Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952

I love this subject.Books written on the yearly years of broadcasting in America can be entertaining and engaging - but this is not one of them.I bought four books on this subject at the same time.This one was the least appealing of the bunch.The writing style fails to engage the reader. It is so dry and uninteresting that it is very difficult to read through.I cannot recommend this particular book. The other books Amazon offers on this subject are much better

The book's very title creates the impression that this is one of the delightful compendiums of a general encyclopedic sort, or perhaps even a history of announcers. Instead its contents are wedged between the tightly bound obsessions of all liberal academicians of our era: 1). the resolutely joyless comparison of past events and opinions held up to current era social standards and 2). a total preoccupation with racism and feminism and repression and "shallowism" and on and on and on.Unless your doctoral dissertation is about racism and the oppression of women in media, skip this dry, bitter tome and spend your money somewhere else!

Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-152 is a must read for those who wish to learn about this important period in our history. It is an excellent book for those who remember those wonderful days, and for those who want to learn what their parents or grandparents were talking about!

I may be out of practice at reading academic writing - it has been a while since college - but I found Radio Voices a chore to get through. The dry writing style within did nothing to help make the reading less of a frustrating challenge.I'm tempted to give this book a 1-star review, but that would not be fair. I honestly respect the amount of information in Radio Voices and the research done by the author and anyone who helped her is impressive.I can't help thinking that there could have been a better way to present that information, though.I wish I had read the reviews of this book here before buying it.(As an edit: One other reviewer mentioned the "polemic" present in several parts of Radio Voices. I, too, felt the political tone intruded on the subject a bit, but I was willing to let it slide in my reading, acknowledging and ignoring it for what it was.I am glad someone else pointed this aspect of the writing out.}

Radio Voices is a decent look at radio from the early 1900s to 1952, although Hilmes mostly skirts any discussion of radio's decline after 1945.She amply discusses the effects of early programs such as Amos 'n Andy which were based on minstrel shows. This discussion and the racial reasons behind them is quite interesting.However, I think the book at many points turns from an interesting discussion into a polemic, and loses its way. She discusses the "ghettoization" of women programs to the daytime schedule. I think this really disrespects women listeners of the 1920s and 30s. Yes, many of them were at home and not out working like many men, but Hilmes discusses this topic in a tone that makes it sound like the daytime schedule was "second rate" when in fact it's the women who make the purchasing choices for most households, not the men who'd be listening more at night. The audience may have been smaller during the day than at night, but it doesn't mean it's less important and certainly shouldn't be referred to as "ghettoization".Also she discusses in condesending tones the use of radio by the government and other interests to promote America's intervention in World War II. Like many post-Vietnam academics, it's obvious she likely falsely believes we should have stayed out of that war. It's really a shame she strays into a polemic on some of these topics. Otherwise, it would have been a great book.

"Radio Voices" offers an overview of the radio's impact on America. Hilmes describes the way this media interacted, effected, and was influenced by phenomenon such as urbanization, immigration, the rise consumer culture, racial tension, the notion of gender roles, WWI, and WWII. I particularly enjoyed her dealings with gender and race. Hilmes reveals the invention and propagation of racial tension as she discusses the portrayal of blacks as an uneducated group participating in society secondarily to white listeners, and most often in positions of servitude. Hilmes' treatment of women in the text reveals their suseptibility to consumerism and their exclusion from nighttime/masuline radio air time. She describes the waxing and waning acceptance of women into positions of power in the radio industry as well as the evolution of gender roles as a result of female shows such as the first soap operas (serials). The end of the text addresses the radio propaganda surrounding WWII, including the encouragement of black soldier participation and women in the workforce. Overall, I feel the text broadenend my knowledge of the radio's influence on American culture, not only between 1922-1952, but in modern society. The radio served as a means to American unification, and traces of this cultural foundation still remain profoundly engraved in the notion of what it means to be an American. After reading this text I feel I can examine, more objectively, the media I absorb today.

Please---not another PC book, full of deconstructionist jargon and only using the triple prism of the Left: race, gender and ethnicity.