The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media: Volume: 5 | Issue: 1

The Radio JournalInternational Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media

The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast &

Audio M

edia | Volume Five N

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ISSN 1476-4504

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www.intellectbooks.com

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Volume Five N

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Journal of

THE RADIO JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN BROADCAST AND AUDIO MEDIA Volume 5 Number 1 – 2007

Editorial

3–4 Peter M. Lewis

Articles

5–7 Sounding Out Radio Martin Shingler

9–18 Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime to podcasting Enrico Menduni

19–34 Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand identity through commercial radio

Andrew Dubber

35–54 Finding an alternative: Music programming in US college radio Tim Wall

Reviews

55–60 Reviews by John Farnsworth and Hugh Chignell

9 771476 450002

ISSN 1476-4504 5 1

Printed and bound in Great Britainby 4edge, UK

ISSN 1476–4504

The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media is published threetimes per year by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK. The currentsubscription rates are £30 (personal) and £180 (institutional). A postage charge of £8 ismade for subscriptions outside of Europe. Enquiries and bookings for advertising should beaddressed to: Marketing Manager, Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK.

© 2007 Intellect Ltd. Authorisation to photocopy items for internal or personal use or theinternal or personal use of specific clients is granted by Intellect Ltd for libraries and otherusers registered with the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) in the UK or the CopyrightClearance Center (CCC) Transactional Reporting Service in the USA provided that the basefee is paid directly to the relevant organisation.

The Radio JournalInternational Studies inBroadcast and Audio MediaVolume 5 Number 1 – 2007

The Journal is published in association with the Radio Studies Network,the UK’s new association for researchers and teachers of sound broad-casting, and is an academic, peer-reviewed publication for all those inter-ested in research into the production, reception, texts and contexts ofradio and audio media; including all structures, forms and genres of radiobroadcasting, while also embracing net distribution and audio streamingof radio services and texts, CD-ROMs, books-on-tape, and sound art.

The Journal welcomes individual contributions from establishedand new scholars around the world, including work and research inprogress. Critical approaches are invited from a range of scholarly disci-plines across the humanities and social sciences. Joint and/or inter-dis-ciplinary submissions are also encouraged. Original work on practiceand production in the radio industries is as welcome as theory forma-tion. Pedagogical issues will be covered in an annual feature on theteaching of radio studies.

International Editorial BoardMarko Ala-Fossi University of Tampere [email protected] Chaparro Escudero University of Malaga [email protected] Cheval Université Michel de Montaigne [email protected] Crisell University of Sunderland [email protected] Garner Glasgow Caledonian University [email protected] Gazi University of Athens [email protected] Goodman University of Melbourne [email protected] Guglielmone Université de Technologie de Compiè[email protected] Hendy University of Westminister [email protected] Hilmes University of Madison-Wisconsin [email protected] Huwiler University of Amsterdam [email protected] Jauert University of Aarhus [email protected] Keith Boston College [email protected] Loviglio University of Minnesota [email protected] Mitchell University of Sunderland [email protected] Menduni Università Roma III [email protected] Moore University of Ulster [email protected] Phillips Murdoch University [email protected] Rothenbuhler Texas A&M University [email protected] Street Bournemouth University [email protected] Tacchi Queensland University of [email protected]

TechnologyBernard Wuilleme Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University [email protected]

EditorTim WallProfessor of Radio and Popular

Music StudiesDepartment of Media and

CommunicationBirmingham City UniversityPerry BarrBirminghamB42 2SU UKEmail: [email protected]

Associate EditorsPeter LewisSenior Lecturer in Community MediaDepartment of Applied Social SciencesLondon Metropolitan UniversityLadbroke House62-66 Highbury GroveLondon N5 2AD UKEmail: [email protected]

Kate LaceySenior Lecturer in Media and Cultural

Studies Media and FilmUniversity of SussexFalmer Brighton BN1 9RG UKEmail: [email protected]

Reviews EditorHugh ChignellSchool of Media Arts and

CommunicationBournemouth UniversityTalbot CampusFern BarrowPooleBH12 5BB UKEmail: [email protected]

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Any matters concerning the format and presentation of articles not covered by the above notes should be addressed to the Editor.The guidance on this page is by no means comprehensive: it must be read in conjunction with Intellect Notes for Contributors.These notes can be referred to by contributors to any of Intellect’s journals, and so are, in turn, not sufficient; contributors will alsoneed to refer to the guidance such as this given for each specific journal. Intellect Notes for Contributors is obtainable fromwww.intellectbooks.com/journals, or on request from the Editor of this journal.

Hard-copy photographs should be greyscaleand at least 11cm wide, althoughreproduction from colour is possible. Slidescan also be presented for greyscalereproduction. Line drawings, maps, diagramsetc. should be in a camera-ready state.

If submitting a digital file as an image forreproduction, this can be sent to the Editoras an email attachment. This should beconverted to greyscale or bitmap first andbe no more than 1850 pixels in width. JPEGis the preferred format, but TIFF or EPS arealso acceptable. If submitting an image forconsideration as a cover illustration, thisshould be in full colour. Otherwise, thesame conditions apply.

All illustrations, photographs, diagrams,maps etc. should follow the same numericalsequence and be shown as Figure 1, Figure2 etc. The source has to be indicated below.Copyright clearance should be indicated bythe contributor and is always the responsi-bility of the contributor. Indication must begiven as to where they should be placed inthe text. If there is no particular preference,this should also be stated.

Examples and QuotationsContributors are encouraged to quoteappropriate primary examples of any radiobroadcasts or audio texts under discussionwherever possible. Context should be given inthe main text of the article not later than theoccasion of the first such quoted example.

This context must include: the radioprogramme title(s), as printed in schedulesor listings, italicised; the name of thebroadcasting organisation, date and time ofbroadcast, all in normal text; and a briefstatement on the format (or content), scale(i.e. national, regional, local) and location ofthe broadcasting organisation.

A reference to the broadcast organisation’swebsite URL address where examples of theprogrammes under discussion may be heard,either live or from archive, would also bewelcome where available. When subsequentexamples of primary radio output quoted arediverse and numerous, these details maythereafter be provided by references (see below).

Within paragraphs, examples and othertextual quotations should normally be nolonger than 25 words, identified by singlequotation marks. Longer examples andquotations must be set out as a separateparagraph in normal text (i.e. not italicised),indented, with an additional one line spaceabove and below, and typed withoutquotation marks.

CaptionsIllustrations should be accompanied by acaption, with the Fig. No. and an acknowl-edgement to the holder of the copyright. Theauthor has a responsibility to ensure thatthe proper permissions are obtained.

Other StylesMargins should be at least one inch allround and pagination should be continuous.Foreign words and phrases inserted in thetext should be italicised.

ContributionsOpinionThe views expressed in The Radio Journal arethose of the authors, and do not necessarilycoincide with those of the Editor or theEditorial Board.

RefereesThe Radio Journal is a refereed journal. Strictanonymity is accorded to both authors andreferees. The latter are chosen for expertisewithin the subject area and are asked tocomment on comprehensibility, originalityand scholarly worth of the article submitted.

LengthArticles should not normally exceed 6000words in length, and more speculative pieceswould normally be considerably shorter.

SubmittingArticles should be original and not be underconsideration by any other publication andbe written in a clear and concise style.

In the first instance, contributions shouldbe in English, annonomised, in the styleoutline below, and submitted preferably as adigital copy to the editorial email [email protected]. Submissions areaccepted in hard copy and should besubmitted to the editor.

If the article is accepted, it should be putonto disk, with any required amendments,and this electronic version of the article asagreed for final publication should then besent to the Editor. The electronic versionshould be in WORD, and be submitted alongwith an ASCII (i.e. Text-only) file of thearticle on a 3.5-inch disk. The strongpreference is for this to be submitted on adisk formatted for Macintosh, although adisk formatted for DOS may be accepted.

The disk should be labelled with thename of the author, the title of the article,and the software used. (Formats other thanWORD are not encouraged, but pleasecontact the Editor for further details.)

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IllustrationsIllustrations are welcome. For example,photographs showing radio presenters,technology, facilities, listeners and listeningpractices; tables, figures and graphs showingaudience figures, details of computerisedproduction systems (e.g. music programmingsoftware, news editorial programming),structures of radio broadcasting organisa-tions, and original models representingtheoretical analysis of processes.

Only greyscale or black-and-whitereproduction is available within articles.

Author NoteA note on the author is required, whichincludes an address. This should not exceed50 words. Authors should also indicate howthey wish their names to appear. The customis without titles, one forename plus surname,but authors may vary this.

AbstractThe abstract should not exceed 150 wordsin length and should concentrate on thesignificant findings. Apart from its value toabstracting services, it should also make acase for the article to be read by someonefrom a quite different discipline.

KeywordsProvision of up to six keywords is muchappreciated by indexing & abstracting services.

Notes, References and BibliographyThe Radio Journal’s main system ofreferencing is by the Harvard system ofincluded or (name, date) references. Therecan in addition be numbered endnotes whichwill appear at the side of the appropriatepage (although the numerical sequence runsthroughout the article), but these should bekept to an absolute minimum, and normallyonly used for reference to sources not in thepublished or public domain (such aspersonal interviews and archives), or forfurther brief context or necessary comment.However, if radio broadcasts underdiscussion in your contribution have beenpublished commercially, or remainpermanently available on a broadcaster’sweb-based online archive, please includethem in your included references and end listof references, referenced in the text in theusual Harvard manner (i.e. title of showitalicised, date). But, to confirm, if any radiobroadcasts you wish to cite are: not availablein any of these ways; lost in the past; or weretransmitted live and never recorded; or existin recorded form only in an archive, pleasedo not include these in your end list ofreferences, but reference by numbered notesonly. If a recording exists only in yourpersonal archive, please say so (‘personalarchive’). All numbered endnotes should beidentified by a superscript numeral. Seepractice employed in this number for detailedguidance on referencing types of sources.Marginal note or end list of referencescitation of radio broadcasts should adherewherever possible to the following format:title of programme as printed in schedules orlistings [italicised] (year of broadcast), nameof broadcasting organisation, area thebroadcast covered, day and date ofbroadcast, local time of broadcast [forexample: Letter from America (2002), BBCRadio 4, UK, Friday 22 November,8.45–9pm]. For subsequent references to the same broadcast in the numbered notes,title and ‘op. cit’ are sufficient; for furthereditions of the same programme in thenumbered notes, title, op. cit, and thedifferent date of broadcast. A list ofreferences must be included with all mainarticle contributions.

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The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media,Volume 5 Number 1. © Intellect Ltd 2007.

Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.3/2

Editorial IntroductionPeter M. Lewis

This issue of the Radio Journal sees us enter the fifth year of our existenceand is able to show something of the range of radio studies that is cur-rently underway. This is the first issue to feature articles selected by aguest editor associated with an important development in our field.

Three of the articles have been co-ordinated by Martin Shingler, who isSenior Lecturer in Radio at the University of Sunderland, and who hostedthe Sounding Out conference in 2006. Martin provides a short editorialessay on the conference, in which he outlines some of the scholarship pre-sented there, and connects it to the developing field of radio and audiostudies.

Martin has also selected two conference papers to be developed into fulljournal articles for this issue. The first by Andrew Dubber, Senior Lecturerin Music Industries and Radio at Birmingham City University, UK, looks atthe construction of national identity through commercial radio in hisnative New Zealand. Andrew explores some of the distinctive features ofNew Zealand culture and the way they have been adapted within a dereg-ulated commercial sphere. His emphasis on music culture, music radioand notions of professionalism raises questions of importance not only forsmall nations like New Zealand, but also for radio and music everywherein the world. We hope that this is a theme that others will want to returnto in future conferences and in future issues of this journal.

The second article drawn from the Sounding Out conference is fromEnrico Menduni of Università Roma Tre in Italy, and is based upon ananalysis of the most recent incarnation of the technology of audio distrib-ution that we used to call broadcasting. Placing podcasting in a historicalcontext, the paper offers some provocative analyses which we hope willspur others to take up one or more of the important issues that aretouched upon here. Technology has always played a significant part in thedevelopment of radio as a cultural and institutional form and we wouldwelcome contributions to this ongoing debate.

The third article in this issue comes from another source, but sharessome of the same themes that Martin, Andrew and Enrico explore. TimWall, Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham CityUniversity, UK, looks at college radio in the United States of America. Hecombines a historical discussion of radio provided by US universities fromthe 1920s onwards with a detailed examination of three contemporarycollege stations. He brings out the importance of music in national

3RJ–ISBAM 5 (1) 3–4 © Intellect Ltd 2007

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culture, the way that changing technologies allow new forms of institu-tions and practices to develop, and offers a distinctive analysis of oneaspect of a nation’s radio system.

Here, then, four radio scholars based in Europe present analyses thatsurvey important contemporary issues across three continents, and takein a major international conference. We now have a broad and represen-tative international editorial board, which we hope will build on work likethis. Other issues in this volume will feature a report on last summer’sRadio Conference, review the slew of books on radio that are now avail-able in English, and extend the international analysis further.

4 Peter M. Lewis

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Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.5/1

Sounding Out RadioMartin Shingler University of Sunderland

Two of the articles included in this issue of The Radio Journal were originallypresented as papers at Sounding Out 3: An international symposium in mediasound, held at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom on7–9th September 2006.1 This event was, as the name suggests, the third ina series of conferences designed to bring together a multinational throng oftheorists, historians and practitioners of radio, film and video sound, sonicart and electro-acoustic music.2 Over a hundred delegates attended, fromcountries such as the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Spain, Greece, Italy,France, Poland, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Norway. The con-ference included presentations by six keynote speakers: Ed Baxter (Reso-nance FM), Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, author of Dumbstruck),Andrew Crisell (University of Sunderland, author of Understanding Radio),John Durham Peters (Iowa University, author of Speaking into the Air),Gianluca Sergi (University of Nottingham, author of The Dolby Era) andAdinda van’t Klooster (a new media installation artist from the Utrecht).Complementing these were 34 papers presented on a range of topics,including: historical and contemporary debates on the impact of sound onthe body and the senses (Kate Lacey), Hindi film songs (Anna Morcom), thephotographing of sound and contemporary electronica (Joanna Demers),artistic glossolalia in Icelandic rock music (Hugo Burgos), the use of silencein Madonna’s music (Arnt Maaso), black women’s empowerment throughpopular music (Miriam Strube), the work of Hildegard Westerkamp in thefilms of Gus van Sant (Randolph Jordan), and the acoustic identity of theproducer of music programmes on the radio – the case of Greece (AngelikiGazi). In addition, there was a series of audio and audio-visual presenta-tions: Lucy Gough’s radio play The Raft (2002); animated shorts by TerryPender, Martine Huvenne and Maurice Wright; Andy Cartwright and SeanStreet’s award-winning radio feature Then-Now (2006); short films byLaurent Bordoiseau, Arnaud Ganzerli and Jerome Blanquet, Bran Evans,Mark Cartwright, Virgil Moorefield and Jeff Weeter, Dennis H. Miller, BartVegeter and Filmstad Producties, D-Fuse and Scanner, Nick Cope and TimHowle, and Adinda van’t Klooster and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra(Graeme Wilson, Giles Lamb, Neil Davidson and George Lyle). A recordingof a live performance in Ecuador by Hugo Burgos, Daniel Pasquel, Jeff Eckelsand Nelson Garcia was also screened. In other words, the event was a richand fascinating mixture of papers and presentations on sound – past,present and possible future – from around the globe.


1 The conference washosted by the Centrefor Research in Media &Cultural Studies at theUniversity ofSunderland, convenedby myself, assisted byChristine Gledhill,Gianluca Sergi, ChrisPriestman, PeterLewis, CarolineMitchell and NickCope, and generouslysupported by a grantfrom IREN:International RadioResearch Network.

2 Sounding Out (July2002, hosted byStaffordshireUniversity withsupport from theRadio Studies Network,the British Academyand the Arts &Humanities ResearchBoard) includedpresentations byRobin Rimbaud (akaScanner), GordonHouse (Head of BBCRadio Drama) andPeter Ringrose (BBCStudio Manager),Jonathan Holloway(Director of RedshiftTheatre Co.) LucyGough (playwright),ParasuramRamamoorthi(Professor of TheatreArts at MaduraiKamaraj University,India) and John Gray(former ChiefAssistant at BBCRadio Scotland).Sounding Out 2 (July2004, hosted by theUniversity ofNottingham with a

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Sounding Out 3 was intended to maintain and extend the dialoguebetween theorists and practitioners of sound, which the previous twoevents had set in train, promoting new research and sustaining emergingcollaborations between practitioners, writers, performers, theorists and his-torians. It sought to identify, exchange and promote international perspec-tives, extending knowledge of sound practices (both production andconsumption) to new and emerging technologies (e.g., Podcasting). The on-going effects of globalisation and media convergence remained in focus as anumber of scholars sought to understand these in relation to the historicalevolution of communication and the electronic mass media. The event pro-moted new and emerging scholarship on sound practices, technologies,aesthetics, perception, affect, and writing and performance, with presenta-tions delivered by scholars new to the field of academic research as well assome of the biggest international names in communication studies, radiotheory and film scholarship. One of the major issues addressed throughoutthe conference was the relationship of sound and image, hearing andvision. Having formerly promoted attention to sound as a distinct medium,one motive for this third event was to refocus questions towards the diverseways that sound and image interact. In Film Studies a new interdisciplinaryapproach to early cinema has been making increasing use of the concept of‘intermediality’ in order to foreground the relations between film and othermedia (e.g., theatre, music-hall, radio, etc.) thus adding a historical dimen-sion (Gledhill 2004). Similarly, in Radio Studies, scholars have been refram-ing perceptions of radio and ‘radiobility’ in response to the text and imagesof digital and web radio (Tacchi 2000).

