| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kathy M. Newman. Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935–1947. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2004. Pp. xiii, 237. Cloth $55.00, paper $21.95.
Kathy M. Newman's account of radio advertising in cultural context represents a fine contribution to the recent renaissance of radio history. She resurrects an entire industry of cultural critique in the 1930s and 1940s that attacked radio for its alliance with corporate capitalism, fought to make radio advertising more accountable, and resisted the medium's power through what she terms "radio-activism." Newman's work adds to the growing field of radio studies by looking closely at radio advertisements, their creators, their detractors, and their beleaguered listeners.	1
Radio ads, unlike ads in print, disrupted the entertainment narrative (p. 27), and corporations had to walk a fine line between making their brand names unforgettable and offending listeners by cutting into their favorite programs (p. 38). Then, as now, the most annoying ads were often the most memorable (p. 41), yet "radio ads were structured around the very notion of listener resistance" (p. 29). Some ad campaigns literally paid listeners with incentives, strengthening the idea that consumption was, itself, a kind of modern "work" (pp. 39–40). Newman traces the rise of the radio "ad-men," professionals whose research was used by companies to hone their appeals to potential consumers. Newman's work introduces a large cast of characters, all concerned with radio reform, although not necessarily connected to each other or to a single movement. The book is more a series of vignettes than a single narrative, perhaps in keeping with radio itself in this time period: a rapid-fire series of short programs, interspersed with patter and song.	. . .

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