It’s interesting to read about former the ties of newspapers and magazines to radio. Today’s print to broadcasting is very minimal, consisting of basically only television guides listed in specific magazines. A major difference in commercial radio today and in the 20s-40s is that today FM radio is mainly music. I work for CBS Radio at WPGC 95.5 and we never have “15 minute programs” or any specific scheduled program at all. Nevertheless, I find the tie between radio and magazines fascinating. It forms its own combined culture and I think allows people to be more familiar with both mediums. Wish I lived back in the 20s!
Live vs Recorded:
Before working in radio I didn’t realize how edited everything we hear on the radio is. I thought the personalities went on-air live. After reading the “Live vs. Recorded” article, I get more perspective on the evolution of live and recorded radio. Although, if done well, a live radio show is more entertaining and allows the audience to seem more involved with the actual show, a recorded show is always safer. It guarantees a time length of the show and the behind the scenes workers, producers/personalities, know exactly what is going on the air. My favorite line from this article was the quote about radio, “bringing the world home.” I never thought about radio in those terms and it’s so true! We are bringing the information, music, and culture of all aspects of the world into our homes and cars. Fascinating, really. Especially with new types of radio like Pandora, Spotify, Sirius XM and podcasts where you can personalize the radio to your own taste.
A running theme in both works was the inability to disconnect the new medium from the limits of its predecessor, such as directly lifting comic strips from newspapers and applying them to radio. The same way the news articles were at first simply copy and pasted to internet (regardless of the graphic design demands of screen viewing). Which begs the question, are we fully utilizing the internet or mobile devices? Or are we only just beginning to realize the potential for the new technology at our fingertip? In what way is our knowledge of older mediums hampering our perception of the new medium? We have to consider the new technologies as being independent of the old in order to see the whole new realm of possibilities that they offer.
Both works seemed to bring up the issue that the times have changed but the problems have stayed the same. Access to new technology isn't enough because while forward thinking minds may have given us something to work with the people making use of this technology are still trapped in the thought process relevant to what was. We need to learn to adapt to the changing times in our thinking as well as our technology.
I thought the readings on the history of early broadcast radio were very interesting. It brought up many things that I would have never thought about because for me, radio has always been around. For instance the first broadcasts were only 15 minutes. Today it sounds absurd to think that a major broadcasting agency would only have that much programing daily. At the time however that must have been revolutionary. For the first time ever, news could be told to a mass audience in short briefs instead of long newspaper stories. This must have been a radical change in what people thought news was and could become.
I also found it interesting that newspapers actually profited off of the growth of radio. I would have assumed that papers would have started to fold because of this new technology so it is very surprising to hear they benefitted from it. Another interesting thing I read is that radio was government regulated in the 1920’s. Because of this, most radio was live, not recorded. I would have assumed the opposite but the point was made that live radio was more exciting. I just assumed that because radio was so new it would have been easier to record it and then replay it but because it was so new I assume liveliness helped it catch on.
In media there is so much interdependency between mediums. It’s funny how originally radio programs were sponsored by magazines and newspapers. Now newspapers are the ones who need more sponsors. The desire to “serve” the public by providing schedules of the radio made buying the paper more valuable. The papers used the radio as a financial security for themselves. Also, thanks to the changing content and target audience of many newspapers, we were able to enjoy greater diversity of radio programming. Without such interdependency between print and radio, we would not be able to enjoy many of the old time programs and genres of radio shows that became so popular.
Live vs Recorded
The story of big companies wanting to protect their dominance is so typical. Of course outlets like NBC wanted to preserve the aspect of “liveness,” because they were the ones who could afford to pay the on air talent and live orchestras. It makes sense that they would have the desire, power and influence to preserve rule 176. Their strategy just make sense to me, it seems to be the one that every major company takes. It reminds me of the situation in which RCA turned down FM and then tried to sabotage the technologies growth to protect their own assets. Thankfully, smaller stations and their advocates were able to lobby for a more relaxed form of rule 176. That enables us to have the local radio stations we are so familiar with today.
Print Formats: I feel like in order for media to work to its full potential, different branches need to be able to work together. Print with broadcast, broadcast to online, etc. and it looks like that what was going on in the "golden age of radio". By leaning on print for writing, and by leaning on radio to get live events on the airwaves, media can work at optimal levels, and as students studying media, or news, that is what we want.
Live vs Recorded: It's funny how the concept of "and now we go live to..." has been around for such a long time. I think that people have this fascination with listening or watching something unfold as it happens, and it's almost a let down when we hear that something was pre-recorded.
