The Golden Age of American radio

The need for regulation

In the United States, active broadcasting preceded firm government policy. Indeed, as radio became more and more of a business, station owners banded together to seek stronger government licensing regulation. From 1922 to 1925, Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce and in charge of radio policy, convened four national conferences, each of which petitioned Congress to replace the only existing (and obsolete) laws regarding broadcasting, which had been established in 1912 to regulate ship-to-shore transmissions.

Initially all stations in the United States had to operate on a single frequency, 833 kilohertz (kHz), and stations in the same area were forced to share time so their signals did not interfere with each another. The addition of two more frequencies, 619 kHz in December 1921 and 750 kHz in August 1922, helped somewhat, but most larger cities had far more than three stations and thus continued to use shared-time arrangements. At Hoover’s behest, most frequencies between 550 kHz and 1,350 kHz were turned over for broadcast use in May 1923. The Department of Commerce, however, lacked the discretion to reject license applications or to enforce frequency assignments. Considerable interference resulted as operators shifted station frequency (and sometimes the transmitter location, by mounting it in a truck) in an attempt to obtain a clear signal.

This lack of self-regulation and mutual cooperation between station operators resulted in increased pressure on Congress to update radio legislation, which was accomplished with the landmark Radio Act of 1927. This act provided basic assumptions that have continued to underpin broadcasting policy in the United States to this day. Frequencies used for broadcasting were to be held by the government, not owned by licensees. A license would be issued only if “the public interest, convenience or necessity” was served. A new Federal Radio Commission established by the law would define what “the public interest” meant, though broadcasters would be held responsible for the content they provided.

The role of advertising

Sale of advertising time was not widely practiced at early radio stations in the United States. Indeed, many objected to the commercialization of radio, among them Herbert Hoover, who said in 1924, “I believe the quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising.” Strong arguments were made opposing the “invasion of people’s homes with commerce” (although newspapers and magazines had done so for more than a century) on the grounds that it would lead to entertainment programs pitched to the mass audience, thereby limiting radio’s potential educational and social benefits. Searching for operating funds, stations sought government support, gifts from the wealthy, voluntary contributions, or an annual fee assessed on listeners (the latter an approach already adopted in some countries). A few cities or states operated stations as government services.

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) brought advertising to American radio when their New York City radio station, WEAF, began selling time for “toll broadcasting.” Its first radio commercial, broadcast on August 22, 1922, was a 15-minute real-estate ad offering apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens. But acceptance of radio advertising was slow, as broadcasters did not want to offend listeners. Early ads promoted an institutional image in a style later common to public radio’s “underwriting” announcements.

Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s, radio was firmly established as an advertising medium, which in turn led to air time’s being sold in set blocks, determined by the length of the program. As radio developed, daytime shows such as soap operas and children’s programs generally ran 15 minutes. Dramatic shows and situation comedies, the bulk of prime-time programming, ran 30 minutes each. Hour-long blocks of time were generally reserved for prestigious big-star shows, such as Lux Radio Theatre, or for low-rated but esteemed and experimental shows, such as The Columbia Workshop.

Many advertisers made themselves known by eventually adopting the practice of combining their name with the name of the star or the title of the program, as with Camel Caravan, sponsored by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, or A&P Gypsies, sponsored by the largest American grocery-store chain at the time. Beginning in the 1930s and continuing for more than two decades, a majority of prime-time network programs were actually created by advertising agencies employed by sponsors. For example, during Bing Crosby’s tenure as host of The Kraft Music Hall, the talent and staff were hired by the Kraft food company’s advertising firm, the J. Walter Thompson agency. The networks merely provided the airtime and studio facilities. Some of the more creative radio talents functioned as their own producers, receiving a budget from the agency out of which they paid the supporting actors and crew. Even these artists were under strict supervision of the agencies, which usually had representatives present during the rehearsals and broadcast.

The development of networks and production centres

A fundamental shift in American broadcasting came with the realization by the late 1920s that individual stations could easily share the cost of providing programs as a part of a broader network service with national appeal. The first such network was the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), primarily organized by the general manager of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), David Sarnoff, who wanted the company not only to manufacture radios but to broadcast as well. On November 15, 1926, NBC made its debut over 19 stations extending from the East Coast to Kansas City, Missouri. Over flagship station WEAF in New York City, announcer Graham McNamee presided over the inaugural broadcast; guest stars included humourist Will Rogers, speaking from Independence, Kansas, and opera star Mary Garden, singing from Chicago. A new era in radio dawned with this broadcast. Earlier radio stations had a limited sphere of influence, but these “clear channel” stations, operating at 50,000 watts on a frequency unique to their outlet, could be heard across a significant part of the country, and so some early radio personalities gained a measure of regional or national fame. Nationally known radio stars began to exist after the advent of the networks. By the beginning of 1927, NBC had two networks, the Red and the Blue, which totaled 25 stations; more would join.

