) 438, 441, 444, 447n2, 448n13 Ruud, E. 56 Ryan, S. 62 Saint-Bris, G. 181, 183 Salut les Copains 376, 377, 378 the Samaritans (UK crisis organisation) 192, 195, 205n3 Sanders, W. 461 The Sandman (UK fiction podcast) 443 São Rafael Avenue, Pau da Lima 423, 424 Saturday Night Live (NBC, United States) 45 Savage, B. 14 Sawyer, M. 234 Scannell, P. 79, 89, 245, 252, 261, 387, 402–3 Scarry, E. 109n18 Scazzocchio, L. 436 Schaeffer, P. 105 Schafer, R. M. 370, 423 Schaffers, H. 318 Schatzki, T. 259 Schmidt, H. C. 63 Schnabel, E. 96, 107n2, 107n6, 454 Schön, D. 155 Schöning, K. 105 Schoonen, M. 328 Schulberg, B. 20–1 Schültge, F. 461 Schultz, D. 150

541

542

Index Schwartz, S., The Night Watchman 107n12 Schwartz, T. 98 Scifo, S. 246, 258 Scotland, Station House Media Unit (shmu) 497–8 Scott, B. 162, 166 Scott, H. 15, 16 Scott, M. 297, 298, 299 Seaton, J. 194 Second Battle of Warsaw 18 Second Battle of Warsaw (US radio play, 1943) 19, 24 Seed, L. 56 Seen and Not Heard (US fiction podcast) 448n12 self, creation of 216 self-in-process 155 self-reflection 155–6 semi-structured interviews 263 Serial (US fiction podcast) 439 Serial (US non-fictional podcast series) 29–30, 174, 227, 232, 233, 237, 238n2, 238n5, 402, 404, 410n3 factual production, intimate 232–4 service principle 294 Shain, S. 69 Shapley, O. 97, 344, 385, 387, 393 Shaw, A. 254 Shepperd, J. 461 Shingler, M. 236, 403, 404 Shippen, L. 439, 445–6, 448n12 Shneidman, E. S. 193 Sienkiewicz, M. 28 Siepmann, C. 23 Sieveking, L. 85, 96, 107n2, 107n7, 384 Kaleidoscope 83, 93n2, 384 The Silt Verses (UK fiction podcast) 445 Silverman, K. 64 Sinke, O. 320 Skoldberg, K. 155 Skoog, K. 194 slang 164 Slocombe, M. 385 Small-Scale DAB (SSDAB) 508 Small-Scale Digital Audio Broadcasting Multiplex 508 smart speaker 51–4 Alexa ‘drop-in feature’ 56 Alexa Silver 45, 52

Alexa Skills 53 Echo 51 HomePod 51 Nest 51 Smith, D., Black Girl Songbook 34 Smith, S. 47 Snyder, J. 233, 234 social broadcasting 473–85 allowing power of authentic conversation 482–3 case studies Beyond the Bubble (Tate Modern) 480–2 Chrisp Street Market, East London 479–80 King’s Cross Station, London 478–9, 480 and community radio 475 as a dialectical space for social participation and transformation 480–2 and oral history 475–6 and podcasting 476–7 reasons for 477 situating in audio media landscape 474–5 social capital 261 social listening 123 social media 32, 34, 38, 53, 66, 222–3 Söderström, G. 49 Sollinger, M. 440 Somerville, M. 384, 386, 393 Something about Joe (play by Milton Merlin and Clarence Muse) 13, 14–15, 24 Song Exploder (music podcast) 36, 37, 38, 40 sound see also future of sound media; materializing sound indices (MSI) ‘on-the-air’ sound 226, 228, 229 community radio, complex soundscapes 416–19 metaphors of radio, sounds as 458 as metonym of radio 458 recalling radio as 458–61 suppression of sounds in Rio 426–8 Sound Archive 385 sound studies 368, 370–1, 378, 403–4 soundscapes 102, 149, 230–2 see also landscapes audio 407 commercial radio 372, 373, 415 complex 416–19 digital 245

