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David Sarnoff & the Communications Industry

This paper is a critique of Kenneth Bilby's biography, The General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications Industry. Sarnoff was an important figure in the development of mass communications, starting as a cable messenger boy and working his way up in an industry that was establishing itself as one of the most important and defining businesses of the twentieth century. Bilby, an associate of Sarnoff's in the final two decades of the communications pioneer's career, makes effective use of his contacts and position to craft a well researched and comprehensive biography. Bilby's main argument is that Sarnoff was exactly the right person in the right place at the right time to influence and lead the emergence of this powerful new industry.

When David Sarnoff arrived in the United States, he was a nine-year-old Russian immigrant whose family expected him to become a rabbi. Instead, the discipline of his Talmudic education allowed him to master English quickly and start on a pursuit of the American Dream that, in Bilby's (1986) estimation, would mark him as,

perhaps the last of that remarkable strain of individualistic entrepreneurs - Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Frick, Harriman were among them - whose autocratic governance of industrial oligarchies bruised the precepts of free competitive enterprise but spurred the tumultuous growth of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America (p. 8).

In Bilby's argument, Sarnoff and the corporation he headed, Radio Corporation of America (RCA), were at the forefront in establishing the communications industry, one of the most important forces in modern society.

Bilby (1986), who knew Sarnoff and worked with him for two decades, analyzes (and often shares) Sarnoff's communication style: "While there were sometimes fustian overtones in his rhetoric, he was capable of delivering alliterative metaphors that brought his subject matter to life" (p. 5). Bilby's voc...

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David Sarnoff & the Communications Industry. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:02, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705535.html