...I always enjoy watching a radio show go out. It's the mix of technology: headphones, microphones (yes - those things again), mixing desks, computer monitor screens, and chairs with little wheels on the bottom of the legs. Seriously. Never try to broadcast on a dining room chair. It just doesn't work. You need to dissipate … Continue reading Behind the scenes…
Tag: Radio Studies
Listening…
“...You really had to be there...” When you hear something amazing on the radio your natural reaction is to try and share that moment. It may be a listener winning a big prize in a phone-in on Heart, or it could be an incisive political interview with a cabinet minister. Perhaps it's the moment your … Continue reading Listening…
Just look up…
...because if you look down all the time the tops of the buildings will start to dissolve and disappear. Good journalists – and academic researchers – always ask 'why?' To do any less is to commit sacrilege to both professions. When I was about ten years old my parents gave me one particular book that … Continue reading Just look up…
This is not radio…
...it's a blog. Even this recording of me reading this blog - I reckon - isn't radio: (Audio Credit: Martin Cooper (c)) But out in the far reaches of the Internet (I'm not convinced it needs a capital letter) there's a forum where the meaning of the word 'radio' is still being thrashed out. The … Continue reading This is not radio…
“I never make predictions…
...and I never will” is a quote attributed to the English footballer Paul Gascoigne, who clearly knew the philosophy behind our natural desire as human beings to have a go at guessing what things will be like in the future. Most of the time we fail, which is why now is a good moment to … Continue reading “I never make predictions…
The soundtrack of your life…
Radio is a personal medium. It's my medium. It's also been the medium of the baby boomer generation, of which I am one. Radio, by the end of the 20th century, had become for many who were born in the two decades after the end of WW2 part of the soundtrack of their lives. Tanja … Continue reading The soundtrack of your life…
Killing cats…
What's the connection between a dead cat and a radio show? In a previous post I'd talked about Clifford Geertz, and how I'd enjoyed the writings of this anthropologist. Now I'd like to mention a colleague of his from Princeton University in the 1970s, Robert Darnton. Robert Darnton is a historian by trade, and I … Continue reading Killing cats…
From the archives: September 1989
How to write about radio, about the experience of listening? Here's a piece from an industry trade paper, in September 1989. It's a review of a tape of a live show I'd recorded onto cassette in June of that year and then posted (by Royal Mail) to the magazine. How else was a journalist in … Continue reading From the archives: September 1989
Thick description…
The job of an academic and a cultural historian is to worry about things: what stuff means. I have been influenced by two writers - one a cultural historian and the other an anthropologist. Here I want to talk about the latter (more about the former in another post). Clifford Geertz was an anthropologist who … Continue reading Thick description…
