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Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce

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Speaker 1: a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff

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Speaker 1: that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from

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Speaker 1: video games to television series, two films to internet videos

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Speaker 1: from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes.

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Speaker 1: You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and

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Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech

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Speaker 1: from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little

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Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably

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Speaker 1: more than a few puns, because that's kind of how

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Speaker 1: I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Stuff, a

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Speaker 1: production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive

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Speaker 1: producer with I Heart Radio and I love all things teching.

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Speaker 1: Its time for another entertainment playlist episode. This one is

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Speaker 1: about the Golden Age of radio. So we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the early days of radio when the radio was first

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Speaker 1: coming into being. It's an interesting and dramatic story and

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Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty entertaining one. Enjoy Today, Christian

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Speaker 1: and I are going to talk about a subject that

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Speaker 1: was suggested by a listener, and first of all, I

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Speaker 1: must apologize to said listener because despite my heroic efforts

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Speaker 1: of researching where this suggestion came from, I couldn't find it.

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Speaker 1: So I'm guessing this was actually an older one. But

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Speaker 1: said the forward thinking, bad prediction story about Hugo Gernsback

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Speaker 1: got me thinking about how crazy it must have been

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Speaker 1: to have lived through the day you of public radio,

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Speaker 1: all the excitement and so little understanding, fireside chats, fearmongering

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Speaker 1: about radio death rays. A history episode about the promises

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Speaker 1: in popular notions surrounding radio could be fun and uh

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Speaker 1: so we wanted to talk about the dawn of broadcast

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Speaker 1: radio before we get into that, I should mention that

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Speaker 1: way back in April two thousand eleven, Chris Palette and

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Speaker 1: I sat down and recorded an episode titled Who Invented

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Speaker 1: the Radio, which was mostly about the inventors who discovered

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Speaker 1: radio waves and found ways to generate radio waves, obviously

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Speaker 1: including the two big names Tesla and Marconi. Anyone who

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Speaker 1: knows anything about the patent wars knows about there was

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Speaker 1: a big kerfuffle between the two of those guys. Uh

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Speaker 1: little peek behind the curtain. That is the first time,

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Speaker 1: and I think the only time I have recorded an

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Speaker 1: entire episode and immediately said, we can't use that, Let's

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Speaker 1: do it again. We recorded it all over because the

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Speaker 1: ghost of Marcon he was haunting you. There was that,

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Speaker 1: and we had in the old studio, we had a

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Speaker 1: portrait of Nicola Tesla on the wall. We felt judged,

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Speaker 1: but mainly Chris and I both felt that we gave

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Speaker 1: such a disjointed story that we were jumping around so

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Speaker 1: much that made no sense. And so we after talking

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Speaker 1: it through once, we went back re recorded. So that

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Speaker 1: first episode that we recorded, it's lost to time. We

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Speaker 1: don't have it anymore. I don't wish I could, at

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Speaker 1: least hope will be more organized today. But I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you just from going through all this research that this

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Speaker 1: is such a vast amount of information for this period

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Speaker 1: of time, and I feel like and it's and you

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Speaker 1: can you can get a PhD in radio communication in

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Speaker 1: the history of radio and understanding these things, and it's yeah,

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Speaker 1: we will probably only scratch the surface today, I imagine, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there there and there's so many crazy dramatic stories of betrayal,

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Speaker 1: of of con men, of big. It's like this pirate

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Speaker 1: industry of people just messing with each other. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: it's fascinating. In fact, there there's probably two or three

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Speaker 1: podcast worth of information that we could cover, but we're

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Speaker 1: gonna try and get this in one if we can. So,

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Speaker 1: first thing I got to mention is that radio and

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Speaker 1: broadcast radio are two different things. You know, radio in

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Speaker 1: the sense of what Tesla and Marconi were looking at,

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Speaker 1: they were looking at ways of transmitting short signals across

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Speaker 1: distances without using wires, so that was it. They were

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Speaker 1: looking largely at using Morse code. So they might use

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Speaker 1: a spark gap technology where they would create sparks and

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Speaker 1: send messages that way. But you couldn't really do a

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Speaker 1: sustained message that way without creating a lot of static

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Speaker 1: and noise, and that was a real problem. So we

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Speaker 1: need to look at another person for broadcast radio. That

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Speaker 1: would be a Canadian by the name of Reginald Fessenden

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Speaker 1: who said actually invented am radio. That would be uh,

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Speaker 1: the amplitude modulated radio. And so from your notes here

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Speaker 1: your notes, it says he worked with Edison or for Edison.

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Speaker 1: He actually he actually worked for both Westinghouse and Edison

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Speaker 1: at different points in his career. So yeah, he just

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Speaker 1: like Tesla. Tesla also worked for both, although you know,

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Speaker 1: again working for like it's like me saying that, you know,

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Speaker 1: I worked for the head of our parent company, and

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Speaker 1: technically I do, but I don't have any contact with them.

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Speaker 1: So uh. He had dropped out of school as a

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Speaker 1: young man. He actually did not complete his school work,

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Speaker 1: but he was keenly interested in electricity and this potential

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Speaker 1: to transmit messages wirelessly, and he was using that spark

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Speaker 1: gap technology. But that was the problem, was that it

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Speaker 1: was creating so much static and noise that it was

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Speaker 1: very difficult to get any intelligible message across. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: actually I want to interject here for sure. So um,

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Speaker 1: in like the model of human communication, when scholars are

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Speaker 1: looking at how human beings communicate with each other regardless

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Speaker 1: of media, they actually use uh this Fessenden Marconi uh

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Speaker 1: model of transmissions as like the baseline for it. And

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Speaker 1: it's all about like sending and receiving with feedback and

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Speaker 1: feed forward and then there's a signal to noise ratio.

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Speaker 1: That's how it's all understood. Whether you and I are

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Speaker 1: sitting here talking in the same room, or it's mass media,

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Speaker 1: or it's uh like like in the early days of radio.

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Speaker 1: That the way they literally thought of it was two

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Speaker 1: ships that were thousands of yards away from one another

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Speaker 1: trying to contact each other using this old radio technology,

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Speaker 1: and they would have so much static they would have

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Speaker 1: to constantly give each other feedback and feed forward to

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Speaker 1: make sure the message was understood. It makes perfect sense,

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Speaker 1: I mean, especially when you see the brilliance of Fessenden.

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Speaker 1: He thought, well, they I can. I can create these

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Speaker 1: sparks of electricity, create these elector of magnetic fields, and

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Speaker 1: thus creating radio waves, but it isn't giving me the

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Speaker 1: fidelity I need in order to communicate properly. He then thought,

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Speaker 1: what if I used a continuous wave. So I create

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Speaker 1: a sign wave and oscillating wave with the same amplitude,

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Speaker 1: same frequency, So it's just steady. Now, that's not carrying

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Speaker 1: any information by itself. It's if you could if you

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Speaker 1: could hear it, it would just be a steady tone.

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Speaker 1: But it's actually talking about using frequencies above the limit

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Speaker 1: of human hearing. So let's say you create this wave

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Speaker 1: and then you were too introduce a second wave, one

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Speaker 1: that was created by your voice, so you'd speak into

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Speaker 1: a microphone, it gets converted into electric waves. You add

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Speaker 1: that on top of the uh, the existing wave you've

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Speaker 1: already created, and you allow it to change the amplitude

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Speaker 1: of that wave as the two waves are overlaid on

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Speaker 1: top of one another. Sure, it's genius, it is genius.

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Speaker 1: It's absolutely genius. Uh. So this was a M radio.

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Speaker 1: This was the idea that what that became a M

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Speaker 1: radio because it does modulate the amplitude of that wave.

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Speaker 1: So the amplitude, by the way, is the the peak

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Speaker 1: to peak uh difference, Right, It's not. It's not how

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Speaker 1: many oscillations. This is just the the amplitude of the

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Speaker 1: wave itself, how tall the peaks are, how low the

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Speaker 1: troughs are, if you were looking at the wave across

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Speaker 1: a line the way at Assuming that this innovation of

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Speaker 1: his significantly reduced the noise and static it did, it did.

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Speaker 1: It did still have issues and that you could have

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Speaker 1: interference with other waves that were created at that same frequency.

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Speaker 1: It also meant that you could get interference with other

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic phenomenon like like a lightning strike. So also if

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Speaker 1: you pass below like if you go under a bridge,

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Speaker 1: you would hear, you know, the disruption of the signal.

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Speaker 1: So it wasn't perfect, but it was an incredible step forward.

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Speaker 1: And this was a revolutionary I mean he tested it successfully.

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Speaker 1: He did a short distance test between two towers and

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Speaker 1: it worked fine. And then in nineteen o six he

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Speaker 1: had his infamous Christmas concert for sailors. See this is yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is where I think that that boat to boat

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Speaker 1: idea comes from. Yeah, because it turns out the disaster

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Speaker 1: of the Titanic would end up really making this uh

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Speaker 1: clear that there needed to be some radio communication for

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Speaker 1: ships at sea. But what he wanted to do was

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Speaker 1: he wanted to send out a message to essentially telegraph

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Speaker 1: operators aboard ships. That was his plan. So he proceeded

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Speaker 1: the concert with an actual telegraph message that essentially translates

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Speaker 1: into hey, pay attention. And then once he did that,

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Speaker 1: he started knew it was coming though, right They were not,

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Speaker 1: most of them. They just knew to pay attention because

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Speaker 1: they got the message. Yeah. There they were like, well,

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Speaker 1: here's the message. Whatever is going to happen, We need

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Speaker 1: to really focus. And so what they were expecting to

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Speaker 1: hear were just the noises they would hear for the

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Speaker 1: dots and dashes of Morse code. So then he he

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Speaker 1: gives a short speech, he plays a violin uh, and

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Speaker 1: plays a Holy Night. There were supposed to be other

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Speaker 1: people who talked into the microphone too, but most of

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Speaker 1: them chickened out because they they got like terrible stage

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Speaker 1: fright because they realized all of a sudden that they

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Speaker 1: were speaking to like hundreds of people, right right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so anyway, it ended up being a big hit.