Index favelas, Brazil 416–19, 423, 425, 427, 428, 429 imperfect 231 versus landscapes 418 layered 34, 427 territoriality 418–19 Spanish radio 313–14, 348–62 Antena 3 radio see Antena 3 Radio (1980s), Spain Association for Media Research (AIMC) 360n10 in early years of democracy 349–50 General Media Study 360n10 SER (Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión), podcaster 348, 349, 351, 358, 359 Technical Plan of 1979 349–50 Transition to Democracy 348 special lecture series 400 speech, recalling radio as 461–2 Spinelli, M. 30, 33, 115, 150–1, 227, 231, 476 Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution 32 sports talk radio, women in 8, 62–78 see also women English-language stations broadcasting 65 male gaze and women’s voices 64–5 need for female role models 67 need to prove knowledge of sports 68 ‘problem’ with voices of 64 radio stations 63, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74 research methodology and findings 65–7 sports media and hegemonic masculinity 63 structural reform 72–3 support needed for women 70–1 wider audience, need to serve 72 Spotify 33, 36, 45, 47–9, 52–4, 133, 142, 143n1 fiction 444, 445 First Look Partnership 450n34 Spotify app 131 This Is series 53 Sprott, E. 386 SR Play 136, 137, 140 St Clair, G. 498 STAAG platforms 510, 514 Stachyra, G. 238 Starkey, G. 238, 337 Station House Media Unit (shmu), Scotland 497–8 Steinberg, M. J. 166–7

Sterling, C. 461 Stern, H. 191, 197, 198–9 Sterne, J. 370, 512 stickiness 137 Stocks, M. 388 Stoever, J. 65, 75, 162, 163 The Story about Danish Jazz (Farlige toner – historien om dansk jazz podcast) 38, 39 StoryCorps (collection of human voice recordings) 476 story listening 149–50 S-Town (documentary podcast) 150, 174, 227, 233–5, 237, 238n6 streaming for building connections 253–5 of music see streaming of music peak 8 streaming of music consumer-oriented 44 and older listeners 8, 44–61 ageism, popular music and technology 45, 46–9 ‘fifty quid man’ stereotype 47 lag in adoption of new technology 45, 49, 50, 52 prior to 2018 49–51 treating as a viable audience for music streaming 45 see also older listeners passive listening 45, 47, 51–4 peak streaming 45 as a ‘provider of vitality’ 55–7 smart speaker 45, 51–4 Street, S. 202 Studio Ochenta 450n35 Sturgess, K. 390 Sturino, M. 73–4, 76n6 suicide see also phone-ins and suicide callers male 200, 205n3 motivations for committing 194 passive ideation vs. firm intentions 192 prevention of 194–5 reporting of 195 researching 192–5 stigma of 198 Werther effect 198, 205n9 Sunrise Radio, London 282

543

544

Index Sunset Radio, Manchester 282 Surlin, S. H. 162, 163 surveillance 45 Sveriges Radio 136, 142 SWR3 app 139 Symbolic Interactionism 216 synchronous listening 245 Syvertsen, T. 143n2 tablets (iPads) 50 Tacchi, J. 151, 259, 454 Taiwan 48 talk radio format 258 argumentative 7 democratic means of broadcasting 195–6 late-night radio see night-time radio performativity 261 phone-ins and suicide callers 190–207 TalkRadio, UK 191, 515n2 tape recorder 106, 109n16 Tardieu, A. 105, 176 team-building 215–16 Teasley, S. D. 400 technological intimacy 226, 227–8 teleoaffective structure 259 television 28, 117, 195, 196, 202, 276, 369, 378, 403, 444, 459, 514 see also Netflix accessibility 87 adaptation 442 audience studies 418 channels 136, 351, 357 commercial 87, 314, 348, 350 documentaries 35, 97, 99 domestic 80 drama 82 European history portal EUScreen 455 features 98–9 in France 186 images on 187 live 90 morning 352 music podcasting, challenges by 39 news 195 Radio and Television Act (1988) 301 sports programmes/sportscasting 64, 65 and Third Programme 80 threat of 1, 87

