03-16-09
Documentary: Empire of the Air – invention of radio
The Power of Radio: The Case of
America and Britain
The Technology Story:
- collective effort between scientists, inventors, businessmen, listeners
- Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism
- signals at the speed of light, Henrich Hertz
- Guglielmo Marconi 1901 – messages across the atlantic ocean
Coming of Age to 1918
- The Marconi Company:
- Marconi thought radio was best suited for point to point transmission rather than broadcasting which was one point to many
- radio required more technological advances from marconi’s time before it became the radio we know today
- 24th of December, Fester recorded and transmitted the first human voice
- 1906 – 1918 radio was more of a hobby, of specialists or amateurs
- others were trying to make money from radio
- American Marconi assumed a dominant role
- radio airwaves were considered to be public property
- temporarily allocated to individuals or corporations through licensing
- 1st world war created a powerful new dynamic for radio in the united states
- all this changed after 1918
- American Marconi controlled radio – did not sit well with the people
- had more British loyalties than American ones
- 1919 RCA formed
The RCA Revolution in the USA
- First emphasis: point to point transmission
- right to operate radio stations
- history of technology, people tend to see the reflections of older technologies (i.e. horseless carriage = car)
- same with broadcasting vs point to point
- concerts and baseball scores etc. could be broadcasted
- important events could be transmitted into peoples homes
- domestic broadcasting was born
- Westing House Company was a major rival to RCA
- applied for a license to start regular programming
- Dec 11, 1920 first American radio station
- 1921 – 22 radio began to take off
- by 1929 sets in use: 9m
- 1922-0.2% of US households;
- 1940-80% of US households
- Jan 1922, 30 broadcasting stations on the air, 12 months later there were 556
- incredible uptake
- number of listening licenses grew by more than 3000% between 1922 and 1940
Radio as a Consumer Durable 1920 – 40
- radio becomes an important part of the consumer economy
- radio becomes significant to the GNP of the countries to which it spread
- transformed itself from a fad in the jazz age to a household necessity
- people would willingly give up their phone rather than their radio due to cost
- but who is to pay for broadcasting?
Radio and Commercial Broadcasting
- Lee DeForest proclaimed advertising as a vulgar development and nothing less than an act of vandalism
- opponents of commercial radio could not coalesce
- advertiser ambivalent at first, but catches on quickly
- the idea of radio exceptionalism (the idea that this medium is different)
- power of radio, not just any medium, an exceptional medium
- started off small, now 1 min advertising spot that we are used to
- newspapers maintain their dominance over the advertising market
- by the late 1930s radio is catching up
- 1939, exceeded advertising in magazines
- convinced people that radio advertisements were making radio free
London Calling
- same medium, evolved in different contexts
- post office and government created a market for radio receiving apparatuses in UK
- when you have a radio you have to have a license for listening
- gov’t believed that the market would be in the production of radio sets rather than the broadcasting rights
Development of the BBC
- public utility, to be run like hydro and telephony
- anti-thetical to the American model
- must not be used for entertainment purposes alone
- responsibility to bring in to the greatest number of homes in the fullest degree all that is best in every department of human knowledge
BBC and National Cohesion
- BBC monopoly on broadcasting in the united kingdom
- continued for 30 years, 1922 – 53
- radio appeared in a time in the UK in a “neotechnic age”
- broadcasting technology was one of the potent elements of such a science
- used as a means of social control
- BBC was an instrument of democratic enlightenment, unity, broader shared social interest, taste, social knowledge
Radio as a Social Expression
- anyone living anywhere in the UK had a right to receive good quality radio service from the BBC
- to achieve this, a small number of high powered transmitters were set up to deliver two types of programs to listeners
- regional , local
- oldest running BBC program still running from 1926 – Coral Edensong (evening prayers, songs, liturgy running every week
03-16-09
Exam5 parts to exam:
part a: essay (answer 1 choice of 2)
part b: essay (answer 1 choice of 2)
part c: essay (answer 1 choice of 2)
part d: short answer (10 questions) (explain concepts from lectures of readings in 2 sentences)
part e: bonus ( trivia questions from class or readings )
document C – essay questions
analyze explain compare
Technology Story
Various stages of technical progress in 1920s and before
Beginning of tv in the laboratory in the 1920s
Cathode ray system –Rozing and V. Zworykin
Shoultz in France…Jenkins in USA…J.L. Baird in London
Bell Telephone Labs –breakthroughs in 1925-6
1926 – faint images on tv screens
People chose not to work on it because it did not have immediate commercial value
Technology Story…(2)
Zworykin and Sarnoff of RCA –innovations for the market begin to take root.
