Unbuttoning NPR: Assessing the music at the margins of All Things Considered. (1st October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cwynar, Christopher
• Is Part Of: Radio journal. Volume 13:Number 1/2(2015)
• Page Start: 89
• Page End: 104
• Publication Date: 2015-10-01
• Subjects: Radio -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Radio audiences -- Periodicals; Radio stations -- Sociological aspects -- Periodicals; Sound recordings -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 384.54
• DOI: 10.1386/rjao.13.1-2.89_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1476-4504

Abstract

There have been few studies to date of the cultural work performed by NPR's information radio programmes, and those that have been conducted have overlooked the role of musical interludes in those programmes. This article combines quantitative data analysis with textual and discourse analysis to elucidate the nature of the interludes and their function within the context of All Things Considered, NPR's flagship afternoon newsmagazine programme. It argues that the structured diversity of the interludes embodies the homologous aesthetic and ideological dispositions of NPR's personnel and its core audience. The interludes themselves suggest a tension between highbrow and middlebrow aesthetic dispositions that are manifested in the structured diversity and hybridity of the genre selections as they are deployed in the context of the programme.