Print Formats Come to Broadcasting:
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting to read about former the ties of newspapers and magazines to radio. Today’s print to broadcasting is very minimal, consisting of basically only television guides listed in specific magazines. A major difference in commercial radio today and in the 20s-40s is that today FM radio is mainly music. I work for CBS Radio at WPGC 95.5 and we never have “15 minute programs” or any specific scheduled program at all. Nevertheless, I find the tie between radio and magazines fascinating. It forms its own combined culture and I think allows people to be more familiar with both mediums. Wish I lived back in the 20s!
Live vs Recorded:
Before working in radio I didn’t realize how edited everything we hear on the radio is. I thought the personalities went on-air live. After reading the “Live vs. Recorded” article, I get more perspective on the evolution of live and recorded radio. Although, if done well, a live radio show is more entertaining and allows the audience to seem more involved with the actual show, a recorded show is always safer. It guarantees a time length of the show and the behind the scenes workers, producers/personalities, know exactly what is going on the air. My favorite line from this article was the quote about radio, “bringing the world home.” I never thought about radio in those terms and it’s so true! We are bringing the information, music, and culture of all aspects of the world into our homes and cars. Fascinating, really. Especially with new types of radio like Pandora, Spotify, Sirius XM and podcasts where you can personalize the radio to your own taste.
A running theme in both works was the inability to disconnect the new medium from the limits of its predecessor, such as directly lifting comic strips from newspapers and applying them to radio. The same way the news articles were at first simply copy and pasted to internet (regardless of the graphic design demands of screen viewing). Which begs the question, are we fully utilizing the internet or mobile devices? Or are we only just beginning to realize the potential for the new technology at our fingertip? In what way is our knowledge of older mediums hampering our perception of the new medium? We have to consider the new technologies as being independent of the old in order to see the whole new realm of possibilities that they offer.
ReplyDeleteBoth works seemed to bring up the issue that the times have changed but the problems have stayed the same. Access to new technology isn't enough because while forward thinking minds may have given us something to work with the people making use of this technology are still trapped in the thought process relevant to what was. We need to learn to adapt to the changing times in our thinking as well as our technology.
ReplyDeleteI thought the readings on the history of early broadcast radio were very interesting. It brought up many things that I would have never thought about because for me, radio has always been around. For instance the first broadcasts were only 15 minutes. Today it sounds absurd to think that a major broadcasting agency would only have that much programing daily. At the time however that must have been revolutionary. For the first time ever, news could be told to a mass audience in short briefs instead of long newspaper stories. This must have been a radical change in what people thought news was and could become.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that newspapers actually profited off of the growth of radio. I would have assumed that papers would have started to fold because of this new technology so it is very surprising to hear they benefitted from it. Another interesting thing I read is that radio was government regulated in the 1920’s. Because of this, most radio was live, not recorded. I would have assumed the opposite but the point was made that live radio was more exciting. I just assumed that because radio was so new it would have been easier to record it and then replay it but because it was so new I assume liveliness helped it catch on.
Print Formats
ReplyDeleteIn media there is so much interdependency between mediums. It’s funny how originally radio programs were sponsored by magazines and newspapers. Now newspapers are the ones who need more sponsors. The desire to “serve” the public by providing schedules of the radio made buying the paper more valuable. The papers used the radio as a financial security for themselves. Also, thanks to the changing content and target audience of many newspapers, we were able to enjoy greater diversity of radio programming. Without such interdependency between print and radio, we would not be able to enjoy many of the old time programs and genres of radio shows that became so popular.
Live vs Recorded
The story of big companies wanting to protect their dominance is so typical. Of course outlets like NBC wanted to preserve the aspect of “liveness,” because they were the ones who could afford to pay the on air talent and live orchestras. It makes sense that they would have the desire, power and influence to preserve rule 176. Their strategy just make sense to me, it seems to be the one that every major company takes. It reminds me of the situation in which RCA turned down FM and then tried to sabotage the technologies growth to protect their own assets. Thankfully, smaller stations and their advocates were able to lobby for a more relaxed form of rule 176. That enables us to have the local radio stations we are so familiar with today.
Print Formats: I feel like in order for media to work to its full potential, different branches need to be able to work together. Print with broadcast, broadcast to online, etc. and it looks like that what was going on in the "golden age of radio". By leaning on print for writing, and by leaning on radio to get live events on the airwaves, media can work at optimal levels, and as students studying media, or news, that is what we want.
ReplyDeleteLive vs Recorded: It's funny how the concept of "and now we go live to..." has been around for such a long time. I think that people have this fascination with listening or watching something unfold as it happens, and it's almost a let down when we hear that something was pre-recorded.