YOUNG GUGLIELMO MARCONI, (1874-1937), BROADCASTING'S FIRST MILLIONAIRE. .
ALCHEMISTS OF THE AIR
Spinning Gold From Thin Air. Many texts have been written tracing the development of wireless communication and voice broadcasting that eventually evolved into commercial radio. But a few, if any, have linked the seemingly unrelated, but contemporaneous events that culminated in Network Radio’s Golden Age from 1932 to 1953. The principals involved in that evolution made the fabled alchemists of past centuries look like pikers as they turned thin air into a communications industry that made Billions in real gold. (1)
But long before the networks were established and their first dollar was collected, radio already had a rich history full of colorful characters who contributed in one way or another to its Golden Age. Participants in the process came from Technology, Industry, Government, Show Business and Marketing In many cases they never met or even knew of the others involved. Yet, their ideas and actions forged the links to what became known as chain broadcasting - Network Radio. Briefly told in somewhat chronological order and non-technical terms, here’s how it all came together:
A Brush With Genius. Our story begins on January 11, 1838, when noted American portrait artist Samuel Morse, 47, first demonstrated his invention, the Telegraph - which some historians assert was stolen from others. Morse’s simple interruption of direct current in different assigned lengths - “dots” and “dashes” to represent each of the 26 letters of the alphabet and the ten digits from one through zero - established electricity as a tool to communicate instantly over long distances - wherever its wires of conductivity could be strung.
Morse the artist became Morse the entrepreneur six years later on May 24, 1844. He opened the first permanent telegraph line - a government financed wire running the 30 miles between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore - with a four word transmission to his assistant, Alfred Vail, “What hath God wrought?”
He wrought a lot. The telegraph inspired others to learn what else could be done with electricity - the mysterious, unseen and potentially lethal force.
Great Scots! Acceptance of Morse’s telegraph spread throughout the world. Its use of electricity became the lifelong fascination of a bright teenager in Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell. Later in life, as a 33 year old physicist, Maxwell theorized in 1864 that still another invisible phenomenon might exist that could transmit electricity through the air - much like the wind carries sound waves - but far more powerful. Maxwell claimed that these waves - he called them electromagnetic waves - could be strong enough to penetrate a brick wall if enough electrical force were generated behind them. Maxwell’s theories became the technical foundation of broadcasting, although they remained unproved for the next 30 years
Maxwell wasn’t the only young Scot influenced by Samuel Morse’s telegraph. When Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847, telegraph lines were already springing up along railroad tracks in his native Edinburgh. It eventually became Bell’s obsession to go Morse one better and enable everyone to communicate over telegraph-like wires by voice, not a complicated code of dots and dashes. Bell emigrated with his concept to the United States in his early twenties.
By the age of 29, Bell had devised a means to convert human speech into electric impulses at one end of an electrically charged wire and then reverse the process at the other end. Bell’s Telephone was patented on March 7, 1876 - and along with it came the original technology for the microphone and for chain broadcasting.
Edison, Tesla & Westingthouse. Three years after Bell introduced the telephone, Thomas Alva Edison - age 32 and already famous as the inventor of the phonograph - took a nearly 80 year old idea, tinkered with it and filed his patent for the electric light bulb on November 4, 1879. (2) Along with its obvious benefits, the light bulb - a sealed glass globe from which all air had been removed - became the prototype from which a critical element to future radio transmission and reception emerged, the vacuum tube.
Most developments involving electricity during this period employed Direct Current. But shortly after Edison introduced the light bulb, industrialist George Westinghouse demonstrated the advantages of Alternating Current - developed by a 27 year old Serbian immigrant, Nikola Tesla, in 1883. Westinghouse was primarily interested in AC for its use in transmitting electricity to municipalities from hydroelectric facilities, but it would prove to be the necessary element for broadcasting speech and music.
Keeping Companies. Bell patented the telephone and incorporated his holdings as The American Telephone and Telegraph Co, (AT&T), on March 3, 1885. The company would eventually become a supplier of broadcasting equipment, a pioneer in commercial radio and the linchpin of all radio and television networks. Westinghouse Electric was incorporated on January 8, 1886, and it became a manufacturer of radio and television equipment for both the industrial and consumer markets and a longtime owner of major radio and television stations. Three years later on April 24, 1889, Edison combined all of his holdings and founded General Electric, (GE), another future manufacturer of radio and television equipment and longtime station owner.
Thus, within a four year span, the three companies which four decades later became radio’s foremost equipment, station and network pioneers were established and incorporated. Of course, the very word Radio was still generally unknown at the time and Network Radio was still nearly 40 years in the future.
Curtain Going Up. Far removed from the university and corporate laboratories that developed the technical side of radio - about as far removed as one could get - another partnership was cemented on July 6, 1885, that would play an instrumental role of what Americans would eventually hear on radio.
Benjamin Keith, 39, and Edward Albee, 28, opened The Bijou Theater in Boston, the first American theater to present continuous strings of variety acts under the umbrella title, Vaudeville. The pair’s Keith-Albee-Orpheum chain would eventually control hundreds of vaudeville houses across America and provide stage experience for Network Radio’s biggest stars. Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Bob Hope and Fred Allen were just a few of the thousands of young hopefuls who entered the split-week, two-to-five- shows-a-day vaudeville grind in their teens. Vaudeville enjoyed 35 years of popularity, peaking in 1910 when over 2,000 theaters in cities and towns across America featured variety and amateur acts, both good and bad - often the latter.
The First Ad Ventures. The late 1800's also saw the birth of yet another industry that would eventually play a key role in radio. Francis Ayer, 21, opened a Philadelphia based advertising agency in 1869 and named it for his father, N.W. Ayer, who bankrolled the enterprise for $250. (3) Thirty year old J. Walter Thompson bought Carlton Smith Advertising in 1877 and gave it his name. Chicago’s Daniel Lord and Ambrose Thomas hung out their Lord & Thomas shingle in 1881 for the agency that became Foote, Cone & Belding 60 years later.
By coincidence, when advertising agencies first appeared, Medicine Shows began roaming the small towns of America’s South and Midwest, giving local townsfolk - the rubes - free entertainment interspersed with sales pitches for tonics, pills and salves. The essence of commercial broadcasting was in those medicine shows of the late 1800's. But the advertising industry originated when newspapers and magazines dominated media. None of its pioneers could have known the influential roles they would play - or the fortunes they would make - from broadcasting when agencies became the unseen middle-men who knotted the ties between the radio audience’s most popular programs and the advertisers who sponsored them. (4)
Meanwhile, Back In The Lab… Heinrich Hertz was a 30 year old physics professor at the University of Heidelberg, long captivated by Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves theories. In 1886 he set up a crude arc generator, shot sparks across his laboratory and proved that the waves did exist, traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles per hour - the speed of light. (5)
Like computer sciences a century later, electronics was the field of young men full of curiosity and eager to make a name for themselves. None was younger than Guglielmo Marconi, a teenager inspired by reports of Hertz’s experiments when he first began to tinker with them. Marconi had more than just intelligence and a curious nature - he also had the support of his father, a wealthy Italian landowner. Marconi eventually built a spark generator, combined it with a telegraph key and transmitted the first wireless telegraphic signals aboard electromagnetic waves between hills on his family’s estate near Bologna. The year was 1895 and Marconi was only 21.
Proving that the entrepreneurial spirit wasn’t limited to America, Marconi went to England where the patent for his transmitter and antenna system was granted on July 2, 1897. Two years later he demonstrated his wireless process to the British Navy by transmitting telegraphic signals across the English Channel and between ships 75 miles apart. Wireless communication’s value to naval safety was obvious. (6)
In the fall of 1899 Marconi sailed to the United States and founded the American Marconi Company in New York City on November 22nd. He promptly made his first important sale to the U.S. Navy for wireless telegraphic communications between ships and shore. When the 19th Century closed the young Italian was only 26 and already on his way to becoming the wealthiest member of an already wealthy family. And with the formation of American Marconi, the fourth corporation responsible for the creation of American broadcasting was in place. Marconi joined AT&T, GE and Westinghouse at the starting gate and the race for patents was underway. It wouldn’t pause until America entered World War I, over 17 years later.
Fessenden’s Firsts. Marconi made international headlines by transmitting the letter “S” in Morse Code by wireless across the Atlantic from England to Newfoundland on December 12, 1901. But a greater impact on broadcasting’s future was the feat accomplished a year earlier by a 34 year old Canadian, Reginald Fessenden. Physics professor Fessenden, working at the time with the U.S. Weather Bureau, experimented with parts taken from a Bell telephone and a low powered alternating current generator. He reasoned that alternating current would allow him to create a steady stream of continuous electromagnetic waves capable of carrying the actual sounds of voice and music - not just the impulses of sparks generated by a telegraph key.
His work paid off on December 23, 1900. Across a one mile span at Cobb Island, Maryland, Reginald Fessenden’s voice became the first ever heard in a wireless transmission saying the now familiar words, “Hello! Test, one, two, three, four...”. In effect, Fessenden became to Marconi what Bell had been to Morse. They both converted the coded communications tool of a few into a common utility for the masses. Radio Telephony was the first term adopted for wireless voice transmission, a mouthful that later simply became, Radio.
But Fessenden realized if he was to be heard at any distance beyond a mile he would need a factory-produced alternating current generator - or a transmitter - of far greater power than he could build in his laboratory. With the backing of two Pittsburgh financiers he turned to General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Ironically, GE was the company founded by Thomas Edison, a bitter opponent of alternating current. Nevertheless, GE undertook Fessenden’s project, took his money and assigned a newcomer on its staff to work with Fessenden - a 28 year old Swedish immigrant, Ernst Alexanderson.
The Canadian and Swede made broadcasting history together on December 21, 1906, as reported by John Grant in The American Telephone Journal: "Wireless speech over a distance somewhat greater than ten miles was satisfactorily accomplished in the presence of a number of persons invited to witness a demonstration of the new system of wireless telephony at the experimental station of the National Electric Signaling Company at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, on Friday, December 21st."
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Although disputed by some historians, Fessenden claimed his and Alexanderson’s next achievement came at 9:00 p.m. on Monday, December 24, 1906, when they powered up Alexanderson’s massive alternating current generator with its 50,000 watts on the shores of the Atlantic, 37 miles southeast of Boston in their building at Brant Rock. With experimental call-sign VE2CV granted on December 21 by the U.S. government, Fessenden took to the air and sent holiday greetings to all who could hear him. Then he picked up his violin to play O Holy Night and became the first musician ever heard on radio. And he was heard.
