Selling the air : a critique of the policy of commercial broadcasting in the United States / Thomas Streeter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Streeter, Thomas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Broadcasting policy--United States.

Broadcasting policy.

Broadcasting--Law and legislation--United States.

Broadcasting.

Broadcasting--United States--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (354 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1996.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this interdisciplinary study of the laws and policies associated with commercial radio and television, Thomas Streeter reverses the usual take on broadcasting and markets by showing that government regulation creates rather than intervenes in the market. Analyzing the processes by which commercial media are organized, Streeter asks how it is possible to take the practice of broadcasting-the reproduction of disembodied sounds and pictures for dissemination to vast unseen audiences-and constitute it as something that can be bought, owned, and sold. With an impressive command of broadcast history, as well as critical and cultural studies of the media, Streeter shows that liberal marketplace principles-ideas of individuality, property, public interest, and markets-have come into contradiction with themselves. Commercial broadcasting is dependent on government privileges, and Streeter provides a searching critique of the political choices of corporate liberalism that shape our landscape of cultural property and electronic intangibles.

Contents:

pt. 1. Liberal television

pt. 2. The politics of broadcast policy in a corporate liberal state

pt. 3. Selling the air : property creation and the privelege of communication.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613097651

9781283097659

1283097656

9780226777290

0226777294

OCLC:

721926882