Beyond media 'platforms'? Talkback, radio, technology and audience

Technology has had an important influence on the constitution and participation of the commercial metropolitan talkback radio audience. The introduction of talkback in the 1960s was hindered by technical impediments to the quality of telephone and radio recording technologies, and the level of domestic telephone penetration meant access to talkback was not fully realised until the mid to late 1970s. By the 1990s, the advent of mobile telephony liberated talkback listeners from their anchoring in the domestic sphere. Programmers reported that while most telephone calls in the 1970s and 1980s originated from housewives, the unemployed and retirees, mobile phones attracted a greater number of men, younger listeners and workers. This article examines the way successive media technologies have influenced experience of talkback radio audiences from the 1960s through to the present. Invoking recent themes in media theory that acknowledge the increasing convergence between traditional media platforms and content, it considers whether newer technologies such as the internet are fundamentally altering the shape and function of this form of listener participation.