Studying Radio (Studying the Media)

This volume offers a concise and thorough introduction to radio broadcasting as an area of study, placing radio in a historical and contemporary media context and tracing the development and day-to-day operation of the medium from the perspective of its institutions, it practitioners and its audience. It focuses not only on the institutions of radio and the ways in which programming is created and shaped but on the problematic issue of how the material is received and used by its listeners. Drawing on a variety of academic approaches, this text surveys radio progamming through its main genres and the editorial practices that inform music selection and news coverage in particular; the language and style of radio programming; the ideology behind radio's basic promise of companionship and escape; and how and why radio output dovetails so closely with working and leisure patterns.