Mediating Education and Entertainment: Legacies of New Deal Broadcasting

• In Event: Listening Learners: The Political Economy of Media Education During the New Deal, 1935-1948

Abstract

This paper examines the question of what radio education meant, and what educational programs looked like, considering the question of propaganda that haunted the interwar period. It draws on theories of propaganda and education – particularly the theory and practice of Education Entertainment formulated by Miguel Sabido and others – as a way of conceptualizing the educational programs produced under the oversight of the Federal Radio Education Committee. In particular, this study examines the negotiations between New Deal government agencies and commercial networks in the production of programs during the late 1930s. Based on primary research at the National Archives, I argue that these programs were designed much like Education Entertainment programs to fit audience expectations of what a "commercial" program would be, while modeling pro-social rather than consumer behavior. The New Deal agencies articulated the goal of “selling” the government the way that advertisers sold soap. Shows like Pleasantdale Folks, Our Neighborhood, and Wings for the Martins approached educational broadcasting primarily as a process of modeling, with some effort at inspiring critical thinking. These experiments seem to confirm the triumph of "propaganda for good" during the New Deal period, well before World War II and the adoption of this approach by government and corporations alike.

Author

• Joy Elizabeth Hayes, U of Iowa