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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2003
Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2003
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2003
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Editorial - On Talking of Troubles
By Ken GarnerWe had not anticipated it, but this second number of The Radio Journal has turned out to be our first ‘themed’ edition. Four of the refereeapproved articles we were processing in Spring 2003 seemed to fit together naturally, so here they are. What they have in common is an interest in what happens to radio organizations, their production processes, and long-established, medium-specific ways of speaking, when speech radio finds itself having to deal with politically and/or personally troubling material. Collectively, through their examination of evolving practices of radio speech and speech production, they remind the rest of us that our subject will evade our grasp, if we do not keep a close watch on how and why it does what it does.
Paul Moore’s article on the Legacy broadcasts on BBC Radio Ulster in 1999 suggests their unique format has bequeathed its own production legacy to that part of the corporation, an acknowledgement that notions of ‘consensus’ or ‘balance’ may have outlived their usefulness. He calls this forward-looking possibility of a more subject-focused approach, in which individuals are supported in gathering their own materials and presenting their own narratives on air, as ‘fourth-phase public service broadcasting’ in Northern Ireland. Hugh Chignell’s study of how BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme dealt with Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s - like Moore’s article, an extended version of a paper presented originally at the second international Radiocracy conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 - shows a similar process of formal evolution in current-affairs radio, if at a greater historical remove and operating at a more typically institutional, stately pace. The differences of style between Ian McIntyre and Mary Goldring may seem minor set alongside the general absence of the voices of the victims of apartheid from their reports, but you will hear a difference none the less, as you read Chignell’s excerpted transcriptions from the archive. And coming after Moore’s article, Chignell’s case study serves as an example of the institutional norms of a past era of current-affairs radio, which have perhaps required challenges like Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ in order to change. Anne Dunn’s analysis of narrative techniques in current radio news bulletins in Australia explains why this evolution in news radio style may well be appropriate for the medium, yet is problematic for the values of the news genre: narrative characteristics - as deployed in headlines, packages, and wraps - seem to make convenient meaning, but may be merely manufacturing ‘pseudo or spurious narratives’. She implies, however, there is no way back to older, stiffer forms (the inverted pyramid), and news broadcasters must simply wrestle every day with the beast they have created. Karen Atkinson and Shaun Moores’ modification of politeness theory to explore the function of a particular kind of broadcast discourse - ‘troubles-talk’, as exemplified by Anna Raeburn’s now-defunct Live and Direct confessional phone-in on the subsequently reformatted national British station Talk Radio - shows that what in certain circumstances would be threatening can be understood here as an act of solidarity.
The very final paragraph in this number looks forward to our next. In his review of Vincent McInerney’s Writing for Radio, Martin Shingler confesses some of the difficulties he finds as a lecturer in persuading students that radio is still ‘relevant and exciting’. Our annual review of the teaching of radio studies in Volume 1: 3 will seek to present reports on an international range of examples of innovation in this area. Also in that concluding number of our first volume, as well as more book reviews, will be articles on the changing organizational constraints on creativity in BBC Radio drama production, the unusual status of ‘third sector’ or free radio stations in Spain, and a detailed report on the proceedings of ‘The Radio Conference - A Transnational Forum’, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in July 2003.
This hugely stimulating, major conference fully lived up to its billing, embodying in its programme and atmosphere what Enrico Menduni of the University of Siena in his thanks to the organisers has already suggested as the way forward for our field: ‘transnational cooperation, interdisciplinary exchange, international projects, and the establishment of a triangular relationship between academics, professionals and students’. With just some of its themes of interest being: history, national and community uses, radio and the Internet, audiences, radio advertising, and music radio, we look forward to exploring several of these topics in Volume 2 – whether in articles based on papers presented in Madison, or sent unsolicited by you, direct to us here. They are all welcome.
