B Griffen-Foley
Biographic Data
| ID | 21367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Griffen-Foley |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Griffen-Foley |
| SIGNATURE | GRIFFEN-FOLEY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8540-3081 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The ‘utility of ideas’
This article surveys Graeme Turner's research contributions to media and communication studies since the 1990s, and his intellectual and pedagogical leadership in the field in Australia and beyond. It considers his work in critical industry studies, as well as his interest in the nation, and his views on issues including technology and the creative industries
Chronically Concerned’
A short history of the Australian media
This chapter presents a short history of the Australian media from 1803, when the country’s first newspaper was established. The preliminary section sketches the emergence of newspapers and magazines and the early book publishing and film industries. The next section, from the end of World War I, focuses on the development and expansion of print media dynasties led by the Fairfax, Murdoch, and Packer families. The chapter then outlines the origin…
Radio
This chapter outlines the evolution and structure of the Australian radio industry. It briefly surveys the history of the industry, showing how it has adapted to successive challenges throughout the decades. The chapter then explains and analyses the main radio sectors: public service (Australian Broadcasting Corporation/ABC, and Special Broadcasting Service/SBS), commercial (dominated by 12 major networks) and community. It considers how radio p…
Aunty Heads West
This article investigates the evolution of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Western Australia between the 1920s and the 1960s, covering the introduction and spread of radio and then television. It considers the visits of ABC commissioners and management to Perth, the appointment of commissioners from Western Australia, the building of radio and television studios, the creation of the ABC’s first state Advisory Committee in 1935, and the …
Towards a History of Literary Programming on ABC Radio
After the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was established in 1932, music occupied just over half of airtime, with talk making up the balance. With the gradual evolution of literary content on Australian radio, novels and plays were adapted, serialised or commissioned, and there were competitions and book readings. Based on fine-grained newspaper and archival research, this article considers the development of book criticism and discussio…
Australian Radio Listeners and Television Viewers
Let's Join in
This article considers the world for children created by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and its predecessors between the 1920s and the 1970s. Beginning with the ‘Aunts’ and ‘Uncles’ of early radio, it looks at the ABC’s endeavours in the areas of children’s and educational broadcasting, focusing particularly on the Argonauts Club, Kindergarten of the Air and Let’s Join In. It also explores the work of ABC identities including compos…
Kindergarten of the Air
This article considers the radio programme for kindergarten-aged children that the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) launched during the Second World War and continued to broadcast until 1985. Kindergarten of the Air, thought to be the ‘first of its kind in the world’, was to inspire interest from, and similar programmes throughout, the British empire and beyond. The article examines the imperial and international broadcasting networks tha…
Inaugural KS Inglis address
This address considers the development of media history as a field of research in Australia. It takes the form of a historiographical excursion, beginning with a focus on the press, and then extending to broadcasting, and touching on the work of KS Inglis as a through line. After considering what I identify as a historiographical blossoming since the 1980s, I extend my gaze to the tools and institutions for media history that have emerged, includ…
Entangled Media Histories
This commentary responds to the research report by Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert on the value of transnational and transmedial approaches in media historiography. It reflects on my introduction to the concept of ‘entangled media histories’, and its potential application to the study of the history of media in Australia and the Asia-Pacific as the field continues to grow in the region, as sketched out in the piece. It considers the value o…
Diary of a television viewer
In 1974, Melbourne teenager Jennifer Sketchley started keeping a daily diary. It continued until 1985, describing everyday life as a schoolgirl, leaving school at the age of 16, studying by correspondence and entering the workforce. She was happiest watching films and television, with her diary recording what she watched from morning to night. Sketchley's diaries provide an intimate insight into the television habits and preferences of one Austra…
Sound Business
Broadsheets, Broadcasts and Botany Bay
The “Australians and the Past” survey in the late 1990s showed that the vast majority of people gained their principal historical understanding from some form of entertainment across their lifetime. For over a century the media has been a key source in the development of Australians’ historical understanding and historical consciousness. This article explores some of the many ways history has been presented by Australian journalists and other med…
Digging up the Past
