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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology. It was tex Stuff from

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I am joined by a special guest,

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Speaker 1: my buddy Christian, who is here. Hey Jonathan, Hey Christian,

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Speaker 1: how you doing. I am good? Windy outside it is.

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Speaker 1: It's a little windy, a little rainy outside in Atlanta today.

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Speaker 1: It's terrible because this morning it was it was, it

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Speaker 1: was raining, but the temperature was about twenty degrees warmer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it dropped significantly. I'm regretting my choice of jackets well,

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Speaker 1: especially because it was in the seventies yesterday. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And now this is this is Atlanta people complaining about

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Speaker 1: whether right. Yeah. Sorry for all of you who are

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Speaker 1: in Montreal or New York or you know, any place

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Speaker 1: where the temperature drops below, say zero, on a regular basis.

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Speaker 1: Here we're like, it's a little chilly, that's raining. Uh. Today,

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

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Speaker 1: that was suggested by a listener, And first of all,

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

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Speaker 1: efforts of researching where this suggestion came from, I couldn't

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Speaker 1: find it. So I'm guessing this was actually an older one,

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

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

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Speaker 1: been to have lived through the debut 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 Pallette 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, or recorded it all over because the

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Speaker 1: ghost of Marconi was haunting you there was that, and

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Speaker 1: we had in the old studio we had a portrait

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: talking it through once we went back re recorded, so

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

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Speaker 1: We don't have it anymore, at least I hope will

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Speaker 1: be more organized today. But I'll tell you just from

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Speaker 1: going through all this research that this is such a

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Speaker 1: vast amount of information for this period of time, and

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Speaker 1: I feel like it's in you can you can get

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Speaker 1: a PhD in radio communication in the history of radio

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Speaker 1: and understanding these things, and it's yeah, we will probably

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Speaker 1: only scratch the surface today. Ig Yeah, there there and

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Speaker 1: there's so many crazy dramatic stories of the trail of

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

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Speaker 1: industry of people just messing with each other. It's it's fascinating.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there there's probably two or three podcast worth

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Speaker 1: of information that we could cover, but we're gonna try

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Speaker 1: and get this in one if we can. So first

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: message that way without creating a lot of static and noise,

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Speaker 1: and that was a real problem. So we need to

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Speaker 1: look at another person for broadcast radio. That would be

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Speaker 1: a Canadian by the name of Reginald Fessenden, who essentially

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Speaker 1: invented a M radio that would be uh, the amplitude

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

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Speaker 1: it says he worked with Edison for Edison. Actually he

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Speaker 1: actually worked for both Westinghouse and Edison at different points

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Speaker 1: in his career. So yeah, he just like Tesla, Tesla

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Speaker 1: also worked for both, although you know, again working for

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Speaker 1: like it's like me saying that, you know, I worked

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Speaker 1: for the head of our parent company. Technically I do,

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Speaker 1: but I don't have any contact with them. So uh,

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Speaker 1: he had dropped out of school as a young man.

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Speaker 1: He actually did not complete his school work, but he

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Speaker 1: was mainly interested in electricity and this potential to transmit

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Speaker 1: messages wirelessly, and he was using that spark gap technology.

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Speaker 1: But that was the problem, was that it was creating

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Speaker 1: so much static and noise that it was very difficult

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Speaker 1: to get any intelligible message across. Yeah. So actually I

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Speaker 1: want to interject here for a second. So, um, in

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

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Speaker 1: at how human beings communicate with each other regardless of media,

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Speaker 1: they actually use uh this Fessenden Marconi uh model of

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Speaker 1: transmissions as like the baseline for it. And it's all

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Speaker 1: about like sending and receiving with feedback and feed forward

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Speaker 1: and then there's a signal to noise ratio. That's how

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Speaker 1: it's all understood, whether you and I are sitting here

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

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Speaker 1: 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 electromagnetic fields and thus creating

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Speaker 1: radio waves, but it isn't giving me the fidelity I

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: So it's just steady. Now that's not carrying any information

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Speaker 1: by itself. It's if you could if you could hear it,

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Speaker 1: it would just be a steady tone. But it's actually

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Speaker 1: talking about using frequencies above the limit of human hearing.

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Speaker 1: So let's say you create this wave, and then you

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Speaker 1: were too introduce a second wave, one that was created

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Speaker 1: by your voice. So you speak into a microphone, it

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Speaker 1: gets converted into electric waves. You add that on top

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Speaker 1: of the uh the existing wave you've already created, and

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Speaker 1: you allow it to change the amplitude of that wave.

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Speaker 1: As the two waves are overlaid on top of one another. Sure,

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Speaker 1: it's genius. It is genius. It's absolutely genius. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: this was a M radio. This was the idea that

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Speaker 1: what that became a M radio because it does modulate

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Speaker 1: the amplitude of that wave. So the amplitude, by the way,

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Speaker 1: is the the peak to peak uh difference, Right, it's not.

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Speaker 1: It's not how many oscillations. This is just the the

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Speaker 1: amplitude of the wave itself, how tall the peaks are,

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Speaker 1: how low the troughs are, if you were looking at

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Speaker 1: the wave across a line the way. It's assuming that

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Speaker 1: this innovation of his significantly reduced the noise and static.

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Speaker 1: It did, it did. It did still have issues and

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Speaker 1: that you could have interference with other waves that were

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Speaker 1: created at that same frequency. It also meant that you

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Speaker 1: could get interference with other electromagnetic phenomenons, like like a

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Speaker 1: lightning strike. So also if you pass below, like if

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Speaker 1: you go under a bridge, you would hear, you know,

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Speaker 1: the disruption of the signal. So it wasn't perfect, but

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Speaker 1: it was an incredible step forward. And this was a

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Speaker 1: revolutionary I mean he tested it successfully. He did a

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Speaker 1: short distance test between two towers and it worked fine.

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Speaker 1: And then in nineteen o six he had his infamous

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

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Speaker 1: where I think that that boat to boat idea comes from,

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Speaker 1: right yeah, Because it turns out the disaster of the

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Speaker 1: Titanic would end up really making this uh clear that

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Speaker 1: needed to be some radio communication for ships at sea.

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Speaker 1: But what he wanted to do was he wanted to

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Speaker 1: send out a message to essentially telegraph operators aboard ships.

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Speaker 1: That was his plan. So he proceeded the concert with

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Speaker 1: an actual telegraph message that essentially translates into hey, pay attention.

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Speaker 1: And then once he did that, he started it was

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Speaker 1: coming right. They were not, most of them. They just

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Speaker 1: knew to pay attention because I got yeah there. They

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Speaker 1: were like, well, here's the message. Whatever is going to happen,

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

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Speaker 1: expecting to hear were just the noises they would hear

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

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

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Speaker 1: uh and plays a Holy Night. There were supposed to

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Speaker 1: be other people who talked into the microphone too, but

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Speaker 1: most of them chickened out because they they got like

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Speaker 1: terrible stage fright because they realized all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: that they were speaking to like hundreds of people, right, 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're we're 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. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so so he he demonstrates this capability, and immediately other

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Speaker 1: physicists and engineers start to experiment with it because some

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Speaker 1: of them had been independently working on the same kind

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Speaker 1: of idea. Fessendon ended up being the first to make

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Speaker 1: it really work in a public demonstration. So you had

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Speaker 1: a lot of other people who were who either adopted

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Speaker 1: his ideas or continued to develop their own ideas, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of amateurs were starting to experiment with radio transmissions,

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Speaker 1: including transmitting out to telegraph operators, who often were very

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Speaker 1: much entertained by this because it was different from just

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Speaker 1: listening to clicks on the headphones. This is the part

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Speaker 1: that's the most fascinating about the evolution of radio to

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Speaker 1: me is that even though the technology is ultimately made

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Speaker 1: for mass communication. People originally started using it as one

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Speaker 1: to one communication across long distances, replacing a telegraph. And

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Speaker 1: then uh, these amateur operators, these like d I y

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Speaker 1: uh people in their in their garage, is just you know,

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Speaker 1: tinkering around with the technology that they could get a

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Speaker 1: hold of. We're able to turn it into this mass

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Speaker 1: communication then yeah, And it's funny because when you look

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Speaker 1: at the early ones, obviously they were using very low

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Speaker 1: wattage transmitters, so that meant that they couldn't transmit very far,

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Speaker 1: most of them. I mean, if you were a big name,

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Speaker 1: you might be able to work with someone like General

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Speaker 1: Electric to get a really big transmitter and be able

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Speaker 1: to send a signal far away, because the signals reach

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Speaker 1: is largely dependent upon the power of the transmitter. Right.

