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BookPrinted Material
Author Stamm, Michael.

Title Sound business : newspapers, radio, and the politics of new media / Michael Stamm.

Publication Info. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2011]
©2011

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Moore Stacks  HE8698 .S755 2011    Available  ---
Edition 1st ed.
Description viii, 256 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.
Series American business, politics, and society
American business, politics, and society.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Introduction: underwriting the ether: newspapers and the origins of American broadcasting -- 1. Power, politics, and the promise of new media: newspaper ownership of radio in the 1920s -- 2. New empires: media concentration in the 1930s -- 3. Reshaping the public sphere: the New Deal and media concentration -- 4. Reform liberalism and the media: the Federal Communications Commission's newspaper-radio investigation -- 5. Media corporations and the critical public: the struggle over ownership diversity in postwar broadcasting -- Conclusion: the persistence of print: newspapers and broadcasting in the age of television.
Summary American newspapers have faced competition from new media for over ninety years. Today digital media challenge the printed word. In the 1920s, broadcast radio was the threatening upstart. At the time, newspaper publishers of all sizes turned threat into opportunity by establishing their own stations. Many, such as the Chicago Tribune's WGN, are still in operation. By 1940 newspapers owned 30 percent of America's radio stations. This new type of enterprise, the multimedia corporation, troubled those who feared its power to control the flow of news and information. In Sound Business, historian Michael Stamm traces how these corporations and their critics reshaped the ways Americans received the news. Stamm is attuned to a neglected aspect of U.S. media history: the role newspaper owners played in communications from the dawn of radio to the rise of television. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, he recounts the controversies surrounding joint newspaper and radio operations. These companies capitalized on synergies between print and broadcast production. As their advertising revenue grew, so did concern over their concentrated influence. Federal policymakers, especially during the New Deal, responded to widespread concerns about the consequences of media consolidation by seeking to limit and even ban cross ownership. The debates between corporations, policymakers, and critics over how to regulate these new kinds of media businesses ultimately structured the channels of information distribution in the United States and determined who would control the institutions undergirding American society and politics. Sound Business is a timely examination of the connections between media ownership, content, and distribution, one that both expands our understanding of mid-twentieth-century America and offers lessons for the digital age. -- Book cover.
Subject Radio broadcasting -- Ownership -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Radio broadcasting.
United States.
History.
Chronological Term 20th century
Subject Radio broadcasting -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Radio broadcasting -- Political aspects.
Newspaper publishing -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Newspaper publishing.
Newspaper publishing -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Newspaper publishing -- Political aspects.
ISBN 9780812243116 hardcover alkaline paper
0812243110 hardcover alkaline paper
Standard No. 3615856