Amateur hobbyists scattered along the East Coast picked up his transmission as did wireless operators at sea, some of them working on banana boats owned by United Fruit, an early pioneer in shipboard wireless. (Fessenden, himself, had designed United’s system of wireless telegraphy to track its cargo fleet in the Caribbean. His staff had alerted ships equipped with the inventor's equipment of the coming Christmas Eve broadcast over the previous weekend.) One can only imagine the delightful shock that Fessenden’s Christmas gift of readings and music gave to those lonesome individuals accustomed to hearing nothing but Morse code and static from their earphones. In effect, the radio program was born on December 24, 1906.
And All The Ships At Sea. Marconi’s wireless was later instrumental in bringing rescue ships to the North Atlantic site of the sinking S.S. Titanic which claimed 1,500 lives on April 15, 1912. The disaster led to The Radio Act of 1912, signed by President William Howard Taft on August 13, 1912, which took effect on the following January 1st. The law replaced the weaker Wireless Ship Act of 1910 and made it mandatory that all seagoing vessels maintain 24 hour contact with nearby ships and shore stations and that all amateur radio operators be licensed. It was the U.S. Government’s first step to license any act of broadcasting.
Who’s On First? Fessenden’s first broadcast motivated entrepreneurs and educators to begin thinking about establishing radio stations to broadcast at regularly scheduled times to serve the public - or their own egos. Among the first was Charles (Doc) Herrold, the operator of a vocational school, The Harrold College of Wireless & Engineering, in San Jose, California, who began broadcasting on a weekly basis on July 22, 1912, to publicize his establishment. Doc Herrold became radio’s first disc jockey, playing phonograph records while he pitched the benefits of learning electronics at his trade school. (7)
On December 4, 1916, the University of Wisconsin began a series of daily weather reports in Morse code on 9XM in Madison, which evolved into WHA Radio. WHA switched to voiced reports in January, 1921, which some historians contend were the first regularly scheduled series of spoken broadcasts.
While others dabbled with establishing radio stations between 1910 and 1920, pioneers John Ambrose Fleming, Lee deForest, Edwin Armstrong and many others were credited with significant contributions to broadcasting’s transmission and reception. (8) Scores of patents were issued to different individuals and corporations which led to confusion, larceny and lawsuits. Nevertheless, public curiosity and interest in radio were on a roll in America with no signs of slowing. Before long, wireless signals for industrial use and amateur amusement filled the air. Then, on April 6, 1917, it all fell silent.
World War I: Truce & Consequences. When the United States entered World War I, all broadcasting in the country was ordered off the air for the duration. The government commandeered the powerful shortwave transmitters that Marconi and others had established along the coastlines of the country for military communications and all wireless transmission within the United States was forbidden. More important to radio’s future, all patent rights were suspended. The suspension enabled manufacturers to develop radio equipment for the military that combined all the latest technical advancements without worry of patent infringement. It improved the state of the art considerably and gave manufacturers ideas about a future free of patent restrictions.
World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Beyond improving the technical aspects of radio, America’s 20 month involvement in the war produced two other effects. First, military service introduced thousands of doughboys to the basics of radio. They returned to civilian life eager to experiment as broadcasters, or listeners or both. The wartime prohibition of amateur radio ended on October 1, 1919, and a reported 8,500 hobbyists brought radio into their homes, leaning over their homemade “breadboard” sets. Magazines directed to amateur radio appeared and sales of radio parts hit $2.1 Million within a year.
Secondly, wartime communications had convinced the American government of radio’s strategic importance to the United States and to any potential foreign enemies. Taking precaution to its extreme, the Navy led a government effort to nationalize and seize control all radio facilities in the country. General Electric forced the issue to a head with its proposed $4.05 Million sale of 24 powerful Alexanderson transmitters to the U.S. based shortwave stations owned by American Marconi, a subsidiary of the Italian’s British corporation. The foreign-owned American Marconi also held a number of U.S. patents, which also troubled the government.
To settle the matter, government and industry met. Franklin Roosevelt, the 37 year old Assistant Secretary of Navy represented the government and General Electric President Owen Young made the case for private industry which owned key patents. They agreed that something had to be done to keep American broadcasting free from foreign control. The question was how to do it.
Let’s Play Monopoly. Young came up with the answer. He proposed to Roosevelt - who would become the “trust-busting” 32nd President - that the government endorse the creation of a monopoly, the Radio Corporation of America, (RCA). RCA - eventually owned by GE, (30%), Westinghouse, (20% after June, 1921), AT&T, (10%), United Fruit, (4%), and individual stock-holders, (36%), - would pool its partners’ 2,000 radio-related patents and buy out American Marconi’s patents and facilities for $3.5 Million. This would settle any potential patent disputes among its principals, expedite radio’s technical development and bring all of Marconi’s holdings into the United States under the ownership of an American corporation.
FDR bought the idea, championed it in Washington and RCA was born on October 17, 1919, less than a year after World War I ended. The new company was chaired by GE’s Young while David Sarnoff, Marconi’s 28 year old protégé and General Manager of American Marconi, was selected to be RCA’s Chief Operating Officer. (9) RCA quickly took over Marconi’s high-powered shortwave installations and began marketing the longwave, (AM), radio equipment manufactured by GE and Westinghouse, while leaving the radio transmitter business to AT&T. But Sarnoff would have far greater ambitions for his company - including the creation of the first permanent radio network seven years later.
Radio Roars Into The Twenties. RCA’s birthday preceded by two days another milestone event that would have an immediate effect on the listening public. Frank Conrad, a 45 year old engineer at the Westinghouse factory in East Pittsburgh, started up 8XK, an experimental radio station housed in a tent-like structure on the roof of the building on October 19, 1919. Conrad gave himself the nightly job of talking and playing records on the station. No one at the time suspected the great impact that his little station would have. But within a year, the surprising popularity of Conrad’s 8XK led Westinghouse to recognize the profit potential in manufacturing radio receivers and establishing AM radio stations in large cities.
The Westinghouse group of stations began with KDKA/Pittsburgh - the first AM station officially licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department on October 27, 1920. Westinghouse then expanded its broadcast holdings in quick order with WBZ/Springfield-Boston, KYW/Chicago and WJZ/Newark, all in the fall of 1921.
Westinghouse’s major competitor, (and partner in RCA), General Electric, also became a station owner when its WGY/Schenectady, located at the company’s factory, was licensed on February 4, 1922. GE followed that with KGO/Oakland-San Francisco and KOA/Denver in 1924.
AT&T was the last of RCA’s partners to get into station ownership on March 2, 1922, by establishing WEAF/New York City with a limited schedule of makeshift programming. Although AT&T’s manufacturing arm, Western Electric, was successful on the equipment side of the communications industry, actual station operations were foreign to the telephone giant. That situation wouldn’t last long. (10)
Hundreds of stations suddenly popped up everywhere across America. From 28 licensed in 1921, over 500 more were added in 1922 The links for a broadcasting chain were formed although the first permanent radio network was still three years away. Meanwhile, stations were on their own to provide programs that would justify the $20 to $60 that listeners were asked to pay for their Westinghouse Aeriola or Crosley Harko radio sets. Early broadcasters were all faced with the same problem - how to fill those gaping hours of vacant airtime every day with something more than static. The situation led to a number of programming firsts. The most notable at the time were KDKA’s reports of the Warren Harding vs. James Cox Presidential election on November 2, 1920. (11)
Vaudeville’s Next To Closing. By 1922, the singers, musicians and actors that stations could snag to perform in their studios began asking for money because their vaudeville employment was getting scarce. Between 1920 and 1925 the number of vaudeville houses in America plummeted from a thousand to a mere 25. The theaters weren’t closing - they were switching to movies. Even the giant Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit joined the movie revolution which ironically began at vaudeville’s peak in 1910 when films were introduced as occasional novelties between live stage acts or as purposely bad “chasers,” to clear out theater audiences between shows. Ten years later movies were chasing vaudeville out of the theaters. By 1920, the weekly movie audience was reported at 35 million and growing.
Radio was just beginning to scratch the surface of the big names who were becoming available. Vincent Lopez brought his popular band to WJZ for a concert on November 27, 1921, and Ed Wynn was the first top comic to test radio, appearing in WJZ’s adaptation of his stage hit, The Perfect Fool, on February 19, 1922. But headliners like Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor deserted the vaudeville circuits for Broadway revues and Hollywood stardom while most of vaudeville’s also-rans drifted back into obscurity - although a lucky few, most notably Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, (Amos & Andy), and Jim and Marian Jordan, (Fibber McGee & Molly), eventually earned fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams in the new wireless medium that still struggled to pay its bills in the early twenties.
Worse yet for stations’ bottom lines in 1922, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, (ASCAP), was preparing to charge broadcasters for the music that performers played or sang on radio. ASCAP’s demands threatened to increase station expenses considerably and shut down poorly financed operations altogether. (12)
Creeping Commercialism. Meanwhile, The Detroit News’ WWJ/Detroit claimed the first broadcast of a complete symphony on February 10, 1922, at the start of radio’s first known series of sponsored programs - the weekly Detroit Bank Concerts. Because commercial radio was yet to come into the open, any mention of the bank’s sponsorship had to be the softest of soft sell. The same was true for Iowa Power & Light’s daily sponsorship of two hours on WMT/Cedar Rapids. The station charged the utility five dollars a day with half of the fee applied to the station’s electric bill. Station owners - from major corporations and big city newspapers to small town retailers - were all learning that it cost money to operate radio stations. Something had to be done to just to keep the things on the air.
For Whom Ma Bell Tolls. No station owner was more aware of radio’s fiscal problems than AT&T. WEAF - the first station to capitulate to ASCAP’s demands by paying a one year license fee of $500 - was a bothersome drain on AT&T’s corporate balance sheet. But instead of shutting down the station and cutting its losses, AT&T surprised observers and opened a second New York station with a plan that would shape the future of broadcasting in America.
AT&T introduced WBAY - a Toll Broadcasting station. Much like AT&T charged tolls for use of its local and long distance telephone lines, WBAY would sell blocks of its time to those who wanted to broadcast messages over its facilities. The first published “toll” was $40 to $50 per quarter hour. Near-sighted purists complained that Ma Bell had become broadcasting’s whore.
