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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, executive producer or I heart radio and I

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Speaker 1: love all things tech. Today we're going to listen to

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Speaker 1: a classic episode the Golden Age of radio. This episode

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Speaker 1: originally published March eleven, two thousand fifteen. I will now

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Speaker 1: stop talking like that, because I know it's obnoxious. I

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Speaker 1: couldn't resist it. Probably should have. I apologize, but no,

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Speaker 1: We're gonna listen to this classic episode of the Golden

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Speaker 1: Age of radio. I hope you enjoy. Radio is one

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Speaker 1: of those things that I have loved all my life. Um,

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Speaker 1: well before I started working for a company that owns

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Speaker 1: hundreds of radio stations. Uh, and I have been a

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Speaker 1: part of radio drama groups that didn't produce classic radio drama,

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Speaker 1: but rather wrote new radio dramas in the style of

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Speaker 1: the classic radio plays. So I have a real fondness

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Speaker 1: for Golden age radio. Anyway, let's take a listen to

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Speaker 1: this episode, which originally published on March eleventh, two thousand

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Speaker 1: and fifteen. Today, Christian and I are going to talk

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Speaker 1: about a subject that was suggested by a listener, and

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Speaker 1: first of all, I must apologize to said listener because

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Speaker 1: despite my heroic efforts of researching where this suggestion came from,

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Speaker 1: couldn't find it. So I'm guessing this was actually an

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Speaker 1: older one. But said the forward thinking, bad prediction story

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Speaker 1: about Hugo Gernsback got me thinking about how crazy it

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Speaker 1: must have been to have lived through the debut of

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: broadcast radio. Before we get into that, I should mentioned

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Uh 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, recorded it all over. Because the ghost

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Speaker 1: of Marconi was haunting you. There was that, and we

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

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Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla on the wall, and 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 made no sense as we after talking it through

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Speaker 1: once we went back rerecorded, so that first episode that

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Speaker 1: we recorded it's lost to time. We don't have it anymore.

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Speaker 1: I wish I could, at least hope will be more

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Speaker 1: organized today. But I'll tell you just from going through

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Speaker 1: all this research that this is such a vast amount

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Speaker 1: of information for this period of time, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like and it's and you can you can get a

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

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

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Speaker 1: scratch the surface today. I imagine, Yeah, they're there. And

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: So first thing I gotta mentioned is that radio and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: who essentially invented am radio. That would be uh, the

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

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Speaker 1: it says he worked with Edison for Edison. He actually

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: media or it's uh like like in the early days

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Speaker 1: of radio. That the way they literally thought of it

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Speaker 1: was two ships that were thousands of yards away from

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Speaker 1: one another trying to contact each other using this old

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Speaker 1: radio technology, and they would have so much static they

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Speaker 1: would have to constantly give each other feedback and feed

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Speaker 1: forward to make sure the message was understood. It makes

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Speaker 1: perfect sense, I mean, especially when you see the brilliance

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Speaker 1: of Fessenden. He thought, well, they I can. I can

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Speaker 1: create these sparks of electricity, create these electromagnetic fields and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that 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 at 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 phenomenon 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 revolutionary.

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

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

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Speaker 1: then in n six he had his infamous Christmas concert

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Speaker 1: for sailors. See this is yeah, this is where I

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Speaker 1: think that that boat to boat the idea comes from, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Because it turns out the disaster of the Titanic would

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Speaker 1: end up really making this uh clear that there needed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: was coming though, right they were not most of them.

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Speaker 1: They just knew to pay attention because they got the message.

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Speaker 1: Yeah there, they were like, well, here's the message, whatever

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Speaker 1: is going to happen, We need to really focus. And

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Speaker 1: so what they were expecting to hear were just the

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Speaker 1: noises they would hear for the dot, some dashes of

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Speaker 1: Morse code. So then he he gives a short speech.

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Speaker 1: He plays a violin, uh and plays a Holy Night.

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Speaker 1: There were supposed to be other people who talked into

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Speaker 1: the microphone too, but most of them chickened out because

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Speaker 1: they got like terrible stage fright because they realized all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden that they were speaking to like hundreds

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Speaker 1: of people, right right, yeah. Yeah, And so anyway, it

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Speaker 1: ended up being a big hit. Sailors up and down

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Speaker 1: the Atlantic coast were we're able to hear him and

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Speaker 1: reported back to it, so it was known to be

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Speaker 1: a success. And that's how AM radio got started. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that. Yeah, so that's a nice start to

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Speaker 1: it ends up being industry. Yeah. So so he he

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Speaker 1: demonstrates this capability, and immediately other physicists and engineers start

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Speaker 1: to experiment with it because some of them had been

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Speaker 1: independently working on this same kind of idea. Fessenden ended

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Speaker 1: up being the first to make it really work in

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Speaker 1: a public demonstration. So you had a lot of other

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Speaker 1: people who were who either adopted his ideas or continued

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Speaker 1: to develop their own ideas, and a lot of amateurs

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Speaker 1: were starting to experiment with radio transmissions, including transmitting out

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Speaker 1: to telegraph operators who often were very much entertained by

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Speaker 1: this because it was different from just listening to clicks

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Speaker 1: on the headphones. This is the part that's the most

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Speaker 1: fascinating about the evolution of radio to me is that

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Speaker 1: even though the technology is ultimately made for mass communication,

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Speaker 1: people originally started using it as one to one communication

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Speaker 1: across long distances, replacing a telegraph. And then uh, these

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

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Speaker 1: their in their garage, is just you know, tinkering around

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Speaker 1: with the technology that they could get a hold of.

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Speaker 1: We're able to turn it into this mass communication then yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's funny because when you look at the early ones,

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

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Speaker 1: meant that they couldn't transmit very far, most of them.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you were a big name, you might

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Speaker 1: be able to work with someone like General Electric to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: interfere that much with anything that was important. We have

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Speaker 1: more to say about the golden age of radio after

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Speaker 1: these brief messages, Festal would invent a high frequency electric

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Speaker 1: generator to create radio waves in the Hurts frequency, which

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Speaker 1: was really important. And in Dr Charles Aaron Culver, who

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

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Speaker 1: College or bell Watt if you prefer Um and So college.

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Speaker 1: I've never it's it's in a town called bell Watt actually,

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Speaker 1: but set up a radio telegraph assembly which became the

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Speaker 1: foundation for the college is radio station, though voice in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that were just you know, trying to use it for

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Speaker 1: educational purposes. Yeah, and that it's interesting later on what

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Speaker 1: happens when amateur radio sort of gets more regulated. It

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Speaker 1: really reminds me of the early days of personal computers

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

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Speaker 1: and then you know, you had bleeding edge adopters who

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Speaker 1: might not build a computer, but they're curious about how

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Speaker 1: they might use it. And then later you had people

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Speaker 1: who were uh, you know more it became more and

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Speaker 1: more mainstream as time went on. So we've seen other

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Speaker 1: emerging technologies that have followed a similar pathway to radio.

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Speaker 1: Uh not always with the dramatics. I mean, there were

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Speaker 1: some deffinite dramatics and early personal computers too. But we

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Speaker 1: got some crazy stories to tell. But first we have

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Speaker 1: another big name in radio that we have to mention. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so in nine and ten, this guy lead to Forest

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Speaker 1: really podcasted like the first sort of broad meant for

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Speaker 1: mass communication. Radio broadcast uh, specifically of a guy named

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Speaker 1: Enrico Caruso singing. I believe it was opera singing from

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Speaker 1: what I understood, um, and that he he ushered in

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Speaker 1: this area era of radio communications. And unfortunately, though even

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Speaker 1: though he was broadcasting, probably on Fessenden's news system, for

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Speaker 1: the most part it was static and radio interference, so

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Speaker 1: the audience barely heard anything. But you know, for a

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Speaker 1: decade afterwards, radio fans were both using uh, these amateur

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Speaker 1: radio units to broadcast and receive. Yeah, it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: them receiving. Yeah, it wasn't like they were a passive audience.

