Biographical note

Phylis A. Johnson is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her fields of interest are diversity and communications. She has published widely regarding the role of radio in society; conducted the first national gay and lesbian radio broadcast survey in the United States in 1994; and has conducted research on African American radio’s impact on urban youth. She has more than twenty years of broadcast experience in Philadelphia, Houston, St. Louis, and other markets across the United States.,
Michael C. Keith is a member of the Communications Department at Boston College. He is the author or coauthor of fifteen acclaimed books on the electronic media. Of special note are Voices in the Purple Haze (1997), Signals in the Air (1995), Talking Radio (2000), and Sounds in the Dark (forthcoming). Keith is the coauthor with Robert Hilliard of Waves of Rancor (1999) and The Broadcast Century and Beyond (2001), and also the author of the most widely adopted textbook on radio in America, The Radio Station, now in its fifth edition (2000). Prior to joining Boston College, Keith served as chair of education for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, taught at George Washington University and Marquette University, and worked as a professional broadcaster for over a dozen years.