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The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media | Volume Five Number One
THE RADIO JOURNAL
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN BROADCAST AND AUDIO MEDIA 5.1
Volume 5 Number 1 – 2007
Editorial
3–4 Peter M. Lewis
5–7
Articles
Sounding Out Radio
Martin Shingler
The Radio
9–18
19–34
Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime to podcasting
Enrico Menduni
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing
New Zealand identity through commercial radio
Andrew Dubber
Journal
35–54 Finding an alternative: Music programming in US college radio International Studies in
Tim Wall
Broadcast & Audio Media
Reviews
55–60 Reviews by John Farnsworth and Hugh Chignell
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RJ-5-1_00-FM 12/4/07 12:51 PM Page 2
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RJ-5-1_01-Introduction 12/4/07 12:52 PM Page 3
Editorial Introduction
Peter M. Lewis
This issue of the Radio Journal sees us enter the fifth year of our existence
and is able to show something of the range of radio studies that is cur-
rently underway. This is the first issue to feature articles selected by a
guest editor associated with an important development in our field.
Three of the articles have been co-ordinated by Martin Shingler, who is
Senior Lecturer in Radio at the University of Sunderland, and who hosted
the Sounding Out conference in 2006. Martin provides a short editorial
essay on the conference, in which he outlines some of the scholarship pre-
sented there, and connects it to the developing field of radio and audio
studies.
Martin has also selected two conference papers to be developed into full
journal articles for this issue. The first by Andrew Dubber, Senior Lecturer
in Music Industries and Radio at Birmingham City University, UK, looks at
the construction of national identity through commercial radio in his
native New Zealand. Andrew explores some of the distinctive features of
New Zealand culture and the way they have been adapted within a dereg-
ulated commercial sphere. His emphasis on music culture, music radio
and notions of professionalism raises questions of importance not only for
small nations like New Zealand, but also for radio and music everywhere
in the world. We hope that this is a theme that others will want to return
to in future conferences and in future issues of this journal.
The second article drawn from the Sounding Out conference is from
Enrico Menduni of Università Roma Tre in Italy, and is based upon an
analysis of the most recent incarnation of the technology of audio distrib-
ution that we used to call broadcasting. Placing podcasting in a historical
context, the paper offers some provocative analyses which we hope will
spur others to take up one or more of the important issues that are
touched upon here. Technology has always played a significant part in the
development of radio as a cultural and institutional form and we would
welcome contributions to this ongoing debate.
The third article in this issue comes from another source, but shares
some of the same themes that Martin, Andrew and Enrico explore. Tim
Wall, Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City
University, UK, looks at college radio in the United States of America. He
combines a historical discussion of radio provided by US universities from
the 1920s onwards with a detailed examination of three contemporary
college stations. He brings out the importance of music in national
culture, the way that changing technologies allow new forms of institu-
tions and practices to develop, and offers a distinctive analysis of one
aspect of a nation’s radio system.
Here, then, four radio scholars based in Europe present analyses that
survey important contemporary issues across three continents, and take
in a major international conference. We now have a broad and represen-
tative international editorial board, which we hope will build on work like
this. Other issues in this volume will feature a report on last summer’s
Radio Conference, review the slew of books on radio that are now avail-
able in English, and extend the international analysis further.
4 Peter M. Lewis
RJ-5-1_02-Shingler 12/4/07 12:56 PM Page 5
Two of the articles included in this issue of The Radio Journal were originally 1 The conference was
hosted by the Centre
presented as papers at Sounding Out 3: An international symposium in media for Research in Media &
sound, held at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom on Cultural Studies at the
7–9th September 2006.1 This event was, as the name suggests, the third in University of
Sunderland, convened
a series of conferences designed to bring together a multinational throng of by myself, assisted by
theorists, historians and practitioners of radio, film and video sound, sonic Christine Gledhill,
Gianluca Sergi, Chris
art and electro-acoustic music.2 Over a hundred delegates attended, from Priestman, Peter
countries such as the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Spain, Greece, Italy, Lewis, Caroline
Mitchell and Nick
France, Poland, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Norway. The con- Cope, and generously
ference included presentations by six keynote speakers: Ed Baxter (Reso- supported by a grant
from IREN:
nance FM), Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, author of Dumbstruck), International Radio
Andrew Crisell (University of Sunderland, author of Understanding Radio), Research Network.
John Durham Peters (Iowa University, author of Speaking into the Air), 2 Sounding Out (July
Gianluca Sergi (University of Nottingham, author of The Dolby Era) and 2002, hosted by
Staffordshire
Adinda van’t Klooster (a new media installation artist from the Utrecht). University with
Complementing these were 34 papers presented on a range of topics, support from the
Radio Studies Network,
including: historical and contemporary debates on the impact of sound on the British Academy
the body and the senses (Kate Lacey), Hindi film songs (Anna Morcom), the and the Arts &
photographing of sound and contemporary electronica (Joanna Demers), Humanities Research
Board) included
artistic glossolalia in Icelandic rock music (Hugo Burgos), the use of silence presentations by
in Madonna’s music (Arnt Maaso), black women’s empowerment through Robin Rimbaud (aka
Scanner), Gordon
popular music (Miriam Strube), the work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the House (Head of BBC
films of Gus van Sant (Randolph Jordan), and the acoustic identity of the Radio Drama) and
Peter Ringrose (BBC
producer of music programmes on the radio – the case of Greece (Angeliki Studio Manager),
Gazi). In addition, there was a series of audio and audio-visual presenta- Jonathan Holloway
(Director of Redshift
tions: Lucy Gough’s radio play The Raft (2002); animated shorts by Terry Theatre Co.) Lucy
Pender, Martine Huvenne and Maurice Wright; Andy Cartwright and Sean Gough (playwright),
Street’s award-winning radio feature Then-Now (2006); short films by Parasuram
Ramamoorthi
Laurent Bordoiseau, Arnaud Ganzerli and Jerome Blanquet, Bran Evans, (Professor of Theatre
Mark Cartwright, Virgil Moorefield and Jeff Weeter, Dennis H. Miller, Bart Arts at Madurai
Kamaraj University,
Vegeter and Filmstad Producties, D-Fuse and Scanner, Nick Cope and Tim India) and John Gray
Howle, and Adinda van’t Klooster and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (former Chief
Assistant at BBC
(Graeme Wilson, Giles Lamb, Neil Davidson and George Lyle). A recording Radio Scotland).
of a live performance in Ecuador by Hugo Burgos, Daniel Pasquel, Jeff Eckels Sounding Out 2 (July
2004, hosted by the
and Nelson Garcia was also screened. In other words, the event was a rich University of
and fascinating mixture of papers and presentations on sound – past, Nottingham with a
present and possible future – from around the globe.
grant from the British Sounding Out 3 was intended to maintain and extend the dialogue
Academy), featured between theorists and practitioners of sound, which the previous two
presentations by
Anne Karpf (writer events had set in train, promoting new research and sustaining emerging
and broadcaster), collaborations between practitioners, writers, performers, theorists and his-
Mike Bull (Lecturer at
Sussex University and torians. It sought to identify, exchange and promote international perspec-
author of Sounding tives, extending knowledge of sound practices (both production and
Out the City) and
David Hunter (Deputy consumption) to new and emerging technologies (e.g., Podcasting). The on-
Head of BBC Radio going effects of globalisation and media convergence remained in focus as a
Drama). It included
papers by Michelene
number of scholars sought to understand these in relation to the historical
Wandor, Alan Beck, evolution of communication and the electronic mass media. The event pro-
Brian O’Neill, Andrew moted new and emerging scholarship on sound practices, technologies,
Boyce, Paul Moore,
Elke Huwiler, Andy aesthetics, perception, affect, and writing and performance, with presenta-
Birtwhistle, Martin tions delivered by scholars new to the field of academic research as well as
Stumpf, Peter Lewis
and Sara O’Sullivan. some of the biggest international names in communication studies, radio
3 Jean-Jacques Cheval is theory and film scholarship. One of the major issues addressed throughout
a lecturer at Michel the conference was the relationship of sound and image, hearing and
de Montaigne-
Bordeaux 3
vision. Having formerly promoted attention to sound as a distinct medium,
University, France, one motive for this third event was to refocus questions towards the diverse
and the President of ways that sound and image interact. In Film Studies a new interdisciplinary
GRER (Group for
Research and Study of approach to early cinema has been making increasing use of the concept of
Radio) as well as the ‘intermediality’ in order to foreground the relations between film and other
Co-ordinator of IREN
(International Radio media (e.g., theatre, music-hall, radio, etc.) thus adding a historical dimen-
Research Network). sion (Gledhill 2004). Similarly, in Radio Studies, scholars have been refram-
4 Irene Giannara ing perceptions of radio and ‘radiobility’ in response to the text and images
presented a paper of digital and web radio (Tacchi 2000).
written by herself,
Andreas Radio played a major role in Sounding Out 3, as it has done in all of the
Giannakoulopoulos symposia. From Ed Baxter’s opening plenary, ‘Extending Radio: A Personal
and Akis Evenis
entitled ‘Audio on Reflection’, to the final presentation, Andrew Crisell’s ‘The New Literacy of
demand: Radio’s Sound: A Retrospect and Some Prospects’, radio remained a dominant
future format and its
impact on the strand of the conference. On the morning of the second day, an address by
communication IREN co-ordinator, Jean-Jacques Cheval,3 prepared the way for a series of
procedure.’ This team
of Greek doctoral
radio panels throughout the day featuring new research by scholars
students, journalists working in Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom. The presentations of
and radio producers Enrico Menduni, Andrew Dubber, Angeliki Gazi and Irene Giannara4 were
explored some of the
new models of subsequently made available on the Sounding Out 3 website (www.
communication soundingout.sunderland.ac.uk). Two of these Podcasted papers have been
resulting from
experiments in local revised and written up for this edition of the Radio Journal. Enrico
radio broadcasting Menduni’s ‘Four steps in radio broadcasting: from QuickTime to Podcasting’
and the Internet that
enable listeners to describes the successive impact that digital music, the internet, file sharing
select from a wide and Podcasting have had on the social practices of listening in Italy and
range of music styles
and artists,
many other parts of the world, and considers how these practices chal-
transforming radio lenge existing notions of radio, broadcasting and recorded music. Rapid
into a personal music and radical changes in radio and the music industry have certainly not
player. Their case
study was Pandora’s been confined to Europe. Andrew Dubber’s article, ‘Tutira mai nga iwi
Music Genome (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand identity through
Project, which defines
commercial radio,’ illustrates this with his case study of New Zealand.
6 Martin Shingler
RJ-5-1_02-Shingler 12/4/07 12:56 PM Page 7
Since the deregulation of its radio industry in 1989, New Zealand has the musical identity of
instigated a series of policies for increasing the proportion of domestically individual songs and
enables stations to
produced music on its stations, despite increasing levels of international mould music
ownership (primarily Australian and Canadian). This has created a highly programmes to the
personality of the
charged and controversial debate about the definitions and the nature of listener.
authentically ‘New Zealand’ (i.e., New Zealand sounding) music. While
explaining the context and development of this debate, Dubber’s article
highlights some important lessons for broadcasting policy-makers and for
those seeking to promote local (i.e., national or regional) music through
radio programming.
Since the launch of Sounding Out in 2002, radio has undergone massive
and fundamental changes – digitisation, convergence, globalisation, frag-
mentation and successive technological innovations – suggesting a radical
transformation of the common practices of radio production and consump-
tion around the world. This provides a challenge to existing theories of radio
and to the established notions of what radio is, what it does, how it does it,
how it’s used and who uses it. The pace of change has been rapid and relent-
less to the extent that each year new possibilities – and possible futures – for
radio are revealed. This requires constant monitoring, analysis and research
in order for radio scholarship to remain relevant and accurate. The biennial
Sounding Out symposium offers one way for radio and audio scholars from
across the globe to share their latest observations, ideas and predictions. In
this way we can maintain our conceptual grasp on radio and broadcast
audio’s development. Once aired and discussed, some of these ideas and
observations deserve to be recorded and documented, enabling future histo-
rians to trace the impact and ideas of the changing global media landscape
in which radio and audio remain key players.
References
Gledhill, Christine (2004), Reframing British Cinema, 1918–1928: Between Restraint
and Passion, London: BFI.
Tacchi, Jo (2000), ‘The need for radio theory in the digital age,’ International
Journal of Cultural Studies, 3: 2 (online: http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/), pp. 289–298.
Suggested citation
Shingler, M. (2007), ‘Sounding Out Radio’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in
Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1, pp. 5–7, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.5/1
Contributor details
Martin Shingler is Senior Lecturer in Radio & Film Studies at the University of
Sunderland, UK, where he teaches courses on radio theory, radio drama and docu-
mentary. He is the co-author, with Cindy Wieringa, of On Air: Methods and meanings of
radio (London: Arnold, 1998) and has published on radio in the Journal of Radio Studies
(USA) and the Media Education Journal. He is the convenor of Sounding Out: an interna-
tional symposium in media sound. Contact: University of Sunderland, School of Arts,
Design, Media & Culture, The Media Centre, St. Peter’s Way, Sunderland, SR6 0DD.