Radio played a major role in Sounding Out 3, as it has done in all of thesymposia. From Ed Baxter’s opening plenary, ‘Extending Radio: A PersonalReflection’, to the final presentation, Andrew Crisell’s ‘The New Literacy ofSound: A Retrospect and Some Prospects’, radio remained a dominantstrand of the conference. On the morning of the second day, an address byIREN co-ordinator, Jean-Jacques Cheval,3 prepared the way for a series ofradio panels throughout the day featuring new research by scholarsworking in Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom. The presentations ofEnrico Menduni, Andrew Dubber, Angeliki Gazi and Irene Giannara4 weresubsequently made available on the Sounding Out 3 website (www.soundingout.sunderland.ac.uk). Two of these Podcasted papers have beenrevised and written up for this edition of the Radio Journal. EnricoMenduni’s ‘Four steps in radio broadcasting: from QuickTime to Podcasting’describes the successive impact that digital music, the internet, file sharingand Podcasting have had on the social practices of listening in Italy andmany other parts of the world, and considers how these practices chal-lenge existing notions of radio, broadcasting and recorded music. Rapidand radical changes in radio and the music industry have certainly notbeen confined to Europe. Andrew Dubber’s article, ‘Tutira mai nga iwi(Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand identity throughcommercial radio,’ illustrates this with his case study of New Zealand.

grant from the BritishAcademy), featuredpresentations byAnne Karpf (writerand broadcaster),Mike Bull (Lecturer atSussex University andauthor of SoundingOut the City) andDavid Hunter (DeputyHead of BBC RadioDrama). It includedpapers by MicheleneWandor, Alan Beck,Brian O’Neill, AndrewBoyce, Paul Moore,Elke Huwiler, AndyBirtwhistle, MartinStumpf, Peter Lewisand Sara O’Sullivan.

3 Jean-Jacques Cheval isa lecturer at Michelde Montaigne-Bordeaux 3University, France,and the President ofGRER (Group forResearch and Study ofRadio) as well as theCo-ordinator of IREN(International RadioResearch Network).

4 Irene Giannarapresented a paperwritten by herself,AndreasGiannakoulopoulosand Akis Evenisentitled ‘Audio ondemand: Radio’sfuture format and itsimpact on thecommunicationprocedure.’ This teamof Greek doctoralstudents, journalistsand radio producersexplored some of thenew models ofcommunicationresulting fromexperiments in localradio broadcastingand the Internet thatenable listeners toselect from a widerange of music stylesand artists,transforming radiointo a personal musicplayer. Their casestudy was Pandora’sMusic GenomeProject, which defines

6 Martin Shingler


Since the deregulation of its radio industry in 1989, New Zealand hasinstigated a series of policies for increasing the proportion of domesticallyproduced music on its stations, despite increasing levels of internationalownership (primarily Australian and Canadian). This has created a highlycharged and controversial debate about the definitions and the nature ofauthentically ‘New Zealand’ (i.e., New Zealand sounding) music. Whileexplaining the context and development of this debate, Dubber’s articlehighlights some important lessons for broadcasting policy-makers and forthose seeking to promote local (i.e., national or regional) music throughradio programming.

Since the launch of Sounding Out in 2002, radio has undergone massiveand fundamental changes – digitisation, convergence, globalisation, frag-mentation and successive technological innovations – suggesting a radicaltransformation of the common practices of radio production and consump-tion around the world. This provides a challenge to existing theories of radioand to the established notions of what radio is, what it does, how it does it,how it’s used and who uses it. The pace of change has been rapid and relent-less to the extent that each year new possibilities – and possible futures – forradio are revealed. This requires constant monitoring, analysis and researchin order for radio scholarship to remain relevant and accurate. The biennialSounding Out symposium offers one way for radio and audio scholars fromacross the globe to share their latest observations, ideas and predictions. Inthis way we can maintain our conceptual grasp on radio and broadcastaudio’s development. Once aired and discussed, some of these ideas andobservations deserve to be recorded and documented, enabling future histo-rians to trace the impact and ideas of the changing global media landscapein which radio and audio remain key players.

ReferencesGledhill, Christine (2004), Reframing British Cinema, 1918–1928: Between Restraint

and Passion, London: BFI.

Tacchi, Jo (2000), ‘The need for radio theory in the digital age,’ InternationalJournal of Cultural Studies, 3: 2 (online: http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/), pp. 289–298.

Suggested citationShingler, M. (2007), ‘Sounding Out Radio’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in

Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1, pp. 5–7, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.5/1

Contributor detailsMartin Shingler is Senior Lecturer in Radio & Film Studies at the University ofSunderland, UK, where he teaches courses on radio theory, radio drama and docu-mentary. He is the co-author, with Cindy Wieringa, of On Air: Methods and meanings ofradio (London: Arnold, 1998) and has published on radio in the Journal of Radio Studies(USA) and the Media Education Journal. He is the convenor of Sounding Out: an interna-tional symposium in media sound. Contact: University of Sunderland, School of Arts,Design, Media & Culture, The Media Centre, St. Peter’s Way, Sunderland, SR6 0DD.E-mail: [email protected]

the musical identity ofindividual songs andenables stations tomould musicprogrammes to thepersonality of thelistener.

7Sounding Out Radio





Four steps in innovative radiobroadcasting: From QuickTime to podcastingEnrico Menduni Università Roma Tre, Italy

AbstractIs podcasting the future of radio? Is podcasting that missing link connecting radio andthe Net that Internet radio stations were not able to establish? Is podcasting a revolu-tionary or a transitory cultural trend? Furthermore, is podcasting a way towards amore democratic audio media system or is it rather a new tool in the hands of themultinational recording industry? This article will explore these questions, providingan historical framework to the introduction of digital sound (from 1991 to 2007)and related social practices, distinguishing four main phases: the birth of the popularuse of digital music; Web radio; Music for free; the iPod and podcasting.

Introduction: digital sound and radio historyThe aim of this article is to link emerging social practices of digital soundto radio history. Although music file sharing, web radio and podcastingcurrently form part of academic debate, we actually know very little aboutthe impact of these innovative practices on the present and the future ofradio. A historical framework of the introduction of digital sound and itsrelationship with radio is provided here, distinguishing four main phases:the birth of the popular use of digital music; Web radio; Music for free; theiPod and podcasting. Critical analysis is supported by several examples, alltaken from the Italian radio landscape. While the extension of these resultsto other countries, even in the age of globalisation, may need to proceedwith caution, comparative studies are eagerly anticipated.

The first phase – birth of the popular use of digital musicSocial practices of popular music diverge from those regarding audiovisualand video content. The introduction of portable gramophones (since theTwenties), of transistor radio sets with cheap and tiny earphones (1955) andof Sony Walkman tape player/recorders, often with built-in radio receivers(1979), appear as milestones in a shift away from socially performed music(live or recorded) to personal choice, and to listening to music in a mobileway. All of these to some extent represent an extension of the private spherewithin the public space, what the French author Patrice Flichy defined as


Keywordspodcastinginternet radiodigital musicfile sharingItalian radio

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‘communicational bubble’, in which the boy or girl walking through thetown is almost completely engaged by listening to his/her own music, sur-rounded by it (Flichy 1991). Audio cassette recording and the Walkmanallowed private copying of discs, even if of low quality, tape-exchanging orbartering and, particularly, the possibility of shaping one’s own personalmusic compilation, to be performed in a mobile and nomadic way anddirected to provide everyone with a peculiar, personally determined sound-track to everyday life. This is a feature that video, which requires more directattention, a large screen and a fixed position, could never offer, other thanthrough screens in public spaces like malls and pubs, paid slender and dis-tracted attention by a passing audience. In any case, these would representpublic performances and not personal compilations.

The coming of digital music prolonged and enlarged trends in the use ofpopular music that were already present in an analogue world. From 1991,a digital audio file could be played by an Apple Macintosh computer thanksto the bundled QuickTime software. In 1992, Tim Berners Lee developedthe World Wide Web at Cern labs, Geneva, and the following year Mosaic,the first web browser, was introduced by the University of Illinois. Between1993 and 1994 Netscape, the first commercial browser, appeared. In1995, MPEG-3 (commonly called MP3) was introduced as an implementa-tion of MPEG-1 Audio Layer III data. In the same year, Windows 95 waslaunched. An audio file could now be played back by an IBM compatible PCwith no additional software. Explorer was embedded in Microsoft Windows95 and, at a mainstream level, it appeared as a mass legitimation of theInternet. In the very same year, RealAudio by Progressive Networks wasreleased, providing the first effective and widespread software for stream-ing, although Liquid Audio was chronologically the first.1

1995 was a critical date as far as changes in the popular perception ofsound are concerned. As often happens, at the outset things appeared dif-ferently. When sound began to be performed by personal computers, man-ufacturers began to produce them equipped with built-in or outerloudspeakers for a sophisticated stereophonic sound. The main social rele-vance of the personal computer, regarding sound, appeared to be the pos-sibility of duplicating discs, even illegally, using widespread and cheapmastering devices. Those ‘CD burners’ created numerous problems for therecording industry. During that period, however, the Internet grew expo-nentially, becoming a mass practice in most developed countries. MPEG-3became widely used as the standard means of compressing audio files. Thediffusion of sound through the net would dramatically change the distrib-ution, economy and culture of music, not to mention all related socialsystems, including radio and the recording industry. Among the variousconsequences, we can distinguish two important categories:

1. Almost everybody could broadcast. The former enormous social andeconomic distance between broadcaster and listener could evolvetowards an almost peer-to-peer (P2P) relationship, at least potentially.

1 Liquid Audiostreaming softwarewas developed in1995. It providedcopy protection andcopyrightmanagement, and didnot meet the esprit dutemps, interestedmostly in musicsharing for free (Mack2002: 576–577).Liquid Audiocompany (afterJanuary 2003, LiquidDigital Media) wasformed in May 1996in Redwood City,California, USA.

10 Enrico Menduni


2. Almost every existing radio station could ‘webcast’ (broadcast on thenet), breaking space and time boundaries and many (if not all) forms ofsocial control and censorship.

Streaming software allowed one to access a digital sound (or, later, video)file before it had been completely downloaded. Before the introduction ofstreaming, downloading time could be so long – due to the dimensions ofthe file – that it would discourage potential listeners (around this timeWWW was popularly interpreted as ‘World Wide Wait’). Before streaming,sound practices on the net were restricted to a small niche of high-speedconnection holders and passionate music lovers. Later, at the end of thenineties, they became more and more popular.

Increasingly, streaming practices reduced the monopoly of contempo-rariness, formerly the exclusive preserve of radio thanks to its unique pos-sibility of live broadcasting. Until the coming of the Net, radiobroadcasting was the only synchronous sound medium and shared withTV alone a ‘culture of contemporariness’ much envied by other ‘still’media like newspapers, cinema and records, obliged to always arrive afterevents and to pay a heavy toll to a technological and social delay. A hugesocial and political fence divided ‘recorded sound’ from ‘live broadcasting’.Now, streaming allowed almost-live broadcasting on a mass scale, wherethe only delay was the buffering time.

The Second Phase: Web radioIn the second half of the Nineties web radio stations were born, first in theUnited States, then pretty much everywhere (Bonini 2006, Priestman2002). They can be divided into three typologies:

1. Websites of an existing terrestrial radio station. They repeat on the webthe same audio content that is transmitted over-the-air (‘simulcast-ing’), breaking its geographical boundaries. On the Internet, anAustralian listener can be a member of the audience of a local Italianstation, which would be otherwise impossible, and he can even ‘phone(time zones permitting) the station to request a special song, as if hewere inside the narrow footprint of the terrestrial antenna of thatremote station on another continent.

2. Web radio only, without any antenna or terrestrial signal. They canbypass the most significant obstacles that make it difficult to establish aterrestrial radio station. These obstacles can be of an economic kind(the cost of the licence), bureaucratic (official authorisation) or politi-cal (censorship, particularly in countries characterised by weak democ-racies, like the well known case of B 92 radio station in Serbia).

3. Thematic radio. Many web portals at the end of the past centuryoffered numerous and diverse libraries of thematic music (called ‘chan-nels’ like in broadcasting), similar to those provided for free by pay-TVsystems as a sort of fringe benefit for household TV audiences. These

11Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime to podcasting


radio stations were extremely poorly formatted, lacking in all paratex-tual marks that transform a sound flow into a broadcast text. Theywere devastated by the sudden decline of the net economy in March2000 (the bursting of the net bubble, probably influenced by anantitrust sentence against Microsoft in court) and, after September 11,by the consequent cutting of channels, portals and personnel. Aboveall, they were badly affected by the growth of streaming practices thatallowed users to build a personal compilation and to use the Net in amore interactive and personalised way.

After some years of Internet radio, it is possible to affirm, without beingconsidered an enemy of radio and of innovation, that it was not the revo-lution that had been announced. A paradox can explain this point: anInternet radio dramatically breaks the spatial and temporal boundariestypical of radio (i.e., with my PC, I can also record a radio programme thatI want to keep, and then listen to it later), fighting effectively againstmarket and political censorship. These characteristics could be interpretedas making Internet radio a democratic medium but only on the conditionthat the user is provided with: (1) a fast and steady telecommunicationconnection, cheap or with somebody (e.g., an absent employer) paying forit; (2) a computer that is powerful enough to let the user carry out othertasks while streaming and listening (Wall 2003). The portrait of this lis-tener depicts a wealthy inhabitant of the Western world and reproducesthe boundaries of the so called ‘digital divide’ (Antonelli 2003). While anobsolete, tiny, cheap and easy-to-use transistor radio set can be effectivelyused even in the very centre of Africa, in a village with no electric powersupply, to promote knowledge and opportunities, this is clearly not thecase with Internet radio (Antonelli 2003: 195, see also Bonfadelli 2002).

This paradox makes Internet radio less attractive than it first appears,introducing a second paradox: the Net’s ‘audience’ (as we can provision-ally define it) is much larger than that of traditional radio, but the Internetradio audience is more restricted, both numerically and socially. Thisparadox emphasises a further difference between radio and television inthe transition towards digital. Television can make a full profit of digitalbroadcasting, compressing signals and using the same frequency forseveral TV channels, formerly broadcast through several frequencies,saving a precious resource and realizing the so called ‘digital dividend’ byselling or hiring that resource no longer essential for broadcasting.Furthermore, television can make profit out of its location within thehousehold, creating a return channel through the existing domesticphone line, using – thanks to a decoder – the existing TV set, withoutlosing any of its previous advantages. On the contrary, radio’s transition todigital (as with DAB, Digital Audio Broadcasting, and other standards) haseither forced users to buy new radio sets that are heavy and expensive orrestricted them to the Internet, which remains (and will remain for someyears to come) a ‘static’ home technology. Both digital radio broadcasting

12 Enrico Menduni


and Internet radio go against the winning trend of radio, namely its minia-turisation and its mobility. Literally, the radio vanishes as an autonomouspiece of hardware, hidden in the dashboard of a car, in the alarm clock, inthe mobile phone, in the Walkman and its off-spring (from MP3 to iPods).It is difficult to consider as a revolution a process that goes against themost beloved characteristics of a medium and its related practices.

The Third Phase: Music for FreeThe emerging limits, if not the decline, of Internet radio, are connected tothe birth of file sharing. Internet radio, as partly digital radio, is not able tocontinue and empower social uses of radio in the television era, in whichlistening to radio is more and more a choice rather than a necessity. Itremains a niche practice, not a re-shaping; a remediation of theradioscape, as transistors were in the second half of the Fifties (Bolter andGrusin 1999). Furthermore, Internet radio, especially in our third typol-ogy (thematic music libraries), is not able to maximise the full advantagesof the Internet: namely, its interactivity, its call to consumers to partici-pate, its willingness to create ‘prosumers’.2 While these limits of Internetradio have become increasingly evident, file sharing has been born. ‘Filesharing’ refers to the exchange of music files among music fans on the Netthrough specific websites, independent of the offers posted by their users.Typical file sharing is free; attempts at transforming it into a commercialtransaction will come later, and will be successful.

File sharing is tied to the spread of MP3 as a standard and to the birthof a new piece of portable personal hardware: a USB flash memory unit,equipped with small earphones, battery operated, which performs MP3audio files after copying them from a personal computer. Napster, the firstmusic file sharing website, appeared in autumn 1999 in the United States,created by Shaw Fanning (Napster was, in fact, his nickname). The novel-ties of Napster were twofold: firstly, it specialised in MP3 only; secondly, itprovided central servers to connect users but the transactions betweenoffer and demand were considered a peer-to-peer relationship, withoutintervention by Napster. In December 1999 the powerful RIAA (RecordIndustry Association of America) sued Napster and its users for copyrightinfringement. More than 2000 cases have since been brought againstNapster and thousands of its users. At first, legal action generated a greatdeal of publicity for Napster, which had 14 million users by February2001 but, later, it led to the end of free file sharing by Napster, after acourt ruling of September 2001, shortly before September 11. Of course,free file sharing practices continued but Napster went into decline, dueboth to legal action and to the coming of new players, such as AppleComputers.

Before describing the iPod era, the fourth phase of our timeline, some-thing should be said about the lasting social practices of file sharing. Withstreaming and file sharing, music loses its contact with a material support.In the era of the technical reproducibility of artwork, to quote Walter

2 ‘Whether we look atself-help movements,do-it-yourself trends,or new productiontechnologies, we findthe same shift towarda much closerinvolvement of theconsumer inproduction. In such aworld, conventionaldistinctions betweenproducer andconsumer vanish’(Toffler 1980: 275).



Benjamin, music has ceased to be a performance-only art, becoming moreand more a recorded art (Benjamin 1936). Live music has become a rela-tively rare and costly social ritual, a very sharply socially segmented onemoreover, while the ordinary consumption of music has transferred fromspecific public places like theatres and concert halls to the intimacy of thehousehold, creating a new political economy of (cheap) recorded music. Incomparison, performed music has been affected by the dangerousBaumol’s cost disease (Towse 1977).3 Once, music in the household couldbe performed by the mechanical piano (pianola), Edison’s reel or Berliner’sdisc. In these three cases, a material support was needed, a fetish or simu-lacrum of music that had to be bought or hired in the public space andtransported into the home. Thus, with the coming of radio, a distinctionarose between instant music and permanent music. Instant music, oftenlive, granted by radio, had an immaterial nature and all the associations ofa novelty and of an unpredictable event but it was ephemeral and practi-cally un-recordable. Permanent music was a collection of records, effectivebut always the same. Permanent music was the music in the household,whereas instant music was often that of in-car audio, transistor radio andthe Walkman. With streaming and file sharing, however, the differencebetween permanent and instant music loses its meaning or, at least, is re-shaped. Music loses its material support, it shows itself again as immater-ial, as it was in live performance but, nevertheless, it can now bereproduced, exchanged and transported, breaking definitively the cosyprison of the home, as radio had first enabled it to do.

The fourth phase: from iPod to PodcastingWhile Napster closed, in 2001, Apple Computers launched its iPod, asophisticated and superbly designed multi-standard portable music andvideo player. This was a digital music player, based on a powerful hard diskrather than on a flash memory.4 Its immediate success made the iPod thetrue heir of the Sony Walkman. The strength of the brand and the beautyof its design were a significant part of this success but so too was its largememory, which was more and more enhanced over time. The iPod allowedits user to hold a personal encyclopaedia in which all his or her history inmusic, video and photos is stored: in other words, a complete set of tastesand preferences. As an encyclopaedia, it is a rounded, complete objectwith its own personality, not only a tool to perform others’ artwork. TheiPod was designed during the Napster era and, as with many Apple prod-ucts, it appealed to the tastes of cultured and moderate transgressives, cer-tainly more liberal than libertarian or radical. The Napster way could nolonger be followed (Spitz and Hunter 2005). Soon after the iPod, Applelaunched its iTunes Music Store, opening the era of fairly-priced paidmusic.5 Its customers pay to download music and a DRM (Digital RightsManagement) software prevents unlimited copying. Paying for music isone of the basic premises of podcasting. Podcasting is a form of distributionof audio contents that can be received periodically on one’s computer by

3 Mass production (ofstandard identicalartefacts) produces aprogressive costdecrease of singleartefacts, with fixedcosts (design, project,factory, tools,advertising) coveredby initial sales. Incontrast, the culturalproduction ofperforming arts(concerts, stage),according to Baumol,are composed ofprototypes different inevery performanceand requiring thesame manpower,therefore not allowingfor significant savingsin costs whenrepeated many times.An orchestra playinga Beethovensymphony (or a teamplaying a footballmatch) practicallycosts the same everyevening. A long runperformance, ifsuccessful, may evenresult in artistsdemanding higherrates of pay forsubsequentperformances.Consequently, in theperforming artssuccess often involvesincreasing costs, notdecreasing as it is inmass production,while revenues(tickets and sponsors)are unable to increaseat the same rate(Baumol 1984).

4 The first generationiPod was announcedon the 23rd October2001 with a 5–10 GBhard disk capacity(against 512 MB – 1GB of flash-based MP3 players), and wenton sale the followingmonth, just in timefor Christmas sales. Aphoto (2004) andvideo (2005) viewerwere later added;capacity grew to amaximum of 80 GB

14 Enrico Menduni


subscribing (for a fee) or adding oneself to a list, thanks to special softwareprogrammes called ‘feeds’. After downloading the contents onto the PCone can copy them (for a limited number of times), re-arrange them, andput them totally or partially onto an iPod.

After this first phase of podcasting, around 2004, the same techniquewas used by radio stations, in order to reach, periodically and for free,those listeners desiring to consume a special radio programme. This hasalso been used (certainly in Italy) by cultural and political organisations inorder to spread their content, especially spoken content. Radio stationsthat once promoted simulcast now adopt podcasting in order to followcurrent trends and to go further beyond the temporal and spatial bound-aries that affect radio: in other words, going beyond the antenna’s foot-prints and programming schedules. In this case podcasting (even if weshould speak of listeners more as enlisted than as subscribers) is a meansof broadening listenership and increasing listeners’ involvement.Podcasting allows listeners to mix in their iPods (or similar devices) andlisten to their store of music and radio programmes, etc., in a mobilemodality.

So is podcasting the future of radio? Is podcasting that missing linkthat connects radio and the Net, which Internet radio stations were notable to establish? Is podcasting something truly revolutionary or is itmerely another transitory cultural trend? And finally, is podcasting a waytowards a more democratic audio media system or, instead, is it yetanother tool to be exploited by the multinational recording industry? Pastexperience of the Internet should make us cautious about the last twoquestions. At the moment, podcasting does not operate as a more democ-ratic medium. Just as it is valued and exploited by the recording industry,radio stations and even political or cultural organisations have adopted itin order to promote closer bonds with their listeners and clients, i.e., aswith any form of subscription. Radio Radicale, a 30 year old radio stationpromoted by Partito Radicale, a political party, now uses podcasts6 to feedits targeted audience with specific radio programmes, dedicated to variouspolitical issues, which are in fact forms of public speech. Vatican Radiopresents podcasts in fifteen different languages,7 all about news and reli-gious information, plus a multilingual podcast dedicated to the speeches ofthe Pope, a modern-day application of the ‘radio as a loudspeaker’ conceptof the Twenties. Radio Deejay, one of the most listened-to private nationalradio stations, offers podcasts8 dedicated to a single entertainer or group,thereby segmenting its mainstream audience. Radio Popolare, a well-routed left wing radio station based in Milan, with syndicated stations inprincipal Italian towns, uses podcasts to distribute the targeted musicchoices of its daily talk show ‘Mente locale’.9 Some websites, likeMagmaweb,10 offer music podcasts from little radio stations, while youngmusic fans produce music podcasts, like ‘Lester Voice’ by Walter Ego,11

often linked with the growing music database of MySpace,12 providing agrassroots music repertory.

in 2006. One yearlater Appleannounced that over100 million iPods hadbeen sold, mostlysince 2005. The podmetaphor allowsmultiple associationsof ideas, from sciencefiction cinema (TheInvasion of the BodySnatchers by DonSiegel, 1956; 2001: ASpace Odyssey byStanley Kubrick,1968) to aerospaceengineering, botanicstudies and zoology.The iPod is providedwith iTunes software,a digital media playerapplication (not onlyMP3, but almost allaudio file formats)first introduced byApple Computers inJanuary 2001.Version 2.0 wasreleased in October2001. Both wereMacintosh only. Thesecond generationiPod (July 2002, 10 –20 GB capacity)included MusicmatchJukebox software forWindows users. AWindows version ofiTunes was releasedin October 2003.

5 The iTunes MusicStore was opened inApril 2003 andproved the viability ofonline music sales. Itnow distributesvideos, movies andvideogames,accounting for 80% ofworldwide onlinedigital music sales.

6 http://www.radioradicale.it/rss_feed.

7 http://www.radiovaticana.org/it1/rss_feeds.asp.

8 http://www.deejay.it/dj/podcast?ref=hphead.



At the moment, iPod and similar tools seem to be widespread cultobjects, particularly as most of them have been given as a present, an‘intelligent present’, often by relatives and parents for Christmas. Musicpodcasting seems far more common than radio podcasting as such; Italianradio stations use podcasting mainly for speech-based entertainment andcomedy shows. Most music podcasts originate not from radio stations somuch as from passionate young individuals. When asked why they usepodcasts, the young people of Rome who did not simply reply ‘for fun’stressed the interactivity of their musical choice and the bricolage of man-aging their own soundtracks. ‘By using podcast’, a student says, ‘I feedmyself with music, but it’s only raw material. In certain evenings I remainat home and, at my desktop computer, I produce my own music, the one Ilove and I can send to my friend. Sometime it takes me hours. Then I fillmy MP3 player and I go out’. Podcasting, as a social practice, seems to beconsidered by the young as more individualised than radio listening andmusic compilation-making, involving a relationship with severalproviders, the podcasters, seen not as institutions but as peers. Anotherteenager says: ‘I prefer to skip from one podcast to another, all made bypeople I know deeply even if I never saw them in person, than to listen toa mainstream radio flow. I can rip and grab songs, offered by a person Itrust, in my personal compilation’. Late afternoons and evenings appearas the favourite time slot for such practices on central weekdays, takingplace at home, given that weekends and Thursdays tend to be devoted togoing out.13

All these hints, however provisional, suggest a role for podcasting as aniche prosumer activity, not as random listening or a passive feed from thepodcaster. While Internet radio is highly static, rooted in the household,podcasting could be the true heir of the urban explorations of theWalkman, both having as their ancestor the flâneur (city-walker) ofBaudelaire: the person who ‘marries the crowd’, who likes most ‘to be outof home, and nevertheless to feel at home everywhere, to watch the world,to be in its centre and to be in hiding’ (Baudelaire 1885: 64–65). Indeed,even more than the Walkman, podcasting implies a component of manualmanipulation on the computer keyboard, accessible to a niche of passion-ate lovers of music and radio. It seems to indicate the future of radio but,nevertheless, it is difficult to think of mass podcasting given that it requiresa component of specialised computer work. What is evoked here, curiously,is radio’s past rather than its future, recalling its amateur phase: i.e., thosewireless (sanfilistes) radio-amateurs of the 1910s and 1920s, who builttheir own radio sets prior to mass production. This suggests that podcast-ing is a mid-term technology, representing one of a number of possibleways for radio to face a complex digital future. As an interesting and effec-tive social technology, podcasting would appear to retain the mobile andinteractive aspects of radio, its valued attributes as a medium. Yet podcast-ing may still not offer the definitive mode of radio consumption. Another

9 http://www.radiopopolare.it/mentelocale/.

10 http://www.rtinradio.com/pod/magma_podcasting.xml.

11 http://feeds.feedburner.com/lestervoice.

12 http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.

13 A research onlistening habits of theyoung in Rome,particularly regardingdigital media, istaking place in RomaTre University. It willbe prepared by 50semi-structuredinterviews to youngpeople (16–21) livingin Rome, plus 500questionnaires to thesame targets and adeep review of radiostations and webmusical resources.

16 Enrico Menduni


mobile device of modern times, the cellular phone, seems to be moreestablished and more popular. It may well be that the mobile phone willcreate its own political economy as a technological and social platform tocarry other media, like a radio set or a camera, a recorder or an MP3player, and a popular billing system. Indeed it may be that radio in thedigital era may profit more by establishing some form of alliance withmobile phones, including an evolution of podcasting, as suggested by thepresentation in December 2006 by Apple of an iPhone. Technology in theUMTS generation of mobile phones could be ready for this but, once again,it will be the social uses of technology rather than the technology itselfthat will finally decide.

ReferencesAntonelli, Cristiano (2003), ‘The Digital Divide: Understanding the Economics of

New Information and Communication Technology in the Global Economy,’Information Economics and Policy, 15, pp. 173–199.

Baudelaire, Charles (1885), Le peintre de la vie moderne, in L’Art romantique, Paris,Calmann Lévy.

Baumol, Hilda and William J. (eds.) (1984), Inflation and the Performing Arts, NewYork: New York University Press.

Benjamin, Walter (1936), Das Kunstwerk in Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzier-barkeit, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.

——— (1982), Das Passagen-Werk, Surkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main; Italiantranslation Parigi capitale del XX secolo, Torino, Einaudi, 1986.

Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard (1999), Remediation: Understanding NewMedia, Cambridge, Mass.: London, MIT Press.

Bonfadelli, Heinz (2002), ‘The Internet and Knowledge Gaps: A Theoretical andempirical Investigation’, European Journal of Communication, 17: 1, pp. 65–84.

Bonini, Tiziano (2006), La radio nella rete. Storia, estetica, usi sociali, Milano, Costa &Nolan.

Flichy, Patrice (1991), Une histoire de la communication moderne. Espace public et vieprivée, Paris: la Découverte.

Mack, Steve (2002), Streaming Media Bible, New York: Hungry Minds.

Priestman, Chris (2002), Web Radio. Radio Production for Internet Streaming, Oxford:Focal Press.

Spitz, David and Hunter, Starling (2005), ‘Contested Codes: The SocialConstruction of Napster,’ The Information Society, 21: 3, pp. 1–27.

Toffler, Alvin (1980), The Third Wave, New York: Bantam.

Towse, Ruth (ed.) (1977), Baumol’s Cost Disease: The Arts and Other Victims,Cheltenham: Elgar.

Wall, Tim (2003), ‘The Political Economy of Internet Music Radio,’ The RadioJournal. International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 2: 1, pp. 27–44.

Suggested citationMenduni, E. (2007), ‘Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime

to podcasting’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and AudioMedia 5: 1, pp. 9–18, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.9/1



Contributor detailsEnrico Menduni is Professor in Television and Radio Languages at Università RomaTre, Rome, Italy. His research is concerned mainly with new technologies (particu-larly the internet, podcasting and mobile phones) on radio broadcasting. Afounder member of IREN, International Radio Research Network, and the Interna-tional Radio Journal, he is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal ofCultural Studies. He has published in journals such as Convergence: the InternationalJournal of Research into New Media Technologies and The Radio Journal. His booksinclude: I media digitali. Tecnologie, linguaggi, usi sociali (Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2007);Il mondo della radio: Dal transistor a Internet (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); I linguaggidella radio e della televisione: Teorie e techinche (Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2002); and Laradio: Percorsi e territori di un medium mobile e interattivo (ed.) (Bologna: Baskerville,2002). Contact: Enrico Mendun, Università Roma Tre, Via Ostiense, 159 – 00154,Rome, Italy.E-mail: [email protected]; www.mediastudies.it

18 Enrico Menduni




Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together,people): Constructing New Zealandidentity through commercial radioAndrew Dubber Birmingham City University

AbstractThis article addresses a controversy within New Zealand radio broadcastingpolicy. As part of its activities to ensure the promotion of New Zealand content inthe media, the non-government public organisation New Zealand On Air fundsmusic recordings, promotional videos, album promotion and radio airplay initia-tives targeted at the commercial broadcasting sector within that country. Sup-porters of the organisation, and its music sector agent provocateur BrendanSmyth, point to the increase in New Zealand music sales, improved concert atten-dance and greatly enhanced representation in mainstream media and popularculture as evidence of the scheme’s resounding success. In some popular musicgenres, New Zealand content has increased from under 2% representation oncommercial radio playlists to over 20%. Detractors argue that in attempting toincrease the quantity of New Zealand-sourced music that is broadcast, fundershave favoured to the point of exclusion music that emulates international reper-toire in order to appeal to conservative radio programmers, and in so doing havedecimated that which makes New Zealand popular music uniquely ‘kiwi’. Thearticle seeks to shed light upon the conditions and decisions that led to this situa-tion, rather than attempt to reconcile these two divergent positions. However, italso endeavours to point to some possible lessons that may be found in the case ofNew Zealand music radio for broadcasting policy-makers and those who wouldseek to promote local music through radio programming interventions. The title ofthis article refers to a popular traditional Maori song often used in a powhiri cer-emony, greeting newcomers to the marae.1 An exchange of songs takes place, and‘Tutira Mai’ is the Maori language song most often learned by non-Maori speak-ers for the occasion. It is thus ingrained in both Maori and non-Maori NewZealand culture alike and is taken here as symbolic of a coherent bicultural NewZealand-ness, as problematic as that concept may be.

Introduction: popular music and the nation stateThere are significant problems when discussing national characteristicswithin popular music culture. The first of these is the fact that contempo-rary popular music is pre-globalised in terms of its aesthetic content.


KeywordsNew Zealandmusic radioMaorideregulationmusic policyquotas

1 A Powhiri is aceremony of welcomeextended to visitors. Itofficially welcomesnewcomers through aseries of protocols,speeches and anexchange of song. TheMarae is a sacredplace at which Maoricustom, language andtradition is celebratedand experienced as away of life. The Maraetypically consists of aclearing (where thepowhiri and otherceremonies takeplace), a wharehui(meeting house),wharekai (dining andkitchen area) andother buildings. Whilecommonly a place ofreconnection withtradition, it is also aplace where peoplelive, rather thansimply visit.

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Contemporary popular genres as diverse as Country, Reggae, Hip Hop,Rock and Dance each have common derivatives that, while rooted in geog-raphy, have become independent of it. The second (and perhaps more sig-nificant) problem is that the popular music business is intensely globalised,and the vast majority of economic activity in the commercial sphere of therecording industries is rooted in multi-national corporate business – evenin those instances where the recorded music is released and consumedexclusively within national boundaries. That is to say, while artists such asStrawpeople, Brooke Fraser, and Che-Fu enjoy success almost exclusivelywithin New Zealand’s borders, they are nevertheless part of the Sony/BMGinternational music marketing machine, and the finance capital flowupon which artists like this depend are subject to corporate policy deci-sions made at a global, as well as at a local, level.

Recorded popular music culture is largely without geographical focus,and while there is an economic and sociological argument for conceptionsof physical localism, both in terms of ‘scenes’ and ‘enterprise clusters,’ byand large the majority of recorded popular music is understood in terms ofa globalised recording industry. As Simon Frith points out:

. . . while a local authority like Sheffield has developed in its cultural indus-tries policy, a much more interesting set of arguments around pop musicthan the Labour Party has nationally, it hasn’t answered the question of whya “Sound of Sheffield” that depends on international marketing for its impactshould be different to the sound from any other global pop setting.

Frith 1992: 38

Martin Cloonan (1999) expresses the difficulty of asserting nationalitywithin popular music from exactly this perspective: that the geographical,cultural and economic boundaries of the nation state do not necessarilyseem to define the characteristics of popular music. Instead, he asserts thedual forces of nationalism and globalisation are negotiated and balancedagainst each other – and that each individual nation state has a degree ofautonomy over the extent of its response to each. However, he highlights –as do Shuker and Pickering – that New Zealand music, in common withthat of Luxembourg and Finland, is defined in terms of the nation. Thiscontrasts with the music of the United Kingdom, for example, which isdefined in terms of the city or region (Shuker and Pickering 1994). Justfive years after New Zealand radio’s wholesale deregulation, Shuker andPickering’s call for a national quota for the broadcast of locally producedcontent, insisting upon it as the single most important issue for Nation-States that are subject to such a significant quantity of imported material,was echoed by many in political and academic circles (Shuker andPickering 1994: 21). They describe a situation whereby New Zealandartists often found that the only way to secure broadcast on New Zealandradio stations was to first leave the country and secure airplay onAmerican, British or Australian radio stations (in descending order of

20 Andrew Dubber

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perceived influence) (Shuker and Pickering 1995: 274). In order to survive,they claimed, New Zealand music must be protected by legislation.

In other countries where local content quotas have been established(with the notable exceptions of Australia and Ireland), the issue to beaddressed was primarily one of language. France provides a significantexample of this. While Maori language representation has been a keyelement of media policy development in recent years, the majority ofmusic radio consumption in New Zealand consists overwhelmingly ofEnglish popular music, and it was in this area that the problem of localrepresentation was considered to be at its most urgent. Promoting and fos-tering Te Reo (Maori language) was addressed through other channels,such as the development of additional radio and television services, ratherthan the implementation of across-the-board mandatory proportional rep-resentation. Allowing for the largest number of New Zealanders to hear agreater proportion of local music was the issue at stake when the notion ofquotas was discussed.

There was eventual support for the idea of quotas at the highest govern-ment level by 1999. Helen Clark’s incoming Labour Government was welldisposed to the idea, and Broadcasting Minister Marian Hobbs was a vocalproponent of mandatory content quotas across all media. Despite this – andbecause of some strong lobbying by the Radio Broadcasters Association(RBA), which represent the interests of commercial radio broadcasters inNew Zealand (mostly multi-national corporate interests at that) – the endresult in 2000 was a system of voluntary targets. Music and radio were hottopics on all sides of the political spectrum in the lead-up to the 1999 NewZealand General Election. Quotas were debated as campaign issues, withboth the conservative National Party and Labour claiming the idea of apublic broadcasting Youth Radio Network (YRN) as their own. However, itis important to understand that the context in which these discussions tookplace was subject to historical, cultural and legislative baggage. Not onlywas it impossible to put the worms of deregulation back in the can but thevery idea of what it meant to be of, from, or even in New Zealand whenmaking music was, and remains, hardly a simple matter.

