The Rise of the Radio Network System: Technological and Cultural Influences on the Structure of American Broadcasting

The excitement aroused by a national radio system seems difficult to recapture for people who take for granted instant international communication, who turn on the seven o'clock news and casually watch videotape from outer space, and who fantasize about inter-galactic communication (“E.T. phone home”). Yet in the early 1920s many people found the introduction of radio a miracle, and the prospect of becoming part of a national radio audience thrilling. As people became accustomed to listening to words and music out of the air, the excitement of radio lay in the listener's ability to hear far-away stations. “Ma, Ma, I heard Pittsburgh on the Radiola 2,” rang through midwestern households in the early twenties. It seemed a small step from hearing far-off stations to being a party to specific events broadcast at the time they happened. If service could be made only a little more dependable, the realm of imagination could easily contain the broadcasting of the presidential inaugural address to the whole country. Radio listeners quickly became interested in national radio systems