L - Radio Overview
Rich Cameron
Issue date: 5/15/02 Section: 100x MM Online
Transcending Distance
Back in our early days of history, as society grew in complexity, people's need for a reliable means of communication over long distances increased. Communication needed to transcend distance and needed to do it quickly. There were several areas of need:
Telegraph
The concept of the telegraph has been around for a long time. Giovanni della Porta, in his 1535 book Natural Magick, an early physics/supernatural book, talked about a sympathetic telegraph that took advantage of the lodestone's magnetic properties. He theorized that if you could find two identical lodestones, you could create a wireless sympathetic telegraph them by floating them in pans of water with letters engraved around the rims of the pans. Something like a Ouji board.
Then in 1844 Samuel Morse invented the telegraph we know about today. So great was the need that the government was willing to finance research on the telegraph, but turn over patent rights to the successful inventor.
In Rich Cameron's view of broadcast history, the beginning begins with the telegraph.
The telegraph converts magnetic energy and passes it along a wire. From there you can go two directions:
To get to radio as we know it today, you essentially need only add content.
1890s - Gugliemo Marconi
The man credited with eliminating the need for the wire was Gugliemo Marconi. The Italian inventor experimented with a machine invented by Heinrich Hertz, a German who developed the theory that there were invisible energy waves all around us.
Marconi saw commercial potential if he could harness these waves for communication. He first managed to send "radio" signals across his garden. Then for distance equivalent to a mile. And eventually across the Atlantic Ocean. It was this latter success that drew attention of mariners and navies across the world. He founded a radio communication company that became very powerful world wide. Learn more about Marconi.
Early Radio Development
While Marconi's radio was the beginning of the broadcast industry as we know it today, early radio was not the entertainment and information medium we consider it today. It was more of a communication medium, like a telephone. Marconi relied on Morse Code for sending messages. He had not harnessed the concept of converting the human voice, or other sound into energy.
That was left up to Reginald Fessenden. Fessenden and others knew that even the earliest radio receivers were built to include sound, it was just a matter of matching telephone technology and merging it with radio technology. One evening in 1906 ships at sea suddenly started receiving music over their radio receivers as Fessenden experimented. Voice was soon to follow.
And it pretty much was ships at sea that heard the sounds because that's where most radio sets were found. The early sets were big and bulky . . . room-sized big. Because ships were also large, but mobile, radio was an ideal tool for those at sea.
As we came into the second decade of the 1900s radio development was slow because of patent wars among inventors. Radio might have taken many more years to develop as these inventors sought to protect their individual contributions had not World War I intervened. The government put a freeze on all patents and in some cases enlisted inventors into the war effort to develop radio as a military tool/weapon. By putting a freeze on the patents, this allowed inventors to make use of inventions to improve radio. In some cases, pre-war patents were useless after the refinements that were made prior to the war. While radio was still considered a communication device, the improvements made during the war greatly sped up the development of radio.
Birth of broadcasting
Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912 to set some regulations on use of radio as a communications device. This set off a series of regulatory acts that still controls radio broadcasting in this country.
We'll take a closer look at those acts, the reasoning behind them and some of their effects in our next lecture on rationales for broadcast regulation.
Radio as an entertainment and information medium probably got its start with David Sarnoff.
Sarnoff and the Radio Music Box memo
David Sarnoff started his career in broadcasting at an early age working for the American Marconi Company, which was in the radio communication business. He sat there listening to incoming Morse Code messages and decoding them. The story goes that he was on duty the night the Titanic sunk. He supposedly put in long hours decoding the lists of names of survivors being sent back by rescue ships.
By 1915 he had reached a status in the company where he could write internal memos and sometimes have them paid attention to. One such memo, which was NOT paid attention to, was his now-famous Radio Music Box memo.
"I have in mind a plan of development," Sarnoff wrote, "which would make radio a "household utility" in the same sense as the piano or phonograph. The idea is to bring music into the home by wireless."
He went on to describe some possible content for this Radio Music Box concept of his. While the memo was filed and ignored, he described future radio. A few years later he advanced even further in the company and pulled out his old memo and ushered in radio. But by then others had come up with similar ideas. You can find out more about Sarnoff at www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/sarnoffdavi/sarnoffdavi.htm.
Postwar broadcasting
After World War I broadcasting bloomed. Lots of people wanted in on this new idea of broadcasting content into the home. But two major problems occurred: Technological interference and financing.
Early radio did not know how to make efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum and with too many people jumping in there was lots of technological interference. There were no enforceable standards on transmission and frequency use. The industry, incapable of policing itself, begged for government help. Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the same guy who later would be President, tried imposing regulations on his own, but was ineffective. The Radio Act of 1912 just didn't have the right stuff in it. So in 1927 Congress passed the Federal Radio Act as a seven-year attempt to establish some technical standards on who could broadcast and when and on what frequency. Step two in the regulatory road.
