Radio and Television Broadcasting

I

Introduction

Radio and Television Broadcasting, primary means by which information and entertainment are delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world. The term broadcasting refers to the airborne transmission of electromagnetic audio signals (radio) or audiovisual signals (television) that are accessible to a wide population via standard, readily available receivers. The term has its origins in the medieval agricultural practice of “broadcasting,” which refers to planting seeds by scattering them across a field.

Broadcasting is a crucial instrument of modern social and political organization. At its peak of influence in the mid-20th century, radio and television broadcasting was employed by political leaders to address entire nations. Because of radio and television’s capacity to reach and influence large numbers of people, and owing to the limited spectrum of frequencies available, governments have commonly regulated broadcasting wherever it has been practiced. (For more information, see the Regulation of Broadcasting section of this article.)

In the early 1980s, new technologies—such as cable television and videocassette players—began eroding the dominance of broadcasting in mass communication, splitting audiences into smaller, culturally distinct segments. Previously the only means of delivering radio and television to home receivers, broadcasting is now just one of several delivery systems available to listeners and viewers. Sometimes broadcasting is used in a broader sense to include delivery methods such as wire-borne (cable) transmission, but these are more accurately called “narrowcasting” because they are generally limited to paying subscribers.

II

The Emergence of Broadcast Communication

For most of history, long-distance communication depended primarily upon conventional means of transportation. A message could be moved aboard a ship, on horseback, by pigeon, or with a human courier, but in virtually all cases it had to be conveyed as a mass through space like any other material commodity. This basic condition of human communication ended in the 19th century due to a series of technological advances.

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A

Radio Broadcasting

The story of radio begins in the development of an earlier medium, the telegraph, which was the first instantaneous system of information movement. Patented simultaneously in 1837 in the United States by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse and in Britain by scientists Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, the electromagnetic telegraph realized the age-old human desire for a means of communication free from the obstacles of long-distance transportation. The first public telegraph line, completed in 1844, ran 64 km (40 mi) from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse's first message, “What hath God wrought?”—transmitted as a coded series of long and short electronic impulses (see International Morse Code)—conveyed his awareness of the momentous proportions of the achievement.

Telegraphy proved so useful and popular that over the next half century wires were strung across much of the world, including a transatlantic undersea cable (1866) connecting Europe and North America. The instantaneous passage of a message over a distance that required hours, days, or weeks to traverse by ordinary transport was so radically unfamiliar an experience that some telegraph offices collected admission fees from spectators wanting to witness the feat for themselves.

As society began to depend on the telegraph for everything from birthday greetings to the news of momentous events, the limitations of telegraphic communication became apparent. Telegraphy depended on the building and maintenance of a complex system of receiving stations wired to each other along a fixed route and requiring trained operators to transmit and receive messages. The telephone, patented by Scottish-born American inventor Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, made instantaneous communication possible via a desktop appliance available to untrained users. However, it required an even more complex system of wires and switching stations than the telegraph. Neither device could be used by ships at sea or reach the many remote communities that could not afford the costs of lines and stations.

Although neither the telephone nor the telegraph could address large numbers of people simultaneously, mass circulation newspapers and magazines benefited greatly from the two devices, translating wired reports into print for mass consumption. News agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters are still often called wire services, referring to their beginnings as telegraph services.

A

1

Radio Experiments

Scientists in many countries worked to devise a system that could overcome the limitations of the telegraph wire. In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a message in Morse code that was picked up 3 km (2 mi) away by a receiving device that had no wired connection to Marconi's transmitting device. With this transmission, Marconi demonstrated that an electronic signal could be cast broadly (broadcast) through space so that receivers at random points could capture it. The closed circuit of instant communication was at last opened by a so-called wireless telegraph. The invention was also called a radiotelegraph (later shortened to radio), because its signal moved outward in all directions, or radially, from the point of transmission. The age of broadcasting had begun.

Unable to obtain funding in Italy, Marconi found willing supporters for his research in Britain, a country that depended on quick and effective deployment of its worldwide naval and commercial shipping fleets to maintain its empire. Marconi moved to London in 1896 and, with the help of financial backers, founded the British Marconi Company to develop and market his invention for military and industrial uses. Within five years a wireless signal had been transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Newfoundland, Canada. For his work in wireless telegraphy, Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1909.

Within a decade of Marconi’s invention, wireless telegraphy had developed into a basic tool of the world maritime industry. Many countries soon required by law that vessels engaged in international trade have a radio transmitter and a certified operator aboard at all times. In 1904 the United Fruit Company hired American inventor Lee De Forest to help build a series of radio broadcasting stations to increase efficiency in shipping perishable goods, especially bananas, from Central America to the United States. These linked stations, which shared information on weather and market conditions, constituted the first broadcasting network. Public awareness of radio was greatly increased in 1912 with the heavily publicized Titanic tragedy. About one-third of the passengers aboard the sinking ship were rescued after wireless telegraph operators on the North American mainland picked up Titanic’s distress signal and dispatched help to the scene.

The earliest radios were truly wireless telegraphs in that they transmitted and received their messages in Morse code. The work of Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden, later elaborated upon by De Forest, allowed for the broadcast transmission of a wider range of sounds, including the human voice and music. In 1914 American inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong patented the regenerative circuit, an innovation in amplifying radio signals that made broadcasting to the general public possible.

Up to this point, little attention had been given to general consumer applications of the new technology. Nonmaritime broadcasting was dominated by amateur experimenters and hobbyists. In 1909 American entrepreneur Charles Herrold established the Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering in San Jose, California, and he and his students broadcasted news and music to receivers they had placed in local hotel lobbies. Backyard tinkerers all over North America built their own transmitters and used them to voice opinions, pass along information, recite poems, play music, or otherwise entertain their fellow amateur enthusiasts, known as hams. Nonbroadcasters built receiver-only units known as crystal sets. Great pride was taken in homemade equipment, and radio clubs sprang up around the United States. Listening for distant signals, a practice known as “DXing,” became popular and can be thought of as a primitive ancestor of Internet surfing. The U.S. government, which began requiring licenses for radio operators in 1912, issued more than 8,000 licenses to hobbyist broadcasters by 1917.