As a colonised nation, the issue of ‘New Zealandness’ is a fraught, con-tested and complex concept when it comes to the construction of identity.Issues of Tino Rangatiratanga – Maori sovereignty – rightly dominate anydiscussion of belonging in New Zealand. Considering that New Zealandhas a diverse ethnic mix – including significant proportions of the popula-tion originating from China and Polynesia (particularly Western Samoaand Tonga) – and given a large section of the population has ancestrydating back to Europe within only three generations, the notion of what itmeans to have the quality of New Zealandness raises immediate questions.Even so, there are generally accepted and popularly referred-to icons of‘kiwiana’ that few New Zealanders take issue with. The wooden pull-alongchildrens’ Buzzy Bee toy, the kiwifruit, the jandal (footwear known else-where as the ‘flip-flop’), the kiwi bird, the pukeko (another native bird),

21Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . .

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greenstone and Christmas at the beach are all images that are universallyaccepted as being part and parcel of New Zealand popular culture. Andequally, there are popular entertainment icons from mass media culturethat have become part and parcel of the New Zealand conception of iden-tity: from television comedians Billy T. James and Fred Dagg to local char-acters The Wizard of Christchurch and author Barry Crump; sportingheroes Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu to singers Kiri Te Kanawa andHayley Westenra; artists Colin McCahon and Len Lye to actors Cliff Curtisand Sam Neill. Among these icons is a wide range of New Zealanders whoproduce and perform popular music, whether based in rock, pop, hip-hop,R&B, metal, house, reggae or indie musical genres. As anywhere, the dom-inant popular music forms (regardless of point of origin) are widely pro-moted, disseminated and consumed via the medium of radio. Despite thevery real barriers put in front of musicians in New Zealand when it comesto marketing, promotion and popular acceptance, there has neverthelessgrown to be a generally accepted sense of a New Zealand Music. Perhapsrather than conceptualise it as a language of its own, it can be thought ofas Western Popular Music with a New Zealand accent.

New Zealand radio has, over the past eighteen years, been unique inthe extent to which it has been deregulated and opened up to the forces offree market economies. It should come as no surprise that such a seismicshift in the political economy of a mass media institution would have a sig-nificant impact on the cultural life of that medium’s consumers – in thiscase, the public of New Zealand. In this article, I describe the conditions ofthe relationship between radio broadcasters, the music business and policymakers within New Zealand, highlighting a debate that problematises oneof the key objectives of an organisation whose role it is to promote NewZealand content over the airwaves. Since deregulation in 1989, NewZealand On Air has initiated and managed schemes to promote andsupport the broadcast of New Zealand-made popular music on commercialradio. The extent to which those efforts can be considered a resoundingsuccess or a colossal failure depends on the answer to one fundamentalquestion: ‘To what end?’

Political economy of New Zealand radioIn 1989 the New Zealand radio industry was entirely deregulated in onefell swoop. Neo-liberal economic theories were applied more thoroughlyand to a much greater extent in New Zealand broadcasting (indeed, to allsectors of the New Zealand economy) than in any other country. As JaneKelsey explains:

The aim of successive governments and their supporters was to put ‘globalisa-tion as ideology’ into practice. ‘The New Zealand Experiment’ – the relentlesspursuit of free-market principles that began in 1984 – exposed a small, remotecountry of 3.8 million people to the full impact of international market forces.

Kelsey 1999: 8

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Public institutions were dismantled and sold to private enterprise andeverything from telecommunications to transport was left to the logic ofthe market. In 1988, the Lange-led Labour Government announced arelaxation of laws of ownership and released the spectrum for free-marketradio broadcasting competition in its purest form. These changes wereimplemented in the 1989 New Zealand Broadcasting Act. Establishmentof a radio station now depended entirely on competitive bidding for scarcespectrum resources, with control over content extending only to estab-lished codes of decency. At the same time, all available frequencies the gov-ernment could identify as available for sale were sold at auction.2 If abroadcaster could prove through a process of engineering and testing,further frequencies were free, that space would also be auctioned. In otherwords, with the exception of National Radio and the Concert Programme,3

the airwaves were up for lease as a revenue-generating activity for thenation’s purse. But as well as simply a strategy to redress trade balancedeficits, deregulation of the radio industry was part of a larger movementaway from government intervention in commercial enterprise:

Neo-liberal economics argued that the market should be liberated fromheavy handed state regulation to go about the rational business of providingcompetitively priced range and variety for consumers.

Zanker 1996: 21

The enthusiastic adoption of the economic philosophies behind deregula-tion stopped short of re-allocating publicly owned stations National Radioand Concert FM (then the Concert Programme) but, in 1995, under theguidance of Broadcasting Minister Maurice Williamson, state-owned com-mercial broadcasters were soon privatised in an attempt to ‘level theplaying field’.4 The deregulation of the radio industry meant that therewere no restrictions on the number of radio stations a business could own;no restrictions on foreign ownership; no restrictions on cross-media own-ership; no restrictions on format or genre; no public service remit for com-mercial broadcasters; no controls over content. Stations could broadcastwhatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, to whomever they wanted.As well as reducing restrictions on foreign ownership and allowing forcross-media ownership, the new Broadcasting Act eliminated advertisinghours, and disbanded the Broadcasting Tribunal and its system of tariffsand strict criteria for applicants in favour of tradable spectrum rights. FMradio in New Zealand was in its infancy, and the combination of a fiercecompetitive environment and the influence of American radio consultantsled music programmers to opt for proven international hits. The result wasthe lowest representation of New Zealand music on the airwaves in history.In an attempt to rectify this situation, legislators established New ZealandOn Air, a body whose role it was to encourage and support the representa-tion of New Zealand works on radio and television. The implementation ofthis policy – and the strategies used to promote New Zealand music

2 At the time, RadioPacific, the station atwhich I wasProduction Managerduring this period,used this process asan opportunity forexpansion. Multiplefrequencies were bidfor in most of theavailable regions, andaround this time, thecompany was listedon the NZ Stockexchange. The abilityto distributenationwide networkedprogramming,interspersed withregional commercialadvertising, provideda very attractivebusiness proposition.By 1993, RadioPacific broadcast on26 frequenciesthroughout thecountry, divided intosix regions for sales,advertising andpromotion purposes.

3 As they are nowknown, Radio NewZealand National andConcert are publicradio stationsprimarily concernedwith speechprogramming andclassical musicrespectively –approximately parallelto the UK’s BBC Radio4 and Radio 3.

4 The idea of state-owned commercialbroadcasters requiressome explanation tomany non-NewZealanders.Essentially, these werepublic broadcasterswith a commercialimperative. Thepopular radio stationscarried advertisingand were not onlysupported bycommercial revenuesbut were in factcharged withmaximising andreturning a profit tothe public purse.


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through commercial radio – have been, by different measures, both wildlysuccessful and catastrophic.

The effect of deregulation was simultaneously complex and almostentirely uniform. A full examination of the deregulation and commercialisa-tion of radio in New Zealand and its effects on consumer choice and repre-sentation can be found in Karen Neill and Morris Shanahan’s The Evolutionof New Zealand Radio (2004). Most crucially, new entrants to the marketsprang up around the country, from small operators in rural areas takingadvantage of the new freedom to establish community-focused commercialenterprises, through to major international organisations purchasing sharesin large urban market stations. With the massive addition of new spectrumavailable at general auction, this was a period of intense proliferation ofsmall radio stations and groups. Stations such as Energy FM in NewPlymouth were started by small groups of investors and private owners, keento take advantage of the new environment.5 Prior to deregulation, indepen-dent commercial stations operated in a strongly protected commercial envi-ronment and to the lucky few who were allocated spectrum, broadcastingseemed a licence to print money (Neill and Shanahan 2004, 2005).6 So, theopportunity to join those lucky few was enthusiastically embraced by manynew entrants to the field. Unsurprisingly, with advertising as the economicbase for commercial broadcasting, the revenue available to the industry as awhole was divided more thinly with each new broadcaster. Although diver-sity had been a stated goal of the deregulation process – the idea being thateach new entrant would cater to an as yet under-served segment of the pop-ulation – many broadcasters found themselves instead competing for thelargest share of advertising, that section targeting the household shopper.The under-served audience remained so, with mainstream audiencesbecoming the focal point for a majority of stations. Competition becameincreasingly fierce and many stations failed, their assets swallowed up bybigger companies. Deregulation opened the door into an arguably lessdiverse, more ‘safe’ array of programming, served up by fewer providers,with less interest in the public good of New Zealanders. The net effect wasarguably to reduce representation on the airwaves and place control of theindustry into fewer hands, whose interests were those of foreign sharehold-ers, rather than those of the New Zealand public.7

After the period of intense proliferation and aggregation that lastedthroughout the 1990s, culminating in the purchase of the Radioworks groupby CanWest in 2000, New Zealand radio now exists in a virtual duopoly.8 Atthe time of writing, the overwhelming majority of all radio stations in thecountry, including all nationwide networked brands, are in the hands of oneof two companies: CanWest9 and The Radio Network10 (Rosenberg 2004:24). There are pockets of independent commercial radio outside those twomedia giants, as well as two nationwide public broadcasting stations, localAccess Radio stations, Iwi Radio, Pacific Island broadcasters and student sta-tions. However, a large majority of listenership and economic activity withinthe local industry is commanded by those two international corporations.

5 The business thatpurchased thefrequency andestablished the stationEnergy FM wasstarted by a smallgroup of MasseyUniversity studentswith an investment of$100 each. It waseventually sold fortens of millions toCanWest in May2000.

6 Under BroadcastingAuthority rules, directcompetition was notonly discouraged, butproving that youwould not competewith incumbentbroadcasters was aprerequisite forgaining a licence.

7 The extent to whichderegulation hasreduced consumerchoice and placed theindustry in the handsof internationalcorporate interestshas formed a largeproportion of therelatively small bodyof New Zealand RadioStudies literaturesince 1990.

8 Radioworks was thelast major fully NewZealand ownedcommercial radionetwork. It was thetarget of an aggressivetakeover by CanWestin May 2000.

9 CanWest is aCanadian-ownedmulti-nationalorganisation, largelyowned and controlledby the Asper family,with strong interestsin both television andradio in New Zealand.They have recentlyindicated theirintention to divesttheir investments ofNew Zealand media,announcing that theywill sell to anAustralian privateequity firm,

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The effect of conglomeration – a seemingly inevitable outcome ofderegulation on this scale – was to significantly reduce the number ofmedia interests and therefore also diversity and dissenting voices. AsRobert McChesney explains,

The situation may be most stark in New Zealand, where the newspaperindustry is largely the province of the Australian-American Rupert Murdochand the Irishman Tony O’Reilly, who also dominates New Zealand’s commer-cial-radio broadcasting and has major stakes in magazine publishing.Murdoch controls pay television and is negotiating to purchase one or bothof the two public TV networks, which the government is aiming to sell. Inshort, the rulers of New Zealand’s media system could squeeze into a closet.

(McChesney 1999)

Elsewhere, commentators and theorists have explored this seismic shift inour broadcasting ecology and it would be an exercise in repetition toattempt to enumerate all of the effects of this policy (Zanker 1996). It issignificant, however, to point out the coincidence of the deregulation ofthe radio industry and the arrival of FM radio – and the predominantlyAmerican FM radio programming consultants employed by the newlicence-holders – in New Zealand.

Radio, music, government and the publicAccording to New Zealand On Air, the body set up to ensure that NewZealand content would be represented in the new, deregulated environment,of all the music played on commercial radio, the proportion that had beenmade by New Zealanders was less than 2%. At a time when commercial radiocommanded in excess of 80% of the listening audience, this presented a chal-lenge for the organisation. New Zealand On Air was, until the late 1990s,funded by a broadcasting fee similar to the TV licence scheme currently inplace in the United Kingdom. The money was divided between priorities,including funding the creation of New Zealand television programmes,annual funding of public broadcasting, and the support of New Zealandmusic on commercial radio. This last was the responsibility of Music ManagerBrendan Smyth. In position since the creation of the organisation, and stillperforming the role today, Smyth’s initiatives have been central to the imple-mentation of policy laid down in the Broadcasting Act 1989.11

Smyth’s first initiative was to co-fund radio programmes that featuredNew Zealand music. The programmes were initially designed to be sold toradio stations at a subsidy, providing a weekly slot where a small represen-tation of local music could be heard. After the independent producers wereunable to secure broadcast for these programmes, the strategy waschanged and the programmes were supplied free to the radio stations. Thefunding was given in its entirety to the independent programme-makers, ifa commitment to broadcast from a significant number of stations indifferent markets across the country was secured. The first, and longest

Ironbridge Capital PtyLtd. (http://www.canwestglobal.com/international/newzealand.html,accessed June 3,2007)

10 Owned jointly byClear ChannelCommunications,Wilson and Horton,and IndependentNews and Media Plc.

11 It is important torecognise thatBrendan Smyth cantherefore beconsidered the authorof the five ‘phases’ ofthe New Zealand OnAir’s Music Strategy.As a result, criticismof New Zealand OnAir’s approach tomusic is often framedas personal criticismof Smyth’sperformance, ideologyand competence. Itshould be made clearthat nothing in thisarticle should beconstrued aspersonally targeted.


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running of these programmes was called ‘Counting The Beat’, after a1981 hit by The Swingers. The programme went to air in late 1990 andwas broadcast in Auckland on 91FM. Hosted by Cheryl Morris and pro-duced by Tim Moon and Trevor Reekie (all three actively involved in inde-pendent record labels) it was written by music producer and recordingartist Paul Casserly of Strawpeople.12 The programme was considered asuccess in terms of getting more New Zealand music onto mainstreamcommercial radio but, at this stage, the success was limited to a ghetto ofone hour per week on a Sunday night.

Anecdotally, among the reasons given by radio programmers to Smyth’squeries about why they were reluctant to play New Zealand music (‘It’spoorly produced’, ‘It’s not as good as international repertoire’, ‘It doesn’treally suit our format’, and – incredibly – ‘Nobody likes local music’) wasone that could be simply addressed: ‘We don’t get sent it and we can’t playit if we don’t have it’. In response to this, Smyth initiated the Hit Discscheme: a series of compilation CDs supplied to all New Zealand radio sta-tions on a periodic basis. These comprised the most promising and poten-tially radio-friendly tracks recently released. New Zealand On Air alsoemployed the first of the ‘pluggers’: promoters whose task it was to visit thekey radio stations in the key markets, endeavouring to encourage program-mers to listen to selected tracks from the Hit Disc and then secure playliststatus for artists represented. Around the same time, the Music Videoscheme was launched. Although seemingly a television initiative, Smythreasoned that funding New Zealand artists to the tune of NZ$5,000 inorder to produce a promotional music video clip of broadcast quality wouldresult in greater radio airplay for these artists. The goal was not to sell morerecords or even to contribute to New Zealand cultural identity by providingmore opportunities for New Zealanders to hear their own music, eventhough New Zealand On Air’s slogan ‘Our Songs, Our Stories’ would indi-cate that this would be the case. Smyth’s interpretation of his role – and thepurpose of initiatives such as the music video funding scheme – were morepragmatic. In interview (2003), he summed up his responsibilities thus:

My job is to get more New Zealand music played on New Zealand radio. Endof story. I don’t do it to promote New Zealand culture, though I think thatwould be a good thing. I don’t do it to help New Zealand music business,though I think that would be a good thing too. I do it because theBroadcasting Act says that that’s my job. My job is purely and simply to getmore New Zealand music heard by New Zealanders, and the way to do thatis through commercial radio, because that’s where most people are doing thelistening. It’s not my job to act as a gatekeeper and decide whether a band ora song is ‘New Zealand’ enough. My job is to get local music on commercialradio – and, like it or not, commercial radio plays ‘hits’ (2003).

Through the 1990s, New Zealand On Air’s strategy for promoting localcontent continued through these and a range of other schemes, including

12 After the first fewmonths of production,I replaced Bryce Hayas the programme’stechnical producer.

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‘Double Digits’ awards for stations that crept up to 10% of broadcastcontent consisting of New Zealand music in any given month, and involve-ment in the Kiwi Music Action Group (KiwiMAG) – a body of representa-tives from the radio industry, the recording industry and NZ On Air.KiwiMAG’s biggest success was in the establishment of New Zealand MusicWeek, which was a nominated week in the calendar in which radio sta-tions agreed to prioritise and promote New Zealand Music. However, theKiwiMAG project was almost derailed by the Youth Radio Network.

Since the publication of a New Zealand On Air research report entitledYouth Television and Radio Needs (1997), the idea of the potential establish-ment of a Youth Radio Network troubled the radio industry. The commer-cial operators saw teens as their primary audience and were opposed tothe idea of a public broadcasting outlet that they believed would directlycompete against their stations, for which frequencies had been auctionedand bought in a market environment that did not include a government-funded competitor. APRA13 executive Arthur Baysting’s vocal support ofmusician Neil Finn’s proposal, for a YRN that would not only provide apublic broadcasting alternative to music radio but also actively promotelocal music, began to strain relationships between the rights organisation(representing the interests of the musicians) and the RBA (representingthe interests of the commercial broadcasters). By 1999, the goodwillbetween the two interests represented in the KiwiMAG project had begunto disintegrate. Nevertheless, in the lead-up to the 1999 General Election,first National and then Labour claimed the YRN as a cause celebre, and astheir own idea. The youth vote looked as if it could swing a very close elec-tion race, and politicians were more concerned at that moment in thehundreds of thousands of registered voters under the age of 25 than in thein-fighting between two creative industries. The YRN was good PR.

The commercial radio industry in New Zealand had more to concernitself with than just the threat of the YRN, however. The FM Licences thatthey had secured at auction for a 20-year lease in 1991 would expire in2011, with no clarity as to the government’s policy about the re-auction-ing of leases or the security of incumbent position on the existing frequen-cies. The Minister of Broadcasting was making more and more noise aboutmandatory content quotas and rallying vocal support from the music andcultural industries. Labour was also interested in reassessing variousadvertising regulations around children, health products, alcohol and cig-arettes. While it had never been unusual for a Broadcasting Minister’sagenda to be at odds with that of the commercial radio sector, this was thefirst time that the parties seemed to share no common ground at all.

