Understanding Radio

Part of the "Studies in Culture and Communication" series, this text looks at the medium of radio. With the arrival of television it seemed that the days of radio were numbered. Yet radio as a medium has proved resilient, adapting to the uses which recent technology has opened for it.

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'... a highly imaginative and often very entertaining book ... which ... probably says more than any other available text about the limitations and possibilities of present forms of radio.' Professor Laurie Taylor on the first edition of Understanding Radio


Understanding Radio is a fully revised edition of a key radio textbook. Andrew Crisell explores how radio processes genres such as news, drama and comedy in highly distinctive ways, and how the listener's use of the medium has important implications for audience studies. He explains why the sound medium, even more than television, has played such a crucial role in the development of modern popular culture.


The book also introduces students to the broadcasting landscape in a time of great change for national and local radio provision. Understanding Radio will be essential reading both to students of media and to those with a practical involvement in programme production. This new edition includes:


a revised history of radio bringing the reader right up to date


a brand new chapter on 'talk-and-music' radio, the format adopted by many of the new stations.


Andrew Crisell lectures in communication and media studies at the University of Sunderland. He has written widely on radio and co-founded Wear FM, winner of the 1992 Sony 'Radio Station of the Year' award.