The End of the Radio Days of the Past - Essay Example

It is impossible to imagine the world in which technological progress stopped because emergent technology is the guarantee of progressive and more effective development of society first of all. That is why it is an obvious fact that TV followed and eventually replaced radio. TV became the original sequel of radio taking radio’s main audience and announcing the end of the radio days of the past nineteen forties and thirties. In this essay we are going to analyze the reasons that caused the decline of the radio and show the whole process in retrospective. Talking about reasons we cannot take in consideration only technical progress and therefore technical reasons. When one media channel of information for mass perception is changed and replaced by another, not only practical and technical reasons are at hand but also people’s ability to adapt, social challenges, and general mood of the society. Radio was the most widespread, successful, and popular media source in the twenties, thirties, and forties in the United States and Europe. Historical changes and political collapses urged society to develop new and fast means of communication and entertainment. Radio as a mass media instrument quickly developed after the First World War because progress in communication was a necessary tool during the wartime. The Roaring Twenties masterfully inclined the idea of home entertainment and news broadcasting using radio transmissions (Mowitt, 2011) Of course, printing was at the high level too offering their consumers all the necessary package of global events, comic strips, home recipes etc. But with cinema being used only for the art and entertainment, collective consciousness quickly developed a new necessity for the ability to hear everything about anything without a need to leave their house. In 1936 Federal communications Commission’s first chief commissioner Anning S. Prall named radio “a combination of the schoolhouse, the church, the public postrum, the newspaper, the theater, the concert hall – in fact all media devoted to the education and enlightment of the people” (Prall, 1936). Radio was the voice of the world, the voice of the time in the late period of the first half of the twentieth century, century of global and local breakdowns. Radio was used as a generator of public opinion, describing and uniting all classes and groups of people, creating the means of propaganda for the purposes of governments and entertainment for the average citizens. With cinema still being on the low level and considering the cost of its production, radio was the most universal method of broadcasting. People listened to the books and plays instead of going physically, and therefore, obviously more expensively to theaters or buying books in bookstores. The idea of a mass broadcasting was not only cheaper and more effective but more comfortable and useful as well. At the beginning of the century radio had been what later became television and eventually turned into the Internet. So what is it? It is a quick, personal, and unmediated access to the global source of any information of all kinds. Even the difficulties of the World War Two were lived through by people with the help of the radio. But what can serve good purposes can also be utilized for bad: radio also helped to provide mass access and wide public attention to, for example, speeches of Joseph Goebbels, therefore, it was a tool used with huge imagination by different forces with different purposes. “As the world moved toward war in the 1930s, radio broadcasting became an element of national war efforts, used both for domestic morale building and especially for international propaganda. The Axis powers adopted radio first and applied it most effectively. Both the Axis and the Allied powers quickly developed effective monitoring points to listen to and transcribe enemy broadcasts as a means of gathering intelligence.” (Skretvedt, 2014) The whole idea of radio is, in my opinion, firstborn child in an attempt to create a straightforward channel from the heart of the civilization machine to the senses of the average Joe. For the most part of the human history, music or any other sort of scientific or artistic entertainment there was an exclusive privilege for the men with power and those of high class in this world. Creating middle class, taking in consideration expansion of freedoms and total and global human right movements, all people were in need of something in common even as an artificial force altogether. Radio proved to be a basis and ideological platform for this need (Sterling & Kittross, 1990).Radio was a complex sum of America’s love for independent and individual thinking and, therefore, perception of reality. Emphasizing individual choices and opinions, radio thus created templates of different categories of listeners, dividing people not by class or color but by their interests and different needs for entertainment. It is difficult to talk about radio and not talk about brief but active historical period in which its role was most significant. The voices of world’s most powerful and mighty people in that period for the first time in history were not limited by the sizes of colosseums, stadiums or stages. Spirit of the voice of great change was heard all across the nations, Germany heard Hitler, Britain welcomed Churchill during evening dinner and Russian people listened to Stalin dumbfoundedly. “But above all the radio provided a way to communicate like never before. Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’ helped the population feel closer to their president than ever” (Greenfield, 1989). Being more powerful force than printed media, radio became the first part in the chain of mass mediums, later passing this title to the TV. When talking about radio we definitely cannot drop out its huge and dominant contribution to the evolution of music and breaking of totally new genres and movements. With music and talk shows, people were not in need of buying records or do their business in silence, radio served as a good background. To show the significant role of the radio, let’s remember the great hoax of Mr. Orson Welles radio-drama adaptation of H .G. Wells “War of the Worlds”. “Perhaps as many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country.” (Schoenherr, 1999) That can serve as the best example of the influence of the radio on the human mind. The whole story looks totally absurd when you think that despite the fact that nobody had seen or heard actual invasion, so many people really believed in a fiction. It is a classic story and it shows that mass media is a huge power and it can be used mutually for the good or bad purposes, depending on who keeps the tool or, in our