Making Radio History (Elena Razlogova)

Subscribe to Phantom PowerJoin our Patreon and get perks + merchRate us easily on your platform of choiceElena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the American Public (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor of “Radical Histories in Digital Culture” issue of the Radical History Review (2013). She has published articles in American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Russian Review, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Radio Journal, Cultural Studies, Social Media Society, and more. Elena’s someone I’m always excited to talk to when I see her at conferences and I thought it would be fun talk to her on this podcast. In this episode we discuss some of her research interests including U.S. radio history, audience research, music recommendation and recognition algorithms, and her current book project, which centers on freeform radio station WFMU and the rise of online music. Toward the end of the episode we talk about Elena’s research strategies as a historian working in the digital age. And for our Patrons we’ll have Elena’s What’s Good segment, featuring something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript by Katelyn Phan.Music by Mack Hagood.Transcript[Robotic Music] This is Phantom Power  Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today’s guest is radio and media historian Elena Razlikova. We’re going to talk about her current research on the legendary freeform radio station, WFMU, among other things. But before we get into that, I just want to do a little bit of a call back to our first episode of this season–my “rant.” I think I might’ve mentioned at the time that I was a little sheepish about doing that episode. You know, sometimes I’ll do an episode on my own Research, but I generally keep this podcast focused on sharing and celebrating the work of other people. So, I was already a little bit out of my comfort zone, wondering if I was being too self indulgent, in talking about myself and the challenges that we’ve been having in Ohio and at my university and the ways that I’m responding to those challenges by reshaping my own career. And then when I was done recording it, I decided I was really not comfortable with it. I was just like, “I don’t want to put this out”. So I was going to pull it, but. I didn’t have another episode ready to go, and I was feeling really guilty about starting the season so late in the year, so I said, okay, whatever, just get over it. And I dropped the episode into the feed. Well, lo and behold, I guess that was the right move because I got more emails about this episode than any I’ve ever produced over the past five years, including a number of episodes that I literally worked on for months. So, yeah I guess you never know. You know, I don’t do audience research and I really probably should, so maybe I wouldn’t be so surprised right now, but your response did my heart good. I really appreciate the feedback. Please keep it coming. I love hearing from y’all. And in terms of the feedback that I did receive, many of you said you would like to hear some episodes about the publishing process, finding a literary agent,