E-mail: martin.shingler@sunderland.ac.uk
Abstract Keywords
Is podcasting the future of radio? Is podcasting that missing link connecting radio and podcasting
the Net that Internet radio stations were not able to establish? Is podcasting a revolu- internet radio
tionary or a transitory cultural trend? Furthermore, is podcasting a way towards a digital music
more democratic audio media system or is it rather a new tool in the hands of the file sharing
multinational recording industry? This article will explore these questions, providing Italian radio
an historical framework to the introduction of digital sound (from 1991 to 2007)
and related social practices, distinguishing four main phases: the birth of the popular
use of digital music; Web radio; Music for free; the iPod and podcasting.
1 Liquid Audio ‘communicational bubble’, in which the boy or girl walking through the
streaming software town is almost completely engaged by listening to his/her own music, sur-
was developed in
1995. It provided rounded by it (Flichy 1991). Audio cassette recording and the Walkman
copy protection and allowed private copying of discs, even if of low quality, tape-exchanging or
copyright
management, and did bartering and, particularly, the possibility of shaping one’s own personal
not meet the esprit du music compilation, to be performed in a mobile and nomadic way and
temps, interested
mostly in music directed to provide everyone with a peculiar, personally determined sound-
sharing for free (Mack track to everyday life. This is a feature that video, which requires more direct
2002: 576–577).
Liquid Audio
attention, a large screen and a fixed position, could never offer, other than
company (after through screens in public spaces like malls and pubs, paid slender and dis-
January 2003, Liquid tracted attention by a passing audience. In any case, these would represent
Digital Media) was
formed in May 1996 public performances and not personal compilations.
in Redwood City, The coming of digital music prolonged and enlarged trends in the use of
California, USA.
popular music that were already present in an analogue world. From 1991,
a digital audio file could be played by an Apple Macintosh computer thanks
to the bundled QuickTime software. In 1992, Tim Berners Lee developed
the World Wide Web at Cern labs, Geneva, and the following year Mosaic,
the first web browser, was introduced by the University of Illinois. Between
1993 and 1994 Netscape, the first commercial browser, appeared. In
1995, MPEG-3 (commonly called MP3) was introduced as an implementa-
tion of MPEG-1 Audio Layer III data. In the same year, Windows 95 was
launched. An audio file could now be played back by an IBM compatible PC
with no additional software. Explorer was embedded in Microsoft Windows
95 and, at a mainstream level, it appeared as a mass legitimation of the
Internet. In the very same year, RealAudio by Progressive Networks was
released, providing the first effective and widespread software for stream-
ing, although Liquid Audio was chronologically the first.1
1995 was a critical date as far as changes in the popular perception of
sound are concerned. As often happens, at the outset things appeared dif-
ferently. When sound began to be performed by personal computers, man-
ufacturers began to produce them equipped with built-in or outer
loudspeakers for a sophisticated stereophonic sound. The main social rele-
vance of the personal computer, regarding sound, appeared to be the pos-
sibility of duplicating discs, even illegally, using widespread and cheap
mastering devices. Those ‘CD burners’ created numerous problems for the
recording industry. During that period, however, the Internet grew expo-
nentially, becoming a mass practice in most developed countries. MPEG-3
became widely used as the standard means of compressing audio files. The
diffusion of sound through the net would dramatically change the distrib-
ution, economy and culture of music, not to mention all related social
systems, including radio and the recording industry. Among the various
consequences, we can distinguish two important categories:
10 Enrico Menduni
RJ-5-1_03-Menduni 12/4/07 12:57 PM Page 11
Streaming software allowed one to access a digital sound (or, later, video)
file before it had been completely downloaded. Before the introduction of
streaming, downloading time could be so long – due to the dimensions of
the file – that it would discourage potential listeners (around this time
WWW was popularly interpreted as ‘World Wide Wait’). Before streaming,
sound practices on the net were restricted to a small niche of high-speed
connection holders and passionate music lovers. Later, at the end of the
nineties, they became more and more popular.
Increasingly, streaming practices reduced the monopoly of contempo-
rariness, formerly the exclusive preserve of radio thanks to its unique pos-
sibility of live broadcasting. Until the coming of the Net, radio
broadcasting was the only synchronous sound medium and shared with
TV alone a ‘culture of contemporariness’ much envied by other ‘still’
media like newspapers, cinema and records, obliged to always arrive after
events and to pay a heavy toll to a technological and social delay. A huge
social and political fence divided ‘recorded sound’ from ‘live broadcasting’.
Now, streaming allowed almost-live broadcasting on a mass scale, where
the only delay was the buffering time.
12 Enrico Menduni
RJ-5-1_03-Menduni 12/4/07 12:57 PM Page 13
and Internet radio go against the winning trend of radio, namely its minia- 2 ‘Whether we look at
turisation and its mobility. Literally, the radio vanishes as an autonomous self-help movements,
do-it-yourself trends,
piece of hardware, hidden in the dashboard of a car, in the alarm clock, in or new production
the mobile phone, in the Walkman and its off-spring (from MP3 to iPods). technologies, we find
the same shift toward
It is difficult to consider as a revolution a process that goes against the a much closer
most beloved characteristics of a medium and its related practices. involvement of the
consumer in
production. In such a
The Third Phase: Music for Free world, conventional
distinctions between
The emerging limits, if not the decline, of Internet radio, are connected to producer and
the birth of file sharing. Internet radio, as partly digital radio, is not able to consumer vanish’
continue and empower social uses of radio in the television era, in which (Toffler 1980: 275).
3 Mass production (of Benjamin, music has ceased to be a performance-only art, becoming more
standard identical and more a recorded art (Benjamin 1936). Live music has become a rela-
artefacts) produces a
progressive cost tively rare and costly social ritual, a very sharply socially segmented one
decrease of single moreover, while the ordinary consumption of music has transferred from
artefacts, with fixed
costs (design, project, specific public places like theatres and concert halls to the intimacy of the
factory, tools, household, creating a new political economy of (cheap) recorded music. In
advertising) covered
by initial sales. In comparison, performed music has been affected by the dangerous
contrast, the cultural Baumol’s cost disease (Towse 1977).3 Once, music in the household could
production of
performing arts
be performed by the mechanical piano (pianola), Edison’s reel or Berliner’s
(concerts, stage), disc. In these three cases, a material support was needed, a fetish or simu-
according to Baumol, lacrum of music that had to be bought or hired in the public space and
are composed of
prototypes different in transported into the home. Thus, with the coming of radio, a distinction
every performance arose between instant music and permanent music. Instant music, often
and requiring the
same manpower, live, granted by radio, had an immaterial nature and all the associations of
therefore not allowing a novelty and of an unpredictable event but it was ephemeral and practi-
for significant savings
in costs when cally un-recordable. Permanent music was a collection of records, effective
repeated many times. but always the same. Permanent music was the music in the household,
An orchestra playing
a Beethoven
whereas instant music was often that of in-car audio, transistor radio and
symphony (or a team the Walkman. With streaming and file sharing, however, the difference
playing a football between permanent and instant music loses its meaning or, at least, is re-
match) practically
costs the same every shaped. Music loses its material support, it shows itself again as immater-
evening. A long run ial, as it was in live performance but, nevertheless, it can now be
performance, if
successful, may even reproduced, exchanged and transported, breaking definitively the cosy
result in artists prison of the home, as radio had first enabled it to do.
demanding higher
rates of pay for
subsequent The fourth phase: from iPod to Podcasting
performances.
Consequently, in the
While Napster closed, in 2001, Apple Computers launched its iPod, a
performing arts sophisticated and superbly designed multi-standard portable music and
success often involves video player. This was a digital music player, based on a powerful hard disk
increasing costs, not
decreasing as it is in rather than on a flash memory.4 Its immediate success made the iPod the
mass production, true heir of the Sony Walkman. The strength of the brand and the beauty
while revenues
(tickets and sponsors) of its design were a significant part of this success but so too was its large
are unable to increase memory, which was more and more enhanced over time. The iPod allowed
at the same rate
(Baumol 1984). its user to hold a personal encyclopaedia in which all his or her history in
4 The first generation
music, video and photos is stored: in other words, a complete set of tastes
iPod was announced and preferences. As an encyclopaedia, it is a rounded, complete object
on the 23rd October with its own personality, not only a tool to perform others’ artwork. The
2001 with a 5–10 GB
hard disk capacity iPod was designed during the Napster era and, as with many Apple prod-
(against 512 MB – 1 ucts, it appealed to the tastes of cultured and moderate transgressives, cer-
GB of flash-based MP
3 players), and went tainly more liberal than libertarian or radical. The Napster way could no
on sale the following longer be followed (Spitz and Hunter 2005). Soon after the iPod, Apple
month, just in time
for Christmas sales. A launched its iTunes Music Store, opening the era of fairly-priced paid
photo (2004) and music.5 Its customers pay to download music and a DRM (Digital Rights
video (2005) viewer
were later added;
Management) software prevents unlimited copying. Paying for music is
capacity grew to a one of the basic premises of podcasting. Podcasting is a form of distribution
maximum of 80 GB of audio contents that can be received periodically on one’s computer by
14 Enrico Menduni
RJ-5-1_03-Menduni 12/4/07 12:57 PM Page 15
subscribing (for a fee) or adding oneself to a list, thanks to special software in 2006. One year
programmes called ‘feeds’. After downloading the contents onto the PC later Apple
announced that over
one can copy them (for a limited number of times), re-arrange them, and 100 million iPods had
put them totally or partially onto an iPod. been sold, mostly
since 2005. The pod
After this first phase of podcasting, around 2004, the same technique metaphor allows
was used by radio stations, in order to reach, periodically and for free, multiple associations
of ideas, from science
those listeners desiring to consume a special radio programme. This has fiction cinema (The
also been used (certainly in Italy) by cultural and political organisations in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers by Don
order to spread their content, especially spoken content. Radio stations Siegel, 1956; 2001: A
that once promoted simulcast now adopt podcasting in order to follow Space Odyssey by
current trends and to go further beyond the temporal and spatial bound- Stanley Kubrick,
1968) to aerospace
aries that affect radio: in other words, going beyond the antenna’s foot- engineering, botanic
prints and programming schedules. In this case podcasting (even if we studies and zoology.
The iPod is provided
should speak of listeners more as enlisted than as subscribers) is a means with iTunes software,
of broadening listenership and increasing listeners’ involvement. a digital media player
application (not only
Podcasting allows listeners to mix in their iPods (or similar devices) and MP3, but almost all
listen to their store of music and radio programmes, etc., in a mobile audio file formats)
first introduced by
modality. Apple Computers in
So is podcasting the future of radio? Is podcasting that missing link January 2001.
that connects radio and the Net, which Internet radio stations were not Version 2.0 was
released in October
able to establish? Is podcasting something truly revolutionary or is it 2001. Both were
merely another transitory cultural trend? And finally, is podcasting a way Macintosh only. The
second generation
towards a more democratic audio media system or, instead, is it yet iPod (July 2002, 10 –
another tool to be exploited by the multinational recording industry? Past 20 GB capacity)
included Musicmatch
experience of the Internet should make us cautious about the last two Jukebox software for
questions. At the moment, podcasting does not operate as a more democ- Windows users. A
Windows version of
ratic medium. Just as it is valued and exploited by the recording industry, iTunes was released
radio stations and even political or cultural organisations have adopted it in October 2003.
in order to promote closer bonds with their listeners and clients, i.e., as 5 The iTunes Music
with any form of subscription. Radio Radicale, a 30 year old radio station Store was opened in
April 2003 and
promoted by Partito Radicale, a political party, now uses podcasts6 to feed proved the viability of
its targeted audience with specific radio programmes, dedicated to various online music sales. It
now distributes
political issues, which are in fact forms of public speech. Vatican Radio videos, movies and
presents podcasts in fifteen different languages,7 all about news and reli- videogames,
accounting for 80% of
gious information, plus a multilingual podcast dedicated to the speeches of worldwide online
the Pope, a modern-day application of the ‘radio as a loudspeaker’ concept digital music sales.
of the Twenties. Radio Deejay, one of the most listened-to private national 6 http://www.
radio stations, offers podcasts8 dedicated to a single entertainer or group, radioradicale.it/rss_
feed.
thereby segmenting its mainstream audience. Radio Popolare, a well-
routed left wing radio station based in Milan, with syndicated stations in 7 http://www.
radiovaticana.org/it1/
principal Italian towns, uses podcasts to distribute the targeted music rss_feeds.asp.
choices of its daily talk show ‘Mente locale’.9 Some websites, like 8 http://www.deejay.it/
Magmaweb,10 offer music podcasts from little radio stations, while young dj/podcast?ref=
hphead.
music fans produce music podcasts, like ‘Lester Voice’ by Walter Ego,11
often linked with the growing music database of MySpace,12 providing a
grassroots music repertory.
