Overview

The opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed a profound transformation in the history of modern sound media, with workers in U.S. film, radio, and record industries developing pioneering production methods and performance styles tailored to emerging technologies of electric sound reproduction that would redefine dominant forms and experiences of popular audio entertainment. Focusing on broadcasting's initial expansion during the 1920s, Making Radio explores the forms of creative labor pursued for the medium in the period prior to the better-known network era, assessing their role in shaping radio's identity and identifying affinities with parallel practices pursued for conversion-era film and phonography. Tracing programming forms adopted by early radio writers and programmers, production techniques developed by studio engineers, and performance styles cultivated by on-air talent, it shows how radio workers negotiated a series of broader industrial and cultural pressures to establish best practices for their medium that reshaped popular forms of music, drama, and public oratory and laid the foundation for a new era of electric sound entertainment.

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9780190497118

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Reviews

This compelling new study by Shawn VanCour adds substantially to our understanding of how radio came to sound the way it did, detailing how sound engineers, studio managers, technicians, and performers negotiated technological, regulatory, and taste cultures to produce what listeners across media now recognize as modern, professionalized, and commercial sound. * Kate Lacey, Professor of Media History and Theory, University of Sussex, and author of Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age * With its innovative focus on creative labor, this book opens up the origins of the very sound of radio itself to historical scrutiny as never before. Adroitly blending production studies and aesthetics with meticulous archival research, VanCour explains the emergence of foundational norms in American broadcasting at a variety of scales, and in several enduring formats. Making Radio is a crucial book, and it will anchor serious works of radio history - and studies of mediamaking more broadly - for many years to come. * Neil Verma, Assistant Professor of Sound Studies, Northwestern University, and author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics and American Radio Drama * Of all important sound media, none has been so neglected as radio especially early radio. That's why Making Radio is so welcome. Based on rarely consulted archival materials, Shawn VanCour's study opens important new territory. * Rick Altman, Emeritus Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa * [VanCour] presents a detailed, well-researched text on how radio production began and developed into a media format... Included with detailed examples are the ways engineers, writers, on-air talent, and others played important roles in how radio began structuring programming into schedules and genres, the effect of sound and speech on listeners, and radio's eventual success... Highly recommended. * C. L. Clements, CHOICE *

This compelling new study by Shawn VanCour adds substantially to our understanding of how radio came to sound the way it did, detailing how sound engineers, studio managers, technicians, and performers negotiated technological, regulatory, and taste cultures to produce what listeners across media now recognize as modern, professionalized, and commercial sound. * Kate Lacey, Professor of Media History and Theory, University of Sussex, and author of Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age * With its innovative focus on creative labor, this book opens up the origins of the very sound of radio itself to historical scrutiny as never before. Adroitly blending production studies and aesthetics with meticulous archival research, VanCour explains the emergence of foundational norms in American broadcasting at a variety of scales, and in several enduring formats. Making Radio is a crucial book, and it will anchor serious works of radio history - and studies of mediamaking more broadly - for many years to come. * Neil Verma, Assistant Professor of Sound Studies, Northwestern University, and author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics and American Radio Drama * Of all important sound media, none has been so neglected as radio especially early radio. That's why Making Radio is so welcome. Based on rarely consulted archival materials, Shawn VanCour's study opens important new territory. * Rick Altman, Emeritus Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa *

Author Information

Shawn VanCour is Assistant Professor of Media Archival Studies in UCLA's Department of Information Studies. His research includes work on history of media technologies, media industries and labor practices, media archiving and preservation, and music and sound studies.

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