Women and Broadcasting: Call Her Daddy - Grace Murakami

 For my final blog post I chose to focus on the connections between women and radio broadcasting. Authors Skoog & Badenoch (2020) note that since its early introduction in the domestic sphere in the 1920s, radio has been used as a medium for the expression of women’s voices, needs and concerns (178). Early radio broadcast were known to provide valuable information and education as well as companionship for listeners at home, who, especially during daytime, were often largely women (Skoog & Badenoch, 2020, p.178).  These original radio programmes for and by women, give us a look into the individual lives and work of women broadcasters, the gendered controversies, debates, and issues over women’s voices (both on and off air), and changing definitions of appropriate programming content for women listeners (Skoog & Badenoch, 2020, p.178). 

Even today we see the radio shows and podcasts ran by women whose content and purpose for broadcasting is very similar to the original historical ones. Podcasts like Call Her Daddy, use their platform to bring attention to controversies and issues surrounding women today like their episode ‘An Abortion Story’. This episode has been called their most important episode ever, as the host Alex Cooper examines the reality women are facing in the fight to preserve autonomy over their bodies. While a form of entertainment, broadcast like this provide women with a space to connect with each other and promote their equality.  


Check out the Call Her Daddy episode here. https://open.spotify.com/episode/03sc8HVIeuQs8fLZyIKTAw    

Kristin Skoog & Alexander Badenoch (2020) Women and radio: sounding out new paths in women's history, Women's History Review, 29:2, 177-182, DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2019.1600648

Comments

  1. Chloe CameronApril 3, 2023 at 11:10 AM

    Hi Grace! I really liked the perspective you took looking at the popular podcast "Call Her Daddy". It is interesting to consider how the podcast has changed from what it began as, to what it is today. Shifting the audience mindsets and becoming a program that empowers women through entertainment and stories from pop culture guests, rather than to only be entertaining for a demographic of largely university female students. The history of radio companionship was interesting too as it was largely women then, and the "Call Her Daddy" podcast audience is also largely women now.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #2: Jess Beard

   Question 1:      Innis argues that orality is more flexible and humanistic whereas writing is rigid and impersonal. As well, creativity stems from orality as language is complex and more difficult to express through written form. Innis views speech as a tool to be human. And to be human according to Innis is to speak, listen and interact with others. Through this social connection wisdom and thought are gained.      We can apply Innis’ argument of orality and speech to the two DJs as they use their voices to add new meanings to words and experiences using universal sounds. Both Grant Massy and Dj Dave Mickie take their time rather than getting straight to the point. They also add a performance aspect that allows the audience to make a judgment on feelings, experiences, and opinions to create a visual outcome.      McLuhan discusses these oral qualities as he states that audience participation is created through spoken word. As we...
Read more

Podcast Studies- Jessica Hardie

In addition to the presentations and class discussions from this week I wanted to talk more about technological determinism versus social constructionism because it was a topic that I found both interesting and a bit confusing. I would like to use this discussion to compare and contrast the two in order to better understand the two terms and what they mean in relation to podcast studies. As discussed in “Podcast Studies and its techno-social discourses’ there are many scholars that are working to define podcasts as it is a newly emerged medium. However, there are many debates on what these definitional parameters are. It is important to gain an understanding of this new emerging technology as it has an impact on both our society and the people within it. Two heavily debated ideas surrounding podcast studies and how this new technology emerged are technological determinism and social constructionism. Technological determinism views these new technologies as a driving force that shapes s...
Read more

Blog 4 Ethan Guevara

I found the platformization of podcasting to be a very interesting topic discussed. Prior to the platformization of podcasting, as discussed by John Sullivan in “The Platforms of Podcasting: Past and Present”, a method known as RSS was used to consume podcasts. This was not easy for everyone to use, as only people with higher knowledge of the use of technology would be able to use this method. Steve Jobs would be the first to make a platform for podcasting with the release of iTUnes 4.9. THis allowed users the ability to consume and discover podcasts from the same place, ultimately making it much easier for the general population to enjoy this medium. Sullivan then goes on to explain how many followed Apple's steps as they were responsible for its popularization. Sullivan expands on this topic, leading him to the discussion of podcast enclosure. Due to the sheer amounts of podcasting platforms, it led to the enclosure of platforms beginning to produce content that would only be ava...
Read more