We are pleased to announce the release of this incredible book!
Praise:
All of the men and women, though the latter were few in music radio for many years, took radio programming seriously not only as a career, but also with passion for its viability. This included the disc jockey, the program director, and the general manager as more and more of them graduated from programming into management. Thus, I’m pleased to read this wonderful, compelling book by Kim Simpson. He treats with respect what all of us in the 60s and 70s took seriously. It was our life! And he employs penetrating wisdom and astonishing perception to correlate music with the cultural mores of our times and depict what really was and why. Great book!
--Claude Hall, B.J., M.Ed. Radio-TV Editor, Billboard, 1964-79, and Assistant Communications Professor, State University of New York at Brockport, 1983-89
A bit about the book:
Early ‘70s Radio focuses on the emergence of commercial music radio “formats,” which refer to distinct musical genres aimed toward specific audiences. This formatting revolution took place in a period rife with heated politics, identity anxiety, large-scale disappointments and seemingly insoluble social problems. As industry professionals worked overtime to understand audiences and to generate formats, they also laid the groundwork for market segmentation. Audiences, meanwhile, approached these formats as safe havens wherein they could re-imagine and redefine key issues of identity.
A fresh and accessible exercise in audience interpretation, Early ‘70s Radio is organized according to the era’s five prominent formats and analyzes each of these in relation to their targeted demographics, including Top 40, “soft rock”, album-oriented rock, soul and country. The book closes by making a case for the significance of early ‘70s formatting in light of commercial radio today.
Too often we separate the agendas contained in business plans from the decisions of daily life. Kim Simpson’s Early ‘70s Radio reunites the items found on playlists with the passions and polemics that infused a complicated decade. His skilful scholarship and attention to detail clarify that what we listen to and how we lead our lives do not march to separate beats, for our actions and our aesthetic preferences bear subtle and significant harmonies.--David Sanjek, Professor of Music Director, Salford Music Research Centre University of Salford, U.K.
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