What was one of the main reasons that led to the formation of radio broadcast networks in the US?

This timeline is provided to help show how the dominant form of communication changes as rapidly as innovators develop new technologies.

A brief historical overview: The printing press was the big innovation in communications until the telegraph was developed. Printing remained the key format for mass messages for years afterward, but the telegraph allowed instant communication over vast distances for the first time in human history. Telegraph usage faded as radio became easy to use and popularized; as radio was being developed, the telephone quickly became the fastest way to communicate person-to-person; after television was perfected and content for it was well developed, it became the dominant form of mass-communication technology; the internet came next, and newspapers, radio, telephones, and television are being rolled into this far-reaching information medium.

Development of Radio
World Changes Due to Radio
Radio Predictions

The Development of Radio

In the years just before World War I, scientists at companies such as American Telephone and Telegraph, General Electric, and Westinghouse and inventors – including Reginald Fessenden, Lee De Forest and Cyril Elwell – were mapping out ways they could develop the potential of wireless communication so it could broadcast more sophisticated messages than the dots and dashes of Morse Code.

By 1914, Fessenden, a Canadian who was once employed in Thomas Edison’s labs, had worked with General Electric to build alternators that could sustain a consistent broadcast wave powerful enough to transmit voices and music over thousands of miles. Radio was developed for its military applications in the pre-World War I years, and the U.S. Navy held the patents.

World Changes Due to Radio

In the boom of the 1920s, people rushed to buy radios, and business and social structures adapted to the new medium. Universities began to offer radio-based courses; churches began broadcasting their services; newspapers created tie-ins with radio broadcasts.

By 1922 there were 576 licensed radio broadcasters and the publication Radio Broadcast was launched, breathlessly announcing that in the age of radio, “government will be a living thing to its citizens instead of an abstract and unseen force.”

Radio was a key lifeline of information for the masses in the years of World War II. Listeners around the world sat transfixed before their radio sets as vivid reports of battles, victories, and defeats were broadcast by reporters including H.V. Kaltenborn and Edward R. Murrow. Franklin D. Roosevelt (at right), Winston Churchill, Adolph Hitler and other political leaders used the medium to influence public opinion.

Past Predictions About the Future of Radio

A Boston Post editorial from 1865:

“Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”

Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, a Scottish mathematician and physicist, is quoted as saying in 1897:

“Radio has no future.”

“If the invention was what he believed it to be, our mariners would have been given a new sense and a new friend which would make navigation infinitely easier and safer than it now was.”

A May 7, 1899 review in the New York Times headlined “Future of Wireless Telegraphy”:

“All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them.”

According to a report in Dunlap’s Radio and Television Almanac, Sir John Wolfe-Barry remarked at a meeting of stockholders of the Western Telegraph Company in 1907:

“…As far as I can judge, I do not look upon any system of wireless telegraphy as a serious competitor with our cables. Some years ago I said the same thing and nothing has since occurred to alter my views.”

A June 1920 article in Electrical Experimenter titled “Newsophone to Supplant Newspapers” reported on an idea for a news service delivered via recorded telephone messages and also predicted the “radio distribution of news by central news agencies in the larger cities to thousands of radio stations in all parts of the world” leading to a time when “anyone can simply listen in on their pocket wireless set.”

H.G. Wells wrote in “The Way the World is Going” in 1925:

“I have anticipated radio’s complete disappearance…confident that the unfortunate people, who must now subdue themselves to listening in, will soon find a better pastime for their leisure.”

In 1913 Lee de Forest, inventor of the audion tube, a device that makes radio broadcasting possible, was brought to trial on charges of fraudulently using the U.S. mails to sell the public stock in the Radio Telephone Company. In the court proceedings, the district attorney charged that:

“De Forest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public…has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company…”

De Forest was acquitted, but the judge advised him “to get a common garden-variety of job and stick to it.”

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Think about radio, and what often comes to mind is the crystal clear music and spoken words broadcast by FM stations across America. But radio wasn't always so advanced -- or so popular. Like many technologies, it evolved gradually and gained acceptance slowly. Today, radio continues to evolve as it competes with other technologies to attract and hold an audience.

The first steps toward inventing radio involved discovering electromagnetic waves and their potential. Hans Christian Oersted was the first to proclaim, in 1820, that a magnetic field is created around a wire that has a current running through it. In 1830, English physicist Michael Faraday confirmed Oersted's theory, and established the principle of electromagnetic induction.  

In 1864, James Clerk Maxwell, an experimental physics professor at Cambridge University, published a theoretical paper stating that electromagnetic currents could be perceived at a distance. Maxwell also boldly postulated that such waves travelled at the speed of light. In the late 1880s, German physicist Heinrich Hertz tested Maxwell's theory. He succeeded in producing electromagnetic waves, and confirmed Maxwell's prediction about their speed. 

Not long after, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, brought electromagnetic waves out of the laboratory and into the world.

He began with short-distance broadcasts in his own back yard. In September, 1899, he astounded the world by telegraphing the results of the America's Cup yacht races from a ship at sea to a land-based station in New York. By the end of 1901, Marconi had founded his own commercial wireless company and broadcast the first transatlantic signal. 

For a time, wireless broadcasts were limited to coded dots and dashes. But on December 24, 1906, Canadian-born physicist Reginald Fessenden changed that by sending the first long-distance transmission of human voice and music from his station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. His signal was received as far away as Norfolk, Virginia. The stage for commercial voice and music broadcasts was set.

A steady stream of inventions pushed radio forward. In 1907, American inventor Lee De Forest introduced his patented Audion signal detector--which allowed radio frequency signals to be amplified dramatically. Another American inventor, Edwin Armstrong, developed the superheterodyne circuit in 1918, and in 1933 discovered how FM broadcasts could be produced. FM provided a clearer broadcast signal than AM, but RCA's top executive, David Sarnoff, was pushing for the development of television. Sarnoff withheld FM from the public for more than a decade.

Still, the public demand for radio grew exponentially. Entertainment broadcasting began in about 1910, and included De Forest's own program, which he aired from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. An entertainment broadcasting venture based in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, became the first commercial radio station, KDKA, in 1920. The station WWJ, in Detroit, Michigan, also one of the firsts, began commercial broadcasting in the same year. Among the early proponents of entertainment broadcasting was Sarnoff, who used radio to create corporate empires at RCA and NBC.

The period between the late 1920s and the early 1950s is considered the Golden Age of Radio, in which comedies, dramas, variety shows, game shows, and popular music shows drew millions of listeners across America. But in the 1950s, with the introduction of television, the Golden Age faded. Still, radio remained a pop-culture force. Developments like stereophonic broadcasting, which began in the 1960s, helped radio maintain its popularity.  

Among contemporary developments in radio is Digital Audio Broadcasting, or DAB. In the works since the late 1980s, it had not received FCC approval as of early 1999. According to proponents, DAB provides compact disc-quality sound without interference at any distance. DAB listeners can also become watchers: information such as programming schedules, and traffic and weather information, can be digitally displayed--on stereo "monitors" or LCD screens. 

Already more than 100 years old, radio is still a powerful force in American life. According to a 1998 Arbitron report, over 95 percent of Americans listen to radio at least once a week. And with new technologies like DAB, the humble radio wave will likely retain its power for some time to come.