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Speaker 1: The further way you get, the weaker the signal is,

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Speaker 1: and the less you'll be likely you are able to

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Speaker 1: pick it up with a receiver. So in the early days,

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Speaker 1: people were happy to experiment with this, and there was

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Speaker 1: really no regulation because there there hadn't been a demonstrable

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

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Speaker 1: to interfere that much with anything that was important. 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 Hurts frequency, which was really important,

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Speaker 1: and in night. Dr Charles Aaron Culver, who was newly

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Speaker 1: hired as a professor of physics at Beloit College or

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Speaker 1: bell Watt if you prefer um. It's it's in a

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Speaker 1: town called bell Watt actually um, but set up a

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Speaker 1: radio telegraph assembly which became the foundation for the college

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Speaker 1: is radio station, though voice in music transmission wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: part of it until the ninth twenties. But this this

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: radio station. Yeah, and that's kind of another interesting aspect

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

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

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Speaker 1: it on their own. A lot of it was educational institutions,

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Speaker 1: not just colleges but also high schools that were just

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Speaker 1: you know, trying to use it for educational purposes. And

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: you had bleeding edge adopters who might not build a computer,

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Speaker 1: but they're curious about how they might use it. And

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Speaker 1: then later who had people who were uh you know

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Speaker 1: more it became more and more mainstream as time went on.

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Speaker 1: So we've seen other emerging technologies that have followed a

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Speaker 1: similar pathway to radio. Uh. Not always with the dramatics.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there were some definite dramatics and early personal

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Speaker 1: computers too. But we got some crazy stories to tell.

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Speaker 1: But first we have another big name in radio that

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Speaker 1: we have to mention. Yeah, so in nineteen ten, this

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Speaker 1: guy lead to Forest uh really broadcasted like the first

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Speaker 1: 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: that 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 new 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 maybe

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Speaker 1: that they were only transmitting to people in their general

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

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Speaker 1: to necessarily pick up that signal for much further. It

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Speaker 1: 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 he would imagine, this job is

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

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

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Speaker 1: programming in a way, And by nineteen ten he had

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: to back in nineteen 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 already contest work. Back then, she would

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 in

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Speaker 1: ninety one would become kq W, and in nineteen 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 the 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 our radio transmissions broadcast without any regulation.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: to ship communication. Uh, it's starting to get a little

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Speaker 1: crowded and we're starting to get interference. 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 like nineteen eleven, everyone would have been confused. Uh.

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: can have these these very important transmissions go uninterrupted because

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

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Speaker 1: you get lots of interference, which is different from there

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Speaker 1: was a military on it too. This as well because

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Speaker 1: World War One was on the horizon, was happening, and

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Speaker 1: they the government banned amateur radio broadcasting during the war

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Speaker 1: for you know, the reason that they were trying to

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Speaker 1: transmit signals to one another of important nature. If somebody

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Speaker 1: was talking in their garage about uh, you know, their

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Speaker 1: favorite records or something or young people. Yeah, the ones

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

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't get these important messages. So they shut it

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Speaker 1: all down. And also just radio detection to the the

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Speaker 1: remote possibility that they might detect radio transmissions from either

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Speaker 1: allies or enemies. It would mean that before they had Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is before the whole Bletchley park On

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Speaker 1: Dygma thing, which is I've talked about that in the

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Speaker 1: previous episode of tex stuff. But fascinating story. So nineteen

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Speaker 1: fourteen Edwin Armstrong, who's going to be important throughout this conversation,

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Speaker 1: and his story is a ma using and tragic. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He patents a radio receiver circuit that increases the selectivity

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Speaker 1: which allows you to tune into specific frequencies and the

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Speaker 1: sensitivity of radio receivers. That means it was able to

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Speaker 1: pick up weaker radio signals than previous receivers. So selectivity

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

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at this particular band of frequencies and I

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Speaker 1: don't want anything outside of that um and we would

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Speaker 1: see that get better and better. In en he would

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: this a few times to kind of get what was

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

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Speaker 1: 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 to explain it to me, because yeah, I'm more

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Speaker 1: of the on the side of the leg cultural examination

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

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

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Speaker 1: I want to transmit a radio signal at a high frequency,

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Speaker 1: so it's not going to interfere with anything else, but

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Speaker 1: that processing high frequencies is a little tricky, So you

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Speaker 1: might have a receiver that can process frequencies up to

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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna take an arbitrary number hurts. But I

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Speaker 1: want to transmit at five hundred killer hurts. If I

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Speaker 1: were to introduce that frequency to an oscillator tuned to

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Speaker 1: a different frequency, suddenly I would be able to receive that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: not just at the original frequency I transmit at, but

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Speaker 1: the difference between that and the oscillating one. So another

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Speaker 1: easy example, let's say they have an oscillating frequency at

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Speaker 1: a thousand killer hurts. Okay, that would mean that if

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Speaker 1: you use a receiver tuned to five killer hurts, killer hurts,

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Speaker 1: or two thousand five Killer Hurts. You would pick up

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Speaker 1: that signal and could process it. Okay, So and I'm

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Speaker 1: imagining that this is a process that's still used today. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This is the principle of transmitting and and receiving with

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Speaker 1: a radios so that your radio doesn't have to have

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Speaker 1: as wide a spectrum. It's called interminute frequency. And it

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Speaker 1: took me a long time to figure out what was

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Speaker 1: going on. Is the oscillator that was throwing me off?

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Speaker 1: And then I realized, oh, the oscillators tuned to a

377
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Speaker 1: different frequency, and that's what gives you the broader range

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00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:38,600
Speaker 1: that you can pick up. It's pretty fascinating. And again

379
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:42,239
Speaker 1: Armstrong was absolutely brilliant coming up with this. Uh. And

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00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:45,119
Speaker 1: then we move up to the nineteen twenties. Yeah, and

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00:22:45,200 --> 00:22:47,639
Speaker 1: the twenties is when this educational stuff that I was

382
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:49,760
Speaker 1: talking about earlier it really hits a boom. There was

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Speaker 1: like more than two hundred educational organizations across the United

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Speaker 1: States of America that, uh, we're requesting broadcasting licenses so

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Speaker 1: that they could transmit, and whether they were using it

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Speaker 1: as a an opportunity for their students to learn about

387
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 1: the technology or to broadcast educational information, it didn't really matter.

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Speaker 1: The unfortunate thing is that thirteen years later, by nine

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Speaker 1: three or more of these educational institutions had folded and

390
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:21,120
Speaker 1: and basically it was because of and this is going

391
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Speaker 1: to be a huge theme of this episode, because of

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00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:28,120
Speaker 1: ad based programming and stronger stations, commercial stations that were

393
00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: able to overlap their signal. Yeah, you essentially had not

394
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:37,120
Speaker 1: just the fact that the companies had more technological behind them,

395
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:41,199
Speaker 1: but that the government was favoring those over the educational ones.

396
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,120
Speaker 1: When we get into a little bit more about the politics,

397
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:48,000
Speaker 1: you're going to hear that repeated a few times, and

398
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:51,600
Speaker 1: it's it's a little upsetting, honestly. And I also i'd

399
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,679
Speaker 1: like to say, like, it's interesting because, despite whatever my

400
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,239
Speaker 1: political beliefs are reading. One of the articles that we

401
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,360
Speaker 1: used as as research for this was written in nineteen

402
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: from the perspective of somebody at Harvard University looking back

403
00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:10,880
Speaker 1: at the Federal Radio Radio Commission before it turned into

404
00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 1: the FCC that we have now and kind of just

405
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:15,960
Speaker 1: doing a broad review of the last like ten years

406
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: of this. And it's very very similar and reminiscent of

407
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 1: arguments that we've seen with media throughout the last hundred

408
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: years and that we're seeing right now in arguments about

409
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:30,000
Speaker 1: net neutrality. Yeah, it's really similar to net neutrality, the

410
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 1: idea being that everyone should be free to use the

411
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 1: Internet to send and receive whatever information they want. In radio,

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00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: we saw the same argument, except in that case radio,

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Speaker 1: it was it ended up being that those folks were

414
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: kind of pushed away and that the the the corporations,

415
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:51,439
Speaker 1: the companies that had the money were the ones that

416
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: had the voice. Yeah, and and so like you know,

417
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:57,440
Speaker 1: as we're talking earlier, there's these amateur radio stations, right,

418
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: and they here's the kind of content you might find

419
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,199
Speaker 1: an amateur radio stations. Maybe somebody's giving a sermon, or

420
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: they're they're they're just reading out of their Bible, or

421
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:10,640
Speaker 1: they're talking about sports out of today's newspaper, updating their

422
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,640
Speaker 1: neighborhood on what happened in sports around the country that day.

