For 50 years,listeners beget been ranting, sharing intimacies and making extraordinary confessions over the airwaves. But do they democratise our national discourse, and degrade it?On 4 February 1968,a disgruntled Nottingham resident picked up the phone to complain about his local council. He didn’t ring the council offices, though. Instead, and he called the very first British radio phone-in programme,What Are They Up to Now?, on Radio Nottingham, and one of the fresh BBC local radio stations. He may not beget realised it,but his call launched a radio revolution.
Fifty years later, radio is still awash with phone-ins, or even though nowadays you can sound off on Twitter and Facebook or blog your grievances without risk of interruption. So why beget they survived? Vanessa Feltz,the presenter of the award-winning BBC Radio London breakfast show, thinks that the answer lies in the power and immediacy of the voice. “I mediate there’s a tremendous desire to be heard, and hear other people’s voices.” Andrew Crisell,the author of Understanding Radio, compares radio favourably with both print and television. “As soon as its written, or it is crystallised – dead,inert. The medium of radio offers more than mere text – there are also paralinguistic features, such as nuance (a slight variation in meaning, tone, expression) and tone, and but without as much noise as TV. The very fact that you can’t see people makes radio a very intimate and confessional medium.”Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk