‘American Radio Networks’ Disappoints, by James E. O'Neal

‘American Radio Networks’ Disappoints, by James E. O'Neal

One in a series of occasional articles reviewing notable new or recent books about radio.

Jim Cox is a retired college professor who has written a number of books with radio as the subject matter. “American Radio Networks: A History” is his 18th book.

In this 2009 work, published by McFarland and retailing for $45, Cox takes the reader back to the very beginning of time as concerns the interconnecting of radio stations for the purpose of carrying the same program simultaneously.

I was looking forward to reading this one. While there’s a lot of information available in the way of early radio station history, the same isn’t true about the networks that linked many of these stations to the large broadcasting centers in places such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Cox does present a lot of interesting and useful history about stations and networks, but as I continued to read, I began to be a bit disappointed. READ MORE . . .