9 http://www. At the moment, iPod and similar tools seem to be widespread cult
radiopopolare.it/ objects, particularly as most of them have been given as a present, an
mentelocale/.
‘intelligent present’, often by relatives and parents for Christmas. Music
10 http://www.
rtinradio.com/pod/ podcasting seems far more common than radio podcasting as such; Italian
magma_podcasting. radio stations use podcasting mainly for speech-based entertainment and
xml.
comedy shows. Most music podcasts originate not from radio stations so
11 http://feeds. much as from passionate young individuals. When asked why they use
feedburner.com/
lestervoice. podcasts, the young people of Rome who did not simply reply ‘for fun’
12 http://www.myspace. stressed the interactivity of their musical choice and the bricolage of man-
com/index.cfm? aging their own soundtracks. ‘By using podcast’, a student says, ‘I feed
fuseaction=music.
myself with music, but it’s only raw material. In certain evenings I remain
13 A research on at home and, at my desktop computer, I produce my own music, the one I
listening habits of the
young in Rome, love and I can send to my friend. Sometime it takes me hours. Then I fill
particularly regarding my MP3 player and I go out’. Podcasting, as a social practice, seems to be
digital media, is
taking place in Roma considered by the young as more individualised than radio listening and
Tre University. It will music compilation-making, involving a relationship with several
be prepared by 50
semi-structured providers, the podcasters, seen not as institutions but as peers. Another
interviews to young teenager says: ‘I prefer to skip from one podcast to another, all made by
people (16–21) living
in Rome, plus 500
people I know deeply even if I never saw them in person, than to listen to
questionnaires to the a mainstream radio flow. I can rip and grab songs, offered by a person I
same targets and a trust, in my personal compilation’. Late afternoons and evenings appear
deep review of radio
stations and web as the favourite time slot for such practices on central weekdays, taking
musical resources. place at home, given that weekends and Thursdays tend to be devoted to
going out.13
All these hints, however provisional, suggest a role for podcasting as a
niche prosumer activity, not as random listening or a passive feed from the
podcaster. While Internet radio is highly static, rooted in the household,
podcasting could be the true heir of the urban explorations of the
Walkman, both having as their ancestor the flâneur (city-walker) of
Baudelaire: the person who ‘marries the crowd’, who likes most ‘to be out
of home, and nevertheless to feel at home everywhere, to watch the world,
to be in its centre and to be in hiding’ (Baudelaire 1885: 64–65). Indeed,
even more than the Walkman, podcasting implies a component of manual
manipulation on the computer keyboard, accessible to a niche of passion-
ate lovers of music and radio. It seems to indicate the future of radio but,
nevertheless, it is difficult to think of mass podcasting given that it requires
a component of specialised computer work. What is evoked here, curiously,
is radio’s past rather than its future, recalling its amateur phase: i.e., those
wireless (sanfilistes) radio-amateurs of the 1910s and 1920s, who built
their own radio sets prior to mass production. This suggests that podcast-
ing is a mid-term technology, representing one of a number of possible
ways for radio to face a complex digital future. As an interesting and effec-
tive social technology, podcasting would appear to retain the mobile and
interactive aspects of radio, its valued attributes as a medium. Yet podcast-
ing may still not offer the definitive mode of radio consumption. Another
16 Enrico Menduni
RJ-5-1_03-Menduni 12/4/07 12:57 PM Page 17
References
Antonelli, Cristiano (2003), ‘The Digital Divide: Understanding the Economics of
New Information and Communication Technology in the Global Economy,’
Information Economics and Policy, 15, pp. 173–199.
Baudelaire, Charles (1885), Le peintre de la vie moderne, in L’Art romantique, Paris,
Calmann Lévy.
Baumol, Hilda and William J. (eds.) (1984), Inflation and the Performing Arts, New
York: New York University Press.
Benjamin, Walter (1936), Das Kunstwerk in Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzier-
barkeit, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.
——— (1982), Das Passagen-Werk, Surkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main; Italian
translation Parigi capitale del XX secolo, Torino, Einaudi, 1986.
Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard (1999), Remediation: Understanding New
Media, Cambridge, Mass.: London, MIT Press.
Bonfadelli, Heinz (2002), ‘The Internet and Knowledge Gaps: A Theoretical and
empirical Investigation’, European Journal of Communication, 17: 1, pp. 65–84.
Bonini, Tiziano (2006), La radio nella rete. Storia, estetica, usi sociali, Milano, Costa &
Nolan.
Flichy, Patrice (1991), Une histoire de la communication moderne. Espace public et vie
privée, Paris: la Découverte.
Mack, Steve (2002), Streaming Media Bible, New York: Hungry Minds.
Priestman, Chris (2002), Web Radio. Radio Production for Internet Streaming, Oxford:
Focal Press.
Spitz, David and Hunter, Starling (2005), ‘Contested Codes: The Social
Construction of Napster,’ The Information Society, 21: 3, pp. 1–27.
Toffler, Alvin (1980), The Third Wave, New York: Bantam.
Towse, Ruth (ed.) (1977), Baumol’s Cost Disease: The Arts and Other Victims,
Cheltenham: Elgar.
Wall, Tim (2003), ‘The Political Economy of Internet Music Radio,’ The Radio
Journal. International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 2: 1, pp. 27–44.
Suggested citation
Menduni, E. (2007), ‘Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime
to podcasting’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio
Media 5: 1, pp. 9–18, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.9/1
Contributor details
Enrico Menduni is Professor in Television and Radio Languages at Università Roma
Tre, Rome, Italy. His research is concerned mainly with new technologies (particu-
larly the internet, podcasting and mobile phones) on radio broadcasting. A
founder member of IREN, International Radio Research Network, and the Interna-
tional Radio Journal, he is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of
Cultural Studies. He has published in journals such as Convergence: the International
Journal of Research into New Media Technologies and The Radio Journal. His books
include: I media digitali. Tecnologie, linguaggi, usi sociali (Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2007);
Il mondo della radio: Dal transistor a Internet (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); I linguaggi
della radio e della televisione: Teorie e techinche (Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2002); and La
radio: Percorsi e territori di un medium mobile e interattivo (ed.) (Bologna: Baskerville,
2002). Contact: Enrico Mendun, Università Roma Tre, Via Ostiense, 159 – 00154,
Rome, Italy.
E-mail: menduni@uniroma3.it; www.mediastudies.it
18 Enrico Menduni
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 19
Abstract Keywords
This article addresses a controversy within New Zealand radio broadcasting New Zealand
policy. As part of its activities to ensure the promotion of New Zealand content in music radio
the media, the non-government public organisation New Zealand On Air funds Maori
music recordings, promotional videos, album promotion and radio airplay initia- deregulation
tives targeted at the commercial broadcasting sector within that country. Sup- music policy
porters of the organisation, and its music sector agent provocateur Brendan quotas
Smyth, point to the increase in New Zealand music sales, improved concert atten-
dance and greatly enhanced representation in mainstream media and popular 1 A Powhiri is a
ceremony of welcome
culture as evidence of the scheme’s resounding success. In some popular music extended to visitors. It
genres, New Zealand content has increased from under 2% representation on officially welcomes
commercial radio playlists to over 20%. Detractors argue that in attempting to newcomers through a
series of protocols,
increase the quantity of New Zealand-sourced music that is broadcast, funders speeches and an
have favoured to the point of exclusion music that emulates international reper- exchange of song. The
Marae is a sacred
toire in order to appeal to conservative radio programmers, and in so doing have place at which Maori
decimated that which makes New Zealand popular music uniquely ‘kiwi’. The custom, language and
tradition is celebrated
article seeks to shed light upon the conditions and decisions that led to this situa- and experienced as a
tion, rather than attempt to reconcile these two divergent positions. However, it way of life. The Marae
typically consists of a
also endeavours to point to some possible lessons that may be found in the case of clearing (where the
New Zealand music radio for broadcasting policy-makers and those who would powhiri and other
seek to promote local music through radio programming interventions. The title of ceremonies take
place), a wharehui
this article refers to a popular traditional Maori song often used in a powhiri cer- (meeting house),
emony, greeting newcomers to the marae.1 An exchange of songs takes place, and wharekai (dining and
kitchen area) and
‘Tutira Mai’ is the Maori language song most often learned by non-Maori speak- other buildings. While
ers for the occasion. It is thus ingrained in both Maori and non-Maori New commonly a place of
reconnection with
Zealand culture alike and is taken here as symbolic of a coherent bicultural New tradition, it is also a
Zealand-ness, as problematic as that concept may be. place where people
live, rather than
simply visit.
. . . while a local authority like Sheffield has developed in its cultural indus-
tries policy, a much more interesting set of arguments around pop music
than the Labour Party has nationally, it hasn’t answered the question of why
a “Sound of Sheffield” that depends on international marketing for its impact
should be different to the sound from any other global pop setting.
Frith 1992: 38
20 Andrew Dubber
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Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 21
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 22
greenstone and Christmas at the beach are all images that are universally
accepted as being part and parcel of New Zealand popular culture. And
equally, there are popular entertainment icons from mass media culture
that have become part and parcel of the New Zealand conception of iden-
tity: from television comedians Billy T. James and Fred Dagg to local char-
acters The Wizard of Christchurch and author Barry Crump; sporting
heroes Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu to singers Kiri Te Kanawa and
Hayley Westenra; artists Colin McCahon and Len Lye to actors Cliff Curtis
and Sam Neill. Among these icons is a wide range of New Zealanders who
produce and perform popular music, whether based in rock, pop, hip-hop,
R&B, metal, house, reggae or indie musical genres. As anywhere, the dom-
inant popular music forms (regardless of point of origin) are widely pro-
moted, disseminated and consumed via the medium of radio. Despite the
very real barriers put in front of musicians in New Zealand when it comes
to marketing, promotion and popular acceptance, there has nevertheless
grown to be a generally accepted sense of a New Zealand Music. Perhaps
rather than conceptualise it as a language of its own, it can be thought of
as Western Popular Music with a New Zealand accent.
New Zealand radio has, over the past eighteen years, been unique in
the extent to which it has been deregulated and opened up to the forces of
free market economies. It should come as no surprise that such a seismic
shift in the political economy of a mass media institution would have a sig-
nificant impact on the cultural life of that medium’s consumers – in this
case, the public of New Zealand. In this article, I describe the conditions of
the relationship between radio broadcasters, the music business and policy
makers within New Zealand, highlighting a debate that problematises one
of the key objectives of an organisation whose role it is to promote New
Zealand content over the airwaves. Since deregulation in 1989, New
Zealand On Air has initiated and managed schemes to promote and
support the broadcast of New Zealand-made popular music on commercial
radio. The extent to which those efforts can be considered a resounding
success or a colossal failure depends on the answer to one fundamental
question: ‘To what end?’
The aim of successive governments and their supporters was to put ‘globalisa-
tion as ideology’ into practice. ‘The New Zealand Experiment’ – the relentless
pursuit of free-market principles that began in 1984 – exposed a small, remote
country of 3.8 million people to the full impact of international market forces.
Kelsey 1999: 8
22 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 23
Public institutions were dismantled and sold to private enterprise and 2 At the time, Radio
everything from telecommunications to transport was left to the logic of Pacific, the station at
which I was
the market. In 1988, the Lange-led Labour Government announced a Production Manager
relaxation of laws of ownership and released the spectrum for free-market during this period,
used this process as
radio broadcasting competition in its purest form. These changes were an opportunity for
implemented in the 1989 New Zealand Broadcasting Act. Establishment expansion. Multiple
frequencies were bid
of a radio station now depended entirely on competitive bidding for scarce for in most of the
spectrum resources, with control over content extending only to estab- available regions, and
around this time, the
lished codes of decency. At the same time, all available frequencies the gov- company was listed
ernment could identify as available for sale were sold at auction.2 If a on the NZ Stock
broadcaster could prove through a process of engineering and testing, exchange. The ability
to distribute
further frequencies were free, that space would also be auctioned. In other nationwide networked
words, with the exception of National Radio and the Concert Programme,3 programming,
interspersed with
the airwaves were up for lease as a revenue-generating activity for the regional commercial
nation’s purse. But as well as simply a strategy to redress trade balance advertising, provided
a very attractive
deficits, deregulation of the radio industry was part of a larger movement business proposition.
away from government intervention in commercial enterprise: By 1993, Radio
Pacific broadcast on
26 frequencies
Neo-liberal economics argued that the market should be liberated from throughout the
heavy handed state regulation to go about the rational business of providing country, divided into
six regions for sales,
competitively priced range and variety for consumers. advertising and
Zanker 1996: 21 promotion purposes.
