Remember that this was originally from 1974.
When we last visited the world, the printing press was being used to disseminate knowledge throughout the world. Anyone with access to books and an education was able to read philosophy, science, history, and a whole host of things that people had seldom thought before. At the same time it small things like spelling started to be standardized within languages and new words were developed to express new thoughts and concepts. Sometimes, new objects or professions. Additionally, words of one language were borrowed by another language – not that English doesn’t have a lot of French constructs incorporated from the Norman invasion of 1066.
Things went along great for many years. Books were written, libraries were established, free libraries were established, the ability to read and write that was once restricted to the elite was eventually thought of as a right of a person in many countries (there are still countries today that restrict people’s learning), and newspapers were established. Now people could read or have read to them stories of recent events rather than hear tales at the ale houses and local markets. The same story now went to all people in an area at the same time. Everyone was “in the know.” Papers could be distributed to other areas and towns so what happened in one part was quickly known in another part. Add to this the improvements in transportation and it is easy to see how England knew within a month that a bunch of their colonies had declared independence back in 1776. Later the telegraph provided the ability for major news items to be sent vast distances so an event in New York City could be reported in the San Francisco paper the next day. Undersea cables linked the US and Europe.
People around the world were now reading about events in other parts of their own countries and in other countries. Some were able to get the papers from other countries and cities to read more details of events there. Since most newspapers were sold primarily in the area where they were published, they represented and reflected the attitudes and opinions of that group. If you compare the reporting of the recent war in Viet Nam as published in the
Washington Post or the
New Your Times with the reporting of the same incidents in the
Times of London you get a completely different perspective. You might even think it was a different war.
War correspondents were a unique breed. From William Randolph Hearst’s famous quip, “You give me the pictures and I’ll give you the war.” (If you are taking notes, that one’s called the “Spanish-American War”) to Ernie Plye’s reports from the trenches in World War I, newspapers no longer relied on reprinting dispatches from other countries, they sent their own people to report it the “right way.” If you want a shock just read any European paper and see what they are saying about President Nixon and his troubles.
The telegraph and the telephone were point-to-point communications, newspapers had to be physically distributed and sometimes by the time you read it in the papers it was old news. Consider the stock market crash. If you had money in the market and your first knowledge was when you read it in the papers, you were far too late. After invention, the early experiments, and government funded development, radio spread from early amateurs to hucksters to full commercial networks stretching from one coast to the other. Radio is the next Dominant Media.
Most radio today, as it was in the beginning of commercial broadcasting, is concerned with local events, there was a time from the 1920s to the early 1950s when there were major commercial radio networks in the United States (names you know today like CBS and NBC) that provided news and entertainment. These dominated and homogenized the news and information areas. Now something that happened in New York could be heard in Los Angles at the same time as it was heard in Chicago. World Series baseball games were broadcast around the country as they were happening. You didn’t have to read about them the next day in the papers. More people listened to radio than ever read a book or newspaper. To feed this growing medium required more people to create the content – both news and entertainment.
So what happened? Just as printing helped to standardize the spelling of words and push aside regional variations (except in England that still insists on putting a “U” in certain words like “color”), radio helped to diminish the regional accents of various parts of the country. The southern drawl is not as pronounced as it was fifty or a hundred years ago just as the New England accent can now be understood even west of the Hudson River.
Just as the railroad of the 19th century had brought the country together commercially where a horseshoe manufactured in Troy, New York from iron ore mined in Minnesota and smelt in Lackawanna or Buffalo, New York could be used to shod a horse in Denver, so too did radio unite the country. When FDR gave his “Fireside Chats” it is said that you could walk down the street and never miss a word as every house had their radio tuned to the broadcast. (Those were the days before indoor air conditioning and suburbs where the houses are separated from each other and set back from the sidewalk and the road.)
One of the most popular entertainment shows on radio was called
Amos & Andy. It was so popular that department stores like JL Hudson in Detroit would play it through their in store speakers because before they did, no one would shop while it was on. Likewise, movie houses (theaters) would time their features and shorts to pause for the time it was on, often this was advertised on the marquee in front.
One of the most famous radio broadcasters from out parent’s era was Edward R. Murrow of CBS. During the Battle of Brittan in World War II when Germany was bombing London, Murrow became famous for reporting from rooftops while the bombs and fighters rained destruction on the City of London. This set a standard of reporting that has often been imitated, but never duplicated. Many credit his reporting as laying the groundwork for the US to enter the war on the British side. There were a lot of support groups in this country that favored the German side. Remember that at that time Hitler was seen by many as a hero for pulling Germany from the ruins of World War I to the top ranks of nations. Most of the things that he and his followers are condemned for today were not known then.
End of Part 2