Twiddling the dial

Book review: Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio Commercial radio’s legitimacy and relevance has been often challenged under the microscope of academic research, which has tended to favour community and public radio as subjects of critical analysis until more recently. In her preface, Bridget Griffen-Foley, one of Australia’s leading media historians and Director of the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, refers to the size of her task when attempting to detail the history of commercial radio in Australia. At the time she embarked on the project, many of us familiar with radio research wondered exactly how it could be done. Previous histories had focused on specific periods of commercial radio history, or areas of commercial radio (for example AM, FM, or talkback). Noone had yet attempted to compile a comprehensive overview of the commercial radio industry from its inception.