LISTEN: The Media Democracy Blues featuring Victor Pickard
This Special interview with Victor Pickard hosted by Roger Smith first aired on Friday October 3 at 12pm. Tune in at 88.1 Ithaca, 89.7 Southern Finger Lakes, or stream from anywhere at WRFI.org/listen
Tune in for 'The Media Democracy Blues' hosted by Roger Smith during Crazy Words, Crazy Tune.
This special two-hour interview with the eloquent media scholar and historian Victor Pickard first aired on Friday, October 3, from 12-2pm in the regular time slot of “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune.”
Victor Pickard teaches mass communication and political economy at the Annenberg School at U Penn. His first major book, America’s Battle for Media Democracy (2015), concentrates on the key decisions made in the 1940s that set in stone the foundations of the commercial, corporate-dominated media system that continues to bedevil us today. Pickard is also the current board chair of the media policy reform group Free Press, which was co-founded by his mentor, Robert W. McChesney. America’s Battle for Media Democracy makes a great bookend to McChesney’s first book, which covers the spirited radio reform movement of the 1920s and ‘30s that tried and failed to secure a non-commercial space for labor and civic groups on the airwaves.
Because the Crazy Words, Crazy Tune weekly show is devoted to the popular culture of that period of history—and because the politics of media has been a lifelong obsession of show host Roger Smith, he was especially excited and proud to interview Victor and delve into this narrative as well as its present-day ramifications.