Organized as an A to Z listing, this book will guide readers in their search for an inside look at radio and how it shaped the lives and the attitudes of the American people through the Twenties, the Depression, World War II and beyond. If you collect recollections and want a complete reference book on what and who wafted over the air, then this tome is your tonic... --ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

Produced in association with the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, the Encyclopedia of Radio includes more than 600 entries covering major countries and regions of the world as well as specific programs and people, networks and organizations, regulation and policies, audience research, and radio's technology. This encyclopedic work will be the first broadly conceived reference source on a medium that is now nearly eighty years old, with essays that provide essential information on the subject as well as comment on the significance of the particular person, organization, or topic being examined.

The term Old Time Radio refers to the relatively brief period from 1926, when the National Broadcasting Company first began network broadcasting, until approximately 1960, when television became the dominant communication medium in the United States. During this time, radio was as popular and ubiquitous as television is today. It was amazingly varied in the types of programming it offered; many characters and programs were so popular that virtually everyone was familiar with them. Even today, recorded versions of these programs are still extremely popular and widely available, both from commercial outlets and from hobbyists. Behind the production of these programs was a complex technological and financial infrastructure that had to be developed virtually from scratch in a world unaccustomed to the rapid communication and technological marvels that we take for granted today. The A to Z of Old Time Radio provides essential facts and information on the Golden Age of Radio. This is accomplished through the use of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the radio networks, programs, directors, producers, writers, actors, radio series, and radio stations. Entries on your favorite shows—The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Dragnet, and Suspense—and actors—Bob Hope, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Edgar Bergen—will have you jumping from one entry to the next as you relive old favorites and discover hidden treasures from the Golden Age of Radio.

The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio is an essential single-volume reference guide to this vital and evolving medium. Comprised of more than 300 entries spanning the invention of radio to the Internet, this refernce work addresses personalities, music genres, regulations, technology, programming and stations, the "golden age" of radio and other topics relating to radio broadcasting throughout its history. The entries are updated throughout and the volume includes nine new entries on topics ranging from podcasting to the decline of radio.

The period from 1925 to 1960 was the heyday of the American Radio Soap Opera. In addition to being part of popular culture, the soap opera had important commercial aspects as well that were not only related to their production, but also to the desperate need to sell products or perish. Both sides of this story are traced in this comprehensive compendium. The dictionary section, made up of more than 500 cross-referenced entries, provides brief vignettes of the more popular and also less well-known 'soaps,' among them Back Stage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Pepper Young's Family and The Guiding Light. Other entries evoke those who brought these programs to life: the actors, announcers, scriptwriters, networks, and even the sponsors. Nor are the basic themes, the stock characters and the gimmick, forgotten. The book's introduction defines the soap opera, examines the span of the radio serial, reviews its origins and its demise, and focuses on the character types that made up its denizens. The chronology outlines the period and the bibliography offers further reading. Together, these elements make a comprehensive reference work that researchers will find invaluable long into the future.

World War II: the Radio War relates concerns and conditions facing American homes during The War and the role that radio played in maintaining morale, providing information and incentive to achieve patriotic responsibility. This human account of public sacrifice and national involvement is relevant to current attitudes and concerns facing our country today in spite of the events occurring some seventy years ago. Although the subject is American-based, the narrative of this book applies to other peoples and has appeal in their countries, especially England.

“A lively overview” of this pre-internet mass-communication tool and “the entrepreneurs and evangelists, hucksters and opportunists” who flocked to it (Publishers Weekly). Long before the Internet, another young technology was transforming the way we connect with the world. At the dawn of the twentieth century, radio grew from an obscure hobby into a mass medium with the power to reach millions of people. When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium’s potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, innovating styles of mass communication and entertainment while making bedlam of the airwaves. Into this wild new frontier stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization transformed radio into an even more powerful political, cultural and economic force. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallée created the first on-air variety show and America elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who communicated with the public through his famous fireside chats, radio had arrived. With extensive knowledge, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation’s living room. “Entertaining and informative.” —The Denver Post “Rudel, with extensive professional radio experience, revels in the enterprising personalities who set up shop on this technological frontier. . . .[And] vividly re-creates the anything-goes atmosphere of the ether’s early days.” —Booklist