Susan Smulyan

Live from Waikiki: Colonialism, Race, and Radio in Hawaii, 1934–1963

Radio history has recently focused on broadcasting’s use in constituting Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ with radio working, in the same way as the census, maps, and museums, to construct national identity. But radio waves cross national boundaries and, in so doing, also interrogate nationalism. In this article, I use radio broadcasts from Hawaii to examine the limits and possibilities of radio as a structuring production for the nation-state. Because of radio’s special claims to improving both citizenship and national unity, it is interesting to consider how, using radio, a territory of the United States asserted a separate identity as well as reaffirmed itself as a part of the nation. Radio presentations of Hawaiian-influenced music, broadcast from the islands, were part of a wave of Hawaiianiana on the US mainland during this time. Yet, the radio programs broadcast from Hawaii had economic and political, as well as cultural, contexts as Hawaii’s old economy (based on agricultural exports) gave way to their new tourist economy and as Hawaiian businessmen pushed for statehood to improve their standing in both of these economic sectors. As a government regulated form of cultural production, radio broadcasts take a crucial place at the nexus of politics and culture. Douglas Craig, in Fireside Politics: radio and political culture in the United States, 1920–1940, described the idea of radio citizenship and showed its limits. Hawaiians used radio in the 1930s and 1940s to make a cultural claim on citizenship, despite the fact that they were, at the time, colonial subjects of the United States. US broadcasters worked hard to appear open to all Americans, but ‘shut out’ in Craig’s phrase, large groups in order to maintain a white, male, and middle class address. Programs from Hawaii proved an easy way to show diversity without really opening the floodgates. Hawaiians were already politically contained and their cultural expressions broadcast over the radio presented

Absence and the advertising historian

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the commonly held idea that American advertising agencies closely supervised their Australian counterparts during the globalization of advertising. Design/methodology/approach The author, a cultural historian based in the USA, searched American archives without finding evidence of the kind of oversight often associated with the Americanization of advertising. Findings The paper concludes that American advertisers paid less attention to Australian advertising than the other way around. In addition, Australian and American advertising industries agreed on the importance of advertising as part of transnational capitalism and did not need to outline, or follow instructions, on how advertising worked. Originality/value Reviewing the history of advertising in a global context reminds scholars that the national advertising industries have different subject positions and yet agree on advertising’s practice and efficacy.

Radio's Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy (review)

230 that all-news channels and live coverage of Congress on C-SPAN would reinvigorate democracy by offering Americans expanded forums for great debates on vital issues. In fact, only a small percentage advantaged themselves of such fare” (p. 213). Still, the point here does not seem to be a condemnatory one; instead, Baughman is attempting to dissect American’s information-seeking behaviors and to demonstrate the ways available media have both addressed and shaped those behaviors. The latest edition of The Republic of Mass Culture is definitely up-to-date as of its early 2006 publication date, with the last two chapters offering a thorough assessment of how multichannel television technologies and the synergistic media environment in which they flourish reinforce the book’s larger claims. There is no question that Baughman is well apprised of the various media industries operating today. The concluding bibliographic essay is a useful reference for media scholars at many levels. It is fairly comprehensive in its coverage, giving especially good coverage to journalistic and other sources often overlooked by academics.