Frank Clune (1893–1971) was a prolific author and the most popular Australian historian of the first half of the twentieth century. This article surveys Clune’s relationships with his ghost-writer, P R Stephensen, and with a later mentor, Justice J V Barry, along with Clune’s role as a press and radio personality in mid-century Australia. In doing so, it reflects on Clune’s mission to popularise Australian history and open up sources for its stud…
Australian Commercial Radio, American Influences—and The BBC
Henry Mayer Lecture Voices of the People
John Laws famously labelled his commercial radio talkback program, and its genre, 'dial-in democracy'. Amongst the mellifluous tones of Laws and 'Andrea', the gravelly rasps of Brian White and Derryn Hinch, and the impatient injunctions of Alan Jones and Howard Sattler have been the voices of countless 'ordinary' Australians. Here, I consider how voices of 'the people' have been heard in Australian print media outlets, led by The Bulletin, since …
Australian Media Reception Histories
As the field of Australian media history expands, so too does the need for a broader and more innovative range of questions, issues and debates. This special issue of MIA responds to that need by considering the sources and research questions raised by media reception historians working on film, radio, television and the press. From print to new media, the papers assembled highlight the ingenuity of Australian historians working to recover the ex…
Radio Ministries
This article examines the first forty years of religious broadcasting on commercial radio in Australia, a subject largely neglected by historians of Australian religion and the media. It reveals the diversity of religious broadcasting on Australian commercial radio, the ambiguities of the regulatory framework within which it operated, the influence of American religious broadcasting in Australia, and the challenges confronting religious broadcast…
From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena
More than 30 commercial stations in Australia were involved in foreign language broadcasting during the years 1950s and the 1970s. However in the second half of the 1950s much official resistance to these programs was beginning to dissipate. The history of foreign language broadcasting is part of a genealogy of Australian multiculturalism that gives partial origin in commercial opportunities and in self-reflexive liberalism
Talkback Radio and Australian Politics since the Summer of 1967
This article explores the intersections between Australian party politics and commercial talkback radio from 1967 to 1983. It considers the eagerness of individual politicians such as John Gorton and R.W. Askin to exploit the possibilities of 'dial-in' radio, addresses how political parties came to view the usefulness (and the dangers) of talkback radio, and assesses the political interventions of Brian White, Ormsby Wilkins and John Laws. In doi…
From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena
The birth of a hybrid
This article surveys the emergence and evolution of the Australian radio system, a hybrid system that by the 1930s embraced both public and private broadcasters. It examines the ways in which proponents of Australian broadcasting viewed developments in Britain and the United States; the debate about cultural standards reflected in arguments about the merits of public sector and commercial broadcasting; the influence of American advertising agenci…
From Tit-Bits to Big Brother
This article explores the connections between reality television and older print and electronic media formats. It surveys the history of audience participation in the media through a series of case studies drawn from Britain, Australia and the United States: periodicals featuring significant contributions from their readers in the 1880s; confessional magazines in the 1920s; mass-market women’s magazines during the inter-war years; talkback radio …
A “Civilised Amateur”
Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists’ Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cult…
From Tit-Bits to Big Brother
This article explores the connections between reality television and older print and electronic media formats. It surveys the history of audience participation in the media through a series of case studies drawn from Britain, Australia and the United States: periodicals featuring significant contributions from their readers in the 1880s; confessional magazines in the 1920s; mass-market women’s magazines during the inter-war years; talkback radio …
The Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer Dynasties in Twentieth-century Australia
Entangled Media Histories
This commentary responds to the research report by Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert on the value of transnational and transmedial approaches in media historiography. It reflects on my introduction to the concept of ‘entangled media histories’, and its potential application to the study of the history of media in Australia and the Asia-Pacific as the field continues to grow in the region, as sketched out in the piece. It considers the value o…
Digging up the Past
Frank Clune (1893–1971) was a prolific author and the most popular Australian historian of the first half of the twentieth century. This article surveys Clune’s relationships with his ghost-writer, P R Stephensen, and with a later mentor, Justice J V Barry, along with Clune’s role as a press and radio personality in mid-century Australia. In doing so, it reflects on Clune’s mission to popularise Australian history and open up sources for its stud…
Introduction
Towards a History of Literary Programming on ABC Radio
After the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was established in 1932, music occupied just over half of airtime, with talk making up the balance. With the gradual evolution of literary content on Australian radio, novels and plays were adapted, serialised or commissioned, and there were competitions and book readings. Based on fine-grained newspaper and archival research, this article considers the development of book criticism and discussio…
