Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Volume 5, Issue 2-3, 2008

The dominant role of women's voices on National Public Radio (NPR) and the atypical voices of some of NPR's women and men contribute significantly to NPR's appeal to an audience of listeners who are ambivalently positioned within a post-liberal, post-civil rights and post-feminist social formation of highly educated Americans. The changing cultural and political meanings associated with the movements of the 1960s and 1970s are echoed in the voices, sounds and stories of National Public Radio, particularly in the changing sounds of men's voices. The cultural work of NPR, then, which can be traced in the content of its journalism, is most effectively conveyed in its harder-to-pin-down sound signification, especially those demonstrated in the voices of the reporters, hosts and commentators most closely identified with the network.

This article investigates the role that one non-commercial college radio station in the Los Angeles area played in the broader music community during the late 1990s, when formerly alternative rock music was getting played on commercial radio. By instituting a radical indie (independent of corporate control) only policy for rock-related music being added to the station, this radio station defined itself even more strongly as an oppositional practice against commercial radio. At the same time, the definition of indie was being contested as both an aesthetic and economic term, both at the station and within the broader music industry. Based on participant observation and interviews, this article interrogates this station's radical indie music policies, uncovering the challenges faced when an organisation has rules based on contested terminology. Although the radio station's formatting rules were designed to foster a spirit of independence from the corporate music industry, they often led to feelings of disempowerment among DJs. Along with the mainstreaming of alternative practices in the 1990s came an increasing vigilance among underground communities, who sought to keep their subcultures pure and untainted by corporate interests, yet as this article highlights, it is very difficult to remain isolated from commercial culture.

In recent years, the consumption of audio material online has become a significant force in the media landscape. As this is often referred to as radio, we are led to address the way in which this user-defined, personalised experience relates to more traditional discourses of radioness. Are the existing concepts of radio, as deployed, relevant to this form of consumption, or do they serve to create false expectations and structures within the newer formats? This article charts the current and historical conceptions of radio, and compares this with the nature of the various online experiences available, in order to establish the extent to which these can be classified as radio, and to which it is reasonable for them to claim this title.

Christian radio is a growing sector; its North American presence, in terms of number of stations, has more than doubled in size in the last twenty years. Yet there is little coverage of this broadcasting format, particularly disinterested academic discourse. This study seeks to address this absence, and to provide a summary of the evolution, role and significance of Christian radio in US radio broadcasting. It attempts to define what we mean by Christian radio, and to examine the drivers of its recent growth. Finally, the article presents some reflections on the possible future of the format, and whether or not this growth represents an important trend in the radio industry.

The article explores the work of the Canadian sound artist Anna Friz over the last decade. Her work deals explicitly with issues of technology and the relative absence of women's voices on radio. Exploring her work as a composer, installation artist, instrumentalist, performance artist and storyteller, and contextualising these practices within feminist critiques and radio conventions, the article explores Friz's self-reflexive radio. Ideas of supermodernity, displacement and critical utopia are deployed to discuss specific pieces of Friz's work in relation to identity and space. The article argues that Friz reconfigures the radio as a site of resistance to dominant constructions of contemporary globalised space and cultures, the politics of informational capitalism and the uneven flows that these cultures and politics engender.

The article argues that within analyses of star performers from the classical Hollywood period, the role played by the medium of radio has been significantly underestimated. Building upon new developments in star discourses which question the role of the cinema as the dominant medium in the creation of star personae, this article examines the relationship between Hollywood and American broadcast media through a study of the multi-medial persona of Peter Lorre in order to suggest that the macabre star persona associated with Lorre has been erroneously attributed to his cinematic career at the expense of a consideration of his radio career. Central to Lorre's public persona was the nature of his employment on American radio between 1936 and 1964. The article discusses the three types of appearances made by the actor: as a star performer in horror programming; his position as host of horror series; and his celebrity cameos on popular shows. It explores how Lorre's extensive radio work was reliant upon certain consistent modes of representation which had the potential to greatly influence public awareness of the performer and helped to cement his nefarious star persona to a far greater degree than his film roles or screen performances.

Crossing the Ether: British Public Service Radio and Commercial Competition 19221945, Sean Street (2006) Eastleigh: John Libby Publishing, 296 pp., ISBN 0 86196 668 6 (pbk), 22.00Historical Dictionary of British Radio, Sean Street (2006) Oxford: Scarecrow Press, 318 pp., ISBN 0 8108 5304 3 (hbk), $80.00Programme Making for Radio, Jim Beaman (2006) London: Routledge 129 pp., ISBN 0-415-36572-4 (pbk), 14.99Radio: A Complete Guide to the industry, W.A. Richter (2006) New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 296 pp., ISBN 0820-4763-31 (pbk), 13.39Radio's Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy, Jason Loviglio (2005) Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 171 pp., ISBN 0-8166-4234-6 (pbk), 13.50