WBAY signed on the air on July 25, 1922 - but hardly anybody could hear it. Its signals, transmitted from mid-Manhattan, were so riddled with interference that AT&T closed the station after three weeks and shifted its toll broadcasting concept to WEAF. And so, by default, WEAF went down in broadcasting history on August 28, 1922, as the first radio station to openly broadcast a paid announcement - a ten minute oratory extolling life in an apartment development in suburban Jackson Heights, Queens. To most everyone’s surprise, the commercial drew results and the real estate developer came back for more commercials with toll money in hand.
Was WEAF really the first station to broadcast a commercial? Probably not. For many of the country’s financially strapped broadcasters, a little cash was just too tempting to resist in exchange for a few hundred friendly words on behalf of a local merchant. AT&T simply brought the practice into the open. (13) Nevertheless, the need for attractive programming still remained a major problem for most stations. Once again, Ma Bell came to their rescue.
Getting Hear From There. Network Radio began with a five minute experiment on January 4, 1923 - a saxophone solo played over a high quality AT&T long distance telephone wire linking New York’s WEAF with WNAC in Boston.
Six months later AT&T demonstrated the first broadcast quality lines with a network broadcast from the National Electric Light Association’s convention in New York City via WEAF to GE’s WGY/Schenectady and Westinghouse’s KDKA/Pittsburgh and KYW/Chicago. But that kind of cooperation among RCA’s partners didn’t extend very far. AT&T prohibited GE and Westinghouse from using its telephone lines for their own networking experiments.
The two electrical giants considered shortwave transmission to link stations and produced a highly publicized broadcast on November 23, 1923, that reached GE’s KGO/Oakland from Westinghouse’s WJZ/Newark and KDKA/Pittsburgh via a shortwave link in Hastings, Nebraska. But results were spotty. Five months later Western Union lines were used to carry a series of WGY Players performances from Schenectady to RCA’s WJZ/New York City and WRC/Washington, D.C.
David Sarnoff took note of all of this and decided that RCA should become more deeply involved in broadcasting and networking, too. His motivation was the same that made station owners of GE and Westinghouse - to sell radios. RCA and Westinghouse had jointly introduced The Radiola Grand in 1923, the first console radio with a built-in speaker. Radio broadcasts could now be heard simultaneously by the entire family - not just one hobbyist wearing a pair of earphones. The Radiola carried a hefty price tag of $323. Sarnoff knew that no family would spend that kind of money for a radio unless there was something the family wanted to hear. If necessary, he’d try to provide it.
In need of an established station, possibly to anchor a network, RCA purchased WJZ from Westinghouse on May 14, 1923, and moved the Newark facility into New York City. Because AT&T refused to lease its broadcast quality lines to any potential competitor, RCA turned to Western Union’s inferior telegraph lines for its first networking attempts. The experiments were soon abandoned and Sarnoff began investigating some other way - any way - to circumvent AT&T’s tight grip on quality telephone line transmission of chain broadcasts. (14)
More Frequent Frequencies. Airborne chaos resulted from nearly 700 stations that popped up across America in the early 1920’s - all broadcasting was on, (or around or somewhat near), the same, single frequency authorized by the Radio Act of 1912: 618.6 kilocycles. Local stations split time on the frequency, or in some cases, simply attempted to blast over the competition. (15) To get control of the situation, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convened a second National Radio Conference of government and industry representatives on March 20, 1923.
As a result of the Conference, the Commerce Department ordered that effective May 15, 1923, the 550 to 1350 kilocycle band would be reserved for AM broadcast channels separated in steps of ten kilocycles and stations would be assigned frequencies exclusive to their areas. It was an overwhelming job for Hoover’s department to supervise, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, the government had no power to keep stations on their assigned frequencies. It was a situation that would come back to haunt Hoover, Congress and listeners across America.
AT&T Spins Its Webs. While its RCA partners continued to spin their wheels, AT&T continued its pioneer networking. It acquired WCAP/Washington and broadcast the opening of Congress on December 4, 1923, to a seven station network that reached as far west as WFAA/Dallas. AT&T was quickly establishing the use of its lines as the network distribution vehicle of greatest quality, dependability and flexibility.
That same December 4th evening, AT&T’s WEAF introduced The Eveready Hour, named for its sponsor, National Carbon Company's batteries and flashlights. The show is recognized as radio’s first big-time variety program, featuring top Broadway stars. Two months later, February 12, 1924, AT&T put the show on its lines to WJAR/Providence and WGR/Buffalo. The Eveready Hour became the first sponsored program heard simultaneously on a chain - or network - of stations.
AT&T continued to push its networking advantage with broadcasts of the Republican and Democratic national conventions in the summer of 1924, followed by President Coolidge’s inaugural address networked to 24 stations on March 4, 1925. Yet, for all of the company’s achievements in the radio industry, Ma Bell still felt like a wallflower at the Broadcasters Ball.
AT&T Hangs Up. AT&T knew that its activities were always in the gunsights of government trust-busters. Already the owner of the near-monopoly in telephone services and part owner of RCA, a legalized monopoly in broadcasting equipment and services, AT&T decided to play it safe - get out of RCA and abandon station ownership.
After several months of negotiations a deal was announced on November 9, 1926. A new entity, The National Broadcasting Company, was incorporated with owners RCA, (50%), GE, (30%), and Westinghouse, (20%). The new NBC agreed to buy AT&T’s two stations, WEAF/New York City and WCAP/ Washington, D.C., for $1.0 Million
WEAF was designated to become flagship of the new NBC Radio Network because the plum of the package was NBC’s ability to lease AT&T’s broadcast-quality telephone lines for network use. The lease fees were worth untold millions to the telephone company and allowed Network Radio to become a reality and a major industry.
NBC Chimes In. Less than a week later, on November 15, 1926, NBC inaugurated its network service over AT&T lines to 24 stations with an elaborate four hour broadcast originated before a thousand invited guests in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ballroom. (16) The quickly organized network’s publicity department made no secret of the flam-boyant event’s cost, $50,000, of which half was claimed to have been spent on talent.
NBC’s founding President, Merlin (Deac) Aylesworth opened the proceedings with a speech promising a brilliant future for Network Radio. The program celebrated his promise by delivering a variety of the day’s biggest names - Will Rogers, soprano Mary Garden, comedy team Weber & Fields, opera star Titta Ruffo, The New York Symphony, Goldman’s Brass Band, a grand and light opera company, plus the popular dance bands led by Vincent Lopez, George Olson, Ben Bernie and B.A. Rolfe. The marathon program demonstrated Network Radio’s ability to put the world’s most popular talents within earshot of any American who purchased a radio that could receive a station linked to NBC.
In addition, Rogers’ monologue and Garden’s solos originated half a continent away from New York City. (Rogers was appearing in Independence, Missouri and Garden was in a concert tour in Chicago.) This use of reverse telephone lines underscored network flexibility. Any location East of the Rockies was now able to transmit a broadcast quality signal to the rest of the country - and Hollywood was just beyond the mountains and a short time away.
If the objective was to promote radio set sales, the expensive program was worth it. NBC had begun to deliver stars into America’s living rooms absolutely free. Two million homes were added to the ranks of radio households over the following year, an increase that brought the total to almost seven million homes.
NBC paid all the bills for its historic November 15th inaugural broadcast with no advertising support. That altruistic practice ended five weeks later when the network produced a twelve hour special on Christmas Day, December 25, 1926. Some of the talent and segments on the marathon Christmas broadcast indicate who was paying for it: The Colgate Orchestra, The Eveready Novelty Orchestra, B. A. Rolfe’s Coward Comfort Hour Orchestra, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony in the Bakelite Hour and the popular singing duo named for cough lozenges, The Smith Brothers - Trade & Mark.
NBC was in operation for six weeks and finished 1926 without network competition. Then, on January 1, 1927, it introduced its own competitor - but as it turned out, a competitor of only limited degree which served to create another situation that smacked of monopoly.
The Birth of The Blue. When NBC designated WEAF as its New York City anchor station, RCA’s WJZ was left out in the cold without network affiliation along with Westinghouse’s KDKA/Pittsburgh, KYW/Chicago and WBZ/Boston. NBC established its second network to serve those stations plus others around the country which were shut out of the original network service by local competitors - often more powerful stations which snapped up NBC affiliations in their markets.
The WEAF anchored network was identified as NBC’s Red Network and the WJZ group became the NBC Blue Network. (17) NBC promptly made it clear that the two networks would be different - almost identifying Blue as the ugly duckling of the pair. Blue was to be the home of cultural and informational programming and the repository of Red’s leftover programming. In other words, Blue would get Red’s unwanted hand-me-downs. In future years Red also stripped Blue of its most popular programs. Blue wasn’t competition to Red, it was a supplement - and a secondary source of revenue for owner RCA.
The FRC Is Born. The AM band was expanded from 1350 to 1500 kilocycles and 96 channels in April, 1925, but the Commerce Department’s control of radio stations was challenged in Federal Court after The Zenith Radio Corporation arbitrarily moved its WJAZ/Chicago from 930 kilocycles to 910 kc., a frequency reserved for Canadian stations. A Federal Court subsequently ruled that Commerce Secretary Hoover was powerless to do anything about it and in effect, had no real jurisdiction over broadcasting. Meanwhile, the AM band had become a mess of ungoverned cross-talk, distortion and squeals. Secretary Hoover - more importantly citizens who voted - demanded that Congress do something. The lawmakers finally got down to work on the problem on December 8, 1926.
President Calvin Coolidge signed The Radio Act of 1927 into law on February 3, 1927, which established the five-member Federal Radio Commission, patterned after the Interstate Commerce Commission. The FRC was initially given one year to create order from the chaos caused by the country’s 732 radio stations which were all required to file for licenses by January 15, 1928. The FRC‘s life was extended a year as it began review the license applications to meet its now familiar standards, “The public’s interest, convenience and necessity.” Approximately 75 stations were weeded out in the initial process and station operators were getting the message that the FRC meant business.
Elimination of marginal stations continued as the FRC and its staff next set about to restructure the broadcast band. It announced its definitive new plan on August 30, 1928, which categorized frequencies in each of the country’s five regions as Clear, Regional or Local. There was some grumbling and a few lawsuits as many stations were forced to change frequencies and adjust power, but when the reorganization took effect at 3:00 a.m. on November 11, 1928, it was evident that the FRC knew what it was doing from the clear reception afforded the remaining 585 stations. And that dependable clarity elevated radio from the status of a novelty to that of a reliable utility for entertainment and information. (18)
Sarnoff Shouldn’t Have Laughed. It’s a stroke of irony that NBC’s real competitor was also conceived in RCA’s executive suite in 1926 when David Sarnoff rebuffed concert promoter Arthur Judson’s proposal to form an in-house talent agency to manage - and profit from - performers appearing on the NBC’s Red and Blue Networks. Sarnoff added insult to injury when he adopted Judson’s idea as his own and laughed when Judson threatened to retaliate by forming a third radio network.
