Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey thereon Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and love all Things tech.
Speaker 1: And in a previous episode just not too long ago,
Speaker 1: I traced the journey of recorded audio and film from
Speaker 1: early commercial efforts up to about nineteen fifty when a
Speaker 1: couple of really big things were happening. So in the
Speaker 1: film industry around the studio system model was broken up
Speaker 1: by the US government because it was monopolistic type of structure.
Speaker 1: Up to that point, movie studios had had kind of
Speaker 1: a death grip on the entire process of producing movies.
Speaker 1: They had everything from exclusive contracts with talent and directors
Speaker 1: and writers, to owning film processing facilities to owning chains
Speaker 1: of movie theaters, so they owned the means of production,
Speaker 1: of distribution, and exhibition, and the studios were able to
Speaker 1: leverage their power through block booking to force independent theater
Speaker 1: owners to agree to screen mediocre films in order to
Speaker 1: get access to the popular movies that people actually wanted
Speaker 1: to see. So they say, oh, if you want big
Speaker 1: tent pole picture, A you're gonna have to take this
Speaker 1: other dozen of you know, mediocre westerns as well. But
Speaker 1: then the Supreme Court waded in and brought all that
Speaker 1: to an end. Now, in the recording industry, the emergence
Speaker 1: of the thirty three and a third and forty five
Speaker 1: RPM records meant that the venerable seventy eight RBM format
Speaker 1: was no longer the only game in town, and micro
Speaker 1: grooves allowed recording studios to fit more audio on each
Speaker 1: side of a record, so that gave birth to the
Speaker 1: long playing album and the forty five single, both of
Speaker 1: which would shape the way music would evolve as well
Speaker 1: as how consumers would access music. That was kind of
Speaker 1: what I ended up talking about in the last one.
Speaker 1: One other thing I did touch upon in the last
Speaker 1: episode was how television was just starting to catch on
Speaker 1: around that same time. Now, technically TV had been around
Speaker 1: in one form or another, mostly in the research and
Speaker 1: development stage, for a couple of decades, but due to
Speaker 1: lots of other things like the Great Depression and World
Speaker 1: War Two, the rollout of television really didn't get started
Speaker 1: in earnest until the late forties and early fifties. TV
Speaker 1: would play a huge role in our relationship with media
Speaker 1: and how we access it. Now, it's do a quick
Speaker 1: jump back to talk about the movie going experience and
Speaker 1: how that changed over time. So we're gonna rewind just
Speaker 1: a bit to go into more of a personal experience
Speaker 1: kind of of of concepts. So, starting around nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: film studios began to produce newsreels in addition to producing
Speaker 1: shorts and features. So these were sort of a predecessor
Speaker 1: to television news programs that would follow a few decades later.
Speaker 1: A newsreel would typically contain numerous stories, ranging from current
Speaker 1: affairs to some rather self serving segments about the entertainment industry.
Speaker 1: So if you were at a Universal owned theater, you
Speaker 1: would likely be seeing some coverage of Universal themed events
Speaker 1: and and movie premieres and that sort of thing. A
Speaker 1: newsreel and a cartoon or two might serve as the
Speaker 1: entertainment before a feature film or maybe even a short film.
Speaker 1: In fact, back in the day, this is where animated
Speaker 1: cartoons really got their start. When Disney started up his
Speaker 1: animation studio, the performance venue for the company's work was
Speaker 1: in theaters. There were no televisions at that point, at
Speaker 1: least not outside those prototype labs. And a few backyard experiments.
Speaker 1: So the early days of Mickey Mouse and other famous
Speaker 1: vintage cartoons were geared towards a theatrical release. You would
Speaker 1: go to a movie theater to see them, So in
Speaker 1: some cities, theater owners would actually open up a dead
Speaker 1: hated theater just to run newsreels and cartoons all day
Speaker 1: long and no feature films at all, so that customers
Speaker 1: could just pay an admission and then drop in to
Speaker 1: catch up on some news, maybe watch a couple of shorts,
Speaker 1: and then leave whenever they wanted. The news reel served
Speaker 1: as a model for documentary films as well as how
Speaker 1: television would first tackle covering the news several decades later.
Speaker 1: Many studios produced newsreels well into the nineteen fifties, but
Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties the practice would come to an
Speaker 1: end of the United States due to television's rise in
Speaker 1: popularity and the shift from film coverage to TV coverage
Speaker 1: of news events. This is probably a good time for
Speaker 1: me to mention a lot of what I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about specifically in these episodes has to do with
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh. That's not to say that important
Speaker 1: things in media weren't happening elsewhere. They absolutely were. In fact,
Speaker 1: the early days of the film industry. The whole film
Speaker 1: industry owes a lot to French entrepreneurs and innovators and inventors,
Speaker 1: but we're largely concentrating on what happened in the US
Speaker 1: because a lot of the business practices and technological developments
Speaker 1: that happened in the States would end up having massive
Speaker 1: impact across the world. Now, before television really got an
Speaker 1: established foothold in homes, going to the movies for a
Speaker 1: lot of families was essentially a weekly event, sometimes more
Speaker 1: than once a week. You would go to the film
Speaker 1: the movies, and along with newspapers and radio, it was
Speaker 1: how you could find out about news events. You could
Speaker 1: see the last in short films and animation. Short films
Speaker 1: gave rise to the establishment of some early franchises like
Speaker 1: Our Gang, which later on was called The Little Rascals.
Speaker 1: Laurel and Hardy got uh famous through short films that
Speaker 1: were shown in front of features. They both Laurel and
Speaker 1: Hardy had both been in lots of movies prior to
Speaker 1: being paired together, but they really found fame as the
Speaker 1: comedy duo. It also helped vaudeville acts like the Three
Speaker 1: Stooges come from the stage to the screen, and so
Speaker 1: movie studios had incredible incentives to produce an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of material to keep tempting people back into the theaters
Speaker 1: because they were going multiple times a week sometimes, So
Speaker 1: some of these movie studios became sort of content farms.
Speaker 1: They were just churning out content. They produce good movies.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of opportunities for filmmakers to get
Speaker 1: movies made, but they also just turned out a lot
Speaker 1: of junk because they needed to fill up all that time.
Speaker 1: But it worked. At the height of the Golden Age
Speaker 1: of cinema, more than eighty million Americans were going to
Speaker 1: the movies at least once per week. And this wasn't
Speaker 1: the era of the blockbuster either. This wasn't when people
Speaker 1: would go back to see the same movie over and over.
Speaker 1: You weren't likely to have the same picture playing in
Speaker 1: a theater for months on end. But again, television would
Speaker 1: change all of that and much of the material that
Speaker 1: has been produced specifically for theaters which shift over to
Speaker 1: TV eventually. Now I bring this up to illustrate how society, entertainment,
Speaker 1: and technology were of folving together over time, and it
Speaker 1: was changing how we access information or entertainment. And here
Speaker 1: we see a shift going from a centralized location, namely
Speaker 1: a movie theater, to accessing the information at home using
Speaker 1: radio and television. Of course, that means we need to
Speaker 1: talk about radio too. That was still a really big
Speaker 1: thing going on in these days, and and so you
Speaker 1: could access news through different radio stations. But the power
Speaker 1: of visuals is a very compelling one for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and that's what film and TV were able
Speaker 1: to capitalize on. So you had these three prongs all
Speaker 1: existing at the same time, and of course they all
Speaker 1: still exist today, and a lot of radio shows and
Speaker 1: radio studios would get directly involved with producing content for television.
Speaker 1: In the United States, the big networks of NBC, CBS,
Speaker 1: and ABC all started as radio networks that more or
Speaker 1: less quickly moved into television production once it was clear
Speaker 1: that TV was viable. That viability had to wait until
Speaker 1: the end of World War two. It just wasn't really
Speaker 1: possible to create a new industry based off a novel technology.
Speaker 1: During the years of the war, governments around the world
Speaker 1: were imposing rationing on various materials, so companies couldn't produce televisions.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get the raw materials needed to make the
Speaker 1: TVs really until after peace was declared. And I should
Speaker 1: also talk about the business side of media for a bit,
Speaker 1: because that's a very important component to all of this.
Speaker 1: The technology obviously enables media, but the business is what
Speaker 1: supports it. Like without the business, there's no there's no media,
Speaker 1: there's no nothing for you to go out and see
Speaker 1: because something has to pay for all of that. Now
Speaker 1: I've covered the business side with film. You know, the
Speaker 1: film studios were making money by essentially owning the whole
Speaker 1: production pipeline and selling blocks of films to theaters, as
Speaker 1: well as taking a share of the box office at
Speaker 1: least until and then the box office theater relationship was
Speaker 1: still important but had changed dramatically. But the movie business
Speaker 1: was a really profitable business for the successful studios at least,
Speaker 1: and block booking meant a studio could make money even
Speaker 1: from a real stinker of a movie, because again, theater
Speaker 1: owners had no choice but to accept those stinkers if
Speaker 1: they also wanted to get the good stuff. But what
Speaker 1: about radio and television. How did they make money? Well,
Speaker 1: let's start with radio. Now, back in the very very
Speaker 1: early days of radio, in the wake of World War One,
Speaker 1: there was no radio advertising. So how do you make
Speaker 1: money with a radio station, assuming you weren't in the
Speaker 1: business of communicating wireless telegrams across the country and acting
Speaker 1: like a communication system. Well, primarily you did it by
Speaker 1: also being in the business of selling radio sets. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you weren't producing radio programs to make
Speaker 1: money directly. You were producing radio programs to create a
Speaker 1: business case to convince customers to buy a radio set.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna buy a radio if there's nothing to
Speaker 1: listen to, So they the companies that were trying to
Speaker 1: sell radios, whether they were manufacturers or retailers, would create
Speaker 1: radio stations in order to create the demand for the
Speaker 1: product they were trying to sell. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of department stores in the United States that sold radio
Speaker 1: sets and also owned a radio broadcast station. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: was a pretty small one that had a very limited range,
Speaker 1: but that was how they convinced people to buy radio sets.
Speaker 1: But there is a big problem with this particular model,
Speaker 1: and you've probably already spotted it. Eventually you're gonna hit
Speaker 1: market saturation, which means everyone who can afford a radio
Speaker 1: has one already, and it's pretty darn hard to convince
Speaker 1: someone to upgrade their radio set if they're old, one
Speaker 1: works just fine. Also, keep in mind that radios were
Speaker 1: really expensive luxuries when they first debuted. They were not cheap.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just go out and buy one for ten bucks.
Speaker 1: They were sometimes hundreds of dollars. And then in August
Speaker 1: nineteen two everything changed, because that's when a New York
Speaker 1: radio station with the station I D of w e
Speaker 1: A F aired the for paid commercial and it was
Speaker 1: for the Hawthorne Court apartments in Jackson Heights. It was
Speaker 1: an innovative approach for the era. A radio station would
Speaker 1: charge people or company's money and in return, those entities
Speaker 1: would get air time on the radio. So the more
Speaker 1: time you wanted, the more you had to pay. The
Speaker 1: company running w e A F was at the time
Speaker 1: A T and T, and A T and T had
Speaker 1: already established the same sort of concept. They applied it
Speaker 1: to long distance phone calls. You guys might not remember this,
Speaker 1: and the older ones of us remember quite well, but
Speaker 1: back in the old days, you had to pay for
Speaker 1: long distance calls, and the amount you paid would depend
Speaker 1: upon how long you're on the phone, and we still
Speaker 1: sometimes see this with many providers when it comes to
Speaker 1: international calls. At least, if you happen to be the
Speaker 1: one traveling internationally, then you want to use a cell
Speaker 1: phone on our partnered service. But these days you don't
Speaker 1: really hear about paid long distance that much any But
Speaker 1: in the day that that was true, and the longer
Speaker 1: you stay on the phone, the more you would owe
Speaker 1: the phone company. Well, this was the same idea, but
Speaker 1: applied to radio stations. The W E a F model
Speaker 1: would spread far and wide, with other radio stations following suit. Now,
Speaker 1: this in turn created a new need in the industry.
Speaker 1: Stations needed to get an idea about how many people
Speaker 1: were tuning into their programs, because the more people that listened,
Speaker 1: the more valuable that block of programming would be. Right,
Speaker 1: and then the more money a station could charge for airtime.
Speaker 1: The station could say, well, if you want to air
Speaker 1: a commercial during this block of programming, we know that
Speaker 1: that's our most popular block, and therefore there's a premium
Speaker 1: on running ads there. But on the flip side, your
Speaker 1: ad will reach way more people than if you chose
Speaker 1: to to advertise during one of these less popular blocks
Speaker 1: of programming. You know, that's a basic idea, but first
Speaker 1: you have to measure that. You have to get those metrics.
Speaker 1: So that created a new industry. It allowed companies like
Speaker 1: Nielsen to step in and measure radio consumption. The Nielsen
Speaker 1: Company had been in the business of retail and consumer
Speaker 1: studies for more than a decade when in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six it purchased the rights to a device called the autometer.
