Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Volume 13, Issue 1-2, 2015

In this article we adopt a cultural approach to radio, and specifically to radio documentaries about recent Spanish history, focusing on an analysis of Documentos RNE, which, from 1999 to date, has been broadcasting documentaries that employ the vast sound archives of Radio Nacional de España (RNE). The archives and their use in historical memory programmes represent a true national repository with which to reconstruct collective memory. Through a more detailed analysis of five documentaries broadcast between 2008 and 2014, we examine major topics such as the Second Republic, the Civil War, the post-war period, the Franco dictatorship and the Transition to Democracy. The article show how Documentos RNE included the mentioned topics in its list of programmes and what type of audio-visual language resources were common on the reconstruction of the past.

This article explores the way British radio critics began to write about radio in the national press during the 1920s and the early 1930s. I will argue that the way radio came to be covered at this time was a result of the way critics were situated in relation to the needs of and interactions between broadcasters, the press and the existing dominant cultural hierarchy of the time. In response to such tensions many critics began to adapt existing forms of coverage associated with theatre, film and book reviewing to this new aural medium, approaches already known to the editors, the public and themselves. Because of this, most critics came to focus on radio programmes as the text to critique and write about, using a form of impressionism. Others, however, began to create a more contextual approach, writing about radio more as a mass medium, created by broadcasting organizations such as the BBC. As this coverage began to appear in the national newspapers it came to play an important role in the way radio became accepted as part of popular culture.

This article considers whether the UK’s classical music radio station, Classic FM that launched in September 1992, should be regarded as having been during the mid-1990s within the tradition of classical music broadcasting on UK radio established by the BBC. The history of classical music radio in the United Kingdom since 1945 was characterized by a series of efforts to widen the franchise, to attract a continuing middlebrow and middle-class audience alongside more elite programming. The introduction of Classic FM, happening at much the same time as BBC Radio 3 was recast in order to attract a wider audience, comprises the most recent such attempt. Drawing on a new database of programme output, and supported by audience data, the changes introduced by Radio 3 from the beginning of the 1990s are shown to be a deliberate attempt to create a more diverse network, soundly based in the established canonic repertoire of classical music radio, but willing to test of the margins of that repertoire. The history of the arrival of Classic FM shows that it came about in a relatively unplanned way. Far from being a natural progression from the earlier Independent Local Radio services, it arrived almost by chance into the broadcasting ecology. The station’s output was dominated by relatively undemanding sequence programming, but was based on the same central canonic repertoire as Radio 3, with Classic FM striking downwards towards greater popularity, whereas the BBC station ascertained upwards towards presenting this genre of music at times as high art. Nevertheless, the two occupied substantially the same cultural ground, and Classic FM notably displayed programming ambition outside peak times, placing it firmly within the longer tradition of UK radio. The common ground shared by the two stations is further demonstrated by the similarity of their audience profiles, and the extent of shared listening, with one million listeners tuning in to both stations each week in the mid-1990s. Classic FM and Radio 3 between them reawakened the substantial middle-class, middlebrow audience for classical music radio in the United Kingdom. It is correct to locate Classic FM within the continuing tradition of British classical music radio, and to regard it as comprising and extending UK public service radio broadcasting accordingly.

Local independent radio stations in Christchurch, New Zealand, had their operations severely disrupted by major earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011. This article examines the experiences of three radio stations that were shut out of their central city premises by the cordon drawn around the city after the 22 February quake. One of the stations continued broadcasting automatically, while the others were unable to fully get back on air for several weeks afterwards. All of the stations had to manage access to workspaces, the emotional needs of staff and volunteers, the technical ability to broadcast, and the need to adapt content appropriately when back on air. For the locally based radio managers decisions had to be made about the future of the stations in a time of significant emotional, physical, and geological upheaval. The article explores how these radio stations were disrupted by the earthquake, and how they returned to air through new combinations and interconnections of people, workspace, technology, content and transmission.

