Selling the Air

In this study of the laws and policies associated with commercial radio and television, the author reverses the usual take on broadcasting and markets by showing that government regulation creates rather than intervenes in the market. Analyzing the processes by which commercial media are organized, Streeter asks how it is possible to take the practice of broadcasting - the reproduction of disembodied sounds and pictures for dissemination to vast unseen audiences - and constitute it as something that can be bought, owned and sold. With a command of broadcast history, as well as critical and cultural studies of the media, Streeter shows that liberal marketplace principles - ideas of individuality, property, public interest and markets - have come into contradiction with themselves. Commercial broadcasting is dependent on government privileges, and Streeter provides a critique of the political choices of corporate liberalism that shape the landscape of cultural property and electronic intangibles.