3 As they are now
known, Radio New
The enthusiastic adoption of the economic philosophies behind deregula- Zealand National and
tion stopped short of re-allocating publicly owned stations National Radio Concert are public
radio stations
and Concert FM (then the Concert Programme) but, in 1995, under the primarily concerned
guidance of Broadcasting Minister Maurice Williamson, state-owned com- with speech
mercial broadcasters were soon privatised in an attempt to ‘level the programming and
classical music
playing field’.4 The deregulation of the radio industry meant that there respectively –
were no restrictions on the number of radio stations a business could own; approximately parallel
to the UK’s BBC Radio
no restrictions on foreign ownership; no restrictions on cross-media own- 4 and Radio 3.
ership; no restrictions on format or genre; no public service remit for com- 4 The idea of state-
mercial broadcasters; no controls over content. Stations could broadcast owned commercial
whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, to whomever they wanted. broadcasters requires
some explanation to
As well as reducing restrictions on foreign ownership and allowing for many non-New
cross-media ownership, the new Broadcasting Act eliminated advertising Zealanders.
Essentially, these were
hours, and disbanded the Broadcasting Tribunal and its system of tariffs public broadcasters
and strict criteria for applicants in favour of tradable spectrum rights. FM with a commercial
imperative. The
radio in New Zealand was in its infancy, and the combination of a fierce popular radio stations
competitive environment and the influence of American radio consultants carried advertising
and were not only
led music programmers to opt for proven international hits. The result was supported by
the lowest representation of New Zealand music on the airwaves in history. commercial revenues
In an attempt to rectify this situation, legislators established New Zealand but were in fact
charged with
On Air, a body whose role it was to encourage and support the representa- maximising and
tion of New Zealand works on radio and television. The implementation of returning a profit to
the public purse.
this policy – and the strategies used to promote New Zealand music
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 23
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 24
5 The business that through commercial radio – have been, by different measures, both wildly
purchased the successful and catastrophic.
frequency and
established the station The effect of deregulation was simultaneously complex and almost
Energy FM was entirely uniform. A full examination of the deregulation and commercialisa-
started by a small
group of Massey tion of radio in New Zealand and its effects on consumer choice and repre-
University students sentation can be found in Karen Neill and Morris Shanahan’s The Evolution
with an investment of
$100 each. It was of New Zealand Radio (2004). Most crucially, new entrants to the market
eventually sold for sprang up around the country, from small operators in rural areas taking
tens of millions to
CanWest in May
advantage of the new freedom to establish community-focused commercial
2000. enterprises, through to major international organisations purchasing shares
6 Under Broadcasting in large urban market stations. With the massive addition of new spectrum
Authority rules, direct available at general auction, this was a period of intense proliferation of
competition was not
only discouraged, but small radio stations and groups. Stations such as Energy FM in New
proving that you Plymouth were started by small groups of investors and private owners, keen
would not compete
with incumbent to take advantage of the new environment.5 Prior to deregulation, indepen-
broadcasters was a dent commercial stations operated in a strongly protected commercial envi-
prerequisite for
gaining a licence.
ronment and to the lucky few who were allocated spectrum, broadcasting
seemed a licence to print money (Neill and Shanahan 2004, 2005).6 So, the
7 The extent to which
deregulation has opportunity to join those lucky few was enthusiastically embraced by many
reduced consumer new entrants to the field. Unsurprisingly, with advertising as the economic
choice and placed the
industry in the hands base for commercial broadcasting, the revenue available to the industry as a
of international whole was divided more thinly with each new broadcaster. Although diver-
corporate interests
has formed a large
sity had been a stated goal of the deregulation process – the idea being that
proportion of the each new entrant would cater to an as yet under-served segment of the pop-
relatively small body ulation – many broadcasters found themselves instead competing for the
of New Zealand Radio
Studies literature largest share of advertising, that section targeting the household shopper.
since 1990. The under-served audience remained so, with mainstream audiences
8 Radioworks was the becoming the focal point for a majority of stations. Competition became
last major fully New
Zealand owned
increasingly fierce and many stations failed, their assets swallowed up by
commercial radio bigger companies. Deregulation opened the door into an arguably less
network. It was the diverse, more ‘safe’ array of programming, served up by fewer providers,
target of an aggressive
takeover by CanWest with less interest in the public good of New Zealanders. The net effect was
in May 2000. arguably to reduce representation on the airwaves and place control of the
9 CanWest is a industry into fewer hands, whose interests were those of foreign sharehold-
Canadian-owned
multi-national ers, rather than those of the New Zealand public.7
organisation, largely After the period of intense proliferation and aggregation that lasted
owned and controlled
by the Asper family,
throughout the 1990s, culminating in the purchase of the Radioworks group
with strong interests by CanWest in 2000, New Zealand radio now exists in a virtual duopoly.8 At
in both television and the time of writing, the overwhelming majority of all radio stations in the
radio in New Zealand.
They have recently country, including all nationwide networked brands, are in the hands of one
indicated their of two companies: CanWest9 and The Radio Network10 (Rosenberg 2004:
intention to divest
their investments of 24). There are pockets of independent commercial radio outside those two
New Zealand media, media giants, as well as two nationwide public broadcasting stations, local
announcing that they
will sell to an Access Radio stations, Iwi Radio, Pacific Island broadcasters and student sta-
Australian private tions. However, a large majority of listenership and economic activity within
equity firm,
the local industry is commanded by those two international corporations.
24 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 25
of the two public TV networks, which the government is aiming to sell. In 11 It is important to
recognise that
short, the rulers of New Zealand’s media system could squeeze into a closet. Brendan Smyth can
(McChesney 1999) therefore be
considered the author
of the five ‘phases’ of
Elsewhere, commentators and theorists have explored this seismic shift in the New Zealand On
our broadcasting ecology and it would be an exercise in repetition to Air’s Music Strategy.
As a result, criticism
attempt to enumerate all of the effects of this policy (Zanker 1996). It is of New Zealand On
significant, however, to point out the coincidence of the deregulation of Air’s approach to
music is often framed
the radio industry and the arrival of FM radio – and the predominantly as personal criticism
American FM radio programming consultants employed by the new of Smyth’s
performance, ideology
licence-holders – in New Zealand. and competence. It
should be made clear
that nothing in this
Radio, music, government and the public article should be
According to New Zealand On Air, the body set up to ensure that New construed as
Zealand content would be represented in the new, deregulated environment, personally targeted.
of all the music played on commercial radio, the proportion that had been
made by New Zealanders was less than 2%. At a time when commercial radio
commanded in excess of 80% of the listening audience, this presented a chal-
lenge for the organisation. New Zealand On Air was, until the late 1990s,
funded by a broadcasting fee similar to the TV licence scheme currently in
place in the United Kingdom. The money was divided between priorities,
including funding the creation of New Zealand television programmes,
annual funding of public broadcasting, and the support of New Zealand
music on commercial radio. This last was the responsibility of Music Manager
Brendan Smyth. In position since the creation of the organisation, and still
performing the role today, Smyth’s initiatives have been central to the imple-
mentation of policy laid down in the Broadcasting Act 1989.11
Smyth’s first initiative was to co-fund radio programmes that featured
New Zealand music. The programmes were initially designed to be sold to
radio stations at a subsidy, providing a weekly slot where a small represen-
tation of local music could be heard. After the independent producers were
unable to secure broadcast for these programmes, the strategy was
changed and the programmes were supplied free to the radio stations. The
funding was given in its entirety to the independent programme-makers, if
a commitment to broadcast from a significant number of stations in
different markets across the country was secured. The first, and longest
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 25
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 26
12 After the first few running of these programmes was called ‘Counting The Beat’, after a
months of production, 1981 hit by The Swingers. The programme went to air in late 1990 and
I replaced Bryce Hay
as the programme’s was broadcast in Auckland on 91FM. Hosted by Cheryl Morris and pro-
technical producer. duced by Tim Moon and Trevor Reekie (all three actively involved in inde-
pendent record labels) it was written by music producer and recording
artist Paul Casserly of Strawpeople.12 The programme was considered a
success in terms of getting more New Zealand music onto mainstream
commercial radio but, at this stage, the success was limited to a ghetto of
one hour per week on a Sunday night.
Anecdotally, among the reasons given by radio programmers to Smyth’s
queries about why they were reluctant to play New Zealand music (‘It’s
poorly produced’, ‘It’s not as good as international repertoire’, ‘It doesn’t
really suit our format’, and – incredibly – ‘Nobody likes local music’) was
one that could be simply addressed: ‘We don’t get sent it and we can’t play
it if we don’t have it’. In response to this, Smyth initiated the Hit Disc
scheme: a series of compilation CDs supplied to all New Zealand radio sta-
tions on a periodic basis. These comprised the most promising and poten-
tially radio-friendly tracks recently released. New Zealand On Air also
employed the first of the ‘pluggers’: promoters whose task it was to visit the
key radio stations in the key markets, endeavouring to encourage program-
mers to listen to selected tracks from the Hit Disc and then secure playlist
status for artists represented. Around the same time, the Music Video
scheme was launched. Although seemingly a television initiative, Smyth
reasoned that funding New Zealand artists to the tune of NZ$5,000 in
order to produce a promotional music video clip of broadcast quality would
result in greater radio airplay for these artists. The goal was not to sell more
records or even to contribute to New Zealand cultural identity by providing
more opportunities for New Zealanders to hear their own music, even
though New Zealand On Air’s slogan ‘Our Songs, Our Stories’ would indi-
cate that this would be the case. Smyth’s interpretation of his role – and the
purpose of initiatives such as the music video funding scheme – were more
pragmatic. In interview (2003), he summed up his responsibilities thus:
My job is to get more New Zealand music played on New Zealand radio. End
of story. I don’t do it to promote New Zealand culture, though I think that
would be a good thing. I don’t do it to help New Zealand music business,
though I think that would be a good thing too. I do it because the
Broadcasting Act says that that’s my job. My job is purely and simply to get
more New Zealand music heard by New Zealanders, and the way to do that
is through commercial radio, because that’s where most people are doing the
listening. It’s not my job to act as a gatekeeper and decide whether a band or
a song is ‘New Zealand’ enough. My job is to get local music on commercial
radio – and, like it or not, commercial radio plays ‘hits’ (2003).
Through the 1990s, New Zealand On Air’s strategy for promoting local
content continued through these and a range of other schemes, including
26 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 27
‘Double Digits’ awards for stations that crept up to 10% of broadcast 13 Australasian
content consisting of New Zealand music in any given month, and involve- Performing Rights
Association.
ment in the Kiwi Music Action Group (KiwiMAG) – a body of representa-
tives from the radio industry, the recording industry and NZ On Air.
KiwiMAG’s biggest success was in the establishment of New Zealand Music
Week, which was a nominated week in the calendar in which radio sta-
tions agreed to prioritise and promote New Zealand Music. However, the
KiwiMAG project was almost derailed by the Youth Radio Network.
Since the publication of a New Zealand On Air research report entitled
Youth Television and Radio Needs (1997), the idea of the potential establish-
ment of a Youth Radio Network troubled the radio industry. The commer-
cial operators saw teens as their primary audience and were opposed to
the idea of a public broadcasting outlet that they believed would directly
compete against their stations, for which frequencies had been auctioned
and bought in a market environment that did not include a government-
funded competitor. APRA13 executive Arthur Baysting’s vocal support of
musician Neil Finn’s proposal, for a YRN that would not only provide a
public broadcasting alternative to music radio but also actively promote
local music, began to strain relationships between the rights organisation
(representing the interests of the musicians) and the RBA (representing
the interests of the commercial broadcasters). By 1999, the goodwill
between the two interests represented in the KiwiMAG project had begun
to disintegrate. Nevertheless, in the lead-up to the 1999 General Election,
first National and then Labour claimed the YRN as a cause celebre, and as
their own idea. The youth vote looked as if it could swing a very close elec-
tion race, and politicians were more concerned at that moment in the
hundreds of thousands of registered voters under the age of 25 than in the
in-fighting between two creative industries. The YRN was good PR.
The commercial radio industry in New Zealand had more to concern
itself with than just the threat of the YRN, however. The FM Licences that
they had secured at auction for a 20-year lease in 1991 would expire in
2011, with no clarity as to the government’s policy about the re-auction-
ing of leases or the security of incumbent position on the existing frequen-
cies. The Minister of Broadcasting was making more and more noise about
mandatory content quotas and rallying vocal support from the music and
cultural industries. Labour was also interested in reassessing various
advertising regulations around children, health products, alcohol and cig-
arettes. While it had never been unusual for a Broadcasting Minister’s
agenda to be at odds with that of the commercial radio sector, this was the
first time that the parties seemed to share no common ground at all.
