American radio networks: A history

摘要

The history of radio networks in the United States serves up lessons on many fronts of American life in the twentieth century and beyond. Their emergence in the 1920s illustrates both the opportunities and harsh realities of corporate capitalism particularly in the development of new technologies. Their regulation reveals the alternately cozy and confrontational relationship between political and commercial interests. Network programming throughout radio's golden age is a window into the tastes and mores of a nation during times of great economic and wartime stress. Perhaps one of the most compelling lessons comes from the transition of radio and its networks during the age of television. The ingrained view of radio as a national entertainment medium was so fixed that most could not imagine radio would survive at all. Seeing radio morph into a completely different yet viable configuration in the 1960s and 70s reminds us that we should not underestimate the plasticity of communication networks. American Radio Networks: A History by Jim Cox provides the basic narrative and source material to begin exploring these and other lessons.