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Speaker 1: They were creating as well. And again, depending upon the

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Speaker 1: power of their radio transmitters, it maybe that they were

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Speaker 1: only transmitting to people in their general neighborhood or even

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Speaker 1: small time, but you wouldn't be able to necessarily pick

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Speaker 1: up that signal for much. Further, also depends on the

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Speaker 1: quality of the receiver as well. Like you could build

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Speaker 1: a very simple a radio receiver that doesn't even require

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Speaker 1: a battery and as a crystal, a very long antenna

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Speaker 1: and some headphones, and uh, you can pick up radio

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Speaker 1: signals if you're close enough to a transmitter. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, that's a fun project to do. You can

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Speaker 1: look up how to do that online. So also in

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Speaker 1: nineteen ten, the same time Leada Forrest was was experimenting

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Speaker 1: with us, you had a guy named Charles David Harold

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Speaker 1: who opened a school that he called the Herald College

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Speaker 1: of Engineering and Wireless, and he was experimenting with wireless

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Speaker 1: voice transmissions as early as nineteen o nine and providing

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Speaker 1: a thrill to telegraph operators who suddenly were able to

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Speaker 1: hear voices over the telegraph lines. Now this is out

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Speaker 1: in California, so he's surprising people out there who normally

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Speaker 1: they weren't expecting it at all, but they loved it

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Speaker 1: because you would imagine this job is a little probably

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Speaker 1: very tedious. Yeah. So he actually started setting up a

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Speaker 1: regular broadcast time, like the first radio programming in a way.

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Speaker 1: And by nineteen ten he had created this, uh, this

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Speaker 1: program that would include reading out news to telegraph operators.

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Speaker 1: And his wife Sybil got involved and she started playing

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Speaker 1: records that the description I said was the kind of

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Speaker 1: records young people like to listen to back in Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so playing records, So playing music for these telegraph operators

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Speaker 1: and holding the first radio contests, and here's all the

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Speaker 1: radio contest work. Back then. She would instruct people listening

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Speaker 1: to come by their house sign a guest book with

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Speaker 1: their name and where they were from, and then they

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Speaker 1: might win a little prize Number seven. No, wasn't calling

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Speaker 1: number seven. Uh. And here's the coolest part. I think

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Speaker 1: this little amateur station eventually over time in ninety one

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Speaker 1: would become k q W, and in nineteen it would

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Speaker 1: evolve into k CBS, then the CBS. Yeah. I thought

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Speaker 1: that was really interesting, especially like we'll talk later about,

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Speaker 1: CBS is sort of importance in the big game of

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Speaker 1: radio development. Yeah. So nineteen ten is also when the

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

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Speaker 1: of the US traveling more than two miles off the

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Speaker 1: coast and carrying more than fifty passengers to have a

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Speaker 1: wireless radio equipment on board with a with an operator,

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Speaker 1: and the transmission range had to be at least a

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

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Speaker 1: more radio transmissions broadcast without any regulation. This is where

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

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Speaker 1: to become a problem because now we we already have

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Speaker 1: a lot of radio traffic going on just through amateurs

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Speaker 1: as well as ship to land land to ship communication. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's starting to get a little crowded and we're starting

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Speaker 1: to get interference. We need to figure out how to

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Speaker 1: handle this. So in nineteen twelve, they passed the Radio

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Speaker 1: Act of nineteen twelve, which is good because if they

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Speaker 1: had passed the Radio Act of nineteen twelve and like

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Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, every one would have been confused. Uh, and

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

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

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Speaker 1: create order in chaos, and it was really kind of like,

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Speaker 1: you know, we want to make sure that we're keeping

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Speaker 1: certain frequencies free so that we can have these these

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Speaker 1: very important transmissions go uninterrupted because am transmissions, if you

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

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Speaker 1: of interference and just different from there was a military

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Speaker 1: component to this as well, because World War One was

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Speaker 1: on the horizon, was happening, and they the government banned

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: garage about, uh, you know, their favorite records something or you. Yeah,

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

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Speaker 1: overlap and they didn't get these important messages, so they

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

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Speaker 1: the the remote possibility that they might detect radio transmissions

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Speaker 1: from either allies or enemies. It would mean that yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is before the whole Bletchley Park on

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

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Speaker 1: previous episode of tech Stuff. But fascinating story fourteen Edwin Armstrong,

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Speaker 1: who's going to be important throughout this conversation, and his

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Speaker 1: story is amazing and tragic. Uh. He patents a radio

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Speaker 1: receiver circuit that increases the selectivity which allows you to

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Speaker 1: tune into specific frequencies and the sensitivity of radio receivers.

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Speaker 1: That means it was able to pick up weaker radio

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Speaker 1: signals than previous receivers. So selectivity obviously very important. You

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Speaker 1: want to be able to say, I'm looking at this

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Speaker 1: particular band of frequencies and I don't want anything outside

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Speaker 1: of that um and we would see that get better

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Speaker 1: and better. In en he would invent the super heterodyne

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Speaker 1: radio receiver or superhead. So this principle is actually really fascinating,

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Speaker 1: and I gotta admit to you, Christian, I had to

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Speaker 1: really sit down and read this a few times to

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Speaker 1: kind of get what was going on. Yeah, because I

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Speaker 1: mean this is radio, electromagnetic and radio broadcast. I have

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Speaker 1: a basic understanding of it, but it does go well

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Speaker 1: beyond what I studied in school. And it took a while,

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Speaker 1: but now I think I've got it. Will explain it

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Speaker 1: to me, because yeah, I'm more of the on the

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Speaker 1: side of the like cultural examination of radio, whereas like

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Speaker 1: the technology of it escapes me sometimes, So yeah, hit me.

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Speaker 1: All right. Let's say, let's say I want to transmit

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Speaker 1: a radio signal at a high frequency, so it's not

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Speaker 1: going to interfere with anything else, but that processing high

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Speaker 1: frequencies is a little tricky, so you might have a

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Speaker 1: receiver that can process frequencies up to I'm just gonna

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Speaker 1: take an arbitrary number, a hundred killer hurts. But I

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Speaker 1: want to transmit at fifteen 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

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Speaker 1: that uh, not just at the original frequency. I transmit

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Speaker 1: at but the difference between that and the oscillating one.

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Speaker 1: So another easy example, let's say they have an oscillating

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Speaker 1: frequency at a thousand killer hurts. Yeah, okay, that would

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Speaker 1: mean that if you used a receiver tuned to five

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

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Speaker 1: you would pick up that signal one could process it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So and I'm imagining that this is a process that's

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Speaker 1: still used today. Yeah. This is the principle of transmitting

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Speaker 1: and receiving with a radio so that your radio doesn't

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Speaker 1: have to have as wide a spectrum. It's called an

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Speaker 1: interminute frequency. And it took me a long time to

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Speaker 1: figure out what was going on, is the oscillator was

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Speaker 1: throwing me off. And then I realized, oh, the oscilators

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Speaker 1: tuned to a different frequency, and that's what gives you

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Speaker 1: the broader range that you can pick up. It's pretty fascinating.

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Speaker 1: And again Armstrong was absolutely brilliant coming up with this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then we move up to the nineteen twenties. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the twenties is when this educational stuff that I

387
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Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, it really hits a boom. There

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

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Speaker 1: United States of America that 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

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Speaker 1: the technology or to broadcast educational information didn't really matter.

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

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

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Speaker 1: basically it was because of and this is going to

396
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Speaker 1: be a huge theme of this episode, because of ad

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Speaker 1: based programming and stronger stations, commercial stations that were able

398
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Speaker 1: to overlapped their signal. Yeah, you essentially had not just

399
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: the fact that the companies had more technological behind them,

400
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,639
Speaker 1: but the government was favoring those over the educational ones.