Let's Join in
This article considers the world for children created by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and its predecessors between the 1920s and the 1970s. Beginning with the ‘Aunts’ and ‘Uncles’ of early radio, it looks at the ABC’s endeavours in the areas of children’s and educational broadcasting, focusing particularly on the Argonauts Club, Kindergarten of the Air and Let’s Join In. It also explores the work of ABC identities including compos…
Kindergarten of the Air
This article considers the radio programme for kindergarten-aged children that the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) launched during the Second World War and continued to broadcast until 1985. Kindergarten of the Air, thought to be the ‘first of its kind in the world’, was to inspire interest from, and similar programmes throughout, the British empire and beyond. The article examines the imperial and international broadcasting networks tha…
Inaugural KS Inglis address
This address considers the development of media history as a field of research in Australia. It takes the form of a historiographical excursion, beginning with a focus on the press, and then extending to broadcasting, and touching on the work of KS Inglis as a through line. After considering what I identify as a historiographical blossoming since the 1980s, I extend my gaze to the tools and institutions for media history that have emerged, includ…
Diary of a television viewer
In 1974, Melbourne teenager Jennifer Sketchley started keeping a daily diary. It continued until 1985, describing everyday life as a schoolgirl, leaving school at the age of 16, studying by correspondence and entering the workforce. She was happiest watching films and television, with her diary recording what she watched from morning to night. Sketchley's diaries provide an intimate insight into the television habits and preferences of one Austra…
Australian Commercial Radio, American Influences—and The BBC
Radio Ministries
This article examines the first forty years of religious broadcasting on commercial radio in Australia, a subject largely neglected by historians of Australian religion and the media. It reveals the diversity of religious broadcasting on Australian commercial radio, the ambiguities of the regulatory framework within which it operated, the influence of American religious broadcasting in Australia, and the challenges confronting religious broadcast…
Talkback Radio and Australian Politics since the Summer of 1967
This article explores the intersections between Australian party politics and commercial talkback radio from 1967 to 1983. It considers the eagerness of individual politicians such as John Gorton and R.W. Askin to exploit the possibilities of 'dial-in' radio, addresses how political parties came to view the usefulness (and the dangers) of talkback radio, and assesses the political interventions of Brian White, Ormsby Wilkins and John Laws. In doi…
Sir Frank Packer and the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1967–71
This article considers the role of Sir Frank Packer and his media outlets in the demise of Sir John Gorton in 1971 and the elevation of Sir William McMahon to the leadership of the Liberal Party and the Prime Ministership of Australia. It identifies Packer's long association with McMahon and traces the part played by Australian Consolidated Press in the intra-party struggle of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The article argues that while Pack…
Four More Points than Moses
While commentators have frequently referred to the complexities of Evatfs personality and the inconsistencies seemingly inherent in his policies,3 it has only recently been recognised that Evatfs views on, and relationship with, the media constitute a common, complex and not always subtle thread throughout his life. Peter Crocketf s observations about Evatt and the press are, however, fleeting, and related to the author's perverse psycho biograph…
The Deep Six
While conservative governments may have reduced or re-directed some funding away from the tenant unions, the infrastructure of tenancy advice organisations remains largely intact. Paris writes of the struggle for sole parents (mostly female) in trying to enter the home ownership stakes. With increasing waiting times for public rental housing most state governments experimented with new home ownership schemes to assist those who found it difficult…
Pacific Union
Heralds and Angels
Playing with Princes and Presidents
1959 Sir Frank Packer decided to launch Australia's first bid for the America's Cup, the coveted trophy that had remained in the hands of the New York Yacht Club for over a century. Well before the Australian yacht Gretel arrived in Newport in 1962, the syndicate was embroiled in controversy. This article, based on previously overlooked archival records in Sydney and New York, explores the geo‐political dimensions of the challenge. It considers t…
Revisiting the ‘Mystery of a Novel Contest’
The terms of the contest, launched in late 1945, seemed straightforward enough. The Sydney Daily Telegraph would award £1000 for the best Australian novel and publish the winning manuscript in Australia and overseas ('Telegraph offers £1000 novel prize'). But the contest became a debacle, beset by controversy and shrouded in mystery. While the prize was awarded to Florence James and Dymphna Cusack for Come in Spinner, the newspaper failed to publ…
The Press Proprietor and the Politician
This article surveys the relationship between Australian's longest serving prime minister. Sir Robert Menzies, and the controversial media proprietor Sir Frank Packer. It begins by briefly discussing the progressive liberalism that characterised the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs in the 1930s and 1940s. It then considers Packer's flirtations with the affairs of the United Australia Party and the Liberal Party in the 1940s, and the way in which Menzi…
