Synopses & Reviews
ONLY CONNECT is a comprehensive history of American broadcasting from its earliest days in radio, through the rise of television, to the current era of digital media and the Internet. It presents broadcasting as a vital component of American cultural identity, placing the development of U.S. radio, television, and new media in the context of social and cultural change. Each chapter opens with a discussion of the historical period, thoroughly traces the development of media policy, the growth of media industries, and the history of U.S. broadcast programming, and closes with a look at the major ways that radio and television have been understood and discussed throughout American history.
About the Author
Michele Hilmes is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has taught the history of broadcasting course for more than a decade. She served as the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies for eight years. Hilmes is the author or editor of several books on broadcasting history in addition to ONLY CONNECT, including RADIO VOICES: AMERICAN BROADCASTING 1922-1952 (1997); THE RADIO READER: ESSAYS IN THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF RADIO (2001, ed. with Jason Loviglio), and THE TELEVISION HISTORY BOOK (2003), as well as numerous journal and anthology articles. She is frequently invited to give presentations on U.S. cultural history, both at home and around the world.
Table of Contents
1. Making History. 2. Before Broadcasting. 3. Broadcasting Begins: 1919 to 1926. 4. The Network Age, 1926 to 1940. 5. Radio for Everyone, 1926 to 1940. 6. War at Home and Abroad, 1940 to 1945. 7. At Last Television, 1945 to 1955. 8. The Domesticated Medium. 9. The Classic Network System, 1965 to 1975. 10. Rising Discontent, 1975 to 1985. 11. The Big Change, 1985 to 1995. 12. All that Rises Must Converge: Regulation and Industry in the New Millennium. 13. Convergence Culture in the New Millennium. 14. Conclusion: TV after TV.