Judson and his partners promptly did just that, calling their venture the United Independent Broadcasters - an obvious dig at RCA’s monopolistic control of two networks. In constant need of working capital just to get established, Judson’s group went through one investor after another, finally selling their network’s control and naming rights to the Columbia Phonograph Company for start-up expenses of $163,000. Sarnoff could still laugh at the attempt.
The Columbia Phonograph Company Radio Network went on the air September 18, 1927, with 16 affiliates and lots of glowing promises but not enough cash or advertisers to pay the bills. (19) Within days Columbia abruptly withdrew its support and Judson’s search for sponsors and capital resumed. Both were found in Philadelphia.
Paley’s Exploding Cigar Business. Young William S. Paley was the college-educated heir and executive whiz kid of his family’s Congress Cigar Company. He first came to radio in 1927 as an advertiser who saw encouraging results from sponsoring The LaPalina Smoker music programs on WCAU/Philadelphia, the shaky Columbia network’s first affiliate whose owners were among Arthur Judson’s string of investors. Increased sales of his cigars convinced Paley to try advertising on the full Columbia chain. LaPalina sales doubled to a million cigars a week and Paley became a believer in Network Radio.
Paley was a serious listener when the owners of WCAU led by Philadelphia industrialist Jerome Louchheim approached him to buy the network that they had taken over and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System, (CBS). The 26 year old Paley convinced his family to buy CBS for $503,000, on September 12, 1928.
In a related deal, Arthur Judson and Paley created the Columbia Concerts Corporation - a CBS variation of the same talent management idea that Sarnoff rejected and then stole from Judson. Arthur Judson remained with CBS for many years as a major stockholder - sharing in the network’s success and getting the last laugh on Sarnoff.
Columbia, The Gem of Promotion. Bill Paley’s Belarusian parents hailed from Minsk, David Sarnoff’s birthplace. But that’s all the two network moguls had in common. Their backgrounds, education and personalities were totally different. In 1928, Sarnoff was in his forties, an aloof industrialist whose hirelings ran NBC. Paley became an instant and personable hands-on broadcasting executive before he was 30.
Paley immediately toured the stations linked by CBS and renegotiated the affiliate contracts which had financially strapped the network’s former owners. The new agreements, similar to NBC and Blue’s, paid affiliates an average 30% of their published rates their for time given to sponsored network programs. Unsponsored - sustaining - programs were provided by CBS to its stations at no cost.
One of Paley’s first hires was advertising man Paul Kresten who was charged with making CBS appear as successful as NBC with a continual bombardment of press releases and expensive promotional pieces to major newspapers, potential sponsors and advertising agencies. The maneuver worked. CBS began to get noticed in the press and attract sponsor interest. To counter NBC’s programs featuring established stars of vaudeville and movies, Paley was determined to build CBS radio stars from younger, lesser known talent. Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Morton Downey and The Mills Brothers were prime examples. Paley figured that he’d simply steal the really big stars from NBC when he got his network up to full speed. That day came sooner than he thought. (20)
Go West, Young Man! NBC had three major advantages over CBS in the summer of 1929 - plenty of cash, powerful station affiliates on the West Coast and a movie connec-tion thanks to RCA’s part ownership of RKO Radio Pictures. Bill Paley concluded that he needed all three to level the playing field. He caught a train to Los Angeles to get them.
Paley scored on two counts by selling 49% of CBS to Paramount Pictures for $5.0 Million just weeks before the stock market crash of October 29th. Further, it was the promise of a screen test at Paramount that enabled CBS to outfox NBC for Bing Crosby’s debut radio series in 1931. (21)
Paley’s mid-summer visit to LA in 1929 also resulted in a CBS affiliation contract with the Don Lee Network that linked the flamboyant car dealer’s KHJ/Los Angeles and KFRC/San Francisco with a group of key stations up the Pacific coast to Portland, Seattle and Spokane. As a result of Paley and Kresten’s efforts - and the addition of the Don Lee stations - CBS could claim a jump from 17 to 49 affiliates and nationwide coverage for advertisers at the end of 1929.
Nets Set To Go For The Gold. By September, 1932, the two NBC networks had 86 affiliates and the upstart CBS - just four years removed from the brink of bankruptcy - had 84. All would share in 1932's gross network revenues of $37.8 Million - up nearly double from $19.2 Million in just three years.
Young Bill Paley had pulled CBS up from $6.7 Million in 1930 to over $12.6 Million in 1932, still behind NBC’s two-network total that exceeded $25.1 Million. Nevertheless, Paley achieved his level playing field for the ratings and revenue battles that lay ahead.
Over the next 21 years the combined network revenues routinely reached, then far exceeded, $100 Million annually. Is it any wonder it we call it Network Radio’s Golden Age?
(1) FCC and trade press records report that four major radio networks alone generated $2.59 Billion in total revenue during the 21 years of their Golden Age and the entire radio industry collected $6.73 Billion.
(2) The long string of inventors who developed the incandescent light bulb began in 1801 with British inventor Humphrey Davy and continued through the century with James Bowman Lindsey, Warren DeLaRue, Frederick DeMoleyns, John Wellington Starr, Alexander Lodygin, William Sawyer, Albon Mann, Hiram Maxim and finally concluded on December 18, 1878, when British inventor Joseph Swan demonstrated his light bulb and received a patent for it in 1880.
(3) The Ayer agency traced its lineage to 1841’s Volney Palmer Agency which became Joy, Cowe & Sharpe upon Palmer’s death in 1863. Francis Ayer later bought it out to open N.W. Ayer representing its first client The National Baptist Weekly.
(4) Most advertising supported Network Radio programming was produced by agencies. The networks simply provided the studio facilities and fed the programs along leased telephone lines to their affiliated stations for broadcast. But the chains were quick to share in any bragging rights their programs’ popularity achieved and allowed the public to assume that they were responsible for creating them.
(5) Hertz’s early contributions to broadcasting’s fundamental process were honored in 1933 when his name replaced Cycles as the international measurement term of electromagnetic waves - Kilohertz for AM radio frequencies, (one thousand cycles per second), and Megahertz for FM, (one million cycles per second). The United States adopted the term some thirty years later.
(6) Marconi’s title as The Father of Radio has been long debated. One title, however, is indisputable: Marconi was The Father of The Radio Business. He was the first to make real money with the contraption.
(7) Herrold’s backroom operation operating first with the call sign FN, and later SJN, eventually later became KQW/San Jose - today’s KCBS/San Francisco.
(8) Fleming developed the first successful vacuum tube, or diode, in 1904. DeForest is credited with inventing the three-element Audion tube to boost amplification in 1906. Armstrong created the regeneration receiver in 1913 which replaced headphones with speakers and the super heterodyne circuit that simplified dialing in 1919. Armstrong was later granted the first patents for Frequency Modulation, (FM), radio on December 28, 1933.
(9) Sarnoff’s “rags to riches” story has been well documented - and often glamorized by an RCA publicity department eager to please the boss. Sarnoff, it was said, never let facts get in the way of a good story, especially his.
(10) RCA, itself, joined the station ownership ranks for one day, July 2, 1921. As little more than a publicity stunt, the company’s WJY/Newark had but one program: a second hand account of the Heavyweight Championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. The station’s transmitter blew out before the end of the fight. RCA then established WDY in Roselle Park, New Jersey, on December 14, 1921, but folded it on February 24, 1922.
(11) KDKA was preceded in election coverage by Lee deForest’s experimental 2XG/New York City which reported results from the Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Evan Hughes Presidental election for six hours on November 7, 1916, and signed off at midnight declaring Hughes the winner.
(12) The ASCAP situation prompted station owners to organize as the National Association of Broadcasters, (NAB), in April, 1923. The NAB eventually became a powerful lobbying group and ASCAP’s strongest adversary.
(13) The telephone giant attempted briefly to collect license fees from stations who seized on the idea of selling time for survival and potential profit. But that brazen maneuver didn’t last long. Radio station time salesmen soon became as common as newspaper space salesmen, just not as successful - yet.
(14) Sarnoff briefly floated his idea of a network consisting of a group of RCA owned, high powered stations strategically placed in major cities from coast to coast. His concept called “Super Radiocasting” went nowhere.
(15) A second frequency, 750 kilocycles, was added by The National Conference On Radio Telephony in April, 1922, but demand still far out-paced the supply.
(16) Stations carrying the NBC Inaugural: KDKA/Pittsburgh, KSD/St. Louis, KYW/Chicago, WBZBoston, WBZA/Springfield, Massachusetts, WCAE/Pittsburgh, WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul, WCSH/Portland, Maine, WDAFKansas City, WDRC/New Haven, WEAF/New York City, WEEI/Boston, WGN/Chicago, WGR/Buffalo, WGY/Schenectady, WHAD/Milwaukee, WJAR/ Providence, WJZ/New York City, WLIT/Philadelphia, WRC/Washington, WSAI/Cincinnati, WTAG/Worcester, WTAM/Cleveland, WTIC/Hartford and WWJ/Detroit.
(17) The color-coded identification reportedly originated with the networks’ telephone line maps drawn in red and blue pencils - or their red and blue connection plugs in NBC master control. Whichever was the case, the idea was to differentiate between the two networks.
(18) The five person Federal Radio Commission remained until The Radio Act of 1927 was replaced by The Communications Act of 1934 and the FRC was succeeded by the seven person Federal Communications Commission.
(19) The original 16 CBS affiliates: WOR/New York City, WMAQ/Chicago, WGHP/Detroit, WCAU/Philadelphia, WJAS/Pittsburgh, KMOX/St. Louis, WNAC/Boston, WMAK/Buffalo, WKRC/Cincinnati, KOIL/Omaha, WOWO/Ft. Wayne, WCAO/Baltimore, WFBL/Syracuse, WEAN/Providence, WADC/Akron and WAIU/Columbus.
(20) Eddie Cantor took his Number One rated show and jumped from NBC to CBS on February 3, 1935. (See The 1934-35 Season on this site.)
(21) Three years later in the Depression year of 1932, CBS and Paramount’s roles were reversed. Movie attendance had fallen 40% and the studios all needed cash to survive. In contrast, the number of radio households had steadily increased to over 16 million - over 55% of the nation’s homes - and CBS was thriving. Paley bought back total control of his network from Paramount for four million dollars - a cool million dollar profit.