twenty-four-hour 186 Texas State Prison, Huntsville 488 That Classical Podcast (music podcast) 34, 36–7, 40 thematic analysis 264 Theocharis, J. 106 They Met on Good Friday (MacNeice) 90 thick description 370 Third Programme 79, 80 see also BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation); drama, radio audiences 84 introduction of 84–6 and scheduling 89–90 writers 84–6 Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls (WBAP) 488 This American Life (TAL), US public radio programme and podcast 202, 227, 238n3, 410n3 factual production, intimate 232–4 Thomas, D., Under Milk Wood 9, 96, 97, 99–100, 103, 104 The Thrilling Adventure Hour (TTAH), fiction podcast 437, 438, 447n1 Thylstrup, N. B. 456 Tighe, K. 211–12, 220 TikTok 47 Tilley, K. 489 Tilly, R. 134 Tinka Tinka Foundation, India 493–4 Todorov, T. 402 Tolliver, L. 165 The Tom Joyner Morning Show 167 Tomlinson, T. 17, 18 Tomorrow (US radio play, 1943) 20–1 Tonning, E. 80, 87 Townsend, S. 152 transistors 178, 179, 368–9, 373, 377, 486 transnational history, commercial radio 373–5 trauma 204 Travis, R. 54 Trevorrow, M. 215 Tribal Council meetings, Indigenous radio stations 254 Trinidad & Tobago, RISE (Rehabilitating Inmates Seeking Empowerment) Maximum Radio 498 Truetzschler, W. 302

Index Truman, H. S. 24n2 Trump, D. 342 Trutat, A. 102, 105 Tufte, T. 300, 301 Ulman, P. 96 Uncle Snoop’s Army Radio 54 Under Milk Wood (Thomas) 9, 96, 97, 99–100, 103, 104 UNESCO 294, 398, 483n1 archives 459, 460 United Kingdom see also BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation); OFCOM (Office for Communications), UK Access Radio 275, 283–6 Black and Asian population 280 Brixton riot (1981) 280 Broadcasting Research Unit (BRU) 280 colonial rule 278 Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) 280 Community Communications Group (COMCOM) 281 Community Radio Association 281, 303 community radio in 262–3 community stations 249 presenters 257–74 Community Radio Order 285, 296, 300, 306 ethnic community radio, development 277–8 Greater London Area, research survey (1985) 280 Home Office 281 Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) 281, 282, 302 migration to 277–8 multicultural 287 Radio Authority 282, 283, 285, 286, 302 suicide rates 192 Sunrise Radio, UK 282 United States all-night radio 175 American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 24n1 Blue Network 10, 21, 24n1 boxing, on American radio 7 Café Society 15 Census Bureau 57n2 Civil Rights Congress 15

Ear Hustle (PRX’s Radiotopia) 499–500 FCC see Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Great Depression 14 Hollywood Writers Mobilization 10 Indigenous communities 249–50 Jim Crow racial segregation 14, 16, 17, 25n6 Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee 15 KALW (public radio station)/Uncuffed (podcast) 500–1 Office of Facts and Figures 23 older listeners and streaming of music, North America see older listeners; streaming of music Pelican Bay UNLOCKED 501 Podcast Awards 33 race relations and tensions 14–17 United States Navy 16 University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI) 498–9 wartime morale drama see morale drama, wartime (US) Unity FM, Birmingham 286 Unity101, Southampton 286 University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI), United States 498–9 University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland 496 user illusion 139 uses and gratifications theory 162 ‘V Day’ (US play, 1943) 21 Valenti, M. 190, 191, 193, 197, 198, 203, 205n2 Valentine, J. 217, 218, 220 Valladares, L. do P. 420 Valois-Nadeau, F. 46 Van Den Bulck, H. 134, 140 Van der Goot, L. 459 van Sprang, A. 321 Van Vuuren, K. 251 Vancour, S. 460 VARA (Dutch broadcasting association) 317, 318, 323–4 Achter het Nieuws (‘Behind the News’) 324 Vargas, J. 12, 13 Vas Dias, M. 316 Vaz Dias (Dutch press agency) 316–17, 319 Verhulst, P. 88

