Radio Careers Background
Broadcast technology developed in the 20th century enabled people to reach large audiences around the world instantly, changing forever the way we communicate. The power and mystery of the radio broadcast in the United States has been marked by events like Orson Welles’s 1938 live radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” which was so realistic with its simulated news coverage that many Americans sought refuge from a Martian invasion. The radio-transmitted voices of “Tokyo Rose” and “Axis Sally” were used as psychological warfare during World War II to disturb American soldiers with taunts about the girlfriends and wives they left behind. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) fireside chats, for the first time, brought a U.S. president’s voice and spirit close to the public he served.
Instantaneous worldwide communication first became a reality in 1895 when an Italian engineer named Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated how to send communication signals without the use of wires. In the early 1900s, transmitting and receiving devices were relatively simple, and hundreds of amateurs constructed transmitters and receivers on their own and experimented with radio. Ships were rapidly equipped with radios so they could communicate with each other and with shore bases while at sea. In 1906, the human voice was transmitted for the first time by Reginald A. Fessenden. Small radio shows started in 1910. Ten years later, two commercial radio stations went on the air, and by 1921, a dozen local stations were broadcasting. The first network radio broadcast (more than one station sharing a broadcast) was of the 1922 World Series. By 1926, stations across the country were linked together to form the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Four years later, the first radio broadcast was transmitted around the world.
Although the advent of television changed the kind of programming available on the radio (from comedy, drama, and news programs to radio’s current schedule of music, phone-in talk shows, and news updates), there has been a steady growth in the number of radio stations in the United States. According to the CIA World Factbook, there were 13,750 radio stations in the United States in 2006.
Before the mid-1990s there were government restrictions on the number of stations one company could own in a single market. Some radio stations suffered because of smaller audiences and resulting lower advertising revenues. The 1996 Telecommunications Act removed all limits on group size nationally and raised the number of stations that a broadcaster can own in one market to a maximum of eight.
With larger broadcast companies continuing to buy up smaller companies, the radio industry will survive as cost-effective competition against television and the Internet.