Abstract
Radio is being transformed in this digital age and it may
lose its very name. So this monograph is titled The 'Death
of Radio?'. Pre-digital understanding of radio is challenged,
as is the very field of radio studies. A 'reinvention' and 're-configuration'
of radio-audio studies is needed, and a new radio studies. This
monograph is also an 'essay', or attempt, in radio-philosophy,
asking radio studies to think of itself in new ways, addressing
some methodologies and foundationalist issues (disciplinary consciousness).
It is done in parallel with an investigation of radio in the
digital age.
There are four systems now (2002) for delivering digital radio
signals - satellite, cable, DAB and the Internet - and these
have given rise to some audio which can be described as 'un-radio-like'.
Also, there are Internet-only radio stations. Analysis is given
of the 'radio-like' (Internet radio) and the 'un-radio-like'
(in two case studies of (a) Music Choice, a new 'super-multiplex'
of automated music channels available on the Sky Digibox, and
(b) the downloading of MP3 files from Internet sites).
It is too soon to supply a group of satisfying theories for
digital radio-audio studies. However, five identity conditions
are suggested for radio. They include a new radio apparatus theory
linked to reception theory, clarification, or defining radio
as against other media, the specificities of radio and a portmanteau
term, 'radioworld'. Further topics are: undecidability ('aporia')
in theory-building, technological convergence/divergence, problems
with a strict constructionist stance on defining radio and its
history, and culturalism.
A 'reinvention' of radio studies may be parallel to that in
film studies (Gledhill, Christine and Williams, Linda, eds.,
2000, Reinventing Film Studies, London: Arnold); and a
twinning is suggested for the future, of both 'hard' radio studies
(the current agenda of media/cultural studies), and 'soft' radio
studies (expanding into new areas on the lead of film, the visual
arts and performance theory).
This monograph offers summary definitions of radio, but finally
a portmanteau term, 'radioworld', relating the theory strands
to each other. 'Radioworld' seeks, in homage to Arthur Danto's
'Artworld' in visual arts theory, to identify the 'radio-like'
as 'enfranchised by theory'. (Danto, Arthur, 1987, 'The Artworld'
in Margolis, Joseph, ed., Philosophy Looks at the Arts,
3rd ed., Philadelphia: Temple University Press)
To Introduction - Digital
- coming soon to a radio near you
To INDEX
Alan Beck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