545

546

Index Vertov, D. 98 veto, power of 221–2 Vibe FM, Watford 265, 267, 270 visuality, absence of (technological intimacy) 227 VOD (Video-on-Demand) 136 voice 64, 403 and ambient sound 229 amplified 149 anechoic 465 authorial 149 confidential 203 disembodied 65, 75, 231 and listening 149 male 38, 87, 379n11 mediated 120 of presenter 213, 223 of radio 168 suicidal callers 197, 199, 201 voice memo recording 226–7, 230 volunteerism/volunteer presenters 124, 259 volunteering on community radio to serve others 264–6 VPRO (Dutch broadcasting association) 317 VRT 136, 137 Vygotsky, L. S. 279 Wace, M. 383, 393–6 From a Doctor to a Mother 395 The Week in Westminster 395 Wade, P. 392 Wahl-Jorgensen, K., 343 WAKR (AM station) 165 Waldmann, E. 150, 233, 235, 236–7 Wallace, H. 11, 24n2 Wang, H. 204 Wang, J. F. 34 Wang, R. 133, 143 Ward, B. 14 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 19 wartime morale drama, United States see morale drama, wartime (US) Watching the Throne 8 Watson, R. 263 Watts, E. 435 Watts, J. 16 Wayland, Kc 438 WBAP (Texas-based radio station) 488 WBEZ (Chicago public radio) 233

WBLK-FM ‘Wake Up Club,’ Buffalo, NY 166 WDIA-AM, Memphis 166 Weaver, H. 250 Weiss, A. S. 237 Welcome to Night Vale (US fiction podcast) 404, 438–9, 444, 445, 447n5, 448n12 Wells, J. 167 Welsh Rarebit (serialized drama) 448n18 We’re Alive (zombie apocalypse serial) 437, 438, 447n1 Werner, J. 14 Wertheim, A. 11 Werther effect 198, 205n9 West, S., The Rescue 97 Wexley, J. 18 WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive 458 Wheatley, H. 385 The Whisperforge (podcast fiction company) 441–2 White, D. 50 Whitehead, K. 83, 84, 85 Whiteside, E. 63 WHIV FM community radio station, New Orleans, NoiseFilter show 253, 254 Wiedemann, E. 38 Wieringa, C. 403, 404 Wijfjes, H. 316 Wilkie, A. 489 Williams, A. 499 Williams, K. 83, 84 Williams, L. 54 Williams, R. 90, 505 Wilson, J. 259 Wilson, W. 392 Wincott, A. 150 Wissmann, T. 402, 403 Witteboom, S. 322 WIZF-FM programme, Cincinnati 166 WMAQ-AM programme, Chicago 163–4 Wogan, T. 270 Wolf 359 (US fiction podcast) 439 Wolfenden, H. 244, 260 Wolvin, A. D. 118 Woman’s Hour (Radio 4) 384 women see also gender algorithmic discrimination against 45

Index as assets 71–2 of colour 63 composers 36 ‘disembodied’ 76n1 need for female role models 67 online harassment 69–70 in podcast production 34 in radio production (early BBC) 383–97 in sports talk radio see sports talk radio, women in subordination of 63 voices of 64–5 white 63 Wooden Overcoats (UK fiction podcast) 439, 448n8 Woods, E. 499 Woods, R. T. 167 Words and Music (Beckett) 8, 80, 81, 88–9, 91 The World (Radio 4) 337

World Association of Community Radio (AMARC) 290 AMARC Europe code 292–3 World Health Organisation (WHO) 192, 195, 205n5 World Wide Web (WWW) 287 writing for radio 407 WSBC-AM, Chicago 163 WVON-AM, Chicago 164 WZAK-FM, Cleveland 165 Young, B. 209, 215, 216 Young, G. 280 Your Day is Coming (US radio play, 1943) 12–13, 23–4 Zeldin, T. 482 Zeta Group 351 Zimmermann, S. 402, 403

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