After Labour’s victory in 1999, with Prime Minister Helen Clark’s
adoption of the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio, New Zealand music
moved further up the agenda. The Broadcasting portfolio was assigned to
a staunch advocate of mandatory content quotas, Marian Hobbs, and the
Youth Radio Network was virtually a fait accompli. Moreover, as part of an
$86m Cultural Recovery Package, Clark announced an injection of extra
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 27
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 28
14 Phases 1 to 3 money into New Zealand On Air’s coffers. The body was now no longer
consisted of the series funded through a licence fee but through general taxation – a move that
of initiatives including
video grants, music had concerned supporters of public broadcasting, since the organisation
radio programme now had to compete with Health and Education for limited resources. For
funding, Hit Discs,
pluggers and the New Zealand On Air, and the sectors of the local music industry it pro-
Double Digits scheme. moted, The Cultural Recovery Package was an unexpected windfall.
It is unclear where
one phase ends and Smyth’s response to the extra millions in New Zealand On Air’s coffers
another begins, as has been to implement the Phase Four scheme,14 an initiative that invests in
these were only
conceptualised as
the creation of recordings that will find popular and airplay acceptance, as
phases retrospectively well as additional promotion through an increase of staff pluggers and mar-
by the development of keting budget. Three categories of recording support have been enabled. The
Phase 4.
first of these is the New Recording Artist support, which provides funding of
$10,000 per project, comprising $5,000 to record a radio single and an addi-
tional (conditional) $5,000 to make a music video. Artists or bands can
apply for a maximum of two New Recording Artist grants. The stated
purpose of the grant is to find new artists and new songs that will work on
commercial radio, and to provide a track record on commercial radio for the
artists. The second funding category is the Album Funding scheme. New
Zealand On Air will match funding up to $50,000 to record an album by
artists with at least two current commercial radio hits to their name. The
album should have the potential to provide at least four additional radio hits.
The funding is recoupable on domestic sales of the record. Its intention is to
encourage record labels to invest in local recordings. Finally, funds are made
available through the Radio Hits grant, which provides a $5,000 reward-
based incentive for record companies whose artists achieve significant
airplay on commercial radio. New Zealand On Air does not seek applicants
for this funding category and, instead, contacts record labels directly after
analysing airplay logs. The top five most played New Zealand singles in any
quarter are awarded the grant. However, songs that have already benefited
from the support of New Zealand On Air, either through the New Recording
Artist scheme or if the song is from a recording made with the assistance of
Album Funding, are not eligible for a Radio Hits grant.
As of December 2005, almost exactly half of Radio Hits grants were
awarded to independent record labels (220 of 436), including all those who
have distribution deals through major labels, but not including those
‘indies’ that are owned outright as subsidiaries of the majors. Sony BMG is
by far the label with the most Radio Hits grants to its name and, while this
draws attention to the fact that public funding is being paid directly into a
multi-national, multi-million dollar business to reward its commercial
success, it also highlights the label’s active role in the recording, marketing
and distribution of local artists.
Voluntary targets
Despite both Marian Hobbs’ undaunted enthusiasm for local content
quotas for radio and the industry’s outright antagonism to the idea, in
March 2002, the RBA, under the direction of Executive Director David
28 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 29
Innes, came to a proposed solution in conjunction with the Minister: 15 The cultural
Voluntary Content Targets. The targets were a series of moving goalposts consideration of
allowing New
that the commercial radio industry would endeavour to reach, and these Zealanders to hear
were variable according to station format. ‘Legacy’ brands that played their musical heritage
was not a factor.
exclusively older music were exempt on the basis that the initiative was
16 The brainchild of New
designed to favour the contemporary local music industry.15 Within five Zealand broadcasters
years, Contemporary Hit Radio and Rock formats were to strive to reach Peter Urlich and Mark
Tierney, Popstars was
20% local content. Although the commercial radio industry was reluctant the first of the
to support New Zealand music on the basis that it was an unknown quan- contemporary
tity and (as they asserted) ‘nobody likes it,’ they maintained that the vol- elimination-based
television talent
untary targets were a tremendous display of goodwill on their part. The shows. The format
Minister agreed to the proposal, and to refrain from imposing mandatory was licensed around
the world, and
quotas, though she reserved the right to re-introduce them if the targets adaptations such as
were not adhered to sufficiently. Although a victory for the government’s X-Factor and Pop Idol
dominate music on
plan to foster and encourage local music through representation on air, network television
the deal provided the commercial broadcasting sector with powerful lobby- worldwide.
ing leverage. They now had a bargaining chip to take off the table if nego-
tiations in other areas (such as the YRN and the 2011 licence expiry) did
not proceed according to plan. As the Prime Minister was also the Minister
for Arts, Culture and Heritage, local content would always take priority
over other considerations when it came to broadcasting legislation.
Despite their claims for the risks they were taking in playing local music,
broadcasters knew that radio creates hits far more than it follows the taste
of its audience. Through exposure comes familiarity and popularity. This
was to prove to be a no-lose deal for the RBA.
Other significant, though not necessarily related, events followed in
quick succession: Marian Hobbs was replaced by Steve Maharey as
Minister of Broadcasting; the Youth Radio Network left its place at the top
of the government’s agenda; incumbent broadcasters were assured first
right of refusal and market rates for FM spectrum beyond 2011; and the
Kiwi Music Action Group settled its differences between members and
went on to transform New Zealand Music Week to New Zealand Music
Month – a nationwide celebration of local popular music throughout the
month of May. Unsurprisingly, the more radio played local music, the more
radio audiences liked local music. At first, the inclusion of more New
Zealand content was unheralded, many listeners being unaware of the
geographical origins of the music they were hearing. However, the success
of 1999’s Popstars television phenomenon, which resulted in the creation
of the country’s first manufactured girl band, ‘True Bliss’, had already
prompted enthusiasm from radio audiences and record buyers despite its
obvious local origins.16 It became increasingly clear that acknowledging
and promoting local music on the basis of its localism was good practice.
Playing New Zealand Music quickly became an instrument of public rela-
tions, with stations beginning to use the proportion of local content they
played as an inducement to listeners. For the first time, New Zealand
Music was something that artists, labels, and commercial radio stations
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 29
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 30
could all agree on, and audiences demonstrated their support of local
content at retail, as reported in Billboard magazine:
Radio stations had almost exclusively positive responses from its audiences
– and even unrelated businesses were keen to use the ‘New Zealand Music
Renaissance’ as a springboard for their own marketing. Major New
Zealand brewery Lion Industries ran a billboard campaign for Lion Red
Beer in May 2004. The signs simply read ‘We Love New Zealand Music’ on
a red background, accompanied by the Lion logo.
30 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 31
making room for it simply because it happens to come from Auckland, 17 An Iwi station is one
Wellington or Christchurch? that is owned by
Maori tribal interests.
It’s a valid concern: with the exception of popular country artist Barry The New Zealand
Saunders, the genres represented in the New Zealand On Air album government allocates
spectrum for Iwi
funding all fit within existing mainstream radio formats, covering a com- broadcasting, and this
paratively narrow range of rock, pop, hip hop and R&B. Reggae makes an is assigned to
geographically-
appearance, though this is not entirely unusual for commercial radio centred tribal
formats in New Zealand. Moreover, in the case of reggae band Katchafire, groupings (Iwi)
around the country.
the record label funded to produce the record (Mai Music) is wholly owned These are not
by the radio station most likely to play it (Mai FM). This ownership of a auctioned or leased in
record label by a mainstream commercial radio station – even an Iwi the usual way, as this
segment of the
station17 – seems to go significantly beyond what would, in international spectrum is not
terms, be characterised as ‘payola.’ However, the fact that it means broad- considered to be
under Crown
cast exposure, artist development and sales success for a New Zealand act ownership. However,
means that it is not only overlooked but actively encouraged by policy- Iwi stations are not
required to be public
makers. broadcasters – or
Much of the comment on the effectiveness of Phase Four and New even not-for-profit
organisations. They
Zealand music on radio takes place on the NZ Radio List – a discussion are managed as the
forum for industry professionals and interested observers.18 The list is tribe sees fit to best
open to the public, and as such is an open forum, but membership is dom- benefit the
community, the tribe
inated by industry and media professionals. One list member, known by and the region. In the
the pseudonym Delphypop but generally reckoned from context and com- case of Mai FM, the
Ngati Whatua tribe
ments to be directly involved with releasing and promoting independent run it as a successful
music, sums up one of the problems for New Zealand music he sees as commercial business
enterprise. Playing a
stemming from NZ On Air initiatives: mix of urban, hip
hop, pop and
contemporary R&B, it
I think it was a good move to push the easy stuff first, soften them up etc, but is one of the most
without stage 2 and 3 plan that initial solution has lead to bands striving to listened-to music
compromise their sounds so they can be part of the club. I know this cos I see radio stations in
Auckland, New
it and hear bands talking about it in the studio. bands who would otherwise Zealand’s most
be creating a valid and original sound are contemplating how they can populous city.
bland themselves out so they can be eligible for an NZ on Air grant, which 18 http://groups.
yahoo.com/group/
requires you to be commercial radio playable. I think a two tiered scheme nzradio
would be appropriate where NZ on Air soften up com radio with some easily
19 http://groups.
digestible tracks and then slowly push some of that pure nz originality yahoo.com/group/
through the open door. that’s not policy at the moment, and it should be. nzradio/message/
6459
Com radio should be expected to come to the part rather than nz on air
bringing the party to them, to their specs.
NZ Radio List, Message #6459, January 14, 200419
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 31
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 32
20 http://groups. observable way to do the job that he actually has. In response to a similar
yahoo.com/group/ thread on the NZ Radio List, Smyth writes:
nzradio/message/
2097
What counts for us is airplay on commercial radio which is where we need
to make a difference because that is where there is (still) not enough New
Zealand music. Not just any airplay. Getting more New Zealand music
played on commercial radio so that the local content figures go up, up, up.
So that New Zealand music is not the preserve of student radio. So that
commercial radio - where most people are listening - pushes and passes
student radio. So that New Zealand music is no longer a ghetto and a
minority interest sport. Personally, I have always believed that the best
thing that a niche or specialist music label can do is export, export, export.
Forget radio. Radio - commercial radio - is a mass, mainstream medium.
Forget NZ On Air. NZ On Air is about airplay and is committed to getting
more of it in the mainstream where there is not enough but where most of
the people are listening.
NZ Radio List, Message #2097, March 15, 200220
At a time when New Zealand On Air has entered into its next phase
(Phase Five, as it is called) and is actively promoting and supporting the
export of New Zealand music to other international markets, questions
must be raised with the benefit of hindsight as to the helpfulness of a strat-
egy that implicitly encouraged small and independent local popular music
producers to be more or less indistinguishable in genre and approach from
the international repertoire with major corporate financial backing.
Competing on the world stage is not a problem in terms of quality or
fitness for purpose but a simple marketing question based on a unique
selling point. In other words, by normalising New Zealand music in the
ears and minds of New Zealanders (including those of New Zealand radio
station programmers), New Zealand On Air may well have made the task
of selling it to the world much more difficult. While they have been
demonstrably successful in getting more local music on the radio, the fact
of the music’s geographical origins as a criteria for selection may not have
been sufficient to fulfil the long-term aspirations of the organisation.
Choosing music based on its inherent New Zealandness is a thorny and
problematic challenge to take on but perhaps wrestling with issues such as
these at an earlier stage, rather than refusing to question the New
Zealandness of a New Zealand-based act, may have been worth the effort
in the light of the end goal.
It is not as if this goal – of an export-led music economy – could not
have been foreseen. The example of Ireland has long been at the heart of
discussions around music quotas in New Zealand. Irish music is arguably
globally successful exactly to the extent to which it is distinctively Irish.
Gerry Smyth’s Noisy Island (2005) grapples with exactly these issues of
national identity and globalisation, discussing the ways in which cultural
nationalism has contributed to a globalised popular music success story
32 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 33
based on difference within established international practices of popular 21 Fat Freddy’s Drop
music culture (Smyth 2005). have subsequently
been featured on NZ
The extent to which the New Zealand music story is comparable with On Air’s Kiwi Hit
that of other countries is debatable. It is still possible – and yet to be seen – Discs and edited
versions of their
whether the New Zealand popular music voice is sufficiently distinctive to typically long songs
international ears to earn the title of a kiwi sound or, at least, be recog- have been playlisted
on commercial radio
nised as a notable national musical accent. It is interesting to note that the in New Zealand.
most significant success in New Zealand popular music, both at home and Though these have
arguably contributed
internationally in recent years has been that of Fat Freddy’s Drop – a band greatly to record
whose record existed (at least initially) entirely outside of the realms of sales, the funders
public funding, radio broadcast and record labels, and yet whose unmis- have only come on
board after it was
takable New Zealandness was a key to their widespread acceptance both at clear that the band’s
home and abroad.21 The album Based on a True Story is the single biggest- popular success was
undeniable and that
selling album of all time by a New Zealand act, remaining in the charts their distinctive New
after three years. It was named by popular British broadcaster Gilles Zealandness was not
incompatible with
Peterson as his ‘album of the year’ in 2005 and the band have toured the their widespread
United Kingdom and Europe several times since its release, including a appeal.
performance at the 2007 Glastonbury festival. Critics point to Fat Freddy’s
Drop as evidence that the New Zealand On Air and state-sponsored com-
mercial radio route to popular music success is not only a shortsighted
policy that leads to increased exposure but also to an increase in derivative
material that adds nothing to either the cultural capital or export potential
of New Zealand music.
