Subject Guide: Radio & Podcasting

Offers short biographies and career outlines of more than 600 performers in stage, screen and radio. The author and editor have extensive experience in the media.

John Brennan helped introduce talk radio in Australia and created stars such as Mike Walsh, Mike Gibson, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and others. In this book, Brennan tells of the highs and lows, successes and failures, the stars and the people behind the scenes, that contributed to a unique media career.

The twenty years preceding the arrival of television are usually described as the 'Golden Years' of Australian radio broadcasting. It was a period of unique activity, and Richard Lane has provided biographies of the principal actors, writers and producers who worked in radio drama in Australia from the beginning of public broadcasting in this country up to the early years of television. The arrangement of biographies is chronological, in related groups, so that the work may be read as a history of the industry in the context of the times.

The most eagerly anticipated book of the year - the compelling and probing, Jonestown takes us to the hazardous intersection of populism and politics, reaching deep into a powerful industry and exposing the myth and the magic of a very powerful man.

Directed by Richard Jasek
Mike Broadhurst interviews a number of top interviewers, including himself. The basic technical requirements of the audio interview are covered, but the emphasis is on content and interaction; how to prepare your questions, how to get the subject to relax, how to deal with subjects who take over the interview, or respond in monosyllables, or evade your questions altogether. The participants in the program act out many of these problem situations as they discuss effective strategies for handling them.

This important book, based on extensive interviews and unprecedented access to SBS archives, argues that SBS is one Australia’s most significant and innovative cultural institutions and that its charter to broadcast for multicultural Australia is as relevant today as it was when the organization started 30 years ago.

Directed by Gary Deans
A five-part history of Australian radio which includes a multitude of great Australian radio moments and in-depth interviews that examine the impact radio has had on the lives of everyday Australians since its introduction in the 1920’s and the success of the radio quiz genre as well as the emergence of sport, music and talkback radio. The series delivers actual recordings of great moments in radio, together with the in–depth interviews with stars past and present.

Interspersed with Harte's personal recollections, he also tells of the first long-distance wireless communication in Morse in 1901, Radio 3LO's opening broadcast in 1934 featuring Dame Nellie Melba, the pedal wireless that transformed life in the outback, and how live broadcasts of cricket were simulated in the studio.

The story of the stars and players of Australian radio from the 1920s.