Only in the second decade of the twenty-first century has contemporary Christian radio appeared as a new genre in Britain, unlike the United States where it has long been a significant format. Responsibility for religious broadcasting in the United Kingdom was, for most of the twentieth century, fulfilled by the BBC. However, the gradual relaxation of broadcasting regulations since the 1980s and the introduction of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) have provided openings for Christian radio stations, and since 2009 the United Kingdom has had two national stations broadcasting from mainland studios for the first time. This article explores recent developments in this genre, using primary research interviews with Christian radio broadcasters. It suggests that what started out as a way for Christians to evangelize and proselytize their message has become a radio service that broadcasts almost exclusively to converted believers. It also observes that the programming and scheduling of these stations closely resembles the speech-and-music-mix style of BBC Local Radio, implying an attempt to insert themselves directly into the mainstream of the radio spectrum.

There have been few studies to date of the cultural work performed by NPR’s information radio programmes, and those that have been conducted have overlooked the role of musical interludes in those programmes. This article combines quantitative data analysis with textual and discourse analysis to elucidate the nature of the interludes and their function within the context of All Things Considered, NPR’s flagship afternoon newsmagazine programme. It argues that the structured diversity of the interludes embodies the homologous aesthetic and ideological dispositions of NPR’s personnel and its core audience. The interludes themselves suggest a tension between highbrow and middlebrow aesthetic dispositions that are manifested in the structured diversity and hybridity of the genre selections as they are deployed in the context of the programme.

Many people in rural areas in Malawi lack access to information due to illiteracy and the unavailability of reliable sources of information. There is also an absence of a proper forum where rural ordinary people can express their views and have their voices heard. However, in communities where there are community radio stations, the stations are helping create spaces for ordinary people to participate in public life by setting up radio listening clubs (RLCs). This article examines how RLCs offer ordinary people opportunities for mediated participation in public debate and for self-representation. Based on face-to-face interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation, the article argues that the organization of listeners into RLCs by community radio stations enables ordinary people to receive and discuss crucial information and hold debate on issues of interest. As such, the RLCs possess some characteristics of the public sphere; hence the reference to them as alternative public spheres.

Community radio in Australia is now well established and considered an important part of the radio sector, however, in today’s economically driven world it is at the bottom of the media money pile. In order to argue for its continuing existence, funding and development in an ever-changing media landscape, some means of capturing its value is essential. This article describes the development of a theoretical framework of value for community radio. The content of the framework was achieved by, first, examining, community media/radio literature through five relevant lenses of analysis. Secondly, a subsequent meta-analysis was applied to consolidate the framework. In order to test the utility of the draft theoretical framework of value, three case studies were conducted with different types of community radio stations in Perth, Western Australia. Two primary research methods were used: interviews with staff and audience focus groups. The testing exercise provided a multimodal insight into the values of community radio as reflected in real life practice. The analysis revealed how value was perceived by participants across three stations as personal motivations, and second, that value at individual stations was contingent upon the characteristics of the individual community radio stations.

In 1932 when the Australian government established the ABC as the national broadcaster, it expected commercial radio to fill the gaps left by the ABC and become the local broadcaster. For regional commercial radio operators, the idea of the local has been embraced when required and rejected when provided the opportunity under deregulation. When radio was deregulated in 1992, the government anticipated that market forces would create diversity and competition. However, deregulation resulted in a concentration of ownership and a perceived lack of diversity and localism by audiences and parliamentary committees. After a lengthy period of deregulation that allowed radio licence holders to create networks in regional Australia without hindrance, the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cwlth) (BSA 1992) was amended in 2007. The then Federal government, led by Prime Minister John Howard, put in place rather prescriptive legislation that set out the requirement for commercial radio licensees to broadcast material of local significance and provide minimum levels of local content. Out of these circumstances some questions arise. First, did this legislation come too late? Second, what is local in the digital age and how do we define it? Finally, is it possible to regulate local content with the impending arrival of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB+) into regional Australia? This article examines whether such prescriptive conditions for regulating local content in response to increased networking in this era of convergence and DAB can restore the concept of local to both networked radio and the community that depends on it. Can radio in its networked form satisfy the desire to embrace the benefits of being local?

Radio’s New Wave. Global Sound in the Digital Er a, Jason Loviglio and Michele Hilm es (eds) (2013) New York: Routledge, 232 pp., ISBN 0415509769 (pbk), $43.95