It is instructive to consider the New Zealand example in this instance
from a wider perspective, for two main reasons. Firstly, the problem of
whether or not to prioritise locally produced music on local radio is virtu-
ally a universal one, and New Zealand is an example that scales well to
regions in other and more populous countries (for instance, the UK’s West
Midlands has a similar population size to New Zealand). Secondly, as the
most deregulated radio market on the planet, New Zealand provides a ref-
erence for other broadcasting political economies that seem to have irrev-
ocable tendencies in the same direction.
More important than the question of how to get more local content on
radio seems to be the question of why. Several possible answers present
themselves: to promote music business at the local level; to promote local
music cultures and scenes; to improve local representation in radio in
general; to enhance and propagate local culture; to eventually contribute
to the growth of an industry through export; to provide an environment
in which New Zealanders see music as a valid and rewarding career
choice, and so forth. The main criticism that can reasonably be levelled at
New Zealand On Air is not to have asked the question in the first place.
The success of New Zealand On Air in providing an environment in
which more New Zealanders hear more music produced in New Zealand
by New Zealanders is unarguable. However, in so doing, they have raised
the more troubling, controversial and thorny issue of the extent to which
that music is actually ‘New Zealand Music’.
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand . . . 33
RJ-5-1_04-Dubber 12/4/07 12:58 PM Page 34
References
Cloonan, Martin (1999), ‘Pop and the Nation-State: Towards a Theorisation.’
Popular Music, 18: 2, pp. 193–207.
Ferguson, John (2003), ‘Kiwi industry celebrates with music month,’ Billboard: 53.
Frith, Simon (1992), ‘End of the wedge,’ New Statesman & Society, 5, pp. 38–39.
McChesney, Robert (1999), ‘The new global media: It’s a small world of big con-
glomerates,’ The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/doc/
19991129/mcchesney on 8 June, 2007.
Kelsey, Jane (1999), Reclaiming the Future: New Zealand and the Global, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Neill, Karen and Shanahan, Morris W. (2004), ‘The Evolution of New Zealand
Radio’, in Goode, Luke and Zuberi, Nabeel (eds.), Media Studies in Aotearoa/New
Zealand, Auckland: Pearson Education, pp. 105–121.
Neill, Karen and Shanahan, Morris W. (eds.) (2005), The Great New Zealand Radio
Experiment, Victoria: Thomson Dunmore Press.
Rosenberg, Bill (2004), News Media Ownership in New Zealand, CAFCA (Campaign
Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa), retrieved from http://canterbury.cyberplace.
org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscellaneous/mediaown.pdf on 3
June, 2007.
Shuker, Roy (1994), ‘Climbing the Rock: the New Zealand music industry,’ in
Hayward, Philip, Mitchell, Tony and Shuker, Roy (eds.), North Meets South: Popular
Music in Aotearoa/New Zealand, NSW: Perfect Beat Publications, pp. 16–27.
Shuker, Roy and Pickering, Michael (1995), ‘Kiwi Rock: Popular Music and
Cultural Identity in New Zealand,’ Popular Music, 13: 3, pp. 261–278.
Smyth, Gerry (2005), Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music, Cork: Cork
University Press.
Zanker, Ruth (1996), ‘Radio in New Zealand in an age of media plenty,’ Continuum,
10: 1, pp. 33–49.
Suggested citation
Dubber, A. (2007), ‘Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing
New Zealand identity through commercial radio’, The Radio Journal – Interna-
tional Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1, pp. 19–34, doi: 10.1386/
rajo.5.1.19/1
Contributor details
Andrew Dubber is Senior Lecturer in Music Industries at Birmingham City University,
where he teaches courses on radio production, music industries, music programming
for radio and online music. His research interests lie mainly in the area of new media
in radio and music business. His website http://newmusicstrategies.com applies
this research in a practical manner for the music and radio industries. Recent pub-
lications include ‘McLuhanising Radio: Essaying a Media Ecology Approach to
Technological Shift in New Zealand Radio Broadcasting’, Communication Journal of
New Zealand, 2007 (vol 8, no. 1), pp. 23–41, and ‘The Digitalisation of Radio in
New Zealand’ in The Great New Zealand Radio Experiment, Karen Neill and Morris
Shanahan (eds.), Victoria: Thomson Dunmore Press 2005. Contact: Department of
Media and Communication, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham,
B42 2SU.
E-mail: Andrew.dubber@bcu.ac.uk
34 Andrew Dubber
RJ-5-1_05-Wall 12/4/07 1:00 PM Page 35
Abstract Keywords
Radio stations based at universities make up only about 11% of all over-the-air music radio
stations in the United States of America, but college radio is often presented as radio music
offering an alternative in music radio to the for-profit stations that dominate the programming
airwaves. College stations are now seen as a key means of promoting ‘indie rock’. music genres
This article traces the development of university-based radio stations in the college radio
United States, and reports on a five-year study of music programming in three USA radio history
stations based in Boston and New York, to examine their claim to alternativeness. alternative media
The paper concludes that the stations do use different forms of music program-
ming, that the programming extends well beyond the scope of ‘indie rock’ and that
the current notions of alternativeness utilised by station staff have their roots in
the development of the sector from the 1920s onwards.
There are over 1400 college radio stations in the United States of America 1 1400 as a proportion
(Quadphonic 2007). They are widely seen to offer an alternative to the of the 12,600 that
the Federal
radio music programming found on over-the-air stations run by for-profit Communications
companies; so widely so that the proposition is used as an assumption for Commission count as
the number of
other forms of investigation, rather than the core of research itself (see, for broadcasting stations
instance, Tremblay 2003). Certainly, the frequencies from 88.1 and 91.9 in the United States of
America.
MHz, where college radio stations are normally to be found in North Commission, Federal
America, usually provide the main alternative to traditional format radio. Communications.
1999. Broadcast
At 11%1 of all licensed radio broadcasters, college radio stations consti- Station Totals,
tute a small but significant part of the US national radio system. The over- 1990–1999,
whelming majority of college stations mainly programme recorded music, www.fcc.gov/mmb/
asd/totals/index.html.
and they are now understood as a distinct radio market and an effective 2007.
promotional medium for the music business. As I will show, by the late 2 See, for instance,
1980s the term ‘college rock’ had been coined to identify the music asso- promotions Music
Media
ciated with these practices, and a small, but thriving, music promotions (www.musicmedianet
industry with promotions houses, specialist magazines and playlist charts work.com) and Apples
and Cats
was operating.2 (www.applesandcats.
Nevertheless, college radio stations are infrequently studied, and no com), specialist
detailed attention has been paid to the sorts of music programming prac- magazine and chart
CMJ (http://www.
tices used by the staff in college stations. This study offers a modest contri- cmj.com/).
bution to opening up this field for more detailed analysis. It is based upon
3 Calculated with a small qualitative study of three stations over a five-year period from
information from 2002, including an analysis of station output, interviews with key station
www.radio-
locator.com, and personnel and observation of their programming and broadcast practices.
population statistics The three stations I looked at were as follows: WFUV, based at Fordham
from
http://quickfacts.cens University in the Bronx, New York; WERS, based at Emerson College,
us.gov. Boston and WZBC, based at Boston College, Boston. The New York station
is one of 13 college stations out of 71 licensed over-the-air stations in all,
for a city population of 8,085,742 (approximately one station for every
100,000 potential listeners). The Boston stations are two of nine college
stations out of 75 licensed over-the-air stations radio stations in all, for a
population of 589,141 (approximately one station for every 6,600 poten-
tial listeners).3 They were selected because they each offer very distinctive
outputs, noticeably different from each other, and from the for-profit sta-
tions that can be heard in the same locales. In particular, I set myself the
goal of evaluating the extent to which these differences in broadcast
output could be understood in relation to the music programming prac-
tices they utilised, the ideas that the station staff articulated about the role
of the station, the music that they played and its relationship to the com-
munities in which they broadcast and the colleges which owned them.
I present the results of this study within an intellectual framework con-
structed through an understanding of the position of these three college
stations within the historical development of the United States’ national
radio system, and the discourses of alternativeness that are woven into dis-
cussions of popular music culture and radio music programming. I, there-
fore, start my investigation with a deconstruction of the proposition that
university-based radio stations constitute an alternative broadcast culture.
This historical analysis is then used as the basis for an exploration of the
discourses of alternativeness within popular music culture, as they pertain
to programming on music radio stations. In the main body of this article, I
outline my findings from an examination of the college broadcasters and
their station practices. I conclude with some reflections on what has been
discovered, and what it may mean for further studies in this area.
36 Tim Wall
RJ-5-1_05-Wall 12/4/07 1:00 PM Page 37
cultural ‘uplift’. In this they juxtaposed their intentions to utilise the new
medium for broader social purposes against those of for-profit broadcasters,
who aimed to maximise audience size as a means to attract programme
sponsors. The debate is captured in a contemporary commentary, in which
a professor of political science at The University of Chicago, Jerome Kerwin,
argues that profit maximisation was incompatible with educational pro-
gramming because, ‘in order to secure the largest audiences which the
advertisers want and will pay for, it is necessary to stage the least elevating
types of programme’ (Smulyan 1994: 135). Vaillant’s study of the
Wisconsin state station WHA in the 1920s indicates that music was an
important part of a culturally ‘uplifting’ programming mix. Performances
of classical music by the university’s orchestra were central to an attempt to
produce music programming noticeably different from what WHA’s first
broadcast chief referred to as the ‘jazz and other worthless material’ broad-
cast by for-profit stations (quoted in Vaillant 2002: 64).
Smulyan (1994) has characterised the period in radio history from
1920 to 1934 as a struggle between organisations representing, on the
one hand, the primacy of social objectives versus those in pursuit of profit;
a struggle in which ‘commercialization’ eventually won out. The progres-
sive agenda of the early university stations had difficulties surviving in an
environment in which federal policy tended towards a ‘corporate liberal-
ism’ that privileged certain forms of ownership, versions of intellectual
property rights and the commodification of audiences that benefited for-
profit corporate oligopolies (Streeter 1996). Regulatory changes in 1927,
and the policies of the Federal Radio Commission in particular, made it
increasingly difficult for such stations to survive against growing competi-
tion from profit-maximising stations funded by sponsorship. In the five
years to 1926, 177 licences were issued to educational stations; only 12
were issued in the five years from 1927, and only 38 of the 202 stations
licensed in the fifteen years since 1921 were still running in 1936
(Smulyan 1994: 130).
While the historical record of the politics of regulation bears out
Smulyan’s analysis, there are another set of dimensions to the issue that
were as important for the early college radio stations as they are eighty
years later. State universities and land grant colleges seemed to be most
successful in keeping their licences, perhaps because of their collective
commitment to a progressive mission of education, cultural ‘uplift’, eco-
nomic and technological development and the modernist aspirations of
senior staff. However, the managers of these stations still struggled with
questions about the processes involved in programming decisions, the rela-
tionships between the programming in the university-based stations and
that of other broadcasters and of the relationships between the broadcast-
ers and the communities who could listen to the station. Vaillant’s study of
the operation of WHA in the 1920s sets the desires of the station’s staff to
be part of a project to ‘rejuvenate and reform rural culture through edu-
cational programmes and uplift’ against the reception of the programming
38 Tim Wall
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within music radio intensified new formats of music broadcasting were 4 The college stations
developed (Barnes 1988; Berland 1993), pop AM stations relied on well- were originally
licensed by the FCC
worked-through formulas to hold market share. These formulas were under class D licenses
only challenged in the late 1960s and early 1970s by stations operating in the main, to
broadcast on 10-watt
on the FM band. transmitters using FM
College radio, as distinct from university-based radio stations, devel- on frequencies from
88.1 to 91.9 MHz.
oped in the 1960s, to some degree in parallel with FM radio as a technical
method of transmission and as a style of music radio. Both the expanded
college stations and the for-profit stations explored new forms of presenta-
tion and music programming aimed at a rising, young and increasingly
wealthy middle class population that saw itself as part of a music-centric
counterculture (Eyerman and Jamison 1998: 106–139). This expansion
in music radio took advantage of the opportunity to transmit on the
underused VHF band, and of regulatory changes that discouraged simul-
taneous AM and FM broadcasting.