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Speaker 1: Sailors up and down the Atlantic coast we were able

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Speaker 1: to hear him and reported back to it, so it

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Speaker 1: was known to be a success. And that's how AM

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Speaker 1: radio got started. Yeah yeah, I like that. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: that's a nice start to it ends up being or

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Speaker 1: rather thorny industry. Yeah. So, so he he demonstrates this

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Speaker 1: capability and immediately other physicists and engineers start to experiment

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Speaker 1: with it because some of them had been independently working

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Speaker 1: on the same kind of idea. Festendon ended up being

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Speaker 1: the first to make it really work in a public demonstration.

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Speaker 1: So you had a lot of other people who were

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Speaker 1: who either adopted his ideas or continued to develop their

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Speaker 1: own ideas, and a lot of amateurs were starting to

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Speaker 1: experiment with radio transmissions, including transmitting out to telegraph operators,

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Speaker 1: who often were very much entertained by this because it

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Speaker 1: was different from just listening to clicks on the headphones.

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Speaker 1: This is the part that's the most fascinating about the

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Speaker 1: evolution of radio to me is that even though the

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Speaker 1: technology is ultimately made for mass communication, people originally started

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Speaker 1: using it as one to one communication across long distances,

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Speaker 1: replacing a telegraph. And then, uh, these amateur operators, these

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Speaker 1: like d I y uh people in their in their garage,

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Speaker 1: is just you know, tinkering around with the technology that

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Speaker 1: they could get a hold of. We're able to turn

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Speaker 1: it into this mass communication then yeah. And it's funny

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Speaker 1: because when you look at the early ones, obviously they

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Speaker 1: were using very low wattage transmitters, so that meant that

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Speaker 1: they couldn't transmit very far, most of them. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you were a big name, you might be able

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Speaker 1: to work with someone like General Electric to get a

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Speaker 1: really big transmitter and be able to to send a

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Speaker 1: signal far away. Because the signals reach is largely dependent

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Speaker 1: upon the power of the transmitter. Right, the further way

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Speaker 1: you get, the weaker the signal is and the less

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Speaker 1: you'll be likely you are able to pick it up

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Speaker 1: with a receiver. So in the early days people were

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Speaker 1: happy to experiment with this, and there was really no

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Speaker 1: regulation because there there hadn't been a demonstrable need to

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Speaker 1: regulate yet, because no one had the power to interfere

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Speaker 1: that much with anything that was important. Nineteen o seven,

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Speaker 1: Festan would invent a high frequency electric generator to create

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Speaker 1: radio waves in the one hurts frequency, which was really important.

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Speaker 1: And in nineteen o eight Dr Charles Aaron Culver, who

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Speaker 1: was newly hired as a professor of physics at Beloit

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Speaker 1: College or bell Watt if you prefer um, and it's

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Speaker 1: it's in a town called bell Watt actually, but set

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Speaker 1: up a radio telegraph assembly which became the foundation for

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Speaker 1: the college is radio station, though voice in music transmission

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be part of it until the nineteen twenties. But

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Speaker 1: this this became like again, it was someone a physics professor,

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Speaker 1: in this case, a physics professor who was already interested

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Speaker 1: in radio and had been working on it independently, setting

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Speaker 1: up a thing that would eventually evolve into an early

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Speaker 1: early radio station. Yeah, and that's kind of Another interesting

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Speaker 1: aspect of this too is that these early amateur radio

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Speaker 1: stations weren't just uh d I y kind of hobbyists

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Speaker 1: doing it on their own. A lot of it was

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Speaker 1: educational institutions, not just colleges but also high schools that

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Speaker 1: were just you know, trying to use it for educational purposes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that it's interesting later on what happens when amateur

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Speaker 1: radio sort of gets more regulated. It really reminds me

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Speaker 1: of the early days of personal computers and how how

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Speaker 1: it first started off as a hobbyist thing, and then

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Speaker 1: you know, you had bleeding edge adopters who might not

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Speaker 1: build a computer, but they're curious about how they might

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Speaker 1: use it. And then later you had people who were uh,

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Speaker 1: you know more it became more and more mainstream as

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Speaker 1: time went on. So we've seen other emerging technologies that

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Speaker 1: have followed a similar pathway to radio. Uh not always

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Speaker 1: with the dramatics. I mean, there were some definite dramatics

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Speaker 1: and early personal computers too. But we got some crazy

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Speaker 1: stories to tell. But first, we have another big name

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Speaker 1: in radio that we have to mention. Yeah, so in

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Speaker 1: nineteen ten, this guy lead to Forest really broadcasted like

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Speaker 1: the first sort of broad meant for mass communication radio broadcast, uh,

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Speaker 1: specifically of a guy named Enrico Caruso singing. I believe

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Speaker 1: it was opera singing from what I understood, um, and

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Speaker 1: he he ushered in this area era of radio communications.

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Speaker 1: And unfortunately, though even though he was broadcasting probably on

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Speaker 1: Fessenden's news system, for the most part it was static

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Speaker 1: and radio interference, so the audience barely heard anything. But

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Speaker 1: you know, for a decade afterwards, radio fans were both

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Speaker 1: using uh, these amateur radio units to broadcast and receive. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't just them receiving. Yeah, it wasn't like they

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Speaker 1: were a passive audience. They were creating as well. And again,

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Speaker 1: depending upon the power of their radio transmitters, it may

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Speaker 1: be the they were only transmitting to people in their

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Speaker 1: general neighborhood or even small town, but you wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: able to necessarily pick up that signal for much further,

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Speaker 1: it also depends on the quality of the receiver as well.

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Speaker 1: Like you could build a very simple a radio receiver

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Speaker 1: that doesn't even require a battery and as a crystal,

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Speaker 1: a very long antenna and some headphones, and uh, you

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Speaker 1: can pick up radio signals if you're close enough to

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Speaker 1: a transmitter. Uh. And in fact, that's a fun project

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Speaker 1: to do. You can look up how to do that online.

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Speaker 1: So also in nineteen ten, the same time Leada Forest

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Speaker 1: was was experimenting with us, you had a guy named

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Speaker 1: Charles David Harold who opened a school that he called

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Speaker 1: the Herald College of Engineering and Wireless and he was

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Speaker 1: experimenting with wireless voice transmissions as early as nineteen o

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Speaker 1: nine and providing a thrill to telegraph operators who suddenly

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Speaker 1: were able to hear voices over the telegraph lines. Now

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Speaker 1: this is out in California, so he's surprising people out

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Speaker 1: there who normally they weren't expecting it at all, but

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Speaker 1: they loved it because you would have imagine this job

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Speaker 1: is a little probably very tedious. Yeah. So he actually

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Speaker 1: started setting up a regular broadcast time like the first

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Speaker 1: radio programming in a way, and by nineteen ten he

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Speaker 1: had created this, uh, this program that would include reading

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Speaker 1: out news to telegraph operators. And his wife Sybil got

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Speaker 1: involved and she started playing records that the description I

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Speaker 1: said was the kind of records young people like to

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Speaker 1: listen to. Back in Yeah, so playing records, So playing

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Speaker 1: music for these telegraph operators and holding the first radio contests.

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Speaker 1: And here's how the radio contest work back then. She

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Speaker 1: would instruct people listening to come by their house, sign

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Speaker 1: a guest book with their name and where they were from,

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Speaker 1: and then they might win a little prize. Was number seven. No,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't calling number seven. Uh. And here's the coolest part.

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Speaker 1: I think this little amateur station eventually over time and

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Speaker 1: twenty one would become kq W, and in ninete it

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Speaker 1: would evolve into k CBS as then the CBS. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting, especially like we'll talk

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Speaker 1: later about, CBS is sort of importance in a big

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Speaker 1: game of radio development. Yeah. So nineteen ten is also

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Speaker 1: when the US passed the Wireless Ship Act, which required

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Speaker 1: all ships of the US traveling more than two miles

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Speaker 1: off the coast and carrying more than fifty passengers to

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Speaker 1: have a wireless radio equipment on board with a with

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Speaker 1: an operator, and the transmission range had to be at

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Speaker 1: least a hundred miles. And that meant that it created

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Speaker 1: a lot more radio transmissions broadcast without any regulation. This

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Speaker 1: is where the United States government starts to say, this

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Speaker 1: is going to become a problem because now we we

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Speaker 1: already have a lot of radio traffic going on just

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Speaker 1: through amateurs as well as ship to land land to

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Speaker 1: ship communication. Uh. It's starting to get a little crowded

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Speaker 1: and we're starting to get interfere rants. We need to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to handle this. So in nineteen twelve,

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Speaker 1: they passed the Radio Act of nineteen twelve, which is

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Speaker 1: good because if they had passed the Radio Act of

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Speaker 1: nineteen twelve and nineteen eleven, everyone would have been confused. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And marked the first time the US government required radio

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Speaker 1: stations to be licensed. So the licensing was really just

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Speaker 1: to create order in chaos. Uh. And it was really

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Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, we want to make sure

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Speaker 1: that we're keeping certain frequencies free so that we can

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Speaker 1: have these these very important transmissions go uninterrupted because am transmissions,

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Speaker 1: if you transmit two things on the same frequency, you

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Speaker 1: get lots of interference and just different from There was

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Speaker 1: a military component to this as well, because World War

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Speaker 1: One was on the horizon, was happening, and they the

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Speaker 1: government banned amateur radio broadcasting during the war for you know,

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Speaker 1: the reason that they were trying to transmit signals to

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Speaker 1: one another of important nature. If somebody was talking in

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Speaker 1: their girl raj about um uh, you know their favorite

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Speaker 1: records the young people listen to. Yeah, the ones that

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Speaker 1: the young people listen to, they would overlap and they

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Speaker 1: wouldn't get these important messages, so they shut it all down.