After Labour’s victory in 1999, with Prime Minister Helen Clark’sadoption of the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio, New Zealand musicmoved further up the agenda. The Broadcasting portfolio was assigned toa staunch advocate of mandatory content quotas, Marian Hobbs, and theYouth Radio Network was virtually a fait accompli. Moreover, as part of an$86m Cultural Recovery Package, Clark announced an injection of extra

13 AustralasianPerforming RightsAssociation.


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money into New Zealand On Air’s coffers. The body was now no longerfunded through a licence fee but through general taxation – a move thathad concerned supporters of public broadcasting, since the organisationnow had to compete with Health and Education for limited resources. ForNew Zealand On Air, and the sectors of the local music industry it pro-moted, The Cultural Recovery Package was an unexpected windfall.

Smyth’s response to the extra millions in New Zealand On Air’s coffershas been to implement the Phase Four scheme,14 an initiative that invests inthe creation of recordings that will find popular and airplay acceptance, aswell as additional promotion through an increase of staff pluggers and mar-keting budget. Three categories of recording support have been enabled. Thefirst of these is the New Recording Artist support, which provides funding of$10,000 per project, comprising $5,000 to record a radio single and an addi-tional (conditional) $5,000 to make a music video. Artists or bands canapply for a maximum of two New Recording Artist grants. The statedpurpose of the grant is to find new artists and new songs that will work oncommercial radio, and to provide a track record on commercial radio for theartists. The second funding category is the Album Funding scheme. NewZealand On Air will match funding up to $50,000 to record an album byartists with at least two current commercial radio hits to their name. Thealbum should have the potential to provide at least four additional radio hits.The funding is recoupable on domestic sales of the record. Its intention is toencourage record labels to invest in local recordings. Finally, funds are madeavailable through the Radio Hits grant, which provides a $5,000 reward-based incentive for record companies whose artists achieve significantairplay on commercial radio. New Zealand On Air does not seek applicantsfor this funding category and, instead, contacts record labels directly afteranalysing airplay logs. The top five most played New Zealand singles in anyquarter are awarded the grant. However, songs that have already benefitedfrom the support of New Zealand On Air, either through the New RecordingArtist scheme or if the song is from a recording made with the assistance ofAlbum Funding, are not eligible for a Radio Hits grant.

As of December 2005, almost exactly half of Radio Hits grants wereawarded to independent record labels (220 of 436), including all those whohave distribution deals through major labels, but not including those‘indies’ that are owned outright as subsidiaries of the majors. Sony BMG isby far the label with the most Radio Hits grants to its name and, while thisdraws attention to the fact that public funding is being paid directly into amulti-national, multi-million dollar business to reward its commercialsuccess, it also highlights the label’s active role in the recording, marketingand distribution of local artists.

Voluntary targetsDespite both Marian Hobbs’ undaunted enthusiasm for local contentquotas for radio and the industry’s outright antagonism to the idea, inMarch 2002, the RBA, under the direction of Executive Director David

14 Phases 1 to 3consisted of the seriesof initiatives includingvideo grants, musicradio programmefunding, Hit Discs,pluggers and theDouble Digits scheme.It is unclear whereone phase ends andanother begins, asthese were onlyconceptualised asphases retrospectivelyby the development ofPhase 4.

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Innes, came to a proposed solution in conjunction with the Minister:Voluntary Content Targets. The targets were a series of moving goalpoststhat the commercial radio industry would endeavour to reach, and thesewere variable according to station format. ‘Legacy’ brands that playedexclusively older music were exempt on the basis that the initiative wasdesigned to favour the contemporary local music industry.15 Within fiveyears, Contemporary Hit Radio and Rock formats were to strive to reach20% local content. Although the commercial radio industry was reluctantto support New Zealand music on the basis that it was an unknown quan-tity and (as they asserted) ‘nobody likes it,’ they maintained that the vol-untary targets were a tremendous display of goodwill on their part. TheMinister agreed to the proposal, and to refrain from imposing mandatoryquotas, though she reserved the right to re-introduce them if the targetswere not adhered to sufficiently. Although a victory for the government’splan to foster and encourage local music through representation on air,the deal provided the commercial broadcasting sector with powerful lobby-ing leverage. They now had a bargaining chip to take off the table if nego-tiations in other areas (such as the YRN and the 2011 licence expiry) didnot proceed according to plan. As the Prime Minister was also the Ministerfor Arts, Culture and Heritage, local content would always take priorityover other considerations when it came to broadcasting legislation.Despite their claims for the risks they were taking in playing local music,broadcasters knew that radio creates hits far more than it follows the tasteof its audience. Through exposure comes familiarity and popularity. Thiswas to prove to be a no-lose deal for the RBA.

Other significant, though not necessarily related, events followed inquick succession: Marian Hobbs was replaced by Steve Maharey asMinister of Broadcasting; the Youth Radio Network left its place at the topof the government’s agenda; incumbent broadcasters were assured firstright of refusal and market rates for FM spectrum beyond 2011; and theKiwi Music Action Group settled its differences between members andwent on to transform New Zealand Music Week to New Zealand MusicMonth – a nationwide celebration of local popular music throughout themonth of May. Unsurprisingly, the more radio played local music, the moreradio audiences liked local music. At first, the inclusion of more NewZealand content was unheralded, many listeners being unaware of thegeographical origins of the music they were hearing. However, the successof 1999’s Popstars television phenomenon, which resulted in the creationof the country’s first manufactured girl band, ‘True Bliss’, had alreadyprompted enthusiasm from radio audiences and record buyers despite itsobvious local origins.16 It became increasingly clear that acknowledgingand promoting local music on the basis of its localism was good practice.Playing New Zealand Music quickly became an instrument of public rela-tions, with stations beginning to use the proportion of local content theyplayed as an inducement to listeners. For the first time, New ZealandMusic was something that artists, labels, and commercial radio stations

15 The culturalconsideration ofallowing NewZealanders to heartheir musical heritagewas not a factor.

16 The brainchild of NewZealand broadcastersPeter Urlich and MarkTierney, Popstars wasthe first of thecontemporaryelimination-basedtelevision talentshows. The formatwas licensed aroundthe world, andadaptations such asX-Factor and Pop Idoldominate music onnetwork televisionworldwide.


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could all agree on, and audiences demonstrated their support of localcontent at retail, as reported in Billboard magazine:

Sean Coleman, managing director of New Zealand’s biggest specialist musicchain – Sounds – says “Overall, 2002 was a great year for New Zealandmusic, and that’s why our marketplace hasn’t been as badly affected [bydeclining sales] as the rest of the world.”

Ferguson 2003: 53

Radio stations had almost exclusively positive responses from its audiences– and even unrelated businesses were keen to use the ‘New Zealand MusicRenaissance’ as a springboard for their own marketing. Major NewZealand brewery Lion Industries ran a billboard campaign for Lion RedBeer in May 2004. The signs simply read ‘We Love New Zealand Music’ ona red background, accompanied by the Lion logo.

New Zealand but not ‘kiwi’Amongst this seemingly overwhelming success and support for NewZealand music across the board is a small band of dissenters, largely con-sisting of independent musicians and small label owners, who claim thatNew Zealand On Air’s Phase Four plan (and indeed, their entire agenda)has been disastrous for local artists, culture and creative industry. It is,perhaps, easy to dismiss such objections as sour grapes and self-interestfrom a sector that has failed to produce music that would warrant a sharein the kind of success that New Zealand On Air encourages and rewards.However, their concerns are legitimate and centre around the fact thatPhase Four openly fosters an environment in which international reper-toire is mimicked in order to obtain airplay and funding. The road tosuccess for local popular artists seems not to lie in the display of a distinc-tive quality and the local appeal of popular music with a kiwi accent, butin the extent to which anything that distinguishes it from internationalpop repertoire has been eradicated. By rewarding airplay with cash incen-tives, funding music videos based on a panel of commercial radio pro-grammers expressing the likelihood of playlisting the tracks proposed, andmatch-funding albums by major label artists, New Zealand On Air haseffectively discouraged ‘New Zealandness’ in popular music. Moreover,detractors claim that the funding is used to artificially prop up acts that donot require the support of the public purse in order to survive or eventhrive in the contemporary radio marketplace, which has already commit-ted itself to filling up to 25% of its playlist with locally produced music.The artists who could most do with the support and active lobbying forairplay are those who express a unique vision that reflects the experienceof New Zealand, rather than the more overtly derivative alternatives thatreflect only American popular culture and genres. If it sounds exactly likethe kind of international pop music from LA, New York and London thatgets played on the radio already, then where is the cultural advantage in

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making room for it simply because it happens to come from Auckland,Wellington or Christchurch?

It’s a valid concern: with the exception of popular country artist BarrySaunders, the genres represented in the New Zealand On Air albumfunding all fit within existing mainstream radio formats, covering a com-paratively narrow range of rock, pop, hip hop and R&B. Reggae makes anappearance, though this is not entirely unusual for commercial radioformats in New Zealand. Moreover, in the case of reggae band Katchafire,the record label funded to produce the record (Mai Music) is wholly ownedby the radio station most likely to play it (Mai FM). This ownership of arecord label by a mainstream commercial radio station – even an Iwistation17 – seems to go significantly beyond what would, in internationalterms, be characterised as ‘payola.’ However, the fact that it means broad-cast exposure, artist development and sales success for a New Zealand actmeans that it is not only overlooked but actively encouraged by policy-makers.

Much of the comment on the effectiveness of Phase Four and NewZealand music on radio takes place on the NZ Radio List – a discussionforum for industry professionals and interested observers.18 The list isopen to the public, and as such is an open forum, but membership is dom-inated by industry and media professionals. One list member, known bythe pseudonym Delphypop but generally reckoned from context and com-ments to be directly involved with releasing and promoting independentmusic, sums up one of the problems for New Zealand music he sees asstemming from NZ On Air initiatives:

I think it was a good move to push the easy stuff first, soften them up etc, butwithout stage 2 and 3 plan that initial solution has lead to bands striving tocompromise their sounds so they can be part of the club. I know this cos I seeit and hear bands talking about it in the studio. bands who would otherwisebe creating a valid and original sound are contemplating how they canbland themselves out so they can be eligible for an NZ on Air grant, whichrequires you to be commercial radio playable. I think a two tiered schemewould be appropriate where NZ on Air soften up com radio with some easilydigestible tracks and then slowly push some of that pure nz originalitythrough the open door. that’s not policy at the moment, and it should be.Com radio should be expected to come to the part rather than nz on airbringing the party to them, to their specs.

NZ Radio List, Message #6459, January 14, 200419

Criticism for New Zealand On Air’s policies is often directed specifically atBrendan Smyth himself, with the accusation of fostering a culture of‘entirely derivative’ pop music over ‘genuinely indigenous’ being laid at hisfeet. While understandable, this is perhaps unfair: Brendan Smyth mightperhaps be guilty of not doing the job critics like Delphypop would like himto have been charged with but he does not seem to have failed in any

17 An Iwi station is onethat is owned byMaori tribal interests.The New Zealandgovernment allocatesspectrum for Iwibroadcasting, and thisis assigned togeographically-centred tribalgroupings (Iwi)around the country.These are notauctioned or leased inthe usual way, as thissegment of thespectrum is notconsidered to beunder Crownownership. However,Iwi stations are notrequired to be publicbroadcasters – oreven not-for-profitorganisations. Theyare managed as thetribe sees fit to bestbenefit thecommunity, the tribeand the region. In thecase of Mai FM, theNgati Whatua triberun it as a successfulcommercial businessenterprise. Playing amix of urban, hiphop, pop andcontemporary R&B, itis one of the mostlistened-to musicradio stations inAuckland, NewZealand’s mostpopulous city.

18 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nzradio

19 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nzradio/message/6459


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observable way to do the job that he actually has. In response to a similarthread on the NZ Radio List, Smyth writes:

What counts for us is airplay on commercial radio which is where we needto make a difference because that is where there is (still) not enough NewZealand music. Not just any airplay. Getting more New Zealand musicplayed on commercial radio so that the local content figures go up, up, up.So that New Zealand music is not the preserve of student radio. So thatcommercial radio - where most people are listening - pushes and passesstudent radio. So that New Zealand music is no longer a ghetto and aminority interest sport. Personally, I have always believed that the bestthing that a niche or specialist music label can do is export, export, export.Forget radio. Radio - commercial radio - is a mass, mainstream medium.Forget NZ On Air. NZ On Air is about airplay and is committed to gettingmore of it in the mainstream where there is not enough but where most ofthe people are listening.

NZ Radio List, Message #2097, March 15, 200220

At a time when New Zealand On Air has entered into its next phase(Phase Five, as it is called) and is actively promoting and supporting theexport of New Zealand music to other international markets, questionsmust be raised with the benefit of hindsight as to the helpfulness of a strat-egy that implicitly encouraged small and independent local popular musicproducers to be more or less indistinguishable in genre and approach fromthe international repertoire with major corporate financial backing.Competing on the world stage is not a problem in terms of quality orfitness for purpose but a simple marketing question based on a uniqueselling point. In other words, by normalising New Zealand music in theears and minds of New Zealanders (including those of New Zealand radiostation programmers), New Zealand On Air may well have made the taskof selling it to the world much more difficult. While they have beendemonstrably successful in getting more local music on the radio, the factof the music’s geographical origins as a criteria for selection may not havebeen sufficient to fulfil the long-term aspirations of the organisation.Choosing music based on its inherent New Zealandness is a thorny andproblematic challenge to take on but perhaps wrestling with issues such asthese at an earlier stage, rather than refusing to question the NewZealandness of a New Zealand-based act, may have been worth the effortin the light of the end goal.

It is not as if this goal – of an export-led music economy – could nothave been foreseen. The example of Ireland has long been at the heart ofdiscussions around music quotas in New Zealand. Irish music is arguablyglobally successful exactly to the extent to which it is distinctively Irish.Gerry Smyth’s Noisy Island (2005) grapples with exactly these issues ofnational identity and globalisation, discussing the ways in which culturalnationalism has contributed to a globalised popular music success story

20 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nzradio/message/2097

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based on difference within established international practices of popularmusic culture (Smyth 2005).

The extent to which the New Zealand music story is comparable withthat of other countries is debatable. It is still possible – and yet to be seen –whether the New Zealand popular music voice is sufficiently distinctive tointernational ears to earn the title of a kiwi sound or, at least, be recog-nised as a notable national musical accent. It is interesting to note that themost significant success in New Zealand popular music, both at home andinternationally in recent years has been that of Fat Freddy’s Drop – a bandwhose record existed (at least initially) entirely outside of the realms ofpublic funding, radio broadcast and record labels, and yet whose unmis-takable New Zealandness was a key to their widespread acceptance both athome and abroad.21 The album Based on a True Story is the single biggest-selling album of all time by a New Zealand act, remaining in the chartsafter three years. It was named by popular British broadcaster GillesPeterson as his ‘album of the year’ in 2005 and the band have toured theUnited Kingdom and Europe several times since its release, including aperformance at the 2007 Glastonbury festival. Critics point to Fat Freddy’sDrop as evidence that the New Zealand On Air and state-sponsored com-mercial radio route to popular music success is not only a shortsightedpolicy that leads to increased exposure but also to an increase in derivativematerial that adds nothing to either the cultural capital or export potentialof New Zealand music.

It is instructive to consider the New Zealand example in this instancefrom a wider perspective, for two main reasons. Firstly, the problem ofwhether or not to prioritise locally produced music on local radio is virtu-ally a universal one, and New Zealand is an example that scales well toregions in other and more populous countries (for instance, the UK’s WestMidlands has a similar population size to New Zealand). Secondly, as themost deregulated radio market on the planet, New Zealand provides a ref-erence for other broadcasting political economies that seem to have irrev-ocable tendencies in the same direction.

More important than the question of how to get more local content onradio seems to be the question of why. Several possible answers presentthemselves: to promote music business at the local level; to promote localmusic cultures and scenes; to improve local representation in radio ingeneral; to enhance and propagate local culture; to eventually contributeto the growth of an industry through export; to provide an environmentin which New Zealanders see music as a valid and rewarding careerchoice, and so forth. The main criticism that can reasonably be levelled atNew Zealand On Air is not to have asked the question in the first place.

The success of New Zealand On Air in providing an environment inwhich more New Zealanders hear more music produced in New Zealandby New Zealanders is unarguable. However, in so doing, they have raisedthe more troubling, controversial and thorny issue of the extent to whichthat music is actually ‘New Zealand Music’.

21 Fat Freddy’s Drophave subsequentlybeen featured on NZOn Air’s Kiwi HitDiscs and editedversions of theirtypically long songshave been playlistedon commercial radioin New Zealand.Though these havearguably contributedgreatly to recordsales, the fundershave only come onboard after it wasclear that the band’spopular success wasundeniable and thattheir distinctive NewZealandness was notincompatible withtheir widespreadappeal.


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ReferencesCloonan, Martin (1999), ‘Pop and the Nation-State: Towards a Theorisation.’

Popular Music, 18: 2, pp. 193–207.

Ferguson, John (2003), ‘Kiwi industry celebrates with music month,’ Billboard: 53.

Frith, Simon (1992), ‘End of the wedge,’ New Statesman & Society, 5, pp. 38–39.

McChesney, Robert (1999), ‘The new global media: It’s a small world of big con-glomerates,’ The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/doc/19991129/mcchesney on 8 June, 2007.

Kelsey, Jane (1999), Reclaiming the Future: New Zealand and the Global, Toronto:University of Toronto Press.

Neill, Karen and Shanahan, Morris W. (2004), ‘The Evolution of New ZealandRadio’, in Goode, Luke and Zuberi, Nabeel (eds.), Media Studies in Aotearoa/NewZealand, Auckland: Pearson Education, pp. 105–121.

Neill, Karen and Shanahan, Morris W. (eds.) (2005), The Great New Zealand RadioExperiment, Victoria: Thomson Dunmore Press.

Rosenberg, Bill (2004), News Media Ownership in New Zealand, CAFCA (CampaignAgainst Foreign Control of Aotearoa), retrieved from http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscellaneous/mediaown.pdf on 3June, 2007.

Shuker, Roy (1994), ‘Climbing the Rock: the New Zealand music industry,’ inHayward, Philip, Mitchell, Tony and Shuker, Roy (eds.), North Meets South: PopularMusic in Aotearoa/New Zealand, NSW: Perfect Beat Publications, pp. 16–27.

Shuker, Roy and Pickering, Michael (1995), ‘Kiwi Rock: Popular Music andCultural Identity in New Zealand,’ Popular Music, 13: 3, pp. 261–278.

Smyth, Gerry (2005), Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music, Cork: CorkUniversity Press.

Zanker, Ruth (1996), ‘Radio in New Zealand in an age of media plenty,’ Continuum,10: 1, pp. 33–49.

