Description
Book SynopsisSound Business tunes in on a neglected aspect of U.S. media history, the role newspaper owners played in the development of radio. This rigorously researched and balanced history of the news business and government regulation expands our understanding of mid-twentieth-century America and offers lessons for the digital age.
Trade Review"
Sound Business is the absorbing account of the conversion of America's post-World War I newspaper business into the early multimedia conglomerates that form today's media giants. . . . Scholars and students alike will regard this exceptional history as a great addition to the literature on how new media intertwine with old to shape the current media landscape." *
Journal of American History *
"Stamm describes in superb detail the important but often overlooked and misunderstood relationship between the newspaper industry and the new medium of radio during an influential, anxious, and sometimes contentious time period for both." *
Journal of Radio and Audio Media *
"
Sound Business: Newspapers, Radio, and the Politics of New Media is a well-researched contribution to American media and business history. . . . But more than that, it helps us better understand the intellectual and political contexts that have both enabled and constrained American choices about cross-media ownership." *
Business History Review *
"A fascinating, finely researched reconsideration of the newspaper industry's response to the advent of radio. Stamm has made a major contribution to mass media history." * James L. Baughman, author of
Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Underwriting the Ether: Newspapers and the Origins of American Broadcasting
1. Power, Politics, and the Promise of New Media: Newspaper Ownership of Radio in the 1920s
2. New Empires: Media Concentration in the 1930s
3. Reshaping the Public Sphere: The New Deal and Media Concentration
4. Reform Liberalism and the Media: The Federal Communications Commission's Newspaper-Radio Investigation
5. Media Corporations and the Critical Public: The Struggle over Ownership Diversity in Postwar Broadcasting
Conclusion: The Persistence of Print: Newspapers and Broadcasting in the Age of Television
Appendix: Newspaper Ownership of American Broadcasting Stations, 1923-1953
List of Archival Abbreviations and Acronyms
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
