Making Radio: Early Radio Programming and the Rise of Modem Sound Culture

摘要

Shawn VanCour's book, an extension of his award-winning 2009 dissertation, has an ambitious goal, an analysis of the aesthetics of early 1920s, pre-network radio programming. In contrast to the revered Golden Age of Radio of the 1930s-'40s, a period for which recordings and transcription discs are plentiful, the formative period of the medium was barely recorded so it may seem unfeasible to describe its audio practices in detail. In an impressive feat of detective work, VanCour has scoured the various archives of early radio material, mined a few dozen mainstream and trade publications, and pieced together a comprehensive study of radio's original aural techniques. This analysis draws from scripts, program logs, internal memos, and perhaps most importantly, articles from radio critics that argued for the preferred uses of the medium. A recurring theme in Making Radio is debate about the proper uses of radio, including the best practice for audio presentation and the optimum ways to use the medium for social good. In contrast to the established art forms of the day, including music, theatre, literature, and even cinema, radio was the upstart seeking to establish legitimacy. Rather than a top-down study of the medium, looking at the way economics or regulations influenced the programming, VanCour buttresses these kinds of claims with decisions made by radio performers and producers themselves. The result is a work that synthesizes decades of previous radio scholarship with new archival evidence for a production-oriented explanation of how American radio came to sound the way that it did.