"A premise of this unique encyclopedia is that radio broadcasting is so pervasive that its importance can be easily overlooked. More than 600 articles provide ample illustration of the role this medium plays throughout the world. From radio's invention to radio on the Internet, the cross-referenced and thoroughly indexed articles analyze over 100 years of topics, programs, issues, people, and places, and provide leads to further reading. Some 250 photographs "give visual context to an often unseen world." Scholars, old-time-radio admirers, and curious readers will appreciate the unparalleled comprehensiveness of this source."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

The history of television in Chicago begins with the birth of the medium and is defined by the city's pioneering stations. WBKB (now WLS-TV) was the principal innovator of the Chicago School of Television, an improvisational production style that combined small budgets, personable talent, and the creative use of scenery and props. WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV) expanded the innovative concept to a wider audience via the NBC network. WGN-TV scored with sports and kids. Strong personalities drove the success of WBBM-TV. A noncommercial educational station, WTTW, and the city's first UHF station, WCIU, added diversity and ethnic programming. The airwaves in Chicago have been home to a wealth of talented performers and iconic programs that have made the city one of the country's greatest television towns. Chicago Television, featuring photographs from the archives of the Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) and the collections of local stations and historians, gives readers a front-row seat on a journey through the fi rst 50 years of Chicago television, 1940-1990. Founded in 1982 by broadcaster Bruce DuMont, the MBC Web site offers over 10,000 digital assets.

"A premise of this unique encyclopedia is that radio broadcasting is so pervasive that its importance can be easily overlooked. More than 600 articles provide ample illustration of the role this medium plays throughout the world. From radio's invention to radio on the Internet, the cross-referenced and thoroughly indexed articles analyze over 100 years of topics, programs, issues, people, and places, and provide leads to further reading. Some 250 photographs "give visual context to an often unseen world." Scholars, old-time-radio admirers, and curious readers will appreciate the unparalleled comprehensiveness of this source."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

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.

The authoritative guide to writing for the broadcast medium.

Castleman and Podrazik present a sweeping season-by-season story, capturing the essence of television from its inception to the contemporary era of anytime access and online streaming, including every prime time fall schedule since 1944. The authors have dug through the mounds of obscure facts, offbeat anecdotes, and corporate strategies that have made television a multibillion-dollar industry. Watching TV provides a fascinating history of how the personalities, popular shows, and coverage of key events have evolved across eight decades. Full of facts, firsts, insights, and exploits, as well as rare and memorable photographs, Watching TV is the standard history of American television. This third edition includes coverage up through the mid-2010s and looks ahead to the next waves of change.

Produced in association with the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, 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.

Los Angeles television history began in the small room of an auto dealership in 1931. Since then, much of the nation's television history has been made here: the first television helicopter, the first big story that television broke before newspapers, the first live coverage of an atomic bomb, and the careers of numerous icons like Betty White, Steve Allen, Liberace, Lawrence Welk, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. Many Los Angeles television personalities went on to network fame, including Tom Snyder, Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Connie Chung, Maury Povich, Bob Barker, Bill Leyden, Ann Curry, Pat Sajak, and Regis Philbin. Readers will discover, in many untold stories, the origins of that curious building on top the Hollywood sign, Albert Einstein's must-see local program, Marilyn Monroe's video debut, a popular television star's last tragic performance, and the actual identities of legends Korla Pandit and Iron Eyes Cody. Also in these pages is the reveal of the Mystery Tower Sitter, the all-night amateur show, the big Las Vegas premiere telecast that was blown off the air, and the treasured performer who worked at one station for 65 years.