Author: Richard Barbrook
AMERICAN THEORIES OF MEDIA DEREGULATION
‘Television is nothing more than a toaster with pictures’ – Mark Fowler 1981 The mass media in contemporary Western Europe has been undergoing a period of profound transformation. For some, this involves a ‘paradigm shift’ from public service to free market broadcasting. (Hoffman‑Riem 1986: 126‑9) After the Second World War, most national broadcasting systems were […]
Author: Richard Barbrook
THE POLICEMAN OF THE ETHER
An Analysis of State Regulation and Intervention in American and British Radio Broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s Under the Thatcher government, the mass media has not been often at the centre of political debate. Despite lobbying from right‑wing think‑tanks and commercial interests, present policies are marked more by confusion and paralysis than by ‘the […]
Author: Richard Barbrook
F.M. Fatale
Pirate Radio in 1980s London It is 1.00 a.m. on a hot Saturday night at London’s King’s Cross station. Outside there is a traffic jam like the middle of a weekday rush hour. The northbound road is partially blocked by people dancing in the street. House music is being pumped out by a very loud […]
Within this MySpace version of the electronic agora, cybernetic communism was mainstream and unexceptional. What had once been a revolutionary dream was now an enjoyable part of everyday life.