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00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,880
Speaker 1: Maybe they're reading a poem, maybe they're giving a speech

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00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:21,000
Speaker 1: about something political at the time, perhaps the usage of radio,

425
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:26,199
Speaker 1: or like we were talking earlier, just playing records and

426
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: at the time, there was no you know, licensing or

427
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: copyright and effect for for how music was broadcasted. So

428
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: they could just throw any record on and kind of

429
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: entertain the neighborhood. Right in a way, you can think

430
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: of it as like the predecessor of blogs. Yeah, you

431
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,919
Speaker 1: know it really in a in a real way it was.

432
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: And uh, this was amazing. This was an ability for

433
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: someone to have a platform to have their voice heard.

434
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:55,000
Speaker 1: Some people made very good use of that. Some people

435
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 1: may you may think, made frivolous use of it, just

436
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: like well, sure, yeah, exactly. And that's just like blogging,

437
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: except for for people like us, I suppose who do

438
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 1: get paid to do it. Uh, A lot of these

439
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 1: these amateur radioists that they weren't getting paid for this.

440
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: They had day jobs. In fact, Like one of the

441
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: stories I read was about how there's this guy who

442
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: ran a gas station, but he also had a radio

443
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: station running out of his gas station, and so he'd

444
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: be on air and then he'd say, hold on a minute,

445
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,080
Speaker 1: I have to go, uh sell some gas, and he'd go.

446
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,120
Speaker 1: He'd disappeared for five minutes, and they'd come back and

447
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: just pick up again. And that was just how it is.

448
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: They didn't really worry about dead air or anything like that. Yeah. Um.

449
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: And and at the same time, there's also this other,

450
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: like broader, more important thing, which I think is why

451
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: the government started to become more involved in it, which

452
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: is that radio allowed the listeners to sample other cultures

453
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 1: from far away states, that and and and learn more

454
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,959
Speaker 1: about what this kind of idea of America as a

455
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:00,840
Speaker 1: nation meant. You know, even though they may have never

456
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: visited Nebraska, they would be hearing what these amateur radioists

457
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: in Nebraska were talking about. They were giving them sort

458
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:11,719
Speaker 1: of a peek into what the culture in those towns were. Like,

459
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: it's really cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. Moving over to

460
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: to nineteen twenty, that's when we get the first commercial

461
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 1: radio station launching. That's k d K A. Now, amateur

462
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,160
Speaker 1: radio stations, like Christian was saying, had already been around,

463
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 1: and a guy named Henry P. Davis was inspired by

464
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,480
Speaker 1: an amateur named Frank Conrad and saw the potential to

465
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: actually make some money off this whole radio thing, and

466
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: not just not just broadcast out for free, but to

467
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: actually make it a commercial enterprise. So the radio station

468
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: went live on November two, nineteen twenty. Henry P. Davis

469
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: himself read out the results of the presidential elections on

470
00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: the air, and he would become heavily involved in broadcast radio,

471
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:56,199
Speaker 1: in fact becoming the first chairman of the National Broadcasting

472
00:27:56,320 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: Company also known as NBC. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. Then

473
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: the opening of thirty Rock in NINETI kt k A

474
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: was owned and operated by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company,

475
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: and you might not be surprised to hear that Westinghouse

476
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 1: used the radio station as a means of convincing people

477
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,639
Speaker 1: to go out and buy radios, because up to this point,

478
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: again it was very much an amateur thing. People who

479
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,360
Speaker 1: were interested in the science would go out and get

480
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: the equipment or build the equipment from from whatever they could,

481
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: and that's how they participated. But now we're talking about

482
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: actually making commercial radio sets for people to go out

483
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: and buy. And this is also the beginning of things

484
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: starting to get a little dodgy on the corporate side

485
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: of things, because previously the patents for radios were all

486
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: over the place. But what happened was the big companies

487
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 1: G E, A, T and T. Weird, they're such a

488
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: familiar it is, G, A, T and T. International Radio

489
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: and Telegraph and Westinghouse all got together and said, let's

490
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: pull together our patent and they created r C A

491
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: the Radio Corporation of America for the express purpose of

492
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: allowing them to build and sell radio equipment like transmitters

493
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: and receivers that were designed not for broadcast broadcast but

494
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: for for telegraphing, but also to keep these amateur radio

495
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: out of business physically, so that they couldn't just go

496
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: and buy an out of the box kit anymore. They

497
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: would have to they would have to really build it themselves.

498
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: R c A flexed its muscles in ways that I

499
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 1: think just about anyone would describe as odious and uh

500
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stories we're gonna cover, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

501
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: um and and what's kind of interesting is just that,

502
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's this other article that I read

503
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: for this that was called The Design of Symbiosis that

504
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: was all about, you know, the the longevity of radio

505
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: and then these corporations interacting. And there's a quote from

506
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: it that I want to read, which is about this

507
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 1: specific thing. It says it was no accident that the

508
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: General Electric Corporation g after acquiring rights to the Marconi

509
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:10,479
Speaker 1: wireless patents in the United States, spearheaded the formation of

510
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: the r c A, which in turn launched the National

511
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: Broadcasting corporation NBC one of GS many subsidiaries. It still is,

512
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: I believe right, Well again he got Universal Yeah great, Yeah,

513
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: it's even larger than that and a leading content company.

514
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: So it's like one thing led to another, from one

515
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 1: corporation to the next. Is they kind of built out

516
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: their their subsidiaries and spread their spread out kind of

517
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: like an umbrella and it and it. Don't get me wrong,

518
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: this wasn't all negative. They were very positive effects at

519
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: the time as well. From this, I love that you

520
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: have this bit about a T and T and their

521
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 1: their business strategy. This is one of the so apparently

522
00:30:55,560 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: they like repeatedly, we're trying to charge people for commercial

523
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: broadcasting over their sets, and they wanted to charge tolls

524
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: in the same way that they were charging people for

525
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: phone calls, which I think is amazing when you when

526
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: you think about it, you know, there's just these these

527
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: negotiations between the public and the large corporations. When these

528
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: new media hit the scene and we're in we're experiencing

529
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 1: it right now, we'll probably always be experiencing it. Yeah,

530
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 1: I imagine so, And it's interesting to you. You make

531
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: a delineation in our notes about how how the radio

532
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: system is treated in America versus in other nations, right, Yeah,

533
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: So the thing that's unique about the American radio system.

534
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 1: This isn't to say that that no other countries did this,

535
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: but the American radio system specifically evolved as a unique

536
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 1: combination between private enterprises like these ones that we were

537
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: just talking about, in government regulation, whereas in other countries,

538
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: for the most part, it went for public ownership. So

539
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: places like Iceland, the United Kingdom obviously with the BBC, Italy, Turkey,

540
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 1: and the USS are it was all public. Um. And

541
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: so the problem that radio had that was unique in

542
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,719
Speaker 1: America was that all of these consumers could receive any

543
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: signal at equal equality, very much like again blogging right

544
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: in theory, and that any broadcaster, however, whether it's NBC

545
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: or a guy operating out of his garage, would be

546
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: able to overwhelm multiple frequencies and overwrite what was being

547
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: played by somebody else's broadcast. Yeah, the very least you

548
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: could interfere with the signal. Um. We'll talk about FM

549
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: and a little bit. The interesting difference, one of the

550
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: many interesting differences between a M and FM is that

551
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:49,240
Speaker 1: if you have two AM broadcasts that are coming out

552
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: at the same signal. They interfere with one another the

553
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 1: same frequency, should say, they interfere with one other FM.

554
00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: If you have two of the same frequency, it's whichever

555
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: frequency is the most powerful is the one you will receive.

