Revolutions in

Communication
Media History from
Gutenberg
to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik

Chapter 8 – Radio and the Golden Age

Web site & textbook
http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

Textbook:

1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016

Hertz, Maxwell
Like discovering a new
continent
 Interest in electromagnetic spectrum
sparked by solar flares of 1859
 James Clerk Maxwell publishes
theoretical paper on the mathematics of
the electromagnetic spectrum
 Heinrich Hertz tests Maxwell’s theory
and measures radio waves
◦ Asked about the value of the experiment,
Hertz told students: “It’s of no use
whatsoever.”
 Edison discovers thermionic emission
 Scientific basis for radio in place by
1890s
Two visions of radio
Guglielmo Marconi Reginald
Fessenden

Spark radio telegraphy Continuous wave telephony

Guglielmo Marconi
 Gifted amateur who used Edison “cut
and try” method
 Made radio telegraphy practical 1890s
◦ Low frequency
◦ Grounded antenna
◦ High power transmitter
 The signal soaked up the entire
spectrum – only one transmitter at a
time possible
Reginald Fessenden
 Scientific approach
 Made radio telephony practical 1906
◦ High frequency transmission
◦ lower power transmitter
◦ Bounced signal off ionosphere
 Used modified Edison / Fleming tube,
triode
 Continuous wave - many transmitters
possible at the same time
 Titanic - April 15, 1912
 Marconi spark system
◦ Protected by patents but
◦ Long out of date
◦ Only one signal at a time
 Nearby ship
Californian told to “get
off” the air
“Sixteen hundred lives were lost that should have been saved
if the wireless communication had been what it should have
been.” NY Times, May 2, 1912
Titanic changes
radio
 Radio monopolies outlawed –
◦ Federal Radio Act of 1912
 Fessenden continuous wave system
widely adopted
 American Marconi becomes Radio
Corporation of America (RCA)
Radio Music Box Memo 1916
(20?)
David Sarnoff of RCA envisions radio
broadcasting supported by advertising

"I have in mind a plan of

development which would make
radio a 'household utility' in the
same sense as the piano or
phonograph. The idea is to bring
music into the house by wireless.

"Radio Music Box" Memo, David Sarnoff,

November, 1916/January, 1920(?)
Monopoly radio network
 Demand for radio explodes after WWI
◦ 5,000 tubes per month in 1921 to 200,000
by mid-1922; by 1930 125 million / month
 RCA creates NBC 1926
◦ Network broadcasts begin
 FRC 1927 General Order 40
◦ Created 25 super stations (clear channel)
 23 of these were NBC owned or affiliated
◦ Some 700 independent and educational
radio stations were pushed off the air
The Golden Age of radio
 An “electronic hearth”
 McLuhan:
◦ “Re-tribalizing” effect
◦ Return to oral culture
 Radio borrowed from
vaudeville and theater
 During its golden age in
the 1930s and 40s, radio
attracted the best
entertainers in the world.
 Amos n’ Andy - 1st popular
show
On radio
1928 – 1960

On TV
1951- 1953,
Withdrawn 1966

Lowbrow,
stereotyped
humor, offensive
to African
Americans.

Less controversial
at the time
than the present.
Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two white
actors, gave humorous portrayals of African
Americans around a barber shop and taxi service.
The show was stereotyped and offensive by modern
 Comic strip NY
Daily News 1924
 “Gee whiskers”
 “Leapin' lizards!”
 Ovaltine sponsors
wrote radio scripts
and shunned comic
strip’s original
political messages
 Sidekick: Punjab
On Air 1931 – 1942
NBC Blue network
 Lone Ranger
 “Hi-ho Silver,
Away” tagline
was invented
moments from
On Air first airtime
1933 –
 Kimo-Sabe
1956
means Faithful
Mutual
Scout
NBC
Bruce Beemer played the Lone Ranger on
radio in the 1940s and 50s
  Radio debut in
1930 as narrator
for Detective
Story Hour
 Comics followed
 Shadow program
1937
 Orson Wells
narrated 1937-38
 Batman was a
On Air
1937 –
take-off
1940s

