Network Radio Ratings 1932 1953

Author : Jim Ramsburg
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 9780786445585
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953 written by Jim Ramsburg and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Network radio from 1932 to 1953 was a high-stakes competition embracing technology, industry, government and advertising, ruled by dollars and dictated by ratings. This comprehensive reference work provides a fascinating account of broadcasting's most colorful era, when four nationwide networks dominated American media as no concerted communications force ever had. Introductory sections chronicle the development of the broadcasting, advertising and entertainment industries, with an explanation of the ratings systems and their evolution. Twenty-one substantial sections follow, each covering a specific year of radio's golden age, with industry statistics, daily program ratings and a chart of the year's 50 top programs. A summary lists the era's most successful programs within the five major formats. Three appendices and a full index conclude the work.

Author : Kirk D. Farney
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 1514003236
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ministers of a New Medium written by Kirk D. Farney and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named Best Major Publication by Concordia Historical Institute During the anxiety-laden period from the Great Depression through World War II to the Cold War, Americans found a welcome escape in the new medium of radio. Throughout radio's "Golden Age," religious broadcasting in particular contributed significantly to American culture. Yet its historic role often has been overlooked. In Ministers of a New Medium, Kirk D. Farney explores the work of two groundbreaking leaders in religious broadcasting: Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier. These clergymen and professors—one a Catholic priest, the other a Lutheran minister—each led the way in combining substantive theology and emerging technology to spread the gospel over the airwaves. Through weekly nationwide broadcasts, Maier's The Lutheran Hour and Sheen's Catholic Hour attracted listeners across a spectrum of denominational and religious affiliations, establishing their hosts—and Christian radio itself—as cultural and religious forces to be reckoned with. Farney examines how Sheen and Maier used their exceptional erudition, their sensitivity to the times, their powerful communication skills, and their unwavering Christian conviction, all for the purpose of calling the souls of listeners and the soul of a nation to repentance and godliness. Their combination of talents also brought their respective denominations, Roman Catholicism and Missouri Synod Lutheranism, from the periphery of the American religious landscape to a much greater level of recognition and acceptance. With careful attention to both the theological content and the cultural influence of these masters of a new medium, Farney's study sheds new light on the history of media and Christianity in the United States.

Author : Tim Brooks
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476676763
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Blackface Minstrel Show in Mass Media written by Tim Brooks and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.

Author : Jim Cox
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786469633
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Radio Journalism in America written by Jim Cox and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of radio news reporting recounts and assesses the contributions of radio toward keeping America informed since the 1920s. It identifies distinct periods and milestones in broadcast journalism and includes a biographical dictionary of important figures who brought news to the airwaves. Americans were dependent on radio for cheap entertainment during the Great Depression and for critical information during the Second World War, when no other medium could approach its speed and accessibility. Radio's diminished influence in the age of television beginning in the 1950s is studied, as the aural medium shifted from being at the core of many families' activities to more specialized applications, reaching narrowly defined listener bases. Many people turned elsewhere for the news. (And now even TV is challenged by yet newer media.) The introduction of technological marvels throughout the past hundred years has significantly altered what Americans hear and how, when, and where they hear it.

Author : Jim Cox
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786474343
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Radio After the Golden Age written by Jim Cox and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What became of radio after its Golden Age ended about 1960? Not long ago Arbitron found that almost 93 percent of Americans age 12 and older are regular radio listeners, a higher percentage than those turning to television, magazines, newspapers, or the Internet. But the sounds they hear now barely resemble those of radio's heyday when it had little competition as a mass entertainment and information source. Much has transpired in the past fifty-plus years: a proliferation of disc jockeys, narrowcasting, the FM band, satellites, automation, talk, ethnicity, media empires, Internet streaming and gadgets galore... Deregulation, payola, HD radio, pirate radio, the fall of transcontinental networks, the rise of local stations, conglomerate ownership, and radio's future landscape are examined in detail. Radio has lost a bit of influence yet it continues to inspire stunning innovations.