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2012 & 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
ALCHEMISTS OF THE AIR
Spinning Gold From Thin Air. Many texts have been written tracing the development of wireless communication and voice broadcasting that eventually evolved into commercial radio. But a few, if any, have linked the seemingly unrelated, but contemporaneous events that culminated in Network Radio’s Golden Age from 1932 to 1953. The principals involved in that evolution made the fabled alchemists of past centuries look like pikers as they turned thin air into a communications industry that made Billions in real gold. (1)
But long before the networks were established and their first dollar was collected, radio already had a rich history full of colorful characters who contributed in one way or another to its Golden Age. Participants in the process came from Technology, Industry, Government, Show Business and Marketing In many cases they never met or even knew of the others involved. Yet, their ideas and actions forged the links to what became known as chain broadcasting - Network Radio. Briefly told in somewhat chronological order and non-technical terms, here’s how it all came together:
A Brush With Genius. Our story begins on January 11, 1838, when noted American portrait artist Samuel Morse, 47, first demonstrated his invention, the Telegraph - which some historians assert was stolen from others. Morse’s simple interruption of direct current in different assigned lengths - “dots” and “dashes” to represent each of the 26 letters of the alphabet and the ten digits from one through zero - established electricity as a tool to communicate instantly over long distances - wherever its wires of conductivity could be strung.
Morse the artist became Morse the entrepreneur six years later on May 24, 1844. He opened the first permanent telegraph line - a government financed wire running the 30 miles between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore - with a four word transmission to his assistant, Alfred Vail, “What hath God wrought?”
He wrought a lot. The telegraph inspired others to learn what else could be done with electricity - the mysterious, unseen and potentially lethal force.
Great Scots! Acceptance of Morse’s telegraph spread throughout the world. Its use of electricity became the lifelong fascination of a bright teenager in Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell. Later in life, as a 33 year old physicist, Maxwell theorized in 1864 that still another invisible phenomenon might exist that could transmit electricity through the air - much like the wind carries sound waves - but far more powerful. Maxwell claimed that these waves - he called them electromagnetic waves - could be strong enough to penetrate a brick wall if enough electrical force were generated behind them. Maxwell’s theories became the technical foundation of broadcasting, although they remained unproved for the next 30 years
Maxwell wasn’t the only young Scot influenced by Samuel Morse’s telegraph. When Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847, telegraph lines were already springing up along railroad tracks in his native Edinburgh. It eventually became Bell’s obsession to go Morse one better and enable everyone to communicate over telegraph-like wires by voice, not a complicated code of dots and dashes. Bell emigrated with his concept to the United States in his early twenties.
By the age of 29, Bell had devised a means to convert human speech into electric impulses at one end of an electrically charged wire and then reverse the process at the other end. Bell’s Telephone was patented on March 7, 1876 - and along with it came the original technology for the microphone and for chain broadcasting.
Edison, Tesla & Westingthouse. Three years after Bell introduced the telephone, Thomas Alva Edison - age 32 and already famous as the inventor of the phonograph - took a nearly 80 year old idea, tinkered with it and filed his patent for the electric light bulb on November 4, 1879. (2) Along with its obvious benefits, the light bulb - a sealed glass globe from which all air had been removed - became the prototype from which a critical element to future radio transmission and reception emerged, the vacuum tube.
Most developments involving electricity during this period employed Direct Current. But shortly after Edison introduced the light bulb, industrialist George Westinghouse demonstrated the advantages of Alternating Current - developed by a 27 year old Serbian immigrant, Nikola Tesla, in 1883. Westinghouse was primarily interested in AC for its use in transmitting electricity to municipalities from hydroelectric facilities, but it would prove to be the necessary element for broadcasting speech and music.
Keeping Companies. Bell patented the telephone and incorporated his holdings as The American Telephone and Telegraph Co, (AT&T), on March 3, 1885. The company would eventually become a supplier of broadcasting equipment, a pioneer in commercial radio and the linchpin of all radio and television networks. Westinghouse Electric was incorporated on January 8, 1886, and it became a manufacturer of radio and television equipment for both the industrial and consumer markets and a longtime owner of major radio and television stations. Three years later on April 24, 1889, Edison combined all of his holdings and founded General Electric, (GE), another future manufacturer of radio and television equipment and longtime station owner.
Thus, within a four year span, the three companies which four decades later became radio’s foremost equipment, station and network pioneers were established and incorporated. Of course, the very word Radio was still generally unknown at the time and Network Radio was still nearly 40 years in the future.
Curtain Going Up. Far removed from the university and corporate laboratories that developed the technical side of radio - about as far removed as one could get - another partnership was cemented on July 6, 1885, that would play an instrumental role of what Americans would eventually hear on radio.
Benjamin Keith, 39, and Edward Albee, 28, opened The Bijou Theater in Boston, the first American theater to present continuous strings of variety acts under the umbrella title, Vaudeville. The pair’s Keith-Albee-Orpheum chain would eventually control hundreds of vaudeville houses across America and provide stage experience for Network Radio’s biggest stars. Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Bob Hope and Fred Allen were just a few of the thousands of young hopefuls who entered the split-week, two-to-five- shows-a-day vaudeville grind in their teens. Vaudeville enjoyed 35 years of popularity, peaking in 1910 when over 2,000 theaters in cities and towns across America featured variety and amateur acts, both good and bad - often the latter.
The First Ad Ventures. The late 1800's also saw the birth of yet another industry that would eventually play a key role in radio. Francis Ayer, 21, opened a Philadelphia based advertising agency in 1869 and named it for his father, N.W. Ayer, who bankrolled the enterprise for $250. (3) Thirty year old J. Walter Thompson bought Carlton Smith Advertising in 1877 and gave it his name. Chicago’s Daniel Lord and Ambrose Thomas hung out their Lord & Thomas shingle in 1881 for the agency that became Foote, Cone & Belding 60 years later.
By coincidence, when advertising agencies first appeared, Medicine Shows began roaming the small towns of America’s South and Midwest, giving local townsfolk - the rubes - free entertainment interspersed with sales pitches for tonics, pills and salves. The essence of commercial broadcasting was in those medicine shows of the late 1800's. But the advertising industry originated when newspapers and magazines dominated media. None of its pioneers could have known the influential roles they would play - or the fortunes they would make - from broadcasting when agencies became the unseen middle-men who knotted the ties between the radio audience’s most popular programs and the advertisers who sponsored them. (4)
Meanwhile, Back In The Lab… Heinrich Hertz was a 30 year old physics professor at the University of Heidelberg, long captivated by Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves theories. In 1886 he set up a crude arc generator, shot sparks across his laboratory and proved that the waves did exist, traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles per hour - the speed of light. (5)
Like computer sciences a century later, electronics was the field of young men full of curiosity and eager to make a name for themselves. None was younger than Guglielmo Marconi, a teenager inspired by reports of Hertz’s experiments when he first began to tinker with them. Marconi had more than just intelligence and a curious nature - he also had the support of his father, a wealthy Italian landowner. Marconi eventually built a spark generator, combined it with a telegraph key and transmitted the first wireless telegraphic signals aboard electromagnetic waves between hills on his family’s estate near Bologna. The year was 1895 and Marconi was only 21.
Proving that the entrepreneurial spirit wasn’t limited to America, Marconi went to England where the patent for his transmitter and antenna system was granted on July 2, 1897. Two years later he demonstrated his wireless process to the British Navy by transmitting telegraphic signals across the English Channel and between ships 75 miles apart. Wireless communication’s value to naval safety was obvious. (6)
In the fall of 1899 Marconi sailed to the United States and founded the American Marconi Company in New York City on November 22nd. He promptly made his first important sale to the U.S. Navy for wireless telegraphic communications between ships and shore. When the 19th Century closed the young Italian was only 26 and already on his way to becoming the wealthiest member of an already wealthy family. And with the formation of American Marconi, the fourth corporation responsible for the creation of American broadcasting was in place. Marconi joined AT&T, GE and Westinghouse at the starting gate and the race for patents was underway. It wouldn’t pause until America entered World War I, over 17 years later.
Fessenden’s Firsts. Marconi made international headlines by transmitting the letter “S” in Morse Code by wireless across the Atlantic from England to Newfoundland on December 12, 1901. But a greater impact on broadcasting’s future was the feat accomplished a year earlier by a 34 year old Canadian, Reginald Fessenden. Physics professor Fessenden, working at the time with the U.S. Weather Bureau, experimented with parts taken from a Bell telephone and a low powered alternating current generator. He reasoned that alternating current would allow him to create a steady stream of continuous electromagnetic waves capable of carrying the actual sounds of voice and music - not just the impulses of sparks generated by a telegraph key.
His work paid off on December 23, 1900. Across a one mile span at Cobb Island, Maryland, Reginald Fessenden’s voice became the first ever heard in a wireless transmission saying the now familiar words, “Hello! Test, one, two, three, four...”. In effect, Fessenden became to Marconi what Bell had been to Morse. They both converted the coded communications tool of a few into a common utility for the masses. Radio Telephony was the first term adopted for wireless voice transmission, a mouthful that later simply became, Radio.
But Fessenden realized if he was to be heard at any distance beyond a mile he would need a factory-produced alternating current generator - or a transmitter - of far greater power than he could build in his laboratory. With the backing of two Pittsburgh financiers he turned to General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Ironically, GE was the company founded by Thomas Edison, a bitter opponent of alternating current. Nevertheless, GE undertook Fessenden’s project, took his money and assigned a newcomer on its staff to work with Fessenden - a 28 year old Swedish immigrant, Ernst Alexanderson.
The Canadian and Swede made broadcasting history together on December 21, 1906, as reported by John Grant in The American Telephone Journal: "Wireless speech over a distance somewhat greater than ten miles was satisfactorily accomplished in the presence of a number of persons invited to witness a demonstration of the new system of wireless telephony at the experimental station of the National Electric Signaling Company at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, on Friday, December 21st."
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Although disputed by some historians, Fessenden claimed his and Alexanderson’s next achievement came at 9:00 p.m. on Monday, December 24, 1906, when they powered up Alexanderson’s massive alternating current generator with its 50,000 watts on the shores of the Atlantic, 37 miles southeast of Boston in their building at Brant Rock. With experimental call-sign VE2CV granted on December 21 by the U.S. government, Fessenden took to the air and sent holiday greetings to all who could hear him. Then he picked up his violin to play O Holy Night and became the first musician ever heard on radio. And he was heard.
