Talk radio is broadcast discourse expressing – under ideal circumstances – the medium’s full potential as a vox populi megaphone. Talk radio creates a virtual arena (a Coliseum!) in which topics of public relevance, and most specifically of current affairs, are treated with both expert voices and the continuous contributions of the “man on the street” – the vox populi. This vox populi is expressed within the mainstream media context. Radio broadcasters anticipate the active participation of listeners and make them engines of the on-air discussions. Talk radio programs become instruments for intervening in public opinion and, via opinions of the public, intervene in the public agenda. Talk radio and its vox populi amplify the importance of political issues and social issues.
Talk radio hosts – from the cerebral and sophisticated to the crude and rude – lure listeners to their radio stations with faux friendship and pseudo authority. Their shows power a cultural forcefield, as they have for generations. Radio Vox Populi provides an account of ubiquitous talk radio, from its inception to its current overwhelming societal power via a comparison of the Italian manifestation of the medium with that of the United States. The story is told through ten chapters written by radio scholars and practitioners with an introduction and conclusion by Professors Laufer and Ruggiero – whose American/Italian university partnership includes a focus on talk radio. Radio Vox Populi is a study from insiders of the history of the medium, its contemporary influence over masses of listeners in America and Europe, and the book interrogates talk radio culture from the point of view of both performer histrionics and audience response.
In the context of a media landscape radically disrupted and wildly expanded since the late 1960s initial successes of 24-hour news-oriented talk radio stations, Radio Vox Populi explains how and why the format holds its potent position as both influencer and revenue generator. Examining the genre’s self-hyping personalities, the book shows how the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule in the United States fueled the volcanic rise of what the broadcast industry calls “non-guested confrontation” programming dominated by right wing philosophies. It illustrates the radical change in perspective of the Italian radio model, from the “thousand flowers season” of the 1970s to the current talk radio reality: a medium dominated by a small number of commercial radio stations that prefer pure entertainment talk programming – albeit with considerable “pockets of resistance” on public radio stations, although some public station programming too is affected by and reflects some of the country's populist tendencies.
Radio Vox Populi provides an authoritative voice to help readers understand why live talk radio is magic, why it is divisive and why it is here to stay – no matter the cultural proclivities of the audiences.
