David Hendy 
Radio in the Global Age 

Radio in the Global Age offers a fresh, up-to-date, and
wide-ranging introduction to the role of radio in contemporary
society. It places radio, for the first time, in a global context,
and pays special attention to the impact of the Internet,
digitalization and globalization on the political-economy of radio.
It also provides a new emphasis on the links between music and
radio, the impact of formatting, and the broader cultural roles the
medium plays in constructing identities and nurturing musical
tastes.

Individual chapters explore the changing structures of the radio
industry, the way programmes are produced, the act of listening and
the construction of audiences, the different meanings attached to
programmes, and the cultural impact of radio across the globe.
David Hendy portrays a medium of extraordinary contradictions: a
cheap and accessible means of communication, but also one
increasingly dominated by rigid formats and multinational
companies; a highly 'intimate’ medium, but one capable of building
large communities of listeners scattered across huge spaces; a
force for nourishing regional identity, but also a pervasive
broadcaster of globalized music products; a 'stimulus to the
imagination’, but a purveyor of the banal and of the routine.
Drawing on recent research from as far afield as Africa,
Australasia and Latin America, as well as from the UK and US, the
book aims to explore and to explain these paradoxes – and, in the
process, to offer an imaginative reworking of Marshall Mc Luhan’s
famous dictum that radio is one of the world’s 'hot’ media.

Radio in the Global Age is an invaluable text for
undergraduates and researchers in media studies, communication
studies, journalism, cultural studies, and musicology. It will also
be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers in the radio
industry.

Spis treści

List of Figures.

List of Table.

List of Boxes.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

Radio in the Social Landscape.

The Structure of this Book.

Chapter 1: Industry.

The Global Structure of Radio:.

Industrial Sectors.

Funding and Goals.

Local, National and International Dimensions.

Commercialization:.

Diversity.

Consolidation and Control.

Technology.

A Global or a Local Industry?.

Chapter 2: Production.

Producers:.

Producing 'actuality’.

Producing narratives.

Producing 'liveness’.

Time and Money.

Formats:.

Programme Formats.

Station Formats.

Schedules.

Creativity versus Predictability.

Chapter 3: Audiences.

The Act of Listening.

The Radio Audience.

The Active Audience.

Chapter 4: Meanings.

Radio as Communicator.

Radio texts: Talk and Music:.

Talk.

Music.

Radio and Modernity: Time, Place and 'Communicative
Capacity’.

Time.

Place.

'Communicative Capacity’.

Chapter 5: Culture.

Radio and Democratic Culture.

Radio and Identity.

Radio, Music and Cultural Change.

Conclusion.

Bibliography.

Index

O autorze

Senior Lecturer in Radio, University of Westminster