Transmission of sound by modulating the frequency of the radio wave,
rather than its amplitude, had been established by RCA as early as 1935,
but the technical challenges of broadcasting pictures, the Second World
War, and regulatory changes over the frequencies of VHF transmission
standards meant that a settled system was not in place until it was used to
send stereo signals as part of the development of domestic high-fidelity
audio playback systems (Shingler and Wieringa 1998: 7–10). The
retarded social application of FM radio and the relatively high cost of FM
receivers created an underused broadcast space that, in contrast to the
highly formatted AM broadcasters, allowed experimentation with music
programming and presentation that was later to be called freeform radio.
In Steven Van Zandt’s mythologising words, the form of broadcasting that
developed as FM in the United States was ‘quieter, even though it was
louder. Peaceful, while it spoke of revolution. Slower, while we evolved at
an inconceivably rapid pace’ (2001: viii). The presenters, and their choices
of music, were actively constructed as offering an alternative to AM pop
radio where, in the contemporary critique from freeform radio pioneer
Tom Donahue, ‘the disc jockeys have become robots performing their
inanities at the direction of programmers who have succeeded in totally
squeezing the human element out of their sound’ (1967: 2).
These freeforms of music radio returned the control of music selection
to the programme presenter, who adopted an antithetical style to AM pop
radio, purposely juxtaposing music of very different styles; playing lengthy
album tracks rather than high-rotation singles; talking slowly for long
periods, or not at all; never interrupting a music track and maybe even
leaving pregnant pauses (Keith 1997; Neer 2001). The presentation styles
were of particular appeal to college students, who adopted many of the
practices in their new low-power4 campus stations.
By contrast, the main thrust of forms of cultural uplift programming,
which had motivated the university-based broadcasters of half a century
before, was focused on the development of a national public radio system.
In the early 1970s, the newly formed NPR distributed classical music con-
certs for broadcast by public stations, but they did little to engage with a
wider issue of diversity of music (McCourt 1999). However, the trajectories
of anti-format broadcasting, alternative provision and cultural uplift were
to play out in music culture and college radio over the next-thirty five
years, through the idea of alternative music cultures.
40 Tim Wall
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5 CMJ started as College output, and incremental but significant change over the five-year period.
Media Journal, My analysis shows that these music programming practices drew on the
developing through
the boom of college differing repertoires that operate in the wider music cultures associated
rock into a reviews with the forms of music played.
and charts
publication, In more straight-forward terms, there is not one type of alternative-
mediating between ness; and the distinctive sense of alternativeness articulated by the jazz,
independent record
companies and world, indie rock, folk and Americana music played on the college stations
station staff at college was as much rooted in the cultural histories of those musical genres as it
radio stations.
was in the way they were programmed and presented. In addition, the cul-
tural uplift agenda of the 1920s’ university-based stations, the progressive
mission that underlay the birth of NPR, and the counter-cultural radio
form of the 1960s are all also apparent to different degrees in the way that
the alternativeness of the music is articulated within the stations and on
air. The music itself, the programming practices, and the presentation
styles, then, operate as a ‘homology’ which, paraphrasing Hebdige para-
phrasing Levis-Straus, we can understand as the ‘symbolic fit’ between
production values, subjective experience and musical forms (Hebdige
1979: 113). These become apparent if we explore the way that college
radio deals with genre styles of indie rock, jazz and world and folk.
In the 1980s, the association between college radio and certain forms of
rock music became so strong that the homology was articulated in the term
‘college rock’. In a retrospective attempt to capture the trajectory of the
term, All Music Guide presented it as a ‘confluence of new wave, post-punk,
and early alternative rock’ with better selling bands with ‘thoughtful lyrics
and socially conscious idealism’, ending in 1991 with the introduction of
many of the bands into commercial station playlists after college rock staple
Nirvana gained international commercial success (AMG 2007). Certainly,
by 1987, the New York Times linked college stations with emergent forms of
rock, and six years later presented college radio as key to the development of
what would become known as grunge (Pareles 1987; Schoemer 1992).
The ordering of alternative rock codified the experimental forms of free
form radio that developed in colleges in the early years of FM into a more
organised, and probably more widely palatable, radio format, just as the
introduction of station programmers on commercial FM stations had built
its elements into the AOR (Adult Orientated Rock) format (Neer 2001).
Negus suggests that the growth of interest in college radio by record com-
panies during the late 1980s moved the stations away from the domain of
enthusiasts and a maverick image (Negus 1992: 103). The codification of
college radio as a format is most apparent in the development of CMJ5 as a
taste leader amongst station staff. Key to the sense of rock music’s alterna-
tiveness in the accounts is a merged sense that the music is exciting, sub-
stantial, authentic and occasionally experimental, set against a view of
music programming on commercial radio as indifferent, lightweight, man-
ufactured and formulaic.
By contrast, jazz programming has tended to construct a sense of alter-
nativeness by following a pattern set within a paradigm established by
42 Tim Wall
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100% 0%
WFUV WERS WZBC
Just listening to their output of the three stations makes the differences
apparent. WZBC in Boston offers the least conventional approach, articu-
lating a strong sense of difference from other broadcasters that could be
heard in the same city, and a style that relates back to the significant pro-
gramming practices of 1970s underground radio. At the other end of the
comparison, WFUV in New York can be understood to be closer to the
conventions of professional broadcasting. While their output has no com-
mercial adverts and the music they played is less frequently or never heard
on other stations in New York, their output is clearly ordered around
hourly clocks, they play sponsor-statements where spot commercials
would go, and records are clearly rotated across programmes. Today,
WERS lies somewhere between the other two, offering structured pro-
grammed output but with music not played on their for-profit competitors.
They have made the biggest change over the years, and the alteration in
their programming is detailed below.
WZBC
Over the five years of my study, WZBC in Boston remained very much a
freeform station with no centralised music programming. However, that
did not mean that all types of music were played. By articulating itself as a
‘freeform’ station, it was working to a format. The presenters were chosen
because of their knowledge of key areas of music, and they were expected
to play mainly indie rock with some electronica and dance influences. Nor
did it mean that there was no central control, because the station’s output
day was organised around a defined programme schedule, with little
variety of music across the weekday daytime (although there were some
distinctions of programmes by musical genre).
44 Tim Wall
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6 Sampled in October were very concerned about the appointment of an advisor from the faculty
2007. staff to work with the station. In particular, the station staff were concerned
that this represented an attempt by the college to remove the independence
of the station, and the issue that was emphasised most, to influence pro-
gramming. Although the station now has a clearer organisational struc-
ture – with a general manager and directors for programmes, operations,
music and six other station functions – programming decisions remain
strongly at the level of the programme and in the hands of presenters.
Although WZBC is part of the National Public Radio network, this
seemed to have little impact on the sense of the station articulated by on-
air staff and listeners, and it did not heavily determine the majority of its
programming. The main ordering of this affiliation was to be found in a
daily mid-day broadcast segment called Democracy Now, a speech-based
news and current affairs service funded by listener subscriptions, and pro-
gressively liberal in stance.
WERS
WERS in Boston changed the most over my five-year period, becoming
more centralised and replacing a strong block-programming system based
upon genre forms with a more traditional strip-music radio system, and a
programming policy closer to the college radio norm. In 2002, weekday
shows were organised in mainly three-hour blocks, through daytime to
night time as: folk/indie; jazz; world; reggae; hip hop; rock. The weekends
featured: women artists; show tunes; a cappella; children’s; Punk; Metal;
Blues. By late 2005, these shows had been replaced by a daytime strip
from 2 a.m. to 7 p.m., playing what is claimed to be ‘a blend of folk, rock,
jazz, world, blues, soul, electronic and reggae’; and evening three-hour
shows for reggae and then hip hop (WERS 2007). The most obviously
casualty of the change was the amount of jazz programmed, which fell
from 20% of daytime playout to one or two tracks a day, usually by artists
like jam band Medeski, Martin and Wood. Nevertheless, it was possible to
hear a running order that went through country artist Johnny Cash, indie
rockers Pinback, electronica band Thievery Corporation, avant rock
Midlake, singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright and indie-folkie Jose
Gonzalez in a single half-hour.6 Very little of the music played on WERS
would be played on WZBC, even though the latter sees itself as a freeform
station with no restrictions on what was played. So, while WERS contin-
ued to cover a wider variety of music, it moved from a schedule differenti-
ated at the level of the programme to a more coherent, station-level sound.
Like WZBC, WERS is a student-run station. However, while WZBC had
no developed organisational structure or hierarchy in 2002, and a very
loose one in 2007, WERS had a very clear, if atypical (for the US radio
industry), structure. There is a station general manager (a paid post) and
an assistant GM, a programme director, a music director, a news director,
a productions director, a sports director, PR and promotions team, and in
2003 there were 17 programme co-ordinators. During my visits at that
46 Tim Wall
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time I talked to the outgoing general manger, the programme director and
music director, along with three of the programme co-ordinators and pre-
senters. Night-time broadcast music was automated, but in 2003 they
used a very interesting playlist-based programming system for all weekday
shows, which was organised by the 18-strong programming staff.
The station staff felt they broadcast to the greater Boston area,
although they believed that a sizable proportion of their listeners would be
students, and the station used the name of the college frequently in their
on-air talk and in the pre-produced idents. Rather than a commitment to
a particular lifestyle, WERS staff were either interested in a career in
broadcasting, or felt that it was an effective way to pursue their interest in
particular kinds of music. A key issue initiated by more senior staff in our
discussions was how they could ensure that presenters with a developing
interest in a specialist music could overcome the limitations of their expe-
rience thus far. Presenters themselves felt that they wanted control over
the content of their programmes, but valued being part of a larger team
that organised the block-music programmes, and all valued the access to
new music that was created by the central music playlist system they used
at that time.
The 2003 playlists were produced by the music director and pro-
gramme co-ordinators, and then adapted by the different presenters who
worked on specific programmes in a rota. The playlists were made avail-
able to the station’s presenters through a series of boxes of CDs within the
studios. Presenters then played some of the tracks from some of the CDs
within the box during their shows – although the actual quantity varied
considerably from presenter to presenter – and chose the rest of the
running order themselves in 15 minute blocks as the show proceeded. By
the end of the five-year period, the station’s daytime programming oper-
ated on an entirely centralised playlist, although the presenters of the spe-
cialist reggae and hip hop shows had freedom to select their own music.
The earlier programming format also influenced the presentation style
heavily. The tradition of jazz programming, with informed presenters
giving detailed discographic or contextual information was common.
Tracks were presented in their entirety and they were often preceded or
followed by moments of dead air. The presenters explained that this
ensured that the music was the centre of attention, and marked out their
style from that found on other stations. These practices remained fairly
constant even after the music programming systems changed. Something
of the aspirations of the station’s leaders can be grasped from the current
strap line used to promote the station – ‘music for the independent mind’,
and the fact that WERS streams on iTunes under the ‘eclectic’ category.
The staff paralleled the college’s commitment to education with their own
attempt to understand more about the music they played, and to share the
music and information with a wider audience. This was not often articu-
lated as ‘cultural uplift’ because station staff thought of themselves as
broadcasting to already knowledgeable or interested listeners in the
WFUV
WFUV in New York is much closer to the approach of format stations
elsewhere in the US industry, although the format it works with is quite
distinctive, and the staff and many listeners feel they offer an alternative to
the majority of mainstream radio. Station staff spoke quite proudly of the
station as an AAA station, and their role in establishing the format within
more conventional radio practice. This format – Album Adult Alternative –
is relatively new in US radio, although it has antecedents in Adult
Oriented Rock (AOR) and Adult Contemporary (AC) formats. As the
names suggest all three are aimed at adult (aged 25+) listeners and grew
out of FM radio. AAA stations are presented, in the words of station staff,
as offering an alternative to the ‘rock-clichés and rock-lite formula of
AOR’, and the ‘pop sensibilities of AC’, by playing ‘music at the margins’ of
American rock, with a strong folk/acoustic and world music flavour.
Most shows, and especially in the daytime, were conventionally format-
ted with a programme schedule, clocks and playlists. The schedule was
unusual because it initially seemed to eschew the usual breakfast/mid-
morning/afternoon/drivetime format. Weekday from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.
was branded as ‘City Folk’, and the website did not give prominence to the
presenters, although on air each daily programme had a regular presen-
ter, and they offered quite distinctive individual identities. The shows
themselves did contain conventional rise and shine/drivetime elements,
including frequent time checks, travel and weather information. Late
evening, night time and weekends featured more specialist folk, world
music and jazz/folk music shows, which were not centrally formatted. The
City Folk programmes featured conventional clocks; the other pro-
grammes were programmed in a more freeform manner by their specialist
presenters.