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Speaker 1: And also just radio detection to the the remote possibility

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Speaker 1: that they might detect radio transmissions from either allies or enemies.

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Speaker 1: It would mean that yeah, yeah, this is this is

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Speaker 1: before the whole Bletchley Park on Dygma thing, which is

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Speaker 1: I've talked about that in the previous episode of tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: But fascinating story. So Uren Edwin Armstrong, who's going to

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Speaker 1: be important throughout this conversation, and his story is amazing

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Speaker 1: and tragic. Uh. He patents a radio receiver circuit that

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Speaker 1: increases the selectivity which allows you to tune into specific

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Speaker 1: frequencies and the sensitivity of radio receivers. That means it

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Speaker 1: was able to pick up weaker radio signals than previous receivers.

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Speaker 1: So selectivity obviously very important. You want to be able

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Speaker 1: to say I'm looking at this picular band of frequencies

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Speaker 1: and I don't want anything outside of that. Um, and

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Speaker 1: we would see that get better and better in he

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Speaker 1: would invent the super heterodyne radio receiver or superhead. So

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Speaker 1: this principle is actually really fascinating, and I gotta admit

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Speaker 1: to you, a Christian, I had to really sit down

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Speaker 1: and read this a few times to kind of get

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Speaker 1: what was going on. Yeah, because I mean this is radio,

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic and radio broadcast. I have a basic understanding of it,

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Speaker 1: but it does go well beyond what I studied in school.

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Speaker 1: And it took a while, but now I think I've

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Speaker 1: got it. Will explain it to me, because yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: more of the on the side of the like cultural

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Speaker 1: examination of radio, whereas like the technology of it escapes

359
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Speaker 1: me sometimes, So yeah, hit me. All right. Let's say,

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Speaker 1: let's say I want to transmit a radio signal at

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Speaker 1: a high frequency, so it's not going to interfere with

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Speaker 1: anything else, but that processing high frequencies is a little tricky,

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Speaker 1: so you might have a receiver that can process frequencies

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Speaker 1: up to I'm just going to take an arbitrary number

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Speaker 1: killer hurts, but I want to transmit at fifteen hundred

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Speaker 1: killer hurts. If I were to introduce that frequency to

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Speaker 1: an oscillator tuned to a different frequency, suddenly I would

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Speaker 1: be able to receive that. Uh, not just at the

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Speaker 1: original frequency I transmit at, but the difference between that

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Speaker 1: and the oscillating one. So another easy example, let's say

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Speaker 1: they have an oscillating frequency at a thousand killer hurts. Okay,

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Speaker 1: that would mean that if you used a receiver tune

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Speaker 1: to five killer hurts, killer hurts or two thousand five

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Speaker 1: killer hurts, you would pick up that signal and could

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Speaker 1: process it. Okay. So and I'm imagining that this is

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Speaker 1: a process that's still used today. Yeah. This is the

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Speaker 1: principle of transmitting and receiving with a radio so that

378
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Speaker 1: your radio doesn't have to have as wide a spectrum.

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Speaker 1: It's called inter minute frequency. And it took me a

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Speaker 1: long time to figure out what was going on. Is

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Speaker 1: the oscillator that was throwing me off? And then I realized, oh,

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Speaker 1: the oscillators tuned to a different frequency, and that's what

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Speaker 1: gives you the broader range that you can pick up.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty fascinating. And again Armstrong was absolutely brilliant coming

385
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Speaker 1: up with this. Uh. And then we move up to

386
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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. Yeah, and the twenties is when this

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Speaker 1: educational stuff that I was talking about earlier. It really

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Speaker 1: hits a boom. There was like more than two hundred

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Speaker 1: educational organizations across the United States of America that, uh,

390
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Speaker 1: we're requesting broadcasting licenses so that they could transmit. And

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Speaker 1: whether they were using it as a an opportunity for

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Speaker 1: their students to learn about the technology or to broadcast

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Speaker 1: educational information didn't really matter. The unfortunate thing is that

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Speaker 1: thirteen years later, by n three or more of these

395
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Speaker 1: educational institutions had folded and in basically it was because

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Speaker 1: of and this is going to be a huge theme

397
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Speaker 1: of this episode, because of ad based programming and stronger stations,

398
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:10,680
Speaker 1: commercial stations that were able to overlap their signal. Yeah,

399
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: you essentially had not just the fact that the companies

400
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 1: had more technological behind them, but the government was favoring

401
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: those over the educational ones. When we get into a

402
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: little bit more about the politics, you're going to hear

403
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: that repeated a few times, and it's it's a little upsetting, honestly.

404
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: And I also i'd like to say, like, it's interesting

405
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Speaker 1: because despite whatever my political beliefs are reading one of

406
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 1: the articles that we used as as research for this

407
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:44,959
Speaker 1: was written in nineteen from the perspective of somebody at

408
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: Harvard University looking back at the Federal Radio Radio Commission

409
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Speaker 1: before it turned into the f CC that we have

410
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:55,199
Speaker 1: now and kind of just doing a broad review of

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Speaker 1: the last like ten years of this. And it's very,

412
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Speaker 1: very similar and reminiscent of arguments that we've seen with

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Speaker 1: media throughout the last hundred years and that we're seeing

414
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: right now in arguments about net neutrality. Yeah, it's really

415
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,359
Speaker 1: similar to net neutrality, the idea being that everyone should

416
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Speaker 1: be free to use the Internet to send and receive

417
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Speaker 1: whatever information they want. In radio, we saw the same argument,

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Speaker 1: except in that case radio it was it ended up

419
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Speaker 1: being that those folks were kind of pushed away and

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Speaker 1: that the the the corporations, the companies that had the

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Speaker 1: money were the ones that had the voice. Yeah, and

422
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Speaker 1: and so like you know, as we're talking earlier, there's

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Speaker 1: these amateur radio stations, right and they here's the kind

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Speaker 1: of content you might find on amateur radio stations. Maybe

425
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Speaker 1: somebody is giving a sermon there, or they're they're they're

426
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Speaker 1: just reading out of their Bible, or they're talking about

427
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 1: sports out of today's newspaper, updating their neighborhood on what

428
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 1: happened in sports around the country that day. Maybe they're

429
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:58,159
Speaker 1: reading a poem, maybe they're giving a speech about something

430
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:02,680
Speaker 1: political at the time. Perhaps the usage of radio or

431
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:06,879
Speaker 1: like we were talking earlier, just playing records and at

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00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: the time there was no you know, licensing or copyright

433
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: and effect for for how music was broadcasted, So they

434
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,000
Speaker 1: just throw any record on and kind of entertain the neighborhood.

435
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:19,360
Speaker 1: Right in a way, you can think of it as

436
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,359
Speaker 1: like the predecessor of blogs. Yeah, you know it really

437
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: in a in a real way, it was and uh,

438
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:29,919
Speaker 1: this was amazing. This was an ability for someone to

439
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 1: have a platform to have their voice heard. Some people

440
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: made very good use of that. Some people may you

441
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: may think, made frivolous use of it, just like what

442
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: we see on the internet. Sure, yeah, exactly. And that's

443
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: just like blogging, except for for people like us, I suppose,

444
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: who do get paid to do it. A lot of

445
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: these these amateur radioists that they weren't getting paid for this.

446
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: They had day jobs. In fact, like one of the

447
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 1: stories I read was about how there's this guy who

448
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: ran a gas station, but he also had a radio

449
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:03,200
Speaker 1: station running out of his gas station, and so he'd

450
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: be on air and then he'd say, hold on a minute,

451
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: I have to go, uh sell some gas, and he'd go.

452
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: He'd disappeared for five minutes, and they'd come back and

453
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:14,480
Speaker 1: just pick up again. And that was just how it is.

454
00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 1: They didn't really worry about dead air or anything like that. Yeah. Um.

455
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: And and at the same time, there's also this other,

456
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 1: like broader, more important thing, which I think is why

457
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: the government started to become more involved in it, which

458
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: is that radio allowed the listeners to sample other cultures

459
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:35,360
Speaker 1: from far away states that and and and learn more

460
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: about what this kind of idea of America as a

461
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: nation meant. You know, even though they may have never

462
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: visited Nebraska, they would be hearing what these amateur radioists

463
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: in Nebraska were talking about. They were giving them sort

464
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: of a peek into what the culture in those towns were.

