Radio and Television

Origins

Wireless telegraphy emerged from Heinrich Hertz’s demonstration of electromagnetic waves in 1888. Guglielmo Marconi, working in Italy and then Britain, developed practical wireless telegraph systems in the 1890s. His company established ship-to-shore communication and, in 1901, transmitted the first transatlantic wireless signal. Wireless initially meant telegraph—coded dots and dashes rather than voice.

Radio broadcasting emerged after World War I. Experimenters discovered that wireless could transmit voice and music, not just telegraph code. Pittsburgh’s KDKA broadcast the 1920 presidential election results; within three years, hundreds of stations operated across America. The business model—advertiser-supported free programming—emerged by 1926 with the formation of NBC.

Television developed through parallel invention. Mechanical scanning systems by John Logie Baird competed with electronic systems developed by Philo Farnsworth and RCA’s Vladimir Zworykin. Electronic television proved superior; BBC began regular broadcasts in 1936, while American television launched after World War II. By 1960, television had become the dominant mass medium.

Structure & Function

Broadcasting created new industry structures. Networks—NBC, CBS, ABC in America; BBC in Britain—aggregated programming and distributed it through affiliated local stations. The scarcity of broadcast spectrum justified government licensing, creating regulated oligopolies. Commercial broadcasting depended on audience measurement, advertising rates tied to viewership, and programming designed to attract mass audiences.

The technology evolved continuously: from AM to FM radio, from black-and-white to color television, from broadcast to cable to satellite to streaming. Each transition reshaped industry structure, but the fundamental model—programming financed by advertising or license fees, consumed passively by mass audiences—persisted until internet video challenged it.

Historical Significance

Broadcasting created mass culture. Radio and television reached audiences simultaneously, creating shared experiences—Roosevelt’s fireside chats, the moon landing, the Super Bowl—that shaped national consciousness. News could be experienced as it happened rather than read the next day. Entertainment became national rather than local; the same programs entered homes across continents.

The political implications were profound. Radio enabled new forms of political communication: Hitler’s rallies, Churchill’s speeches, Roosevelt’s reassurance. Television transformed campaigning; the Kennedy-Nixon debates demonstrated that visual presentation mattered as much as argument. Broadcasting also raised concerns about manipulation, propaganda, and the homogenization of culture that persist into the streaming age.