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broadcast
This page
is under construction. It will look at the broadcasting revolution - radio and
television - as background to considering the internet.
The media page in the
separate economy guide considers the industry. There are
detailed profiles
on individual media groups.
In contrast to print, there are few outstanding studies of
how broadcasting has affected western culture, society and
economies overall. We've therefore pointed to some of the
more provocative or entertaining writing, particularly
from the US, with a restricted scope.
the shape of the revolution
For Mitchell Stephens, author of The rise of the image the fall
of the word (New York, Oxford Uni Press 98) "video remains the
communications revolution of our time", one that
was seized by consumers and business at a quicker rate
than the web.
Neil Harris' Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites
& Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago, Uni
of Chicago Press 90) notes that 1% of US homes had colour
television in 1961 when NBC first broadcast all its programs in
colour.
By 1963, 60 million homes had tv; only 1.2 million had
colour sets, rising to 33% in 1969. Thirty years later 98%
of US households (94% of Australian) have colour
televisions, more than have phones. Raymond Williams' Television:
Technology & Cultural Form (New York, Schocken 75)
and Michael Sproule's Propaganda & Democracy: The
American Experience of Media & Mass Persuasion
(Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 9) offer an alternative
view.
For a view of the broadcasting industry we recommend
a grab-bag of books. Susan Douglas's Inventing American
Broadcasting 1899-1922 (Baltimore, Johns
Hopkins Uni Press 87) is an insightful study of early
days. Erik Barnouw's three volume A History
of Broadcasting in the United States (New York, Oxford
Uni Press 66-70), is a lively journalistic account,
complementing Asa Briggs' staid four volume The History of Broadcasting in the
United Kingdom (Oxford, Oxford Uni Press 61-79).
Barnouw's Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American
Television (75) focuses on the development of
television; we recommend
David Fisher's Tube:
The Invention of Television (Washington, Counterpoint
96) instead. Anthony
Smith edited the crisp Television: An International History
(
Oxford, Oxford Uni Press 95).
impacts
James
Baughman's The Republic of Mass
Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking & Broadcasting in
America since 1941 (Baltimore, Johns
Hopkins Uni Press 92) is a thoughtful study of
broadcasting's relationship with film and print media.
"Television quickly proved the most popular of the
public arts. Americans who had once spent their
evenings using a variety of mass media - films,
newspapers, periodicals, and radio - were likely by
the mid and late 1950s to watch television. People
still went to the movie house, read a daily paper or
a magazine, and listened to a radio program, but the
amount of time they devoted to each activity
declined, in some cases dramatically."
Baughman's Television's Guardians:
The FCC & the Politics of Programming, 1958-1967
(Knoxville, Uni of Tennessee Press 85) is a perceptive
study of US content regulation. For television as a model
for perceptions of the web as a sewer that destroys
culture, commerce and community consult William Boddy's Fifties Television: The Industry &
Its Critics (Urbana, Uni of Illinois Press 99) and
Karal Marling's As seen on TV - The Visual Culture of
Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, Harvard Uni
Press 94).
Jeffrey Sconce's Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from
Telegraphy to Television (Durham, Duke Uni Press 00)
explores the box as a device onto which we project our
darkest fears.
For politics, local and national consult Negrine, Ralph, ed.,
Satellite Broadcasting: The
Politics & Implications of the New Media (London,
Routledge 88) edited by Ralph Negrine. Monroe Price edited
The
V-Chip Debate: Content Filtering from Television to the
Internet (Mahwah, Erlbaum 98), valuable in
understanding wars over internet content filtering
systems.
Among landmark studies of the 'tube of plenty' as a
mechanism for social good and model for the web consider the report of the Sloan Commission on Cable
Communications in On
the Cable: The Television of Abundance (New York, McGraw-Hill
71).
"Cable
technology, in concert with other allied technologies,
seems to promise a communications revolution....
Citizens may still take a hand in shaping cable
television's growth and institutions in a fashion that
will bend it to society's will and society's best
intentions.... If cable technology proves indeed to be
the heart of a communications revolution, its impact
upon society's most immediate needs might be
enormous." Ralph Smith's The Wired Nation: Cable TV: The
Electronic Communications Highway (New York, Harper
72) was more realistic: 500 channels (many of them on
what's now AOL) but most showing what critics
characterised as the SOS.
the death of television
For popular accounts of the fall of electronic 'old media'
view Fred
MacDonald's One Nation Under Television: The Rise &
Decline of Network TV (New York, Pantheon 90), Kevin
Maney's Megamedia Shakeout: The
Inside Story on the Leaders & Losers in the Exploding
Communications Industry ( New York, Wiley 95) and Ken
Auletta's Three Blind Mice: How The Television Networks
Lost Their Way (New York, Random House 91)
For home recording, of interest as a precursor to
companies such as Napster, see Gladys & Oswald
Ganley's Global
Political Fallout: The First Decade of the VCR 1976-1985
(Cambridge, Center for Information Policy Research
87).
Joel Brinkley's Defining Vision: The Battle for
the Future of Television (New York, Harcourt Brace 97)
explored the High Definition TV revolution, one that never
occurred. Expect more of the same with Australia's digital
tv regime in the next three years.
Ellen Seiter's Television & New Media Audiences (New
York, Oxford Uni Press 99) is suggestive.
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