How to finance radio
Perhaps a more intriguing story, however, is the problem of how to pay for all this new content. Those first into the business were the manufacturers of radio sets. Provide content and people will buy the sets. With the profits you pay for more and better content so more people will want radios. Fine for the manufacturers, but what about others who wanted to provide information and entertainment, but did not want to build and sell radio sets?
Several proposals to fund radio content were floated.
The first advertising in radio creeped in as early as 1922 when a real estate company sponsored 's 10-minute talk show about how to buy real estate. Oh, and, by the way, if you are in the market for real estate, we've got property you might want to look at . . .
Early radio advertising was not what it is today. Advertisers would buy airtime from a radio station or network and then supply the content. The advertiser hired the writers for a whole half hour show, hired the actors, etc. Many times the advertiser's product were woven into the theme of the show. Ironically, we are seeing a return to a similar situation in television as advertisers are paying for blatant product placement within shows.
And early radio content was not what it is today. The content was more akin to today's television, without the pictures. Instead of rock music or talk radio the content included 15-minute, half hour and hour-long comedies, soap operas, variety shows, dramas, etc. There were a lot of action shows.
Growth of Radio
The 1920s were a rocking time for the American economy. People had money to spend. If not, they took advantage of the new concept: Credit -- Buy now and pay later. Radio grew rapidly. Even in the depression of the 1930s, when radio content was probably at its best, people would forego a rent payment to get their radios repaired if necessary.
Look at the rate of growth of radio ownership through the years:
Learn more about how radio works at "How Stuff Works."
Reading Assignment
You should be reading the chapter on radio in your textbook to get more information about radio.
Exercise
Take a moment to reflect on the numbers of radios in your home. How many? (Remember all the boom boxes, stereos, car radios, clock radios, shower radios, etc.) How many TV sets? Computers? (And no, I'm not casing your house to rob it.)
Note that when submitting the answer start the subject line with:
J100x-L -- YourLastName -- Radio
Next lecture: Regulating Broadcast
Back in our early days of history, as society grew in complexity, people's need for a reliable means of communication over long distances increased. Communication needed to transcend distance and needed to do it quickly. There were several areas of need:
- Social -- As people started to spread out and leave their home villages and got to know other peoples, the need to communicate with them increased.
- Military -- Entire battles or wars could be won or lost depending on the intelligence you had available. Knowing the strength of a far away army could be crucial.
- Commercial -- As transportation improved demand for resources from other provinces increased. Knowing what was out there and how to get it required long distance communication.
- Government -- Different governments struck up cordial relations with each other and needed ways to communicate with each other.
- Military -- Entire battles or wars could be won or lost depending on the intelligence you had available. Knowing the strength of a far away army could be crucial.
- Semaphores or flags -- Napoleon used this form of communication to find out about approaching armies and semaphore communication is still used by navies today.)
- Smoke signals
- Flashing mirrors
Telegraph
The concept of the telegraph has been around for a long time. Giovanni della Porta, in his 1535 book Natural Magick, an early physics/supernatural book, talked about a sympathetic telegraph that took advantage of the lodestone's magnetic properties. He theorized that if you could find two identical lodestones, you could create a wireless sympathetic telegraph them by floating them in pans of water with letters engraved around the rims of the pans. Something like a Ouji board.
Then in 1844 Samuel Morse invented the telegraph we know about today. So great was the need that the government was willing to finance research on the telegraph, but turn over patent rights to the successful inventor.
In Rich Cameron's view of broadcast history, the beginning begins with the telegraph.
 |
The telegraph converts magnetic energy and passes it along a wire. From there you can go two directions:
- Convert sound/voice to energy and pass it along a wire
- Eliminate the need for the wire.
To get to radio as we know it today, you essentially need only add content.
1890s - Gugliemo Marconi
 |
Marconi saw commercial potential if he could harness these waves for communication. He first managed to send "radio" signals across his garden. Then for distance equivalent to a mile. And eventually across the Atlantic Ocean. It was this latter success that drew attention of mariners and navies across the world. He founded a radio communication company that became very powerful world wide. Learn more about Marconi.
Early Radio Development
While Marconi's radio was the beginning of the broadcast industry as we know it today, early radio was not the entertainment and information medium we consider it today. It was more of a communication medium, like a telephone. Marconi relied on Morse Code for sending messages. He had not harnessed the concept of converting the human voice, or other sound into energy.
That was left up to Reginald Fessenden. Fessenden and others knew that even the earliest radio receivers were built to include sound, it was just a matter of matching telephone technology and merging it with radio technology. One evening in 1906 ships at sea suddenly started receiving music over their radio receivers as Fessenden experimented. Voice was soon to follow.
And it pretty much was ships at sea that heard the sounds because that's where most radio sets were found. The early sets were big and bulky . . . room-sized big. Because ships were also large, but mobile, radio was an ideal tool for those at sea.
As we came into the second decade of the 1900s radio development was slow because of patent wars among inventors. Radio might have taken many more years to develop as these inventors sought to protect their individual contributions had not World War I intervened. The government put a freeze on all patents and in some cases enlisted inventors into the war effort to develop radio as a military tool/weapon. By putting a freeze on the patents, this allowed inventors to make use of inventions to improve radio. In some cases, pre-war patents were useless after the refinements that were made prior to the war. While radio was still considered a communication device, the improvements made during the war greatly sped up the development of radio.
