Radio and the Golden Age

developed a means of expression that made use of sound as a tool of communication and that found a way to utilize sound in the service of dramatic presentation. For most of its history, radio drama and comedy were live, and their sound effects, music, and dialogue were delivered to a live audience both at home and in the studio in many cases. Comedies had an interactive and

participative audience, and the laugh track carried over into filmed television was an attempt to maintain that element. Both comedy and drama were experimental in terms of their use of sound, though this has not always been recognized. A serious drama such as a play by Norman Corwin or a CBS Radio Workshop would be recognized for their interesting use of sound, but comedies like The Jack Benny Show used sound to convey ideas and attitudes with just as much experimentation.

Radio developed simultaneously as an entertainment medium and as a means for conveying the news and public events to the people. By 1925, there were millions of radio receivers in American homes, and the consumers spent $430 million on radio products. Radio was now a major part of both the economy and American popular culture, and it would remain so in basically the same niche until the advent of television more than two decades later. Radio was a harbinger of a panoply of technological changes to come:

Ultimately, broadcasting was one more technological

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of characterization. The people roared at his delayed response, at his "Well!" and "Yipe" and "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! WAIT A MINUTE!" Benny could say more with a simple "Hmmmm" than many comedians could say in a page of script (Dunning 319). These were gags that were repeated again and again, and one of the most important sound elements on the Benny program was the absence of sound, his characteristic use of the long pause, something audiences seemed always to understand even though they could not see what he was doing when he was not speaking. One way this worked was to have the pause commented on by others. A famous instance occurred in a show in which a burglar holds a gun on Benny and demands in a rough voice, "You're money or your life!" There is then a long pause until the burglar repeats his question, at which point Benny, the cheapskate character, responds, "I'm thinking it over!" In the fall of 1945, the program was The Lucky Strike Program Starring Jack Benny. The opening show of the season, September 30, 1945, used the running characters of two NBC switchboard operators who took calls about the program. The first man calls and asks what is on at 4:00, and when he is told it is the Benny program, the sound of
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Approximate Word count = 2259
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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