Description
Book SynopsisExamining work by novelists, filmmakers, TV producers and songwriters, this book uncovers the manner in which the radio and the act of listening has been written about for the past 100 years.
Ever since the first public wireless broadcasts, people have been writing about the radio: often negatively, sometimes full of praise, but always with an eye and an ear to explain and offer an opinion about what they think they have heard. Novelists including Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, Evelyn Waugh, and James Joyce wrote about characters listening to this new medium with mixtures of delight, frustration, and despair. Clint Eastwood frightened moviegoers half to death in Play Misty for Me, but Lou Reed''s Rock & Roll' said listening to a New York station had saved Jenny''s life. Frasier showed the urbane side of broadcasting, whilst Good Morning, Vietnam exploded from the cinema screen with a raw energy all of its own. Queen thought that all the audience heard
Trade Review
A fascinating and highly readable account of the representation of radio in other media. Martin Cooper’s history of a hundred years of radio in song, films, novels and television programmes is both a highly entertaining and fascinating read and also an important new source for radio historians. The perfect book to celebrate the one hundred years of radio broadcasting in Britain. * Hugh Chignell, Emeritus Professor of Media History, Bournemouth University, UK *
Table of Contents
Preface 1. Introduction 2. Broadcasting on Air, 1922-1935 3. Developing Ways of Listening, 1935-1938 4. The Home Front, 1938-1949 5. New Elizabethans, and New Questions, 1950-1963 6. The Rise of Format Radio, 1964-1979 7. Video Killed the Radio Star, 1979-1983 8. The Radio DJ and the Cult of Personality, 1984-1993 9. Critique, Questions, and Satire, 1993-2004 10. Listening Back and Looking Forward, 2005-2022 11. Conclusion Sources Index