401
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: When we get into a little bit more about the politics,

402
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,439
Speaker 1: you're going to hear that repeated a few times, and

403
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: it's it's a little upsetting, honestly, And I also i'd

404
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:26,119
Speaker 1: like to say, like, it's interesting because despite whatever my

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00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: political beliefs are reading. One of the articles that we

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00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 1: used as as research for this was written in nineteen

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Speaker 1: from the perspective of somebody at Harvard University looking back

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Speaker 1: at the Federal Radio Radio Commission before it turned into

409
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Speaker 1: the FCC that we have now and kind of just

410
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:47,399
Speaker 1: doing a broad review of the last like ten years

411
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Speaker 1: of this, and it's very very similar and reminiscent of

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Speaker 1: arguments that we've seen with media throughout the last hundred

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Speaker 1: years and that we're seeing right now in arguments about

414
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Speaker 1: net neutrality. Yeah, it's really similar to net neutrality, the

415
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: idea being that everyone should be free to use the

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Speaker 1: Internet to send and receive whatever information they want. In radio,

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00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,960
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

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Speaker 1: kind of pushed away and that the the the corporations,

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Speaker 1: the companies that had the money were the ones that

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Speaker 1: had the voice. Yeah, and and so like you know,

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Speaker 1: as we were talking earlier, there's these amateur radio stations,

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Speaker 1: right and they here's the kind of content you might

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Speaker 1: find on amateur radio stations. Maybe somebody's giving a sermon,

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

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Speaker 1: or they're talking about sports out of today's newspaper, updating

427
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,679
Speaker 1: their neighborhood on what happened in sports around the country

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Speaker 1: that day. Maybe they're reading a poem, maybe they're giving

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Speaker 1: a speech about something political at the time, perhaps the

430
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Speaker 1: usage of radio, or like we were talking earlier, just

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Speaker 1: playing records and at the time there was no you know,

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Speaker 1: aacensing or copyright and effect for for how music was broadcasted.

433
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: So they just throw any record on and kind of

434
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: entertain the neighborhood. Right in a way, you can think

435
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,720
Speaker 1: of it as like the predecessor of blogs. Yeah, you

436
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: know it really in a in a real way, it was,

437
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 1: and uh, this was amazing. This was an ability for

438
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: someone to have a platform to have their voice heard.

439
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:26,439
Speaker 1: Some people made very good use of that. Some people,

440
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 1: may you may think, made frivolous use of it, just

441
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:35,440
Speaker 1: like the internet. Sure, yeah, exactly, And that's just like blogging,

442
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: except for for people like us I suppose, who do

443
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: get paid to do it. A lot of these these

444
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: amateur radioists that they weren't getting paid for this. They

445
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: had day jobs. In fact, Like one of the stories

446
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: I read was about how there's this guy who ran

447
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: a gas station, but he also had a radio station

448
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: running out of his gas station, and so he'd be

449
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: on air and then he'd say, hold on a minute,

450
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: I have to go, uh sell some gas and he'd go,

451
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:01,920
Speaker 1: he'd just appear for five minutes, and they had come

452
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,919
Speaker 1: back and just pick up again. And that was just

453
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 1: how it is. They didn't really worry about dead air

454
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Yeah. Um. And and at the

455
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 1: same time, there's also this other, like broader, more important thing,

456
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: which I think is why the government started to become

457
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,239
Speaker 1: more involved in it, which is that radio allowed the

458
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: listeners to sample other cultures from far away states that

459
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 1: and and and learn more about what this kind of

460
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: idea of America as a nation meant. You know, even

461
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: though they may have never visited Nebraska, they would be

462
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: hearing what these amateur radioists in Nebraska were talking about.

463
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 1: They were giving them sort of a peek into what

464
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: the culture in those towns were like. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah,

465
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: absolutely yeah. And moving over to nineteen twenty, that's when

466
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,200
Speaker 1: we get the first commercial radio station launching. That's Kadi

467
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,640
Speaker 1: k A. Now, amateur radio stations, like Christian was saying,

468
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: had already been around, and a guy named Henry P.

469
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: Davis was inspired by an mature named Frank Conrad and

470
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,679
Speaker 1: saw the potential to actually make some money off this

471
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 1: whole radio thing, and not just not just broadcast out

472
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,880
Speaker 1: for free, but to actually make it a commercial enterprise.

473
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: So the radio station went live on November two, nineteen twenty,

474
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 1: Henry P. Davis himself read out the results of the

475
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: presidential elections on the air, and he would become heavily

476
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,640
Speaker 1: involved in broadcast radio, in fact becoming the first chairman

477
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 1: of the National Broadcasting Company also known as NBC. So yeah, exactly, pacock. Yeah.

478
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: Then the opening of thirty Rock in nine s kt

479
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: k A was owned and operated by Westinghouse Electric and

480
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: Manufacturing Company, and you might not be surprised to hear

481
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: that Westinghouse used the radio station as a means of

482
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: convincing people to go out and buy radios, because up

483
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: to this point, again it was very much an amateur thing.

484
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 1: People who were interested in the science would go out

485
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 1: and get the equipment or build the equipment from from

486
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: whatever they could, and that's how they participated. But now

487
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: we're talking about actually making commercial radio sets for people

488
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: to go out and buy. And this is also the

489
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: beginning of things starting to get a little dodgy on

490
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: the corporate side of things, because previously the patents for

491
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: radios were all over the place. But what happened was

492
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: the big companies G E, A, T and T. Weird,

493
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: they're such a familiar name nowadays. G A, T and T,

494
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: International Radio and Telegraph and Westinghouse all got together and said,

495
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: let's pull together our patents, and they created r c A,

496
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: the Radio Corporation of America, for the express purpose of

497
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: allowing them to build and sell radio equipment like transmitters

498
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: and receivers that were designed not for broadcast broadcast, but

499
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: for for telegraphing, but also to keep these amateur radio

500
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: out of business, basically so that they couldn't just go

501
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 1: and buy an out of the box kit anymore. They

502
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: would have to they would have to really build it themselves.

503
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 1: R c A flexed its muscles in ways that I

504
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: think just about anyone would describe as odious and uh

505
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stories we're gonna cover, yeah yeah,

506
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, um. And what's kind of interesting is just that,

507
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's this other article that I read

508
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: for this that was called The Design of Symbiosis that

509
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: was all about, you know, the the longevity of radio

510
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: and in these corporations interacting, and there's a quote from

511
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: it that I want to read, which is about this

512
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 1: specific thing. It says it was no accident that the

513
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: General Electric Corporation G, after acquiring rights to the Marconi

514
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: wireless patents in the United States, spearheaded the formation of

515
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: the r c A, which in turn launched the National

516
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: Broadcasting Corporation NBC, one of gs many subsidiaries. It still is,

517
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: I believe right. Well again you got Universal Yeah, yeah,

518
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: it's even larger than that and a leading content company.

519
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 1: So it's like one thing led to another, from one

520
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: corporation to the next as they kind of built out

521
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: their their subsidiaries and spread their spread out kind of

522
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: like an umbrella and it and it. Don't get me wrong,

523
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: this wasn't all negative. They were very positive effects at

524
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: the time as well. From this we will conclude the

525
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: story of the Golden Age of radio, if I can

526
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: say such a grandiose thing, after we take this quick break.

527
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: I love that you have this bit about a T

528
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 1: and T and their their business strategy. This is one

529
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 1: of the so apparently they like repeatedly, we're trying to

530
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 1: charge people for commercial broadcasting over their sets, and they

531
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: wanted to charge tolls in the same way that they

532
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: were charging people for phone calls, which I think is

533
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:53,960
Speaker 1: amazing when you when you think about it, you know,

534
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: there's just these these negotiations between the public and the

535
00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: large corporations. When these new media hit the scene, and

536
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: and we're experiencing it right now, we'll probably always be

537
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: experiencing it, I imagine. So, and it's interesting to you

538
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: you make a delineation in our notes about how how

539
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: the radio system is treated in America versus in other nations, right, yeah,

540
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: So the thing that's unique about the American radio system.

541
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: This isn't to say that that no other countries did this,

542
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: but the American radio system specifically evolved as a unique

543
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: combination between private enterprises like these ones that we were

544
00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: just talking about, in government regulation, whereas in other countries,

545
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: for the most part, it went for public ownership. So

546
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 1: places like Iceland, the United Kingdom obviously with the BBC, Italy,

547
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: Turkey and the uss are it was all public um.