556
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: So you could have a little station that is broadcasting

557
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: in a very small amount of power that if you

558
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: are close to it, you would be able to pick

559
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: it up on an FM band that would normally be

560
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 1: for a radio station that mean miles away. That could

561
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: be a giant corporations one. So there's a lot of

562
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: back and forth with this too, which is today we

563
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: think of this. You and I were talking about this

564
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 1: the other day when we proposed this idea. We think

565
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 1: of it as pirate radio, right, and I think I

566
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: always think of pup up the volume. Yeah, and Christians

567
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: later driving around his neighborhood with his his pirate radio

568
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: station at the back of his car. Yeah, it's also similar.

569
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: I did a story with Chuck Bryant about it was

570
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: television not radio, but the same same principle, uh the

571
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: Max Headroom incident where in Chicago that was also the

572
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: same principle as FM radio, and that if you were

573
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: able to send a signal along the same frequency but

574
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: at a higher power rate. Then you could overpower that

575
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 1: and people would receive yours, no, not someone else's. Yeah.

576
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: But and so as these these conflicts are going on,

577
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: these like weird ven diagrams of stations playing up against

578
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 1: one another, the government starts to become interested, as we

579
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, and especially because of military reasons.

580
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,239
Speaker 1: So the Navy says, you know what, we should really

581
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:22,720
Speaker 1: take control of this as a means of national defense.

582
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:24,359
Speaker 1: And the way that they thought it should be run

583
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:27,319
Speaker 1: was basically like the post office, that the you know,

584
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: the federal government should own and control what is broadcast

585
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 1: on radio signals. Obviously that that didn't end up happening,

586
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,359
Speaker 1: But then you get this huge boom because of the

587
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: amateur radio movement. From nineteen to nineteen twenty three, the

588
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: number of radio sets in America increased from sixty thousand

589
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 1: to one point five millions. That's a huge, massive and

590
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 1: uh in in nineteen twenty two there were twenty eight

591
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: stations in operation, but I think it like exploded to

592
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 1: hundreds very quickly. Um and then enter the scene a

593
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 1: little guy named Herbert Hoover, who was at the time

594
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Commerce, right, and the and the Department

595
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: of Commerce oversaw radio at this time. Yeah, yeah, And

596
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 1: he was really the initiative of that idea. He was

597
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: the one who said, uh, you know, uh, he really

598
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,799
Speaker 1: wanted the Department of Commerce to control it first of all.

599
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: But he also said, and this is another quote, he said,

600
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: at first, the idea of making money off radio seem profane.

601
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a

602
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 1: possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, and for vital

603
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter. This is

604
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover who subsequently ends up using the government to

605
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:53,720
Speaker 1: support the businesses uh in terms of businesses over amateur

606
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: radio stations, uh in terms of their licensing. And his

607
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 1: other analogy for radio was that he thought of it

608
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: as transportation, rather than the the post office analogy that

609
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 1: the Navy was using. He thought it was like, we

610
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: should think of them as like water ways, and that

611
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: the public should be be able to ride these waterways,

612
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: but that the government would regulate how they did. So.

613
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 1: I like this this message here too, of the We're

614
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:22,520
Speaker 1: one of the world's first radio ads aired on August two,

615
00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 1: UH for a housing development in Queens. Yeah. Yeah, this

616
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: is the They were basically like, um, advocating what we

617
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: would now call gentrification or like get this is a

618
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 1: quote from that ad get away from the solid masses

619
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: of brick, where children grow up starved for a run

620
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: over a patch of grass. But my child's never seen

621
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:48,319
Speaker 1: what a tree looks like. A queen. This is the

622
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:51,919
Speaker 1: first thing that we we sold on radio. That's hilarious. Yeah.

623
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 1: But so Hoover goes on in two he calls together

624
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: the first American Radio Conference, which is he brings together

625
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: represent otives from and I put this in quote radio

626
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: industry because it really wasn't an industry, you know, it's

627
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: just kind of and and this included not only you know,

628
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: the businesses that had interests in mind, but also the

629
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:17,080
Speaker 1: amateur radio operators. And no action was taken. Uh, there

630
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: were calls for legislation they introduced to build a congress.

631
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 1: Congress is like, no, we don't want to have anything

632
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: to do with this. And there's political reasons behind that

633
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: that I'll get into later. Um. But then by nine

634
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 1: we've got fourteen hundred radio stations, not just what did

635
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 1: I say? Yeah, And so you've got these big commercial

636
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,439
Speaker 1: broadcasters that are forming networks like NBC and CBS, both

637
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: of them they formed in seven respectively. Uh, and it's

638
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: very similar today to the same that NBC and CBS

639
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: that we understand as being television. Right now, now I've

640
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: got the beginning of one of the weirdest stories I've

641
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: ever heard. This guy is my favorite. I think you

642
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 1: should do a whole episode about this. I could easily

643
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: do a whole episode about this guy. And and he's

644
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: going to pepper through parts of the rest of this episode.

645
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: So Ninete is what we're talking about here. We're going

646
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:16,760
Speaker 1: back just a little bit too to set the stage.

647
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: That's when doctor using in quotes, John R. Brinkley starts

648
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 1: up a radio station called kf KB in Kansas. So

649
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 1: let me tell you about doctor Brinkley. First of all,

650
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: he wasn't a real doctor. He's like the original snake

651
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: oil salesman. He he at least perfected it to an

652
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: art form. Right. He went to medical school by never graduated,

653
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 1: but he bought a diploma from a diploma mill for

654
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars, not an insignificant amount of money. Uh,

655
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: and it gave him the right to practice medicine in

656
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:54,359
Speaker 1: some states, including Kansas. He purchased diploma, not not an

657
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: actual like proof that he had the training that would

658
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: allow him to do this. So anyway, he starts practicing medicine.

659
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,240
Speaker 1: He had previously been involved in some scams and cons,

660
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: including things like selling tinted water as if it were

661
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:13,919
Speaker 1: an actual medicinal cure and injecting it into people. But

662
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: I want to see a movie about this guy's life.

663
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: I want to I want to see a movie. I

664
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: want to see a movie about this guy. I want

665
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: to see him cast. I want I want Simon Peg

666
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: to play him. He's just like deviously injecting things into

667
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: people and cutting open their necks. I think I think

668
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,399
Speaker 1: either Simon Peg or Neil Patrick Harris that would be Yeah,

669
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: he would be good. It's like evil Dookie Houser. Yeah.

670
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:38,959
Speaker 1: So he had he had been hired as a house

671
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 1: doctor for a meat packing company, and he observed the

672
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: rigorous mating habits of goats. Uh yeah, So let's slow

673
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: down for a second. People, This means that he watched

674
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: goats have sex for a long time and and enthusiastically

675
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: the goats. At least I don't know about him, but

676
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: the goats were certainly enthusiastics. So he was talking to

677
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,879
Speaker 1: him mail patient once about the fact that the mail

678
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: patient was having problems in the bedroom. He was having

679
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: a failing libido, a rectile dysfunction. Perhaps the the actual

680
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: nature of the problem was not what explained in all

681
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: the sources I looked at, but had something to do

682
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: with failing libido or or um, you know, virility. And

683
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: so supposedly what Dr Brinkley did was jokingly suggest that

684
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: perhaps they should transplate plant some goat quote unquote glands

685
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: as in gonads into the mail patient. And he said,

686
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:38,320
Speaker 1: let's let's do it. Let's firow up like the original

687
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: body modification. Give me some give me some of them

688
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 1: goat glands. So he does he actually did start performing this,

689
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: and then he started to suggest like he began to

690
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: essentially advertise, saying, this is a way to restore virility

691
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: for men. Uh, let me do this this medical procedure

692
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:01,439
Speaker 1: for a not insignificant amount of money. So flash forward

693
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,720
Speaker 1: to when he gets the radio station and he starts

694
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: to fill his broadcast time with music and medical lectures,

695
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: and he would end up advocating for this kind of

696
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:17,239
Speaker 1: treatment and other treatments that were equally bogus in advertising too. Yeah,

697
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: and he was he was essentially throwing business to surgeons

698
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 1: into pharmacists and getting kickbacks every single time and making

699
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: a mint off it. So he's in full operation and

700
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:36,040
Speaker 1: will end up, believe it or not, defining in part

701
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: why radio has regulated the way it is. But we'll

702
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: get to that in a little Yeah, I know, he's

703
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 1: important to the history of it. Um. In the meantime,

704
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:47,720
Speaker 1: Hoover is continuing to negotiate with stations and the government

705
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: on how it should be regulated. And you know, basically,

706
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: as the Secretary of Commerce, his work is to let

707
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 1: the stations work out amongst themselves which frequency is going

708
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: to be used when and how they overlaping. It wasn't

709
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: really you know, handing it out. He wouldn't occasionally make decisions.

