CHAPTER ESSENTIALS

• The telegraph, invented in the 1840s, sent electrical impulses from a transmitter through a cable to a reception point and was the first technology to enable communication to exceed the speed of human transportation. To send messages, telegraph operators used Morse code—a series of dots and dashes that stood for letters of the alphabet. The telegraph’s limitations caused other inventors to experiment without wires, leading to the discovery of radio waves and electromagnetic waves (pp. 185–187).

• New developments in the nineteenth century improved wireless communication, taking it from narrowcasting (point-to-point communication) to broadcasting (one-to-many communication). Guglielmo Marconi is credited with developing wireless telegraphy, a form of voiceless point-to-point communication, in the 1890s, leaving others—such as Reginald Fessenden and Lee De Forest—to experiment with producing wireless telephony (voice transmissions) and amplifying radio sound (pp. 187–189).

• Early regulation of wireless/radio focused on providing public safety and national security; in 1910, Congress passed the Wireless Ship Act, which required all major ships to be equipped with wireless equipment, and two years later it passed the Radio Act of 1912, which required all radio stations on land or at sea to be licensed and assigned special call letters (pp. 189–190).

• Following World War I, radio moved into the private sector with the formation of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA)—a privately owned company that had the government’s approval to acquire radio patents and dominate the radio industry (pp. 190–191).

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• Radio’s development as a business was solidified with the creation of the first lasting network, NBC, in 1926. Backed by David Sarnoff and connected by AT&T long lines, the network broadcast programs nationally and played a prominent role in unifying the country (pp. 191–193).

• The growth of the network and affiliate system alarmed government leaders, who banded together to pass the Radio Act of 1927, which began the process of issuing radio licenses and created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) to oversee radio licenses and negotiate channel problems. The Radio Act introduced a pivotal new principle: Licensees did not own their channels but could use them as long as they operated to serve the “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” With the passage of the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which allowed commercial interests to control the airwaves, the FRC became the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent U.S. government agency charged with regulating interstate and international communications (pp. 193–194).

• By 1930, the golden age of radio was in full force; living rooms were filled with music, drama, comedy, variety and quiz shows, weather forecasts, farm reports, and news (pp. 194–196).

• In the wake of TV’s development and massive popularity in the 1950s, radio suffered but was resurrected via portable transistor radios and the shift to music formats that relied on the recording industry for content (pp. 196–197).

• The rise of FM (frequency modulation) brought greater clarity and reception to radio, and became the dominant band for music by the 1980s. Until then, radio technology had centered on AM (amplitude modulation).

• The rise of format radio, in which station managers controlled the station’s music programming, gearing it to specific listeners, solidified music as radio’s single biggest staple and also introduced the idea of rotation: playing the top songs many times during the day (pp. 197–198).

• Radio stations use a variety of formats to serve a diverse group of listeners, including news and talk radio (the most popular format of the 1990s, especially on AM stations) and music, which is often divided into specific categories: country, Top 40/contemporary hit radio (CHR), adult contemporary (AC), urban adult contemporary, Spanish-language radio (sometimes in both talk and music formats), and album-oriented rock (AOR) (pp. 198–201).

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• Nonprofit radio stations, such as those in the Pacifica Foundation network, and noncommercial networks, such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—both of which were mandated under federal provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—were created to provide alternatives to commercial broadcasting (pp. 201, 204).

• Over the past decade or so, five alternative radio technologies have helped bring more diverse sounds and options for listening to radio audiences: Internet radio, podcasting and portable listening, convergence with mobile technology, satellite radio, and HD radio (pp. 204–206).

• Commercial radio stations take in revenue from advertisers and spend money on assets such as content programming, often purchasing programming from national network radio (pp. 206–207).

• A radio station’s musical content can be influenced by payola, the unethical practice of record promoters paying deejays or program managers to favor particular songs over others (p. 207).

• The Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced a new age of consolidation in radio ownership across the United States (pp. 207, 210).

• In response to large corporations’ control over the airwaves, low-power FM (LPFM) was approved by the FCC in 2000 as a new class of noncommercial radio stations that aimed to give voice to local groups lacking access to the public airwaves (pp. 210–211).

• Radio has shaped trends in music, news, and entertainment while still remaining a supremely local medium, yet the trend has begun moving radio away from its localism, as radio groups often manage hundreds of stations from afar (p. 211).

• In an age when control of the public airwaves lies in fewer hands than ever, it is important to think about the impact this has on the number of voices permitted to speak and how this could affect our democracy (p. 211).

1. Question 6.1

   How did broadcasting, unlike print media, come to be federally regulated?

2. Question 6.2

   What is the significance of the Radio Act of 1927 and the Federal Communications Act of 1934?

3. Question 6.3

   How did radio adapt to the arrival of television?

4. Question 6.4

   What has been the main effect of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on radio station ownership?

5. Question 6.5

   What is the relevance of localism to debates about ownership in radio?

• DESCRIBE the ownership of stations in your (or a nearby) radio market and their formats.

• ANALYZE the information in your list, looking for patterns and trends. How many stations attract the majority of the market’s ratings? Are there multiple stations serving the same formats? What formats are missing?

• INTERPRET what these patterns mean. For example, what does your market profile suggest about diversity in ownership and station formats? Are there people in your community who are underserved by all of the on-air options?

• EVALUATE radio in your community. Do newer developments like Internet radio, satellite radio, podcasts, and HD radio offer better alternatives, or are they poor substitutes for broadcast radio?

• ENGAGE with your community by writing to a local station. Tell the manager what the station is doing right or what could be done better to serve the community.