Suggested citationDubber, A. (2007), ‘Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing

New Zealand identity through commercial radio’, The Radio Journal – Interna-tional Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1, pp. 19–34, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.19/1

Contributor detailsAndrew Dubber is Senior Lecturer in Music Industries at Birmingham City University,where he teaches courses on radio production, music industries, music programmingfor radio and online music. His research interests lie mainly in the area of new mediain radio and music business. His website http://newmusicstrategies.com appliesthis research in a practical manner for the music and radio industries. Recent pub-lications include ‘McLuhanising Radio: Essaying a Media Ecology Approach toTechnological Shift in New Zealand Radio Broadcasting’, Communication Journal ofNew Zealand, 2007 (vol 8, no. 1), pp. 23–41, and ‘The Digitalisation of Radio inNew Zealand’ in The Great New Zealand Radio Experiment, Karen Neill and MorrisShanahan (eds.), Victoria: Thomson Dunmore Press 2005. Contact: Department ofMedia and Communication, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham,B42 2SU.E-mail: [email protected]

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Finding an alternative: Musicprogramming in US college radioTim Wall Birmingham City University

AbstractRadio stations based at universities make up only about 11% of all over-the-airstations in the United States of America, but college radio is often presented asoffering an alternative in music radio to the for-profit stations that dominate theairwaves. College stations are now seen as a key means of promoting ‘indie rock’.This article traces the development of university-based radio stations in theUnited States, and reports on a five-year study of music programming in threestations based in Boston and New York, to examine their claim to alternativeness.The paper concludes that the stations do use different forms of music program-ming, that the programming extends well beyond the scope of ‘indie rock’ and thatthe current notions of alternativeness utilised by station staff have their roots inthe development of the sector from the 1920s onwards.

There are over 1400 college radio stations in the United States of America(Quadphonic 2007). They are widely seen to offer an alternative to theradio music programming found on over-the-air stations run by for-profitcompanies; so widely so that the proposition is used as an assumption forother forms of investigation, rather than the core of research itself (see, forinstance, Tremblay 2003). Certainly, the frequencies from 88.1 and 91.9MHz, where college radio stations are normally to be found in NorthAmerica, usually provide the main alternative to traditional format radio.

At 11%1 of all licensed radio broadcasters, college radio stations consti-tute a small but significant part of the US national radio system. The over-whelming majority of college stations mainly programme recorded music,and they are now understood as a distinct radio market and an effectivepromotional medium for the music business. As I will show, by the late1980s the term ‘college rock’ had been coined to identify the music asso-ciated with these practices, and a small, but thriving, music promotionsindustry with promotions houses, specialist magazines and playlist chartswas operating.2

Nevertheless, college radio stations are infrequently studied, and nodetailed attention has been paid to the sorts of music programming prac-tices used by the staff in college stations. This study offers a modest contri-bution to opening up this field for more detailed analysis. It is based upon


Keywordsmusic radioradio music

programmingmusic genrescollege radioUSA radio historyalternative media

1 1400 as a proportionof the 12,600 thatthe FederalCommunicationsCommission count asthe number ofbroadcasting stationsin the United States ofAmerica.Commission, FederalCommunications.1999. BroadcastStation Totals,1990–1999,www.fcc.gov/mmb/asd/totals/index.html.2007.

2 See, for instance,promotions MusicMedia(www.musicmedianetwork.com) and Applesand Cats(www.applesandcats.com), specialistmagazine and chartCMJ (http://www.cmj.com/).

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a small qualitative study of three stations over a five-year period from2002, including an analysis of station output, interviews with key stationpersonnel and observation of their programming and broadcast practices.

The three stations I looked at were as follows: WFUV, based at FordhamUniversity in the Bronx, New York; WERS, based at Emerson College,Boston and WZBC, based at Boston College, Boston. The New York stationis one of 13 college stations out of 71 licensed over-the-air stations in all,for a city population of 8,085,742 (approximately one station for every100,000 potential listeners). The Boston stations are two of nine collegestations out of 75 licensed over-the-air stations radio stations in all, for apopulation of 589,141 (approximately one station for every 6,600 poten-tial listeners).3 They were selected because they each offer very distinctiveoutputs, noticeably different from each other, and from the for-profit sta-tions that can be heard in the same locales. In particular, I set myself thegoal of evaluating the extent to which these differences in broadcastoutput could be understood in relation to the music programming prac-tices they utilised, the ideas that the station staff articulated about the roleof the station, the music that they played and its relationship to the com-munities in which they broadcast and the colleges which owned them.

I present the results of this study within an intellectual framework con-structed through an understanding of the position of these three collegestations within the historical development of the United States’ nationalradio system, and the discourses of alternativeness that are woven into dis-cussions of popular music culture and radio music programming. I, there-fore, start my investigation with a deconstruction of the proposition thatuniversity-based radio stations constitute an alternative broadcast culture.This historical analysis is then used as the basis for an exploration of thediscourses of alternativeness within popular music culture, as they pertainto programming on music radio stations. In the main body of this article, Ioutline my findings from an examination of the college broadcasters andtheir station practices. I conclude with some reflections on what has beendiscovered, and what it may mean for further studies in this area.

University-based radio stations as an alternative broadcast cultureUniversity-based radio stations have a long tradition in the United States ofAmerica, and some of the issues that I discuss in relation to music pro-gramming in the twenty-first century are first found in the origins of thisform of broadcasting. Some of the earliest radio stations established in thefirst half of the 1920s were based at universities or initiated by faculty staff,at a time when only 7% of radio broadcasts came from profit-maximisingstations (Dimmick 1986), and by 1923 the 72 university stations consti-tuted a major category of broadcaster (Barnouw 1966: 4). State universi-ties were particularly prominent among these early broadcasters, and theirleaders tended to share a view that radio was an important part of a widerprogressive agenda, which aimed (in the terminology of the time) at

3 Calculated withinformation fromwww.radio-locator.com, andpopulation statisticsfromhttp://quickfacts.census.gov.

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cultural ‘uplift’. In this they juxtaposed their intentions to utilise the newmedium for broader social purposes against those of for-profit broadcasters,who aimed to maximise audience size as a means to attract programmesponsors. The debate is captured in a contemporary commentary, in whicha professor of political science at The University of Chicago, Jerome Kerwin,argues that profit maximisation was incompatible with educational pro-gramming because, ‘in order to secure the largest audiences which theadvertisers want and will pay for, it is necessary to stage the least elevatingtypes of programme’ (Smulyan 1994: 135). Vaillant’s study of theWisconsin state station WHA in the 1920s indicates that music was animportant part of a culturally ‘uplifting’ programming mix. Performancesof classical music by the university’s orchestra were central to an attempt toproduce music programming noticeably different from what WHA’s firstbroadcast chief referred to as the ‘jazz and other worthless material’ broad-cast by for-profit stations (quoted in Vaillant 2002: 64).

Smulyan (1994) has characterised the period in radio history from1920 to 1934 as a struggle between organisations representing, on theone hand, the primacy of social objectives versus those in pursuit of profit;a struggle in which ‘commercialization’ eventually won out. The progres-sive agenda of the early university stations had difficulties surviving in anenvironment in which federal policy tended towards a ‘corporate liberal-ism’ that privileged certain forms of ownership, versions of intellectualproperty rights and the commodification of audiences that benefited for-profit corporate oligopolies (Streeter 1996). Regulatory changes in 1927,and the policies of the Federal Radio Commission in particular, made itincreasingly difficult for such stations to survive against growing competi-tion from profit-maximising stations funded by sponsorship. In the fiveyears to 1926, 177 licences were issued to educational stations; only 12were issued in the five years from 1927, and only 38 of the 202 stationslicensed in the fifteen years since 1921 were still running in 1936(Smulyan 1994: 130).

While the historical record of the politics of regulation bears outSmulyan’s analysis, there are another set of dimensions to the issue thatwere as important for the early college radio stations as they are eightyyears later. State universities and land grant colleges seemed to be mostsuccessful in keeping their licences, perhaps because of their collectivecommitment to a progressive mission of education, cultural ‘uplift’, eco-nomic and technological development and the modernist aspirations ofsenior staff. However, the managers of these stations still struggled withquestions about the processes involved in programming decisions, the rela-tionships between the programming in the university-based stations andthat of other broadcasters and of the relationships between the broadcast-ers and the communities who could listen to the station. Vaillant’s study ofthe operation of WHA in the 1920s sets the desires of the station’s staff tobe part of a project to ‘rejuvenate and reform rural culture through edu-cational programmes and uplift’ against the reception of the programming

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amongst Wisconsin’s rural communities (2002: 84). So, while some ofWHA’s classical music broadcasts were clearly valued by some listeners,others argued for music that was rooted far more deeply in the culturalvalues of the rural community.

These examples of debates within organisations pursuing social broad-casting aims (offered by Smulyan), and of programmers trying to resolvethe friction between audience expectations and their own objectives(offered by Vaillant), are indicative of the wider, century-long history ofradio broadcasting as an institutional form within the United States. Theprogressive mission of some early broadcasters did survive the initialdecline of the university stations, and can be understood to have developedwithin the campaigns of the broadcast reform movement of the 1930s,and in the establishment of National Public Radio (NPR) in 1967(Engelman 1996; Mitchell 2005).

However, the post-war transformation of the dominant form of radio,from mixed programming to music radio, happened outside the university-based and public radio sectors, primarily in the commercial sectors. ForRothenbuhler and McCourt (2002) ‘radio redefines itself ’ in the UnitedStates in the fifteen years from 1947. This transformation is apparent inprogramming, the inter-relationships of stations and the relationshipbetween a station and its respective publics. For Rothenbuhler andMcCourt, it is primarily a movement from a network era to a format era.The pre-war, centrally-devised, mixed-block programme broadcastinggives way to locally-devised, strip-structure programming, using arecorded music and news format but overlapped by a transitional period ofdiversity and experimentation.

By the point that the hegemonic network system had fully given way toa plethora of small independent stations making local decisions withinstrict conventions, diversity in programming had significantly declined,and the variety that did exist was organised within conventional formatsaimed at specific audiences, mainly of teenagers, urban African-Americans and rural whites. The development of Top 40 programmingstructures (Rothenbuhler and McCourt 2004) was paralleled by thegrowth of black music format stations (George 1988; Barlow 1999)through to the 1960s. From these roots, a dominant form of AM pop radiodeveloped, built around personality DJs and a fast rotation of a fewrecords, selected on the basis of market information published in musicand radio trade journals.

By 1960, then, a dominant music radio ‘mainstream’ had been estab-lished in the United States of America. Presentation became a highly con-ventional form, taking many of the mannerisms of black radio presenters,but codifying them into a youth-orientated ‘total station sound’, in whichthe single elements of personality and recorded music were less impor-tant than the overall identity of the station. The centralisation, and laterthe computerisation, of music programming became a central part ofensuring that the station sound predominated. Although as competition

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within music radio intensified new formats of music broadcasting weredeveloped (Barnes 1988; Berland 1993), pop AM stations relied on well-worked-through formulas to hold market share. These formulas wereonly challenged in the late 1960s and early 1970s by stations operatingon the FM band.

College radio, as distinct from university-based radio stations, devel-oped in the 1960s, to some degree in parallel with FM radio as a technicalmethod of transmission and as a style of music radio. Both the expandedcollege stations and the for-profit stations explored new forms of presenta-tion and music programming aimed at a rising, young and increasinglywealthy middle class population that saw itself as part of a music-centriccounterculture (Eyerman and Jamison 1998: 106–139). This expansionin music radio took advantage of the opportunity to transmit on theunderused VHF band, and of regulatory changes that discouraged simul-taneous AM and FM broadcasting.

Transmission of sound by modulating the frequency of the radio wave,rather than its amplitude, had been established by RCA as early as 1935,but the technical challenges of broadcasting pictures, the Second WorldWar, and regulatory changes over the frequencies of VHF transmissionstandards meant that a settled system was not in place until it was used tosend stereo signals as part of the development of domestic high-fidelityaudio playback systems (Shingler and Wieringa 1998: 7–10). Theretarded social application of FM radio and the relatively high cost of FMreceivers created an underused broadcast space that, in contrast to thehighly formatted AM broadcasters, allowed experimentation with musicprogramming and presentation that was later to be called freeform radio.In Steven Van Zandt’s mythologising words, the form of broadcasting thatdeveloped as FM in the United States was ‘quieter, even though it waslouder. Peaceful, while it spoke of revolution. Slower, while we evolved atan inconceivably rapid pace’ (2001: viii). The presenters, and their choicesof music, were actively constructed as offering an alternative to AM popradio where, in the contemporary critique from freeform radio pioneerTom Donahue, ‘the disc jockeys have become robots performing theirinanities at the direction of programmers who have succeeded in totallysqueezing the human element out of their sound’ (1967: 2).

These freeforms of music radio returned the control of music selectionto the programme presenter, who adopted an antithetical style to AM popradio, purposely juxtaposing music of very different styles; playing lengthyalbum tracks rather than high-rotation singles; talking slowly for longperiods, or not at all; never interrupting a music track and maybe evenleaving pregnant pauses (Keith 1997; Neer 2001). The presentation styleswere of particular appeal to college students, who adopted many of thepractices in their new low-power4 campus stations.

By contrast, the main thrust of forms of cultural uplift programming,which had motivated the university-based broadcasters of half a centurybefore, was focused on the development of a national public radio system.

4 The college stationswere originallylicensed by the FCCunder class D licensesin the main, tobroadcast on 10-watttransmitters using FMon frequencies from88.1 to 91.9 MHz.


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In the early 1970s, the newly formed NPR distributed classical music con-certs for broadcast by public stations, but they did little to engage with awider issue of diversity of music (McCourt 1999). However, the trajectoriesof anti-format broadcasting, alternative provision and cultural uplift wereto play out in music culture and college radio over the next-thirty fiveyears, through the idea of alternative music cultures.

Radio programming and alternative music cultureThe college radio stations that I studied covered a wide range of popularmusic genres, but the terms jazz, world, alternative and indie rock, folkand Americana were particularly prominent in the programme schedules.In North American radio, each of these genre terms cover a wide range ofmusic, while still not embracing the full range of music made available bythe genre-ordering structures used in music cultures outside radioplaylists. It is necessary, then, to understand in what sense these could beunderstood as alternative musical forms, and why particular recordingsare included in a programming category, while others are neglected.

Atton (2002; 2004), through an engagement with the key texts ofmedia structural analysis, has shown how neglected the notion of alterna-tive media is, and maps the idea of an ‘alternative media’ within discourseon culture and political society. His attempt to produce an analytical defi-nition that emphasises media subject matter and organisation, and coversartistic and subcultural, as well as political practices, is very helpful.However, as he himself shows, so wide are the range of practices that canbe defined as alternative that it extends beyond the unconventional andradical. In this study, I do not seek to provide a definition of ‘alternative-ness’ against which the radio stations I studied can be compared. Instead,I want to explore in some detail how the development and contemporaryoperation of radio broadcasting within the United States of America hasconstructed various and particular notions of ‘alternativeness’ as they areapplied to music and radio. Following Foucault’s (1972: 49) methodologi-cal directive, I am more interested in teasing out the discursive practices,which constitute alternative radio as a cultural object.

Any notion of alternativeness must, of course, have a binary ‘other’against which it is set. In music culture, these senses of alternativeness arebuilt around a notion that there is a ‘mainstream’ that dominates musicculture. This metaphor is itself interesting, and contains within it twosenses. First, that – in the range of music possibility that runs analogouslyfrom bank to bank of a waterway – there is a central flow where theculture runs most clearly and speedily, without the eddies and complexclutter of the margins. Second, that this mainstream runs down from thesource in a continuous flow. The mainstream is the common current ofthought or practice.

Although this analogy is widely used in both vernacular discussionsand more systematic academic analysis, the concepts and the way theyare deployed receive little scrutiny. For instance, while Williams (1976)

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established an approach to discussing the ‘Keywords’ of culture andsociety, he did not include the concepts of alternative and mainstream;and neither did the authors who updated the work (Bennett and Grossberg2005). Primarily, this is because the selected keywords are the termsthrough which intellectuals ordered their analysis of culture, rather thanthe terms used by the participants who practised it.

The very notion of a mainstream is constructed by two parallelprocesses. One, in which an idea of the common current is an assertion ofthe values of the norm in society: ‘common sense’, ‘what we like’, ‘not eso-teric’; the other, in which a mainstream is constructed as an ‘other’against which values of difference, freedom, and non-conformity can beasserted. These values of difference are in themselves variable, and notnecessarily compatible. Most relevant to the discussion here are the polar-isation of the exotic from the everyday, the exciting from the indifferent,the substantial from the lightweight, the experimental from the formulaicand the authentic from the manufactured.

While earlier studies of college radio have used a core notion of alter-nativeness, and one at least presents clear evidence that college radio staffuse phraseology similar to that utilised by the respondents in my ownresearch, these ideas remain undeveloped in the presentation of theresearch data. We can see this clearly in, for instance, Tremblay’s (2003)investigation of college radio faculty advisors’ attitudes to the future ofcollege radio. He quotes station staff as champions of programmingaround ‘alternative music, blues and jazz etc’ (p. 173), and concludes thatthere is an acceptance of ‘the traditional college radio ideology: to be analternative to commercial radio’ (p. 179). He also reports that localnesswas an important driver within the stations, and that such programmingindependence, rather than national networking, was often seen as thebasis of future success (p. 180). Similarly, Sauls (1995; 1998) has dis-cussed college radio and the formation of alternative rock music in twodescriptive conference papers, which summarise journalistic commentaryon college radio. Neither researcher, though, takes the opportunity to drilldown further into the ways in which differences in programming and pre-sentation practices order this idea of alternativeness, and then make itmanifest in the broadcast.

In essence, this is the task I set myself. Following three quite distinctradio stations over a five-year period, I examined the changing program-ming and presentation practices within each station in some visits and dis-cussions with key staff in 2003 and 2006, and by scrutinising theirplaylists, programme schedules and broadcasts on a yearly basis from2002. During my visits, I watched presenters at work selecting and broad-casting the music in their live shows, and went through the music pro-gramming practices with key station personnel, including the seniormanagement, programming staff, presenters and faculty advisors. In ourdiscussions, notions of alternativeness were a common theme. As I willshow later, my findings reveal considerable variation in practice and


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output, and incremental but significant change over the five-year period.My analysis shows that these music programming practices drew on thediffering repertoires that operate in the wider music cultures associatedwith the forms of music played.

