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America's Interactive Past: Where Radio and Internet Meet
From: Columbia University
| By:
Phil Napoli |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The birth of broadcasting had strong similarities to the development of the Internet. When radio receivers hit the market in 1921, the demand for these boxes "to bring music into the house by wireless" was greater than the demand for any other new product before or since. It was greater than cars, movies and even the present market for personal computers.
According to Phil Napoli, curator of the Herbert H. Lehman Suite and  Papers at Columbia University, the communications revolution brought on by radio represented an even more profound break with the past than the current "information revolution" associated with the growth of the Internet. "With broadcasting, one no longer needed to be able to read to be informed," Napoli has written. In that regard, the Internet may even be "a step backward, in the sense that most of the information on the Internet is still written, and worse yet, often in English, effectively excluding a large section of the earth's population from its use."
Napoli, who has studied the growth of radio in the United States between 1920 and 1950, offers in this essay a perspective on our interactive present through a closer look at our wireless past. |
 n a recent New York Times article, Patricia Nelson Limerick, one of the premier historians of the American West, argued that in their search for parallels to the present Internet dot-com boom, financial writers have overlooked one episode in American history that exemplifies "our passion for seeking fortune and adventure in new territory." Limerick asserts that proper historical precedent for the commercial growth of the Internet is to be found in the history of the gold rush and oil boom of the late nineteenth century. Professor Limerick is certainly correct that there are clear similarities between these events, and that the most significant element shared by the forty-niners, the boomers and the contemporary "dot-commies" is the desire to strike it rich quickly and get out safely. In today's overheated Internet economy, companies often begin to think of their escape strategy as part of the business plan. Of course, the dot-com phenomenon is only one aspect of the Internet's contemporary importance. |
The history of American radio offers a better historical point of comparison to the growth of the Internet overall. Much of the social potential of the Internet, and many of its problems, are prefigured in the history of radio. First, both were greeted with enormous enthusiasm. Second, both emerged, in part, as a result of the intervention of the military. Third, both have been plagued by concern about monopoly in the industry. |
It has become commonplace to describe the Internet as a communications revolution, and to a large degree it is. It has the potential to fundamentally change the way people communicate with their governments. It has already had a profound impact on American businesses, and its social implications are just now being explored. |
Radio, too, was a communications revolution. Indeed, perhaps it was a more profound revolution than the Internet. It broke the monopoly on information held by the literate classes since the invention of the printing press. With broadcasting, one no longer needed to be able to read to be informed. In this regard, the Internet even represents a step backward, in the sense that most of the information on the Internet is still written, and worse yet, often in English, effectively excluding a large section of the earth's population from its use. |
Popular enthusiasm about radio in the 1920s parallels the contemporary rhetoric about the Internet "revolution." In 1923, Literary Digest captured the sentiment of a number of political observers when it exclaimed: "Picture yourself as the chief executive of a mighty republic, able as you stand in your office to speak through radio directly to a nation of 100,000,000 souls. What contact! What inspiration to a nation! What uniformity of purpose during peril!" |
Radio, according to Literary Digest, would rejuvenate the electoral process by serving as an information vehicle of immense power, while at the same time forcing elected officials to greater accountability. F.W. Parsons of the Saturday Evening Post even argued that radio could form "the missing link between the government and the people." |
Just as today there is a great rush to get a computer with an Internet hookup into every classroom, in the 1920s the education potential of radio was a delight to some. One writer gushed that "[radio's] present rudimentary beginnings will be totally eclipsed by lectures delivered to millions of students by the professors of some radio university located in Chicago or New York. What a chance for some future Einstein to elucidate his concept of time and space to a whole world..." Radio, like the Internet, offered the prospect of a virtual classroom that could encompass the nation, and perhaps the world. |
The potential benefits of radio appeared nearly limitless. One correspondent in Radio Broadcast described a performance of radio for an assembled group of North Carolina mountaineers, the majority of whom could not read or write, and only 3 of whom had ever used an ordinary telephone before. "To these," she wrote, radio is the "greatest wonder of the modern age... For the Radiophone brings them religion, education, music and news of events, from all over the world." It is not uncommon to hear the Internet spoken of in similar terms. |
But there is more than enthusiasm connecting the histories of these two media. Radio and the Internet both emerged in part because of their connections with the military. The precursor to the Internet, ARPANET, was a wide-area network created by the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in the 1960s to allow computers to share information, and potentially survive nuclear attack. Similarly, radio was developed in the 1890s by Guglielmo Marconi as a means of transmitting coded information, and was adopted by the world's navies. In September of 1899, Marconi came to the United States and began a series of successful experiments for the US Navy, in which he signaled a distance of 80 miles. Italy and France quickly began using the system, and the United States did the same on May 15, 1901. |
During World War I, the military connection with radio intensified. In an effort to combine the technical and productive capacities of the American wireless industry, the American military developed a plan that allowed US firms to share American-held radio patents for the duration of the war. This patent-pooling agreement established an important precedent, and enabled the government to contract for the most advanced radio equipment. It made possible the diffusion of scientific and manufacturing information throughout the industry, and obviated concerns about patent-infringement suits by rival producers. |
