Editor’s Remarks: History, Impact and Entertainment: Radio and Audio Continue to Engage

Abstract

To start, special thanks to our guest editors Anne MacLennan and Masadul Biswas for bringing us several great research reports for the symposium part of this edition. The Journal of Radio and Audio Media has had quite a few great symposia in recent years, and we look forward to more in the future. We’re currently reviewing articles for our fall 2023 issue about the 100th Anniversary of the BBC, and please check the BEA Web site for our current symposium call, “Exploring the History and Contemporary Trends in Black Radio,’ with guest editors Tia C.M. Tyree and Melvin L. Williams. Having worked in commercial radio and in university environments advising student radio, there’s a special personal appreciation as editor of the journal for the kind of research JRAM publishes. I hope you will likewise enjoy the variety of research we have included in this issue, within the symposium articles as well as in a variety of other recently accepted studies. A reminder also that we have a backlog of research that was accepted and published online first, and with this and future print editions, we’re working to catch up and not have articles have to wait so long before being added to a printed version of the journal. With so much good research to read, we work within this introduction to help you navigate the journal by highlighting much of the work that follows. We start the non-symposium section of this issue with the work of Teresa Piñeiro-Otero and Daniel Martín-Pena. Their study says that today, in its new digital essence, the medium of radio has acquired materiality and multimedia capabilities through the incorporation of texts, images, videos, and more. Its adaptation to social networks and haptic devices has contributed interactivity and tactility to the listening experience. In this context, what is the essence of the medium? Piñeiro-Otero and Martín-Pena (2023) analyze the presence and use that European mainstream radios give to Instagram, asking, on the quintessential visual platform, European stations become visible, but are they still auditory? Next, Andrea Hanáčková brings a disturbing report from Central Europe, from the background of postsocialist public service media (Hanáčková, 2023). Reports from the European Federation of Journalists and the European Center for Press and JOURNAL OF RADIO & AUDIO MEDIA 2023, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 1–5 https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2023.2206260