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Rogue Radio Broadcasters Of The Jazz Age
University of Pennsylvania Press
May 2005
On Sale: April 27, 2005
157 pages ISBN: 0812238710 EAN: 9780812238716 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
When American radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s
there was a consensus among middle-class opinion makers that
the airwaves must never be used for advertising. Even the
national advertising industry agreed that the miraculous new
medium was destined for higher cultural purposes. And yet,
within a decade American broadcasting had become
commercialized and has remained so ever since. Much recent scholarship treats this unsought
commercialization as a coup, imposed from above by mercenary
corporations indifferent to higher public ideals. Such
research has focused primarily on metropolitan stations
operated by the likes of AT&T, Westinghouse, and General
Electric. In American Babel, Clifford J. Doerksen provides a
colorful alternative social history centered on an
overlooked class of pioneer broadcaster--the independent
radio stations. Doerksen reveals that these "little" stations often
commanded large and loyal working-class audiences who did
not share the middle-class aversion to broadcast
advertising. In urban settings, the independent stations
broadcast jazz and burlesque entertainment and plugged
popular songs for Tin Pan Alley publishers. In the
countryside, independent stations known as "farmer stations"
broadcast "hillbilly music" and old-time religion. All were
unabashed in their promotional practices and paved the way
toward commercialization with their innovations in
programming, on-air style, advertising methods, and direct
appeal to target audiences. Corporate broadcasters, who
aspired to cultural gentility, were initially hostile to the
populist style of the independents but ultimately followed
suit in the 1930s. Drawing on a rich array of archives and contemporary print
sources, each chapter of American Babel looks at a
particular station and the personalities behind the
microphone. Doerksen presents this group of independents as
an intensely colorful, perpetually interesting lot and
weaves their stories into an expansive social and cultural
narrative to explain more fully the rise of the commercial
network system of the 1930s.
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