The 1910s

The 1920s

The 1930s

The 1940s

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

When Ed Sullivan welcomed America to watch the premiere of a new CBS tele vi sion show called “Toast of the Town,” at 9 p.m. on Sunday, June 20, 1948, World War II had been over for only three years, the boys were back, babies were booming, and everything was bountiful— bubblegum, nylon stockings, gasoline, jugglers, acrobats. In the spring of 1948, the country was in a contented, conservative mood following the turmoil of a world war, even if the memory of Hiroshima had been replaced by a silent mushroom cloud that hovered over the globe and instilled a chilly new interior turmoil— a “cold war.” Outwardly, peace and prosperity had descended on America and created the appearance of a population eager to forget the past and have a good time. As John Updike said in an interview with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal in 2005, “The U.S. in the wake of World War II was a naive, innocent country looking to be led.” Radio had united, and helped cheer up, the nation during the war and, by the late 1940s, was in its middle- age prime, but several of its major programs had overstayed their welcome. A new broadcasting menace, the “giveaway show,” knocked off the air such beloved veterans as Fred Allen and Edgar Bergen. CBS president William Paley, desperate to rejuvenate his radio network, went on the march in what were called No-Talent Host Tames the One-Eyed Beast “the Paley raids,” enticing Jack Benny, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Amos ’n’ Andy (Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll), and other loyal longtime NBC radio stars to defect to CBS. For Paley, it was insurance against the slim chance that tele vi sion might succeed. Movies were still pop u lar, though their huge war time attendance dipped after 1945, when moviegoing became less a diversion from war time angst. To help pull people into movies in their new streamlined Oldsmobiles and Studebakers, the drive- in theater was invented; older movie houses played to small audiences. It was time for some serious nest building and cocooning. Finally, everyone was home together again, and TV was there to welcome them. The first hit show that kept people at home was “Texaco Star Theater,” whose star was a used- up radio comic and battered ex–slapstick vaudevillian named Milton Berle. Berle debuted on TV only 12 days before Sullivan’s TV debut and shortly after the emergence of TV’s other early major megastar, Arthur Godfrey, a radio- bred personality as relaxed as the brassy Berle was in- your- face. Neither a brash Berle nor a folksy Godfrey, Ed Sullivan somehow managed to squeeze himself into a niche between these two reigning TV giants of 1948. Berle, though he didn’t know it yet, was about to become old news. As fresh as he was on TV in 1948, he wore out his comic welcome in a few years, whereas Godfrey, with his homespun, guy- next- door style, was the wave of TV’s future. Together, Berle and Godfrey ruled those primitive video airwaves. Godfrey had an all- time high of four CBS shows on the air at once: one telecast every morning (“Arthur Godfrey and His Friends”) and one seen weekly (“Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts”), and both programs were also simulcast on radio. Godfrey wore a radio headset on screen, as if treating TV as a branch of radio; he could wing an entire show, often arriving at the studio five minutes before airtime. An unidentified Milwaukee broadcaster said, “The only thing a person could turn on in his house without getting Godfrey was the faucet.” On November 2, 1920, the first commercially recognized radio broadcast was heard on station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Radio became a family experience. Friends and neighbors joined the family and gathered around the radio to listen to the news, comedy shows, and music. The world became a little smaller. Radio, like music, is an entertainment form that is directed to the ear, not the eye. Radio uses sound to stimulate the imagination. The mind’s eye is exercised, and the listener is forced to imagine what is happening, what the performers look like, and where the action is taking place. Think about how radio affects the imagination. For example, in 1938 when Orson Welles presented a Halloween eve program of H. G. Wells’s 1898 book War of the Worlds (about a Martian invasion of Earth), millions of listeners panicked. They thought the invasion was really happening. The Golden Age of Radio lasted only about thirty years, from 1925 to around 1956, when television captured Americans’ attention with visual programming. The first known radio broadcast in America was made from an experimental station in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, on December 24, 1906. It was a Christmas Eve program of phonograph records; a speech; and a violin solo. There is no record of how many people may have heard it. Radio’s potential would not be realized for another ten years, except by the military in World War I. In 1916 David Sarnoff believed in the possibility of having a radio receiver in every home. Sarnoff would later become the head of RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and NBC (the National Broadcasting Company). Dr. Frank Conrad, a Westinghouse assistant chief engineer, transmitted the first true wireless radio program in 1916, over station 