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Legacy: Fourth phase public service broadcasting in Northern Ireland
By Paul MooreThis article examines the importance of radio in the context of public service broadcasting in Northern Ireland. It analyses the strategies used by BBC Northern Ireland to engage with the problems of the last thirty years, and argues that technological and audience developments have produced a new listening environment that demands new modes of broadcast address. The Legacy series, broadcast in Northern Ireland during 1999, is used as a case study to illustrate the ways in which this new mode of address is being constructed. The article uses examples from the Legacy broadcasts to illustrate the fact that radio in Northern Ireland could be entering a new editorial phase aimed at complementing the political changes enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement.
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BBC Radio 4’s Analysis and Africa: How the flagship current affairs programme covered Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s
More LessBBC Radio 4’s Analysis was first broadcast in April 1970 and quickly established itself as the pre-eminent exponent of radio current affairs. This paper considers how Southern Africa was represented, in particular at two stages of the programme’s evolution, in the early 1970s and again a decade after that. Between 1971 and 1973 five programmes on Africa were presented by Ian McIntyre, a central figure in British current affairs broadcasting, who went on to be Controller of both BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. By 1980 McIntyre had been succeeded as the main presenter of Analysis by another notable figure in British radio journalism and current affairs, Mary Goldring. Like McIntyre, Goldring visited Southern Africa to source her programmes. Both presenters can be criticized for over-attention to the white point of view and attempting the impossible in a ‘parachute’ mission. It could, however, be argued that they both achieved more than the British press and in their different ways clearly signalled the crises facing South Africa and Rhodesia.
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Telling the Story: Narrative and radio news
By Anne DunnWith reference to Australian radio, this paper reviews a premise of recent European television news research: that in the increased climate of competition engendered by deregulation over the last decade, news has moved away from the objectivism embodied in the inverted pyramid, and narratives have come to dominate news reports. This ‘storytelling’ mode has been identified with ‘dumbing down’ or ‘tabloidization’ of news. The paper offers a definition of narrative modes in broadcast news, then analyses radio bulletins on public stations in Sydney, to support the argument that narrative modes are appropriate to the radio medium but raise questions for the news genre.
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‘We all have bad bad days’: Attending to face in broadcast troubles-talk
Authors: Karen Atkinson and Shaun MooresThe authors of this article investigate electronically mediated communication on a radio phone-in programme, critically applying ideas about face and politeness to instances of broadcast troubles-talk. They focus on the host’s performance of identity, which is bound up with her strategies for attending to face. Analysing the mediated interaction and quasi-interaction that she has with callers and audiences, the authors show how ordinariness, trust and sincerity can be constructed in relationships between physically distant others - and they argue that, in order to take account of the significance of straight talking in these moments of intimacy at a distance, it is necessary to modify politeness theory. Bringing together concepts drawn from language studies and media studies, they develop an interdisciplinary perspective on broadcast discourse that extends the existing range of work in this area.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Andrew T S Kanyegirire, Tim Crook and Martin ShinglerAfrican Broadcast Cultures: Radio in Transition, Richard Fardon and Graham Furniss (eds.) (2000) Oxford: James Currey, 239 pp., ISBN 0-852-55828-7
Words at War - World War II Radio Drama and the Post-war Broadcasting Industry Blacklist, Howard Blue (2002) Lanham and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 407 pp., ISBN 0-1808-4413-3
Writing for Radio, Vincent McInerney (2001) Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001, xii + 276 pp., no illustrations. ISBN 0-7190-5842-2 (hardback) £40.00 and 0-7190-5843-0 (paperback) £14.99
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 21 (2023)
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Volume 20 (2022)
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Volume 19 (2021)
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Volume 18 (2020)
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Volume 17 (2019)
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Volume 16 (2018)
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Volume 15 (2017)
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Volume 14 (2016)
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Volume 13 (2015)
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Volume 12 (2014)
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Volume 11 (2013)
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Volume 10 (2012)
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Volume 9 (2011)
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Volume 8 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 7 (2009)
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Volume 6 (2008 - 2009)
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Volume 5 (2007 - 2008)
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Volume 4 (2007)
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Volume 3 (2005)
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Volume 2 (2004)
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Volume 1 (2003 - 2004)