SCL). It may also serve as a “lullaby” at night, or it may be the alarm clock to wake up in the morning.
Each day, the radio contributes to the organization of domestic routines, the regular information of the exact time, the weather and news report, all central elements to explain the impact of certain programs in households because they mark key moments during the day. The news’s broadcasting management of inner time establishes a dynamic of accompaniment that reinforces the bond with the home. It starts with the classic “good morning” when the alarm goes off and then stays with the family throughout its inti- mate and domestic routines while members shower, get dressed, and have breakfast.
The radio, together with the water heater and the stove, is the first thing that is turned on in the morning; that is why its routines are altered only when family life is shattered by an unexpected or extraordinary event. In one of the families interviewed, the youngest child had to be hospitalized, and during the first day, while the diagnosis remained uncertain, the family did not turn on the radio and the TV. When the emergency was over, both were turned on again, indicating with their habitual noises that things had gone back to normal again:
This is a special week because my brother was in the hospital from Sunday to Friday. . . . Neither the radio nor the TV are on, so that the only noise that can be heard is the blender; the rest of the time there is silence. . . . We spent that day without knowing what would happen, we were out most part of the day, and we never turned on the TV or the radio, (we did so) only when we came back that night from the hospital and we were a bit more relaxed. (family re- cord, lower-middle SCL)
The weather forecast also produces the same effect as the traffic report, an illusion of control and foresight over the uncertain outer world. The im- portance of these references does not lie so much in the knowledge or inter- est they produce but in the ability to order and administer the maelstrom of urban time, to situate the present and classify the sequence of past events. The radio news has more impact as a routine regulator than as information purveyor. Almost none of those interviewed could remember spontane- ously what news has been delivered by the media the previous day. Con- tents are dissociated from forms, and the routines of the news program (greetings, broadcaster’s voice, commercials, permanent sections, music curtains, and weather report) at some points are more important than the information delivered. All kinds of programs are tuned in at any time, but attention “comes and goes” because it competes with, and occasionally is integrated into, family conversations and activities. In the following exam- ple, we can see how the incorporation of radio discourse takes place in the