8XK, from Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. The program consisted of talks and some recorded music. When Conrad ran out of phonograph records, the Hamilton Music Store agreed to supply him with more records if he announced that they came from its store in Wilkinsburg. This became the first commercial on radio. By 1920 the Joseph Horne Department Store in Pittsburgh advertised in the local paper that the music broadcast by Dr. Conrad could be heard on the wireless sets they were selling. Westinghouse, realizing the potential, began to manufacture and sell radio receivers. On November 2, 1920, Westinghouse station KDKA–Pittsburgh went on the air with the  presidential returns. President Warren G. Harding’s inaugural ceremonies later followed. KDKA in 1921 set many firsts: the first commercially licensed station; the first remote church broadcast; the first broadcast by a national figure, Herbert Hoover; the first regular baseball scores; the first stock market reports; and the first World Series broadcast. In 1920 Westinghouse, General Electric, AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation), and RCA opened radio stations. By the end of 1920, there were thirty broadcasting licenses issued, and by 1923 there were nearly six hundred. AT&T was the most aggressive, with station WEAF in New York. It developed many early technical changes and many broadcasting techniques, including sponsored continuous broadcasts. AT&T sold ten-minute blocks of time for one hundred dollars each. On December 6, 1923, WEAF–New York; WCAP–Washington, D.C.; and WJAR– Providence, Rhode Island, were connected by wire and became the first radio network in the United States. Radio content in the Golden Age of Radio had its origins in audio theatre. Audio theatre began in the 1880s and 1890s with audio recordings of musical acts and other vaudeville. These were sent to people by means of telephone and, later, through phonograph cylinders and discs. Visual elements, such as effects and sight gags, were adapted to have sound equivalents. In addition, visual objects and scenery were converted to have audio descriptions. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden was said to have sent the first radio program broadcast, consisting of some violin playing and passages from the Bible. While Fessenden's role as an inventor and early experimenter is not in dispute, several contemporary radio researchers have questioned whether the Christmas Eve broadcast took place, or whether the date was in fact several weeks earlier. The event was never reported in any sources of Fessenden's time, and was mainly disseminated after his death, in a book authored by his wife Helen. (See for example, Halper and Sterling, "Seeking the Truth About Fessenden" and also James O'Neal's essay It was not until after the Titanic catastrophe in 1912 that radio for mass communication came into vogue, inspired first by the work of amateur (or "ham") radio operators. Radio was especially important during World War I, since it was vital for air and naval operations. In fact, World War I sped the development of radio by transitioning radio communications from the Morse code of the wireless telegraph to the vocal communication of the wireless telephone through advancements in vacuum tube technology and the introduction of the transceiver. After the war, numerous radio stations were born and set the standard for later radio programs. The first radio news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920 on the station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan; owned by the Detroit News, the station covered local election results. This was followed in 1920 with the first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA, being established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first regular entertainment programs were broadcast in 1922, and on March 10, Variety carried the front page headline: "Radio Sweeping Country: 1,000,000 Sets in Use."  A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923 on the Los Angeles station The first North Carolina radio station—as well as the first commercial station in the Southeast—WBT, started broadcasting in Charlotte in 1922. The second station licensed in the state was WLAC at North Carolina State College. Students and faculty of the communications department founded that station, which first broadcast on October 16, 1922. WLAC went off the air one year later because of financial hardship. The first popular radios cost sixty dollars, without headsets or speakers. Sixty dollars in 1920 was a lot of money. In today’s currency, it would equal about six hundred dollars. In 1922 radio crystal sets were in general use. Listeners had to use earphones, and only one person could listen at a time. Static was a big problem. In 1922 Gimbel Brothers’ department store broadcast an hour-long musical program, and the American Tobacco Company came on the air with the Lucky Strike Radio Show. By late 1925, radio was really beginning to prosper because of the financial support of the many advertisers anxious to get more recognition for their products. Newspaper publishers throughout the country feared the success of radio. Many papers refused to carry lists of radio programs, because radio was taking away a large number of their advertisers. Time reduced their fears, and radio even increased their business. NBC became the first nationwide