Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting

Despite uncertain beginnings, public broadcasting emerged as a noncommercial media industry that transformed American culture. Josh Shepperd looks at the people, institutions, and influences behind the media reform movement and clearinghouse the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) in the drive to create what became the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.

Founded in 1934, the NAEB began as a disorganized collection of undersupported university broadcasters. Shepperd traces the setbacks, small victories, and trial and error experiments that took place as thousands of advocates built a media coalition premised on the belief that technology could ease social inequality through equal access to education and information. The bottom-up, decentralized network they created implemented a different economy of scale and a vision of a mass media divorced from commercial concerns. At the same time, they transformed advice, criticism, and methods adopted from other sectors into an infrastructure that supported public broadcasting in the 1960s and beyond.

Author: Josh Shepperd
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 05/23/2023
Pages: 244
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.98h x 5.98w x 0.87d
ISBN13: 9780252087257
ISBN10: 0252087259
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Media Studies
- Performing Arts | Radio | History & Criticism
- History | United States | 20th Century

About the Author
Josh Shepperd is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the Sound Submissions Project at the Library of Congress.