Radiophilia by Carolyn Birdsall (review)

Reviewed by:

• Radiophilia by Carolyn Birdsall
• Richard Legay (bio)

Radiophilia
By Carolyn Birdsall. New York: Bloomsbury, 2023. Pp. 279.

Just in time to mark radio’s first century in many countries, Carolyn Birdsall’s Radiophilia is a particularly welcome and original addition to the scholarship of both radio studies and broadcasting history. This ambitious book introduces a new concept, “radiophilia,” understood as the attachment to or love for radio, and goes on to successfully unravel its various constitutive elements from the early days of the wireless to today, in multiple geographical contexts.

To undertake this task, the book often balances between overarching questions and concrete examples and is split into four chapters, simply named “Loving,” “Knowing,” “Saving,” and “Sharing.” This rather unusual approach of one-word progressive verbs as chapter titles is actually an excellent way for Birdsall to explicate her concept, as she can focus on what ties people (i.e., practices and emotions) to the medium over time. In the first pages, the attention is put on loving radio, both as action and practice, concerning individuals and groups. This is analyzed first in a historical manner, showing various forms of radiophilia over time, then through the lens of history of emotions, and finally in a multisensory and multimedia dimension. The book then moves on to the topic of knowing radio, shedding light on knowledge production as radiophilia. This chapter includes the communities formed around this technical hobby in the early days of radio, the importance of regulators and the industry, and the relationship between knowledge and affect, especially present with fan culture. In “Saving,” the author delves into the various shapes taken by radiophiliacs to preserve and hang on to the ephemeral sounds of the medium. Interestingly, this chapter includes amateur and professional actors as well as analogue and digital practices, revealing the width of the topic. The fourth chapter explores the issue of how enthusiasts have shared their love of radio over the last century. The net cast to catch the heterogeneity of this question is wide as individual, local, and national activities, practices, objects, spaces, and curatorial choices are all included. Overall, the author successfully balances an ambitious new and overarching concept with more concrete examples, and by doing so brings in a wide range of geographical and historical contexts, which makes the result particularly convincing. Interestingly, the author’s personal attachment to radio is also discussed on a few occasions in the book, which helps with understanding her perspective on the topic at hand and will likely echo many readers’ own relationship with radio. [End Page 1037]

In regard to the book’s contribution to the existing scholarship, a few points should be raised. First and foremost is the author’s unquestionable knowledge and mastery of the scientific literature on the topic at hand. Indeed, the book builds on an extensive range of publications from various fields, including history, radio and media studies, history of technology, and history of emotions, but also fan studies. In addition to in-depth theoretical discussions, numerous examples are included that cover many regions of the world; a predominance of publications in English is noticeable, which is, however, an issue inherent to the topic. Therefore, this book not only builds on the existing scholarship, it also directly contributes to it in an innovative way by introducing this new concept of radiophilia. There is little doubt that it will be of use to many scholars, as anyone who has worked on radio—this review’s author included—will have been confronted, and maybe affected, by a form of radiophilia. In this regard, Radiophilia might echo Marine Beccarelli’s Micros de nuit (2021), a study of nighttime radio in France and its particular intimate relationship with its listeners, and Sean Street’s Radio Waves (2004), in which the scholar and poet celebrates his love of radio. More specifically, the analysis of radio preservation detailed in the third chapter is especially relevant for readers interested in the medium’s history, as it provides a critical perspective and potential contextualization on the ways the sources they work with have been saved. In addition to the new insights brought to radio studies and broadcasting history...