Speaker 1: And an autometer would allow like if it's connected to
Speaker 1: a radio, it would actually record when that radio was on,
Speaker 1: so when it was powered on, and it would also
Speaker 1: register what station the radio had been tuned to. So
Speaker 1: Nielsen would use that to establish a radio index, and
Speaker 1: Nielsen could provide information to radio stations and let them
Speaker 1: know about which programs were the most popular, usually extrapolating
Speaker 1: the data from their their findings, so they would say
Speaker 1: that one radio would represent a certain percentage of radios
Speaker 1: for the entire region. They wouldn't have full granular detail
Speaker 1: of every single radio within a given area, so they'd
Speaker 1: have to kind of you know, there's some guestimation that
Speaker 1: happens with this, but those in charge of radio programming
Speaker 1: could then use that information and they could experiment. They
Speaker 1: could move programs around and try to find out which
Speaker 1: time slots worked best for different types of shows and
Speaker 1: thus maximize their effect You know, you might find out
Speaker 1: that one program works pretty well in the morning, but
Speaker 1: it tanks in the afternoon, so it tells you, well,
Speaker 1: we want to shift that to the morning to maximize
Speaker 1: its effectiveness. Then they could turn things over to the
Speaker 1: sales side of the business, and the sales team could
Speaker 1: determine what the best advertising rates they could use that
Speaker 1: the market would support for those different programs. In addition
Speaker 1: to running ads during or between programs, radio shows also
Speaker 1: experimented with something that you'll hear in a lot of
Speaker 1: podcasts and also online video series, and that's sponsored content.
Speaker 1: In the early days of radio, station owners were trying
Speaker 1: all sorts of different ways to incorporate ads without making
Speaker 1: the audience so irritated that they stopped listening, something we
Speaker 1: in the podcasting world still deal with today. So some
Speaker 1: shows were sponsored by a company outright and at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, and maybe during station identification breaks,
Speaker 1: you would hear someone's saying the company's name, like this
Speaker 1: brought to you by such and such, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: would be associated with an entire block of programming, like
Speaker 1: you might have the Texico Star Theater, and some radio
Speaker 1: shows would actually work in references to sponsors within the
Speaker 1: program itself, though it is far more common to hear
Speaker 1: an ad before, after, or in the break of a program.
Speaker 1: Turns out a lot of people get a little stevie
Speaker 1: if you try to work and add into the content
Speaker 1: of a program itself. The ads of radio would set
Speaker 1: the ground for similar ads on television decades later, and
Speaker 1: if you had a radio or later a television, you
Speaker 1: could access all of the programming in the broadcast range
Speaker 1: for free. In other words, if your antenna could pick
Speaker 1: it up, you could watch it. There are no scrambled
Speaker 1: channels or anything like that for as far as entertainment goes,
Speaker 1: and all you had to do in return was watch
Speaker 1: or listen to a few ads. Of course, this was
Speaker 1: after you had already ponied up the cash of that
Speaker 1: was required to actually buy the radio or television set
Speaker 1: in the first place, which was quite a bit of money.
Speaker 1: In the early days. We got a lot more to
Speaker 1: talk about as far as the business, tech and consumption
Speaker 1: of media is concerned, but first, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to think our sponsor. Okay, So now we've got
Speaker 1: the business of film, radio, and TV in the early
Speaker 1: days covered. As television emerged after World War Two, it
Speaker 1: was forcing the film industry to change. The birth of
Speaker 1: TV news would kill off news reels for the most part,
Speaker 1: but that was just one small way that DV was
Speaker 1: causing waves, and television was helped by another trend, a
Speaker 1: move to the suburbs. So there were a combination of
Speaker 1: external forces that changed the economic status of lots of
Speaker 1: Americans in the years following the First World War. So
Speaker 1: let's walk through those because all of these are important
Speaker 1: for us to understand why things happened the way they did,
Speaker 1: and in turn, the way the economic shift happened shape
Speaker 1: the way media would change, and it shaped the way
Speaker 1: we would consume media. So all of these fit together.
Speaker 1: It's a real big picture kind of approach. So you
Speaker 1: had the Great Depression, which was essentially twenty to thirty nine,
Speaker 1: and that had forced a lot of people around the world,
Speaker 1: not just in the United States, to do the best
Speaker 1: they could to save every penny possible because it was
Speaker 1: a very uncertain economic world out there and everyone was
Speaker 1: terrified of being destitute, and lots of people were struggling
Speaker 1: trying to make ends meet during that that decade. So
Speaker 1: that had really instilled a sense of responsibility with money
Speaker 1: to the point where people were, you know, sitting on
Speaker 1: money that they wouldn't spend because they felt that they
Speaker 1: were going to need it later. Then you had World
Speaker 1: War Two that happened that ended up making a big
Speaker 1: industrial boom because obviously the to support the war effort,
Speaker 1: lots of factories would convert over to working on military
Speaker 1: projects and ended up hiring a lot of people, many
Speaker 1: women for example, in order to come in and fulfill
Speaker 1: those needs while a lot of men were off to
Speaker 1: fight the war. The soldiers returning home from World War
Speaker 1: Two did so to families that had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a nest egg because the women had been working
Speaker 1: while the men were gone. And people have been saving
Speaker 1: since the Great Depression, So now you had some disposable
Speaker 1: income going on. And one of the big purchases families
Speaker 1: made in the following years, you know, after World War Two,
Speaker 1: were homes out in the suburbs. The suburban population in
Speaker 1: the United States grew by forty three percent between the
Speaker 1: year's nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty three, and it
Speaker 1: was helped in large part by the Servicemen's Readjustment Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty four, better known as the g I Bill,
Speaker 1: and the g I Bill provided benefits to World War
Speaker 1: Two veterans that those benefits included low cost mortgages and
Speaker 1: one year of unemployment compensation, among many other benefits. At least,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be white, you would get those benefits.
Speaker 1: Black veterans found it much more difficult to get access
Speaker 1: to the benefits their white counterparts parts were getting. They
Speaker 1: were completely uh owed those benefits they were they were
Speaker 1: you know, so they met all the requirements to get them.
Speaker 1: But the the distribution of benefits was largely a local concern,
Speaker 1: not a federal concern, and a lot of local governments
Speaker 1: were not so concerned about granting those benefits out to
Speaker 1: non white veterans. Now, there's a lot to unpack there,
Speaker 1: and obviously the story goes much much more deeply than that,
Speaker 1: but it does lead into some very important discussions about
Speaker 1: social movements in general. And it's probably a topic for
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. But I want to
Speaker 1: a knowledge that the social structure of the time didn't
Speaker 1: account for or keyter to a sizeable part of the population.
Speaker 1: We're talking ten or so of the population at the time.
Speaker 1: That's that's significant. Uh So when I start talking about
Speaker 1: people having disposable income and everything, I'm really talking primarily
Speaker 1: about white families because they were the ones who were
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of this government program more in
Speaker 1: far greater numbers and percentages than non white uh families.
Speaker 1: So the suburb suburbs were very different from cities. Right.
Speaker 1: You were no longer living in a dense urban environment.
Speaker 1: You had uh this larger population living further out from
Speaker 1: the infrastructure of urban areas. So suburbs rarely had access
Speaker 1: to mass transportation. Theaters were almost exclusively in cities, so
Speaker 1: getting to a theater was no longer as convenient for
Speaker 1: a lot of Americans. In fact, a lot of the
Speaker 1: big movie houses, the big classic movie houses that had
Speaker 1: been built in the twenties, thirties and forties, started to
Speaker 1: close around this time because there were fewer people to
Speaker 1: fill them out. They people were out in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: not in the cities. So television was really in a
Speaker 1: good place and was poised to help fill the gap.
