While radio is no longer quite so dominant a technology today as it once was, it was a revolutionary development in entertainment and it still has the ear of millions of listeners. It is also especially exciting because its early rise can be seen in the newspapers in our digital collection. By looking at our papers from 100 years ago, we can see how radio came to hold such a prominent place in American culture.
Throughout the 1800s, the discovery and experimentation of electromagnetic waves provided the groundwork for radio. The first major successful attempts at broadcast occurred in the late 1890s and early 1900s, although they initially consisted of dots and dashes like the telegraph. The first radio broadcast to feature both a human voice and music was made in December 1906 by Reginald Fessenden in Brant Rock, Massachusetts. With this development, radio as we know it today could really emerge.
Radio was the realm of amateurs and enthusiasts in its earliest days, with the small group of original listeners tuning in to irregular broadcasts by fellow enthusiasts on hand-made receivers, primarily listening through headphones, and it remained that way into the early 1920s; according to the April 14, 1916 Perth Amboy Evening News, of the 5,073 radio stations in the U.S. at the end of 1915, 3,836 were amateur stations, the rest primarily being government stations. However, even if the number of actual radio owners remained relatively small, radio as a technology caught the interest of many more, intrigued by the novelty of hearing voices and music, often broadcast from miles away.
One group that was very invested in the technology was the United States government. They were quickly aware of its potential military purposes, and they began getting involved in the regulation of the technology during the First World War. As noted in the August 6, 1914 issue of the Newark Evening Star, President Woodrow Wilson, supported by an act of Congress, prohibited the broadcast of “messages of an unneutral nature” in order to preserve American neutrality in the conflict after it had been found that one radio broadcaster had been sending coded messages to the Germans in the Atlantic. More drastic measures would be taken when the country entered the war in 1917, with most broadcasting becoming prohibited.
With the conclusion of the war, broadcasting resumed, and the public became increasingly interested in it. In 1920, the first commercial radio station, KDKA, began broadcasting out of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, and by the end of 1921, there were about 30 such stations. With radio becoming an increasingly popular commercial venture, manufacturers began producing pre-built receivers for families to put in their homes. The radio “craze” was such that The Pleasantville Press, in their August 2, 1922 issue, published an article warning against investing in scams built around the hype for the new technology.
With the sudden appearance of sections of the paper devoted to covering the radio and many ads for radio products, it’s easy to see the radio boom in the papers.
It did not take long for radio to catch on with the public. According to the website Our World in Data, in 1925, 10 percent of households had a radio. Five years later, in 1930, that number had jumped to 45 percent. That number was even higher in 1940: 81 percent. Truly, by the time the radio entered its “Golden Age,” it was a standard feature of the American home.
With radio’s sudden prevalence, there was inevitable controversy regarding the new medium. One such argument was over the content. Advocates of radio believed it could serve a great role in providing educational material. Take, for instance, an article from the May 4, 1923 Palisadian, which envisioned radio as a great way to provide “general instruction.” Writing about using radio to teach music, the article argued “It is easy to picture regular series of lessons by radio, with appropriate demonstrations with the voice or on the various instruments.” With radio becoming increasingly commercial, radio’s advocates worried that advertisement-driven programming would create substance-less content for mass audiences. On top of that, there were those who thought adding advertisements to programming would turn off those considering embracing radio. These included Herbert Hoover, who was the secretary of commerce at the time and thus in charge of the nation’s radio policy. In 1924, Hoover asserted, “I believe the quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising.” However, these worries did not turn out to have much truth to them; radio quickly adopted advertising, and it did not do much to slow the embrace of the new technology.
Ultimately, as our papers show, the 1920s saw the public fall in love with radio, embracing the new technology and the way it brought entertainment to the home. This would lay the groundwork for the “Golden Age” of radio during the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s before competition from television brought an end to the era. Even though technologies like television and internet streaming have come and undermined radio, it remains a popular technology with millions of listeners every day, a century after it first came to prominence.
(Contributed by Tristan Smith)
Sources:
Our World in Data. “Share of United States Households Using Specific Technologies.” Accessed May 15, 2023. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/technology-adoption-by-households-in-the-united-states?time=1860..latest&facet=none&country=~Radio.
PBS. “The Development of Radio.” American Experience. Accessed May 15, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rescue-development-radio/.
Skretvedt, Randy and Christopher H. Sterling. “Radio.” Britannica, March 27, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/radio.