Radio Critics and Popular Culture

This introduction starts by reflecting on how important radio still is in our culture. It is still a medium that most of us listen to at some stage in the week, whether intentionally or not. However, it is a medium we often forget, focusing more on what we hear, whether news or music, than how. This has led, as some writers have argued, to a lack of scholarly work on radio compared to other areas such as television. Echoing this lack of interest in radio there has been little interest or research on the role of radio critics or radio criticism. However, radio criticism and radio coverage by the newspapers is important as it has, overtime, helped position radio within public debates and within our shared culture, it has been one of the main ways we, the listening public, know what is on, what is worth listening to and how others think about radio. This book is an attempt to fill this gap in our understanding.

This chapter begins by questioning why we need to undertake research on radio critics and what insight this will provide. Then, using work from Anthony Scott (Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth (New York: Penguin), 2006), James Grant (The Critical Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2013), John Corner (JOMEC, 4(Autumn), pp.1–12, http://​www.​cardiff.​ac.​uk/​jomec/​jomecjournal, date accessed 2 July 2015, 2013), Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews (European Journal of Cultural Studies 15(5), pp.551–562, 2012), the chapter explores, at a conceptual level, the nature of the critic, the critic’s role as a cultural intermediary, the relationship between the critic and the industry they work for and the one they might write about and the wider cultural context they work in. This is then followed by exploring the specific situation of the radio critic, one who works for the national press and writes about the broadcasting industry within a particular dominant culture. This chapter ends by outlining the methodology taken within this work, including how the sample was chosen, the papers looked at and the form taken by the analysis.

This chapter starts by providing an historical overview of the way radio developed from a communication to a broadcast form. As radio developed the newspapers began to offer early forms of coverage written by journalists and radio correspondents, as no identifiable radio critics had yet been appointed. As this chapter shows, two important narratives, one positive focusing on the excitement of radio and one more negative and critical, came to dominate the early newspaper coverage of radio, which fed back into the wider public debates occurring about radio. The second part of the chapter analyses the early forms of radio coverage that appeared in the 1920s, which take up these early narratives, with some celebrating the spectacle and excitement of radio and its output, while other elements criticised the British Broadcasting Company (it became a public corporation in 1927), the organisation given the monopoly to run broadcasting in Britain and to provide its early radio output.

This chapter explores how, as radio established itself as a popular medium in the 1930s, radio critics start to be appointed by most newspapers. The critics writing for the popular papers were given their own columns and started to establish or develop further some of the main ways of writing about radio, such as with previews and reviews, supplemented by gossip about and from the industry. Some of these critics, such as Collie Knox, Jonah Barrington and Sydney Moseley, become key columnists for the papers, although those appointed by the quality papers are less well known and not yet given by-lines. The form of radio coverage developed by these critics and found in a range of newspapers is explored in detail, including an analysis of the listings information, the types of programmes that dominate the previews and reviews and how programmes are critiqued. Such analysis helps provide a reflection on how radio is being positioned culturally at this time by different newspapers.

This chapter covers the period from the early 1990s until now, corresponding to a period when new forms of digital communication and the internet arrived. For radio, this is a period of huge change, with the development of DAB, podcasts and radio streaming, but also for the newspapers, as younger readers started to desert them for online news. Initially, however, the 1990s was a period when radio criticism experiences, what could be called, a mini resurgence in the popular press, with the appearance of weekly Radio and TV Guides, though this coverage soon declined again later in the decade. The internet started to allow new forms of competition to the newspapers to appear, such as from new online only media companies and from the public itself using blogs and new forms of social media. Radio criticism, while still found in traditional newspapers, now also moved online, onto the newspapers’ website, onto the sites of new forms of online media and onto the areas populated by the public, such as Twitter and Facebook. I end by reflecting on whether such developments might mean the end of the radio critic and radio criticism, or just that of the media-based critic with the appearance of new public critics.

In the conclusion I reflect on what this historical overview of the role of radio critics and the development of radio criticism has told us about the changing relationship between radio broadcasting, the press and the wider dominant culture. I begin by returning to the conceptual framework introduced at the start of the book, including the linked concepts of frames, expertise and impact, and how these help us to understand and explore how radio critics play an important role as cultural intermediaries. In particular I reflect on how they have come to position radio for the public, playing an important role in defining what is good or popular radio, helping us to collectively understand and appreciate radio. However, I also reflect on how their various approaches raise concerns about the dominance of a textual focus within their work, which has meant the mass media nature of radio has often been forgotten. This has also meant that their work, mostly, has failed to develop a form of critical reflection more attuned to the aural nature of radio. I end by suggesting that while in the digital age there is still a need for a media-based or public-created radio critic, there needs to be more cross fertilisation between radio scholars and media critics to create a more robust and adequate critical approach to radio.