Speaker 1: People still wanted entertainment, but they didn't want to necessarily
Speaker 1: have to leave their home, travel for a significant amount
Speaker 1: of time to get to a movie theater and then
Speaker 1: go see a film. Uh television mint you could get
Speaker 1: that entertainment right in your own home, at least some entertainment,
Speaker 1: not exactly the same stuff that was in the theaters.
Speaker 1: Movie studios we're seeing profits drop as more people moved
Speaker 1: away from urban centers. Meanwhile, starting in nine, you had
Speaker 1: several major television networks that began to broadcast a full
Speaker 1: schedule during prime time viewing hours, and the movie studios
Speaker 1: had really two choices. They could try to beat them,
Speaker 1: or they could try to join them. So programs like
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy were gathering a pretty big audience. In fact,
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy would be ranked the number one show
Speaker 1: in popularity for four out of its first six seasons,
Speaker 1: and color television was coming up pretty soon as well,
Speaker 1: so the movie studios decided to join them, and soon
Speaker 1: studios were buying up television production and broadcast studios, so
Speaker 1: movie they were trying to do for the TV industry
Speaker 1: what they had already done for the film industry. And
Speaker 1: then the Supreme Court decision came in and broke up
Speaker 1: the movie studios, and essentially they also said, hey, you
Speaker 1: can't do to TV what you did to film. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're gonna reverse some of what you've done to the
Speaker 1: film industry and we're gonna prevent you from doing that
Speaker 1: with the television industry. The FCC could deny companies a
Speaker 1: TV broadcast license if those companies have been found guilty
Speaker 1: of engaging in monopolistic practices, which included all of the
Speaker 1: movie studios. So they wouldn't be allowed to create broadcast
Speaker 1: stations themselves. Though they could create television production studios. They
Speaker 1: can make content end they just couldn't own again, they
Speaker 1: couldn't own the content production, the processing, and the distribution
Speaker 1: and the exhibition of it. They could focus on one
Speaker 1: of those, and they focused on the content part, and
Speaker 1: so they could create content for other television stations to broadcast,
Speaker 1: and that helped diversify movie studios. They were no longer
Speaker 1: focusing just on films, and it also meant that they
Speaker 1: were able to remain relevant longer because without that, there
Speaker 1: was a real fear that TV was going to kill
Speaker 1: the film industry, that no one would bother going to
Speaker 1: the movie theater because they all would have television at home.
Speaker 1: That need was made more clear as the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: went on because another big event in American politics was
Speaker 1: unfolding that would have a huge impact on the film industry.
Speaker 1: And that's what we would now call McCarthy is um So.
Speaker 1: Joe McCarthy, a U S. Senator, led the charge in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. In the nineteen fifties against perceived threats to
Speaker 1: the American way. And so this was during the Cold
Speaker 1: War when the United States and then USSR we're racing
Speaker 1: to establish themselves as the dominant world power. And McCarthy
Speaker 1: shook up the United States by leading an investigation that
Speaker 1: stemmed from a list of alleged members of the Communist
Speaker 1: Party in the United States, and he framed it as
Speaker 1: a national security threat, essentially saying, these people are spying
Speaker 1: on behalf of the U. S. SR. The government established
Speaker 1: the House on American Activities Community Committee or h u
Speaker 1: a C. That committee conducted investigations and held interrogations of
Speaker 1: lots of accused communists, including many prominent individuals in the
Speaker 1: media industry, actors, writers, directors, lots of people in that
Speaker 1: industry began to find themselves blacklisted, and which meant that
Speaker 1: they could no longer work in that industry at all.
Speaker 1: No studio would touch them. Others would leave the movie
Speaker 1: industry to go seek work and television. And by others
Speaker 1: I mean people who had not been accused of being
Speaker 1: a communist. They kind of proactively got out of film
Speaker 1: because they saw as an industry that was in danger
Speaker 1: and television was the new star on the rise, so
Speaker 1: they wanted to hitch their wagons to this this this horse.
Speaker 1: I'm mixing metaphors left and right. I apologize for that,
Speaker 1: but like I said, that seemed to be on the
Speaker 1: up and up. It seemed to be getting ready to
Speaker 1: really emerge and become dominant, where whereas the film industry
Speaker 1: was starting to decline. Now, while movie studios diversified in
Speaker 1: an effort to remain relevant, they also sought out ways
Speaker 1: to differentiate film content from television content. Television had to
Speaker 1: follow in the US a new way had to adhere
Speaker 1: to specific regulations f c C regulations, and those grew
Speaker 1: out of a pretty puritanical morality code. It meant that
Speaker 1: the content on television had to largely be sanitized and
Speaker 1: family friendly. Uh. You could not go beyond that, or
Speaker 1: else you were risking getting fined by the FCC. So
Speaker 1: that meant that the broadcast stations had to keep everything
Speaker 1: pretty squeaky clean. For the most part. Movies had a
Speaker 1: similar set of standards that they were supposed to follow
Speaker 1: or else face the possibility of censorship. The original code
Speaker 1: for films was called the Haze Code or production code
Speaker 1: that was established uh early in movie history, around nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two. And the reason why it came into being
Speaker 1: in the first place is because right around nineteen two,
Speaker 1: a whole mess of scandals were breaking out around Hollywood
Speaker 1: and it was raising a lot of concerns that the
Speaker 1: movie industry was inherently immoral and it was corrupting people,
Speaker 1: and not just the people in the industry, but possibly
Speaker 1: people watching the films, that the vile behaviors of some
Speaker 1: of the Hollywood elite would seep through the cinema and
Speaker 1: infect the minds of good, decent Americans who were just
Speaker 1: sitting there trying to watch a movie. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of very serious scandals. I'm not just
Speaker 1: talking about lighthearted stuff. I mean there were, you know,
Speaker 1: murders and sue asides and drug use and lots of dark,
Speaker 1: dark stuff in those early Hollywood days. So the code
Speaker 1: was kind of meant to counteract that, and it was
Speaker 1: a list of suggestions, essentially guidelines of stuff you should
Speaker 1: and should not do. But the code wasn't really enforced
Speaker 1: either when it first was was enacted, and movie studios
Speaker 1: rarely paid more than lip service to it. But then
Speaker 1: Will Hayes, the guy that the act is is, or
Speaker 1: the code is often referred to, you know Hayes Code.
