Revisiting Schramm's Radiotown: Media Displacement and Saturation

Abstract

In 1959 Wilbur Schramm collected data on the media use behavior of children in what he believed was the last remaining town in North America to have radio as its only electronic mass media, and he concluded the primary impact of new media was the displacement of incumbent media. This research returns to Schramm's “Radiotown” for two follow-up studies to assess the validity of displacement as a mechanism for understanding long-term changes in media use. The first study is a qualitative data collection among a convenience sample (n = 28) of the now-adult participants of the 1959 study. The second study quantitatively tests the conclusions of the first study among the youth of Radiotown (n = 263). Among both adults and youth, radio remains a primary mass media device, with adults using more radio now than in 1959. Three principles of media use are proposed: the ubiquity of mass media devices in the household, the proximity of media devices, and the constancy of media use. Implications for the displacement hypothesis are discussed.