“A Certain Stigma” of Educational Radio: Judith Waller and “Public Service” Broadcasting

This paper explores Judith Waller’s radio programming philosophy over her career that began in 1922 at WMAQ Chicago. In the 1940s, representing the interests of her employer NBC, Waller began to use the phrase “public service” as a way to break free of the “stigma” of educational radio. The concept of public service programming shifted during the 1930s and 1940s in the US, redefined and negotiated in response to assumptions about radio listeners, the financial motivations of commercial radio, and Federal Communications Commission rulings. This paper brings renewed attention to the past and present political economy of media in the US, providing a window into the historically complex relationship between commercial and noncommercial media that continues to this day

Defining a Medium: The Educational Aspirations for Early Radio

This essay examines the attempts by many writers to steer the burgeoning U.S. radio industry towards educational uses and programming in the 1920s. At the same time that commercial radio began to take shape, several competing and seemingly incompatible visions of the airwaves emerged—one of which privileged the use of radio for educational purposes. Using discourse from trade journals, general interest magazines, and newspapers, this article explores the calls for educational programming amid the rapidly expanding and consolidating commercial radio industry

Sound Recognition of Historical Visibility: The Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress: Introduction

This issue of Journal of Radio & Audio Media serves as a gesture toward increasing attention to many untold cultural sound histories. The “question” of radio preservation, we’re just coming to realize, closely equates to our responsibility to identify gaps within our historical record, as those gaps are delineated along race, class, orientation, and gendered lines. Sound preservation turns out to be one strategy for how to reconcile failures of recognition. It’s widely accepted that a historian must not project a different meaning upon historical materials than its author intended. Yet at the same time historians might now play the role of advocates, by increasing representation through digital preservation. Sound history is one of the last frontiers to build paths of visibility among scattered records. The Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress represents one such project. National in scope but local in focus, the RPTF is currently in the process of constructing several interconnected initiatives that will culminate in a detailed mapping of the cultural history of radio, so as to reveal previously hidden experiences, events, and perspectives

Investigating sound: Visual and aural style from Broadchurch to Gracepoint

Using Broadchurch and its American version Gracepoint as a case study, this article explores the aesthetic relationship between these two television programmes through an analysis of their visual and aural styles. The increasing proliferation of television-to-television adaptations and remakes necessitates revisiting the terminology to assess how it accommodates methodological approaches that extend beyond cross-cultural analyses. As narrative content and style are inextricably connected, this article attends to the complexity of employing existing terms to analyse the new version of a programme that simultaneously replicates and departs from the style and tone of its predecessor

A Postapocalyptic Return to The Frontier: The Walking Dead As Post-Western

This article argues that The Walking Dead is a post-Western, a genre that extracts classical Hollywood Western themes and iconography, and resituates them in a dystopian, postapocalyptic setting. The program features characters forced to reconquer the frontier amid the disintegration of modern society, who must battle undead walkers and other human survivors. As a post-Western, the program inverts the ideological optimism of the classical Hollywood Western. In doing so, it highlights the linkages between the seemingly unconnected narrative universes of the Western and the postapocalyptic tale

Visible/invisible: Female astronauts and technology in Star Trek: Discovery and National Geographic\u27s Mars

This article examines the newest television programme in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Discovery (2017–) and National Geographic’s part-documentary, part-fictional series Mars (2016–). I argue that Discovery and Mars make visible the depiction of developing technology and a breadth and depth of female astronaut characters, two elements that have been historically marginalised in sf narratives such as Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–9). Discovery and Mars both emphasise the purposeful centrality of female characters and their positions of authority as female astronauts and ship leaders. Each programme also foregrounds the representation and framing of technology, emphasising the not-yet-perfect science and the loss of lives associated with complex space expeditions

EGFR Targeted Theranostic Nanoemulsion for Image-Guided Ovarian Cancer Therapy

Platinum-based therapies are the first line treatments for most types of cancer including ovarian cancer. However, their use is associated with dose-limiting toxicities and resistance. We report initial translational studies of a theranostic nanoemulsion loaded with a cisplatin derivative, myrisplatin and pro-apoptotic agent, C6-ceramide