The more traditional approach to programming was reflected in a
more conventional organisational structure and a professional, rather
than student, workforce of a general manager, programme director and
music director, all of whom had been at the station for some time. All the
presenters were professionals, mostly well known on New York radio,
having moved from other stations which served WFUV’s listeners when
they were younger. All the station staff expressed particular commitments
to the station and there was very little turn over of staff during the five
48 Tim Wall
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years I followed the station. In discussing music and radio culture, they
drew on repertoires derived from underground rock radio of the 1970s,
but argued that they sustained these values within a musical and eco-
nomic format that could survive in the current radio market. The core
managers felt that ‘city folk’ communicated particularly important ideas
about updating, in an urban format, some traditional perspectives of value
and authenticity in music, which had been prevalent as they grew up. The
presenters explicitly connected their current work with their roles in other
New York stations, which had now moved on to what they saw as more
‘commercial formats’. Each spoke quite passionately about the need for
human connections and for radio where music was valued. They under-
stood their alternativeness explicitly in relation to the other for-profit sta-
tions. While staff at WZBC and WERS in 2003 felt that it was important to
have music and other programming systems that differed from for-profit
stations, the WFUV saw these as professional tools, which could be used
for another purpose. Their professionalism was very important to them,
and they used this self-identity to distinguish themselves from other
college stations. On the other hand, they associated themselves with the
college’s commitment to education as a way of distinguishing their values
from those of the stations whose primary objective was profit.
The music director worked with a basic three list structure. She called
these lists ‘Hots and Heavies’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Lites’. The terms refer to the
degree of rotation. So a ‘heavy’ would have seven to nine rotations in a
week, a ‘medium’ three to five and a ‘lite’ two plays. The turnover of
records was quite low, with four or five being dropped out and being added
each week. The heavies list of 16 tracks and medium 30 tracks would
combine new releases from artists with relatively long careers such as
Wilco, Pattie Smith, Toots and the Maytals, David Byrne, Badly Drawn
Boy, Gomez, Crosby and Nash and JJ Cale. Genre was a less important
issue for WFUV staff. They tended to talk about artists who had authentic-
ity or value that went beyond simple genre classifications. Nevertheless,
their artists tended to be drawn from America’s rock heritage, or from
genres like Reggae that tended to be associated with world music. Music
played with acoustic instruments was particularly valued.
The lites contained 25 artists who were less well known, or establishing
a name, although they played fairly eclectic lists of artists such as Scissor
Sisters, Joss Stone and Morrissey in this category before they established
wider reputations in other radio stations. It is noticeable how many inde-
pendent and boutique labels were represented in the play list. Only four or
five per playlist were from the main label of a major corporation. The
‘current’ lists were supported by a massive list of older records, which got
very low rotations but would be well known to listeners as they received
heavy radio play rotation at the time they were originally released.
The station played an important part in National Public Radio and
took its national and regional news from NPR. They also had a significant
news team that produced quite imaginative news items: there was no rip
and read at WFUV. The music and programming parts of the station were
contained within a single complex of rooms, but news occupied the
greater space at the far end of the station. Very few students worked at the
station, and the majority of those who did were interns in the newsroom.
One student intern was working with the director of music, and was very
interested in a career in radio.
It seems unlikely that WFUV neither had a large local listenership in
the Bronx nor was WFUV aimed at Fordham students (they are too young
for its target audience), and few worked at the station. The station carried
fairly well in the greater NYC area. The listener figures, and more impor-
tantly the listener subscriptions, were quite high. Unlike WZBC, but on the
same lines as WERS, WFUV took supporter messages as well. This is a
form of advertising that was heavily circumscribed by the station’s licence
to ensure it was not in competition with advertising-funded stations.
The university acted as a host, rather than inspiration for the station’s
work. However, just as Fordham is an affluent Gothic oasis in the bustling,
and less affluent, commercial streets of the multicultural borough of New
York City, the staff saw themselves to be in an oasis of privileged radio
culture set within a wider, more commercial and faster radio culture
outside.
Conclusions
Each of the stations I examined had very small listenerships when com-
pared with for-profit over-the-air stations, and they survived economically
mainly because of the in-kind subsidy of the university host and the free
labour of station staff. WFUV relied on generous sponsors and listener
financial support to offset higher professional staff costs. This relative priv-
ilege secured their position within the local radio market, and the US
national radio system as a whole.
As I have been able to show, the progressive mission of the early uni-
versity stations and the uplift agenda of public radio campaigners are
apparent in college radio even today, but certainly transformed through a
newer sensibility about popular music that is rooted in the 1960s’ counter
culture. All staff in all the stations saw themselves as offering a significant
alternative to the music programming of for-profit over-the-air broadcast-
ers. What that alternative was, and how it could be achieved, differed from
station to station, and it changed over the five years of my study. The
changes related to a struggle to define what the relationship of the broad-
casters were with the university’s mission, with their commitment to
music, and with their audience. Each station attempted a different solu-
tion, sometimes the product of the organisation of the station, and in part
defined by their particular geographical and cultural circumstances.
WZBC was one of the last refuges of Negus’ enthusiasts and mavericks,
and its staff saw themselves as involved in a counter-culture to American
society, often expressing themselves as an alternative within their host
institution, the prestigious Boston College. Although few staff had a
50 Tim Wall
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important in the handcraft of choosing music, even when they felt that
some forms of centralisation were needed to overcome the limitations of
presenters whose knowledge of music was just developing.
It is also interesting to note that, on the basis of my interviews at least,
the broadcasters who worked in these stations had only slight understand-
ing of the rich history of university-based radio, and yet were readily par-
ticipating in agendas of radio that were set in the 1920s, and practices
around music radio that were forged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Music radio as a whole remains lamentably understudied, and so it is
easy to fall back on rather too general statements about its function and
impact. The results presented here at least indicate that there is much to
be gained from the detailed study of the internal operation of single sta-
tions, in addition to placing them in the context of the wider flows of a
nation’s national system and cultural values.
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Suggested citation
Wall, T. (2007), ‘Finding an alternative: Music programming in US college radio’,
The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5: 1,
pp. 35–54, doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.35/1
Contributor details
Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City
University in the UK. He is chair of the Radio Studies Network and editor of the
Radio Journal. He researches and publishes widely on the relationship between
radio, popular music culture and the regulation and technology of communication
in society. He is author of Studying Popular Music Culture (Arnold) and is currently
researching a book on the development of radio culture. Contact: Department of
Media & Communication, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham,
B42 2SU, UK.
E-mail: tim.wall@bcu.ac.uk
54 Tim Wall
RJ-5-1_06-Reviews 12/4/07 1:01 PM Page 55
Reviews
The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media,
Volume 5 Number 1. © Intellect Ltd 2007.
Reviews. English language. doi: 10.1386/rajo.5.1.55/5
Book Reviews
Media Talk: Spoken Discourse on TV and Radio,
Andrew Tolson, (2005)
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 193 pp.,
ISBN 0 7846 1826 0 (pbk), £16.99
If it was not for the ceaseless streams of talk which animate the airways,
broadcasting would be a largely lifeless activity. Talk itself is utterly
protean, with forms, styles, idioms and utterances that are almost viral in
the way they proliferate. For scholars of discourse this is both talk’s fasci-
nation and its difficulty. By definition, talk is fluid, slipping effortlessly
between private and public contexts in the to-and-fro of conversational
exchanges. One of the strengths of Tolson’s welcome new book is to show
just how such interchanges can be traced, marked out and understood.
This he demonstrates by drawing together a developing body of work on
broadcast talk.
Talk is not only fluid; it is also managed and how broadcast talk
is managed lies at the heart of this book. Tolson tracks this by dividing
his book into two parts. The first discusses talk as a public activity
organised through the broadcast media; the second selects particular
broadcast genres of talk and examines these in detail. This allows Tolson
to tackle genres such as news, political, sports, youth, ordinary and
celebrity talk in a format that incorporates both radio (sports and youth
talk) and television. As a whole, the book is weighted towards television
rather than radio. It also appears squarely aimed at a British readership,
although he picks out examples from both sides of the Atlantic. In
celebrity talk, for example, he refers to the British Mrs Merton and the
American Oprah chat shows, while ‘ordinary talk’ includes the quasi-
therapy talk shows Trisha in the United Kingdom and Sally Jesse Raphael
in the United States.
The strength of the book lies in its series of clear, well-developed analy-
ses. Ranging across the variety of genres he selects, these illustrate how
transcripts can be taken apart and investigated to reveal the way conver-
sational exchanges are sequenced and enacted. He also demonstrates the
ways they are related to shifting talk styles and broadcast practices. For
example, in a particularly effective chapter on youth talk, he draws on
References
Heritage, J. (1985), ‘Analyzing News Interviews: Aspects of the Production of Talk
for Overhearing Audiences’, in T. Van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis,
Vol. 3, London: Academic Press.
Turner, G. (2003), ‘Ethics, Entertainment and the Tabloid: The Case of Talkback
Radio in Australia’, in C. Lumby and E. Probyn (eds.), Remote Control: New
Media, New Ethics, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
It is hardly surprising that John Reith’s early BBC was so keen to persuade
the literary and cultural elite (and especially the ‘Bloomsbury’ group) to
contribute radio talks. Given the cultural aspirations of the fledgling
organisation it made good sense to persuade these very public figures to
have their say and add their prestige to the new corporation. The list of
writers who went on air in the 1920s and 1930s was, to use Todd Avery’s
words, a ‘Who’s Who of literary modernism’. To take a small but signifi-
cant sample: Virginia Woolf gave three talks, Desmond McCarthy gave
‘scores’ of talks, T.S. Eliot (around 80), H.G. Wells (9), Leonard Woolf was
a regular broadcaster and E.M. Forster gave hundreds of radio talks on the
pre-war BBC.
The presence of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot in
a 1930s radio studio was highly significant for radio and also for the mod-
ernist movement. Drawing on recent accounts of the literary elite, Avery
offers a new understanding of the relationship between them and mass
culture and also provides the most detailed account of the Bloomsbury
talks available. In addition, for this reviewer at least, he also solves one or
two of BBC radio history’s more intractable dilemmas.
It is legitimate to ask why Bloomsbury wanted to speak into the air to
millions of their fellow citizens. A cursory reading of John Carey’s (1992)
influential The Intellectuals and the Masses is enough to suggest the
problem. He describes the modernist’s contempt for the masses and mass
culture and indeed goes further to provide a graphic account of their
hatred towards not only the working class but also the culturally aspirant
middle class. He offers evidence of a profound distrust of mass education,
raising the expectations of the masses and making them yet more dangerous.
Carey is not alone in this view and Avery refers to similar anti-modernist
sentiments in D.L. LeMahieu (1988). Hence the dilemma: why should the
enemies of the masses, mass culture and mass education give talks on the
BBC? Furthermore, why did Reith, the Christian moralist and puritan, a
man of intensely traditional and conservative views, allow the morally and
politically dubious modernists to broadcast?
This uneasy alliance, between the BBC and Bloomsbury, was of course
greatly assisted by the first Head of Talks, Hilda Matheson. Her contribu-
tion to the radio talk has been well documented elsewhere but Avery pro-
vides an important insight into the relationship between her famous
creation of the informal style of radio talks and the ethical basis of liter-
ary modernism. Matheson, very much an insider in the cultural and
social elite, advocated a mode of broadcast talk, which owed more to the
informality of conversation than the formality of public address. Avery
points out that conversation was fundamental to the Bloomsbury ethic.
Their ethical stance was largely derived from the philosopher, G.E. Moore,
who regarded conversation, the intimate exchange of ideas between indi-
viduals, as morally important. Bloomsbury talks can be seen as attempts
to reach the mass audience not in the crude propaganda radio of other
parts of Europe, but as a conversation between the talker and a mass of
individuals.
This fascinating, elegantly written and important book is primarily
addressed to modernist, rather than radio, scholars. But what it reveals
takes us to the heart of the BBC in the 1930s by describing the relation-
ship between the corporation and the modernist movement. Anyone inter-
ested in the formative period of British broadcasting might start with
Scannell and Cardiff ’s (1991) definitive account of the BBC and the public
sphere, then read Sean Street’s (2006) reminder of the importance of com-
mercial radio at the time before reading Avery’s book. In these three texts,
References
Carey, J. (1992), The Intellectuals and the Masses, London: Faber and Faber.
LeMahieu, D.L. (1988), A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Culti-
vated Mind in Britain Between the Wars, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Scannell, P. and David, C. (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, Vol. 1:
1922–1939, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Street, S. (2006), Crossing the Ether: British Public Service Radio and Commercial
Monopoly 1922–1945, Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing.
The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media | Volume Five Number One
THE RADIO JOURNAL
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN BROADCAST AND AUDIO MEDIA 5.1
Volume 5 Number 1 – 2007
Editorial
3–4 Peter M. Lewis
5–7
Articles
Sounding Out Radio
Martin Shingler
The Radio
9–18
19–34
Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: From QuickTime to podcasting
Enrico Menduni
Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing
New Zealand identity through commercial radio
Andrew Dubber
Journal
35–54 Finding an alternative: Music programming in US college radio International Studies in
Tim Wall
Broadcast & Audio Media
Reviews
55–60 Reviews by John Farnsworth and Hugh Chignell