Christopher H. Sterling

Stay tuned : a history of American broadcasting

Contents: The Context of Broadcasting. The Prehistory of Broadcasting (to 1919). The Beginnings of Broadcasting (1920-1926). The Coming of Commercialism (1926-1933). Radios Golden Age (1934-1941). Radio Goes to War (1941-1945). Era of Great Change (1945-1952). The Age of Television (1952-1960). Accommodation and Adjustment (1961-1976). Challenge and Competition (1977-1988). Change and Evolution (1988-2001). Lessons From the Past for the Future. Appendices: A Short Chronology of American Broadcasting. Glossary. Historical Statistics on Broadcasting. Selected Bibliography.

Books of the Month

Alan Stone Economic Regulation and the Public Interest: The Federal Trade Commission in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977—

The Rise of Radio Studies: Scholarly Books Over Four Decades

15.00) Jon G. Udell, The Economics of the American Newspaper (New York: Hastings House, 1978—

Pioneering Risk: Lessons from the US Teletext/Videotex Failure

11.50/5.95) Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1978—

Decade of Development: FM Radio in the 1960s

19.95)

Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship

Just before Thanksgiving 1969, the first issue of Broadcasting Bibliophile’s Booknotes appeared, just three dittoed pages, one of them reviewing a host of (now long-gone) New York City second-hand bookshops. Among the handful of books reviewed in that inaugural issue were two radio biographies—Kendrick’s life of Edward R. Murrow (discussed below), and a paperback reprint of Lawrence Lessing’s biography of radio inventor E. H. Armstrong, originally published in 1956. Even then a congenital book collector, I mailed perhaps a dozen copies to colleagues who might be interested in a regular media book reporting service. I had no idea what starting Booknotes would accomplish. Four decades later, Chignell’s Key Concepts in Radio Studies (2009) appeared, certainly a solid indicator that an academic field was thriving both here and abroad. During those intervening decades, Booknotes—since 1998 published as Communication Booknotes Quarterly—continued to report on and review most new books on radio and other media. What follows is a distillation drawn from archive issues of what began as BBB, became MMB in 1973. CB in 1981, and finally CBQ a decade ago. Over those 40 years, an awful lot of radio book reviews have appeared, most written by me, though with many contributed by others. Not all of them are included here—eliminated for this essay are almost all textbooks, how-to (production/performance) titles, and nearly all books about radio in other countries (which would make up another long article in itself). The focus is on serious or scholarly titles devoted to some aspect of American radio, with a bias toward those issued by university presses. No year now goes by without at least several more radio books appearing, most of them historical, but some reviewing the changing modern business. But that was not always the case. A fair number of scholarly radio books—most of them concerning either technology or audience studies–had appeared before World War II. Even with television taking hold in the late 1940s, useful research volumes about radio were being published. Among them, Lazarsfeld & Kendall’s Radio Listening in America (1948) reported results of a national audience survey, updating one published just two years earlier; and Maclaurin’s 1949 study related the central role of patent control in the technology’s early development. These studies were

CBQ REVIEW ESSAY: U.S. Telecommunications Policy Since the 1996 Act

Digital teletext/videotex services enjoyed a decades-long heyday in Europe, and only recently have largely given way to the far more capable Internet. But neither service succeeded in the US. This article assesses multiple reasons behind the American failure to adopt this technology, some of which apply to todays digital services

Book Review: The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know about Itself, by Andrew Pettegree:

,As the 1970s began, FM radio was one of the fastest growing elements in American broadcasting. Spurred by Federal Communications Commission decisions which helped to give it an identity separate frcm AM radio, FM was taking on a role of importance for the first time in its 35-year history. This role of increasing importance, however, was almost totally a phenomenon of the 1960s, for prior to 1961-62, FM was distinctly a second service existing primarily to fill in coverage and programming holes of AM stations. The factors behind FM’s changing role were primarily 1) economic and technical overcrowding in both AM and TV, 2) increasing use of FM functional services, 3) the coming of stereo multiplex, 4) a reclassification of FM stations which allowed for more orderly growth, 5 ) the program non-duplication ruling, 6) increased audience interest in FM because of more program appeal, and 7)

1. CBQ Review Essay: Development of Motion Picture Technology

Seems it was not all that long ago that a typical introductory course about mass media for undergraduates made use of a text that might feature a couple of crosscutting chapters on media effects and law, but which then devoted most of its pages to a medium-by-medium survey of print and electronic services past and present. This stovepipe approach dominated media teaching for decades, demonstrating just how unformed and immature the academic field of mass communication really was. Clearly, and for some time now, that outlook has been changing. Jim Potter offers a very useful take on that maturing view of media’s multiple roles. A former editor of this journal, and long a member of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Potter is best known for his books on media literacy and violence. Here, he reaches further to take on the challenging task of incorporating and integrating both specific and holistic analysis by many media scholars, in the United States and abroad. The result is a far more satisfying approach to perceiving and understanding the deep and changing impact of media on society. Potter arranges his material into four main ‘‘facets’’ or ways to attain a fuller understanding of mass communication—organizations, audiences, messages, and effects. Combined with an introduction and conclusion, and all in about 300 pages, he provides an explanatory road map to a fast-changing field of study. Along the way he introduces student readers to a wide variety of research terms, approaches, and findings from a broad menu of researchers. He sees the field as a wheel, describing in Chapter 2 the media research hub, spokes and rim, as well as the problems found in each sector. The ‘‘organizations’’ facet looks at the media organizations or institutions approach, and then more specifically at the defining business, marketing and employment strategies of media

1. CBQ Centennial Review Essay: Communications and World War I (Part Two)

On February 8, 1996, President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a far-reaching set of amendments to the 1934 Communications Act passed the week before by wide margins in both houses of Congress. The ceremony capped several years of congressional hearings and bill drafting, and was in many ways the longdelayed outcome of an effort begun two decades ago to update the 1934 benchmark law. Subsequent legal battles held up enforcement of key parts of the law until the Supreme Court upheld them early in 1999 (AT&T v. Iowa Utilities Board). Thus, in a sense, key portions of the landmark legislation are in practical effect only a bit over a year old rather than four.