Military involvement did not end with the conclusion of the fighting in 1918. In mid-April 1919, US Navy officials met with executives from General Electric. The Navy suggested that General Electric establish a corporation whose ownership would ensure the maintenance of crucial broadcasting technology under American control. GE agreed. The result was the creation of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) on October 17, 1919, setting the stage for the development of commercial monopoly in radio in the postwar years. |
The monopoly problem has bedeviled both industries. As almost everyone knows, a federal court has found that the Microsoft Corporation has committed antitrust violations. The remedies are under discussion as of today. One proposal suggested by the Justice Department is to break Microsoft into two parts. One would control the Windows operating system, and the other would hold the various Microsoft applications. This "ops-aps" division of Microsoft has caused a great deal of concern and comment within the computer and Internet industries. Microsoft should take heart. History suggests that divorce can be a good thing for a company. It happened that way in radio. |
In the 1920s and 1930s, Americans also fretted that radio and the broadcasting industries were monopolies. The dominant position of RCA in the radio manufacturing industry quickly attracted the attention of Congress. As the result of a congressional call for investigation, the Federal Trade Commission investigated the radio patent situation as it existed in 1923 and reported its findings. The conclusions shocked RCA. While scrupulously avoiding conclusions about RCA violations of law, the report made clear that the company's control of radio patents gave it a virtual stranglehold on the American radio industry. The evidence persuaded Congress to write anti-monopoly provisions into the Radio Act of 1927. |
The charge of monopoly in radio persisted and was echoed many times throughout the decade and into the 1930s. By the late '30s there were four national networks controlling the most important avenues of access to the American airwaves. Two were owned by the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), the corporate child of RCA. The first, known as the "Red" network, was the more commercial of the two. The second, NBC "Blue," carried most of the network's noncommercial programming. Of course, William Paley dominated the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the fourth, known as the Mutual network, was a cooperative network sharing programming between several important stations. |
Both CBS and NBC prohibited their affiliates from selling time to stations affiliated with the Mutual network. In certain circumstances, this exclusivity eliminated the possibility that listeners could hear Mutual programming at all. This became especially galling when Mutual carried the World Series and NBC did not. |
As a result of publicity given to such circumstances, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC had replaced the FRC in 1934) decided to investigate network practices in March 1938. During the course of the exhaustive six-month hearings, 69 witnesses were heard and 8,713 pages of transcript were taken. |
After concluding its hearings in May 1939, the commission took more than a year to issue its preliminary report, which it did on June 12, 1940. Its language was painfully blunt. The FCC concluded that "the record reveals at every turn the dominant position of the network organizations in the field of radio broadcasting." |
The FCC pulled no punches. It argued that "to the extent that the ownership and control of radio broadcasting stations falls into fewer and fewer hands, whether they be network organizations or other private interest, the free dissemination of ideas and information, upon which our democracy depends, is threatened." |
"The inescapable conclusion," the report continued, "is that National and Columbia, directed by a few men, hold a powerful influence over the public domain of the air and measurably control radio communication to the people of the United States. If freedom of communication is one of the precious possessions of the American people, such a condition is not thought by the committee to be in the public interest and presents inherent dangers to the welfare of a country where democratic processes prevail." |
Concentration of ownership and control, according to the FCC, represented an inherently anti-democratic development in radio. As a remedy, the FCC called for drastic changes in the structure of network operations. Most importantly, NBC would have to sell off either the Red or the Blue. |
The networks determined to challenge the rulings, ultimately taking their appeal to the US Supreme Court. In this they were unsuccessful. On May 10, 1943, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of National Broadcasting Co., Inc. et al. v. United States. The Court, with Justice Felix Frankfurter writing for the majority, upheld the power of the FCC to make and enforce its regulations. |
The irony of the NBC case, and the historical lesson to be learned, is that after the breakup of the network and the transformation of the Blue into the American Broadcasting Company in 1944, both companies earned much more money then ever before. The FCC decision to require competition in the network broadcasting industry was extraordinarily good for business. At the same time, the intensification of the commercial pressures forced the elimination of much public-interest programming. There was simply less time available on the air for programming of high quality that did not make money. |
While American network radio went into decline after about 1950, we are now only beginning to glimpse the developmental path of the Internet. Will access be controlled by companies engaged in monopolistic practices? Will its content be dominated by high-powered commercial Internet providers? It seems unlikely. But still, a look back at the history of radio should persuade us that the enthusiasm that greets the introduction of a new communications "revolution" should not blind us to the significance of the conflicts surrounding its structure. The outcome of the struggles now taking place concerning the Internet, such as the Microsoft case and the fight between Disney and Time Warner, will have profound consequences for how the medium is used in years to come. |
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