Hello, Everybody!

July 14, 2008
Novelist and classical music expert Rudel (Imagining Don Giovanni
), who has an extensive background in radio broadcasting, offers a lively overview of the birth of radio with an emphasis on the entrepreneurs and evangelists, hucksters and opportunists who saw the medium's potential. He traces the transition from hobbyists to the “radio craze” of 1922 when Americans spent more than $60 million on home receivers that brought the sounds of urban life to rural areas. The first station west of the Rockies, KHJ, prompted the notorious sexual-rejuvenation surgeon John R. Brinkley to open KFKB in 1923 Kansas. By the end of the 1920s, the Federal Radio Commission was established to manage the airwaves, NBC and CBS competed and advertising increased. Along with political campaigns and sports broadcasts, Rudel covers the “love/hate relationship” of newspapers and radio stations. His chapter on “the unholy marriage between radio and religion” details the rise and fall of evangelist Sister Aimée Semple McPherson. Profiles reveal Rudy Vallee's vast appeal and important role in creating the radio variety show. With extensive newspaper research, this is an authoritative and entertaining survey of the early days of dial twisting.

August 15, 2008
Rudel ("Classical Music Top 40"), past programmer and now consultant for radio networks, effectively presents the lives of the diverse pioneers of radio from the Teens, Twenties, and Thirties. For several decades, the culturally transformative medium of the radio was the only source for the very latest updates on politics and sports (thus arguably the prototype for 24/7 TV and the Internet) and was also the most accessible medium for drama, comedy, music, and advertising. Tracing radio's evolution from the telegraph to wireless's broadcast communication, Rudel asserts that American radio blossomed owing to the relatively light governmental regulation of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Arranged around such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Father Charles Coughlin, crooner Rudy Vallee (who inaugurated radio's variety format), and the quack Dr. John Brinkleynot to mention David Sarnoff of RCA, Sam "Roxy" Rothafel (whose radio column is the source of this book's title), and a panoply of players from the golden age of sportsRudel's book is an enjoyable read, benefiting from the author's extensive use of newspaper columns and a bibliography incorporating both web and print sources. While illustrations of some of the colorful radio pioneers would have further enhanced the text, the book will appeal to pop culture enthusiasts and is recommended for all public libraries.Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2008
Broadcastings formative decadethe 1920sisgiven new airtime in Rudels narrative of commercial radios beginnings. The big unknown of the business was what made for a popular and profitable programming format, and Rudel, with extensive professional radio experience, revels in the enterprising personalities who set up shop on this technological frontier. Interestingly, the man who more than any other organized the radio industry, commerce secretary and then president Herbert Hoover, inveighed against advertising as a radio revenue raiser, and although that did become the business model, a wacky collection of entrepreneurs discovered alternative ways of making money. One Rudel showcases was quack doctor John Brinkley, the bizarre subject of Pope Brocks Charlatan! (2008);others whom Rudel collects also boast biographies, such as evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (Sister Aimee, 1993, by David Mark Epstein). Whether the broadcaster learned how to sell medical and spiritual salvation, or hit upon sports, spot news, and entertainment as the secrets to programming success, Rudel vividly re-creates the anything-goes atmosphere of the ethers early days.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)