Ray Barfield has done something quite new in media studies. Rather than trace the history of radio through the usual route, he has sought out a body of oral history from those who grew up with and listened to radio. He has not only collated the responses of his informants but placed their comments in a larger cultural and historical context and thus provided a kind of history from the ground up. He demonstrates thereby just how important and influential radio was in the lives of ordinary Americans. General readers and scholars alike will learn something from Barfield's engaging narrative about why radio was once such a compelling force in our culture. From the Foreword by Thomas Inge
Foreword by M. Thomas Inge Preface Introduction: "No Radio" and No "Radio" How They Listened Listening in the 1920s Listening in the 1930s Listening in (and After) the 1940s Car and Portable Radios Radio Families What They Heard Events and Commentators Sportscasts Cultural, Educational, and Religious Programs Morning to Mid-Afternoon Programs Children's Adventure Programs Other Children's Programs Comedy Programs Drama Anthologies Crime and Terror Programs Music Programs Audience Participation, Amateur Talent, and Related Programs Radio Travels: Memory, Time, and Place Staying Tuned: Contemporary Sources for Old-Time Radio Bibliography Contributors General Index Index
RAY BARFIELD is Professor of English at Clemson University. He has authored numerous articles, conference papers, and reference book entries on radio, cartoons, children's books, and 1920s fads. He is co-author of a business communications handbook.
"Now, for the first time, the ultimate book has been written on
Old-Time Radio. Why? Because it was written by those who really
knew about it--the listener, the fan, the 'buff.' The author has
really done his homework well. He has combed the length and breadth
of this great nation--small towns, hamlets, big cities and
small--gathering a potpourri of personal reminiscences from people
who remembered, and lived with, the 'Golden Era of Radio.' For an
entertaining journey "to those thrilling days of yesteryear," I
highly recommend this book as a must for any Old-Time Radio buff,
and as an addition to their Old-Time Radio library."-Owens L.
Pomeroy, Co-Founder Golden Radio Buffs of Radio
"Ray Barfield has filled a major gap in radio scholarship.
Listening to Radio, 1920-1950 gathers testimony from dozens of
articulate people who reminisce about what they heard during the
golden age. More important, they tell us where the family radio was
located, what they did during programs, how music and drama made
them feel--data that have not, until now, been available in any
depth....Listening to Radio gives voices and personalities
(uniformly interesting) to the unseen audience of the most powerful
medium that human ingenuity had devised since Gutenberg's
press....A final virtue of Barfield's book: it forces us to admit
that current attack-and-humiliate radio, vulgarian television, and
relentlessly violent films once had a kinder, gentler parent. Few
works so successfully depict an art form for scholars and general
audiences."-James A. Freeman, Professor of English University of
Massachusetts at Amherst
?Barfield...takes on broadcasting history with something different.
This is a radio-listener oral history up to the time television
began to dominate the scene.... A useful volume for its different
approach and emphasis on listener attitudes and thoughts about a
once-dominant medium.?-Choice
"Barfield...takes on broadcasting history with something different.
This is a radio-listener oral history up to the time television
began to dominate the scene.... A useful volume for its different
approach and emphasis on listener attitudes and thoughts about a
once-dominant medium."-Choice
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