Birth of broadcasting
Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912 to set some regulations on use of radio as a communications device. This set off a series of regulatory acts that still controls radio broadcasting in this country.
We'll take a closer look at those acts, the reasoning behind them and some of their effects in our next lecture on rationales for broadcast regulation.
Radio as an entertainment and information medium probably got its start with David Sarnoff.
Sarnoff and the Radio Music Box memo
 |
By 1915 he had reached a status in the company where he could write internal memos and sometimes have them paid attention to. One such memo, which was NOT paid attention to, was his now-famous Radio Music Box memo.
"I have in mind a plan of development," Sarnoff wrote, "which would make radio a "household utility" in the same sense as the piano or phonograph. The idea is to bring music into the home by wireless."
He went on to describe some possible content for this Radio Music Box concept of his. While the memo was filed and ignored, he described future radio. A few years later he advanced even further in the company and pulled out his old memo and ushered in radio. But by then others had come up with similar ideas. You can find out more about Sarnoff at www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/sarnoffdavi/sarnoffdavi.htm.
Postwar broadcasting
After World War I broadcasting bloomed. Lots of people wanted in on this new idea of broadcasting content into the home. But two major problems occurred: Technological interference and financing.
Early radio did not know how to make efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum and with too many people jumping in there was lots of technological interference. There were no enforceable standards on transmission and frequency use. The industry, incapable of policing itself, begged for government help. Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the same guy who later would be President, tried imposing regulations on his own, but was ineffective. The Radio Act of 1912 just didn't have the right stuff in it. So in 1927 Congress passed the Federal Radio Act as a seven-year attempt to establish some technical standards on who could broadcast and when and on what frequency. Step two in the regulatory road.
How to finance radio
Perhaps a more intriguing story, however, is the problem of how to pay for all this new content. Those first into the business were the manufacturers of radio sets. Provide content and people will buy the sets. With the profits you pay for more and better content so more people will want radios. Fine for the manufacturers, but what about others who wanted to provide information and entertainment, but did not want to build and sell radio sets?
Several proposals to fund radio content were floated.
- Public donations -- Why not have the public donate money to pay for the content, sort of like public radio and public television today. You have pledge campaigns every now and then. But why would the public pay for something they could get for free? Even today the money you pledge to public TV or radio accounts for a small amount of the operating revenue.
- Philanthropy -- The postwar economy was good and there were a number of people who had made big money during the war. Some were even donating money to build public hospitals and libraries. Maybe some would contribute to a radio content fund. Nope. Too many people still looked at entertainment radio as a novelty, a fad that would soon fade away. They weren't willing to toss money that direction.
- License fees for sets -- Some felt that the owners of radio sets should pay an annual fee, just like you pay the Department of Motor Vehicles an annual registration fee for your car. That idea wasn't well received either. Besides, when there are a few hundred thousand radio sets out there maintaining a database of the owners would be difficult enough. Try keeping track of millions!
The first advertising in radio creeped in as early as 1922 when a real estate company sponsored 's 10-minute talk show about how to buy real estate. Oh, and, by the way, if you are in the market for real estate, we've got property you might want to look at . . .
Early radio advertising was not what it is today. Advertisers would buy airtime from a radio station or network and then supply the content. The advertiser hired the writers for a whole half hour show, hired the actors, etc. Many times the advertiser's product were woven into the theme of the show. Ironically, we are seeing a return to a similar situation in television as advertisers are paying for blatant product placement within shows.
And early radio content was not what it is today. The content was more akin to today's television, without the pictures. Instead of rock music or talk radio the content included 15-minute, half hour and hour-long comedies, soap operas, variety shows, dramas, etc. There were a lot of action shows.
Growth of Radio
The 1920s were a rocking time for the American economy. People had money to spend. If not, they took advantage of the new concept: Credit -- Buy now and pay later. Radio grew rapidly. Even in the depression of the 1930s, when radio content was probably at its best, people would forego a rent payment to get their radios repaired if necessary.
Look at the rate of growth of radio ownership through the years:
| 1930s .......... | 1.5 radios per home |
| 1955 .......... | 2.5 radios per home |
| 1960 .......... | 2.9 radios per home |
| 1965 .......... | 3.9 radios per home |
| 1970 .......... | 5.1 radios per home |
| 2000 .......... | 6.6 radios per home, or two for every man, woman and child in the country. |
Learn more about how radio works at "How Stuff Works."
Reading Assignment
You should be reading the chapter on radio in your textbook to get more information about radio.
Exercise
Take a moment to reflect on the numbers of radios in your home. How many? (Remember all the boom boxes, stereos, car radios, clock radios, shower radios, etc.) How many TV sets? Computers? (And no, I'm not casing your house to rob it.)
Note that when submitting the answer start the subject line with:
Next lecture: Regulating Broadcast
