Abstract
It is a Monday morning, 7:30 am EST, and as I get in the car to go to work (and as is my habit), I turn on the radio, hoping that during my 15 min commute National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Morning Edition” will give me something to use as a teaching moment in class that day. While this act has been part of my morning routine for many years, it is also a cultural practice involving delineations and compressions of time, space, and place. “Morning Edition” is produced in Washington D.C. and syndicated by my local NPR station. By the time I leave for work, I am not hearing “Morning Edition” broadcast live. I do, however, hear live broadcasts of regional news and announcements made by local my public radio station; thus, the broadcast is simultaneously live and pre-programmed, local and global (through syndication and streaming over the web). My car stereo receives the terrestrial signal from the local NPR station, a signal with defined spatial boundaries and limits. The frame of my car defines another spatial aspect of my morning radio routine: the listening space. If my car windows are open, the listening space expands beyond the confines of the car’s frame. The broadcast becomes part of my social space as I reflect on a particular story with a colleague later that day. Finally, as a listener to this program, I am connected to different places (spaces with meaning): some distant, some close and familiar. I am also connected to place through the regional accents of reporters and announcers, especially those from my local station. Finally, I am connected to place through the musical interludes during “Morning Edition,” which are chosen to reflect the story just reported. Even if I catch a “Morning Edition” broadcast in another context (e.g. hearing it coming from a colleague’s office) and hear those eight chords that mark the transition between broadcast segments, I immediately picture myself in a specific, familiar place: as a listener in my car.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abler, R. (1973). Monoculture or miniculture?: The impact of communications media on culture in space. In D. Lanegan & R. Palm (Eds.), An invitation to geography (pp. 186–195). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Adams, P. (2009). Geographies of media and communication. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Alper, G. (2006). XM reinvents radio’s future. Popular Music and Society, 29(5), 505–518.
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Rev. and extended 2nd edition. London: Verso.
Bay Area Radio Museum. (2013). KSFR radio 94.9, San Francisco: A broadcast day begins. http://bayarearadio.org/audio/ksfr/index.shtml. Last Accessed 3 Jul 2013.
Brunner, J. (1992). América Latina: Cultura and modernidad. Mexico City: Grijalbo.
Bull, M. (2004). ‘To each their own bubble’: Mobile spaces of sound in the city. In N. Couldry & A. McCarthy (Eds.), MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media age (pp. 275–293). New York: Routledge.
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Malden: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cavell, R. (1999). McLuhan and spatial communication. Western Journal of Communication, 63, 348–363.
Crosper, A. (2009). Part two: San Francisco, Oakland, San José Radio (1950s–2000). San Fransicso-Bay area radio history. http://www.playlistresearch.com/sfradiohistory2.htm. Last Accessed 3 Jul 2013.
Guido Interview: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/interviews/guido.html. Last Accessed 10 Jul 2013
Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Hilmes, M. (2004). Forward: Transnational radio in the global age. Journal of Radio Studies, 11(1), iii–vi.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (1944). Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Keith, M. C. (2010). The radio station: Broadcast, satellite and internet (8th ed.). Burlington: Focal Press.
Keough, S. (2009). Internet radio and cultural connections: A case study of the St. John’s, Newfoundland radio market. In T. Bell & O. Johannson (Eds.), Sound, society, and the geography of popular music (pp. 185–204). Hampshire: Ashgate.
Keough, S. (2010). The importance of place in community radio broadcasting: A case study of WDVX, Knoxville, Tennessee. Journal of Cultural Geography, 27(1), 77–99.
Kirk, M. (Writer, Producer, Director). (2004). The way the music died. Frontline. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/
Lin, C. (2006). Predicting satellite radio adoption via listening motives, activity, and format preference. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 50(1), 140–159.
Longan, M. (2013). Landscape as media, media as landscape: Representing Northwest Indian as landscape on the World Wide Web. Aether: Journal of Media Geography, 11, 127–147.
Martín-Barbero, J., & Janer, Z. (2000). Transformation in the map: Identities and culture industries. Latin American Perspectives, 27(4), 27–48.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: Signet Books.
Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995). Global media, electronic landscapes, and cultural boundaries. London: Routledge.
Murray Shafer, R. (1969). The new soundscape: A handbook for the modern music teacher. Toronto: BMI Canada.
Orgad, S. (2007). The internet as a moral space: The legacy of Roger Silverstone. New Media & Society, 9, 33–41.
Patsiokas, S. (2001). XM satellite radio technology fundamentals. SAE Technical Paper 2001-01-1328, doi: 10.4271/2001-01-1328.
Silverstone, R. (2004). Regulation, media literacy and media civics. Media, Culture & Society, 26, 440–449.
SiriusXM Corporate Website. http://www.siriusxm.com/. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2013.
Vowell, S. (1996). Radio on: A listener’s diary. New York: Martin’s Press.
Woodyard, C. (2013, 25 Mar). Newfound rivals jam car radios. USA Today, p. 1B
Zarek, C. (Summer 2004). Catching static: Satellite radio companies XM and Sirius come under fire for broadcasting local traffic and weather reports. The News Media and the Law, 38–39.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Robert Drew for the immensely productive brain-storming sessions that helped shape this chapter, and for his helpful comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Dr. Scott Youngstedt and Dr. Thomas Bell for their helpful suggestions on drafts of this work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keough, S.B. (2015). Placing Satellite Radio in the Contemporary Radio Landscape. In: Mains, S., Cupples, J., Lukinbeal, C. (eds) Mediated Geographies and Geographies of Media. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9969-0_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9969-0_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9968-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9969-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)