Chappaqua Library Talk: Anthony Rudel on radio’s roots & media’s march to dominance

7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 6

See Rudel’s interview with Joan Kuhn on NCCMC in “Read more.”
October 1, 2010
by Christine Yeres

“Everything in today’s 24/7 media-crazed world has its roots in the first dozen years of American radio,” says author and media consultant Anthony Rudel whose book

Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio

was a critical success when it was published two years ago.  He will give a talk and field questions during a forum at the Chappaqua Library on Wednesday, October 6th, at 7:30 p.m.

Rudel, who lives in Chappaqua and teaches at Manhattanville College, will draw on his more than three decades in the media, including more than a decade at WQXR, to discuss the evolution of the media world and how the media circus that exists today came to be. “During radio’s earliest days,” Rudel notes, “People, even members of the Republican administrations of the 1920s, worried about the power of a message sent via the airwaves; they were concerned about undue influence on our society and political process. Now, to some degree thanks to deregulation, those concerns have been forgotten, and that’s not necessarily good.”

Hello, Everybody! Rudel’s fourth book, was called “a wonderful trip through the colorful characters, electronic geniuses and diehard believers who turned radio from a quirky hobby into the country’s first mass medium early in the 20th century,” by David Hinckley in the New York Daily News. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: the “book offers rich rewards. Written in a conversational style, it includes odd facts and eccentric people. Rudel goes back and forth comfortably from radio programming to the social upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s.”

Rudel, who today doubles as a Professor of Writing and Communications and a media consultant, finds the 1920s and early 1930s to be very informative about the world in which we live. “The parallels between the elections of 1928 and 2004, and 1932 and 2008 are staggering. But best of all, the role of the electronic media in those elections was amazing. We can learn by looking back,” he said recently. Rudel’s controversial views on media and messaging in politics can be read in three essays he wrote for USNEWS.com (search “Rudel”).

Rudel and his family have lived in Chappaqua for the last twenty years. His wife Kristy has been involved with the Girl Scouts and other local organizations. Their two daughters, Rebecca and Susannah, graduated from Horace Greeley in 2005 and 2008, respectively.

“I’m looking forward to speaking in Chappaqua,” Rudel added. “I’ve done about thirty lectures and more than 200 radio interviews discussing the book. It will be fun to do one in my back yard.”