465
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: Like it's really cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. Moving over

466
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: to ninety that's when we get the first commercial radio

467
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: sta Asian launching. That's Kadi k A. Now, amateur radio stations,

468
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: like Christian was saying, had already been around, and a

469
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:09,360
Speaker 1: guy named Henry P. Davis was inspired by an amateur

470
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: named Frank Conrad and saw the potential to actually make

471
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: some money off this whole radio thing, and not just

472
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: not just broadcast out for free, but to actually make

473
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,640
Speaker 1: it a commercial enterprise. So the radio station went live

474
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 1: on November two, nineteen twenty. Henry P. Davis himself read

475
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 1: out the results of the presidential elections on the air,

476
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:32,919
Speaker 1: and he would become heavily involved in broadcast radio, in

477
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 1: fact becoming the first chairman of the National Broadcasting Company

478
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: also known as NBC, so in yeah, exactly, Yeah. Then

479
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: the opening of thirty Rock in nineteen six. Kadi k

480
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: A was owned and operated by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company,

481
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: and you might not be surprised to hear that Westinghouse

482
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: used the radio station as a means of convincing people

483
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: to go out and buy radios, because up to this point,

484
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: again it was very much an amateur thing. People who

485
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: were interested in the science would go out and get

486
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,600
Speaker 1: the equipment or build the equipment from there from whatever

487
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: they could, and that's how they participated. But now we're

488
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: talking about actually making commercial radio sets for people to

489
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: go out and buy. And this is also the beginning

490
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: of things starting to get a little dodgy on the

491
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 1: corporate side of things, because previously the patents for radios

492
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: were all over the place. But what happened was the

493
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: big companies G E, A, T and T. Weird, they're

494
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: such a familiar name nowadays, G A, T and T,

495
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: International Radio and Telegraph and Westinghouse all got together and said,

496
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: let's pull together our patents, and they created our c A,

497
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: the Radio Corporation of America, for the express purpose of

498
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: allowing them to build and sell radio equipment like transmitters

499
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: and receivers that were designed not for broadcast broadcast but

500
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 1: for for telegraphing, but also to keep these amateur radio

501
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: wash out of business physically, so that they couldn't just

502
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 1: go and buy an out of the box kit anymore.

503
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: They would have to they would have to really build

504
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: it themselves. R c A flexed its muscles in ways

505
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: that I think just about anyone would describe as odious

506
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: and uh and a lot of the stories we're gonna cover,

507
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, um. And what's kind of interesting

508
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: is just that, you know, there's there's this other article

509
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: that I read for this that was called the Design

510
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:32,680
Speaker 1: of Symbiosis that was all about, you know, the the

511
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: longevity of radio and then these corporations interacting. And there's

512
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: a quote from it that I want to read, which

513
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: is about this specific thing says it was no accident

514
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: that the General Electric Corporation G, after acquiring rights to

515
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,160
Speaker 1: the Marconi wireless patents in the United States, spearheaded the

516
00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 1: formation of the r c A, which in turn launched

517
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: the National Broadcasting Corporation NBC, one of g S many subsidiaries.

518
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: It still is, I believe right. Well again you got Universal, Yeah, great,

519
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: it's even larger than that and a leading content company.

520
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: So it's like one thing led to another, from one

521
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: corporation to the next. Is they kind of built out

522
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 1: their their subsidiaries and spread their spread out kind of

523
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: like an umbrella and it and it. Don't get me wrong,

524
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,719
Speaker 1: this wasn't all negative. They were very positive effects at

525
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: the time as well. From this, I love that you

526
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 1: have this bit about a T and T and there

527
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: their business strategy that this is one of the So

528
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: apparently they like repeatedly, we're trying to charge people for

529
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: commercial broadcasting over their sets, and they wanted to charge

530
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: tolls in the same way that they were charging people

531
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: for phone calls. Which I think is amazing when you

532
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: when you think about it, you know, there's just these

533
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: these negotiations between the public and the large corporations. When

534
00:31:56,640 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: these new media hit the scene, and we're experiencing it

535
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: right now, we'll probably always be experiencing it, I imagine. So,

536
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to you. You make a delineation in

537
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: our notes about how how the radio system is treated

538
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: in America versus in other nations, right, yeah, So the

539
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: thing that's unique about the American radio system. This isn't

540
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: to say that that no other countries did this, but

541
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: the American radio system specifically evolved as a unique combination

542
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 1: between private enterprises like these ones that we were just

543
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: talking about, in government regulation, whereas in other countries, for

544
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: the most part, it went for public ownership. So places

545
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: like Iceland, the United Kingdom obviously with the BBC, Italy,

546
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: Turkey and the USS are it was all public um.

547
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: And so the problem that radio had that was unique

548
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: in America was that all of these consumers could receive

549
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: any signal at equal equality, very much like again blogging,

550
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: right sure in theory, and that any broadcaster, however, whether

551
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: it's NBC or a guy operating out of his garage

552
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 1: would be able to overwhelm multiple frequencies and overwrite what

553
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:16,719
Speaker 1: was being played by somebody else's broadcast. Yeah, the very

554
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: least you could interfere with the signal. Um, we'll talk

555
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: about FM and a little bit. The interesting difference, one

556
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: of the many interesting differences between a M and FM

557
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 1: is if you have two AM broadcasts that are coming

558
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: out at the same signal, they interfere with one another

559
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 1: the same frequency, I should say, they interfere with one

560
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: of FM. If you have two of the same frequency,

561
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: it's whichever frequency is the most powerful is the one

562
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: you will receive. So you could have a little station

563
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: that is broadcasting in a very small amount of power

564
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: that if you are close to it, you would be

565
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: able to pick it up on an FM band that

566
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: would normally be for a radio station that might be

567
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: miles away, that could be a giant corporations one. So

568
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: there was a lot of back and forth with this too,

569
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 1: which is today we think of this. You and I

570
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: were talking about this the other day when we proposed

571
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:08,920
Speaker 1: this idea. We think of it as pirate radio, right,

572
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: and I think I always think of pop up the

573
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,360
Speaker 1: volume of the volume. Yeah, and Christians later driving around

574
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:16,800
Speaker 1: his neighborhood with his his pirate radio station at the

575
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:19,399
Speaker 1: back of his car. Yeah, it's also similar. I did

576
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: a story with Chuck Bryant about it was television, not radio,

577
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,400
Speaker 1: but the same same principle, uh the Max Headroom incident

578
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 1: where in Chicago that was also the same principle as

579
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 1: FM radio, and that if you were able to send

580
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: a signal along the same frequency but at a higher

581
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: power rate, then you could overpower that and people would

582
00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:44,279
Speaker 1: receive your signal not someone else's. Yeah, but anyway, and

583
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: so as these these conflicts are going on, these like

584
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: weird ven diagrams of stations playing up against one another,

585
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: the government starts to become interested as we as we've

586
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: talked about, and especially because of military reasons. So the

587
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,320
Speaker 1: Navy says, you know what, we should really take control

588
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:03,520
Speaker 1: of this as a means of national defense. And the

589
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 1: way that they thought it should be run was basically

590
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:08,760
Speaker 1: like the post office, that the you know, the federal

591
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:13,920
Speaker 1: government should own and control what is broadcast on radio signals.

592
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: Obviously that that didn't end up happening, But then you

593
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: get this huge boom because of the amateur radio movement

594
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:24,560
Speaker 1: from nine to nineteen twenty three, the number of radio

595
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: sets in America increased from sixty thousand to one point

596
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 1: five millions. That's a huge adoption. Massive And uh in

597
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: nineteen two there were twenty eight stations in operation, but

598
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 1: I think it like exploded to hundreds very quickly. Um.

599
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 1: And then enter the scene a little guy named Herbert Hoover,

600
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: who was at the time the Secretary of Commerce, right,

601
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 1: and the and the Department of Commerce oversaw radio at

602
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:56,879
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, yeah, And he was really the initiative

603
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 1: of that idea. He was the one who said, you know, uh,

604
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: he really wanted the Department of Commerce to control it

605
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: first of all. But he also said, and this is

606
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: another quote, he said, at first the idea of making

607
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: money off radio seemed profane. It is inconceivable that we

608
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: should allow so great a possibility for service, for news,

609
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 1: for entertainment, and for vital commercial purposes to be drowned

610
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: in advertising chatter. This is Herbert Hoover who subsequently ends

611
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 1: up using the government to support the businesses, uh in

612
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: terms of businesses over amateur radio stations, UH, in terms

613
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: of their licensing. And his other analogy for radio was

614
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: that he thought of it as transportation rather than the

615
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,319
Speaker 1: the post office analogy that the Navy was using. He

616
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 1: thought it was like, we should think of them as

617
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:50,399
Speaker 1: like waterways, and that the public should be be able

618
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: to ride these waterways, but that the government would regulate

619
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: how they did. So I like this this message here too,

620
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,360
Speaker 1: of the We're one of the world's first radio ads,

621
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:07,439
Speaker 1: aired on August two, uh for a housing development in Queens. Yeah. Yeah,

622
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 1: this is the They were basically like um advocating what

623
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 1: we would now call gentrification or like get This is

624
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 1: a quote from that ad. Get away from the solid

625
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 1: masses of brick, where children grow up starved for a

626
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,720
Speaker 1: run over a patch of grass. But my child's never

627
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,799
Speaker 1: seen what a tree looks like. Queen. This is the

628
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:32,399
Speaker 1: first thing that we we sold on radio. That's hilarious. Yeah.

629
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: But so Hoover goes on in Ino. He calls together

630
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: the first American Radio Conference, which is he brings together

631
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,760
Speaker 1: representatives from and I put this in quotes radio industry

632
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: because it really wasn't an industry, you know, it's just

633
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 1: kind of and and this included not only you know,

634
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: the businesses that had interests in mind, but also the

635
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:57,560
Speaker 1: amateur radio operators and no action was taken. Uh, there

636
00:37:57,560 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: were calls for legislation they introduced to building Congress. Congress

637
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: is like, no, we don't want to have anything to

638
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: do with this, and there's political reasons behind that that

639
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: I'll get into later. Um. Then by nine, we've got

640
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred radio stations, not just what did I say?

641
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: Yeah and you So you've got these big commercial broadcasters

642
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: that are forming networks like NBC and CBS, both of

643
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: them they've formed in seven respectively. Uh, and it's very

644
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: similar today to the same that NBC and CBS that

645
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 1: we understand as being television. Right now, now I've got

646
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: the beginning of one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard.

647
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: This guy is my favorite. I agree. I think you

648
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: should do a whole episode about this guy. I could

649
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:46,839
Speaker 1: easily do a whole episode about this guy. And and

650
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 1: he's going to pepper through parts of the rest of

651
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: this episode. So nineteen twenty three is what we're talking

652
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: about here. We're going back just a little bit too

653
00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: to set the stage. That's when doctor used in quotes

654
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 1: John R. Brinkley starts up a radio station called kf

655
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 1: KB in Kansas. So let me tell you about doctor Brinkley.

656
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 1: First of all, he wasn't a real doctor. He's like

657
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: the original snake oil salesman. He he at least perfected

658
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: it to an art form, right. He went to medical school.

659
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 1: They never graduated, but he bought a diploma from a

660
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: diploma mill for five hundred dollars not an insignificant amount

661
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: of money, that's uh, and it gave him the right

662
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:33,320
Speaker 1: to practice medicine in some states, including Kansas. He purchased diploma,

663
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: not not an actual like proof that he had the

664
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:40,440
Speaker 1: training that would allow him to do this. So anyway,

665
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: he starts practicing medicine. He had previously been involved in

666
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: some scams and cons including things like selling tinted water

667
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:52,359
Speaker 1: as if it were an actual medicinal cure and injecting

668
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:56,280
Speaker 1: it into people. But I want to see a movie

669
00:39:56,320 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 1: about this guy's life. I want to I want to

670
00:39:58,360 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: see a movie. I want to see a movie of

671
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: this guy. I want to see him cast. I want

672
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: I want Simon Peg to play him. He's just like

673
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: deviously injecting things into people and cutting open their necks.

674
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: I think I think either Simon Peg or Neil Patrick

675
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: Harris that would be pliant yeah, he would be good.

676
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: It's like evil doogie howser. Yeah. So he had he

677
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: had been hired as a house doctor for a meat

678
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 1: packing company and he observed the rigorous mating habits of goats.

679
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So let's slow down for a second, of people,

680
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:31,439
Speaker 1: This means that he watched goats have sex for a

681
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: long time and enthusiastically the goats at least I don't

682
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:39,359
Speaker 1: know about him, but the goats were certainly enthusiastic. So

683
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: he was talking to a male patient once about the

684
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,720
Speaker 1: fact that the male patient was having problems in the bedroom.

685
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,760
Speaker 1: He was having a failing libido rectile dysfunction. Perhaps the

686
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: the actual nature of the problem was not what explained

687
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:57,839
Speaker 1: in all the sources I looked at, but had something

688
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 1: to do with failing libido or um, you know, virility,

689
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: And so supposedly what Dr Brinkley did was jokingly suggest

690
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: that perhaps they should transplant plant some goat quote unquote glands,

691
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: as in gonads into the male patient. And he said,

692
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:19,919
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's fire up like the original body modification.

693
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:22,280
Speaker 1: Give me some give me some of them goat glands.

694
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 1: So he does he actually did start performing this, and

695
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 1: then he started to suggest, like he began to essentially

696
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:34,799
Speaker 1: advertise saying, this is a way to restore virility for men. Uh,

697
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: let me do this this medical procedure for a not

698
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: insignificant amount of money. So flash foward to when he

699
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 1: gets the radio station and he starts to fill his

700
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:50,439
Speaker 1: broadcast time with music and medical lectures, and he would

701
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 1: end up advocating for this kind of treatment and other

702
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: treatments that were equally bogus advertising too. Yeah, and he

703
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:02,239
Speaker 1: was he was essentially throwing business two surgeons into pharmacists

704
00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: and getting kickbacks every single time and making a mint

705
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 1: off it. So he's in full operation and will end up,

706
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 1: believe it or not, defining in part why radio has

707
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:20,719
Speaker 1: regulated the way it is. But we'll get to that. Yeah,

708
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: I know, he's important to the history of it um.

709
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Hoover's continuing to negotiate with stations and

710
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: the government on how it should be regulated. And you know, basically,

711
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,399
Speaker 1: as the Secretary of Commerce, his work is to let

712
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: the stations work out amongst themselves which frequency is going

713
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: to be used and when and how they overlap. You know,

714
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:44,280
Speaker 1: it wasn't really you know, handing it out. He wouldn't

715
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 1: occasionally make decisions. And what happened was in the federal

716
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: court was like whoa, whoa, you don't have this power.

717
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: And specifically the Attorney General of the United States, who

718
00:42:56,560 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 1: you know, was from the same administration that the Secretary

719
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: of Commerce was, decided that Hoover didn't have this power,

720
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: he could not grant permits at request, and that all

721
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: of a sudden, these air waves turned into even more

722
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: of this like wild wild West of broadcasting than they

723
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:17,880
Speaker 1: already were. Uh. And so obviously more regulation is even

724
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: is necessary. And Coolidge is the president of the time.

725
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: He favors the control by the Department of Commerce obviously

726
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 1: because it's under his branch, and he opposes any kind

727
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,720
Speaker 1: of commission being formed. Senate, however, didn't like the idea

728
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 1: of one man being in control. And this is where

729
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: the political angle comes in, because they knew that Herbert

730
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: Hoover had his eye on the presidency and they didn't

731
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: want to give him any political prestige for taking care

732
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 1: of the radio problem. Interesting, and also this will probably

733
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:53,200
Speaker 1: seem familiar to people following them, that neutrality arguments, where

734
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: one of the big problems was the FCC had brought

735
00:43:56,640 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: a case against Comcast for blocking bit torrent traffic, and

736
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:04,879
Speaker 1: then the response was, you don't have authority to tell

737
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: Comcast what it can and can't do because Internet transmissions

738
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 1: were a title one classification, not titled two. Uh. And

739
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about that, you can

740
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 1: listen to the title to podcast I did and Common

741
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:20,759
Speaker 1: Carrier podcast I did from a while back to to

742
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:23,399
Speaker 1: learn more about it. But just suffice it to say

743
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,439
Speaker 1: that this is something that we've seen before and we'll

744
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:29,759
Speaker 1: likely see again. I just I think it's fascinating that,

745
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:36,080
Speaker 1: like the future of this major media uh, was decided

746
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 1: by people who wanted to screw over a political candidate

747
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 1: potentially running from Yeah, yeah, and sometimes just people who

748
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 1: were wanting to screw over inventors. Uh. It's crazy. We'll

749
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:51,240
Speaker 1: talk more about those two. In Congress creates the Federal

750
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:55,879
Speaker 1: Radio Commission and passes the Radio Act of nineteen twenty seven. Now,

751
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,400
Speaker 1: before that time, it was all the Department of Commerce,

752
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 1: like Christian was saying. So the Commission's job was to

753
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: get radio into shape, and they wanted to have a

754
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: little more power than Department of Commerce, which could grant

755
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: broadcast licenses but couldn't deny a broadcast license. So if

756
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: you requested it, if you did all the things you

757
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:15,280
Speaker 1: were supposed to do, you would get one. You couldn't

758
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 1: be told no, So the Federal Radio Commission was supposed

759
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: to be able to say no if it was warranted. Um,

760
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: the question of how they determined how it was warranted

761
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: was something of a problem. And uh. The Act also

762
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,839
Speaker 1: laid out rules for content. Programming could not have obscene,

763
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: in decent or profane language, and the Commission could and

764
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 1: did use content as a factor when deciding whether or

765
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 1: not to renew a broadcast license. So if you were

766
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:48,400
Speaker 1: broadcasting and not paying a whole attention to those content rules,

767
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:51,840
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily have your license revoked, but when you

768
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 1: went back to get your license renewed, you might be denied. Right,

769
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 1: And this makes sense in light of other arguments that

770
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 1: were going on with media of the you know, the

771
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 1: twenty years probably surrounding this, both with the cinema and

772
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: I would assume newspapers and comic books as well. Yeah,

773
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: all looking at the government, the government trying to deem

774
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: what was profane or wasn't, but also trying to leave

775
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: it in the public's hands to decide. Yeah. There was

776
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: also a real worry about how far can you rule

777
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: on these things before it becomes censorship. So that I mean,

778
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 1: that's a real worry, right, because they didn't want to

779
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: be accused of taking away somebody's right to free speech. Sure, yeah, um.

