ABSTRACT
In his book on “mediamorphosis,” or “the transformation of communication media” in response to “perceived needs, competitive and political pressures, and social and technological innovations” (Fidler 1997: xv), Roger Fidler outlines six basic principles of media change. Two of these deal with user adoption (adoption of new media being both delayed and answering specific economic, social, or political needs), with the remainder focusing on the mutually constitutive relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. New media, Fidler argues, have never been truly ‘new’ but are instead metamorphoses of existing media forms, coevolving and coexisting with older media whose “languages” or “communicatory codes” they borrow and propagate, while old media are in turn “compelled to adapt and evolve for survival in a changing media environment” (Fidler 1997: 29). Pursuing a mediamorphic approach, this chapter offers an intermedial study of US television’s emergence as a new medium of dramatic entertainment in the fifteen-year period following World War II, exploring its relationship with the ‘old’ medium of radio broadcasting. Focusing on the genre of the anthology drama, I argue that TV workers framed their medium not simply as a ‘visual’ one, but also actively cultivated and theorized its sonic potentialities, drawing on familiar communicatory codes of aural broadcasting while at the same time distancing themselves from their radio forbears in bids for aesthetic autonomy and professional legitimation. Upholding Fidler’s principles of metamorphosis and propagation, television both transformed and perpetuated existing radio techniques, while in keeping with the principles of coevolution and survival, radio’s own forms and functions were themselves strategically redefined in response to growing competition from television.