Author : Mitchell Stephens
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1137279826
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Voice of America written by Mitchell Stephens and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER, Sperber Prize 2018, for the best biography of a journalist** The first and definitive biography of an audacious adventurer—the most famous journalist of his time—who more than anyone invented contemporary journalism. Tom Brokaw says: "Lowell Thomas so deserves this lively account of his legendary life. He was a man for all seasons." “Mitchell Stephens’s The Voice of America is a first-rate and much-needed biography of the great Lowell Thomas. Nobody can properly understand broadcast journalism without reading Stephens’s riveting account of this larger-than-life globetrotting radio legend.” —Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite Few Americans today recognize his name, but Lowell Thomas was as well known in his time as any American journalist ever has been. Raised in a Colorado gold-rush town, Thomas covered crimes and scandals for local then Chicago newspapers. He began lecturing on Alaska, after spending eight days in Alaska. Then he assigned himself to report on World War I and returned with an exclusive: the story of “Lawrence of Arabia.” In 1930, Lowell Thomas began delivering America’s initial radio newscast. His was the trusted voice that kept Americans abreast of world events in turbulent decades – his face familiar, too, as the narrator of the most popular newsreels. His contemporaries were also dazzled by his life. In a prime-time special after Thomas died in 1981, Walter Cronkite said that Thomas had “crammed a couple of centuries worth of living” into his eighty-nine years. Thomas delighted in entering “forbidden” countries—Tibet, for example, where he met the teenaged Dalai Lama. The Explorers Club has named its building, its awards, and its annual dinner after him. Journalists in the last decades of the twentieth century—including Cronkite and Tom Brokaw—acknowledged a profound debt to Thomas. Though they may not know it, journalists today too are following a path he blazed. In The Voice of America, Mitchell Stephens offers a hugely entertaining, sometimes critical portrait of this larger than life figure.

Author : Kathryn Fuller-Seeley
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520295048
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy written by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century--by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating "Fall Guy" character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack's pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering "showrunners" combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors' products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932's depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Jarmila Mildorf
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 149859980X
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Radio Art and Music written by Jarmila Mildorf and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the cultural, aesthetic, and political relevance of music in radio art from its beginnings to present day. Contributors include musicologists, literary studies, and cultural studies scholars and cover radio plays, radio shows, and other programs in North American, English, Spanish, Greek, Italian, and German radio.

Author : Kevin Mungons
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252052749
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry written by Kevin Mungons and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From tent revivals to radio and records with a gospel music innovator Homer Rodeheaver merged evangelical hymns and African American spirituals with popular music to create a potent gospel style. Kevin Mungons and Douglas Yeo examine his enormous influence on gospel music against the backdrop of Christian music history and Rodeheaver's impact as a cultural and business figure. Rodeheaver rose to fame as the trombone-playing song leader for evangelist Billy Sunday. As revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver leveraged his place in America's newborn celebrity culture to start the first gospel record label and launch a nationwide radio program. His groundbreaking combination of hymnal publishing and recording technology helped define the early Christian music industry. In his later years, he influenced figures like Billy Graham and witnessed the music's split into southern gospel and black gospel. Clear-eyed and revealing, Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry is an overdue consideration of a pioneering figure in American music.

Author : Nancy Hendricks
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440871299
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Daily Life of Women in Postwar America written by Nancy Hendricks and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Beatniks to Sputnik and from Princess Grace to Peyton Place, this book illuminates the female half of the U.S. population as they entered a "brave new world" that revolutionized women's lives. After World War II, the United States was the strongest, most powerful nation in the world. Life was safe and secure—but many women were unhappy with their lives. What was going on behind the closed doors of America's "picture-perfect" houses? This volume includes chapters on the domestic, economic, intellectual, material, political, recreational, and religious lives of the average American woman after World War II. Chapters examine topics such as the entertainment industry's evolving concept of womanhood; Supreme Court decisions; the shifting idea of women and careers; advertising; rural, urban, and suburban life; issues women of color faced; and child rearing and other domestic responsibilities. A timeline of important events and glossary help to round out the text, along with further readings and a bibliography to point readers to additional resources for their research. Ideal for students in high school and college, this volume provides an important look at the revolutionary transformation of women's lives in the decades following World War II.