Synopses & Reviews
"Irate listeners attacking anti-union advertisers, boycotts of soap operas, a bitter ex-federal official who took up the cause of consumers--Newman brings us all of this and more, revealing in her stunning new book how twentieth-century consumers--especially women--contested commercial radio in its glory years. With tremendous clarity and analytical sophistication, she shows that far from 'duped consumers,' radio listeners were savvy, sassy, and effective activists who talked back plenty to commercial radio. Analyzing the dynamics of as a contested zone between listeners, advertisers, radio stations, and new consumer intellectuals, Newman deftly and persuasively reframes our understanding of the cultural politics of consumption."and#151;Dana Frank, author of
Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism"Cultural historians often claim that audiences were far from passive victims of mass media manipulation, but Kathy Newman is among the first to reveal how ordinary people actually responded. Focusing on the major mass medium of the 1930s and 1940s, the radio, Newman brilliantly tracks the dialectical process through which audience attention became a commodity that broadcasters set out to sell to sponsors and then how listeners, often women, turned their new-found importance to their own ends as assertive consumers. This is cultural history at its best, bringing together as it does the influence of intellectuals, the workings of cultural institutions, and the reactions of popular audiences."and#151;Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
"Lively and accessible, Newman's fascinating account of the characters and concerns behind anti-commercial activism illuminates an overlooked facet of radio history. Her cast of middle class reformers who used radio's own commercialized address to mobilize the consumer movement reminds us of advertising's complex and contested relationship to twentieth-century American culture, and points towards the same forces at work today, now on a global scale."and#151;Michele Hilmes, co-editor of Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio
"An important contribution. . . . More than any other work to date, Newman deconstructs 'the' radio audience and demonstrates how this often-referred-to singular entity was really a heterogeneous body with multiple forms, faces, and concerns. She shows how radio listeners used information they learned on air to launch social movements that had broad economic and political consequences in American society."and#151;Steven J. Ross, author of Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America
Review
and#8220;Combining a close attention to sound, money, demographics, and the ties that bound them together in an ever-shifting constellation of radio formats since the 1970s, Weisbard brilliantly rewrites pop music as we know it. Weisbard is one of our top pop music scribes, and Top 40 Democracy is the best kind of revisionist history. It takes something familiar and makes it strange again. It enables us to listen with fresh ears and find beauty and meaning in music too often dismissed for lacking both. I wanted to turn it up and sing along at the top of my lungs.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Weisbard was a smart music journalist and is an even smarter music academic. I used to read his reviews and feel compelled to listen to music I didnand#8217;t know. Reading this book compelled me to rethink music I thought I knew only too well. Weisbardand#8217;s history of the mainstreams of American popular music and his analysis of the surprising complexities of American format radio is persuasive and entertainingly detailed. As an account of the cultural and political effects of the kind of commercial pop music that is usually taken for granted, Top 40 Democracy shows eloquently and exuberantly why pop music must be central to our understanding of social history.and#8221;
Review
"Forget the canonical version of pop's past and learn to think like a radio, that surprisingly persistent force in shaping our listening lives. It can tame and it can maim, but it adds a jostling vitality that crackles with the tensions of history. Weisbard is a wide-viewed, big-eared, provocative analyst of how it's all worked via fickle formats, tuned-in stars who've never received such smart critical attention (Dolly! Elton! The Isleys! Herb Alpert!), and#8216;record men,and#8217; meathead rock jocks, and more. There's a fact or insight on every page that will spin your dial. So you better do as you are told: you better read about your radio."
Review
and#8220;This spin around the radio dial is an engrossing, unpredictable tour of the multiplicity of imagined communities inhabiting the pop mainstream, and Weisbardand#8217;s innovative theorizing of format as an alternative to genre logic transforms the idea of a Top 40 democracy from a utopian metaphor into a material political economy. It's a book for everyone who takes music seriously and every auto executive who would consider producing a car without a radio receiver.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A brilliantly expansive tour of American pop radio, in all its sleaze and conflict, as a fantasy republic that stretches through the nation. Eric Weisbard, a true scholar and a true fan, masterfully follows the yellow brick road through the boomtowns and wastelands of American culture, from Vegas to Dollywood, with revelatory and challenging insights about how these competing musical visions both unite and divide.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Smart but not inaccessibly so. . . . In Weisbardandrsquo;s view, Top 40 isnandrsquo;t simply the place where Rick Dees and Casey Kasemandrsquo;s voices oozed from transistors, but a vast virtual stage for Elton John to import a brash British pop sensibility to American rock audiences, queering the top of the pop charts long before he was out of the closet.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[A] sharp, detailed history. . .andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Consistently provocative and engaging. Compared with record producers, broadcasters have been shown limited respect by both scholars and critics, and Weisbardandrsquo;s book deserves much praise simply for taking them seriously. His pointed business narrative gives a fascinating look at how programming decisions actually get made, and unmade.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Weisbard wrote not just for fellow critics and scholars, but for serious music fans wishing to go deeper.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Top 40 Democracy is not only smart and interesting and fun, but insightful, and done in such a way that makes how much you learn from it feel as surprising as discovering Doritos-flavored broccoli.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Inventively researched and subtly argued.andrdquo;
Synopsis