o Practical television receiver was developed
o Could be operated by the average man in his home
British Developments: govt. standards and successes
o Some help from Americans
o 1935 – Gov’t standards Comission, regulation of the transmission of images
In Germany…brilliant innovations, bad pictures
o Very low quality, unusual for Germany
o
Television’s First Steps
Early programming
o Musical numbers, drama, game shows, were broadcasted
Standard setting
Marconi and Baird EMI
o Marconi 405 lines of definition as opposed to Baird’s 240
Broadcasting Chamberlain and the Munich
30th of Sept 1938 first broadcasting
o of British PM back from Munich
o outside broadcast unit à truck and camera
Conference…
…meanwhile, back in NYC…
Sarnoff gets an idea…&
LTS is a success
o Ppl ask radio is king why do we need television ?
Meanwhile in the US…
High prices, and little public interest at first
The manufacturing strategy: All TVs must go!
o Wanted monopoly on television receivers
Clearance prices! Blowout! [ the battle for position]
National Television Systems Committee –1940
o For most of the time, NTSC standards were lower than PAL (European)
o More programming here but better programming overseas
War shuts everything down.
o Getting ready to broadcast in 1941 and Pearl Harbor stopped everything
Taking a Closer Look
American television's formative years -10 years determines the next 30 years
o In the first decade of American television which had a very weak beginning
+ Set in place the actors and structures for the industry and the 3 or 4 decades after the second world war
Early regulatory decisions –esp. standards
o Do seem to matter a great deal
o Establish economic patterns, allocate broadcast spectrum, dictate image quality etc
o Behind these decision are competing private interests inside and outside the broadcasting industry
Broadcast regulation –federal license + commercial protection
o Federal license confers a privilege and not a right to broadcast in the public interest using public airwaves
o Private property, the rights of property apply to broadcasters
The VHF decision and its implications
o Very high frequency decision to locate the television frequency in the VHF of the electromagnetic spectrum meant that only 12 channels could be broadcasted nation wide and only 3 in most large cities
o Created a relatively small group of extremely profitable operators
o NBC and CBS, while ABC and Dumont came in second
Standards and VHF (Pt 2)
VHF vs. UHF –who cares? A vital question
o It will be faster, television will be sent out
o CBS wants to delay and do it properly, to establish a colour and UHF band which can support 60 channels
o Economics of teleivision service would be completely diff if used UHF
o More players and less restricted
o Anti-competitive nature of VHF in the 1940s
o Gov’t was under considerable pressure to establish
o Patent position was strongest in VHF
The regulatory decision that mattered a great deal
The fight between CBS and NBC/RCA
o NBC won because they supported VHF
o CBS closed their new york city tv studios
o Refrained for applying for additional VHF broadcast licenses
o Boycotting television
And a possible industrial failure…until the 1950s
o Found its momentum again
Training TV Audiences
Early apprehensions of television watching
o May impact housewives chores, used to listen while they worked
o Adjustment in domestic life had to be made
Early predictions
A disruptive influence on the American home?
Do Not Adjust Your Set
Transmission problems…please stand by
o Line of site transmission
o Had to be able to see the tower in order to get transmissions from it
o 1940s saw exotic proposals to overcome this
+ 300 mile high transmitter in Kansas City
+ companies of traveling actors
Who’s going to pay?
The situation in 1947…60,000 sets in USA, 66% in
NYC
Early audiences…the take off
o 1952-53 people were rushing to get a television
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