This book, first published in 1974, is the story of BBC Audience Research, a behind-the-scenes activity that has always been the subject of some curiosity. It describes the early, tentative experiments, designed both to develop ways of applying the techniques of social research to broadcasting and to win the confidence of BBC staff. The way World War II, which deprived programme planners of many of their familiar landmarks, acted as a fillip to audience research, which emerged at the end of the war as an established and accepted adjunct to broadcasting, is described in detail.

Images of the golden age of wireless and family life before the age of television have widespread currency. Their dominance raises fundamental questions about the extent to which people’s memories of early radio and everyday pre-war life are shaped and mediated by these public histories. For geographical reasons radio has played an unusually important part in twentieth-century Australian life and culture. Australian radio must therefore stand as a major example in the study of the medium. This book, first published in 1988, examines the early history of Australian radio, looking at the...

This book, first published in 1990, offers an in-depth analysis of the ‘fundamental beliefs’ of radio. This refers to the common understanding of what the radio enterprise is – and should be – about: entertainment and information. A major thrust of this book is to arrive at a set of fundamental beliefs about the values and the realities of the radio business in regard to entertainment programming – a set of beliefs that may or may not be right, or forever, but that might at least provide a basis for developing programming strategies. Most other books on radio programming describe...