Week 5 Radio Review

91%

Radio still reaches ___% of Americans eighteen and older each week

Telegraph

Precursor of radio technology

• Invented in 1840s

• First developed by American inventor Samuel Morse

  • Uses Morse Code

• Limitations

  • Unable to transmit the human voice

  • Ships at sea could nt use it to communication with the rest of the world

The existence of electromagnetic waves

• Invisible electronic impulses similar to visible light

  • Proved that electricity, magnetism, light, and heat are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum and radiate in space at the speed of light

  • Believed that a portion of these, later known as radio waves, coul be harnessed to transmit signals

What did James Maxwell theorize?

Advanced the development of wireless communication

• Proved Maxwell’s theories

What did Heinrich Hertz do?

Received a patent for wireless telegraphy

• A form of voiceless point-to-point communication

What did Guglielmo Marconi do?

Made parallel discoveries in Russia

• Sent and received wireless messages in May 1895

What did Alexander Popov do?

Invented a wireless system in 1892

• Used a much of Tesla’s work, and for years Tesla was not associated with the invention of radio

• Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s wireless patent and deemed Tesla the inventor of radio

What did Nikola Tesla do?

Created wireless telephony

• Wireless voice and music transmission

What did Lee De Forsest do?

Engineer who worked for General Electric, improving wireless signals

• First broadcast in 1906

What did Reginald Fessenden do?

Broadcasting

Transmission of radio waves to a broad public audience

Morse Code

Series of dots and dashes that stand for letters of the alphabet

Used as a safety measure and natural resource

• Ships/WW1

What were radio waves used for originally?

Wireless Ship Act of 1910

Required wireless equipment on seagoing ships

Radio Act 1912

Required radio stations to be licensed

• Navy took control of radio

• Corporate heads and government leaders conspired to make sure radio served American interests

What was radio’s involvement in WW1

Radio Corporation of America (RCA)

Acquired American Marconi and radio patents of other US Companies

• With its patent pool arrangement, it took the lead in expanding American communication technology throughout the world

• Became a private sector monopoly

  • Gave US almost total control over broadcasting

British Broadcasting Corporation

BBC funded by household licensing fees

• 2/3 of European countries fund public service broadcasting with TV licenses

• America take sthe path less traveled: Commercial radio

Westinghouse engineer

• Set up a crude radio station above his Pittsburgh garage; unofficially one of the medium’s first disc jockeys

• Established the first commercial broadcast station (KDKA) in 1920

What did Frank Conrad do?

AT&T

Who broke RCA agreements in 1922 in an attempt to monopolize radio by making and selling its own radio receivers?

Station to regularly sell commercial time to advertisers and radio network

AT&T created the first radio ____

Government forced them to sell network to RCA for $1 million, not broadcast for 8 years, but can still control/sell long lines

What happened to AT&T after breaking agreements?

First RCA general manager

• Created NBC, which was shared by RCA, GE, and Westinghouse

• Original telephone group became known as the NBC-Red network

• Radio group became known as the NBC-Blue Network

Who is David Sarnoff?

NBC began to carry their programs

• In exchange NBC reserved time slots in programming, which it sold to national advertisers

• Emphasized national programming as opposed to local and regional

What did NBC do in response to AT&T’s removal?

• Government scrutiny

• Sarnoff works to extent RCA’s and NBC’s position - Merges RCA with Victor Talking Machine Company

How did the end of monopoly occur for radio?

Radio Act of 1927

Stated that stations could only license their channels as long as they operated to serve the “public interest, convenience, or necessity”

Federal Radio Commission (FRC)

Created to oversee licenses and negotiate channel problems

Communications Act of 1934

Established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in place of the FRC

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Jurisdiction covered radio, telephone, telegraph, and later television, cable, adn the internet

• Outlawed the practice of option time

• Demanded that RCA sell one of its two NBC networks

Variety Shows

Quiz Shows

Dramatic Programs

What are some examples of early programming for live music/15-minutes evening programs?

Amos ‘n’ Andy

• Launched the idea of the serial show

• Featured stereotypes of black characters

• Moved to TV and was first show with an entirely black cast

• Cancelled in 1953 amid strengthening civil rights movement

Transistors

Small electrical devices that receive and amplify radio signals

• More durable and less expensive than vacuum tubes, they used less power and produced less heat

• Led to the creation of small pocket radios

• Made radio portable

FM (Frequency Modulation) Radio

Discovered and developed by Edwin Armstrong

• Greater fidelity and clarity than AM radio

• Lost RCA’s support to TV

• Accentuated the pitch, or distance, between radio waves

AM (Amplitude Modulation) Radio

Stressed the volume, or height of radio waves

Music

Radio’s dependence on ____ help it survive after TV came along and took radio’s program ideas and sponsors

Format Radio

Developed by Todd Storz

• Management controls programming

• Rotation: Playing top songs many times during the day

• Top 40 Format: Practice of playing the forty most popular hits in a given week as measured by record sales

Drive Time

Between 6 and 9 AM and between 4 and 7 PM

News/Talk Radio

Stations dominated by news programs or talk shows

• Appeals to adults over age thirty-five

• Appeals to adversities looking to target working and middle class adult consumers

Adult Contemporary (AC)

One of radio’s oldest and most popular formats with a mix of news, talk, oldies, and soft rock

Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR)

Top 40 radio that encompasses everything from rap to pop-punk music

Country

One of the strongest formats in the US

Urban Contemporary

Format that targets a wide variety of Black listeners, primarily in large cities; many companies have moved away from using urban in their format names

Internet Radio

AM or FM stations stream versions of on-air signal

New stations are created exclusively for the internet

Satellite Radio

A subscription-based national service originating with the launch of a series of satellites to cover the continental US

• Requires a special radio tuner, through access is available on mobile devices via an app

Podcast

Making audio files available on the internet for downloading or streaming

Economics of Radio

• Sponsorship

• Radio Advertsiing

  • 20% of budget goes towards programming costs

  • Constitutes 4.9% of media advertising

Payola

Record promoters pay deejays to play particular records

Telecommunications Act of 1996

Eliminated Most ownership restrictions on radio

Low-Power FM

A class of 100-watt stations that give voice to local groups lacking access to the public airwaves