Speaker 1: He was the Postmaster General back at this time. He
Speaker 1: had proposed the guidelines. He began to threaten studios with
Speaker 1: official government censorship, and that changed everything. If studios were told, hey,
Speaker 1: if you don't if you don't obey by these guidelines,
Speaker 1: we're not going to let your movies go into theaters,
Speaker 1: then the movie studios would be out all the money
Speaker 1: at costs to produce those films. They'd never be able
Speaker 1: to recapture those costs, so they felt forced to follow
Speaker 1: the Production Code. Now, that code, like the FCC regulations
Speaker 1: for television, was really puritanical at first. So for example,
Speaker 1: one of the rules was quote the sympathy of the
Speaker 1: audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: evil or sin end quote. So following such a rule
Speaker 1: means that you wouldn't be able to make a film
Speaker 1: with a sympathetic villain, at least not without running in
Speaker 1: danger of violating this code. The villain had to clearly
Speaker 1: be in the wrong. The audience was supposed to want
Speaker 1: to see the villain get taken down and not feel
Speaker 1: anything other than joy when it happened. Films weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to have nudity or any suggestive content. There weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be any depictions of illicit drug use. And also, uh,
Speaker 1: there were some things that went beyond puritanical to just
Speaker 1: playing you know, racists, like there were supposed to be
Speaker 1: no depictions of interracial romance in film under the Hayes Code. Now,
Speaker 1: the Hayes Code was tweaked several times as social morays changed.
Speaker 1: Film studios wanted to cater to audiences, and the audience
Speaker 1: tastes had changed over time, and yet this code still existed,
Speaker 1: so they did their best to kind of change things
Speaker 1: around a little bit. Uh. Studios were also struggling to
Speaker 1: attract audiences, so there was a greater need to cater
Speaker 1: to their wants, and some filmmakers went so far as
Speaker 1: to completely ignore the code since it was technically a
Speaker 1: voluntary code, so they were running the risk of having
Speaker 1: their films denied the chance to be screened in theaters,
Speaker 1: but they were making what they wanted to make. Now,
Speaker 1: in some cases, theaters would refuse to show the films
Speaker 1: and they just wouldn't get screened. But in other cases,
Speaker 1: the demand for the film was so high because people
Speaker 1: had heard about it and they really wanted to see it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't that the film was like salacious or lascivious.
Speaker 1: It was that the movie was gritty but really good.
Speaker 1: Theaters would get enough demand where they would show it
Speaker 1: even without the official seal of approval that indicated the
Speaker 1: movie adhered to the Haze code. And there were some
Speaker 1: movies that even got nominated for Oscars that fell into
Speaker 1: this category. And again that showed that if the movie
Speaker 1: was considered good enough to be a a paragon of
Speaker 1: the art form, then the code needed to be changed.
Speaker 1: So it stayed in place. Uh you know, it was
Speaker 1: tweeked several times, but stayed in place still. Nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: that's when the motion picture Association of America came up
Speaker 1: with a an alternative system, a system of voluntary film ratings,
Speaker 1: and that's the system we're familiar with today. So in
Speaker 1: that case, movie studios could push the limits of what
Speaker 1: could be shown on a movie screen, and then they
Speaker 1: would get rated by a committee, and the rating would
Speaker 1: tell audiences what they could expect in such a film,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't restrict the filmmakers over what they could
Speaker 1: include in their movies. The filmmakers could put whatever they
Speaker 1: wanted in the film. It's just that that would you know,
Speaker 1: if it was super dark or super sexual in nature,
Speaker 1: then they would get a rating that would buy its
Speaker 1: very nature limit the number of people who would see
Speaker 1: the movie. So the that would help regulate the industry
Speaker 1: in a different way. Studios would make calculated risks about
Speaker 1: what kind of films they wanted to produce, and if
Speaker 1: they thought, well, this is a really gritty film, but
Speaker 1: it's going to attract a big adult audience, that's fine,
Speaker 1: they would go forward with it. So movies became more violent,
Speaker 1: they began to include sexual situations, and they were typically
Speaker 1: able to include material that television could not include. So
Speaker 1: that was one way that again media changed because of technology.
Speaker 1: The television industry was taking was, at least in theory,
Speaker 1: taking ticket sales away from the movies. But then the
Speaker 1: movies were able to offer something that television couldn't. Now
Speaker 1: by that point, more than half the homes in America
Speaker 1: had televisions in them, and so the film industry's migration
Speaker 1: to more gritty content was a necessary move to survive
Speaker 1: in that era of television. Movie studios were producing some
Speaker 1: of the TV shows that we're making it to broadcast,
Speaker 1: and we're becoming media conglomerates in the process. This would
Speaker 1: continue on over the following years, and it also would
Speaker 1: include stuff not just movie and television, but also obviously
Speaker 1: music label record recording studios, that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: you would end up having these conglomerates that would cover
Speaker 1: all forms of entertainment. Um, we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in future episode. Movie studios also brought in revenue by
Speaker 1: licensing their respective back catalogs of films for television syndication.
Speaker 1: So back to television for a bit. Like radio, television
Speaker 1: studios depended upon advertising dollars for revenue. The first TV
Speaker 1: ad to ever air did so way back in when
Speaker 1: only a few thousand television sets were in the United
Speaker 1: States and it was for Boulova watches. And this ad
Speaker 1: only aired in New York and it lasted a whopping
Speaker 1: ten whole seconds. It costs less than ten dollars to make.
Speaker 1: No telling how effective that ad was, but it was
Speaker 1: a a not really an indicator for what was going
Speaker 1: to come next. So by the nineteen fifties, lots of
Speaker 1: brands were sponsoring blocks of programming very similar to what
Speaker 1: was happening in radio. So you might hear about I
Speaker 1: Love Lucy sponsored by Philip Morris, for example. In two
Speaker 1: the first commercial for a toy ever aired. That toy
Speaker 1: would be Mr Potato Head, which in those days consisted
Speaker 1: of just a collection of pieces. You wouldn't get a
Speaker 1: big plastic potato. Instead, you would use those pieces and
Speaker 1: attach those to a real potato. Potato was not included.