Amateur hobbyists scattered along the East Coast picked up his transmission as did wireless operators at sea, some of them working on banana boats owned by United Fruit, an early pioneer in shipboard wireless. (Fessenden, himself, had designed United’s system of wireless telegraphy to track its cargo fleet in the Caribbean. His staff had alerted ships equipped with the inventor's equipment of the coming Christmas Eve broadcast over the previous weekend.) One can only imagine the delightful shock that Fessenden’s Christmas gift of readings and music gave to those lonesome individuals accustomed to hearing nothing but Morse code and static from their earphones. In effect, the radio program was born on December 24, 1906.
And All The Ships At Sea. Marconi’s wireless was later instrumental in bringing rescue ships to the North Atlantic site of the sinking S.S. Titanic which claimed 1,500 lives on April 15, 1912. The disaster led to The Radio Act of 1912, signed by President William Howard Taft on August 13, 1912, which took effect on the following January 1st. The law replaced the weaker Wireless Ship Act of 1910 and made it mandatory that all seagoing vessels maintain 24 hour contact with nearby ships and shore stations and that all amateur radio operators be licensed. It was the U.S. Government’s first step to license any act of broadcasting.
Who’s On First? Fessenden’s first broadcast motivated entrepreneurs and educators to begin thinking about establishing radio stations to broadcast at regularly scheduled times to serve the public - or their own egos. Among the first was Charles (Doc) Herrold, the operator of a vocational school, The Harrold College of Wireless & Engineering, in San Jose, California, who began broadcasting on a weekly basis on July 22, 1912, to publicize his establishment. Doc Herrold became radio’s first disc jockey, playing phonograph records while he pitched the benefits of learning electronics at his trade school. (7)
On December 4, 1916, the University of Wisconsin began a series of daily weather reports in Morse code on 9XM in Madison, which evolved into WHA Radio. WHA switched to voiced reports in January, 1921, which some historians contend were the first regularly scheduled series of spoken broadcasts.
While others dabbled with establishing radio stations between 1910 and 1920, pioneers John Ambrose Fleming, Lee deForest, Edwin Armstrong and many others were credited with significant contributions to broadcasting’s transmission and reception. (8) Scores of patents were issued to different individuals and corporations which led to confusion, larceny and lawsuits. Nevertheless, public curiosity and interest in radio were on a roll in America with no signs of slowing. Before long, wireless signals for industrial use and amateur amusement filled the air. Then, on April 6, 1917, it all fell silent.
World War I: Truce & Consequences. When the United States entered World War I, all broadcasting in the country was ordered off the air for the duration. The government commandeered the powerful shortwave transmitters that Marconi and others had established along the coastlines of the country for military communications and all wireless transmission within the United States was forbidden. More important to radio’s future, all patent rights were suspended. The suspension enabled manufacturers to develop radio equipment for the military that combined all the latest technical advancements without worry of patent infringement. It improved the state of the art considerably and gave manufacturers ideas about a future free of patent restrictions.
World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Beyond improving the technical aspects of radio, America’s 20 month involvement in the war produced two other effects. First, military service introduced thousands of doughboys to the basics of radio. They returned to civilian life eager to experiment as broadcasters, or listeners or both. The wartime prohibition of amateur radio ended on October 1, 1919, and a reported 8,500 hobbyists brought radio into their homes, leaning over their homemade “breadboard” sets. Magazines directed to amateur radio appeared and sales of radio parts hit $2.1 Million within a year.
Secondly, wartime communications had convinced the American government of radio’s strategic importance to the United States and to any potential foreign enemies. Taking precaution to its extreme, the Navy led a government effort to nationalize and seize control all radio facilities in the country. General Electric forced the issue to a head with its proposed $4.05 Million sale of 24 powerful Alexanderson transmitters to the U.S. based shortwave stations owned by American Marconi, a subsidiary of the Italian’s British corporation. The foreign-owned American Marconi also held a number of U.S. patents, which also troubled the government.
To settle the matter, government and industry met. Franklin Roosevelt, the 37 year old Assistant Secretary of Navy represented the government and General Electric President Owen Young made the case for private industry which owned key patents. They agreed that something had to be done to keep American broadcasting free from foreign control. The question was how to do it.
Let’s Play Monopoly. Young came up with the answer. He proposed to Roosevelt - who would become the “trust-busting” 32nd President - that the government endorse the creation of a monopoly, the Radio Corporation of America, (RCA). RCA - eventually owned by GE, (30%), Westinghouse, (20% after June, 1921), AT&T, (10%), United Fruit, (4%), and individual stock-holders, (36%), - would pool its partners’ 2,000 radio-related patents and buy out American Marconi’s patents and facilities for $3.5 Million. This would settle any potential patent disputes among its principals, expedite radio’s technical development and bring all of Marconi’s holdings into the United States under the ownership of an American corporation.
FDR bought the idea, championed it in Washington and RCA was born on October 17, 1919, less than a year after World War I ended. The new company was chaired by GE’s Young while David Sarnoff, Marconi’s 28 year old protégé and General Manager of American Marconi, was selected to be RCA’s Chief Operating Officer. (9) RCA quickly took over Marconi’s high-powered shortwave installations and began marketing the longwave, (AM), radio equipment manufactured by GE and Westinghouse, while leaving the radio transmitter business to AT&T. But Sarnoff would have far greater ambitions for his company - including the creation of the first permanent radio network seven years later.
Radio Roars Into The Twenties. RCA’s birthday preceded by two days another milestone event that would have an immediate effect on the listening public. Frank Conrad, a 45 year old engineer at the Westinghouse factory in East Pittsburgh, started up 8XK, an experimental radio station housed in a tent-like structure on the roof of the building on October 19, 1919. Conrad gave himself the nightly job of talking and playing records on the station. No one at the time suspected the great impact that his little station would have. But within a year, the surprising popularity of Conrad’s 8XK led Westinghouse to recognize the profit potential in manufacturing radio receivers and establishing AM radio stations in large cities.
The Westinghouse group of stations began with KDKA/Pittsburgh - the first AM station officially licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department on October 27, 1920. Westinghouse then expanded its broadcast holdings in quick order with WBZ/Springfield-Boston, KYW/Chicago and WJZ/Newark, all in the fall of 1921.
Westinghouse’s major competitor, (and partner in RCA), General Electric, also became a station owner when its WGY/Schenectady, located at the company’s factory, was licensed on February 4, 1922. GE followed that with KGO/Oakland-San Francisco and KOA/Denver in 1924.
AT&T was the last of RCA’s partners to get into station ownership on March 2, 1922, by establishing WEAF/New York City with a limited schedule of makeshift programming. Although AT&T’s manufacturing arm, Western Electric, was successful on the equipment side of the communications industry, actual station operations were foreign to the telephone giant. That situation wouldn’t last long. (10)
Hundreds of stations suddenly popped up everywhere across America. From 28 licensed in 1921, over 500 more were added in 1922 The links for a broadcasting chain were formed although the first permanent radio network was still three years away. Meanwhile, stations were on their own to provide programs that would justify the $20 to $60 that listeners were asked to pay for their Westinghouse Aeriola or Crosley Harko radio sets. Early broadcasters were all faced with the same problem - how to fill those gaping hours of vacant airtime every day with something more than static. The situation led to a number of programming firsts. The most notable at the time were KDKA’s reports of the Warren Harding vs. James Cox Presidential election on November 2, 1920. (11)
Vaudeville’s Next To Closing. By 1922, the singers, musicians and actors that stations could snag to perform in their studios began asking for money because their vaudeville employment was getting scarce. Between 1920 and 1925 the number of vaudeville houses in America plummeted from a thousand to a mere 25. The theaters weren’t closing - they were switching to movies. Even the giant Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit joined the movie revolution which ironically began at vaudeville’s peak in 1910 when films were introduced as occasional novelties between live stage acts or as purposely bad “chasers,” to clear out theater audiences between shows. Ten years later movies were chasing vaudeville out of the theaters. By 1920, the weekly movie audience was reported at 35 million and growing.
Radio was just beginning to scratch the surface of the big names who were becoming available. Vincent Lopez brought his popular band to WJZ for a concert on November 27, 1921, and Ed Wynn was the first top comic to test radio, appearing in WJZ’s adaptation of his stage hit, The Perfect Fool, on February 19, 1922. But headliners like Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor deserted the vaudeville circuits for Broadway revues and Hollywood stardom while most of vaudeville’s also-rans drifted back into obscurity - although a lucky few, most notably Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, (Amos & Andy), and Jim and Marian Jordan, (Fibber McGee & Molly), eventually earned fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams in the new wireless medium that still struggled to pay its bills in the early twenties.
Worse yet for stations’ bottom lines in 1922, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, (ASCAP), was preparing to charge broadcasters for the music that performers played or sang on radio. ASCAP’s demands threatened to increase station expenses considerably and shut down poorly financed operations altogether. (12)
Creeping Commercialism. Meanwhile, The Detroit News’ WWJ/Detroit claimed the first broadcast of a complete symphony on February 10, 1922, at the start of radio’s first known series of sponsored programs - the weekly Detroit Bank Concerts. Because commercial radio was yet to come into the open, any mention of the bank’s sponsorship had to be the softest of soft sell. The same was true for Iowa Power & Light’s daily sponsorship of two hours on WMT/Cedar Rapids. The station charged the utility five dollars a day with half of the fee applied to the station’s electric bill. Station owners - from major corporations and big city newspapers to small town retailers - were all learning that it cost money to operate radio stations. Something had to be done to just to keep the things on the air.
For Whom Ma Bell Tolls. No station owner was more aware of radio’s fiscal problems than AT&T. WEAF - the first station to capitulate to ASCAP’s demands by paying a one year license fee of $500 - was a bothersome drain on AT&T’s corporate balance sheet. But instead of shutting down the station and cutting its losses, AT&T surprised observers and opened a second New York station with a plan that would shape the future of broadcasting in America.
AT&T introduced WBAY - a Toll Broadcasting station. Much like AT&T charged tolls for use of its local and long distance telephone lines, WBAY would sell blocks of its time to those who wanted to broadcast messages over its facilities. The first published “toll” was $40 to $50 per quarter hour. Near-sighted purists complained that Ma Bell had become broadcasting’s whore.
WBAY signed on the air on July 25, 1922 - but hardly anybody could hear it. Its signals, transmitted from mid-Manhattan, were so riddled with interference that AT&T closed the station after three weeks and shifted its toll broadcasting concept to WEAF. And so, by default, WEAF went down in broadcasting history on August 28, 1922, as the first radio station to openly broadcast a paid announcement - a ten minute oratory extolling life in an apartment development in suburban Jackson Heights, Queens. To most everyone’s surprise, the commercial drew results and the real estate developer came back for more commercials with toll money in hand.