710
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: And what happened was in the federal court was like whoa, whoa,

711
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,360
Speaker 1: you don't have this power. And specifically the Attorney General

712
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: of the United States, who you know, was from the

713
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 1: same administration that the Secretary of Commerce was, decided that

714
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 1: Hoover didn't have this power, he could not grant permits

715
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:26,480
Speaker 1: at request, and that all of a sudden, these air

716
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:29,720
Speaker 1: waves turned into even more of this like wild wild

717
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: West of broadcasting than they already were. Uh. And so

718
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: obviously more regulation is even is necessary. And Coolidge is

719
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 1: the president of the time. He favors the control by

720
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 1: the Department of Commerce obviously because it's under his branch,

721
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 1: and he opposes any kind of commission being formed. The Senate, however,

722
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:53,800
Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of one man being in control.

723
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: And this is where the political angle comes in, because

724
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: they knew that Herbert Hoover had his eye on the

725
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: presidency and didn't want to give him any political prestige

726
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:06,800
Speaker 1: for taking care of the radio problem. Interesting and also

727
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: this will probably seem familiar to people following the net

728
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: neutrality arguments, where one of the big problems was the

729
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 1: FCC had brought a case against Comcast for blocking bit

730
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: torrent traffic. And then the response was you don't have

731
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 1: authority to tell Comcast what it can and can't do

732
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 1: because Internet transmissions were a title one classification, not titled

733
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: too uh. And if you want to know more about that,

734
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: you can listen to the title to podcast I did

735
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 1: and Common Carrier podcast I did from a while back

736
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 1: to to learn more about it, but just suffice it

737
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,520
Speaker 1: to say that this is something that we've seen before

738
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 1: and we'll likely see again. I just I think it's

739
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: fascinating that, like the future of this major media uh,

740
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: was decided by people who wanted to screw over a

741
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 1: political candidate potentially yeah, yeah, and sometimes just people who

742
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 1: were wanted to screw over inventors. Uh, it's crazy. We'll

743
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 1: talk more about those two in Congress creates the Federal

744
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:15,319
Speaker 1: Radio Commission and passes the Radioact of nineteen twenty seven. Now,

745
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: before that time, it was all the Department of Commerce,

746
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: like Christian was saying. So the Commission's job was to

747
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 1: get radio into shape, and they wanted to have a

748
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 1: little more power than Department of Commerce, which could grant

749
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 1: broadcast licenses but couldn't deny a broadcast license. So if

750
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 1: you requested it, if you did all the things you

751
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: were supposed to do, you would get one. You couldn't

752
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: be told no. So the Federal Radio Commission was supposed

753
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 1: to be able to say no if it was warranted. Um,

754
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: the question of how they determined how it was warranted

755
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,839
Speaker 1: was something of a problem. And UH. The Act also

756
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 1: laid out rules for content programming could not have obscene,

757
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: in decent or profane language, and the Commission could and

758
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: did use content as a factor when deciding whether or

759
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 1: not to renew a broadcast license. So if you were

760
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: broadcasting and not paying a whole attention to those content rules,

761
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,320
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily have your license revoked, but when you

762
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: went back to get your license renewed, you might be denied, right,

763
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: And this makes sense in light of other arguments that

764
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 1: were going on with media over the you know, the

765
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: twenty years probably surrounding this, both with the cinema and

766
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: I would assume newspapers and comic books as well. Yeah,

767
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: all looking at the government, the government trying to deem

768
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 1: what was profane or wasn't, but also trying to leave

769
00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: it in the public's hands to decide. Yeah, there was

770
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:46,319
Speaker 1: also a real worry about how far can you rule

771
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 1: on these things before it becomes censorship, So that, I mean,

772
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:52,200
Speaker 1: that's a real worry, right, because they didn't want to

773
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 1: be accused of taking away somebody's right to free speech. Sure, yeah, um,

774
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:04,359
Speaker 1: And so the FARC Federal Radio Commission, it was really

775
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: just like this compromise, this political compromise, and so the

776
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: idea was like really like they just assumed, they being Congress,

777
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 1: that it was going to go away after a year

778
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,479
Speaker 1: as part of a political deal basically to keep Hoover

779
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:20,800
Speaker 1: out of office, and especially because of the commercial radio interests.

780
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:24,720
Speaker 1: These guys who were lobbying their politicians. Uh, they wanted

781
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: the regulation to go back to the Secretary of Commerce.

782
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: They just didn't want it to be Hoover. Uh. And

783
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: so they and their supporters in Congress would belittle the

784
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 1: FARC's accomplishments even as they had they had subsequently argued

785
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 1: that it should exist, and then as it was going along,

786
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: they would say, oh, this is terrible, you're not doing

787
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 1: a good job. And Uh. The FARC was handicapped by

788
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: a number of things. At the limited financial resources, had

789
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: an inadequate staff. Uh, and as we're talking about here,

790
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 1: it really didn't have any power authority, and its existence

791
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: was in question from the very day that it was

792
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 1: it was created. It was like they were constantly on probation. Yeah.

793
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:07,919
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where, um, they're also

794
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 1: they're very organization ended up being a problem. So one

795
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:15,279
Speaker 1: of the things about the FARC was that they were

796
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,839
Speaker 1: organized so that the entire United States was divided into

797
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: two zones. Yeah. They called this sectionalism, and each zone

798
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: was giving given the same number of broadcast licenses essentially

799
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 1: as every other zone, which you know, from one perspective,

800
00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:33,920
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be fair, like everybody gets the

801
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 1: same amount, But then you think where's the population distribution.

802
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: The Northeast is very heavily populated and the Southwest is

803
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 1: very lightly populated, and so you don't have enough broadcast

804
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: licenses for the Northeast and you have too many for

805
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: the Southwest. So these were so simple things, like just

806
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: the way things were set up kind of set the

807
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 1: fr C up for failure. It did, yeah, especially because

808
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,279
Speaker 1: when that happened and Southerners in particular felt like they

809
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: weren't being treated fairly. Uh, And it led to the

810
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 1: Davis Amendment in March. The idea was that there had

811
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 1: to be an equal allocation of licenses, band frequencies, periods

812
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 1: of time for operation station power for each of these

813
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 1: five zones. And that so you know, obviously sexualism was

814
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: a huge problem for the FARC. And this is even

815
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 1: before we get into the business interest to angle right, right,

816
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 1: this is just in the operation part of the f

817
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: FRC not even getting into the business section, but these

818
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,800
Speaker 1: are definitely important things to to consider. The idea of

819
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 1: being able to say, here's the frequency you are allowed

820
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: to use, here's the amount of power your transmitter is

821
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 1: allowed to have, so that way we can make sure

822
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 1: that we don't have these battling frequencies interfering with one another,

823
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 1: because that's not gonna be good for anybody. It's not

824
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 1: good for the transmitter, it's not good for the consumer

825
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: who's trying to receive these. All of that made sense,

826
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 1: but they were hampered so much. And also, I mean,

827
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 1: there were a lot of shady political goings on along

828
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: with corporate goings on at the same time. Right, they

829
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: were essentially trying to fulfill this mission of favoring big

830
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:15,880
Speaker 1: business over amateur radios. And they actually there's an actual

831
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: FRC memo that says, quote, there is not room in

832
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: the broadcast band for every school of thought, whether it's religious, political, social, social,

833
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: or economic. Each can't have its own separate broadcasting station

834
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: or a mouthpiece in the ether. Uh So they, you know,

835
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: they were coming down pretty hard on these these amateur

836
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: stations that were given providing you know, a pulpit essentially

837
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: to anybody who had the means to to operate a

838
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: broadcast um in favor of the businesses that were, you know,

839
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: lobbying to have them created in the first place. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So,

840
00:49:56,360 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: you know, very complicated issue. The technology oddly enough, less

841
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: complicated than the politics and culture surrounding it. In this case,

842
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: like the stories end up getting um like it's the

843
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:12,920
Speaker 1: human element that really throws the monkey wrench in here. Yeah. So,

844
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 1: for instance, like you've got this happens, the FARC says,

845
00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't a this isn't a pulpit for

846
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: your beliefs. And then the labor movement, which is very

847
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:24,399
Speaker 1: powerful at the time, says, wait a minute, we should

848
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:26,919
Speaker 1: have a clear channel that we can broadcast over these

849
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: five zones so we can talk to people about labor interests.