548
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: And so the problem that radio had that was unique

549
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: in America was that all of these consumers could receive

550
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: any signal at equal equality, very much like again blogging,

551
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: right sure in theory, and that any broadcaster, however, whether

552
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,680
Speaker 1: it's NBC or a guy operating out of his garage

553
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: would be able to overwhelm multiple frequencies and overwrite what

554
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: was being played by somebody else's broadcasts. Yeah, the very

555
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: least you could interfere with the signal. Um, we'll talk

556
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: about FM and a little bit. The interesting difference, one

557
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,000
Speaker 1: of the many interesting differences between a M and FM

558
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: is if you have two AM broadcasts that are coming

559
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: out at the same signal, they interfere with one another

560
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: the same frequency, I should say they interfere with one

561
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: of FM. If you have two of the same frequency,

562
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: it's whichever frequency is the most powerful is the one

563
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 1: you will receive. So you could have a little station

564
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: that is broadcasting on a very small amount of power

565
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: that if you are close to it, you would be

566
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: able to pick it up on an FM band that

567
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: would normally be for a radio station that might mean

568
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: miles way. That could be a giant corporations one. So

569
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: there's a lot of back and forth with this too,

570
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: which is today we think of this. You and I

571
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: were talking about this the other day when we proposed

572
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: this idea. We think of it as pirate radio, right,

573
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 1: and I think I always think of pop up the

574
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: volume of the Yeah, and Christians later driving around his

575
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 1: neighborhood with his his pirate radio station at the back

576
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: of his car. Yeah, it's also similar. I did a

577
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,760
Speaker 1: story with Chuck Bryant about it was television, not radio,

578
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: but the same same principle, uh the Max Headroom incident

579
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: where in Chicago that was also the same principle as

580
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,320
Speaker 1: FM radio, and that if you were able to send

581
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 1: a signal along the same frequency but at a higher

582
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: power rate, then you could overpower that and people would

583
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 1: receive your signal not someone else's. Yeah, but anyway, and

584
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: so as these these conflicts are going on, these like

585
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: weird ven diagrams of stations playing up against one another,

586
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 1: the government starts to become interested, as we as we've

587
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: talked about, and especially because of military reasons. So the

588
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 1: Navy says, you know what, we should really take control

589
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 1: of this as a means of national defense. And the

590
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: way that they thought it should be run was basically

591
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:11,800
Speaker 1: like the post office, that the you know, the federal

592
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: government should own and control what is broadcast on radio signals.

593
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 1: Obviously that that didn't end up happening, but then you

594
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:24,280
Speaker 1: get this huge boom because of the amateur radio movement.

595
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: From nine to nineteen twenty three, the number of radio

596
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,720
Speaker 1: sets in America increased from sixty thousand to one point

597
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: five millions. That's a huge adoption rates massive and UH

598
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:40,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen two there were twenty eight stations in operation,

599
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: but I think it like exploded to hundreds very quickly. Um.

600
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: And then enter the scene a little guy named Herbert Hoover,

601
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: who was at the time the Secretary of Commerce, right,

602
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 1: and the and the Department of Commerce oversaw radio at

603
00:35:56,400 --> 00:35:59,919
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, yeah, And he was really the initiative

604
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 1: of that idea. He was the one who said, uh,

605
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 1: you know, uh, he really wanted the Department of Commerce

606
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: to control it first of all. But he also said,

607
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:13,399
Speaker 1: and this is another quote, he said, at first, the

608
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: idea of making money off radio seemed profane. It is

609
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service,

610
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: for news, for entertainment, and for vital commercial purposes to

611
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 1: be drowned in advertising chatter. This is Herbert Hoover who

612
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,919
Speaker 1: subsequently ends up using the government to support the businesses

613
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: UH in terms of businesses over amateur radio stations, UH

614
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: in terms of their licensing and his other analogy for

615
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: radio was that he thought of it as transportation rather

616
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: than the post office analogy that the Navy was using.

617
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: He thought it was like, we should think of them

618
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 1: as like waterways, and that the public should be be

619
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:55,799
Speaker 1: able to ride these waterways, but that the government would

620
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: regulate how they did. So I like this this message

621
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: year two of the We're one of the world's first

622
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: radio ads aired on August two, uh for a housing

623
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 1: development in Queens. Yeah. Yeah, this is the They were

624
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: basically like um advocating what we would now call gentrification

625
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:19,479
Speaker 1: or like get This is a quote from that ad.

626
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: Get away from the solid masses of brick, where children

627
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: grow up starved for a run over a patch of grass,

628
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: but my child's never seen what a tree looks like.

629
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: The Queen this is the first thing that we we

630
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:37,439
Speaker 1: sold on radio. That's hilarious. Yeah. But so Hoover goes

631
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: on in inwo He calls together the first American Radio Conference,

632
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: which is he brings together representatives from and I put

633
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: this in quote radio industry because it really wasn't an industry,

634
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: you know, it's just kind of and and this included

635
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: not only you know, the businesses that had interests in mind,

636
00:37:55,239 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: but also the amateur radio operators, and no action was taken. Uh,

637
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 1: there were calls for legislation they introduced to build a congress.

638
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: Congress is like, no, we don't want to have anything

639
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: to do with this. And there's political reasons behind that

640
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,879
Speaker 1: that I'll get into later. Um. Then by nineteen we've

641
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: got fourteen hundred radio stations, not just what did I say? Yeah,

642
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: and you So you've got these big commercial broadcasters that

643
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 1: are forming networks like NBC and CBS, both of them

644
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 1: they've formed in ven respectively. Uh, and it's very similar

645
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: today to the same that NBC and CBS that we

646
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: understand as being television. Right now, now I've got the

647
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: beginning of one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard.

648
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: This guy is my favorite. I agree, I think you

649
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 1: should do a whole episode about this guy. I could

650
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: easily do a whole episode about this guy. And and

651
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: he's going to pepper through parts of the rest of

652
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 1: this episode. So nineteen twenty three is what we're talking

653
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: about here. We're going back just a little bit too

654
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: to set the stay age. That's when doctor used it.

655
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: In quotes. John R. Brinkley starts up a radio station

656
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 1: called kf KB in Kansas. So let me tell you

657
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: about doctor Brinkley. First of all, he wasn't a real doctor.

658
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: He's like the original snake oil salesman. He he at

659
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:20,399
Speaker 1: least perfected it to an art form, right. He went

660
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 1: to medical school. They never graduated, but he bought a

661
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: diploma from a diploma mill for five hundred dollars not

662
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: an insignificant amount of money. That's bad, uh, And it

663
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: gave him the right to practice medicine in some states,

664
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: including Kansas. He purchased diploma, not not an actual like

665
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: proof that he had the training that would allow him

666
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: to do this. So anyway, he starts practicing medicine. He

667
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 1: had previously been involved in some scams and cons including

668
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: things like selling tinted water as if it were an

669
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 1: actual medicinal cure and injecting it into people. But I

670
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 1: want to see a movie about this guy his life,

671
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 1: and I want to see a movie. I want to

672
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: see a movie about this guy. I want to see

673
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: him cast. I want I want Simon Peg to play him.

674
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 1: He's just like deviously injecting things into people and cutting

675
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: open their necks. I think I think either Simon Peg

676
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: or Neil Patrick Harris. That would be prilliant. Yeah, he

677
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,360
Speaker 1: would be good. It's like evil dookie houser. Yeah. So

678
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:22,880
Speaker 1: he had he had been hired as a house doctor

679
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: for a meat packing company and he observed the rigorous

680
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: mating habits of goats. Uh. Yeah, So let's slow down

681
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: for a second, of people, This means that he watched

682
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 1: goats have sex for a long time and enthusiastically the

683
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: goats at least I don't know about him, but the

684
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 1: goats were certainly enthusiastic. So he was talking to a

685
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,760
Speaker 1: male patient once about the fact that the male patient

686
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 1: was having problems in the bedroom. He was having a

687
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: failing libido rectile dysfunction. Perhaps the the actual nature of

688
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: the problem was not what explained in all the sources

689
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: I looked at, but had something to do with failing

690
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: libido or or um, you know, virility. And so supposedly

691
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 1: what Dr Brinkley did was jokingly suggest that perhaps they

692
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 1: should transplant plant some goat quote unquote glands and gonads

693
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: into the mail patient. And he said, let's do it.