Was WEAF really the first station to broadcast a commercial? Probably not. For many of the country’s financially strapped broadcasters, a little cash was just too tempting to resist in exchange for a few hundred friendly words on behalf of a local merchant. AT&T simply brought the practice into the open. (13) Nevertheless, the need for attractive programming still remained a major problem for most stations. Once again, Ma Bell came to their rescue.
Getting Hear From There. Network Radio began with a five minute experiment on January 4, 1923 - a saxophone solo played over a high quality AT&T long distance telephone wire linking New York’s WEAF with WNAC in Boston.
Six months later AT&T demonstrated the first broadcast quality lines with a network broadcast from the National Electric Light Association’s convention in New York City via WEAF to GE’s WGY/Schenectady and Westinghouse’s KDKA/Pittsburgh and KYW/Chicago. But that kind of cooperation among RCA’s partners didn’t extend very far. AT&T prohibited GE and Westinghouse from using its telephone lines for their own networking experiments.
The two electrical giants considered shortwave transmission to link stations and produced a highly publicized broadcast on November 23, 1923, that reached GE’s KGO/Oakland from Westinghouse’s WJZ/Newark and KDKA/Pittsburgh via a shortwave link in Hastings, Nebraska. But results were spotty. Five months later Western Union lines were used to carry a series of WGY Players performances from Schenectady to RCA’s WJZ/New York City and WRC/Washington, D.C.
David Sarnoff took note of all of this and decided that RCA should become more deeply involved in broadcasting and networking, too. His motivation was the same that made station owners of GE and Westinghouse - to sell radios. RCA and Westinghouse had jointly introduced The Radiola Grand in 1923, the first console radio with a built-in speaker. Radio broadcasts could now be heard simultaneously by the entire family - not just one hobbyist wearing a pair of earphones. The Radiola carried a hefty price tag of $323. Sarnoff knew that no family would spend that kind of money for a radio unless there was something the family wanted to hear. If necessary, he’d try to provide it.
In need of an established station, possibly to anchor a network, RCA purchased WJZ from Westinghouse on May 14, 1923, and moved the Newark facility into New York City. Because AT&T refused to lease its broadcast quality lines to any potential competitor, RCA turned to Western Union’s inferior telegraph lines for its first networking attempts. The experiments were soon abandoned and Sarnoff began investigating some other way - any way - to circumvent AT&T’s tight grip on quality telephone line transmission of chain broadcasts. (14)
More Frequent Frequencies. Airborne chaos resulted from nearly 700 stations that popped up across America in the early 1920’s - all broadcasting was on, (or around or somewhat near), the same, single frequency authorized by the Radio Act of 1912: 618.6 kilocycles. Local stations split time on the frequency, or in some cases, simply attempted to blast over the competition. (15) To get control of the situation, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convened a second National Radio Conference of government and industry representatives on March 20, 1923.
As a result of the Conference, the Commerce Department ordered that effective May 15, 1923, the 550 to 1350 kilocycle band would be reserved for AM broadcast channels separated in steps of ten kilocycles and stations would be assigned frequencies exclusive to their areas. It was an overwhelming job for Hoover’s department to supervise, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, the government had no power to keep stations on their assigned frequencies. It was a situation that would come back to haunt Hoover, Congress and listeners across America.
AT&T Spins Its Webs. While its RCA partners continued to spin their wheels, AT&T continued its pioneer networking. It acquired WCAP/Washington and broadcast the opening of Congress on December 4, 1923, to a seven station network that reached as far west as WFAA/Dallas. AT&T was quickly establishing the use of its lines as the network distribution vehicle of greatest quality, dependability and flexibility.
That same December 4th evening, AT&T’s WEAF introduced The Eveready Hour, named for its sponsor, National Carbon Company's batteries and flashlights. The show is recognized as radio’s first big-time variety program, featuring top Broadway stars. Two months later, February 12, 1924, AT&T put the show on its lines to WJAR/Providence and WGR/Buffalo. The Eveready Hour became the first sponsored program heard simultaneously on a chain - or network - of stations.
AT&T continued to push its networking advantage with broadcasts of the Republican and Democratic national conventions in the summer of 1924, followed by President Coolidge’s inaugural address networked to 24 stations on March 4, 1925. Yet, for all of the company’s achievements in the radio industry, Ma Bell still felt like a wallflower at the Broadcasters Ball.
AT&T Hangs Up. AT&T knew that its activities were always in the gunsights of government trust-busters. Already the owner of the near-monopoly in telephone services and part owner of RCA, a legalized monopoly in broadcasting equipment and services, AT&T decided to play it safe - get out of RCA and abandon station ownership.
After several months of negotiations a deal was announced on November 9, 1926. A new entity, The National Broadcasting Company, was incorporated with owners RCA, (50%), GE, (30%), and Westinghouse, (20%). The new NBC agreed to buy AT&T’s two stations, WEAF/New York City and WCAP/ Washington, D.C., for $1.0 Million
WEAF was designated to become flagship of the new NBC Radio Network because the plum of the package was NBC’s ability to lease AT&T’s broadcast-quality telephone lines for network use. The lease fees were worth untold millions to the telephone company and allowed Network Radio to become a reality and a major industry.
NBC Chimes In. Less than a week later, on November 15, 1926, NBC inaugurated its network service over AT&T lines to 24 stations with an elaborate four hour broadcast originated before a thousand invited guests in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ballroom. (16) The quickly organized network’s publicity department made no secret of the flam-boyant event’s cost, $50,000, of which half was claimed to have been spent on talent.
NBC’s founding President, Merlin (Deac) Aylesworth opened the proceedings with a speech promising a brilliant future for Network Radio. The program celebrated his promise by delivering a variety of the day’s biggest names - Will Rogers, soprano Mary Garden, comedy team Weber & Fields, opera star Titta Ruffo, The New York Symphony, Goldman’s Brass Band, a grand and light opera company, plus the popular dance bands led by Vincent Lopez, George Olson, Ben Bernie and B.A. Rolfe. The marathon program demonstrated Network Radio’s ability to put the world’s most popular talents within earshot of any American who purchased a radio that could receive a station linked to NBC.
In addition, Rogers’ monologue and Garden’s solos originated half a continent away from New York City. (Rogers was appearing in Independence, Missouri and Garden was in a concert tour in Chicago.) This use of reverse telephone lines underscored network flexibility. Any location East of the Rockies was now able to transmit a broadcast quality signal to the rest of the country - and Hollywood was just beyond the mountains and a short time away.
If the objective was to promote radio set sales, the expensive program was worth it. NBC had begun to deliver stars into America’s living rooms absolutely free. Two million homes were added to the ranks of radio households over the following year, an increase that brought the total to almost seven million homes.
NBC paid all the bills for its historic November 15th inaugural broadcast with no advertising support. That altruistic practice ended five weeks later when the network produced a twelve hour special on Christmas Day, December 25, 1926. Some of the talent and segments on the marathon Christmas broadcast indicate who was paying for it: The Colgate Orchestra, The Eveready Novelty Orchestra, B. A. Rolfe’s Coward Comfort Hour Orchestra, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony in the Bakelite Hour and the popular singing duo named for cough lozenges, The Smith Brothers - Trade & Mark.
NBC was in operation for six weeks and finished 1926 without network competition. Then, on January 1, 1927, it introduced its own competitor - but as it turned out, a competitor of only limited degree which served to create another situation that smacked of monopoly.
The Birth of The Blue. When NBC designated WEAF as its New York City anchor station, RCA’s WJZ was left out in the cold without network affiliation along with Westinghouse’s KDKA/Pittsburgh, KYW/Chicago and WBZ/Boston. NBC established its second network to serve those stations plus others around the country which were shut out of the original network service by local competitors - often more powerful stations which snapped up NBC affiliations in their markets.
The WEAF anchored network was identified as NBC’s Red Network and the WJZ group became the NBC Blue Network. (17) NBC promptly made it clear that the two networks would be different - almost identifying Blue as the ugly duckling of the pair. Blue was to be the home of cultural and informational programming and the repository of Red’s leftover programming. In other words, Blue would get Red’s unwanted hand-me-downs. In future years Red also stripped Blue of its most popular programs. Blue wasn’t competition to Red, it was a supplement - and a secondary source of revenue for owner RCA.
The FRC Is Born. The AM band was expanded from 1350 to 1500 kilocycles and 96 channels in April, 1925, but the Commerce Department’s control of radio stations was challenged in Federal Court after The Zenith Radio Corporation arbitrarily moved its WJAZ/Chicago from 930 kilocycles to 910 kc., a frequency reserved for Canadian stations. A Federal Court subsequently ruled that Commerce Secretary Hoover was powerless to do anything about it and in effect, had no real jurisdiction over broadcasting. Meanwhile, the AM band had become a mess of ungoverned cross-talk, distortion and squeals. Secretary Hoover - more importantly citizens who voted - demanded that Congress do something. The lawmakers finally got down to work on the problem on December 8, 1926.
President Calvin Coolidge signed The Radio Act of 1927 into law on February 3, 1927, which established the five-member Federal Radio Commission, patterned after the Interstate Commerce Commission. The FRC was initially given one year to create order from the chaos caused by the country’s 732 radio stations which were all required to file for licenses by January 15, 1928. The FRC‘s life was extended a year as it began review the license applications to meet its now familiar standards, “The public’s interest, convenience and necessity.” Approximately 75 stations were weeded out in the initial process and station operators were getting the message that the FRC meant business.
Elimination of marginal stations continued as the FRC and its staff next set about to restructure the broadcast band. It announced its definitive new plan on August 30, 1928, which categorized frequencies in each of the country’s five regions as Clear, Regional or Local. There was some grumbling and a few lawsuits as many stations were forced to change frequencies and adjust power, but when the reorganization took effect at 3:00 a.m. on November 11, 1928, it was evident that the FRC knew what it was doing from the clear reception afforded the remaining 585 stations. And that dependable clarity elevated radio from the status of a novelty to that of a reliable utility for entertainment and information. (18)
Sarnoff Shouldn’t Have Laughed. It’s a stroke of irony that NBC’s real competitor was also conceived in RCA’s executive suite in 1926 when David Sarnoff rebuffed concert promoter Arthur Judson’s proposal to form an in-house talent agency to manage - and profit from - performers appearing on the NBC’s Red and Blue Networks. Sarnoff added insult to injury when he adopted Judson’s idea as his own and laughed when Judson threatened to retaliate by forming a third radio network.