In more straight-forward terms, there is not one type of alternative-ness; and the distinctive sense of alternativeness articulated by the jazz,world, indie rock, folk and Americana music played on the college stationswas as much rooted in the cultural histories of those musical genres as itwas in the way they were programmed and presented. In addition, the cul-tural uplift agenda of the 1920s’ university-based stations, the progressivemission that underlay the birth of NPR, and the counter-cultural radioform of the 1960s are all also apparent to different degrees in the way thatthe alternativeness of the music is articulated within the stations and onair. The music itself, the programming practices, and the presentationstyles, then, operate as a ‘homology’ which, paraphrasing Hebdige para-phrasing Levis-Straus, we can understand as the ‘symbolic fit’ betweenproduction values, subjective experience and musical forms (Hebdige1979: 113). These become apparent if we explore the way that collegeradio deals with genre styles of indie rock, jazz and world and folk.

In the 1980s, the association between college radio and certain forms ofrock music became so strong that the homology was articulated in the term‘college rock’. In a retrospective attempt to capture the trajectory of theterm, All Music Guide presented it as a ‘confluence of new wave, post-punk,and early alternative rock’ with better selling bands with ‘thoughtful lyricsand socially conscious idealism’, ending in 1991 with the introduction ofmany of the bands into commercial station playlists after college rock stapleNirvana gained international commercial success (AMG 2007). Certainly,by 1987, the New York Times linked college stations with emergent forms ofrock, and six years later presented college radio as key to the development ofwhat would become known as grunge (Pareles 1987; Schoemer 1992).

The ordering of alternative rock codified the experimental forms of freeform radio that developed in colleges in the early years of FM into a moreorganised, and probably more widely palatable, radio format, just as theintroduction of station programmers on commercial FM stations had builtits elements into the AOR (Adult Orientated Rock) format (Neer 2001).Negus suggests that the growth of interest in college radio by record com-panies during the late 1980s moved the stations away from the domain ofenthusiasts and a maverick image (Negus 1992: 103). The codification ofcollege radio as a format is most apparent in the development of CMJ5 as ataste leader amongst station staff. Key to the sense of rock music’s alterna-tiveness in the accounts is a merged sense that the music is exciting, sub-stantial, authentic and occasionally experimental, set against a view ofmusic programming on commercial radio as indifferent, lightweight, man-ufactured and formulaic.

By contrast, jazz programming has tended to construct a sense of alter-nativeness by following a pattern set within a paradigm established by

5 CMJ started as CollegeMedia Journal,developing throughthe boom of collegerock into a reviewsand chartspublication,mediating betweenindependent recordcompanies andstation staff at collegeradio stations.

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academic critics constructing jazz as a tradition of great artists, whose per-formances they actively disassociate from the commercial music industryin which they were created (Ulanov 1952; Stearns 1956; Williams 1959).In doing so, they remade jazz as ‘America’s classical music’. Jazz program-ming, and presentation on the jazz shows that developed at NPR andcollege radio stations from the mid-1970s, reflected the ideas of a histori-cal canon and the discographic detail found in the critics’ journalism andbooks. In particular, the programmes gave little attention to the new formsof music that developed out of the black arts movement, and the retellingof jazz history by black cultural critics (Jones 1966; Looker 2004).

Jazz programmes were often the cornerstone of college radio’s specialistshows, most often found in the evenings or at weekends, and presented byknowledgeable station staff with large record collections of their own.These programmes presented jazz’s alternativeness as ‘substance’ in con-trast to the ‘lightweight’ of other popular music. Most significant was theidea of a mainstream jazz as a tradition that had to be learnt, and intowhich individual artists had to be placed (Gennari 2006: 207–251). Itallowed for the idea of a peripheral avant-garde, but favoured a textbookrendition of the music’s past. More recently, jazz’s tradition has beenrecontextualised by the adoption of the ideas of Ellison and Murray, whohave articulated the music’s development within African-Americanculture (Ellison 1964; Murray 1976; Ellison and Murray 2000). Theseperspectives have been influential within jazz education, on musician andeducator Wynton Marsalis (via cultural critic Stanley Crouch), and onwider notions of jazz as a concert, or repertory music. This has placed jazz,along with classical music, comfortably as part of a discourse of culturaluplift, and it is in this context that it is most often programmed and pre-sented on college radio.

Folk music, and particularly its reinterpretation by Bob Dylan, was animportant element in the 1960s counter-cultural movement, which lay atthe heart of what Keith has characterised as ‘underground radio’ (Keith1997). The association of folk forms with progressive politics has a longhistory (Denisoff 1971; Eyerman and Jamison 1998), where folk isasserted as possessing an authenticity that is contrasted with the manu-factured nature of mainstream popular music. From the 1970s onwards, asimilar association, rooted in the activities of field musicology and songcollecting, built around the vernacular forms of other peoples. Marketed as‘world music’, it connects to the idea that localised music from differentparts of the world is more authentic than the international repertoire thatis played on stations with for-profit owners (Taylor 1997). World musicworks in radio programming terms as ‘exotica’ against the ‘everyday’ ofAmerican life, and is presented as part of cultural uplift in widening per-sonal horizons beyond the limitations of North America. It is significantthat such programmes hardly ever include music from the homelands ofprominent minority groups within the United States, and reggae, forinstance, is preferred over contemporary United States black music forms.


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I want to argue, then, that a sense of an alternative music culture isbuilt up out of a series of discursive practices around music, which are thenreinforced in the programming and presentation of the music on airthrough remnants of the ideas of cultural uplift, progressive politics andcounter-culture that have pervaded not-for-profit radio in the United States.

Music programming in three college radio stationsWFUV in New York, and WERS and WZBC in Boston are very differentstations with very different approaches to music programming. To under-stand their positions in relation to other US radio stations, we could repre-sent this on a continuum of the degree of central control from 100% tonone. The overwhelming majority of US stations would be placed at the100% pole, so all three are atypical; but there are also interesting differ-ences between the three.

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100% 0%WFUV WERS WZBC

Just listening to their output of the three stations makes the differencesapparent. WZBC in Boston offers the least conventional approach, articu-lating a strong sense of difference from other broadcasters that could beheard in the same city, and a style that relates back to the significant pro-gramming practices of 1970s underground radio. At the other end of thecomparison, WFUV in New York can be understood to be closer to theconventions of professional broadcasting. While their output has no com-mercial adverts and the music they played is less frequently or never heardon other stations in New York, their output is clearly ordered aroundhourly clocks, they play sponsor-statements where spot commercialswould go, and records are clearly rotated across programmes. Today,WERS lies somewhere between the other two, offering structured pro-grammed output but with music not played on their for-profit competitors.They have made the biggest change over the years, and the alteration intheir programming is detailed below.

WZBCOver the five years of my study, WZBC in Boston remained very much afreeform station with no centralised music programming. However, thatdid not mean that all types of music were played. By articulating itself as a‘freeform’ station, it was working to a format. The presenters were chosenbecause of their knowledge of key areas of music, and they were expectedto play mainly indie rock with some electronica and dance influences. Nordid it mean that there was no central control, because the station’s outputday was organised around a defined programme schedule, with littlevariety of music across the weekday daytime (although there were somedistinctions of programmes by musical genre).

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The station was entirely run by students, or in some cases BC gradu-ates, and there was a faculty staff organiser. In my independent discus-sions with three station presenters, they each stated that they had a verycommitted listenership in the Boston area, but they also argued that it waswidely perceived that most Boston College students were not interested inthe station’s output. In doing so, they constructed parallels between theirown personal sense of being outside of mainstream college life with thecommitment of a group outside the university and a musical form thatthey perceived to be ‘alternative’ and ‘underground’. These on-air staff feltthey provided a form of radio that could not be heard elsewhere.Presenters, then, saw themselves as mavericks and as living an alternativelifestyle indexed by alternative music. Something of the sense of this can befound in the names selected for the programmes – ‘Cheval Noir’, ‘Love andMathematics’, ‘Electric Blue Watermelon’ for instance – which denotelittle, but which work as rich connotations within the ethos of the stationand its broadcast output, and made a direct semiotic attachment to thenaming of shows in 1970s underground radio.

The station’s work practices and the presenter’s self-identity werefirmly rooted in free-form radio of thirty years before, and in our conversa-tions the staff went to particular lengths to distance themselves from the‘college rock’ forms of radio they perceived as the norm in college stations.They called upon repertoires of ‘cultural uplift’ to make this point, andthey presented the music they broadcast and the programming systemthey used as part of a wider radical agenda that was seen to mix progres-sive politics with artistic exploration. The presenters selected music on atrack-by-track basis as the show progressed, usually chosen in response tothe record currently playing. Most often these records were from a pile thepresenter had pre-selected and brought in from their own collection, butalso drew on records from the station’s extensive library as an idea for atrack occurred to them. This method was viewed as an essential part ofthe ‘free-form’ radio they valued. It was their response to a particulartrack, which determined what the next one should be, as well as a sense ofhow the individual programme should sound. Although a long-term lis-tener would have a good idea of the breadth of music they would listen to,and they may begin to know the styles of selection of individual presen-ters, there was little predictability in the selections beyond that. Howeversmall the listenership, there was clearly some commitment to the musicamong listeners, and an interest in ‘surprise’ as a listener value becausealmost every track played was followed by a phone call enquiring aboutthe details of the recording.

The values of the station were sustained through the induction of newstaff into the strong ethos of the station, by the presence of former studentswho broadcast over a greater number of years than undergraduates basedat BC, and somehow by the studio centre itself, which will have changedlittle since the 1970s: walls filled with vinyl LPs and music promotionstickers going back decades. During my visit in 2003, a number of staff


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were very concerned about the appointment of an advisor from the facultystaff to work with the station. In particular, the station staff were concernedthat this represented an attempt by the college to remove the independenceof the station, and the issue that was emphasised most, to influence pro-gramming. Although the station now has a clearer organisational struc-ture – with a general manager and directors for programmes, operations,music and six other station functions – programming decisions remainstrongly at the level of the programme and in the hands of presenters.

Although WZBC is part of the National Public Radio network, thisseemed to have little impact on the sense of the station articulated by on-air staff and listeners, and it did not heavily determine the majority of itsprogramming. The main ordering of this affiliation was to be found in adaily mid-day broadcast segment called Democracy Now, a speech-basednews and current affairs service funded by listener subscriptions, and pro-gressively liberal in stance.

WERSWERS in Boston changed the most over my five-year period, becomingmore centralised and replacing a strong block-programming system basedupon genre forms with a more traditional strip-music radio system, and aprogramming policy closer to the college radio norm. In 2002, weekdayshows were organised in mainly three-hour blocks, through daytime tonight time as: folk/indie; jazz; world; reggae; hip hop; rock. The weekendsfeatured: women artists; show tunes; a cappella; children’s; Punk; Metal;Blues. By late 2005, these shows had been replaced by a daytime stripfrom 2 a.m. to 7 p.m., playing what is claimed to be ‘a blend of folk, rock,jazz, world, blues, soul, electronic and reggae’; and evening three-hourshows for reggae and then hip hop (WERS 2007). The most obviouslycasualty of the change was the amount of jazz programmed, which fellfrom 20% of daytime playout to one or two tracks a day, usually by artistslike jam band Medeski, Martin and Wood. Nevertheless, it was possible tohear a running order that went through country artist Johnny Cash, indierockers Pinback, electronica band Thievery Corporation, avant rockMidlake, singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright and indie-folkie JoseGonzalez in a single half-hour.6 Very little of the music played on WERSwould be played on WZBC, even though the latter sees itself as a freeformstation with no restrictions on what was played. So, while WERS contin-ued to cover a wider variety of music, it moved from a schedule differenti-ated at the level of the programme to a more coherent, station-level sound.

Like WZBC, WERS is a student-run station. However, while WZBC hadno developed organisational structure or hierarchy in 2002, and a veryloose one in 2007, WERS had a very clear, if atypical (for the US radioindustry), structure. There is a station general manager (a paid post) andan assistant GM, a programme director, a music director, a news director,a productions director, a sports director, PR and promotions team, and in2003 there were 17 programme co-ordinators. During my visits at that

6 Sampled in October2007.

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time I talked to the outgoing general manger, the programme director andmusic director, along with three of the programme co-ordinators and pre-senters. Night-time broadcast music was automated, but in 2003 theyused a very interesting playlist-based programming system for all weekdayshows, which was organised by the 18-strong programming staff.

The station staff felt they broadcast to the greater Boston area,although they believed that a sizable proportion of their listeners would bestudents, and the station used the name of the college frequently in theiron-air talk and in the pre-produced idents. Rather than a commitment toa particular lifestyle, WERS staff were either interested in a career inbroadcasting, or felt that it was an effective way to pursue their interest inparticular kinds of music. A key issue initiated by more senior staff in ourdiscussions was how they could ensure that presenters with a developinginterest in a specialist music could overcome the limitations of their expe-rience thus far. Presenters themselves felt that they wanted control overthe content of their programmes, but valued being part of a larger teamthat organised the block-music programmes, and all valued the access tonew music that was created by the central music playlist system they usedat that time.

The 2003 playlists were produced by the music director and pro-gramme co-ordinators, and then adapted by the different presenters whoworked on specific programmes in a rota. The playlists were made avail-able to the station’s presenters through a series of boxes of CDs within thestudios. Presenters then played some of the tracks from some of the CDswithin the box during their shows – although the actual quantity variedconsiderably from presenter to presenter – and chose the rest of therunning order themselves in 15 minute blocks as the show proceeded. Bythe end of the five-year period, the station’s daytime programming oper-ated on an entirely centralised playlist, although the presenters of the spe-cialist reggae and hip hop shows had freedom to select their own music.

The earlier programming format also influenced the presentation styleheavily. The tradition of jazz programming, with informed presentersgiving detailed discographic or contextual information was common.Tracks were presented in their entirety and they were often preceded orfollowed by moments of dead air. The presenters explained that thisensured that the music was the centre of attention, and marked out theirstyle from that found on other stations. These practices remained fairlyconstant even after the music programming systems changed. Somethingof the aspirations of the station’s leaders can be grasped from the currentstrap line used to promote the station – ‘music for the independent mind’,and the fact that WERS streams on iTunes under the ‘eclectic’ category.The staff paralleled the college’s commitment to education with their ownattempt to understand more about the music they played, and to share themusic and information with a wider audience. This was not often articu-lated as ‘cultural uplift’ because station staff thought of themselves asbroadcasting to already knowledgeable or interested listeners in the


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metropolitan area, and they saw themselves as maintaining an importantcultural space on the airwaves. In 2003, long-term listeners from thegreater Boston area knew exactly what to expect at different times of theday because the programmes had remained fairly consistent over the years,and the identity of the single programmes ordered the way that the pre-senters chose their music (and presented their shows). It is likely that alarge proportion of these listeners were lost when the station moved to anew format, and the output was likely to appeal more to students than tothe wider constituency it formerly attracted.

WFUVWFUV in New York is much closer to the approach of format stationselsewhere in the US industry, although the format it works with is quitedistinctive, and the staff and many listeners feel they offer an alternative tothe majority of mainstream radio. Station staff spoke quite proudly of thestation as an AAA station, and their role in establishing the format withinmore conventional radio practice. This format – Album Adult Alternative –is relatively new in US radio, although it has antecedents in AdultOriented Rock (AOR) and Adult Contemporary (AC) formats. As thenames suggest all three are aimed at adult (aged 25+) listeners and grewout of FM radio. AAA stations are presented, in the words of station staff,as offering an alternative to the ‘rock-clichés and rock-lite formula ofAOR’, and the ‘pop sensibilities of AC’, by playing ‘music at the margins’ ofAmerican rock, with a strong folk/acoustic and world music flavour.

Most shows, and especially in the daytime, were conventionally format-ted with a programme schedule, clocks and playlists. The schedule wasunusual because it initially seemed to eschew the usual breakfast/mid-morning/afternoon/drivetime format. Weekday from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.was branded as ‘City Folk’, and the website did not give prominence to thepresenters, although on air each daily programme had a regular presen-ter, and they offered quite distinctive individual identities. The showsthemselves did contain conventional rise and shine/drivetime elements,including frequent time checks, travel and weather information. Lateevening, night time and weekends featured more specialist folk, worldmusic and jazz/folk music shows, which were not centrally formatted. TheCity Folk programmes featured conventional clocks; the other pro-grammes were programmed in a more freeform manner by their specialistpresenters.

The more traditional approach to programming was reflected in amore conventional organisational structure and a professional, ratherthan student, workforce of a general manager, programme director andmusic director, all of whom had been at the station for some time. All thepresenters were professionals, mostly well known on New York radio,having moved from other stations which served WFUV’s listeners whenthey were younger. All the station staff expressed particular commitmentsto the station and there was very little turn over of staff during the five

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years I followed the station. In discussing music and radio culture, theydrew on repertoires derived from underground rock radio of the 1970s,but argued that they sustained these values within a musical and eco-nomic format that could survive in the current radio market. The coremanagers felt that ‘city folk’ communicated particularly important ideasabout updating, in an urban format, some traditional perspectives of valueand authenticity in music, which had been prevalent as they grew up. Thepresenters explicitly connected their current work with their roles in otherNew York stations, which had now moved on to what they saw as more‘commercial formats’. Each spoke quite passionately about the need forhuman connections and for radio where music was valued. They under-stood their alternativeness explicitly in relation to the other for-profit sta-tions. While staff at WZBC and WERS in 2003 felt that it was important tohave music and other programming systems that differed from for-profitstations, the WFUV saw these as professional tools, which could be usedfor another purpose. Their professionalism was very important to them,and they used this self-identity to distinguish themselves from othercollege stations. On the other hand, they associated themselves with thecollege’s commitment to education as a way of distinguishing their valuesfrom those of the stations whose primary objective was profit.

The music director worked with a basic three list structure. She calledthese lists ‘Hots and Heavies’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Lites’. The terms refer to thedegree of rotation. So a ‘heavy’ would have seven to nine rotations in aweek, a ‘medium’ three to five and a ‘lite’ two plays. The turnover ofrecords was quite low, with four or five being dropped out and being addedeach week. The heavies list of 16 tracks and medium 30 tracks wouldcombine new releases from artists with relatively long careers such asWilco, Pattie Smith, Toots and the Maytals, David Byrne, Badly DrawnBoy, Gomez, Crosby and Nash and JJ Cale. Genre was a less importantissue for WFUV staff. They tended to talk about artists who had authentic-ity or value that went beyond simple genre classifications. Nevertheless,their artists tended to be drawn from America’s rock heritage, or fromgenres like Reggae that tended to be associated with world music. Musicplayed with acoustic instruments was particularly valued.