Speaker 1: The commercial helped push the toy to great success, and
Speaker 1: it really showed that advertising was a very effective way
Speaker 1: for manufacturers to boost sales of their products. And there
Speaker 1: were two ways you could get a television broadcast in
Speaker 1: the early days of television. Really around again night that
Speaker 1: was a really important year in media in general. That's
Speaker 1: when you're looking at you know, the records UH changing formats,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the studio system getting broken up. But
Speaker 1: it was also the way that you started to see
Speaker 1: differentiation of getting television. One way to get TV was
Speaker 1: to use an antenna for over the air broadcasts, so
Speaker 1: you're picking up the television signals over the air. So
Speaker 1: I can remember adjusting the bunny ear antenna on our
Speaker 1: television lots of times as a kid in an effort
Speaker 1: to improve incoming signal. But the other way you could
Speaker 1: get television signals, which dates all the way back to
Speaker 1: nineteen gate, is cable television. Now, it's different from what
Speaker 1: we think of as cable TV today. Cable TV did
Speaker 1: not debut as a competitor with broadcast television right away.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't have UH content specifically made for
Speaker 1: cable TV for decades. Instead, it was created to address
Speaker 1: a particular technological challenge. People who lived in remote areas
Speaker 1: far from broadcast stations would frequently have trouble picking up
Speaker 1: over the air signals. They would buy a television that
Speaker 1: they weren't getting a strong and the signal to be
Speaker 1: able to watch anything. One way to fix that problem
Speaker 1: was to have a group get together or maybe a
Speaker 1: company form to erect a large antenna, typically on an
Speaker 1: elevated region that would be able to pick up broadcast
Speaker 1: signals from far away, and then run physical cables from
Speaker 1: this antenna or the station connected to the antenna down
Speaker 1: to televisions that belonged to customers who would subscribe to
Speaker 1: this convenient service, and boom cable television. So let's say
Speaker 1: you live out in the sticks and you pay a
Speaker 1: small fee to someone who owns a really big antenna,
Speaker 1: and they run a cable out to your house, and
Speaker 1: so you can watch the same stuff that you would
Speaker 1: be able to watch if your antenna could just pick
Speaker 1: up those those broadcast signals. Cable actually debuted in three
Speaker 1: separate areas of the United States right around the same time.
Speaker 1: Those three areas where Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Oregon. Then it
Speaker 1: moved into major metropolitan areas over the following decade. Many
Speaker 1: cities had similar problems to remote areas. If you happen
Speaker 1: to live in the shadow of a really big building
Speaker 1: that stands stands between you and a broadcast signals origin,
Speaker 1: you might have trouble getting that broadcast signal. So cable
Speaker 1: companies began to rise up, giving concern to broadcast stations.
Speaker 1: The concern deepened when as cable companies erected better antenna's,
Speaker 1: they discovered they could pick up broadcasts from different regional
Speaker 1: markets and deliver all of those to the cable company's customers.
Speaker 1: And now it actually was an advantage to have cable
Speaker 1: over just broadcast antenna. And there were TV companies that
Speaker 1: protested the rise of pay TV or subscription based cable. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: consumers were getting access to more programming from different regions. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, to explain this, because these antenna were
Speaker 1: so big and capable of picking up UH signals much
Speaker 1: better than your your television's little antenna, you could sometimes
Speaker 1: pick up programming meant for a totally different market. So
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, we might pick up stuff that was
Speaker 1: being broadcast in Chattanooga, for example, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and that
Speaker 1: would mean that we could watch channels that were regional
Speaker 1: to Atlanta as well as those for for Chattanooga. Some
Speaker 1: stuff would probably be duplicated, you know, you'd watch a
Speaker 1: program that is is shown on both affiliates of the
Speaker 1: same network, and some stuff would be local, so you'd
Speaker 1: be able to watch the local programming for both Atlanta
Speaker 1: and Chattanooga. This was actually a problem, but we'll get
Speaker 1: into more about that in just a second. The first
Speaker 1: color television program to be broadcast was a CBS program
Speaker 1: and actually aired on June ninety one. It was not
Speaker 1: exactly a global or even a nationwide event because the
Speaker 1: broadcast was only compatible with CBS designed color TVs, which
Speaker 1: used an electro mechanical design, and I talked about this
Speaker 1: not too long ago in the r c A episodes.
Speaker 1: In fact, only twelve televisions in all of America were
Speaker 1: able to pick up and display this program, so it
Speaker 1: would be a while before color television would become a standard,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be CBSS model that would do it. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're talking about our CIA's electronic approach to color television,
Speaker 1: which would win out over cbs is design due to
Speaker 1: lots of different reasons. Again I had covered this in
Speaker 1: the r c A episodes. One of those reasons was
Speaker 1: another war, this time the Korean War, which impacted CBS
Speaker 1: ability to manufacture their color television sets and gave our
Speaker 1: c A enough time to perfect the electronic approach, or
Speaker 1: at least perfected enough to make it a practical alternative
Speaker 1: to CBS is design, and again there was a need
Speaker 1: to create content in a color format to drive demand
Speaker 1: for color television sets. Adoption of color television was pretty slow,
Speaker 1: largely because of two problems. Color TVs were more expensive
Speaker 1: than black and white sets, and there just wasn't much
Speaker 1: color television programming to watch, so that would be the
Speaker 1: next problem that the industry would have to solve. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more in just a second, but let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break. NBC became the first television network to offer
Speaker 1: live broadcasts in color, starting in nineteen fifty four. NBC's
Speaker 1: parent company r C, a Radio Corporation of America, had
Speaker 1: a vested interest, seeing as how it had essentially established
Speaker 1: the color television standard and was in the business of
Speaker 1: manufacturing color television sets. But color broadcasts were special events
Speaker 1: for nearly a decade. It wasn't until the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: that a million color television sets had been purchased by
Speaker 1: American consumers and created enough of a demand to justify
Speaker 1: color television production on a grand scale. One company to
Speaker 1: jump to the challenge was Walt Disney Productions. The Disney
Speaker 1: studio was navigating the same choppy waters as other film studios,
Speaker 1: with added challenges that come along with building a business
Speaker 1: on the relatively expensive art form of animation. Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Productions produced a television anthology series. It originally aired on ABC,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen sixty one they would jump on over
Speaker 1: to NBC to produce The Wonderful World of Color because
Speaker 1: NBC was capable of broadcasting and color to a large market.
Speaker 1: That series helped convince more Americans to invest in purchasing
Speaker 1: color televisions, and that created more pressure on the other
Speaker 1: networks and production studios to upgrade and start producing more
Speaker 1: content and color. The NBC by the mid sixties said
Speaker 1: it was the all color network and like almost a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of its programming was in color at that point,
Speaker 1: but the process to go to full color took a really,
Speaker 1: really long time, with some regional broadcasts remaining in black
Speaker 1: and white until the late nineteen seventies. So this wasn't
Speaker 1: like a flip a switch and everything changes kind of moment.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Wizard of Oz where it goes from black
Speaker 1: and white to color in an instant. Back to cable
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, the Federal Communications Commission stepped in
Speaker 1: to regulate cable television. So the FCC forces cable operators
Speaker 1: to blackout programming that was picked up from distant markets
Speaker 1: if it duplicated the programming from a local station within
Speaker 1: the cable company service area, and that was only if
Speaker 1: the local station requested it. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: I'm running an Atlanta ABC affiliate and I happen to
Speaker 1: know there's a cable company that is picking up my
Speaker 1: signal and giving it to people who are in my
Speaker 1: service area, but they just can't pick up my broadcast signal,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But then if I find out they're also
Speaker 1: serving up Chattanooga's signal and Chattanooga has some of the
Speaker 1: duplicate programming as Atlanta, you know, the Chattanooga ABC is
Speaker 1: showing some of the same shows that I'm showing, I
Speaker 1: could demand that those programs get blacked out of the
Speaker 1: offering from that cable company. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is again advertising, right, Like I, I depend on ads
Speaker 1: to generate revenue for my business. If it turns out
Speaker 1: that people in my service area are able to watch
Speaker 1: the same programming but on another provider, then they're not
Speaker 1: watching my channel. I can't use their demographic to help
Speaker 1: set a sales price for my advertising fees, and so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to sell advertising for lower than I
Speaker 1: would otherwise. So that was considered an unfair practice. It
Speaker 1: was it was harming the businesses efforts to do business.
