[Commlist] Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 16.2 published

Intellect is pleased to announce that Radio Journal: International 
Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 16.2 is now available! For more 
information about the issue, click here >> https://bit.ly/2LcE6H5 
<https://bit.ly/2LcE6H5>

Contents

A note from the editor
Authors: Mia Lindgren

Guy Starkey (1959–2018)
Authors: Andrew Crisell

Up in the air? The matter of radio studies
Authors: Kate Lacey

This article is based on the keynote lecture presented to the Radio 
Conference 2018, and offers a review of the field of radio studies in 
the decade since the publication in this journal of ‘Ten years of radio 
studies: The very idea!’. While still wary of the limitations of ‘the 
very idea’ of radio studies and indeed of ‘radio’ itself, this article 
finds research in the field to be international, interdisciplinary and 
intermedial, and well placed to engage in the most pressing political 
and theoretical questions about contemporary media and communication.

Indigenous radio and digital media: Tautoko FM’s national and 
transnational audiences
Authors: Joost De Bruin And Jo Mane

In this article, we posit that Māori radio as it is structured in 
Aotearoa/New Zealand is at the same time national, international and 
transnational. Based on a research project that we carried out with the 
radio station Tautoko FM, we show that this station caters for national 
Ngāpuhi audiences, that it engages in international networking with 
other iwi-based radio stations and that it has invested in transnational 
connections with diasporic audiences. As a result, it has constructed a 
public sphere for both national and transnational indigenous audiences. 
This is facilitated by the changing nature of radio as a medium, which 
is evolving into a multimedia experience incorporating broadcasting, 
live streaming, websites and social media. Māori radio in Aotearoa/New 
Zealand is one example of a global trend in which indigenous communities 
have adapted new media technologies to re-centre notions of national 
identity. The digital media landscape allows them to form indigenous 
media networks, to narrate indigenous experiences in new ways and to 
acquire attention for indigenous struggles.

Radio regulation and market strategies in Portugal: Towards the 
consolidation and musicalization of operations
Authors: Elsa Costa e Silva

Radio market in Portugal has been consistently portrayed as being 
economically fragile with financial weaknesses. A new radio law, passed 
in 2010, significantly reshaped the scope of radio activity and changed 
concentration restrictions, thus placing Portugal in the track of the 
neo-liberal context. This article identifies the changes produced in 
radio market from 2010 to 2015 by this change, analysing the strategies 
of radio stations that are reported to the Portuguese regulation media 
agency. The following trends were identified: a concentration strategy 
followed by major media groups in Portugal, through formal ownership 
transactions and through strategic partnerships with local broadcasters; 
little investment by small scale radio groups at the regional level; a 
strategic option in live music events, musical content and disinvestment 
in news; a branding association between radios and music festivals. Over 
the time, radio has become even more commercial-oriented (with some 
stations even adopting the name of telecommunications brands) and has 
gone outside the airwaves, which has reinforced the weight of 
non-traditional revenues (NTR) of their operations.

The ‘radio service’: Religion and ABC national radio
Authors: John Potts

This article discusses religious broadcasting in Australia on Australian 
Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Radio during the 1940s and 1950s. ABC 
policy in this period was strictly ecumenical, at a time when 
Protestant/Catholic sectarian bitterness was a significant social issue 
in Australia. The article considers the ABC’s motivation for this 
ecumenical policy, as well as the broadcasting strategies employed in 
pursuit of this approach. ABC religious broadcasting is considered as 
part of the ABC’s contribution to a national conversation on religion, 
tolerance and national culture.

Music in Samuel Beckett’s radio play Embers: ‘I shouldn’t be hearing that!’
Authors: Lucy Jeffery

This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 
radio play Embers is linked to our understanding of the experience of 
memory and storytelling. It reconsiders how Beckett’s use of the radio 
medium both informs and is informed by his lifelong interest in music. 
Beckett’s well-known attitudes towards storytelling – his struggle to 
express, interest in ambiguity, and resistance to neat conclusions – are 
revisited with close attention paid to his attempt to express the 
ineffable. The article argues that Beckett’s simultaneous need for and 
resistance to storytelling finds its voice in the impossibility of 
describing music. It suggests that this implicit tension is essential 
not only in terms of listening to Embers, but also becomes an 
increasingly central and knotty element of Beckett’s creative process. 
Hence, the article claims that Beckett can be read alongside 
twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Paul 
Hindemith. In its use of Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the 
analysis employs musicological readings of Beckett’s radio play to 
demonstrate how Beckett’s use of music complicates, rather than 
facilitates, our experience of memory and storytelling.

The Family Nagashi: Anti-racist radio and the Japanese internment
Authors: Matthew A. Killmeier

This article provides a cultural history of The Family Nagashi, a 1945 
propaganda play by Arch Oboler focused on combatting racism against 
Japanese Americans returning home from the wartime internment camps and 
military service. It situates the play in the historical contexts of 
wartime US racism towards Japanese Americans, the collaborative nature 
of US wartime propaganda and the uses of ethnic soldiers in wartime 
propaganda to promote tolerance. The author argues that the play 
provides a poetic argument that relies heavily on an affective narrative 
to support the efforts of the US government to resettle Japanese 
Americans immediately after the war. The play draws on materials 
provided by the US government, which was a common collaborative practice 
in wartime propaganda, in its attempt to persuade listeners that 
Japanese Americans are assimilated Americans, to combat racism against 
them and to forward a message of tolerance and pluralism.

The spontaneous discourse of radio presenters in states of security 
emergency
Authors: Ella Ben-Atar And Smadar Ben-Asher

Scholars from various research disciplines have focused on ways of 
helping a civilian population withstand mass natural or human-instigated 
disasters. The present study examines the theoretical principles 
suggested by Hobfoll et al. (safety, calming, efficacy, connectedness 
and hope) by an analysis of the spontaneous discourse of educational 
radio presenters during emergency broadcasts when the region’s residents 
live under the constant danger of rocket fire. This study analysed 198 
broadcasting hours sampled from three different periods of military 
conflict (2008−14). The radio presenters’ spontaneous discourse was 
analysed by content, drawing a distinction between resilience-promoting 
(function) and resilience-impairing (dysfunction) messages. The findings 
show that despite the presenters’ intention to help the community 
contend with the difficult situation, numerous resilience-impairing 
messages also appeared in their spontaneous discourse. The present study 
contributes by providing an additional layer of theoretical research on 
interventions in community stress situations and looks at utilizing the 
potential inherent in educational radio as a tool to aid development of 
community resilience.

Book Reviews
Authors: Pedro Roxo And Anya Luscombe

Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production and 
Audiences, Christina L. Baade and James Deaville (eds) (2016)
Across the Waves: How the United States and France shaped the 
International Age of Radio, Derek W. Vaillant (2017)
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