Radio

Radio. Radio developed from wired and later wireless telegraph and telephone technology, and adapted its broadcasting contents from vaudeville, the phonograph, the popular press, and film.In the early 1920s, these elements combined to create a new medium.

Before 1920.

Radio developed first outside the United States. A few American experimenters sought improved point‐to‐point communication to compete with existing wired services and to transmit to ships at sea. Lee de Forest (1874–1961), the first important American wireless inventor, developed his Audion three‐element vacuum tube in 1906. But it took years to realize its ability to amplify sound and thus its wireless applications. Perhaps the first broadcast took place on Christmas Eve 1906 when Reginald Fessenden transmitted signals of his voice and recorded music near Boston. Early public attention focused on radio's lifesaving role in such disasters as the 1912 Titanic sinking. Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890–1954), another key American inventor, patented several circuits widely used in radio receivers and fought lengthy patent battles with de Forest and others. Thousands of soldiers learned to use radio during World War I, but postwar development was slowed by the cancellation of government manufacturing contracts and by the fact that the patents needed to make radios were held by competing firms. Cooperation was imperative, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was founded in 1919 to coordinate American radio manufacturing through a shared patent pool. But this hard‐won legal agreement did not foresee broadcasting.

1920–1927.

The inception of service by station KDKA in East Pittsburgh on 2 November 1920 is widely accepted as the birth of regular American broadcasting. Operated by the Westinghouse Corporation to encourage purchase of its radios, the station offered a regular weekly schedule of a few hours of talk and music designed for general listening. RCA built stations (also to sell radios), as did American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), which perceived radio as similar to toll telephony. As public interest soared, some five hundred stations went on the air by 1922, creating a cacophony of interference. Under a 1912 Radio Act that had not foreseen broadcasting's demand, the U.S. Department of Commerce had to license all applicants. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover called four radio conferences (1922–1926) to develop industry agreement on new legislation, then persuaded Congress to pass it. The resulting Radio Act of 1927 established a Federal Radio Commission (FRC) to license and regulate stations.

How to support these stations created further controversy. AT&T's New York station, WEAF, first sold time to advertisers in 1922, and eventually this became the accepted means of meeting operating costs. WEAF also first interconnected stations with telephone lines (1923) to allow program sharing, thereby creating the first experimental networks. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was the first company established (in 1926 by owner RCA) as a national radio network. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) followed in 1927. There were then nearly seven hundred AM (amplitude modulation) stations on the air.

1928–1948.

The years before television competition marked radio's golden age. Despite the Depression of the 1930s, radio prospered as it provided free entertainment and news to anyone who owned a receiver. By the early 1930s, popular formats were well established, including half‐hour situation comedies, variety and music programs, brief daily newscasts, fifteen‐minute daytime serial dramas, and evening dramas of many kinds. Radio stars ranked in public appeal with those of film and stage. One indicator of radio's growing role came on Halloween in 1938, when a CBS adaptation of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, directed by and starring the young actor Orson Welles, frightened millions into believing that America was under attack by invading Martians.

Audience ratings based on telephone surveys conducted by the C.E. Hooper Company measured radio's growing appeal to advertisers. Radio's share of all advertising soared—from less than 1 percent in 1928 to a high of 15 percent in 1945 when radio profited from wartime paper shortages that limited newspapers' advertisements. Despite the networks' dominance, radio's local appeal was evident as local advertising revenue grew from 20 percent of radio income in the late 1920s to twice that two decades later. This encouraged station growth—from just over 600 AM outlets in 1930 to 765 in 1940 and 1,612 in 1948.

Meanwhile, more regional and national networks appeared. Mutual Broadcasting System began operating in 1934 based on cooperative sharing of programs among its stations. The dominance of CBS and NBC (which operated two parallel national networks) over programs and advertising led the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, created in 1934 to replace the FRC) to investigate in 1938–1941. The FCC ordered NBC to divest one network, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943. NBC's Blue network was sold and became the American Broadcasting Company in 1945.

The search for interference‐free operation eventually led to frequency modulation (FM) radio in the late 1930s. Based on a new transmission system perfected by Edwin Armstrong, the first experimental station aired in 1938. FM generally eliminated on‐air static and provided much improved sound quality over AM stations. The FCC approved commercial FM operation in 1941. Few FM stations aired before America's entry into World War II froze further expansion, but by 1948 some 460 FM stations were on the air.

1948–1980.

Network radio declined after network television's first season in 1948–1949, and stations began a difficult transition back to the role of a local, music‐based medium. Network programming disappeared by the early 1950s as audiences and advertisers moved to television. Whereas more than 90 percent of the 1,000 radio stations on the air in 1947 had been affiliated with a national network, a decade later fewer than half the 3,000 stations held network agreements, while only a quarter of 1967's 5,700 AM–FM stations were tied to any network's hourly newscasts, special events, and sports coverage.

The continued growth in the number of stations offered solid evidence of radio's successful transition to something quite different from television. A return to music‐based programming (as in radio's earliest days) was paced by “Top–40” stations that attracted youth who learned a lifelong radio habit (as adults, many would tune to “golden oldies” outlets). Although the number of FM stations declined through 1957 because of few receivers, smaller audiences, and industry focus on television and AM, FM expanded in the 1960s aided by FCC approval of stereo FM in 1961. By 1979 FM stations collectively surpassed the more numerous AM outlets in total national listening.

The FCC reserved some FM frequencies for noncommercial or educational service. From 15 such stations in 1948, what later became known as public radio grew to 162 outlets in 1960, more than 400 in 1970, and over 1,000 by 1980. National Public Radio tied many of these outlets together beginning in the early 1970s and numerous states had networks of stations. Public radio offered drama, music, in‐depth news reporting, and special programs. Audiences were small but intensely loyal.

Since 1980.

As the twentieth century ended, radio was characterized by program specialization, use of satellites for distribution of programs, and continued expansion—to some twelve thousand AM and FM stations by 2000. Fully three‐quarters of all radio listening was to FM stations. Deregulation in 1996 encouraged ownership of chains of hundreds of stations—and up to eight outlets in the largest cities. With little FCC program oversight, often strident right‐wing talk shows, conservative religious station, and other controversial formats thrived. Early in 2000, the FCC established Low Power FM (LPFM), which could in time place hundreds of mini‐stations on the air. Further change loomed with the inception of digital radio services projected early in the new century.
See also Electricity and Electrification; Mass Marketing; New Deal Era, The; Popular Culture; Public Broadcasting; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Erik Barnouw , A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933, 1966.
Erik Barnouw , The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, 1933–1953, 1968.
Susan J. Douglas , Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899–1922, 1987.
Christopher H. Sterling and and John Michael Kittros , Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, 2d ed., 1990.
Susan Smulyan , Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934, 1994.
Ray Barfield , Listening to Radio, 1920–1950, 1996.
Robert L. Hilliard and and Michael C. Keith , The Broadcast Century: A Biography of American Broadcasting, 2d ed., 1997.
Michele Hilmes , Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952, 1997.
John Dunning , On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old‐Time Radio, 1998.
Donald G. Godfrey and and Frederic A. Leigh , Historical Dictionary of American Radio, 1998.
Christopher H. Sterling, ed. Encyclopedia of Radio, 2001.

Christopher H. Sterling