Forging a format
Advertising, attention and intimacy on the Mary Margaret McBride Program, 1941–54
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12723795 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stéphane Couture (0000-0002-7095-8324, ISNI: 0000000419368649 McGill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 155-170 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Radio Journal International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1476-4504 • E-ISSN: 2040-1388 |
| Publisher | Intellect (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1386/rjao_00080_1 |
| OpenAlex | W4390063659 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Each weekday at one o’clock, American radio personality Mary Margaret McBride (1899–1976) chatted on the air with guests for 45 minutes. Her programme combined advertising, editorial content and interviews in a unique manner, and her relationship with listeners was experienced as close and personal. Building on radio scholars’ interest in the ‘intimacy’ of the medium, this article investigates the form and structure of McBride’s programme, how her listeners engaged with it, and the specific techniques and stylistic choices which contributed to these feelings of familiarity. Based on listener letters, newspaper clippings and the programme itself, this work explores the ways in which McBride and her listeners together developed an atmosphere of intimacy on her programme, notes how these relationships were deeply enmeshed in consumer culture, and suggests that McBride’s programme was a part of an emergent cultural formation, articulating novel structures of feeling which have since become dominant across media forms and have persisted over time
Advertising · Atmosphere (unit · Consumer Culture · Feeling · Media studies · Newspaper · Personality · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Music History and Culture · Psychology · Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |