Encyclopedia of Radio 3-Volume Set

Editors’ Introduction

Radio means distinct things to different people. For some, radio primarily means the “golden age” of the 1920s through the 1940s when network radio headlined the only broadcast service and provided a variety of programs for all tastes. For such listeners, radio's importance is in its programs and stars, its role as the on-the-spot recorder of history, and in its carriage of period politics, sports, and talk. (It is this period of old-time radio [OTR] that is hotly collectible—books, program premiums, recordings, magazines and equipment of the era.) For others radio means the omnipresent yet sometimes struggling business of the early 21st century with chains of stations under common ownership dependent on syndicated programs ...