The lites contained 25 artists who were less well known, or establishinga name, although they played fairly eclectic lists of artists such as ScissorSisters, Joss Stone and Morrissey in this category before they establishedwider reputations in other radio stations. It is noticeable how many inde-pendent and boutique labels were represented in the play list. Only four orfive per playlist were from the main label of a major corporation. The‘current’ lists were supported by a massive list of older records, which gotvery low rotations but would be well known to listeners as they receivedheavy radio play rotation at the time they were originally released.

The station played an important part in National Public Radio andtook its national and regional news from NPR. They also had a significantnews team that produced quite imaginative news items: there was no rip


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and read at WFUV. The music and programming parts of the station werecontained within a single complex of rooms, but news occupied thegreater space at the far end of the station. Very few students worked at thestation, and the majority of those who did were interns in the newsroom.One student intern was working with the director of music, and was veryinterested in a career in radio.

It seems unlikely that WFUV neither had a large local listenership inthe Bronx nor was WFUV aimed at Fordham students (they are too youngfor its target audience), and few worked at the station. The station carriedfairly well in the greater NYC area. The listener figures, and more impor-tantly the listener subscriptions, were quite high. Unlike WZBC, but on thesame lines as WERS, WFUV took supporter messages as well. This is aform of advertising that was heavily circumscribed by the station’s licenceto ensure it was not in competition with advertising-funded stations.

The university acted as a host, rather than inspiration for the station’swork. However, just as Fordham is an affluent Gothic oasis in the bustling,and less affluent, commercial streets of the multicultural borough of NewYork City, the staff saw themselves to be in an oasis of privileged radioculture set within a wider, more commercial and faster radio cultureoutside.

ConclusionsEach of the stations I examined had very small listenerships when com-pared with for-profit over-the-air stations, and they survived economicallymainly because of the in-kind subsidy of the university host and the freelabour of station staff. WFUV relied on generous sponsors and listenerfinancial support to offset higher professional staff costs. This relative priv-ilege secured their position within the local radio market, and the USnational radio system as a whole.

As I have been able to show, the progressive mission of the early uni-versity stations and the uplift agenda of public radio campaigners areapparent in college radio even today, but certainly transformed through anewer sensibility about popular music that is rooted in the 1960s’ counterculture. All staff in all the stations saw themselves as offering a significantalternative to the music programming of for-profit over-the-air broadcast-ers. What that alternative was, and how it could be achieved, differed fromstation to station, and it changed over the five years of my study. Thechanges related to a struggle to define what the relationship of the broad-casters were with the university’s mission, with their commitment tomusic, and with their audience. Each station attempted a different solu-tion, sometimes the product of the organisation of the station, and in partdefined by their particular geographical and cultural circumstances.

WZBC was one of the last refuges of Negus’ enthusiasts and mavericks,and its staff saw themselves as involved in a counter-culture to Americansociety, often expressing themselves as an alternative within their hostinstitution, the prestigious Boston College. Although few staff had a

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developed sense of the historical detail of freeform FM radio in the 1970s,most of their practices were rooted in those traditions and the rock culturein which it was based, passed on from generation to generation of stu-dents. There was enthusiastic support from a small number within theBoston area, and this was the defining criterion of the presenters’ sense ofsuccess.

WERS underwent the most change during my period of study. Theyevolved from something close to a publisher-broadcaster, with very distinc-tive block programmes made by producer teams and listened to by partic-ular groups of music fans, to a much more traditional college broadcasterwith a centralised playlist and a student target audience. Something oftheir earlier eclecticism was still apparent, though.

WFUV’s worked solidly within conventional commercial broadcastnotions of formats, even if staff perceived that the station’s alternativenesslay in an assertion of their role as innovators in the development of theAdult Album Alternative format. The station was strongly led by the per-manent professional staff, and the large number of presenters with lifelongprofessional broadcasting experience seemed to be connected to the highregard for professional conventions of music programming and presenta-tion, even when it was felt that these were used for more imaginative pur-poses. Overall, the station staff articulated their role as innovators within atradition of folk music broadcasting in which authenticity was a centralcultural value, and related to a New York audience who had grown upwith alternative FM broadcasting in the late 1960s. It is probably no sur-prise, then, that they had little commitment to a cultural uplift mission,and saw themselves as hosted by the university, rather than part of itsactivities.

None of the stations fitted firmly the image of the college rock pro-gramming station often associated with college radio. This could, ofcourse, simply be the product of such a small sample; with over 1400other college stations to study, these could well be the most distinctive.However, this qualitative study has allowed me to explore the very differ-ent ways in which alternativeness can be understood and articulatedthrough practices of programming and presentation. The case studiesreveal that there is no one form or expression of alternativeness inAmerican radio, although outside National Public Radio it is throughmusic culture that both the mainstream and its alternatives are defined.More important than a simplistic sense of ‘college music’ as alternativerock, it is the themes of progress, cultural uplift and alternative lifestylethat have threaded throughout the development of American educationand broadcasting, and they continue to play an important part in the dis-cursive practices of college radio today. These ideas shaped the way thatthe music was programmed, which in turn determined what was heard inthe output of the stations. Although the dominant form of music radiorelies upon centralised, computerised programming based upon highlydeveloped market information, these stations felt that there was something


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important in the handcraft of choosing music, even when they felt thatsome forms of centralisation were needed to overcome the limitations ofpresenters whose knowledge of music was just developing.

It is also interesting to note that, on the basis of my interviews at least,the broadcasters who worked in these stations had only slight understand-ing of the rich history of university-based radio, and yet were readily par-ticipating in agendas of radio that were set in the 1920s, and practicesaround music radio that were forged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Music radio as a whole remains lamentably understudied, and so it iseasy to fall back on rather too general statements about its function andimpact. The results presented here at least indicate that there is much tobe gained from the detailed study of the internal operation of single sta-tions, in addition to placing them in the context of the wider flows of anation’s national system and cultural values.

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The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1,pp. 35–54, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.35/1

Contributor detailsTim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham CityUniversity in the UK. He is chair of the Radio Studies Network and editor of theRadio Journal. He researches and publishes widely on the relationship betweenradio, popular music culture and the regulation and technology of communicationin society. He is author of Studying Popular Music Culture (Arnold) and is currentlyresearching a book on the development of radio culture. Contact: Department ofMedia & Communication, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham,B42 2SU, UK.E-mail: [email protected]

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Reviews


Reviews. English language. doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.55/5

Book ReviewsMedia Talk: Spoken Discourse on TV and Radio,Andrew Tolson, (2005)Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 193 pp., ISBN 0 7846 1826 0 (pbk), £16.99

If it was not for the ceaseless streams of talk which animate the airways,broadcasting would be a largely lifeless activity. Talk itself is utterlyprotean, with forms, styles, idioms and utterances that are almost viral inthe way they proliferate. For scholars of discourse this is both talk’s fasci-nation and its difficulty. By definition, talk is fluid, slipping effortlesslybetween private and public contexts in the to-and-fro of conversationalexchanges. One of the strengths of Tolson’s welcome new book is to showjust how such interchanges can be traced, marked out and understood.This he demonstrates by drawing together a developing body of work onbroadcast talk.

Talk is not only fluid; it is also managed and how broadcast talkis managed lies at the heart of this book. Tolson tracks this by dividinghis book into two parts. The first discusses talk as a public activityorganised through the broadcast media; the second selects particularbroadcast genres of talk and examines these in detail. This allows Tolsonto tackle genres such as news, political, sports, youth, ordinary andcelebrity talk in a format that incorporates both radio (sports and youthtalk) and television. As a whole, the book is weighted towards televisionrather than radio. It also appears squarely aimed at a British readership,although he picks out examples from both sides of the Atlantic. Incelebrity talk, for example, he refers to the British Mrs Merton and theAmerican Oprah chat shows, while ‘ordinary talk’ includes the quasi-therapy talk shows Trisha in the United Kingdom and Sally Jesse Raphaelin the United States.

The strength of the book lies in its series of clear, well-developed analy-ses. Ranging across the variety of genres he selects, these illustrate howtranscripts can be taken apart and investigated to reveal the way conver-sational exchanges are sequenced and enacted. He also demonstrates theways they are related to shifting talk styles and broadcast practices. Forexample, in a particularly effective chapter on youth talk, he draws on


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Scannell’s notion of ‘double articulation’, the ‘there’ and ‘here’ of productionand consumption, to show exactly how the genre of DJ talk has beentransformed over time on BBC pop radio. He does this by highlighting theshift from ‘traditional’ DJ banter to a ‘zoo aesthetic’. The first, he suggests,emphasised intimacy between DJ and listener through the use of self-reflexive, personalised asides or by invoking work, regional or individu-alised identification such as star signs. In contrast, he argues, the zooaesthestic works by foregrounding the here-and-now of the studio and byexploiting the formerly hidden machinery of broadcasting practice in anexplicit or transgressive way. The chapter is typical of the book’s casestudies, in the way it employs well-chosen transcripts to illustrate howactual discourses are managed and by providing extensive links to relatedstudies and theoretical frames. In this sense, the book is a consistentlyexcellent resource for media studies students, by condensing complex the-oretical models and providing lucid applications of them to show how thesame analytical repertoire can be employed across a wide variety of insti-tutional forms in both television and radio. The broad method is laid outearly in a very clear, well-illustrated chapter, ‘Analysing Media Talk’, andthen carried through in the following case studies.

In the main, the book draws on the ethnomethodological tradition ofconversation analysis and the work of Erving Goffman. These perspectivesare variously supplemented by other analytical frames, such as Scannell’sphenomenological work and Horton and Wohl’s post-war work on para-social interaction. Taken together, these frames enable Tolson to developan argument in the first part of the book that emphasises three dimen-sions of talk: its interactional nature, its performativity, and what hedescribes as its liveliness, or seeming spontaneity. It is these aspects, heargues, that highlight how ordinary conversation is transformed in broad-casting into a specific mode of performance for a distant audience. Theyreveal, in short, how mediated public talk is constituted: a practice of talkwhich he goes on to situate within the context of modernity and the publicsphere. This line of argument throws up some difficult questions. If thesepoint to some of the book’s limitations, they also provide a stimulus tothinking through some of the complex issues that any study of mediateddiscourse throws up.

Principal amongst them is how the idea of discourse, as opposed totalk, is understood. There are two issues here, both of which turn on thechoice of analytic perspective. The first relates to how discourse can bemost effectively studied; the second to how it can be situated with respectto the social or political tensions that routinely inhabit the broadcastmedia. Where the choice of analytic perspective is concerned Tolson’smethods are predominantly microsociological. This is particularly so withthe tradition of ethnomethodology which emphasises a very close-grainedanalysis of conversation practices. What the combination of this method,Goffman’s frame analysis and Bakhtin’s work on speech genres drawattention to is exactly how interactional practices are constructed. In this

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context, conversation is one kind of performance that works interactivelyto produce and manage speakers’ identities and draws on existing reper-toires, idioms and genres to do so. Tolson translates these insights into therealm of public broadcasting and shows how they can be used to under-stand the manufacture of public, mediated identities.

However, this translation also introduces a strain which the book neverfully resolves. Partly, this is to do with a notion of the audience whichTolson takes over from Heritage’s (1984) work on the idea of the ‘over-hearing’ audience. It is an awkward construction since the constantlyshifting modes of address in broadcasting mean the audience does muchmore than overhear when it moves between active participation, is activelyinvoked, or engages in vicarious or partial activity, such as laughter orclapping in live shows. Indeed, Tolson himself appears to use this notiononly sporadically and omits it when analysing such live audience interac-tions as Kilroy or The Jerry Springer Show. Ironically, talkback radio, whichtakes up exactly such problems (Turner 2003), is not discussed and israrely referenced.

The problem here appears to be in transporting concepts developedlargely in private or unmediated public contexts to those the mediatedpublic sphere. This may also explain why the book’s studies do not extendbeyond the traditional broadcasting forms of radio and television to com-munity or alternative media or to the emergent hybrid forms of digital andinternet communication where public and private boundaries are continu-ally being reworked. These areas constantly raise questions about howidentities and social relationships are managed, and how discourse worksto produce, manage or sustain them.

Focusing on ‘talk’ also sidelines the sizeable critical discourse literatureand, in particular, the work of Foucault, which attracts only one briefentry in the index. Granted that it is hardly fair to expect one book toencompass every variety of discourse analysis, the significance of this deci-sion is still that the socio-political and cultural implications of talk areseverely under-represented. The reader, for example, will finish the booklittle wiser about how discourses might either produce or sustain particu-lar kinds of institutional power or social inequality. Nor is it clears howTolson’s methods are sensitive to the negotiation of class, race or genderdiscourses. For this reason, the chapter on political talk is one of the book’sleast persuasive.

In turn, this raises questions both about the discursive framing of thepublic sphere and, equally, about how commercial talk genres such adver-tising might be understood within Tolson’s model. Nevertheless, one of thevaluable aspects of this book is that it marks out its field clearly enough forsuch questions to be raised. It also suggests how there are plenty of areasfor future study. That aside, Media Talk ably demonstrates how the tradi-tion of conversation analysis can be applied and developed across a widerange of broadcasting genres.Reviewed by John Farnsworth, New Zealand Broadcasting School

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ReferencesHeritage, J. (1985), ‘Analyzing News Interviews: Aspects of the Production of Talk

for Overhearing Audiences’, in T. Van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis,Vol. 3, London: Academic Press.

Turner, G. (2003), ‘Ethics, Entertainment and the Tabloid: The Case of TalkbackRadio in Australia’, in C. Lumby and E. Probyn (eds.), Remote Control: NewMedia, New Ethics, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Radio Modernism: Literature, Ethics, and the BBC,1922–1938, Todd Avery (2006)Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 158 pp., ISBN 0-7546-5517-2 (hbk), £45.00

It is hardly surprising that John Reith’s early BBC was so keen to persuadethe literary and cultural elite (and especially the ‘Bloomsbury’ group) tocontribute radio talks. Given the cultural aspirations of the fledglingorganisation it made good sense to persuade these very public figures tohave their say and add their prestige to the new corporation. The list ofwriters who went on air in the 1920s and 1930s was, to use Todd Avery’swords, a ‘Who’s Who of literary modernism’. To take a small but signifi-cant sample: Virginia Woolf gave three talks, Desmond McCarthy gave‘scores’ of talks, T.S. Eliot (around 80), H.G. Wells (9), Leonard Woolf wasa regular broadcaster and E.M. Forster gave hundreds of radio talks on thepre-war BBC.

The presence of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot ina 1930s radio studio was highly significant for radio and also for the mod-ernist movement. Drawing on recent accounts of the literary elite, Averyoffers a new understanding of the relationship between them and massculture and also provides the most detailed account of the Bloomsburytalks available. In addition, for this reviewer at least, he also solves one ortwo of BBC radio history’s more intractable dilemmas.

It is legitimate to ask why Bloomsbury wanted to speak into the air tomillions of their fellow citizens. A cursory reading of John Carey’s (1992)influential The Intellectuals and the Masses is enough to suggest theproblem. He describes the modernist’s contempt for the masses and massculture and indeed goes further to provide a graphic account of theirhatred towards not only the working class but also the culturally aspirantmiddle class. He offers evidence of a profound distrust of mass education,raising the expectations of the masses and making them yet more dangerous.Carey is not alone in this view and Avery refers to similar anti-modernistsentiments in D.L. LeMahieu (1988). Hence the dilemma: why should theenemies of the masses, mass culture and mass education give talks on theBBC? Furthermore, why did Reith, the Christian moralist and puritan, aman of intensely traditional and conservative views, allow the morally andpolitically dubious modernists to broadcast?



The answers to these questions, as Avery shows, are complex. Todescribe the Bloomsbury set as adversarial cultural elitists, dismissive andcontemptuous of most of the rest of the population, is a misunderstandingof literary modernism. Following recent ‘New Modernist’ thinking, Averyidentifies the intense interest in mass rather than individual identities inliterary modernism. He rejects the orthodox account of modernist hostilityto the masses and mass culture and instead suggests an egalitarianism in,for example, Virginia Woolf ’s contributions, and a desire to democratisethe accessibility of art and culture.

A chapter is devoted to H.G. Wells’ radio career (and another to that ofT.S. Eliot) in which the radicalism of his views is revealed. Wells was aninternationalist, a critic of patriotism who believed in a socialist worldstate. So what was this man doing delivering his dangerous views onReith’s BBC to audiences of over ten million listeners? Avery suggests thatWells, along with other members of the cultural elite, felt free to deliverforms of critique, which challenged the ideological foundations of the BBC:

Bloomsbury broadcasters inserted themselves into a space which had beenbuilt with the materials of a liberal nationalist and evangelical Christian ide-ology – and which was punctured and torn, as any large organization invari-ably is, by internal and external stresses during its first quarter century ofexistence . . . (p. 73)

This uneasy alliance, between the BBC and Bloomsbury, was of coursegreatly assisted by the first Head of Talks, Hilda Matheson. Her contribu-tion to the radio talk has been well documented elsewhere but Avery pro-vides an important insight into the relationship between her famouscreation of the informal style of radio talks and the ethical basis of liter-ary modernism. Matheson, very much an insider in the cultural andsocial elite, advocated a mode of broadcast talk, which owed more to theinformality of conversation than the formality of public address. Averypoints out that conversation was fundamental to the Bloomsbury ethic.Their ethical stance was largely derived from the philosopher, G.E. Moore,who regarded conversation, the intimate exchange of ideas between indi-viduals, as morally important. Bloomsbury talks can be seen as attemptsto reach the mass audience not in the crude propaganda radio of otherparts of Europe, but as a conversation between the talker and a mass ofindividuals.

This fascinating, elegantly written and important book is primarilyaddressed to modernist, rather than radio, scholars. But what it revealstakes us to the heart of the BBC in the 1930s by describing the relation-ship between the corporation and the modernist movement. Anyone inter-ested in the formative period of British broadcasting might start withScannell and Cardiff ’s (1991) definitive account of the BBC and the publicsphere, then read Sean Street’s (2006) reminder of the importance of com-mercial radio at the time before reading Avery’s book. In these three texts,

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but in particular in Radio Modernism, the cultural significance of radio isgiven particular prominence.Reviewed by Hugh Chignell, Bournemouth University

ReferencesCarey, J. (1992), The Intellectuals and the Masses, London: Faber and Faber.

LeMahieu, D.L. (1988), A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Culti-vated Mind in Britain Between the Wars, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Scannell, P. and David, C. (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, Vol. 1:1922–1939, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Street, S. (2006), Crossing the Ether: British Public Service Radio and CommercialMonopoly 1922–1945, Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing.



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35–54 Finding an alternative: Music programming in US college radio Tim Wall

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