Slow death of the profession: the radio professional in face of the productive rationalization

Abstract

This article keeps the track of a single and deep interview with one radio professional who exposes the changes processed within his job due to modernization and rationalization of the operational and productive ways to perform his work. His report highlights important aspects of such change, showing how it alters the meaning of the broadcaster-sound operator’s job. In the first section the article introduces the context of the productive restructuring which affects labor as a whole; then it presents the current situation in contrast to the past by building an argument underpinned into a “two worlds” frame. The next sections deal respectively with depicting the labor process, stressing both the intensification and the technical change; the classification struggle within the broadcaster’s job; the labor market in the professional field (where the ‘PJ’ status shows its weight); and lastly the intra-professional passage within the craft-job. The text concludes by resuming the main topics raised.