case, who pushes the buttons. Second World War stimulated technological progress again while further Cold War provided a need for a more reliable and trustworthy, therefore more powerful, conductor of ideas and information. Winning the war, America entered the period of massive growth, period that we know as “baby boom” (Watson, 1997) So how has TV managed to displace such an effective and popular means of information transfer as radio in the fiftieth? We stated earlier that the progress of technology led to the new checkpoint in the neverending race of industrial and technological progress. But the need for the visual proofs of the new global events, with each side representing them in its own way, Cold War playing with nuclear warheads – all this together provided a basis for a new and of a high quality mass media phenomenon which we all know as television. At first television was not able to give viewers useful and visually adequate material but all statistics and charts show that once the idea of television had been presented, its growth became unstoppable in a scale of geometrical progression (Stephens, 2007). The core of the question is simple – TV has everything what radio has but TV is better because it adds visual content and therefore makes entire material more truthful and reliable. In some way TV proposed a ticket for a place in the first row on a concert, show, movie, sports game – in other words anything. As was with radio, a person once again was not even in need to leave their home. But this time home entertainment was represented on a whole new and different level, entering and opening new era in the world of global mass media communications, offering everyone to become the part of the world without barriers. Television had become cultural force and public attention quickly started moving closer to it. “The televised debates between Kennedy and Nixon were credited with giving JFK a slim election victory.” (Ganzel, 2007) TV took all the responsibilities of radio but also started to create new forms of entertainment and news programs. In the United States the evolution of the world was demonstrated through the national channels, which helped to generate public opinion against communism. The radio days were left in the past but music was still radio’s best offer, for example for those with cars because every car had its own radio. But of course some people were not happy – "I enjoy old radio drama because it appeals to the imagination. I enjoy old radio drama because it forces me to use my imagination. Television gives you too much: you dont use your imagination." (Foley, 2005) The idea of picture and ultimate universal method to show everything somehow could be criticized by those who preferred listening but this is just a matter of choices, like with books or theater. Nevertheless Golden Age of television was in full growth. Bosses and creative directors of three biggest networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) started to create new and imaginative projects among which animation TV-series, drama, and soap-operas were having a huge success combining attention of different kind of viewers(Carothers, 1991). Television adapted ideas from everywhere – radio, theater, cartoons etc. People started talking about television, more TV-sets were bought showing the incredible growth of the whole new and earlier impossible kind of mass media. “Above all, this was the Golden Age of live television, marked by achievement in two distinct types of entertainment: great comedy-variety shows that brought the leading comedians before the national audience, and dramatic showcases that temporarily turned television into a training ground for a generation of gifted writers, producers, and actors.” (MacDonald, 2009) J. Fred MacDonald stated that TV created a new spot for those art performers who wanted their looks to be noticed, which was not possible on radio. So TV programs had become a training area and a good rehearsing stage for those who later became TV-Stars. Talking about movies and films, television united with cinema once again proving its competitive supremacy in comparison with the radio. The whole new shiny concept of the 1950s was asking for the new multitasking tool and family’s best friend. Home TV-Set replaced radio with new variety of choices of entertainment making them not only visual but more original, innovative, imaginative and therefore more interesting (Hilmes & Loviglio, 2002). New world needed new means for staying in touch with what was happening and also distracting modern families from day-to-day problems. Kennedy’s assassination wouldn’t be so horrible if not for all those eyes who seen it on their TV sets and so could feel it better. So radio can appeal only to our hearing when TV is not only hearing but seeing, what can be more obvious? More senses - more comprehension. So among most important reasons of television stepping in the radio’s boots and eventually growing up of them we stated unstoppable technological progress, people’s need for more reliable and various guide in the field of information, and historical need to build stronger public opinion against communist threat in America`s case. These are not all the reasons but, in my opinion, they are most important and showing that the end justifies the means because if there wasn’t a need there wouldn’t be a satisfaction, facts are talking for themselves. References Carothers, D. (1991) Radio broadcasting from 1920 to 1990: an annotated bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing Foley, J. (2005) And Again I Hear: Old time radio and the imagination. Retrieved from: http://www.otrcat.com/old-time-radio-and-the-imagination.html Greenfield, T. (1989) Radio: a reference guide. Chicago: McFarland Press Hilmes, M. & Loviglio, J. (2002) Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. London: Routledge MacDonald, F. (2009) One Nation Under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV. London: Wadsworth Publishing Mowitt, J. (2011) Radio: Essays in Bad Reception. Oakland: University of California Press. Prall, A. (1936) Broadcast live speech Schoenherr, S. (2001) Golden Age of Radio 1935-50. Audio Engineering Society. Retrieved from: http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/recording.technology.history/radio2.html Skretvedt, R. (2014) The end of American radio’s Golden Age, Encyclopedia Britannica Sterling, C. & Kittross, J. (1990) Stay Tuned: a Concise History of American Broadcasting, 2nd ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Pub. Stephens,M. (2007)History of Television, Grolier Encyclopedia. Watson, M. (1997) Defining Visions: television and the American experience since 1945. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell Read More