The battle of Melbourne
Sir Frank Packer and the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1967–71
This article considers the role of Sir Frank Packer and his media outlets in the demise of Sir John Gorton in 1971 and the elevation of Sir William McMahon to the leadership of the Liberal Party and the Prime Ministership of Australia. It identifies Packer's long association with McMahon and traces the part played by Australian Consolidated Press in the intra-party struggle of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The article argues that while Pack…
Introduction
The House of Packer
The Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer Dynasties in Twentieth-century Australia
Sir Frank Packer
A “Civilised Amateur”
Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists’ Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cult…
The birth of a hybrid
This article surveys the emergence and evolution of the Australian radio system, a hybrid system that by the 1930s embraced both public and private broadcasters. It examines the ways in which proponents of Australian broadcasting viewed developments in Britain and the United States; the debate about cultural standards reflected in arguments about the merits of public sector and commercial broadcasting; the influence of American advertising agenci…
From Tit-Bits to Big Brother
This article explores the connections between reality television and older print and electronic media formats. It surveys the history of audience participation in the media through a series of case studies drawn from Britain, Australia and the United States: periodicals featuring significant contributions from their readers in the 1880s; confessional magazines in the 1920s; mass-market women’s magazines during the inter-war years; talkback radio …
From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena
From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena
More than 30 commercial stations in Australia were involved in foreign language broadcasting during the years 1950s and the 1970s. However in the second half of the 1950s much official resistance to these programs was beginning to dissipate. The history of foreign language broadcasting is part of a genealogy of Australian multiculturalism that gives partial origin in commercial opportunities and in self-reflexive liberalism
Talkback Radio and Australian Politics since the Summer of 1967
This article explores the intersections between Australian party politics and commercial talkback radio from 1967 to 1983. It considers the eagerness of individual politicians such as John Gorton and R.W. Askin to exploit the possibilities of 'dial-in' radio, addresses how political parties came to view the usefulness (and the dangers) of talkback radio, and assesses the political interventions of Brian White, Ormsby Wilkins and John Laws. In doi…
Radio Ministries
This article examines the first forty years of religious broadcasting on commercial radio in Australia, a subject largely neglected by historians of Australian religion and the media. It reveals the diversity of religious broadcasting on Australian commercial radio, the ambiguities of the regulatory framework within which it operated, the influence of American religious broadcasting in Australia, and the challenges confronting religious broadcast…
Australian Media Reception Histories
As the field of Australian media history expands, so too does the need for a broader and more innovative range of questions, issues and debates. This special issue of MIA responds to that need by considering the sources and research questions raised by media reception historians working on film, radio, television and the press. From print to new media, the papers assembled highlight the ingenuity of Australian historians working to recover the ex…
Australian Commercial Radio, American Influences—and The BBC
Henry Mayer Lecture Voices of the People
John Laws famously labelled his commercial radio talkback program, and its genre, 'dial-in democracy'. Amongst the mellifluous tones of Laws and 'Andrea', the gravelly rasps of Brian White and Derryn Hinch, and the impatient injunctions of Alan Jones and Howard Sattler have been the voices of countless 'ordinary' Australians. Here, I consider how voices of 'the people' have been heard in Australian print media outlets, led by The Bulletin, since …
Broadsheets, Broadcasts and Botany Bay
The “Australians and the Past” survey in the late 1990s showed that the vast majority of people gained their principal historical understanding from some form of entertainment across their lifetime. For over a century the media has been a key source in the development of Australians’ historical understanding and historical consciousness. This article explores some of the many ways history has been presented by Australian journalists and other med…
Digging up the Past
Frank Clune (1893–1971) was a prolific author and the most popular Australian historian of the first half of the twentieth century. This article surveys Clune’s relationships with his ghost-writer, P R Stephensen, and with a later mentor, Justice J V Barry, along with Clune’s role as a press and radio personality in mid-century Australia. In doing so, it reflects on Clune’s mission to popularise Australian history and open up sources for its stud…
Political science (26 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Media studies (22 works) · History (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Australian History and Society (18 works) · Media Studies and Communication (16 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Broadcasting (networking (9 works)