[ecrea] Radio Utopia - new book

A new publication from University of Illinois Press

Free postage to UK customers

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/radio-utopia

**

*Radio Utopia***

*Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest***

/Matthew C. Ehrlich///

"An excellent contribution to the now-burgeoning field of revisionist 
radio scholarship."—/Technology and Culture/

"Highly recommended."—/Choice/

"With careful attention to detail, a command of archival sources 
including recordings of old radio programs, and an understanding of how 
the radio industry operated, Ehrlich has produced an entertaining book 
with a convincing argument. It is that rarest of things—a monograph with 
a well-defined subject that has both scholarly integrity and an appeal 
to a wide audience."—/American Historical Review/

"A fascinating book that brings together important moments in 
journalism, technology, politics, world order, media control, and the 
mood in the United States during the postwar years. Ehrlich dramatically 
sharpens our understanding of how both radio and television news evolved 
during the late 1940s."—Mike Conway, author of /The Origins of 
Television News in America: The Visualizers of CBS in the 1940s/

"A vivid reflection of the social and cultural climate of the post-World 
War II era, Matthew C. Ehrlich's engaging study shows readers what was 
occurring on the national radio networks as the Cold War started and the 
impact that the war had on broadcasting and those who worked in it. This 
study is of significance to historians, mass communications scholars, 
and journalists."—Patrick S. Washburn, author of /The African American 
Newspaper: Voice of Freedom/

As World War II drew to a close and radio news was popularized through 
overseas broadcasting, journalists and dramatists began to build upon 
the unprecedented success of war reporting on the radio by creating 
audio documentaries. Focusing particularly on the work of radio 
luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, Norman Corwin, and 
Erik Barnouw, /Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public 
Interest/ traces this crucial phase in American radio history, 
significant not only for its timing immediately before television, but 
also because it bridges the gap between the end of the World Wars and 
the beginning of the Cold War.

Matthew C. Ehrlich closely examines the production of audio 
documentaries disseminated by major American commercial broadcast 
networks CBS, NBC, and ABC from 1945 to 1951. Audio documentary programs 
educated Americans about juvenile delinquency, slums, race relations, 
venereal disease, atomic energy, arms control, and other issues of 
public interest, but they typically stopped short of calling for radical 
change. Drawing on rare recordings and scripts, Ehrlich traces a crucial 
phase in the evolution of news documentary, as docudramas featuring 
actors were supplanted by reality-based programs that took advantage of 
new recording technology. Paralleling that shift from drama to realism 
was a shift in liberal thought from dreams of world peace to uneasy 
adjustments to a cold war mentality.

Influenced by corporate competition and government regulations, radio 
programming reflected shifts in a range of political thought that 
included pacifism, liberalism, and McCarthyism. In showing how 
programming highlighted contradictions within journalism and 
documentary, /Radio Utopia/ reveals radio's response to the political, 
economic, and cultural upheaval of the post-war era.

*Matthew C. Ehrlich*is a professor of journalism at the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of Journalism in the Movies.

University of Illinois Press | History of Communication | July 2017| 
240pp | 9780252083112 | PB | £22.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL17RADIO**

*Price subject to change.

  **Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australia.

Author and independent bookshop blog - Bookscombined.com 
<https://bookscombined.com/>
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