The Development of Radio as a Mass Medium
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Radio and television were both developed as commercial media in the era after World War I. Radio was the first truly mass medium of communication, reaching millions of people instantly and altering social attitudes, family relationships, and how people related to their environment. Television would have an even greater impact once it was commercially viable. Television was invented in the late 1920s, and various experiments were conducted into the 1930s. What delayed the development of television as a product for a mass audience was World War II, and within a few years of the end of that war, television would start to become a feature in the American home. The shift from radio to television was not really a shift from one to the other but the creation of a new atmosphere which accommodate both. Radio did not disappear as was predicted by some. Instead, the way people related to radio changed, but this happened in a way that gave radio its own important media niche, one that was even bigger than it had occupied before. The existence of electromagnetic radiation was demonstrated by Heinrich Hertz in an experiment designed to confirm a prediction made earlier in the nineteenth century by James Clark Maxwell. Hertz made this discovery in 1888. Guglielmo Marconi was the man who foresaw and developed the use of radio as a means of communication, where Hertz did not (MessadiT 178). Radio was at first known as "wireless," and it became an important worldwide means of co
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be. The first picture transmitted over a distance was a portrait of President Warren G. Harding in 1923 (MessadiT 201). Philo Farnsworth received the patent for the television system in 1930 and set about finding a way to make television a viable medium. By 1935, there were fewer than 4,000 electronic TV sets in the nation, and Farnsworth was convinced that the success of radio networks meant there would be television networks following the same pattern. Farnsworth never became involved in programming himself and concentrated on improving the technical side of television while companies like RCA, General Electric, and DuMont worked to get early television programs on the air (Ritchie 14).
The Golden Age of Radio was coming to an end in 1946 and 1947 when radio was very profitable and when the networks were planning to use their profits from radio to build the television industry. The NBC research department predicted in 1946 that television would produce an $8 million loss over the next four years, and it was suggested that radio should be made to fiance that loss. In 1947 NBC chairman David Sarnoff urged radio network affiliates to get into television, and many heeded this advice. As a result, 1948 was a period of transit
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1843
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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