780
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: And so the fr C Federal Radio Commission, it was

781
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 1: really just like this compromise, this political compromise. And so

782
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:50,879
Speaker 1: the idea was like really like they just assumed they

783
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:54,000
Speaker 1: being Congress, that it was going to go away after

784
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 1: a year as part of a political deal basically to

785
00:46:56,560 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: keep Hoover out of office, and especially because of the

786
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: commercial radio interests these guys who were lobbying their politicians. Uh,

787
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: they wanted their regulation to go back to the Secretary

788
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: of Commerce. They just didn't want it to be Hoover. Uh.

789
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: And so they and their supporters in Congress would belittle

790
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: the FARC's accomplishments even as they had they had subsequently

791
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 1: argued that it should exist, and then as it was

792
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: going along, they would say, oh, this is terrible. You're

793
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: not doing a good job. And Uh. The FARC was

794
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: handicapped by a number of things. A limited financial resources,

795
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 1: had an inadequate staff, uh, and as we're talking about here,

796
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: it really didn't have any power authority, and its existence

797
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 1: was in question from the very day that it was

798
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: it was created. It was like they were constantly on probation. Yeah.

799
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where, um, they're also

800
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: they're very organization ended up being a problem. So. Uh.

801
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 1: One of the things about the FARC was that they

802
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: were organized so that the entire United States was divided

803
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: into into zones. Yeah. They called this sectionalism, and each

804
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: zone was giving given the same number of broadcast licenses

805
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: essentially as every other zone, which you know, from one perspective,

806
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be fair, like everybody gets the

807
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 1: same amount, But then you think where's the population distribution.

808
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 1: The Northeast is very heavily populated and the Southwest is

809
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: very lightly populated, and so you don't have enough broadcast

810
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: licenses for the Northeast and you have too many for

811
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: the Southwest. So these were so simple things like just

812
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: the way things were set up kind of set the

813
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 1: f r C up for failure. It did, yeah, especially

814
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:42,799
Speaker 1: because when that happened, Southerners in particular felt like they

815
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: weren't being treated fairly. Uh, And it led to the

816
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: Davis Amendment in March. The idea was that there had

817
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: to be an equal allocation of licenses, band frequencies, periods

818
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: of time for operation station power for each of these

819
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 1: five zones. Uh and that so you know, obviously sexualism

820
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 1: was a huge problem for the FARC. And this is

821
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:09,440
Speaker 1: even before we get into the business interest angle, right right,

822
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: This is just in the operation part of the f FRC,

823
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: not even getting into the business section. But these are

824
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: definitely important things to to consider. The idea of being

825
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: able to say, here's the frequency you are allowed to use,

826
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 1: here's the amount of power your transmitter is allowed to have,

827
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 1: so that way we can make sure that we don't

828
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: have these battling frequencies interfering with one another, because that's

829
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: not going to be good for anybody. It's not good

830
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 1: for the transmitter, it's not good for the consumer who's

831
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 1: trying to receive these. All of that made sense, but

832
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: they were hampered so much. And also, I mean, there

833
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:44,719
Speaker 1: were a lot of shady political goings on along with

834
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: corporate goings on. At the same time. They were essentially

835
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: trying to fulfill this mission of favoring big business over

836
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:57,720
Speaker 1: amateur radios, and they Actually, there's an actual FARC memo

837
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 1: that says, quote, there is not room in the broadcast

838
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: band for every school of thought, whether it's religious, political, social, social,

839
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 1: or economic. Each can't have its own separate broadcasting station

840
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 1: or a mouthpiece in the ether. Uh So they, you know,

841
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: they were coming down pretty hard on these these amateur

842
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: stations that we're given providing you know, a pulpit essentially

843
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: to anybody who had the means to to operate a

844
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: broadcast um in favor of the businesses that were, you know,

845
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: lobbying to have them created in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so,

846
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: you know, very complicated issue. The technology, oddly enough, less

847
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 1: complicated than the politics and culture surrounding it. In this case,

848
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: like the stories end up getting um Like it's the

849
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:53,480
Speaker 1: human element that really throws the monkey wrench in here. Yeah. So,

850
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: for instance, like you've got this happens, the FRC says,

851
00:50:57,640 --> 00:50:59,400
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't a this isn't a pulpit for

852
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: your belief And then the labor movement, which is very

853
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,920
Speaker 1: powerful at the time, says, wait a minute, we should

854
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:07,399
Speaker 1: have a clear channel that we can broadcast over these

855
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: five zones so we can talk to people about labor interests,

856
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,279
Speaker 1: and then educators said, yeah, so should we uh, And

857
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,120
Speaker 1: so there's all this pressure from the public, and then

858
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 1: subsequently Congress uses that and just keeps pushing on the

859
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: f r C, saying you're really blowing it here. Yeah.

860
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:27,319
Speaker 1: So you've got a great bullet list here of the

861
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:30,799
Speaker 1: working principles of the f r C. Let's go through those. Yeah.

862
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: So this is how they would ostensibly decide things. The

863
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 1: first is that the station with the longest record of

864
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 1: continuous service had the superior right for broadcasting on a

865
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: particular channel, right, but they had a stipulation. There were

866
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: other conditions as well. So in order to fulfill the

867
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:53,920
Speaker 1: fair and equitable distribution that was required by them, an

868
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: applicant who wanted to broadcast needed firm financial standing and

869
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,319
Speaker 1: efficient equipment. That's pretty vague, right, So it's up to

870
00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 1: this f r C, not f c C f r

871
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: C commissioner at the time to determine what firm financial

872
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: standing means and what efficient equipment means, especially as this

873
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: equipment is evolving at a rapid pace. Um. And then

874
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 1: you also had to obey the rules of the obscene

875
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: of not broadcasting obscene content like we talked about earlier,

876
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 1: UH and basically keeping it so that the dissemination of

877
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: propaganda wasn't controlled by a single group, and that creeds

878
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: were supposed to find that this is another quote that

879
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: I loved, find their way into the market of ideas

880
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 1: to be on the air. There was this idea that, um,

881
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: there was a there would be a natural kind of

882
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 1: UH process throughout the radio operators in the public that

883
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:55,040
Speaker 1: decide which political agendas should get to be broadcast on

884
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: the radio or not, rather than just giving everyone the

885
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:00,839
Speaker 1: opportunity to Yeah, and that would actually changed to there

886
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: would there would eventually become a decision where people would say,

887
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: you know what, we need to make sure that everyone

888
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: has equal opportunity to voice there, to to put their

889
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 1: political voice out there. But that would be an idea

890
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:19,360
Speaker 1: that would come around a little later. Yeah, So you know,

891
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: saying let's just put this out there and see what happens,

892
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 1: and and I trust that whatever outcome there is it

893
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 1: will be for the best didn't always work out. It's

894
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: like it's like saying, the laws of nature will decide

895
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: who the best person for president of the United States

896
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:39,239
Speaker 1: would be. So what sort of stuff did we get

897
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: as a result of this, well, subsequently, the f r

898
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:47,840
Speaker 1: C didn't want to regulate advertising. Uh, not only because

899
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:52,239
Speaker 1: you know, the advertiser's interests were also their interests, but

900
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: also because the commission chose to further the ends of

901
00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:58,200
Speaker 1: the commercial broadcasters as part of what they called the

902
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 1: public interest. So the f SEE had this ability to

903
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:04,360
Speaker 1: claim that it didn't have powers of censorship and it

904
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:09,359
Speaker 1: couldn't be held responsible for questionable advertising such as cigarettes.

905
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,439
Speaker 1: You know, those like old corny cigarette ads that Judy

906
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: hear on radio right now. If you listen, if you

907
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,440
Speaker 1: ever listen to old timey radio that has the commercial

908
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 1: still in it, you will hear tons of these. So

909
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:24,320
Speaker 1: they didn't want to censor those. But at the same time,

910
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: they would rule that public stations that were on the

911
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:28,759
Speaker 1: air could or could not be on the air because

912
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:32,040
Speaker 1: of their quality of character, which I think is kind

913
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: of fascinating that you know it was. I would assume

914
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:39,359
Speaker 1: at the time that it was maybe arguments of political beliefs, right, um, yeah,

915
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: very likely religious. This actually makes me think of how

916
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:48,080
Speaker 1: it's unrelated. It's tangential, but how if I'm watching a

917
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:54,080
Speaker 1: streaming content on my one of my devices whenever it

918
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: gets to the content part, like whatever I'm actually trying

919
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:00,000
Speaker 1: to see, I might encounter buffering three or four times,

920
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:03,799
Speaker 1: depending upon the connection. But commercials always seemed to play

921
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 1: with perfect clarity and no buffering whatsoever. Isn't that interesting,

922
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:11,320
Speaker 1: especially especially when you're when you're on YouTube, and YouTube

923
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: has got that new sort of passive aggressive alert that

924
00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 1: comes up at the bottom that says, hey, just so

925
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:18,799
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't US, it's the limits of your

926
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:25,400
Speaker 1: bandwidth provider, right, commercial. So it's interesting to me also

927
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:27,879
Speaker 1: that the public, you know, you would think like, oh,

928
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: the public, were they crying out on behalf of the

929
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,439
Speaker 1: little guy, And it turns out they weren't. In large part,

930
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 1: they were actually citing with the big networks. Yeah they were.