Speaker 1: So the FCC said, all right, well, if you complain,
Speaker 1: if you if you file a complaint about this, then
Speaker 1: we will certainly step in and tell the station cut
Speaker 1: it out, you know, block out the Chattanooga ABC affiliate
Speaker 1: for the duplicate programming and just allow the local programming
Speaker 1: and that's it. In nine seventy, the first cable television
Speaker 1: network's debut, and that was another huge game changer. So
Speaker 1: up until this point, cable had been all about distributing
Speaker 1: over the air signals to people who otherwise had trouble
Speaker 1: picking up those signals. But now production companies were looking
Speaker 1: into creating studios specifically to produce content for cable. So
Speaker 1: this wasn't capturing over the air broadcast and then uh
Speaker 1: sending it to people who otherwise couldn't get it. This
Speaker 1: was creating content specifically for those people who were using cable.
Speaker 1: Cable would allow for a new type of television pay
Speaker 1: TV networks, so unlike a broadcast network, which was free
Speaker 1: to access and supported by ads um, you could access
Speaker 1: those over the year if you had the right antenna
Speaker 1: and you were within range. The cable approach would allow
Speaker 1: producers to encode a signal so that only people who
Speaker 1: had subscribed to the service could decode it on their end,
Speaker 1: typically with a specific cable box, So you would pay
Speaker 1: a subscription fee to get access to that service, and
Speaker 1: then you would be able to watch that network. The
Speaker 1: first such pay TV network ever was HBO or Home
Speaker 1: Box Office, which launched in nineteen seventy two. HBO also
Speaker 1: ushered in the era of domestic satellite transmission, allowing a
Speaker 1: network to beam programming up to a satellite, which in
Speaker 1: turn could distribue that signal across a broad region and
Speaker 1: beam to other satellites if necessary for greater coverage, and
Speaker 1: you weren't beaming it straight to customers. So HBO studios
Speaker 1: has the signal for a film that they are going
Speaker 1: to show on the network, they beam that signal up
Speaker 1: to a satellite. The satellite then beams it down to
Speaker 1: regional stations around the United States, and those regional stations
Speaker 1: can then serve that signal up to the customers. So
Speaker 1: you at home wouldn't have access to this unless you
Speaker 1: went out and purchased an enormous satellite dish, in which case, yeah,
Speaker 1: then you can get access. The second service to use
Speaker 1: the domestic satellites was Atlanta's own television station w TBS
Speaker 1: TED Turner station, the first super station. Now, unlike HBO,
Speaker 1: you didn't have to pay to access this station. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the emergence of cable networks fueled interest in the technology,
Speaker 1: and millions of people began to subscribe to cable and
Speaker 1: that gave a lot of anxiety to the broadcast networks.
Speaker 1: So you started to see a lot of struggles in
Speaker 1: the government uh circles regarding this. Around that same time,
Speaker 1: we saw the birth of another new type of media
Speaker 1: over in the film world, the blockbuster. Now, these are
Speaker 1: movies then not only attract a large audience, they also
Speaker 1: tap into something special that convinces that audience to see
Speaker 1: the film more than one time. Most historians. Film historians
Speaker 1: tagged Jaws as the first film to be a summer blockbuster.
Speaker 1: Jaws came out in nineteen In fact, fun trivia, it
Speaker 1: was the number one film at the box office when
Speaker 1: I was born, and it remains one of my favorite
Speaker 1: films of all time. Universal had spent nearly two million
Speaker 1: dollars advertising Jaws, which was a considerable marketing budget for
Speaker 1: the time, and the marketing was incredibly effective. Jaws open
Speaker 1: to a seven million dollar opening weekend, which is paltry
Speaker 1: by today's standards, but back then that was enormous, and
Speaker 1: it was called a blockbuster because people would line up
Speaker 1: around the block to get movie theater tickets to go
Speaker 1: see this film more than once. Universal also chose to
Speaker 1: put Jaws into wide release right away. Earlier studios would
Speaker 1: typically release a film in small markets or maybe just
Speaker 1: a few large markets at the same time see how
Speaker 1: well it does before deciding whether or not to move
Speaker 1: into other markets. So there were chances that you would
Speaker 1: never get a chance to see a film at all,
Speaker 1: just because it never came to your area. But Universal
Speaker 1: in this case said no, we're gonna go big. Then
Speaker 1: we're gonna go nationwide. We're gonna capitalize on this marketing
Speaker 1: and it worked. Hollywood immediately investigated ways to capture that
Speaker 1: same lightning in a bottle. Marketing efforts changed and more
Speaker 1: unusual projects would get pushed forward. When Star Wars debuted
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, it was to a similar reception
Speaker 1: and the blockbuster was well cemented in film logic and
Speaker 1: is that way to this day. That's why we have
Speaker 1: so many of these big tent pole type films, especially
Speaker 1: the ones that open up in May and throughout the summer.
Speaker 1: Film found another way to differentiate itself from television through
Speaker 1: spectacle and a communal experience. Now we're gonna close out
Speaker 1: this episode by touching on an industry I haven't really
Speaker 1: talked very much about in this episode, which is the
Speaker 1: recording industry. The introduction of micro grooves for LPs really
Speaker 1: transformed the recording industry early. Didn't hurt that those changes
Speaker 1: happened right around the same time that middle class Americans
Speaker 1: found themselves with more disposable income for the same reasons
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, and around that same time, Less Paul,
Speaker 1: the guy who became famous for building the first solid
Speaker 1: body electric guitar, pioneered what we call sound on sound recording,
Speaker 1: also known as overdubbing or double tracking and then later
Speaker 1: on multi tracking. Up until Less Paul introduced that technique,
Speaker 1: recording music meant that you had to gather all the
Speaker 1: musicians together at the same time, and you would use
Speaker 1: one or more microphones, but you would record everyone playing simultaneously,
Speaker 1: and that also meant that you might have to move
Speaker 1: some musicians further away or closer to the microphones in
Speaker 1: order to be heard along with everybody else. So it
Speaker 1: was different from the old acoustic horn days, but still
Speaker 1: in that same general realm. Less Paul pioneered multi track recording,
Speaker 1: in which multiple signals could be recorded on two different
Speaker 1: tracks of the same length of magnetic tape. This would
Speaker 1: allow musicians to record sessions separately if they wanted to.
Speaker 1: Um they could each record their own particular part to
Speaker 1: a specific track, and collectively those tracks would represent a song.