694
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: Let's fire us like the original body modification. Give me

695
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 1: some give me some of them goat glands. So he

696
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:29,319
Speaker 1: does he actually did start performing this, and then he

697
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: started to suggest, like he began to essentially advertise saying,

698
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 1: this is a way to restore virility for men. Uh,

699
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: let me do this this medical procedure for a not

700
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: insignificant amount of money. So flash forward to when he

701
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 1: gets the radio station and he starts to fill his

702
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: broadcast time with music and medical lectures, and he would

703
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,919
Speaker 1: end up advocating for this kind of treatment and other

704
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: treatments that were equally bogus advertise thing to Yeah, and

705
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 1: he was. He was essentially throwing business to surgeons, into

706
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:10,919
Speaker 1: pharmacists and getting kickbacks every single time and making a

707
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 1: mint off it. So he's in full operation and will

708
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 1: end up, believe it or not, defining in part why

709
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: radio has regulated the way it is. But we'll get

710
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, I know he's important to the history

711
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: of it UM. In the meantime, Hoover's continuing to negotiate

712
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 1: with stations and the government on how it should be regulated.

713
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: And you know, basically, as the Secretary of Commerce, his

714
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: work is to let the stations work out amongst themselves

715
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: which frequency is going to be used and when and

716
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: how they overlap. You it it wasn't really you know, handing

717
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:50,280
Speaker 1: it out. He wouldn't occasionally make decisions. And what happened

718
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: was in the federal court was like whoa, whoa, you

719
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: don't have this power. And specifically, the Attorney General of

720
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,359
Speaker 1: the United States, who you know, was from the same

721
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: administration that the Secretary of Commerce was, decided that Hoover

722
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: didn't have this power, he could not grant permits at request,

723
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: and that all of a sudden, these air waves turned

724
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: into even more of this like wild wild West of

725
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:19,799
Speaker 1: broadcasting than they already were. Uh. And so obviously more

726
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: regulation is even is necessary. And Coolidge is the president

727
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: of the time. He favors the control by the Department

728
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: of Commerce obviously because it's under his branch, and he

729
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: opposes any kind of commission being formed. The Senate, however,

730
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:37,440
Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of one man being in control.

731
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,359
Speaker 1: And this is where the political angle comes in, because

732
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: they knew that Herbert Hoover had his eye on the

733
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 1: presidency and they didn't want to give him any political

734
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: prestige for taking care of the radio problem. Interesting, and

735
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: also this will probably seem familiar to people following them,

736
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 1: that neutrality arguments where one of the big problems was

737
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 1: the FCC had brought a race against Comcast for blocking

738
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:06,439
Speaker 1: bit torrent traffic, and then the response was, you don't

739
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: have authority to tell Comcast what it can and can't

740
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: do because Internet transmissions were a title one classification, not

741
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: titled two. Uh. And if you want to know more

742
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: about that, you can listen to the title to podcast

743
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:22,920
Speaker 1: I did and Common Carrier podcast I did from a

744
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:25,480
Speaker 1: while back to to learn more about it. But just

745
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: suffice it to say that this is something that we've

746
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: seen before and we'll likely see again. I just I

747
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating that, like the future of this major

748
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: media uh, was decided by people who wanted to screw

749
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: over a political candidate potentially running Yeah yeah, and sometimes

750
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:49,720
Speaker 1: just people who were wanting to screw over inventors. Uh.

751
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: It's crazy. We'll talk more about those two in Congress

752
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 1: creates the Federal Radio Commission and passes the Radio Act

753
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:00,279
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty seven. Now, before that time, it was

754
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: all the Department of Commerce, like Christian was saying, So

755
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: the Commission's job was to get radio into shape, and

756
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,240
Speaker 1: they wanted to have a little more power than Department

757
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:12,280
Speaker 1: of Commerce, which could grant broadcast licenses, but couldn't deny

758
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: a broadcast license. So if you requested it, if you

759
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 1: did all the things you were supposed to do, you

760
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: would get one. You couldn't be told no, So the

761
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: Federal Radio Commission was supposed to be able to say

762
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:27,359
Speaker 1: no if it was warranted. Um, the question of how

763
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: they determined how it was warranted was something of a problem.

764
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:33,760
Speaker 1: And uh. The Act also laid out rules for content.

765
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: Programming could not have obscene, in decent or profane language,

766
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: and the Commission could and did use content as a

767
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: factor when deciding whether or not to renew a broadcast license.

768
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: So if you were broadcasting and not paying a whole

769
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 1: attention to those content rules, you wouldn't necessarily have your

770
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 1: license revoked, but when you went back to get your

771
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:59,439
Speaker 1: license renewed, you might be denied. Right, And this makes

772
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: sense in light of other arguments that were going on

773
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 1: with media over the you know, the twenty years probably

774
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: surrounding this, both with the cinema, and I would assume

775
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: newspapers and comic books as well. Yeah, all looking at

776
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: the government, the government trying to deem what was profane

777
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 1: or wasn't, but also trying to leave it in the

778
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: public's hands to decide. Yeah. There was also a real

779
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: worry about how far can you rule on these things

780
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: before it becomes censorship, So that, I mean, that's a

781
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: real worry, right, because they didn't want to be accused

782
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 1: of taking away somebody's right to free speech. Yeah. Um.

783
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: And so the fr C Federal Radio Commission, it was

784
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: really just like this compromise, this political compromise. And so

785
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: the idea was like really like they just assumed, they

786
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 1: being Congress, that it was going to go away after

787
00:46:57,120 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 1: a year as part of a political deal basically to

788
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: keep who were out of office, and especially because of

789
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:07,760
Speaker 1: the commercial radio interests, these guys who were lobbying their politicians. Uh,

790
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: they wanted the regulation to go back to the Secretary

791
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:13,720
Speaker 1: of Commerce. They just didn't want it to be Hoover. Uh.

792
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: And so they and their supporters in Congress would belittle

793
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: the FARC's accomplishments, even as they had they had subsequently

794
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:23,799
Speaker 1: argued that it should exist, and then as it was

795
00:47:23,880 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 1: going along, they would say, oh, this is terrible, you're

796
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: not doing a good job. And Uh. The FARC was

797
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: handicapped by a number of things. A limited financial resources,

798
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:37,839
Speaker 1: had an inadequate staff. Uh, and as we're talking about here,

799
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 1: it really didn't have any power authority, and its existence

800
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: was in question from the very day that it was

801
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:48,720
Speaker 1: it was created. It was like they were constantly on probation. Yeah.

802
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where, um, they're also

803
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 1: they're very organization ended up being a problem. So. Uh.

804
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: One of the things about the FARC was that they

805
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 1: were organized so that the entire United States was divided

806
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 1: into into zones. Yeah. They called this sectionalism, and each

807
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: zone was giving given the same number of broadcast licenses

808
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: essentially as every other zone, which you know, from one perspective,

809
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be fair, like everybody gets the

810
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: same amount, But then you think where's the population distribution.

811
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: The Northeast is very heavily populated and the Southwest is

812
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: very lightly populated, and so you don't have enough broadcast

813
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: licenses for the Northeast and you have too many for

814
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,399
Speaker 1: the Southwest. So these were so simple things, like just

815
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: the way things were set up kind of set the

816
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: f r C up for failure. It did, Yeah, especially

817
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:45,880
Speaker 1: because when that happened, Southerners in particular felt like they

818
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 1: weren't being treated fairly, uh, and it led to the

819
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: Davis Amendment in March. The idea was that there had

820
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:59,000
Speaker 1: to be an equal allocation of licenses, band frequencies, periods

821
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: of time for operation and station power for each of

822
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 1: these five zones and that so you know, obviously sexualism

823
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: was a huge problem for the FARC. And this is

824
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: even before we get into the business interest to angle right, right, right,

825
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 1: This is just in the operation part of the FARC,

826
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 1: not even getting into the business section. But these are

827
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: definitely important things to to consider. The idea of being

828
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,719
Speaker 1: able to say, here's the frequency you are allowed to use,

829
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: here's the amount of power your transmitter is allowed to have,

830
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:29,839
Speaker 1: so that way we can make sure that we don't

831
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: have these battling frequencies interfering with one another, because that's

832
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 1: not gonna be good for anybody. It's not good for

833
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: the transmitter, it's not good for the consumer who's trying

834
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 1: to receive these. All of that made sense, but they

835
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,239
Speaker 1: were hampered so much. And also, I mean, there were

836
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:48,280
Speaker 1: a lot of shady political goings on along with corporate

837
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:51,319
Speaker 1: goings on at the same time. They were essentially trying

838
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: to fulfill this mission of favoring big business over amateur radios.