850
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 1: And then educators said, yeah, so should we. Uh, And

851
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 1: so there's all this pressure from the public, and then

852
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,840
Speaker 1: subsequently Congress uses that and just keeps pushing on the FARC,

853
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: saying you're really blowing it here. Yeah. So you've got

854
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: a great bullet list here of the working principles of

855
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: the FARC. Let's go through those. Yeah. So this is

856
00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 1: how they would ostensibly decide things. The first is that

857
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: the station with the longest record of continuous service had

858
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:02,719
Speaker 1: the superior right for broadcasting on a particular channel, right,

859
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: but they had a stipulation. There were other conditions as well.

860
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: So in order to fulfill the fair and equitable distribution

861
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:14,680
Speaker 1: that was required by them, an applicant who wanted to

862
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 1: broadcast needed firm financial standing and efficient equipment. That's pretty vague, right,

863
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 1: So it's up to this f r C, not f

864
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: c C f r C commissioner at the time to

865
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: determine what firm financial standing means and what efficient equipment means,

866
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:35,239
Speaker 1: especially as this equipment is evolving at a rapid pace. UM.

867
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:38,400
Speaker 1: And then you also had to obey the rules of

868
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 1: the obscene of not broadcasting obscene and content like we

869
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: talked about earlier UH and basically keeping it so that

870
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: this dissemination of propaganda wasn't controlled by a single group

871
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: and that creeds were supposed to find that this is

872
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: another quote that I loved. Find their way into the

873
00:51:57,680 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 1: market of ideas to be on the air. There was

874
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: this idea that UM, there was a there would be

875
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: a natural kind of UH process throughout the radio operators

876
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:13,320
Speaker 1: in the public that would decide which political agendas should

877
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:15,839
Speaker 1: get to be broadcast on the radio or not, rather

878
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 1: than just giving everyone the opportunity to Yeah, and that

879
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,800
Speaker 1: would actually change too. There would there would eventually become

880
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: a decision where people would say, you know what, we

881
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:28,440
Speaker 1: need to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to

882
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:31,919
Speaker 1: voice there, to to put their political voice out there.

883
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: But that would be an idea that would come around

884
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:40,880
Speaker 1: a little later. Yeah, So you know, saying let's just

885
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:43,360
Speaker 1: put this out there and see what happens, and and

886
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:46,800
Speaker 1: I trust that whatever outcome there is, it will be

887
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: for the best didn't always work out. It's like it's

888
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 1: like saying, the laws of nature will decide who the

889
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: best person for president of the United States would be.

890
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: So what sort of stuff did we get as a

891
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 1: result of this. Well, Subsequently, the FARC didn't want to

892
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 1: regulate advertising. Uh, not only because you know, the advertiser's

893
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: interests were also their interests, but also because the Commission

894
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: chose to further the ends of the commercial broadcasters as

895
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:19,239
Speaker 1: part of what they called the public interest. So the

896
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: FARC had this ability to claim that it didn't have

897
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 1: powers of censorship, and it couldn't be held responsible for

898
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:30,280
Speaker 1: questionable advertising such as cigarettes. You know, those like old

899
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:33,720
Speaker 1: corny cigarette ads that you to hear on um radio

900
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: if you listen, if you ever listen to old timey

901
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 1: radio that has the commercial still in it, you will

902
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:41,840
Speaker 1: hear tons of these. So they didn't want to censor those.

903
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: But at the same time they would rule that public

904
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:47,360
Speaker 1: stations that were on the air could or could not

905
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: be on the air because of their quality of character,

906
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of fascinating that you know

907
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: it was. I would assume at the time that it

908
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: was maybe arguments of political beliefs, right, um, yeah, very

909
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 1: likely religious. This actually makes me think of how it's unrelated.

910
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: It's tangential. But how if I'm watching a streaming content

911
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:13,960
Speaker 1: on my one of my devices, whenever it gets to

912
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: the content part, like whatever I'm actually trying to see,

913
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 1: I might encounter buffering three or four times, depending upon

914
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:24,280
Speaker 1: the connection. But commercials always seemed to play with perfect

915
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:28,600
Speaker 1: clarity and no buffering whatsoever. Isn't that interesting, especially especially

916
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,080
Speaker 1: when you're when you're on YouTube, and YouTube has got

917
00:54:31,160 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: that new sort of passive aggressive alert that comes up

918
00:54:34,520 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: at the bottom that says, hey, just so you know,

919
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:39,440
Speaker 1: this isn't US, it's the limits of your bandwidth provider,

920
00:54:39,680 --> 00:54:45,880
Speaker 1: right commercial. So it's interesting to me also that the public,

921
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:48,080
Speaker 1: you know, you would think like, oh, the public, were

922
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 1: they crying out on behalf of the little guy, And

923
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: it turns out they weren't. In large part, they were

924
00:54:53,239 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: actually citing with the big networks. Yeah they were. And

925
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: what's kind of interesting about this is, yeah, they were

926
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:01,680
Speaker 1: more interest did in the content that NBC, r c

927
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 1: A and CBS was we're putting out um. And even

928
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 1: though some people argued, you know, our c has a

929
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: monopoly on this industry. Uh, it's interesting, Like there was

930
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 1: another argument that was essentially that look, the mass public

931
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:17,560
Speaker 1: just wants entertainment from these radio channels. They don't want

932
00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: to be educated, they don't want to listen to your

933
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 1: political screeds, and so subsequently they're complacent about the whole

934
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 1: thing and they don't really care whether or not these

935
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: amateur radio stations are getting edged out um. And so again,

936
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 1: like I turned back to this article by this guy

937
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 1: Herring out of the Harvard Review, and he proposed that

938
00:55:39,560 --> 00:55:41,919
Speaker 1: there are two potential solutions which I think are really

939
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: interesting now that we have the the advantage of being

940
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 1: so far ahead and time and looking back on this,

941
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: and he said, the only possible solutions are that we

942
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: go for full government ownership. His example was the BBC

943
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:57,120
Speaker 1: at the time. UH. And he said, yeah, there's criticisms

944
00:55:57,160 --> 00:55:59,360
Speaker 1: that come in the form of minority is not not

945
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:03,080
Speaker 1: ethnic mind parities, but like minorities of voice, claiming that

946
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 1: they aren't given equal opportunity to access to stations. So

947
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: that's the one negative drawback to that. And he said,

948
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,320
Speaker 1: or we could a lot of fixed percentage of radio

949
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 1: facilities just for nonprofit programs. UH. And then whatever it is,

950
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: whether it's uh, they allocate a certain number of frequencies

951
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: or maybe they say, you know, the commercial stations can

952
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: broadcast for these twelve hours a day, and then another

953
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day, it's our nonprofit stations. UM. But

954
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: even if they did that, there were so much demand

955
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 1: for nonprofit amateur radio that they didn't have enough enough

956
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:43,040
Speaker 1: to accommodate everybody. There wasn't literally in this case, there

957
00:56:43,120 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: wasn't There weren't enough frequencies to facilitate it. Yeah. Yeah,

958
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: So this is really between where we see the beginning

959
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:58,280
Speaker 1: of the radio industry an actual radio industry that is commercialized,

960
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: and they're questions that we're going around about, well, how

961
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: should broadcasting be financed, how should we produce our programs?

962
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:09,920
Speaker 1: How should we distribute all of this stuff? And amateur

963
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:13,480
Speaker 1: broadcasting moved away as much as it was, like kind

964
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 1: I think of it as being like the fandom of today,

965
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: you know, like I keep thinking that's amateur radios like

966
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 1: the Tumbler of the twenties, um, and that there were

967
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: so many fandoms expressed there. But ultimately other stations that

968
00:57:30,200 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: had commercial enterprises behind them, or even commercial enterprises themselves,

969
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: like department stores or music stores, or doctors or Mr

970
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: Brinkley sorry Dr brink Yes, Uh, he didn't spend three

971
00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:48,520
Speaker 1: years not graduating medical school to be called Mr exactly. Yeah,

972
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: I mean that five was well spent. Uh. They ultimately

973
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: were able to, you know, put push out these interests

974
00:57:56,760 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: of the sort of amateur broadcasters. So like our C A, G. E.