Speaker 1: But you could also record each part on its own
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, and you could have the drummer
Speaker 1: record the drum track first, and then have the bass
Speaker 1: player record the bass track, and then etcetera, etcetera. There
Speaker 1: had been some experiments with that sort of thing in
Speaker 1: the past, but less Paul's approach was the most practical
Speaker 1: and it transformed the recording industry. He worked with the
Speaker 1: engineers at the company Ampex to develop a three track
Speaker 1: recorder which would later turn into a four track recorder,
Speaker 1: and then on and on and on. Each track could
Speaker 1: be recorded and even erased independently, which was incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1: So if you laid down the perfect rhythm guitar track
Speaker 1: and then you whiffed it while playing lead guitar, you
Speaker 1: can actually go back and re record the lead guitar
Speaker 1: part without erasing the rhythm track. It was incredibly useful.
Speaker 1: It meant that you didn't have to sit there and
Speaker 1: try and record the same song eight and seventy three
Speaker 1: times in a row. It also opened up new opportunities
Speaker 1: for musicians to experiment with their art. They could incorporate
Speaker 1: all sorts of different instruments and effects, and the experimental
Speaker 1: gradually evolved into the main stream, but that always takes time.
Speaker 1: Bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys were pioneers
Speaker 1: with multi track recordings. The Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever
Speaker 1: was actually made up of two different versions of the
Speaker 1: same songs spliced together that George Martin, the producer, was
Speaker 1: in charge of cutting those tracks apart and then piecing
Speaker 1: them back together to make one song out of two
Speaker 1: different takes. As the technology evolved, engineers produced recording devices
Speaker 1: capable of supporting more tracks. The next big jump was
Speaker 1: up to eight tracks. Eventually we got twenty four track
Speaker 1: recorders and those are stackable, so you could have multiples
Speaker 1: of twenty four. You have seventy two tracks if you wanted.
Speaker 1: So how does that work. Well, let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a string quartet in the studio. You want to record
Speaker 1: them all to one track that's going to be part
Speaker 1: of a rock song. You don't want to record them
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the band because you'd never
Speaker 1: be able to pick up the strings and the recording
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even hear them. So you mike their instruments
Speaker 1: and those mics feed into a mixing console, which the
Speaker 1: engineer tunes to get the right amount of recorded volume
Speaker 1: for the track. They balance it properly, and the mixing
Speaker 1: console connects to the multi track recorder, which will send
Speaker 1: the signal to a specific track on the magnetic tape
Speaker 1: and in separate recording session, you can record the band
Speaker 1: with each of their microphone instruments leading to the mixing
Speaker 1: console and recorded onto separate tracks. And so you might
Speaker 1: have one track that's the stringed group, and then you
Speaker 1: have one track that might be the drummer and one
Speaker 1: track that might be a guitarist, etcetera, etcetera, and all
Speaker 1: without having to erase the string section that you already have.
Speaker 1: And obviously you don't necessarily have to go in that order.
Speaker 1: I was just doing that as a hypothetical example. Now,
Speaker 1: one other thing that happened in the mid nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: was that recording studios began to purchase and install equipment
Speaker 1: that allowed for stereo recording. That gave studios the chance
Speaker 1: to record separate signals for the right and left hand
Speaker 1: speakers on separate tracks on quarter inch magnetic tape. Moreover,
Speaker 1: it was possible to record those separate signals into a
Speaker 1: single groove on a record, and so by nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: record companies began to release albums both in mono or
Speaker 1: in single channel sound that's what mono is, or in
Speaker 1: stereo sounds. So you could often buy the exact same
Speaker 1: album in both mono and stereo, one of each. So
Speaker 1: now the nature of recorded sound changes. The introduction of
Speaker 1: multitrack recording and stereo sound opened up a lot of
Speaker 1: possibilities for musicians and engineers to play with and it
Speaker 1: would also open up a new market, that of the
Speaker 1: audio file. These are fans of recorded works who want
Speaker 1: a system that will best reproduce the sound the artist
Speaker 1: intended when making the recording, whether that means a perfect
Speaker 1: reproduction of what was recorded in the studio or a
Speaker 1: faithful reproduction of whatever the artist's original vision happened to be.
Speaker 1: Audio files tend to be really passionate people. They have
Speaker 1: very strong opinions about which formats, which pieces of equipment,
Speaker 1: and even which cables you should use to create the
Speaker 1: perfect home stereo sound system. Devoted audio files might spend
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars building out their systems, and so this
Speaker 1: desire for high fidelity sound would fuel a very healthy
Speaker 1: electronics industry which continues to this day. Um the this
Speaker 1: sets the stage for the next evolution in the recording
Speaker 1: industry that would have a really big impact on the
Speaker 1: business and consumer sides, and that would be the emergence
Speaker 1: of consumer at tapes. Magnetic tape was being used on
Speaker 1: the industry side, on the recording side of the business
Speaker 1: to lay down tracks in recording studios that would later
Speaker 1: be transferred onto master recordings and used to produce vinyl
Speaker 1: LPs and forty singles. But in the nineties sixties, magnetic
Speaker 1: tape would find its way into consumer cassettes, and that
Speaker 1: would change things in a really big way. It would
Speaker 1: opened up new opportunities for ways to consume music. It
Speaker 1: made music more portable than ever before. It would also
Speaker 1: impact the quality of the recorded audio, and it would
Speaker 1: drive audio files nuts, not to mention set the stage
Speaker 1: for our modern era of music, and it would open
Speaker 1: up the possibility for something that had so far been
Speaker 1: pretty difficult to do. Piracy. So that sets the stage
Speaker 1: for our next episode, where we'll talk more about home theater,
Speaker 1: the emergence of the home theater, and how that changed
Speaker 1: lots of things, the business side, the content creation side,
Speaker 1: and the consumption side, and we'll start getting closer to
Speaker 1: modern day. I don't think we'll quite make it up
Speaker 1: to the digital realm, or at least not into the
Speaker 1: most recent digital realm, until the episode after that one.
Speaker 1: So I know this is an epic series, but I
Speaker 1: also find it absolutely fascinating to see how these changes
Speaker 1: have happened over the years, and it also informs us
Speaker 1: a lot about other things, Like I haven't even really
Speaker 1: touched on it, but this also had a huge role
Speaker 1: that you know, the way that the technology evolved had
Speaker 1: a huge role in shaping things like copyright law as well.
Speaker 1: So maybe I'll touch on that in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Is in addition to the ones I already have planned. Um,
Speaker 1: but like I said, it gets really big and really
Speaker 1: complicated and really messy, and I love it. If you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. Send me an email. The address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Make sure
Speaker 1: you dropped by our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Will find the archive for all of our old episodes
Speaker 1: on their plus links to our social media presence, so
Speaker 1: go check that out and a link to our store.
Speaker 1: Remember everything you purchased there goes to help the show.
Speaker 1: We greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.