Bridget Griffen-Foley

This lively and accessible book charts how Australian audiences have engaged with radio and television since the 1920s. Ranging across both the commercial and public service broadcasting sectors, it recovers and explores the lived experiences of a wide cross-section of Australian listeners and viewers. Offering new perspectives on how audiences have responded to broadcast content, and how radio and television stations have been part of the lives of Australians, over the past one hundred years, this book invites us into the dynamic world created for children by the radio industry, traces the operations of radio and television clubs across Australia, and uncovers the workings of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s viewers’ advisory committees. It also opens up the fan mail received by Australian broadcasting stations and personalities, delves into the complaints ?les of regulators, and teases out the role of participants and studio audiences in popular matchmaking programs.

This lively and accessible book charts how Australian audiences have engaged with radio and television since the 1920s. Ranging across both the commercial and public service broadcasting sectors, it recovers and explores the lived experiences of a wide cross-section of Australian listeners and viewers. Offering new perspectives on how audiences have responded to broadcast content, and how radio and television stations have been part of the lives of Australians, over the past one hundred years, this book invites us into the dynamic world created for children by the radio industry, traces the operations of radio and television clubs across Australia, and uncovers the workings of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s viewers’ advisory committees. It also opens up the fan mail received by Australian broadcasting stations and personalities, delves into the complaints ?les of regulators, and teases out the role of participants and studio audiences in popular matchmaking programs.

This timely book investigates the fascinating landscape of media-driven politics through the prisms of 'public opinion', political campaigning, and audiences.From Indigenous voting rights and climate change to talkback radio and right-wing populism, Public Opinion, Campaign Politics & Media Audiences showcases new research in political science, history and media studies. Contributors scrutinise the relationship between polls, party policy and voting behaviour, and evaluate the roles of oratory and the media in electioneering and political communication across Australia, Britain and the United States.The eight chapters are based on papers delivered at a symposium to honour Murray Goot FASSA, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, on his retirement from Macquarie University.

This timely book investigates the fascinating landscape of media-driven politics through the prisms of 'public opinion', political campaigning, and audiences.From Indigenous voting rights and climate change to talkback radio and right-wing populism, Public Opinion, Campaign Politics & Media Audiences showcases new research in political science, history and media studies. Contributors scrutinise the relationship between polls, party policy and voting behaviour, and evaluate the roles of oratory and the media in electioneering and political communication across Australia, Britain and the United States.The eight chapters are based on papers delivered at a symposium to honour Murray Goot FASSA, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, on his retirement from Macquarie University.

Legendary media baron Sir Frank Packer was pugnacious, autocratic and always controversial. After joining forces with Labor politician E.G. Theodore to establish Australian Consolidated Press and the Women's Weekly in the 1930s, his empire grew to encompass newspapers, magazines and the Nine television network. This absorbing biography traces the newspaper career of Frank's father R.C. Packer from Hobart and the outback to the founding of Smith's Weekly in 1919. Overshadowed by his brilliant father, Frank was an academic failure at school and a mediocre cadet reporter. Despite his own lack of promise as a journalist, Frank came to rule the Australian media landscape with an iron fist.He was famous for his spectacular takeover bids and editorial interventions, his closeness to Prime Minister Menzies and his pitched battles with unions. A philanthropist as well as a philanderer, he bullied his staff including his sons Clyde and Kerry. In 1960s Sydney, he jostled with the rising Rupert Murdoch for control of the country's largest newspaper market.A keen sportsman, Frank's first successes were in the boxing ring and on the polo field. In 1962 he mounted Australia's first challenge for the America's Cup in the yacht Gretel, named after his late wife.

Immediate, intimate, portable and inexpensive, radio is the most pervasive medium in Australia. ""Changing Stations"" is the first full-scale, national history of commercial radio in Australia, from the experiments and schemes of the 1920s through to the eve of the introduction of digital radio in 2009. This sweeping national study moves from Sydney to Adelaide, Launceston to Cairns, Broken Hill to Albany. In tracing the often contentious evolution of regulation, ownership and networking from the amateur experiments of the 1920s to podcasting in the 2000s, it considers producing and listening, the national and the local, the mass and the personal, 'payola' and 'cash for comment'. It explores programming genres, from drama, music and quiz shows to sport, politics and talkback, and to trace commercial radio's engagement with communities of Australian listeners. The iconic names of commercial radio, including George Edwards, Grace Gibson, Jack Davey, Bob Dyer, Bob Rogers, Norman Banks, Andrea, Brian White, John Laws and Alan Jones, are here, together with lesser known figures, such as the first woman cricket broadcaster in Australia and the station manager who privately dismissed listeners as 'morons'.

'A remarkable account of the Packer family.painstakingly researched.will enthral anyone with an interest in the media'. - Kate de Brito, The Daily TelegraphAustralia's richest man, Kerry Packer, came to the helm of Australian Consolidated Press a quarter of a century ago;in recent years his son, James, has begun taking over the reins of the group. But despite the legendary reputation of Kerry Packer and his father Sir Frank, and the popular fascination with young James, the story of the creation of the family dynasty has never been told.This compelling book unravels, for the first time, Frank Packer's Machiavellian deals that resulted in the launch of the Australian Women's Weekly in 1933. From there it charts the production of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, the Nine network, the Bulletin and Cleo.The House of Packer moves seamlessly from the bohemia of the newsroom to the intrigue of the boardroom;from the rumbustious style of celebrated editors to the feudalism of Sir Frank;from the bitter condemnation of political enemies to at times bizarre territorial disputes with the Fairfax and Murdoch dynasties.