Drawing on rare recordings and scripts, Ehrlich traces a crucial phase in the evolution of news documentary, as docudramas featuring actors were supplanted by reality-based programs that took advantage of new recording technology. Paralleling that shift from drama to realism was a shift in liberal thought from dreams of world peace to uneasy adjustments to a cold war mentality. Influenced by corporate competition and government regulations, radio programming reflected shifts in a range of political thought that included pacifism, liberalism, and McCarthyism.
In showing how programming highlighted contradictions within journalism and documentary, Radio Utopia reveals radio's response to the political, economic, and cultural upheaval of the post-war era.
About the Author. About the Author Matthew C. Ehrlich is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Show Schedule. Show More. Current Day. All times listed EST. Find the package that fits your groove. See All Plans. Discover More. You May Also Like. SiriusXM Hits 1. Studio Diplo's Revolution. All Music Genres. Focusing particularly on the work of radio luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, Norman Corwin, and Erik Barnouw, Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest traces this crucial phase in American radio history, significant not only for its timing immediately before television, but also because it bridges the gap between the end of the World Wars and the beginning of the Cold War.
Audio documentary programs educated Americans about juvenile delinquency, slums, race relations, venereal disease, atomic energy, arms control, and other issues of public interest, but they typically stopped short of calling for radical change.
Drawing on rare recordings and scripts, Ehrlich traces a crucial phase in the evolution of news documentary, as docudramas featuring actors were supplanted by reality-based programs that took advantage of new recording technology. At the same time, it told tales of heroic individualism that celebrated classically American virtues. By , the political climate was shifting. Utopian dreams of a united peaceful world were giving way to anticommunism as the cold war intensified.
Changes accelerated in and The networks were increasingly devoting their attention to television and cutting costs in radio. The communist takeover of China, the Soviet development of the atomic bomb, and the eruption of war in Korea further fueled the cold war, and the redbaiting book Red Channels appeared, leading to the blacklisting of several leading documentarians. Against that backdrop, Fred Friendly and NBC produced the four-part documentary The Quick and the Dead on the development of the atomic bomb and the looming specter of the hydrogen bomb.
The series also explored the promise of atomic energy. Murrow in creating a new radio documentary series, Hear It Now. In contrast to the dramatized documentaries that had been the norm up until then, the new series centered around recordings and strove to present a grimly realistic portrait of the ongoing war in Korea. That marked the end of the heyday of the postwar radio documentary.
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