Broadcasting in United States

Reginald Fessenden did ground-breaking experiments with voice and music by 1906.

Charles "Doc" Herrold (Charles Herrold) of San Jose, California sent out broadcasts as early as April 1909 from his Herrold School electronics institute in downtown San Jose, using the identification ''San Jose Calling'', and then a variety of different call signs as the Department of Commerce began to regulate radio - charlesherrold.org

He was on the air daily for nearly a decade when the World War interrupted operations.

Pioneer radio station 2XG, also known as the "Highbridge station", was an experimental station located in New York City and licensed to the DeForest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company.

It was the first station to use a vacuum tube transmitter to make radio broadcasts on a regular schedule. From 1912 to 1917 Charles Herrold made regular broadcasts, but used an arc transmitter. He switched to a vacuum tube transmitter when he restarted broadcasting activities in 1921.

Herrold coined the terms broadcasting and narrowcasting, and claimed the invention of broadcasting to a wide audience, through the use of antennas designed to radiate signals in all directions - dcwstore.com

David Sarnoff has been considered by many as "the prescient prophet of broadcasting who predicted the medium's rise in 1915", referring to his radio music box concept.

A few organizations were allowed to keep working on radio during the war. Westinghouse (Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was the most well-known of these. Frank Conrad, a Westinghouse engineer, had been making transmissions from 8XK since 1916 that included music programming - ieee.org

A team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison headed by Professor Earle M. Terry was also on the air. They operated 9XM (WHA (AM)), originally licensed by Professor Edward Bennett (Edward Bennett (physicist)) in 1914, and experimented with voice broadcasts starting in 1917 - books.google.com

By 1919, after the war, radio pioneers across the country resumed transmissions. The early stations gained new call signs. Many early stations were started by newspapers worried radio might replace their newspapers. 8XK became KDKA (KDKA (AM)) in 1920.

KDKA received the first federal license and began broadcasting on November 2, 1920. Madison Avenue early on recognized the importance of radio as a new advertising medium. Advertising provided the major funding for most stations. The United States never had a licensing fee for set users. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) began regular broadcasting in 1926, with telephone links between New York and other Eastern cities. NBC became the dominant radio network, splitting into Red and Blue networks. The Columbia Broadcasting System began in 1927 under the guidance of William S. Paley.

Radio in education began as early as April 1922, when Medford Hillside's WGI Radio broadcast the first of an ongoing series of educational lectures from Tufts College professors. These lectures were described by the press as a sort of "wireless college." Soon, other colleges across the U.S. began adding radio broadcasting courses to their curricula; some, like the University of Iowa, even provided what today would be known as distance-learning credits.

Curry College, first in Boston and then in Milton, Massachusetts, introduced one of the nation's first broadcasting majors in 1932 when the college teamed up with WLOE in Boston to have students broadcast programs. This success led to numerous radio courses in the curriculum which has taught thousands of radio broadcasters from the 1930s to today.

In 1934, several independent stations formed the Mutual Broadcasting System to exchange syndicated programming, including ''The Lone Ranger'' and ''Amos 'n' Andy''. Prior to 1927, U.S. radio was supervised by the Department of Commerce.

Then, the Radio Act of 1927 created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) in 1934, this agency became known as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

A Federal Communications Commission decision in 1939 required NBC to divest itself of its Blue Network. That decision was sustained by the Supreme Court in a 1943 decision, National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, which established the framework that the "scarcity" of radio-frequency meant that broadcasting was subject to greater regulation than other media.

This Blue Network network became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Around 1946, ABC, NBC, and CBS began regular television broadcasts. Another TV network, the DuMont Television Network, was founded earlier, but was disbanded in 1956; later in 1986 the surviving DuMont independent stations formed the nucleus of the new Fox Broadcasting Company.