"Irate listeners attacking anti-union advertisers, boycotts of soap operas, a bitter ex-federal official who took up the cause of consumers--Newman brings us all of this and more, revealing in her stunning new book how twentieth-century consumers--especially women--contested commercial radio in its glory years. With tremendous clarity and analytical sophistication, she shows that far from 'duped consumers, ' radio listeners were savvy, sassy, and effective activists who talked back plenty to commercial radio. Analyzing the dynamics of as a contested zone between listeners, advertisers, radio stations, and new consumer intellectuals, Newman deftly and persuasively reframes our understanding of the cultural politics of consumption."--Dana Frank, author of "Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism
"Cultural historians often claim that audiences were far from passive victims of mass media manipulation, but Kathy Newman is among the first to reveal how ordinary people actually responded. Focusing on the major mass medium of the 1930s and 1940s, the radio, Newman brilliantly tracks the dialectical process through which audience attention became a commodity that broadcasters set out to sell to sponsors and then how listeners, often women, turned their new-found importance to their own ends as assertive consumers. This is cultural history at its best, bringing together as it does the influence of intellectuals, the workings of cultural institutions, and the reactions of popular audiences."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
"Lively and accessible, Newman's fascinating account of the characters and concernsbehind anti-commercial activism illuminates an overlooked facet of radio history. Her cast of middle class reformers who used radio's own commercialized address to mobilize the consumer movement reminds us of advertising's complex and contested relationship to twentieth-century American culture, and points towards the same forces at work today, now on a global scale."--Michele Hilmes, co-editor of "Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio
"An important contribution. . . . More than any other work to date, Newman deconstructs 'the' radio audience and demonstrates how this often-referred-to singular entity was really a heterogeneous body with multiple forms, faces, and concerns. She shows how radio listeners used information they learned on air to launch social movements that had broad economic and political consequences in American society."--Steven J. Ross, author of "Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America
Synopsis
Radio Active tells the story of how radio listeners at the American mid-century were active in their listening practices. While cultural historians have seen this period as one of failed reformand#151;focusing on the failure of activists to win significant changes for commercial radioand#151;Kathy M. Newman argues that the 1930s witnessed the emergence of a symbiotic relationship between advertising and activism. Advertising helped to kindle the consumer activism of union members affiliated with the CIO, middle-class club women, and working-class housewives. Once provoked, these activists became determined to influenceand#151;and in some cases eliminateand#151;radio advertising.
As one example of how radio consumption was an active rather than a passive process, Newman cites The Hucksters, Frederick Wakeman's 1946 radio spoof that skewered eccentric sponsors, neurotic account executives, and grating radio jingles. The book sold over 700,000 copies in its first six months and convinced broadcast executives that Americans were unhappy with radio advertising. The Hucksters left its mark on the radio age, showing that radio could inspire collective action and not just passive conformity.
Synopsis
If you drive into any American city with the car stereo blasting, youand#8217;ll undoubtedly find radio stations representing RandB/hip-hop, country, Top 40, adult contemporary, rock, and Latin, each playing hit after hit within that musical format. American music has created an array of rival mainstreams, complete with charts in multiple categories. Love it or hate it, the world that radio made has steered popular music and provided the soundtrack of American life for more than half a century.
Inand#160;Top 40 Democracy, Eric Weisbard studies the evolution of this multicentered pop landscape, along the way telling the stories of the Isley Brothers, Dolly Parton, AandM Records, and Elton John, among others. He sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the past fifteen years and their implications for the audiences the industry has shaped. Weisbard focuses in particular on formatsand#151;constructed mainstreams designed to appeal to distinct populationsand#151;showing how taste became intertwined with class, race, gender, and region. While many historians and music critics have criticized the segmentation of pop radio, Weisbard finds that the creation of multiple formats allowed different subgroups to attain a kind of separate majority statusand#151;for example, even in its most mainstream form, the RandB of the Isley Brothers helped to create a sphere where black identity was nourished. and#160;Music formats became the one reliable place where different groups of Americans could listen to modern life unfold from their distinct perspectives. The centers of pop, it turns out, were as complicated, diverse, and surprising as the cultural margins. Weisbardand#8217;s stimulating book is a tour de force, shaking up our ideas about the mainstream music industry in order to tease out the cultural importance ofand#160;alland#160;performers and songs.
Synopsis
A capacious and stimulating tour de force of the mainstream music industry that reveals the cultural import of even the most deliberately banal performers and songs. Weisbard finds depths in our cultureand#8217;s shallows as he investigates and articulates the cultural construction of such phenomena as Dolly Parton, Elton John, the Isley Brothers, AandM Records, and the rise of radio populism. He further sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the last fifteen years and the implications of them for the audiences the industry has shaped. Each chapter brings us to see afresh precisely that music and those musicians that have become the most familiar and overexposed, by delving into the minutiae of how pop stars and their music were made and framed for repeated consumption in the era dominated by radio.
About the Author
Kathy M. Newman is Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The Dialectic between Advertising and Activism
Part I. Cultural Critics in the Age of Radio
Chapter 1. The Psychology of Radio Advertising: Audience Intellectuals and the Resentment of Radio Commercials
Chapter 2. "Poisons, Potions, and Profits": Radio Activists and the Origins of the Consumer Movement
Part II. Consumers on the March: CIO Boycotts, Active Listeners, and Consumer Time
Chapter 3. The Consumer Revolt of "Mr. Average Man": Boake Carter and the CIO Boycott of Philco Radio
Chapter 4. Washboard Weepers: Women Writers, Women Listeners, and the Debate over Soap Operas
Chapter 5. "I Wonand#8217;t Buy You Anything But Love, Baby": NBC, Donald Montgomery, and the Postwar Consumer Revolt
Conclusion. High-Class Hucksters: The Rise and Fall of a Radio Republic
Notes
Bibliography
Index