Judson and his partners promptly did just that, calling their venture the United Independent Broadcasters - an obvious dig at RCA’s monopolistic control of two networks. In constant need of working capital just to get established, Judson’s group went through one investor after another, finally selling their network’s control and naming rights to the Columbia Phonograph Company for start-up expenses of $163,000. Sarnoff could still laugh at the attempt.
The Columbia Phonograph Company Radio Network went on the air September 18, 1927, with 16 affiliates and lots of glowing promises but not enough cash or advertisers to pay the bills. (19) Within days Columbia abruptly withdrew its support and Judson’s search for sponsors and capital resumed. Both were found in Philadelphia.
Paley’s Exploding Cigar Business. Young William S. Paley was the college-educated heir and executive whiz kid of his family’s Congress Cigar Company. He first came to radio in 1927 as an advertiser who saw encouraging results from sponsoring The LaPalina Smoker music programs on WCAU/Philadelphia, the shaky Columbia network’s first affiliate whose owners were among Arthur Judson’s string of investors. Increased sales of his cigars convinced Paley to try advertising on the full Columbia chain. LaPalina sales doubled to a million cigars a week and Paley became a believer in Network Radio.
Paley was a serious listener when the owners of WCAU led by Philadelphia industrialist Jerome Louchheim approached him to buy the network that they had taken over and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System, (CBS). The 26 year old Paley convinced his family to buy CBS for $503,000, on September 12, 1928.
In a related deal, Arthur Judson and Paley created the Columbia Concerts Corporation - a CBS variation of the same talent management idea that Sarnoff rejected and then stole from Judson. Arthur Judson remained with CBS for many years as a major stockholder - sharing in the network’s success and getting the last laugh on Sarnoff.
Columbia, The Gem of Promotion. Bill Paley’s Belarusian parents hailed from Minsk, David Sarnoff’s birthplace. But that’s all the two network moguls had in common. Their backgrounds, education and personalities were totally different. In 1928, Sarnoff was in his forties, an aloof industrialist whose hirelings ran NBC. Paley became an instant and personable hands-on broadcasting executive before he was 30.
Paley immediately toured the stations linked by CBS and renegotiated the affiliate contracts which had financially strapped the network’s former owners. The new agreements, similar to NBC and Blue’s, paid affiliates an average 30% of their published rates their for time given to sponsored network programs. Unsponsored - sustaining - programs were provided by CBS to its stations at no cost.
One of Paley’s first hires was advertising man Paul Kresten who was charged with making CBS appear as successful as NBC with a continual bombardment of press releases and expensive promotional pieces to major newspapers, potential sponsors and advertising agencies. The maneuver worked. CBS began to get noticed in the press and attract sponsor interest. To counter NBC’s programs featuring established stars of vaudeville and movies, Paley was determined to build CBS radio stars from younger, lesser known talent. Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Morton Downey and The Mills Brothers were prime examples. Paley figured that he’d simply steal the really big stars from NBC when he got his network up to full speed. That day came sooner than he thought. (20)
Go West, Young Man! NBC had three major advantages over CBS in the summer of 1929 - plenty of cash, powerful station affiliates on the West Coast and a movie connec-tion thanks to RCA’s part ownership of RKO Radio Pictures. Bill Paley concluded that he needed all three to level the playing field. He caught a train to Los Angeles to get them.
Paley scored on two counts by selling 49% of CBS to Paramount Pictures for $5.0 Million just weeks before the stock market crash of October 29th. Further, it was the promise of a screen test at Paramount that enabled CBS to outfox NBC for Bing Crosby’s debut radio series in 1931. (21)
Paley’s mid-summer visit to LA in 1929 also resulted in a CBS affiliation contract with the Don Lee Network that linked the flamboyant car dealer’s KHJ/Los Angeles and KFRC/San Francisco with a group of key stations up the Pacific coast to Portland, Seattle and Spokane. As a result of Paley and Kresten’s efforts - and the addition of the Don Lee stations - CBS could claim a jump from 17 to 49 affiliates and nationwide coverage for advertisers at the end of 1929.
Nets Set To Go For The Gold. By September, 1932, the two NBC networks had 86 affiliates and the upstart CBS - just four years removed from the brink of bankruptcy - had 84. All would share in 1932's gross network revenues of $37.8 Million - up nearly double from $19.2 Million in just three years.
Young Bill Paley had pulled CBS up from $6.7 Million in 1930 to over $12.6 Million in 1932, still behind NBC’s two-network total that exceeded $25.1 Million. Nevertheless, Paley achieved his level playing field for the ratings and revenue battles that lay ahead.
Over the next 21 years the combined network revenues routinely reached, then far exceeded, $100 Million annually. Is it any wonder it we call it Network Radio’s Golden Age?
(1) FCC and trade press records report that four major radio networks alone generated $2.59 Billion in total revenue during the 21 years of their Golden Age and the entire radio industry collected $6.73 Billion.
(2) The long string of inventors who developed the incandescent light bulb began in 1801 with British inventor Humphrey Davy and continued through the century with James Bowman Lindsey, Warren DeLaRue, Frederick DeMoleyns, John Wellington Starr, Alexander Lodygin, William Sawyer, Albon Mann, Hiram Maxim and finally concluded on December 18, 1878, when British inventor Joseph Swan demonstrated his light bulb and received a patent for it in 1880.
(3) The Ayer agency traced its lineage to 1841’s Volney Palmer Agency which became Joy, Cowe & Sharpe upon Palmer’s death in 1863. Francis Ayer later bought it out to open N.W. Ayer representing its first client The National Baptist Weekly.
(4) Most advertising supported Network Radio programming was produced by agencies. The networks simply provided the studio facilities and fed the programs along leased telephone lines to their affiliated stations for broadcast. But the chains were quick to share in any bragging rights their programs’ popularity achieved and allowed the public to assume that they were responsible for creating them.
(5) Hertz’s early contributions to broadcasting’s fundamental process were honored in 1933 when his name replaced Cycles as the international measurement term of electromagnetic waves - Kilohertz for AM radio frequencies, (one thousand cycles per second), and Megahertz for FM, (one million cycles per second). The United States adopted the term some thirty years later.
(6) Marconi’s title as The Father of Radio has been long debated. One title, however, is indisputable: Marconi was The Father of The Radio Business. He was the first to make real money with the contraption.
(7) Herrold’s backroom operation operating first with the call sign FN, and later SJN, eventually later became KQW/San Jose - today’s KCBS/San Francisco.
(8) Fleming developed the first successful vacuum tube, or diode, in 1904. DeForest is credited with inventing the three-element Audion tube to boost amplification in 1906. Armstrong created the regeneration receiver in 1913 which replaced headphones with speakers and the super heterodyne circuit that simplified dialing in 1919. Armstrong was later granted the first patents for Frequency Modulation, (FM), radio on December 28, 1933.
(9) Sarnoff’s “rags to riches” story has been well documented - and often glamorized by an RCA publicity department eager to please the boss. Sarnoff, it was said, never let facts get in the way of a good story, especially his.
(10) RCA, itself, joined the station ownership ranks for one day, July 2, 1921. As little more than a publicity stunt, the company’s WJY/Newark had but one program: a second hand account of the Heavyweight Championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. The station’s transmitter blew out before the end of the fight. RCA then established WDY in Roselle Park, New Jersey, on December 14, 1921, but folded it on February 24, 1922.
(11) KDKA was preceded in election coverage by Lee deForest’s experimental 2XG/New York City which reported results from the Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Evan Hughes Presidental election for six hours on November 7, 1916, and signed off at midnight declaring Hughes the winner.
(12) The ASCAP situation prompted station owners to organize as the National Association of Broadcasters, (NAB), in April, 1923. The NAB eventually became a powerful lobbying group and ASCAP’s strongest adversary.
(13) The telephone giant attempted briefly to collect license fees from stations who seized on the idea of selling time for survival and potential profit. But that brazen maneuver didn’t last long. Radio station time salesmen soon became as common as newspaper space salesmen, just not as successful - yet.
(14) Sarnoff briefly floated his idea of a network consisting of a group of RCA owned, high powered stations strategically placed in major cities from coast to coast. His concept called “Super Radiocasting” went nowhere.
(15) A second frequency, 750 kilocycles, was added by The National Conference On Radio Telephony in April, 1922, but demand still far out-paced the supply.
(16) Stations carrying the NBC Inaugural: KDKA/Pittsburgh, KSD/St. Louis, KYW/Chicago, WBZBoston, WBZA/Springfield, Massachusetts, WCAE/Pittsburgh, WCCO/Minneapolis-St. Paul, WCSH/Portland, Maine, WDAFKansas City, WDRC/New Haven, WEAF/New York City, WEEI/Boston, WGN/Chicago, WGR/Buffalo, WGY/Schenectady, WHAD/Milwaukee, WJAR/ Providence, WJZ/New York City, WLIT/Philadelphia, WRC/Washington, WSAI/Cincinnati, WTAG/Worcester, WTAM/Cleveland, WTIC/Hartford and WWJ/Detroit.
(17) The color-coded identification reportedly originated with the networks’ telephone line maps drawn in red and blue pencils - or their red and blue connection plugs in NBC master control. Whichever was the case, the idea was to differentiate between the two networks.
(18) The five person Federal Radio Commission remained until The Radio Act of 1927 was replaced by The Communications Act of 1934 and the FRC was succeeded by the seven person Federal Communications Commission.
(19) The original 16 CBS affiliates: WOR/New York City, WMAQ/Chicago, WGHP/Detroit, WCAU/Philadelphia, WJAS/Pittsburgh, KMOX/St. Louis, WNAC/Boston, WMAK/Buffalo, WKRC/Cincinnati, KOIL/Omaha, WOWO/Ft. Wayne, WCAO/Baltimore, WFBL/Syracuse, WEAN/Providence, WADC/Akron and WAIU/Columbus.
(20) Eddie Cantor took his Number One rated show and jumped from NBC to CBS on February 3, 1935. (See The 1934-35 Season on this site.)
(21) Three years later in the Depression year of 1932, CBS and Paramount’s roles were reversed. Movie attendance had fallen 40% and the studios all needed cash to survive. In contrast, the number of radio households had steadily increased to over 16 million - over 55% of the nation’s homes - and CBS was thriving. Paley bought back total control of his network from Paramount for four million dollars - a cool million dollar profit.
This post is in part abridged from Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2012 & 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com