975
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 1: And Westinghouse, they form NBC because they want to keep

976
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:10,960
Speaker 1: their interests from diverging, even though their competitors they're also

977
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: you know, united against amateur radio. This leads to the

978
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 1: rise of advertising sponsorships, which were well familiar with in

979
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: the podcasting world and with ad agents. This is really

980
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 1: like the first time that they had like whole ad

981
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 1: agencies that were working together with these companies kind of

982
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 1: coming up with how this stuff is going to be

983
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 1: broadcasting and how is the best way to convince the

984
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:38,480
Speaker 1: audience to to move from queens or to buy a cigarette. So,

985
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: looking back to our friend that we referred to a

986
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: second ago, Dr John R. Brinkley, Uh, the f RC

987
00:58:47,160 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: denied his broadcast renewal license in nineteen thirty. So Dr

988
00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 1: Brinkley comes up to the f r C s as

989
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 1: a time for me to get a little stamp on

990
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: here so I can continue my my good deeds of

991
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:04,840
Speaker 1: posting are broadcasting fraudulent medical practices and getting kickbacks. And

992
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: they said nope. They actually cited the fraudulent claims and

993
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:11,200
Speaker 1: the content as the reason, saying it was against their

994
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:14,000
Speaker 1: content rules and that's why they were not renewing his license.

995
00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 1: So actually an instance where they did that and it

996
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: was for the good for the yeah, great for the

997
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: greater good in this case, although Brinkley, Brinkley said that

998
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: what was happening was effectively censorship um and so he protests,

999
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:31,240
Speaker 1: and what he does. He buys a radio station in

1000
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: Mexico that broadcasts had a much higher power than almost

1001
00:59:34,560 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: any station in the US. It was at a hundred

1002
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 1: thousand watts, uh eventually went up to a half million

1003
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 1: watts and so very powerful radio station compared to the

1004
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: other ones that were active at the time. He directs

1005
00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: the antenna northward into the United States. It's amazing. So

1006
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: here's here's the deal. This is this is what's going

1007
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:56,720
Speaker 1: to come back and haunt him. The way this worked

1008
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:00,960
Speaker 1: was that he would, uh, he would actually his studio

1009
01:00:01,160 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: was in the United States. The the stuff he was

1010
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: broadcasting would go to Mexico to be transmitted by radio,

1011
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: and that's what would eventually come back to get him,

1012
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 1: but that would be another couple of years. He's I'm

1013
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: fascinated by this guy. He's the brass, the moxie. Yeah. Um. Well.

1014
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,320
Speaker 1: As a side note, one of the things that was

1015
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top from that listener message was FDRs

1016
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:35,040
Speaker 1: fireside chats, and those began in nineteen thirty three. So

1017
01:00:35,240 --> 01:00:39,280
Speaker 1: this is really when I mean fireside chats don't happen anymore.

1018
01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:41,880
Speaker 1: But I'm fairly certain that the president of the United

1019
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 1: States still records a weekly message that goes out on radio,

1020
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:51,360
Speaker 1: and it becomes an institution. The Presidency recognizes the importance

1021
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:55,760
Speaker 1: of this media, the communicating to the mass public. Also

1022
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: in nineteen three, that's when Edwin Howard Edwin Howard Armstrong,

1023
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:03,640
Speaker 1: remember we talked about them earlier, created frequency modulation radio

1024
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: or FM radio. So AM Remember we mentioned changes the

1025
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 1: peak to peak voltage changes the amplitude of that wavelength.

1026
01:01:11,440 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 1: Frequency modulation doesn't change the amplitude, it changes the number

1027
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:18,480
Speaker 1: of oscillations per second, the actual frequency of the wave

1028
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:20,840
Speaker 1: within a fairly narrow band because obviously you have to

1029
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,320
Speaker 1: tune to a band of frequencies in order to pick

1030
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 1: things up. Then if it went outside of that, you

1031
01:01:26,600 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: wouldn't get anymore, which is why you can overlap stations

1032
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 1: instead of causing interference. Yeah, as long as you know,

1033
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:36,640
Speaker 1: so you know, if you're if you're going in an

1034
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:39,480
Speaker 1: area where the power levels are almost the same for

1035
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 1: the frequencies, that's when you start getting that weird thing

1036
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 1: where you'll hear one station and then the other station.

1037
01:01:44,680 --> 01:01:46,960
Speaker 1: Maybe you'll hear both the same time, but it's pretty rare.

1038
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:50,160
Speaker 1: Uh So it's also not as prone to static, you

1039
01:01:50,200 --> 01:01:52,040
Speaker 1: don't have the same problems that you did with AM

1040
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: with electromagnetic interference. But before it could get widespread adoption,

1041
01:01:58,240 --> 01:02:01,520
Speaker 1: Armstrong was essentially backstabbed by his former friend David Starnoff,

1042
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:05,160
Speaker 1: who was head of guess what r c A and

1043
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:07,480
Speaker 1: now our c A obviously had a big vested interest

1044
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:10,960
Speaker 1: in AM radio. FM was rising as a competing technology.

1045
01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: Starnoff went nuclear. He he had wanted Armstrong to go

1046
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:19,200
Speaker 1: and create technology to make AM radio broadcast more clear,

1047
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:23,640
Speaker 1: more free of static, and instead Armstrong comes up with

1048
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: this alternative to AM radio. But our c A is

1049
01:02:27,040 --> 01:02:32,280
Speaker 1: heavily invested in AM, so rather than say, let's adopt

1050
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:36,320
Speaker 1: this new technology and build on it, he went nuclear

1051
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:40,440
Speaker 1: and he started lobbying the FCC to deny an experimental

1052
01:02:40,560 --> 01:02:46,440
Speaker 1: license for UH testing FM radio. Essentially, every time Armstrong

1053
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:48,800
Speaker 1: tried to make a move to push FM radio forward,

1054
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 1: r c A blocked it or tried to block it,

1055
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:55,680
Speaker 1: or complicated litigation ensued. It got very expensive, and here's

1056
01:02:55,680 --> 01:03:00,200
Speaker 1: where things get really tragic. UH in the by the

1057
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 1: time you get to the nineteen forties, Armstrong was effectively

1058
01:03:04,600 --> 01:03:09,080
Speaker 1: bankrupted by the litigation. He was still trying to pursue this,

1059
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 1: He goes to his wife to ask her for some

1060
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:17,080
Speaker 1: of the money he had given her in their earlier

1061
01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: part of their relationship that she had put aside for

1062
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:25,080
Speaker 1: their retirement. She denies him this. He he has been

1063
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: beaten down totally, and he gets enraged and does a

1064
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:32,040
Speaker 1: horrible act. He grabs a fire poker, hits his wife

1065
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:36,480
Speaker 1: in the arm uh injuring her arm. She leaves, obviously,

1066
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:40,840
Speaker 1: she leaves him that evening. He sits down, writes an

1067
01:03:40,880 --> 01:03:45,000
Speaker 1: apologetic letter, and jumps out the window of his thirteenth

1068
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:51,320
Speaker 1: floor building and kills himself. Tragic, tragic story. So there

1069
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:57,640
Speaker 1: are some amazing and powerful stories here. Brinkley, Armstrong Tesla Marconi.

1070
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Speaker 1: Is I mean there's a movie? There are many movies

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Speaker 1: to be made from this. Moving on the nineteen thirty

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01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: four Communications Act, huge, huge piece of legislation. This is

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01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: the formation of the fcc UM. The one section of

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Speaker 1: that Act is actually referred to as the Brinkley Act.

