ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this chapter is to assess whether or not radio news journalism can survive in the face of the ‘ec-tech’ squeeze outlined in Chapter 4. Linked in to this throughout will be an evaluation of the extent to which the changing face of radio can remain compatible with the needs of ‘meaningful’ democracy as defined in Chapter 3. The book’s three core questions will be explicitly or implicitly present throughout this part of the discussion. Because of increasing convergence within the media industry it is inevitable that radio will have to be discussed in relation to some of the new and emerging platforms that complement it, or threaten to replace it. The chapter includes also something of the history of radio, in so far as it is a prerequisite for understanding both the present and the future of journalism in this field. But given the complex detail needed for the core discussion, it does not duplicate the historical material already covered in Chapter 2. We begin with what seemed like ‘the beginning of the end’ for talk radio in the era when broadcasting became opened to the economic pressures of Reaganism and Thatcherism.