839
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:02,000
Speaker 1: And they actually there's an actual FARC memo that says, quote,

840
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 1: there is not room in the broadcast band for every

841
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 1: school of thought, whether it's religious, political, social, social, or economic.

842
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 1: Each can't have its own separate broadcasting station or a

843
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: mouthpiece in the ether. Uh So they, you know, they

844
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:21,160
Speaker 1: were coming down pretty hard on these these amateur stations

845
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: that were given providing you know, a pulpit essentially to

846
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 1: anybody who had the means to to operate a broadcast

847
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:33,880
Speaker 1: um in favor of the businesses that were you know,

848
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:38,839
Speaker 1: lobbying to have them created in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So,

849
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:44,640
Speaker 1: you know, very complicated issue. The technology, oddly enough, less

850
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 1: complicated than the politics and culture surrounding it. In this case,

851
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: like the stories end up getting um Like it's the

852
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: human element that really throws the monkey wrench in here. Yeah. So,

853
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 1: for instance, like you've got this happens, the our c says,

854
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't this isn't a pulpit for your beliefs,

855
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: and then the labor movement, which is very powerful at

856
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 1: the time, says, wait a minute, we should have a

857
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,240
Speaker 1: clear channel that we can broadcast over these five zones

858
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: so we can talk to people about labor interests. And

859
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 1: then educators said, yeah, so should we uh, And so

860
00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:20,959
Speaker 1: there's all this pressure from the public, and then subsequently

861
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 1: Congress uses that and just keeps pushing on the f

862
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:27,359
Speaker 1: r C, saying you're really blowing it here. Yeah. So

863
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: you've got a great bullet list here of the working

864
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,919
Speaker 1: principles of the f r C. Let's go through those. Yeah.

865
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: So this is how they would ostensibly decide things. The

866
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,319
Speaker 1: first is that the station with the longest record of

867
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: continuous service had the superior right for broadcasting on a

868
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 1: particular channel, right, but they had a stipulation. There were

869
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 1: other conditions as well. So in order to fulfill the

870
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: fair and equitable distribution that was required by them, an

871
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,800
Speaker 1: applicant who wanted to broadcast needed firm find ancial standing

872
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 1: and efficient equipment. That's pretty vague, right, So it's up

873
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:07,800
Speaker 1: to this f r C, not f c C f

874
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: r C commissioner at the time to determine what firm

875
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: financial standing means and what efficient equipment means, especially as

876
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: this equipment is evolving at a rapid pace. Um. And

877
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:22,080
Speaker 1: then you also had to obey the rules of the

878
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,880
Speaker 1: obscene of not broadcasting obscene content like we talked about earlier,

879
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: and basically keeping it so that the dissemination of propaganda

880
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: wasn't controlled by a single group, and that creeds were

881
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: supposed to find that this is another quote that I loved,

882
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: find their way into the market of ideas to be

883
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 1: on the air. There was this idea that, um, there

884
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: was a there would be a natural kind of uh

885
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 1: process throughout the radio operators in the public that decide

886
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,200
Speaker 1: which political agendas should get to be broadcast on the

887
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,319
Speaker 1: radio or not, rather than just give everyone the opportunity

888
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:04,240
Speaker 1: to Yeah, and that would actually change too. There would

889
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,120
Speaker 1: there would eventually become a decision where people would say,

890
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: you know what, we need to make sure that everyone

891
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: has equal opportunity to voice there, to to put their

892
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,840
Speaker 1: political voice out there. But that would be an idea

893
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 1: that would come around a little later. Yeah, So, you know,

894
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 1: saying let's just put this out there and see what happens,

895
00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: and and I trust that whatever outcome there is, it

896
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: will be for the best didn't always work out. It's

897
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: like it's like saying, the laws of nature will decide

898
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: who the best person for president of the United states

899
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:42,319
Speaker 1: would be So what sort of stuff did we get

900
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,839
Speaker 1: as a result of this. Well, subsequently, the FRC didn't

901
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 1: want to regulate advertising. Uh, not only because you know,

902
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:56,120
Speaker 1: the advertiser's interests were also their interests, but also because

903
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:58,760
Speaker 1: the commission chose to further the ends of the commercial

904
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: broadcasters as part of what they called the public interest.

905
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: So the FARC had this ability to claim that it

906
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: didn't have powers of censorship and it couldn't be held

907
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:12,919
Speaker 1: responsible for questionable advertising such as cigarettes. You know, those

908
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:17,320
Speaker 1: like old corny cigarette ads that Judy hear on radio

909
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: right now. If you listen, if you ever listen to

910
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: old timey radio that has the commercial still in it,

911
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: you will hear tons of these. So they didn't want

912
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:27,799
Speaker 1: to censor those. But at the same time, they would

913
00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: rule that public stations that were on the air could

914
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: or could not be on the air because of their

915
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,799
Speaker 1: quality of character, which I think is kind of fascinating

916
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: that you know it was. I would assume at the

917
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:42,439
Speaker 1: time that it was maybe arguments of political beliefs, right, um, yeah,

918
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: very likely religious. This actually makes me think of how

919
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: it's unrelated. It's tangential, But how if I'm watching a

920
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: streaming content on my one of my devices, whenever it

921
00:54:57,200 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: gets to the content part, like whatever I'm actually trying

922
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: to see, I might encounter buffering three or four times,

923
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:06,879
Speaker 1: depending upon the connection. But commercials always seemed to play

924
00:55:06,960 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: with perfect clarity and no buffering whatsoever. Isn't that interesting,

925
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:14,400
Speaker 1: especially especially when you're when you're on YouTube, and YouTube

926
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: has got that new sort of passive aggressive alert that

927
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 1: comes up at the bottom that says, hey, just so

928
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:21,839
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't US, it's the limits of your

929
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: bandwidth provider, right, commercial. So it's interesting to me also

930
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:30,960
Speaker 1: that the public, you know, you would think like, oh,

931
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 1: the public, were they crying out on behalf of the

932
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: little guy, And it turns out they weren't. In large part,

933
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: they were actually citing with the big networks. Yeah they were.

934
00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: And what's kind of interesting about this is, yeah, they

935
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 1: were more interested in the content that NBC, r c

936
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 1: A and CBS was we're putting out um and even

937
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: though some people argued, you know, our c has a

938
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: monopoly on this industry. Uh, it's interesting, Like there was

939
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,760
Speaker 1: another argument that was essentially that, look, the mass public

940
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: just wants entertainment from these radio chances. They don't want

941
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:03,239
Speaker 1: to be educated, they don't want to listen to your

942
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 1: political screeds, and so subsequently they're complacent about the whole

943
00:56:08,120 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: thing and they don't really care whether or not these

944
00:56:10,600 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 1: amateur radio stations are getting edged out. UM. And so again,

945
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: like I turned back to this nine article by this

946
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 1: guy Herring out of the Harvard Review, and he proposed

947
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:25,279
Speaker 1: that there are two potential solutions, which I think are

948
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: really interesting now that we have the the advantage of

949
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,080
Speaker 1: being so far ahead and time and looking back on this,

950
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:33,520
Speaker 1: and he said, the only possible solutions are that we

951
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: go for full government ownership. His example was the BBC

952
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 1: at the time. UH. And he said, yeah, there's criticisms

953
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 1: that come in the form of minorities, not not ethnic minorities,

954
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 1: but like minorities of of voice claiming that they aren't

955
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:49,560
Speaker 1: given equal opportunity to access to stations. So that's the

956
00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:52,400
Speaker 1: one negative drawback to that. And he said, or we

957
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 1: could a lot of fixed percentage of radio facilities just

958
00:56:56,080 --> 00:57:00,759
Speaker 1: for nonprofit programs. UH. And then whatever is whether it's

959
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,880
Speaker 1: uh they allocate a certain number of frequencies or maybe

960
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:07,839
Speaker 1: they say, you know, the commercial stations can broadcast for

961
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: these twelve hours a day and then another twelve hours

962
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: a day. It's our nonprofit stations. Um. But even if

963
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: they did that, there were so much demand for nonprofit

964
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: amateur radio that they didn't have enough enough to accommodate everybody.

