ABSTRACT
Adorno’s critique of modern media, of radio, television and film is especially associated with the papers he wrote on the subject during his exile in the US from 1938 to 1949. His views concerning the development of music and its social situation in the modern world had been more or less fully developed years before he began to work with Paul Lazarsfeld on what became known as the Princeton Radio Project. His part in the project concerned the broadcasting of music. Adorno’s arrival in the United States coincided with the golden era of radio: the days before television, when radio was a powerful and influential arm of the culture industry. Its influence was felt at the heart of every home and it provided an endless stream of entertainment, information, quiz programmes, gossip, drama and music. Adorno saw the effects of all this in a negative light. Radio represented commercial interests. It was an instrument of propaganda and it pandered to the regressive tendencies of mass audiences, serving up an unremitting diet of undemanding ‘baby food’.