CBS
 NBC Chase & Sanborn Hour
 NBC’s main Sunday night
program
 Starred Charlie McCarthy &
Edgar Bergen
 Also:
◦ Eddie Cantor
◦ Jimmie Durante
◦ Dorothy Lamour
◦ Bob Hope
◦ Nelson Eddy
◦ Don Ameche
◦ Mae West (banned in
1938)
Mae West in the Garden of
Eden
With

“If trouble is something

that makes your blood run
like seltzer water, mmh,
Adam, give me trouble… “

Big trouble from the FCC,

Dec. 12, 1937
 CBS – Mercury Theater

On Air
1938 –
1940
CBS

War
of the
Worlds
Oct 30
1938
Why a panic?
 News program style
 6 million listened,
 1 million believed
 War news from
Europe was new
 No commercial
breaks (Mercury had no sponsor)
 Wells didn’t believe that people were
really panicking / didn’t break up
program
FDR’s Fireside Chats
1933 – 1944

30 informal talks

Started as NY
governor 1929

Term coined by CBS

exec, not Roosevelt,
but he adopted it.
 Edward R. Murrow, Wm.
Shirer
CBS “director
of talks”

Covered
London as
war broke out

Shirer based
in Berlin
Father Charles Coughlin
“Hate speech” on the radio
Weekly broadcasts 1926 – 1940
16 million listeners in mid-1930s

Anti-communist, antisemitic,
isolationist, conspiracy theorist

Openly sympathetic to Hitler

Direct paraphrasing Nazi propaganda
Secretly took $ from Nazis

NBC, CBS refused to run program

after Kristalnacht comment in 1938:

"Jewish persecution only followed

after Christians first were
persecuted.”
Content regulation
 FRC licensing upheld in Brinkley, Trinity
cases 1930s
◦ Note press licensing not upheld in Near v
Minnesota, 1933
 NAB code changes 1938
 FCC Mayflower decision 1940
 FCC Blue book report 1946
◦ Attempt to fight “Shabby commercialism” and a
“listeners be damned” attitude
◦ Public service requirements
 Fairness doctrine 1947
◦ Equal time for all viewpoints
Structure regulation
 NBC two networks – blue and red
◦ Blue network becomes ABC following anti
trust decision by US Supreme Court, 1942
 Loraine Journal v US, 1951
◦ Supreme Court said newspaper could not
refuse advertising simply because a
company also placed radio ads
◦ (Regulation of “refusal to deal” was the
basis of the Microsoft anti-trust suit 1999)
New competition from TV
 Television replaces radio early 1950s
 Radio reverts to local ownership and music
content
◦ Corruption in promotions called “payola”
 Music industry growth 4x 1960 – 1980
 Formats fragment
 New competition leaves radio going bankrupt
 Telecomm Act 1996 allows consolidation of
radio industry under few owners
◦ Clear Channel and Viacom/CBS Infinity
Broadcasting now own most of market
Talk radio
 End of the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987
gave a green light to partisan political
radio shows
 Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael
Savage, Glen Beck
 Liberal talk radio fails to launch
◦ Air America 2004 – 2010
Satellite radio, podcasting
 XM Radio and Sirius get FCC approval
1997
◦ Express condition was that they never merge
 XM Radio and Sirius merge 2008
 International satellite radio
◦ Increasingly useful for UN peacekeeping
 Podcasting made possible through ITU’s
MPEG-1/Layer3 (mp3) compression
technology
 Mobile asynchronous audio devices like
iPods mean the end of the radio
audience
 But storytelling is never
obsolete
Decoder Ring Theater
Review: people
 Heinrich Hertz, James Clark Maxwell,
Guglielmo Marconi, Reginald
Fessenden, Edwin H. Armstrong,
David Sarnoff, William S. Paley, Lone
Ranger (Bruce Beemer), Orson Wells,
Herbert Morrison, Mae West, Amos n’
Andy, Edward R. Murrow, William L.
Shirer, Father Charles Coughlin,
Charlie McCarthy & Edgar Bergen,
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Review: Concepts
 Radio telegraphy, radio telephony,
continuous wave versus spark, talk
radio, radio censorship, fireside chats,
War of the Worlds broadcast,
controversy over news on radio, FRC
regulation, Mayflower decision (leading
to Fairness Doctrine, Ch 9); payola
scandals, radio station ownership
consolidation in Telecommunications Act
of 1996, satellite radio, internet radio,
MP3 players (iPods etc – Decoder Ring
Next: Chapter 9
Television