radio network on November 15, 1926. It was headquartered in New York, with WEAF, and connected nineteen scattered stations, using more than thirty-five hundred miles of telephone wire. The first coast-to-coast broadcast occurred in January 1927. It was the Rose Bowl football game, broadcast over NBC. CBS started in 1927. It was originally called the United Independent Broadcasters, Inc.  which merged with the Columbia Phonograph Company and aired on September 18, 1927, as the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company. The name was changed in 1929 to the Columbia Broadcasting System. It began with 28 stations, and it grew in ten years to 114 stations. The early years of radio were experimental. Programming was based on what station managers thought people wanted to hear. Before radio existed, audiences liked sports events, dance bands, and vaudeville. It was therefore thought that they would like the same type of entertainment over the radio. As time went on, radio listeners had an assortment of types of programs to choose from. Radio appealed to almost every musical taste, from grand opera to novelty music. From the 1930s on, radio began offering more of a variety of programming. The Metropolitan Opera in New York began airing productions every Saturday afternoon. The Longines Symphonette offered chiefly classical music. The National Barn Dance and Grand Ole Opry dominated country music. Radio’s comedy shows were mainly of two types: those with plots and those without. Those with plots were called situation comedies. They included the widely popular serial Amos ’n’ Andy. Comedy-variety shows had no plots but instead consisted of skits, music, and joke telling. Most of the radio comedians were veterans of vaudeville. Some dramatic programs were showcases, or groups of short stories. They presented plays that had been written for the stage or plots of Hollywood films. The showcase programs included The Lux Radio Theatre, Hallmark Playhouse, and Hollywood Star Playhouse. Radio also offered mystery, crime, and suspense—everything from everyday detectives  to the most bizarre encounters with the supernatural. Westerns, which later became popular on television, varied from the singing-cowboy shows of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers to the more dramatic Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel. Commonly called the “soaps” or soapers, because soap manufacturers sponsored many of them, serial dramas appealed mostly to women and were broadcast during the day. Soap operas started in Chicago, and most were fifteen-minute shows broadcast five days a week. Radio offered a number of quiz programs, but these gave very little money as prizes. The after-school hours and Saturday mornings were devoted to children’s programming. These shows were mostly adventures, featuring such heroes as Jungle Jim, Captain Midnight, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Superman, Tarzan, and Dick Tracy. There were also programs in a lighter vein, such as Gasoline Alley, Joe Palooka, L’il Abner, and for instance, was a weekly talent contest. It was the predecessor of such popular television shows as American Idol and Star Search. The Answer Man gave responses to listeners’ questions on all subjects. And Vox Pop, Latin for “voice of the people,” was an interview show. It originated in Houston, Texas, as a man-in-the-street program and was later transferred to New York, becoming one of the most popular shows on the air. Radio in the 1920s was a way for many people to escape from their everyday cares. They could listen to a variety of programs. People could find out what was happening in the world almost as soon as it happened, and much faster than waiting for the newspaper to print it. Listeners could hear favorite performers or dramas. Radio became the popular form of entertainment of the 1920s for most Americans. During the Golden Age of Radio, radio featured genres and formats popular in other forms of American entertainment—adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery, musical variety, romance, thrillers—along with classical music concerts, big band remotes, farm reports, news and commentary, panel discussions, quiz shows (beginning with Professor Quiz), sidewalk interviews (on Vox Pop), broadcasts, talent shows and weather forecasts. Rehearsal for the World War II radio show You Can't Do Business with Hitler with John Flynn and Virginia Moore. This series of programs, broadcast at least once weekly by more than 790 radio stations in America, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). In the late 1920s, the sponsored musical feature was the most popular program format. Commercial messages were regarded as intrusive, so these shows usually displayed the sponsor's name in the title, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Acousticon Hour, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, The Flit Soldiers, The Fox Fur Trappers, The Goodrich Zippers, The Ingram Shavers, The Ipana Troubadors, The Planters Pickers, The Silvertown Cord Orchestra (featuring the Silver Masked Tenor), The Sylvania Foresters and The Yeast Foamers. During the 1930s and 1940s, the leading orchestras were heard often through big band remotes, and NBC's Monitor continued such remotes well in the 1950s by broadcasting live music from New York City jazz clubs to rural America.

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