931
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:39,839
Speaker 1: And what's kind of interesting about this is, yeah, they

932
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 1: were more interested in the content that NBC, r c

933
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,520
Speaker 1: A and CBS was we're putting out um and even

934
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,480
Speaker 1: though some people argued, you know, our c has a

935
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: monopoly on this industry. Uh, it's interesting, Like there was

936
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: another argument that was essentially that, look, the mass public

937
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,080
Speaker 1: just wants entertainment from these radio channels. They don't want

938
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:00,160
Speaker 1: to be educated, they don't want to listen to your

939
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: political screeds, and so subsequently they're complacent about the whole

940
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 1: thing and they don't really care whether or not these

941
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 1: amateur radio stations are getting edged out. UM. And so again,

942
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:15,239
Speaker 1: like I turned back to this article by this guy

943
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: Herring out of the Harvard Review, and he proposed that

944
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:22,439
Speaker 1: there are two potential solutions, which I think are really

945
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: interesting now that we have the the advantage of being

946
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:26,960
Speaker 1: so far ahead and time and looking back on this,

947
00:56:27,120 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: and he said, the only possible solutions are that we

948
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: go for full government ownership. His example was the BBC

949
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:37,640
Speaker 1: at the time. UH. And he said, yeah, there's criticisms

950
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: that come in the form of minorities, not not ethnic minorities,

951
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 1: but like minorities of of voice claiming that they aren't

952
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 1: given equal opportunity to access to stations. So that's the

953
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:49,319
Speaker 1: one negative drawback to that. And he said, or we

954
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:52,799
Speaker 1: could a lot of fixed percentage of radio facilities just

955
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:57,440
Speaker 1: for nonprofit programs. UH. And then whatever it is, whether

956
00:56:57,480 --> 00:57:01,800
Speaker 1: it's uh they allocate a certain number frequencies or maybe

957
00:57:01,840 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 1: they say, you know, the commercial stations can broadcast for

958
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: these twelve hours a day and then another twelve hours

959
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:11,160
Speaker 1: a day, it's our nonprofit stations. Um. But even if

960
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:14,799
Speaker 1: they did that, there were so much demand for nonprofit

961
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:20,160
Speaker 1: amateur radio that they didn't have enough enough to accommodate everybody.

962
00:57:20,200 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough literally in this case, it wasn't There

963
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:28,200
Speaker 1: weren't enough frequencies to facilitate it. Yeah. Yeah, So this

964
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: is really between where we see the beginning of the

965
00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 1: radio industry an actual radio industry that is commercialized, and

966
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: there are questions that we're going around about, well, how

967
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: should broadcasting be financed, how should we produce our programs?

968
00:57:46,640 --> 00:57:50,480
Speaker 1: How should we distribute? All of this stuff? And amateur

969
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:54,000
Speaker 1: broadcasting moved away as much as it was, like kind

970
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: of I think of it as being like the fandom

971
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:59,160
Speaker 1: of today, you know, like I keep thinking that's amateur

972
00:57:59,240 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 1: radios like the bler of the twenties, um, and that

973
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:09,160
Speaker 1: there were so many fandoms expressed there. But ultimately other

974
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:14,640
Speaker 1: stations that had commercial enterprises behind them, or even commercial

975
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:19,240
Speaker 1: enterprises themselves, like department stores or music stores or doctors

976
00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:24,840
Speaker 1: or Mr Brinkley sorry Dr brink Yes, uh, he didn't

977
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: spend three years not graduating medical school to be called

978
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: Mr Exactly. Yeah, I mean that five was well spent. Uh,

979
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:36,439
Speaker 1: they ultimately were able to you know, put push out

980
00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:42,400
Speaker 1: these interests of the sort of amateur broadcasters. So like

981
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: our c A GE and Westinghouse, they form NBC because

982
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 1: they want to keep their interests from diverging, even though

983
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 1: their competitors they're also you know, united against amateur radio.

984
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 1: This leads to the rise of advertising sponsorships, which were

985
00:58:57,440 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: well familiarly with in the podcasting world and with ad agents.

986
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:03,400
Speaker 1: This is really like the first time that they had

987
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: like whole ad agencies that were working together with these

988
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: companies kind of coming up with how this stuff is

989
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: going to be broadcasting, How is the best way to

990
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 1: convince the audience to to move from queens or to

991
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 1: a cigarette. So looking back to our friend that we

992
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 1: referred to a second ago, doctor John R. Brinkley. Uh,

993
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: the FRC denied his broadcast renewal license in nineteen thirty.

994
00:59:30,760 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 1: So Dr Brinkley comes up to the f r C

995
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 1: s as a time for me to get a little

996
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 1: stamp on here so I can continue my my good

997
00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: deeds of posting are broadcasting fraudulent medical practices and getting kickbacks,

998
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: And they said nope, They actually cited the fraudulent claims

999
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:51,520
Speaker 1: and the content as the reason, saying it was against

1000
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: their content rules and that's why they were not renewing

1001
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:57,600
Speaker 1: its license. So actually an instance where they did that

1002
00:59:58,240 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: and it was for the good, out for the great,

1003
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: for the greater good in this case, although Brinkley. Brinkley

1004
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: said that what was happening was effectively censorship. Um. And

1005
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 1: so he protests, and what he does. He buys a

1006
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:14,120
Speaker 1: radio station in Mexico that broadcasts had a much higher

1007
01:00:14,120 --> 01:00:16,760
Speaker 1: power than almost any station in the US. It was

1008
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:19,960
Speaker 1: at a hundred thousand watts, eventually went up to a

1009
01:00:19,960 --> 01:00:24,480
Speaker 1: half million watts and so very powerful radio station compared

1010
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 1: to the other ones that were active at the time.

1011
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 1: He directs the antenna northward into the United States. It's amazing.

1012
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: So here's here's the deal. This is this is what's

1013
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: gonna come back and haunt him. The way this worked

1014
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: was that he would, uh, he would actually his studio

1015
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:45,000
Speaker 1: was in the United States, the the stuff he was

1016
01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 1: broadcasting would go to Mexico to be transmitted by radio,

1017
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:53,160
Speaker 1: and that's what would eventually come back to get him.

1018
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:57,080
Speaker 1: But that would be another couple of years. He's unfascinated

1019
01:00:57,120 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: by this guy. He's the brass, the moxie. Yeah. Um. Well,

1020
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 1: as a side note, one of the things that was

1021
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top from that listener message was FDRs

1022
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:15,600
Speaker 1: fireside chats, and those began in nineteen thirty three. So

1023
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:19,840
Speaker 1: this is really when I mean fireside chats don't happen anymore.

1024
01:01:19,840 --> 01:01:22,400
Speaker 1: But I'm fairly certain that the President of the United

1025
01:01:22,440 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: States still records a weekly message that goes out on

1026
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:31,280
Speaker 1: radio and it becomes an institution, but presidency recognizes the

1027
01:01:31,280 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 1: importance of this media, of the communicating to the mass public.

1028
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:39,240
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen thirty three, that's when Edwin Howard Edwin

1029
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: Howard Armstrong, remember we talked about him earlier, created frequency

1030
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:47,280
Speaker 1: modulation radio or FM radio. So am Remember we mentioned

1031
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:50,440
Speaker 1: changes the peak to peak voltage changes the amplitude of

1032
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:55,280
Speaker 1: that wavelength. Frequency modulation doesn't change the amplitude. It changes

1033
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:58,640
Speaker 1: the number of oscillations per second, the actual frequency of

1034
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:01,000
Speaker 1: the wave, but then a fairly narrow band because obviously

1035
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: you have to tune to a band of frequencies in

1036
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:06,520
Speaker 1: order to pick things up. Then if it went outside

1037
01:02:06,560 --> 01:02:09,280
Speaker 1: of that, you wouldn't get it anymore, which is why

1038
01:02:09,640 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 1: you can overlap stations instead of causing interference. Yeah, as

1039
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: long as you know so you know if you're if

1040
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:19,080
Speaker 1: you're going in an area where the power levels are

1041
01:02:19,120 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: almost the same for the frequencies, that's when you start

1042
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:23,680
Speaker 1: getting that weird thing where you'll hear one station and

1043
01:02:23,680 --> 01:02:26,720
Speaker 1: then the other station. Maybe you'll hear both the same time.

1044
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 1: But it's pretty rare. Uh So it's also not as

1045
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: prone to static. You don't have the same problems that

1046
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: you did with AM with electromagnetic interference. But before it

1047
01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:40,480
Speaker 1: could get widespread adoption, Armstrong was essentially backstabbed by his

1048
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: former friend David Starnoff, who was head of guess what

1049
01:02:43,920 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: r c A, and r c A obviously had a

1050
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:50,480
Speaker 1: big vested interest in AM radio FM was rising as

1051
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:54,920
Speaker 1: a competing technology. Sarnoff went nuclear. He he had wanted

1052
01:02:55,400 --> 01:02:58,480
Speaker 1: Armstrong to go and create technology to make AM radio

1053
01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 1: broadcast more clear, more free at static, and instead Armstrong

1054
01:03:03,720 --> 01:03:06,440
Speaker 1: comes up with this alternative to AM radio. But our

1055
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 1: c A is heavily invested in AM, so rather than say,

1056
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: let's adopt this new technology and build on it, he

1057
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:20,120
Speaker 1: went nuclear, and he started lobbying the FCC to deny

1058
01:03:20,200 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: an experimental license for UH testing FM radio. Essentially, every

1059
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: time Armstrong tried to make a move to push FM

1060
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:31,640
Speaker 1: radio forward, our ci A blocked it or tried to

1061
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: block it, or complicated litigation ensued. It got very expensive.

