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It's hard not to be romantic about radio;
few inventions evoke such nostalgia, such deeply personal
and vivid memories. Ask anyone born before World War II
about radio, and you'll see that person time-travel to the
lost world of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Arturo
Toscanini; to the jokes of Jack Benny and Burns and Allen;
to the sobering commentary of Franklin Roosevelt and Edward
R. Murrow. Those born after World War II grew up tuning
in to Jean Shepherd in the darkness of their bedrooms; blasting
Sam Cooke, the Beatles, or the Doors while cruising around
in their parents' cars or baking on the beach; talking back
to Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
Listening In is the first in-depth history of how
radio culture and content have kneaded and expanded the
American psyche.
But Listening In is more than a history.
It is also a reconsideration of what listening to radio
has done to American culture in the twentieth century and
how it has brought a completely new auditory dimension to
our lives. Susan Douglas explores how listening has altered
our day-to-day experiences and our own generational identities,
cultivating different modes of listening in different eras.
Douglas reveals how radio has played a pivotal
role in helping us imagine ourselves in invisible communities
-- of sports fans, Fred Allen devotees, rock'n'rollers,
ham operators, Dittoheads -- creating both deep cultural
niches and broad national identities. Listening In
is also a penetrating look at radio as a guiding force in
shaping our views of race, gender roles, ethnic barriers,
family dynamics, leadership, and the generation gap.
Listening In begins in the 1920's, when
the "radio boom" swept the nation. It charts the
Golden Era of radio comedy and drama in the 1930s, when
Jack Benny's opening salvo of "Jell-O, ladies and gentlemen"
and the haunting strains of the theme to The Shadow
captured the American imagination. It chronicles how the
broadcast journalism of Edward R. Murrow, H. V. Kaltenborn,
and William Shirer brought World War II into every American's
living room. It traces the importance of DXers and modern-day
ham operators, reflectors of radio's twin gifts of democratization
and subversion. It limns the artistry of sports commentary,
from Harry Caray and Red Barber's baseball to Graham McNamee's
boxing. With standard-bearer Wolfman Jack, it reports the
ascendance of DJs and the Top 40 format and the FM revolution
of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, it captures the rise of
National Public Radio and the phenomenon of talk radio in
the 1990s.
Douglas explores two little-understood aspects
of radio: the commodification of radio and the act of listening
itself. She explains how radio researchers invented the
idea of the audience, then learned how to market to it --
a phenomenon whose implications changed the entire media
industry. Douglas describes the different modes of listening
that radio has cultivated through different eras and how
these sounds have shaped our sense of ourselves.
How we listened, where we listened, who
we listened to and why: With her trademark wit and erudition,
Susan Douglas has created an eminently readable cultural
history of radio that fixes its place in our lives as shaper
and reflector of our passions and obsessions.
Susan J. Douglas, Ph.D., is a professor
of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan --
Ann Arbor. The author of Where the Girls Are: Growing
Up Female with the Mass Media, she lives with her husband
and daughter in Ann Arbor.
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