The Impact of Radio and Television on American Society

Of all the major inventions of the twentieth century, few have had a more profound impact on people’s lives than radio and television. By 1933, two-thirds of American homes had at least one radio, twice as many as those with telephones. Forty-five years later, 97 percent of all households had at least one television set. But the numbers cannot convey the contradictory roles that broadcasting has played in American society as it has reshaped the country’s politics, economy, and culture.

Role in American Society

The broadcast media have allowed Americans to listen to and watch candidates for public office in order to decide for themselves who merits their support. But television has also trivialized politics, overemphasizing appearance and style while too often serving as gatekeeper for the flow of information about the political process. Radio and television have exposed Americans to an unprecedented amount of news and information. But they have also promoted anti-intellectualism and elevated mindless entertainment over the pursuit of knowledge. Broadcasting provides free entertainment in the home, which is often a godsend for the ill, the confined, parents of small children, and those simply exhausted after a day’s work. But in exchange, the audience has become a commodity sold to advertisers, who in turn try to persuade everyone, including children, to buy their products. Radio and television, then, have both expanded and narrowed people’s horizons. But as we review their enormous impact on American life, we should keep in mind that they are not a sort of hypodermic needle, injecting an unsuspecting culture with alien messages. They are the product of American history, having themselves been shaped by the trends and events of the twentieth century.

Development of Broadcasting

When Guglielmo Marconi, the Irish-Italian inventor, came to the United States in 1899 to demonstrate how his wireless telegraph might expedite press coverage of the America’s Cup races, the concept of broadcasting had not entered his mind at all. He thought his device, which sent Morse code messages without connecting wires, would be useful for corporate clients who needed a rapid, mobile communications system. His American competitors, however, sought to expand the invention’s applications and to use it to transmit music and voice. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden, who developed the first sophisticated radio transmitter, the high-frequency alternator, sent out a program of music and speech. Lee de Forest, inventor of the radio tube, attempted to broadcast synthesized music and opera in New York City between 1907 and 1909. By the next decade, amateur operators were broadcasting speech, music, and coded messages in dozens of cities. This activity, interrupted by World War I, resumed in the early 1920s, and the radio boom began. The number of broadcasting stations soared, from 30 in 1922 to 556 in 1923, and by the next year, the number of homes with radios had tripled. This explosion produced chaos in the airwaves, and broadcasters wrestled with how to avoid interference and how to pay for programming.

Commercialization and Regulation

The solutions to these problems established commercial and regulatory precedents that determined how broadcasting would be managed. Owners of radio stations, seeking to reduce competition and maximize profits, organized stations into networks to broadcast the same show at the same time. And they began experimenting with on-air advertising as a way to finance programming. Radio advertising was, in the 1920s, only one of several proposals for financing radio, and it was controversial. Critics felt that sending ads over the airwaves constituted an invasion of privacy, sabotaging people’s ability to keep the marketplace out of the home. So sponsors who wanted to sell their products over radio began with “indirect advertising.” The merits of a product, its price, or where it could be purchased were not mentioned. Instead, singing groups, comedians, or bands assumed the name of the sponsor, giving rise to such radio celebrities as the Cliquot Club Eskimos and the A&P Gypsies. Because corporate sponsorship provided money to increase the quality and variety of programming, companies found they generated goodwill with listeners, and resistance to advertising (although not resentment of it) gradually broke down. During the depression, as advertisers gained more financial clout, direct sales pitches became the norm.