Book Excerpt: The Birth of American Radio & Radio Politics Edition

"The airwaves in the 1920s were like newly discovered virgin land that attracts colonists eager for adventure, wealth, of the opportunity to build a glorious new civilization. Like many a frontier territory, radio quickly became a battleground of legal claims and political deals, of new industry, dashed hopes, and great business empires. That had always been the course of American settlement whether on the prairie or on the spectrum. Broadcasting, however, was not simply a field of enterprise or an extension of society into a new domain. It promised to change society. The promise of broadcasting, even more than earlier media, was to make culture accessible to all, to enable the electorate to become better informed, to put people instantaneously in touch with the news of the world. Here was a new, buzzing and booming public sphere, an updated means of forming public opinion and public taste appropriately scaled to the age of mass democracy.

Yet, by comparison with the traditional medium of the public sphere- the press- radio suffered from several disabilities. Its entire basis of operation, the radio spectrum, was a scarce resource allocated by the state. As radio developed during the late 1920s and 1930s, control devolved on only a few hands, and the new medium provided less latitude for cultural diversity and political dissent than did print. While the press was increasingly independent of politics, there developed an interdependence between those who held political power(and needed radio) and those who controlled radio (and needed political goodwill). Instead of extending democracy, therefore, radio threatened to distort it. Such was the promise- such were the dangers- as the political framework of broadcasting was established in the period from 1927 to World War II." -From, "The Creation Of The Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications" By: Paul Starr