The most popular early network series by far was NBC’s Amos ’n’ Andy, a daily 15-minute situation comedy in which two white men (Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll) acted the parts of two black operators of a taxicab company in Chicago. The program began as Sam ’n’ Henry on Chicago’s WGN station in 1926 and quickly became a national phenomenon when it made its network debut under its new name in 1929. Although the characters on the show seem insultingly stereotypical by today’s standards, the show was hugely popular with both white and black radio audiences of the time, with theatres often having to interrupt movie showings and push a radio on to the stage for the evening broadcast.

Early in 1927, a competing network called United Independent Broadcasters was formed. An early investor in the network was the Columbia Phonograph Company, which insisted that the chain be called the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System. However, the record company soon sold its shares to a group of financiers that included Leon Levy, whose father-in-law was cigar magnate Sam Paley; before long, Paley’s son William decided to invest his own million-dollar fortune in the new network. William S. Paley became president of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) on September 25, 1928, two days before his 27th birthday, and he would lead the network for more than 60 years. CBS would soon become a major force in radio, although it would take years before it would challenge NBC’s supremacy.

In the late 1930s the Federal Communications Commission (created by the Communications Act of 1934) investigated the potential for a monopoly on broadcasting, and in 1941 it recommended that no single company own more than one network. As a result, NBC decided to sell its Blue network in 1943. The chain was purchased by Edward J. Noble, president of the Life Savers candy company. By 1944 it had been renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

In the earliest years of network radio’s heyday, most of the evening programs were produced and broadcast from New York City. Chicago also soon developed into a major centre of radio production, transmitting many of the daytime soap operas and afternoon shows for children. Detroit’s WXYZ became a major force in 1933 with popular shows such as The Lone Ranger. In 1934 WXYZ joined with the powerful 50,000-watt stations WLW in Cincinnati, WOR in New York, and WGN in Chicago to form the Quality Group, an association that was soon rechristened the Mutual Broadcasting System. The network had 19 stations by the end of 1935; by the mid-1940s Mutual had more than 300 stations, more affiliates than either of its rivals. Mutual did not own any of its affiliated stations, however, whereas NBC and CBS each owned and operated several stations.

In radio’s earliest days, Hollywood did not provide network programming, with rare exceptions. Networks used telephone lines to transmit their signals to affiliates, and because they were designed to be broadcast from the East Coast to the West, AT&T charged $1,000 an hour to reverse the circuits. Powerful gossip columnist Louella Parsons—whose show, Hollywood Hotel, debuted on CBS in October 1934—surmounted this fee by inducing top film stars to appear on her program for free. The success of this show established Hollywood as a major centre of radio production.

By the start of the 1940s, most of the best-known radio shows came from Hollywood. New York still had a bustling radio community, but the Chicago shows began moving to one coast or the other. Detroit’s WXYZ remained a world unto itself, producing popular adventure shows through the early 1950s. Smaller regionally based networks also existed during the 1930s and ’40s, such as the Boston-based Yankee Network, which ultimately became a pioneer in FM, or frequency-modulation, broadcasting. (Virtually all broadcasts during radio’s peak years were in AM, or amplitude modulation.)

Ratings systems

As radio grew into a commercial force, it became necessary to determine the popularity of particular shows, as this would affect the price of the program’s advertising time. In 1930 the Association of National Advertisers, along with the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, devised a ratings system called the Crossley Report, for which several thousand people were polled by telephone and asked to recall the programs to which they had been listening. A refinement of this was created by another company, C.E. Hooper. The firm would make random telephone calls to people who lived in 36 major cities. Those who answered were then asked to name the radio program to which they were currently listening, if any. The tally resulted in an estimate of the number of people listening to a particular show; a rating of 14.2 meant that out of 100 people called, 14.2 were listening to a particular program at the time of the call. Along with this “Hooperating,” as it was then known, the audience share of a given program was listed; this was the rating divided by all the sets then being used. Another firm that measured audience response was the A.C. Nielsen Co., which provided thousands of listeners with a mechanical device called an audiometer. On paper tape, a stylus would scratch a signal showing which station a radio was tuned to during every moment that it was in use.