Broadcasting: General

Abstract

There are several ways of thinking about radio and television. If we focus on how we perceive them, then radio is defined as an auditory and television as a visual medium—we ‘listen’ to radio and ‘watch’ television. Radio delivers two basic kinds of sound: talk and music and today most stations offers a continuous supply of one or the other. Television offers some program services which are beyond the capacity of the ‘blind’ medium of radio, notably the screening of movies. Thus, there are some important differences between the two media that show up when we attend to their audio/visual properties. Differences between radio and television show up again if we concentrate on the economics of their production; the costs per hour of radio services is a fraction of the costs of television output. These differences are explored more fully elsewhere. Here attention is focused on the fundamental similarities of radio and television as broadcast media which become apparent when we attend to the common temporal and spatial dimensions of their production, transmission, and reception.