Domesticating the Airwaves: Broadcasting, Domesticity and Femininity [Paperback]

Using case studies and analytical overviews this book explores the relationship between broadcasting and the intimate domestic sphere into which it is broadcast. It focuses on the period from the 1920s, when broadcasting was established in the UK, to the present day when both domesticity and broadcasting have become areas of anxiety and contestation. The entry of the 'wireless', and later television, into the home changed men and women's experience of domesticity, offering education and reducing isolation. But broadcasting did not merely change domestic leisure patterns, it actively intervened in constructing domesticity. The supposedly natural relationship between femininity and domesticity has structured the nature of broadcasting, and also the discourses which have emerged concerning the consumption of broadcast media. Contemporary broadcasting continues to be obsessed by domesticity, both in an idealised sense as well as portraying the domestic world as one of turmoil and crisis. This volume demonstrates that the relationship between broadcasting and domesticity is a key, and often neglected, feature of the cultural history of Britain in the last 100 years.An exploration of how the domestic reception of broadcasting shaped the medium, from the 1920s to the present day.Dr Maggie Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Popular and Modern History at Staffordshire University, UK with over twenty years of experience in teaching History, Cultural Studies and Media Studies.

This is a rich historical study of the complex and often problematic role that broadcasting has always played in constructing notions of gender and domesticity in British society. Maggie Andrews skilfully examines a number of radio and television programmes from the inter-war years to the present day which focus on domestic ideology and practice. She identifies a raft of cultural factors and, with compelling analysis, demonstrates how these have promoted marked changes to the tone, the style and the substal$