Using case studies and analytical overviews this book explores the relationship between broadcasting and the intimate domestic sphere into which it is broadcast. It focuses on the period from the 1920s, when broadcasting was established in the UK, to the present day when both domesticity and broadcasting have become areas of anxiety and contestation. The entry of the 'wireless', and later television, into the home changed men and women's experience of domesticity, offering education and reducing isolation. But broadcasting did not merely change domestic leisure patterns, it actively intervened in constructing domesticity. The supposedly natural relationship between femininity and domesticity has structured the nature of broadcasting, and also the discourses which have emerged concerning the consumption of broadcast media. Contemporary broadcasting continues to be obsessed by domesticity, both in an idealised sense as well as portraying the domestic world as one of turmoil and crisis. This volume demonstrates that the relationship between broadcasting and domesticity is a key, and often neglected, feature of the cultural history of Britain in the last 100 years.

Media technologies have played a central role in shaping ideas about home life over the last two centuries. Changing Media, Homes and Households explores the complex relationship between home, householders, families and media technologies by charting the evolution of the media-rich home, from the early twentieth century to the present. Moving beyond a narrow focus on media texts, production and audiences, Deborah Chambers investigates the physical presence of media objects in the home and their symbolic importance for home life. The book identifies the role of home-based media in altering relationships between home, leisure, work and the outside world in the context of entertainment, communication and work. It assesses whether domestic media are transforming or reinforcing traditional identities and relations of gender, generation, class and migrancy. Mediatisation theory is employed to assess the domestication of media and media saturation of home life in the context of wider global changes. The author also develops the concept of media imaginaries to explain the role of public discourses in shaping changing meanings, values and uses of domestic media. Framed within these approaches, four chapters also provide in-depth case studies of the processes involved in media’s home adoption: early television design, family-centred video gaming, the domestication of tablet computers, and the shift from "smart homes" to today’s "connected" homes. This is an ideal text for students and researchers interested in media and cultural studies, communication, and sociology.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. The 20th century was a time of rapid expansion in media industries, as well as of accelerating demands for equality and recognition for women. While women's agency has typically been defined through the domestic sphere, the introduction of media into the home destabilised firm boundaries between public and private spheres. Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age demonstrates how women as media producers and audiences in three countries with public service broadcasters (UK, Canada and Australia) have contributed to changes in our understandings of public and private. Justine Lloyd offers a new way of understanding how tremendous changes in social definitions of gender roles played out in media forms worldwide during this period through the notion of 'intimate geographies'. Women's participation in media continues to be a key challenge to notions of the public sphere and the book concludes that profound changes initiated in the broadcast era are unfinished in the age of digital media. Lloyd therefore provides rich and valuable evidence of the dynamic relationship between media texts, producers and audiences that is relevant to contemporary debates about a growing gender 'apartheid' in a mediated culture.

This collection critically examines the role of food programming on European early television and the impact this might have had on food habits and identities for the European audiences. It foregrounds various food programme genres, from travelog, cooking show and TV cooking competition, to more artistic forms. For the first time, it examines in one place eight European countries, from Portugal to Czechoslovakia and Britain to France and Yugoslavia, to explore ways in which television contributed to culinary change, demonstrating differences and similarities in which early food programme in Europe shaped and promoted progress, modernity, gender and national identities in both Eastern and Western Europe. Featuring a number of archival images that illustrate early food programme visually, this collection complements other research into postwar food history, adding a perspective of visual medium that is often neglected. As such, it should be interesting for food and media historians as well as those interested in European postwar history and culture.

This book is a history of women's voices on the radio in two of South America's most important early radio markets. It explores what it meant to hear female voices on the radio and asks readers to consider gender in its aural and sonic dimensions.

Contributions by Christina Baade, Candace Bailey, Paula J. Bishop, Maribeth Clark, Brittany Greening, Tammy Kernodle, Kendra Preston Leonard, April L. Prince, Travis D. Stimeling, and Kristen M. Turner For every star, there are hundreds of less-recognized women who contribute to musical communities, influencing their aesthetics and expanding opportunities available to women. Hidden Harmonies: Women and Music in Popular Entertainment focuses not on those whose names are best known nor most celebrated but on the women who had power in collective or subversive ways hidden from standard histories. Contributors to Hidden Harmonies reexamine primary sources using feminist and queer methodologies as well as critical race theory in order to overcome previous, biased readings. The scholarship that results from such reexaminations explores topics from songwriters to the music of the civil rights movement and from whistling schools to musical influencers. These wide-ranging essays create a diverse and novel view of women's contribution to music and its production. With intelligence and care, Hidden Harmonies uncovers the fascinating figures behind decades of popular music.

In 1954 Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the Australian House of Representatives, argued that radio had ‘created a bigger revolution in the life of a woman than anything that has happened any time’ as it brought the public sphere into the home and women into the public sphere. Taking this claim as its starting point, Sound Citizens examines how a cohort of professional women broadcasters, activists and politicians used radio to contribute to the public sphere and improve women’s status in Australia from the introduction of radio in 1923 until the introduction of television in 1956. This book reveals a much broader and more complex history of women’s contributions to Australian broadcasting than has been previously acknowledged. Using a rich archive of radio magazines, station archives, scripts, personal papers and surviving recordings, Sound Citizens traces how women broadcasters used radio as a tool for their advocacy; radio’s significance to the history of women’s advancement; and how broadcasting was used in the development of women’s citizenship in Australia. It argues that women broadcasters saw radio as a medium that had the potential to transform women’s lives and status in society, and that they worked to both claim their own voices in the public sphere and to encourage other women to become active citizens. Radio provided a platform for women to contribute to public discourse and normalised the presence of women’s voices in the public sphere, both literally and figuratively.

The media have played a significant role in the contested and changing social position of women in Britain since the 1900s. They have facilitated feminism by both providing discourses and images from which women can construct their identities, and offering spaces where hegemonic ideas of femininity can be reworked. This volume is intended to provide an overview of work on Broadcasting, Film and Print Media from 1900, while appealing to scholars of History and Media, Film and Cultural Studies. This edited collection features tightly focused and historically contextualised case studies which showcase current research on women and media in Britain since the 1900s. The case studies explore media directed at a particularly female audience such as Woman’s Hour, and magazines such as Vogue, Woman and Marie Claire. Women who work in the media, issues of production, and regulation are discussed alongside the representation of women across a broad range of media from early 20th-century motorcycling magazines, Page 3 and regional television news.

Mabel Constanduros was one of the first British radio comediennes and a beloved star of the early BBC, best known as the creator and performer of the comic Cockney family, the Bugginses. In this, the first significant biography of Constanduros, Jennifer J Purcell explores Constanduros's career and influence on the shaping of popular British entertainment alongside the history of the nascent BBC. Mother of the BBC provides new insights into programming decisions and content on the early BBC, deepening our understanding of the history and evolution of situation comedy and soap opera. Further, Constanduros's biography considers class in the representation of the British people on BBC radio, the gendered experience and performance of radio celebrity, and the intersections between BBC entertainment and other forms of popular media prior to the advent of television. Constanduros's emphasis on the everyday and the family had far-reaching impacts on the shape of sitcom and soap opera in Britain, two popular lenses through which the nation sees itself at home. Her role in developing entertainment on the BBC and the ways in which she cultivated her career make her the Mother of the BBC, but in constructing a popular image of family life she might also be considered the Mother of the Nation.

This book explores the literary and cultural history behind certain Christmas and Halloween traditions, and examines the way that they have moved into broadcasting. It demonstrates how these horror traditions have become more domestic and personal, and how they provide a necessary seasonal pause for reflection on our fears.