1062
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 1: And here's where things get really tragic. UH in the

1063
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 1: and by the time you get to the nineteen forties,

1064
01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:48,400
Speaker 1: Armstrong was effectively bankrupted by the litigation. He was still

1065
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:53,200
Speaker 1: trying to pursue this. He goes to his wife to

1066
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:55,960
Speaker 1: ask her for some of the money he had given

1067
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: her in their earlier part of their relationship that she

1068
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:02,360
Speaker 1: had put aside for their retirement. She denies him this.

1069
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:08,040
Speaker 1: He he has been beaten down totally, and he gets

1070
01:04:08,160 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 1: enraged and does a horrible act. He grabs a fire poker,

1071
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 1: hits his wife in the arm UH injuring her arm.

1072
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: She leaves obviously. She leaves him that evening. He sits down,

1073
01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:24,840
Speaker 1: writes an apologetic letter, and jumps out the window of

1074
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:31,120
Speaker 1: his thirteenth floor building and kills himself. Tragic, tragic story.

1075
01:04:31,440 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 1: So there are some amazing and powerful stories here. Brinkley

1076
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 1: Armstrong Tesla Marconi. Is I mean there's a movie? There

1077
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:44,880
Speaker 1: are many movies to be made. From this, moving on

1078
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:51,240
Speaker 1: the nur Communications Act, huge huge piece of legislation. This

1079
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 1: is the formation of the fcc UM. The one section

1080
01:04:55,520 --> 01:04:58,800
Speaker 1: of that Act is actually referred to as the Brinkley Act.

1081
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:03,160
Speaker 1: This is within the overall nine Communications Act. And of

1082
01:05:03,200 --> 01:05:05,560
Speaker 1: course the Brinkley Act is in fact named after our

1083
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:10,200
Speaker 1: good buddy, doctor John R. Brinkley. So this was the

1084
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:14,960
Speaker 1: US government's attempt to finally shut down Brinkley and his

1085
01:05:15,040 --> 01:05:18,560
Speaker 1: attempts to continue broadcasting. And they said that if you

1086
01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 1: are transmitting information from the United States to another country

1087
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 1: to be broadcast, that is a type of international commerce

1088
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:30,479
Speaker 1: and thus can be regulated. And they laid down rules

1089
01:05:30,520 --> 01:05:33,440
Speaker 1: and they said, you cannot do this, it is against

1090
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:36,400
Speaker 1: the law. Now we have put that into law. It

1091
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 1: put a stop to his transmitting and he ended up

1092
01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:43,360
Speaker 1: trying to do other things. He also, by the way,

1093
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:47,400
Speaker 1: really got the government's attention, not just by transmitting messages

1094
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 1: about quackery and terrible medicinal cures for things. He sided

1095
01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: with the Nazis before the before the United States entered

1096
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: the war, exactly as is before the United States was

1097
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:04,280
Speaker 1: in in World War Two. But he started with the Nazis.

1098
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 1: Did not go over well. Uh. He eventually would die

1099
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:14,680
Speaker 1: of a heart attack in nine. Yeah, and insane with

1100
01:06:14,920 --> 01:06:19,160
Speaker 1: Dr Brinkley. But Brinkley, I mean his his actions are

1101
01:06:19,240 --> 01:06:21,520
Speaker 1: what in fact there was not. There was a case

1102
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:25,280
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties that related to shutting down

1103
01:06:25,520 --> 01:06:29,800
Speaker 1: a uh AN organization that was using a similar means

1104
01:06:29,880 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: of transmitting from the United States to a radio antenna

1105
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:37,400
Speaker 1: in Mexico because they had the facility that they could

1106
01:06:37,480 --> 01:06:42,200
Speaker 1: use and it was largely unregulated. Even as late as nineties,

1107
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:44,360
Speaker 1: we've had cases that fall under this part of the Act.

1108
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:47,720
Speaker 1: For some reason, I'm thinking about d d O S attacks.

1109
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:51,960
Speaker 1: It's like the their version of yeah, it's all about

1110
01:06:52,040 --> 01:06:58,320
Speaker 1: stepping around the regulations, right yeah. Well, um, Congress, like

1111
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:01,280
Speaker 1: you said, had abolished that FARC, which they were hoping

1112
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: to do to begin with, but instead of just turning

1113
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:05,760
Speaker 1: it back over to the Department of Commerce, they established

1114
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:10,000
Speaker 1: the FCC. The mandate of the SEC is Interstate and

1115
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:13,800
Speaker 1: Foreign Commerce in Communication, which is where the Brinkley thing

1116
01:07:13,840 --> 01:07:16,760
Speaker 1: comes in. And this is these are the three claims

1117
01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:20,800
Speaker 1: that they maintainer. The reason for the FCC make sure

1118
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:25,040
Speaker 1: that radio is available to all for reasonable charges and

1119
01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:28,520
Speaker 1: with adequate facilities. So that you're not necessarily listening to.

1120
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 1: No longer would you be listening to an amateur out

1121
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:34,760
Speaker 1: of their garage, out of their gas station, would walk

1122
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:36,800
Speaker 1: away for five minutes to go pump some gas and

1123
01:07:36,800 --> 01:07:40,600
Speaker 1: then come back. You want reliable radio service, America, and

1124
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:42,760
Speaker 1: we're going to give it to you. And so this

1125
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 1: is also when we start seeing the allocation of large

1126
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 1: frequency bands for AM radio and FM radio. There's still

1127
01:07:49,920 --> 01:07:52,240
Speaker 1: is amateur radio. You can get a license to operate

1128
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:55,440
Speaker 1: an amateur radio, but there are very specific band of

1129
01:07:55,520 --> 01:07:57,680
Speaker 1: frequencies you are allowed to use and you can't use

1130
01:07:57,720 --> 01:08:01,000
Speaker 1: anything outside of that. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind

1131
01:08:01,000 --> 01:08:04,200
Speaker 1: of what Herrying was arguing back in the nineteen thirties

1132
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 1: that that there, but it's far more limited than that.

1133
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:09,160
Speaker 1: I think what he was envisioning with that there there

1134
01:08:09,160 --> 01:08:14,520
Speaker 1: would be a spectrum for nonprofit radio um and, and

1135
01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:16,800
Speaker 1: he also argued that the f c C at the

1136
01:08:16,840 --> 01:08:20,040
Speaker 1: time had to decide whether they were going to support

1137
01:08:20,120 --> 01:08:25,480
Speaker 1: commercial broadcasters at the expense of nonprofit ones, and ultimately,

1138
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: as we know, they decided to do that. Um and

1139
01:08:29,400 --> 01:08:32,120
Speaker 1: even though they were hearings going on and reports were

1140
01:08:32,160 --> 01:08:34,240
Speaker 1: being pulled together and the f CC was looking at

1141
01:08:34,240 --> 01:08:37,000
Speaker 1: all these things. You know, ultimately, what we know of

1142
01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:39,960
Speaker 1: as the Golden Age of radio saw the growth of

1143
01:08:40,000 --> 01:08:45,520
Speaker 1: these these uh multi uh corporate networks across the country.

1144
01:08:45,720 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: Right and by this time we're talking about World War two,

1145
01:08:49,400 --> 01:08:54,080
Speaker 1: radio now was adopted by a huge percentage of the population.

1146
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,760
Speaker 1: Nine and ten families owned a radio and listened to

1147
01:08:57,840 --> 01:08:59,880
Speaker 1: an average of three to four hours of programming at

1148
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:02,439
Speaker 1: a right, this is like what we picture of that

1149
01:09:02,520 --> 01:09:06,320
Speaker 1: like family gathered right time. Yeah, my place is going

1150
01:09:06,360 --> 01:09:09,439
Speaker 1: and they're all gathered around the radio, little orphan Annie

1151
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,320
Speaker 1: and the lone Ranger and green Hornet and all that

1152
01:09:12,400 --> 01:09:15,160
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Yeah, this is this is where we're

1153
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:18,920
Speaker 1: going to kind of draw and end to this because

1154
01:09:19,760 --> 01:09:22,040
Speaker 1: while we're right here at the dawn of the Golden Age,

1155
01:09:22,080 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 1: I think that you know, what's the cool story that

1156
01:09:24,479 --> 01:09:27,240
Speaker 1: we've been able to tell is the rocky journey it

1157
01:09:27,360 --> 01:09:30,840
Speaker 1: took to get there. I hope you guys enjoyed that

1158
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:33,040
Speaker 1: episode about the Golden Age of radio. If you have

1159
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:35,920
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes, reach out to me on

1160
01:09:36,040 --> 01:09:38,599
Speaker 1: tech stuff or Twitter. The handle for both of those

1161
01:09:38,680 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: is tex Stuff h s W and I'll talk to

1162
01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:49,599
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart

1163
01:09:49,720 --> 01:09:53,439
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

1164
01:09:53,479 --> 01:09:56,559
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1165
01:09:56,640 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Eight