965
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough literally in this case, it wasn't There

966
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 1: weren't enough frequencies to facilitate it. Yeah. Yeah. So this

967
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: is really between where we see the beginning of the

968
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:42,800
Speaker 1: radio industry, an actual radio industry that is commercialized, and

969
00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:45,800
Speaker 1: there are questions that we're going around about, well, how

970
00:57:45,800 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: should broadcasting be financed, how should we produce our programs,

971
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: how should we distribute all of this stuff? And amateur

972
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:57,040
Speaker 1: broadcasting moved away as much as it was, like kind

973
00:57:57,080 --> 00:57:58,960
Speaker 1: of I think of it as being like the fandom

974
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 1: of today, you know. I keep thinking that's amateur radios

975
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 1: like the tumbler of the twenties, UM, and that there

976
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: were so many fandoms expressed there. But ultimately other stations

977
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:18,800
Speaker 1: that had commercial enterprises behind them, or even commercial enterprises themselves,

978
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 1: like department stores or music stores or doctors or Mr

979
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: Brinkley sorry Dr brink Yes, uh, he didn't spend three

980
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 1: years not graduating medical school to be called mr exactly. Yeah,

981
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:36,920
Speaker 1: I mean that five was well spent. Uh. They ultimately

982
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 1: were able to you know, put push out these interests

983
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: of the sort of amateur broadcasters. So like our C, A, G. E.

984
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:51,400
Speaker 1: And Westinghouse, they form NBC because they want to keep

985
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 1: their interests from diverging, even though their competitors they're also

986
00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: you know, united against amateur radio. This leads to the

987
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: rise of advertising sponsorships, which were well familiarly with in

988
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: the podcasting world and with ad agents. This is really

989
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 1: like the first time that they had like whole ad

990
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:11,560
Speaker 1: agencies that were working together with these companies kind of

991
00:59:11,600 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: coming up with how this stuff was going to be broadcasting,

992
00:59:13,840 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 1: How is the best way to convince the audience to

993
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: to move from queens or to a cigarette. So looking

994
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 1: back to our friend that we referred to a second ago,

995
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:31,880
Speaker 1: doctor John R. Brinkley. Uh, the FRC denied his broadcast

996
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:35,400
Speaker 1: renewal license in nineteen thirty. So Dr Brinkley comes up

997
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: to the f r C s as a time for

998
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:39,640
Speaker 1: me to get a little stamp on here so I

999
00:59:39,640 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: can continue my my good deeds of posting are broadcasting

1000
00:59:44,920 --> 00:59:49,280
Speaker 1: fraudulent medical practices and getting kickbacks, and they said nope.

1001
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 1: They actually cited the fraudulent claims and the content as

1002
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 1: the reason, saying it was against their content rules and

1003
00:59:55,800 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: that's why they were not renewing his license. So Brinley

1004
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 1: actually an instance or they did that. Yeah, and it

1005
01:00:01,680 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: was for the good. Yeah, yeah, great for the greater

1006
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:07,640
Speaker 1: good in this case, although Brinkley, Brinkley said that what

1007
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 1: was happening was effectively censorship. Um, and so he protests,

1008
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: and what he does. He buys a radio station in

1009
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:18,120
Speaker 1: Mexico that broadcasts had a much higher power than almost

1010
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 1: any station in the US. It was at a hundred

1011
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: thousand watts, eventually went up to a half million watts

1012
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:27,920
Speaker 1: and so very powerful radio station compared to the other

1013
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 1: ones that were active at the time. He directs the

1014
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:35,360
Speaker 1: antenna northward into the United States. It's amazing. So here's

1015
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:37,160
Speaker 1: here's the deal. This is this is what's going to

1016
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:40,520
Speaker 1: come back and haunt him. The way this worked was

1017
01:00:40,560 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 1: that he would, uh, he would actually his studio was

1018
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:49,160
Speaker 1: in the United States, the the stuff he was broadcasting

1019
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 1: would go to Mexico to be transmitted by radio, and

1020
01:00:54,160 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: that's what would eventually come back to get him. But

1021
01:00:56,360 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 1: that would be another couple of years. He's unfascinating it

1022
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:08,600
Speaker 1: by this guy, he's uh the brass the moxie. Yeah. Um. Well,

1023
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 1: as a side note, one of the things that was

1024
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top from that listener message was FDRs

1025
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 1: fireside chats, and those began in nineteen thirty three. So

1026
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:22,920
Speaker 1: this is really when I mean fireside chats don't happen anymore.

1027
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: But I'm fairly certain that the President of United States

1028
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 1: still records a weekly message that goes out on radio

1029
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 1: and it becomes an institution. The presidency recognizes the importance

1030
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 1: of this media, of the communicating to the mass public.

1031
01:01:39,120 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen thirty three, that's when Edwin Howard Edwin

1032
01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 1: Howard Armstrong, remember we talked about him earlier, created frequency

1033
01:01:46,040 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: modulation radio or FM radio. So am Remember we mentioned

1034
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:53,520
Speaker 1: changes the peak to peak voltage changes the amplitude of

1035
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:58,360
Speaker 1: that wavelength. Frequency modulation doesn't change the amplitude. It changes

1036
01:01:58,400 --> 01:02:01,720
Speaker 1: the number of oscillations per second, the actual frequency of

1037
01:02:01,760 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: the wave within a fairly narrow band, because obviously you

1038
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,680
Speaker 1: have to tune to a band of frequencies in order

1039
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 1: to pick things up. Then if it went outside of

1040
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:12,880
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't get it anymore, which is why you

1041
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: can overlap stations instead of causing interference. Yeah, as long

1042
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:19,160
Speaker 1: as you know, so you know if you're if you're

1043
01:02:19,160 --> 01:02:22,560
Speaker 1: going in an area where the power levels are almost

1044
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:24,720
Speaker 1: the same for the frequencies, that's when you start getting

1045
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:26,920
Speaker 1: that weird thing where you'll hear one station and then

1046
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 1: the other station. Maybe you'll hear both the same time,

1047
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:32,800
Speaker 1: but it's pretty rare. Uh So it's also not as

1048
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: prone to static. You don't have the same problems that

1049
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:39,200
Speaker 1: you did with AM with electromagnetic interference. But before it

1050
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 1: could get widespread adoption, Armstrong was essentially backstabbed by his

1051
01:02:43,640 --> 01:02:46,680
Speaker 1: former friend David Starnoff, who was head of guess what

1052
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:50,200
Speaker 1: r c A and r c A obviously had a

1053
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:53,560
Speaker 1: big vested interest in AM radio FM was rising as

1054
01:02:53,560 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: a competing technology. Starnoff went nuclear. He he had wanted

1055
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,560
Speaker 1: Armstrong to go and create technology to make AM radio

1056
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:06,760
Speaker 1: broadcast more clear, more free of static, and instead Armstrong

1057
01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:09,520
Speaker 1: comes up with this alternative to AM radio. But our

1058
01:03:09,560 --> 01:03:14,760
Speaker 1: c A is heavily invested in AM, so rather than say,

1059
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:19,040
Speaker 1: let's adopt this new technology and build on it, he

1060
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 1: went nuclear, and he started lobbying the FCC to deny

1061
01:03:23,280 --> 01:03:29,200
Speaker 1: an experimental license for UH testing FM radio. Essentially, every

1062
01:03:29,240 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 1: time Armstrong tried to make a move to push FM

1063
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:34,720
Speaker 1: radio forward, our c A blocked it or tried to

1064
01:03:34,720 --> 01:03:38,880
Speaker 1: block it, or complicated litigation ensued. It got very expensive,

1065
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:42,440
Speaker 1: and here's where things get really tragic. UH in the

1066
01:03:43,200 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 1: and by the time you get to the nineteen forties,

1067
01:03:46,320 --> 01:03:51,480
Speaker 1: Armstrong was effectively bankrupted by the litigation. He was still

1068
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:56,320
Speaker 1: trying to pursue this. He goes to his wife to

1069
01:03:56,400 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 1: ask her for some of the money he had given

1070
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:01,880
Speaker 1: her in there earlier part of their relationship that she

1071
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: had put aside for their retirement. She denies him this.

