Reality Radio: Remediating the Radio Contest Genre in Major Bowes' Amateur Hour Films

Melnick,

doi:10.2979/filmhistory.23.3.331

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Koszarski (1990: 106) and Ellis (1953) describe their use for generating brand-specific programming for film, radio and television. Contests themselves have become program content, a tendency seen early on in US commercial television, as Melnick (2011) observes regarding the ubiquitous game shows and talent shows first developed for radio. An example from early US television is noted by the trade journal Broadcasting/Telecasting (1956), which describes a television program that showed the final round of a contest for the best impromptu 25 words about a soft drink, with the winner chosen by the soft drink’s buyers.…”

Section: Contestant: Republicanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical forms of user production

Hamilton

2014

Media, Culture & Society

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Common conceptions of user production overstate its novelty while understating its variety. To respond to these lacks, this article develops an analytic map that enables a more nuanced historical and critical understanding and investigation of user production. Historical approaches are well suited for capturing the multifarious forms of user production while also avoiding the problem of a-historicism. The article develops a contextual typology of user production by theorizing it as a cultural form. Primary forms discussed include those of buyer; source, subject, interviewee; contestant; supplier; financier; inventor; activist; and member, all of which are related to their generative formations and conditions. The article concludes by suggesting the kinds of questions and studies that such a framework makes possible.

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Section: Contestant: Republicanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical forms of user production

Hamilton

2014

Media, Culture & Society

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The Voice: Popular Culture and the Perpetuation of Ideology

Arditi

2020

Getting Signed

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“On Fire with Hope”: African American Classical Musicians,Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, and the Hope for a Colour-Blind Radio

Goodman¹

2012

J. Am. Stud.

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Amateur talent shows were among the most popular programs on mid-1930s network radio, but for African Americans they had an importance that went beyond entertainment. These shows attracted considerable attention in the black press and from black audiences because they held out the promise of escape from the constraints of Jim Crow into a colour-blind national public sphere. This article explores the participation of African American performers on the most popular of the radio amateur shows, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour. It focusses particularly on two black classical performers on the Amateur Hour – singers Otis Holley and La Julia Rhea – contrasting their success on the radio show with the obstacles they encountered in the segregated world outside the studio. Radio did stimulate hope about the possibility of a race-free sound world, a new sense that such a thing could be possible. That the first generation to test the idea – gifted performers such as Holley and Rhea – often failed to translate radio success into mainstream acceptance, should not lead us to neglect the increase in hope that the early mass media provoked among African Americans.

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Reality Radio: Remediating the Radio Contest Genre in Major Bowes' Amateur Hour Films

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

Historical forms of user production

Historical forms of user production

The Voice: Popular Culture and the Perpetuation of Ideology

“On Fire with Hope”: African American Classical Musicians,Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, and the Hope for a Colour-Blind Radio

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