Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America - Hardcover

Walker, Jesse

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814793819 ISBN 13: 9780814793817

Publisher: NYU Press, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Jesse Walker is an associate editor of Reason magazine. His articles have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, L.A. Weekly, Salon, The New Republic, Inside.com, the All-Music Guide, Radio World, and Z. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Contemporary mainstream radio offers very little diversity; play lists are chosen in corporate offices, and stations across the country sound very similar. An associate editor for Reason magazine, Walker argues that government collusion with big business for decades is responsible for reducing variety and eliminating dissident voices in radio broadcasting. Opening his history of alternative radio with the amateur operators in the early 1900s, he shows that as soon as the first regulations were passed in the Radio Act of 1912, pirate stations began defying the rules. Walker de0ions that pushed the limits of radio broadcasting (both legally and illegally), documents the history of the Pacifica Foundation and the community radio movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and ends with some open questions about the future of micro radio and the potential of the Internet. The use of interviews and anecdotes brings life to this history. Both academics and radio enthusiasts will appreciate this book. Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814793819
• ISBN 13: 9780814793817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 326