1072
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:11,120
Speaker 1: He he has been beaten down totally, and he gets

1073
01:04:11,280 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: enraged and does a horrible act. He grabs a fire poker,

1074
01:04:15,000 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: hits his wife in the arm uh injuring her arm.

1075
01:04:18,960 --> 01:04:23,840
Speaker 1: She leaves, obviously, she leaves him that evening. He sits down,

1076
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 1: writes an apologetic letter, and jumps out the window of

1077
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:34,200
Speaker 1: his thirteenth floor building and kills himself. Tragic, tragic story.

1078
01:04:34,520 --> 01:04:38,720
Speaker 1: So there are some amazing and powerful stories here. Brinkley

1079
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: Armstrong Tesla Marconi. Is I mean there's a movie. There

1080
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:47,960
Speaker 1: are many movies to be made from this. Moving on

1081
01:04:48,080 --> 01:04:54,160
Speaker 1: the N four Communications Act, huge, huge piece of legislation.

1082
01:04:54,200 --> 01:04:58,240
Speaker 1: This is the formation of the fcc UM. The one

1083
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:00,960
Speaker 1: section of that Act is actually where two as the

1084
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 1: Brinkley Act. This is within the overall nine Communications Act.

1085
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:08,200
Speaker 1: And of course the Brinkley Act is in fact named

1086
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 1: after our good buddy, doctor John R. Brinkley. So this

1087
01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:17,680
Speaker 1: was the US government's attempt to finally shut down Brinkley

1088
01:05:17,760 --> 01:05:21,040
Speaker 1: and his attempts to continue broadcasting. And they said that

1089
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: if you are transmitting information from the United States to

1090
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:28,960
Speaker 1: another country to be broadcast, that is a type of

1091
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:33,040
Speaker 1: international commerce and thus can be regulated. And they laid

1092
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:35,960
Speaker 1: down rules and they said, you cannot do this, it

1093
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:38,959
Speaker 1: is against the law. Now we have put that into law.

1094
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:43,280
Speaker 1: It put a stop to his transmitting and he ended

1095
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,480
Speaker 1: up trying to do other things. He also, by the way,

1096
01:05:46,680 --> 01:05:50,480
Speaker 1: really got the government's attention, not just by transmitting messages

1097
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:57,320
Speaker 1: about quackery and terrible medicinal cures for things. He sided

1098
01:05:57,360 --> 01:06:02,000
Speaker 1: with the Nazis before the before the United States Center

1099
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:04,520
Speaker 1: of the Ward exactly, it's before the United States was

1100
01:06:04,560 --> 01:06:06,800
Speaker 1: in in World War Two. But he started with the

1101
01:06:06,880 --> 01:06:11,080
Speaker 1: Nazis did not go over well. Uh, he eventually would

1102
01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: die of a heart attack in ninety Yeah, and insane

1103
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 1: with Dr Brinkley. But Brinkley, I mean his his actions

1104
01:06:22,080 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: are what in fact there was not. There was a

1105
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:28,000
Speaker 1: case back in the nineteen nineties that related to shutting

1106
01:06:28,080 --> 01:06:32,560
Speaker 1: down a uh an organization that was using a similar

1107
01:06:32,600 --> 01:06:35,760
Speaker 1: means of transmitting from the United States to a radio

1108
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 1: antenna in Mexico because they had the facility that they

1109
01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 1: could use and it was largely unregulated. Even as late

1110
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:46,880
Speaker 1: as nine nineties, we've had cases that fall under this

1111
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:48,880
Speaker 1: part of the Act. For some reason, I'm thinking about

1112
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:53,960
Speaker 1: d d O S attacks. It's like the their version

1113
01:06:54,000 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 1: of yeah, it's all about stepping around the regulations, right yeah. Well, um, Congress,

1114
01:07:01,280 --> 01:07:03,800
Speaker 1: like you said, had abolished the f r C, which

1115
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:05,840
Speaker 1: they were hoping to do to begin with, but instead

1116
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 1: of just turning it back over to the Department of Commerce,

1117
01:07:08,280 --> 01:07:11,920
Speaker 1: they established the FCC. The mandate of the SEC is

1118
01:07:12,120 --> 01:07:16,240
Speaker 1: Interstate and Foreign Commerce in Communication, which is where the

1119
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:19,240
Speaker 1: Brinkley thing comes in. And this is these are the

1120
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:23,120
Speaker 1: three claims that they maintainer. The reason for the FCC

1121
01:07:23,560 --> 01:07:26,680
Speaker 1: make sure that radio is available to all for reasonable

1122
01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 1: charges and with adequate facilities, so that you're not necessarily

1123
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:33,520
Speaker 1: listening to No longer would you be listening to an

1124
01:07:33,560 --> 01:07:37,160
Speaker 1: amateur out of their garage, out of their gas station,

1125
01:07:37,400 --> 01:07:39,480
Speaker 1: would walk away for five minutes to go pump some

1126
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: gas and then come back. You want reliable radio service, America,

1127
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: and we're gonna give it to you. And so this

1128
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: is also when we start seeing the allocation of large

1129
01:07:48,600 --> 01:07:52,880
Speaker 1: frequency bands for AM radio and FM radio. There's still

1130
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 1: is amateur radio. You can get a license to operate

1131
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:58,520
Speaker 1: an amateur radio, but there are very specific band of

1132
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:01,120
Speaker 1: frequencies you are allowed to you you can't use anything

1133
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: outside of that. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of

1134
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:07,480
Speaker 1: what Herrying was arguing back in the nineteen thirties that

1135
01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:10,200
Speaker 1: that there, but it's far more limited than that. I

1136
01:08:10,240 --> 01:08:12,439
Speaker 1: think what he was envisioning with that there there would

1137
01:08:12,440 --> 01:08:17,760
Speaker 1: be a spectrum for nonprofit radio um and, and he

1138
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:20,240
Speaker 1: also argued that the f c C at the time

1139
01:08:20,640 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 1: had to decide whether they were going to support commercial

1140
01:08:23,720 --> 01:08:28,920
Speaker 1: broadcasters at the expense of nonprofit ones, and ultimately, as

1141
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:32,679
Speaker 1: we know, they decided to do that. Um and even

1142
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 1: though they were hearings going on and reports were being

1143
01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:37,479
Speaker 1: pulled together, and the f CC was looking at all

1144
01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:40,280
Speaker 1: these things. You know, Ultimately, what we know of as

1145
01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of Radio saw the growth of these

1146
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:49,280
Speaker 1: these uh multi corporate networks across the country. Right and

1147
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:52,839
Speaker 1: by this time we're talking about World War two, radio

1148
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: now was adopted by a huge percentage of the population.

1149
01:08:58,000 --> 01:09:00,840
Speaker 1: Nine and ten families owned a radio and listen to

1150
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:03,280
Speaker 1: an average of three to four hours of programming a day.

1151
01:09:03,760 --> 01:09:07,000
Speaker 1: This is like what we picture of that like family

1152
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: gathered right time. My place is going in there, all

1153
01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:13,800
Speaker 1: gathered around the radio, little orphan nanny and the lone

1154
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:16,080
Speaker 1: Ranger and green hornet and all that kind of stuff.

1155
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:19,719
Speaker 1: And that was the Tech Stuff classic episode the Golden

1156
01:09:19,720 --> 01:09:23,599
Speaker 1: Age of Radio, which originally published March eleventh, two. Hope

1157
01:09:23,640 --> 01:09:27,280
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it, and we will be back next week

1158
01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:29,880
Speaker 1: with another classic episode. Of course, we'll have all new

1159
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 1: episodes next week as well. If you have a suggestion

1160
01:09:33,040 --> 01:09:36,000
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in a new episode, please

1161
01:09:36,040 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that

1162
01:09:38,120 --> 01:09:41,160
Speaker 1: is on Twitter. The handle for the show is text

1163
01:09:41,160 --> 01:09:44,559
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W. And I'll talk to you again

1164
01:09:45,439 --> 01:09:52,880
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production.

1165
01:09:53,120 --> 01:09:55,920
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i

1166
01:09:56,040 --> 01:09:59,280
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1167
01:09:59,320 --> 01:10:02,120
Speaker 1: your favorite, it's ye