Micro Radio became a lightening rod for the emerging Media Activism and Reform Movement. Like the environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s that focused on specific issues like nuclear power, the Media Activism Movement discovered a significant formative issue in micro radio at the turn of the millennium. This book is a close examination of the struggle over micro radio. Throughout this research micro radio is viewed as a site of social activity, a unique cultural and historical bond where ideas about the relationship between media and democracy are explored. This work is the first to spotlight this emerging social movement and uses critical historical analysis to provide a description of it. The information in this book shows the struggle over micro radio as the most recent manifestation of a growing social movement, a movement of media activism and reform. As local people took to the airwaves, illegally broadcasting the frivolous to the serious, theoretical concepts such as localism and public access suddenly became grounded in a real world radio show. Micro radio broadcasters were able to demonstrate what is left out of most mainstream media. They showed what could happen when a diverse public is allowed to access the most universal telecommunications of the day. This look at micro radio will be valuable to communications students who are interested in the strategies behind media and social movements, alternative media, and news media practices.

Microradio and Democracy discusses the role of citizen access to communications in a democratic society, and how diversity, localism, and core political speech are undermined by corporate control of the public airwaves. Ruggiero examines the emergence of microradio activism in recent court cases, and the links between the microradio struggle and larger movements for democracy and social justice. Illustrated with photos and graphics, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned about keeping free speech for communities, not corporations.

The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio is an essential single-volume reference guide to this vital and evolving medium. Comprised of more than 300 entries spanning the invention of radio to the Internet, this refernce work addresses personalities, music genres, regulations, technology, programming and stations, the "golden age" of radio and other topics relating to radio broadcasting throughout its history. The entries are updated throughout and the volume includes nine new entries on topics ranging from podcasting to the decline of radio.

Explores the alternative radio that refuses to succumb to the big business that monopolizes the airwaves Boring DJs who never shut up, and who don't even pick their own records. The same hits, over and over. A constant stream of annoying commercials. How did radio get so dull? Not by accident, contends journalist and historian Jesse Walker. For decades, government and big business have colluded to monopolize the airwaves, stamping out competition, reducing variety, and silencing dissident voices. And yet, in the face of such pressure, an alternative radio tradition has tenaciously survived. Rebels on the Air explores these overlooked chapters in American radio, revealing the legal barriers established broadcasters have erected to ensure their dominance. Using lively anecdotes drawn from firsthand interviews, Walker chronicles the story of the unsung heroes of American radio who, despite those barriers, carved out spaces for themselves in the spectrum, sometimes legally and sometimes not. Walker's engaging, meticulous account is the first comprehensive history of alternative radio in the United States. From the unlicensed amateurs who invented broadcasting to the community radio movement of the 1960s and 1970s, from the early days of FM to today's micro radio movement, Walker lays bare the hidden history of broadcasting. Above all, Rebels on the Air is the story of the pirate broadcasters who shook up radio in the 1990sand of the new sorts of radio we can expect in the next century, as the microbroadcasters crossbreed with the even newer field of Internet broadcasting.

Produced in association with the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, the Encyclopedia of Radio includes more than 600 entries covering major countries and regions of the world as well as specific programs and people, networks and organizations, regulation and policies, audience research, and radio's technology. This encyclopedic work will be the first broadly conceived reference source on a medium that is now nearly eighty years old, with essays that provide essential information on the subject as well as comment on the significance of the particular person, organization, or topic being examined.

When it first appeared in the 1930s, FM radio was a technological marvel, providing better sound and nearly eliminating the static that plagued AM stations. It took another forty years, however, for FM's popularity to surpass that of AM. In Sounds of C

The future of mass media may appear unpredictable and too complex to fathom, but Mass Media in 2025 takes a scholarly, theoretical approach to identifying trends and explaining their possibilities. Noted contributors approach a variety of media with a solid grounding in the history of each, and an eye for which may be vulnerable and which may thrive in the new technological age. Trends such as interactivity and niche building will affect everything from the newspaper to public relations, and this collection of essays provides a fascinating guide to where the next decades may take us. Regardless of the visual, aural, or printed form, Mass Media in 2025 illustrates the degree to which older media will have to incorporate the level of interaction and specialization offered by newer media if they are to survive. These effects can already be seen in the proliferation of television channels, in the ironic bent of advertising, in the rise of infotainment in news organizations. This book shows not only how all of this has come to be, but also, more importantly, where it will go.

DIVAffirms the importance of invention of radio and explores how radio creates sets of overlapping communities of the air, including those who study and theorize radio as a technological, social, cultural, and historical phenomenon./div