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Speaker 1: This is within the overall nineteen Communications Act. And of

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01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 1: course the Brinkley Act is in fact named after our

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01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:29,680
Speaker 1: good buddy, doctor John R. Brinkley. So this was the

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01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:34,440
Speaker 1: US government's attempt to finally shut down Brinkley and his

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01:04:34,520 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 1: attempts to continue broadcasting. And they said that if you

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01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 1: are transmitting information from the United States to another country

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01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:46,600
Speaker 1: to be broadcast, that is a type of international commerce

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01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:49,959
Speaker 1: and thus can be regulated. And they laid down rules

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01:04:50,000 --> 01:04:52,960
Speaker 1: and they said, you cannot do this, it is against

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Speaker 1: the law. Now we have put that into law. It

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01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:59,880
Speaker 1: put a stop to his transmitting and he ended up

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01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 1: trying to do other things. He also, by the way,

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01:05:03,120 --> 01:05:06,880
Speaker 1: really got the government's attention, not just by transmitting messages

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01:05:06,920 --> 01:05:13,720
Speaker 1: about quackery and terrible medicinal cures for things. He sided

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01:05:13,800 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 1: with the Nazis before the before the United States entered

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01:05:18,520 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: the war exactly is before the United States was in

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01:05:21,520 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: in World War Two. But he started with the Nazis.

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Speaker 1: Did not go over well. Uh. He eventually would die

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01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: of a heart attack in nine. Yeah, and insane with

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Speaker 1: Dr Brinkley. But but Brinkley, I mean, his his actions

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Speaker 1: are what in fact there was not. There was a

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01:05:40,800 --> 01:05:44,400
Speaker 1: case back in the nineteen nineties that related to shutting

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01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 1: down a uh AN organization that was using a similar

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01:05:49,040 --> 01:05:52,160
Speaker 1: means of transmitting from the United States to a radio

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01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:56,680
Speaker 1: antenna in Mexico because they had the facility that they

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01:05:56,720 --> 01:06:00,960
Speaker 1: could use, and it was largely unregulated. Even as late

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01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:03,640
Speaker 1: we've had cases that fall under this part of the

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01:06:03,680 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: air for some reason, I'm thinking about d d O

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01:06:05,960 --> 01:06:10,840
Speaker 1: S attacks, But it's it's like the their version of yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's all about stepping around the yeah yeah. Well um. Congress,

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Speaker 1: like you said, had abolished the f r C, which

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01:06:20,240 --> 01:06:22,280
Speaker 1: they were hoping to do to begin with, but instead

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01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:24,680
Speaker 1: of just turning it back over to the Department of Commerce,

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01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:28,280
Speaker 1: they established the FCC. The mandate of the SEC is

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01:06:28,520 --> 01:06:32,680
Speaker 1: Interstate and Foreign Commerce in Communication, which is where the

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01:06:32,720 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: Brinkley thing comes in. And this is these are the

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01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:39,560
Speaker 1: three claims that they maintainer. The reason for the FCC.

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Speaker 1: Make sure that radio is available to all for reasonable

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01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:47,400
Speaker 1: charges and with adequate facilities, so that you're not necessarily

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01:06:47,480 --> 01:06:49,920
Speaker 1: listening to No longer would you be listening to an

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01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 1: amateur out of their garage, out of their gas station,

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01:06:53,800 --> 01:06:55,840
Speaker 1: would walk away for five minutes to go pump some

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01:06:55,960 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: gas and then come back. You want reliable radio service, America,

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01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:01,800
Speaker 1: and we're going to give it to you. And so

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Speaker 1: this is also when we start seeing the allocation of

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01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:08,959
Speaker 1: large frequency bands for AM radio and FM radio. There's

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01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 1: still is amateur radio. You can get a license to

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01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: operate an amateur radio, but there are very specific band

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01:07:14,880 --> 01:07:16,919
Speaker 1: of frequencies you are allowed to use and you can't

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01:07:17,040 --> 01:07:20,240
Speaker 1: use anything outside of that. Yeah, it's kind of it's

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01:07:20,320 --> 01:07:23,240
Speaker 1: kind of what Herring was arguing back in the nineteen

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01:07:23,280 --> 01:07:26,440
Speaker 1: thirties that that there, but it's far more limited than that.

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Speaker 1: I think what he was envisioning with that there there

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01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:34,000
Speaker 1: would be a spectrum for nonprofit radio um and, and

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01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:37,240
Speaker 1: he also argued that the FEC at the time had

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01:07:37,320 --> 01:07:41,000
Speaker 1: to decide whether they were going to support commercial broadcasters

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01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: at the expense of nonprofit ones. And ultimately, as we know,

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Speaker 1: they decided to do that. Um and even though they

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Speaker 1: were hearings going on and reports were being pulled together

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01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:54,439
Speaker 1: and the f CC was looking at all these things,

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01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:57,280
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately what we know of as the Golden

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01:07:57,360 --> 01:08:00,280
Speaker 1: Age of radio saw the growth of these he's a

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Speaker 1: multi uh corporate networks across the country, right and by

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01:08:06,080 --> 01:08:09,560
Speaker 1: this time we're talking about World War two. Radio now

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01:08:09,920 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 1: was adopted by a huge percentage of the population. Nine

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01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:17,439
Speaker 1: and ten families owned a radio and listened to an

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01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:19,679
Speaker 1: average of three to four hours of programming a day

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01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:25,479
Speaker 1: picture of that, like family gathered right time my place

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01:08:25,560 --> 01:08:27,960
Speaker 1: is going and they're all gathered around the radio, a

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Speaker 1: little orphan Annie and and lone Ranger and green hornet

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01:08:31,479 --> 01:08:33,720
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, this is this

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01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:37,280
Speaker 1: is where we're going to kind of draw and end

1147
01:08:37,560 --> 01:08:40,559
Speaker 1: to this because while we're right here at the dawn

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01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:42,759
Speaker 1: of the Golden Age, I think that you know, what's

1149
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:45,320
Speaker 1: the cool story that we've been able to tell is

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01:08:45,360 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: the rocky journey it took to get there, and clearly, uh,

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01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:52,519
Speaker 1: it was one that had a lot of drama in it.

1152
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:55,960
Speaker 1: And maybe if you guys are really interested in this topic,

1153
01:08:56,760 --> 01:08:58,920
Speaker 1: you want to hear more about it, you should let

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01:08:59,000 --> 01:09:01,760
Speaker 1: us know. Will be happy to explore it further, whether

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01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:04,439
Speaker 1: it means, you know, concentrating on a much smaller segment

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01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:08,879
Speaker 1: to really get to the stories. Armstrong's fascinating person. Brinkley

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01:09:09,120 --> 01:09:12,120
Speaker 1: is a fascinating person. A lot of people that we

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01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:15,560
Speaker 1: could talk about. Fessendon very fascinating guy, So lots of

1159
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:17,680
Speaker 1: things we can chat about. Just let us know. You

1160
01:09:17,760 --> 01:09:19,720
Speaker 1: can always get in touch with me by sending me

1161
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 1: an email at a message That address is tech Stuff

1162
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:25,080
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Or drop me a

1163
01:09:25,160 --> 01:09:28,120
Speaker 1: line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all

1164
01:09:28,160 --> 01:09:30,960
Speaker 1: three is tech Stuff hs W. You can catch Christians

1165
01:09:31,040 --> 01:09:33,680
Speaker 1: work all over How Stuff Works. You do a lot

1166
01:09:33,720 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 1: of writing for our various video series. I do get

1167
01:09:36,320 --> 01:09:38,559
Speaker 1: for what the Stuff and for brain Stuff, and we've

1168
01:09:38,600 --> 01:09:40,840
Speaker 1: got a lot of great new content that's gonna be

1169
01:09:40,840 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 1: coming out on the How Stuff Works channel on YouTube

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01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:45,400
Speaker 1: the next couple of months. So if you have, if

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01:09:45,439 --> 01:09:48,360
Speaker 1: you have watched something from How Stuff Works on YouTube,

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01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:51,080
Speaker 1: odds are good that Christian was at least in some

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01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:54,320
Speaker 1: way involved in that. Probably yeah, yeah, I either wrote

1174
01:09:54,360 --> 01:09:57,639
Speaker 1: it or was somehow in the studio or on set

1175
01:09:57,640 --> 01:10:00,800
Speaker 1: at the time trying to wrangle things together. Right. These

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01:10:00,840 --> 01:10:02,439
Speaker 1: are the people who keep me in line whenever you

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01:10:02,479 --> 01:10:05,720
Speaker 1: see me on camera. So, guys, I hope you enjoyed this.

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01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:07,760
Speaker 1: I look forward to hearing from you and you look

1179
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:13,439
Speaker 1: her from me again. Releases for more on thiss and

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01:10:13,520 --> 01:10:16,040
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it has stuff Works dot

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Speaker 1: Com