"Cultural historians often claim that audiences were far from passive victims of mass media manipulation, but Kathy Newman is among the first to reveal how ordinary people actually responded. Focusing on the major mass medium of the 1930s and 1940s, the radio, Newman brilliantly tracks the dialectical process through which audience attention became a commodity that broadcasters set out to sell to sponsors and then how listeners, often women, turned their new-found importance to their own ends as assertive consumers. This is cultural history at its best, bringing together as it does the influence of intellectuals, the workings of cultural institutions, and the reactions of popular audiences."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
"Lively and accessible, Newman's fascinating account of the characters and concernsbehind anti-commercial activism illuminates an overlooked facet of radio history. Her cast of middle class reformers who used radio's own commercialized address to mobilize the consumer movement reminds us of advertising's complex and contested relationship to twentieth-century American culture, and points towards the same forces at work today, now on a global scale."--Michele Hilmes, co-editor of "Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio
"An important contribution. . . . More than any other work to date, Newman deconstructs 'the' radio audience and demonstrates how this often-referred-to singular entity was really a heterogeneous body with multiple forms, faces, and concerns. She shows how radio listeners used information they learned on air to launch social movements that had broad economic and political consequences in American society."--Steven J. Ross, author of "Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America
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"Cultural historians often claim that audiences were far from passive victims of mass media manipulation, but Kathy Newman is among the first to reveal how ordinary people actually responded. Focusing on the major mass medium of the 1930s and 1940s, the radio, Newman brilliantly tracks the dialectical process through which audience attention became a commodity that broadcasters set out to sell to sponsors and then how listeners, often women, turned their new-found importance to their own ends as assertive consumers. This is cultural history at its best, bringing together as it does the influence of intellectuals, the workings of cultural institutions, and the reactions of popular audiences."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
"Lively and accessible, Newman's fascinating account of the characters and concernsbehind anti-commercial activism illuminates an overlooked facet of radio history. Her cast of middle class reformers who used radio's own commercialized address to mobilize the consumer movement reminds us of advertising's complex and contested relationship to twentieth-century American culture, and points towards the same forces at work today, now on a global scale."--Michele Hilmes, co-editor of "Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio
"An important contribution. . . . More than any other work to date, Newman deconstructs 'the' radio audience and demonstrates how this often-referred-to singular entity was really a heterogeneous body with multiple forms, faces, and concerns. She shows how radio listeners used information they learned on air to launch social movements that had broad economic and political consequences in American society."--Steven J. Ross, author of "Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America
Imprint | University of California Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | May 2004 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days |
First published | May 2004 |
Authors | Kathleen M. Newman |
Dimensions | 229 x 152 x 15mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback - Trade |
Pages | 250 |
Edition | New |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-520-23590-8 |
Barcode | 9780520235908 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-520-23590-8 |