Radio Act Of 1912 And Its Impact On American History

Numerous events throughout American history have allowed for the overall growth and advancement of the United States culture. Regardless of whether this progression was initiated by a negative or positive event, all of the occurrences significantly impacted the societal evolution of the United States. From experiencing and, then, revising key mistakes that occurred in negative instances—such as the events responsible for sparking the Civil War—to the positive examples of constructing and improving new technologies, such as the “Radio System” or “Television,” these critical turning points greatly influenced the cultures of their respective time periods. Arguably, one of the most influential actions of the twentieth century was the development

Obviously, with such novel and electrifying technology, the people of the United States became extremely fascinated with this new mass medium. Copious amounts of amateur radio experimenters, creating receivers with any available supplies, soon took over the unregulated airwaves with their zealous personalities—resulting in an increase in interference with governmental station frequencies (Sage, n.d.). Because of this, the Radio Act of 1912 was enacted, restricting amateur radio experimenters to operate only in frequencies above 1500 kHz (White, 1996). The social climate was beginning to accumulate a whirlwind of modification because of the radio industry, and soon began to fully take

Previous to the explosion of the radio industry, the only means of advertising a product to a large body of consumers was via magazines—and a select few newspapers. With a tremendous increase in radio stations, such as NBC and CBS becoming the first official radio networks in 1926 and 1927, respectively, the industry now had even more competition against newspaper, magazine, and motion picture companies (Peterson, 1956). The economic gain that the radio industry offered to businesses was on an exponential incline: “By the late twenties, radio was rapidly becoming an important competitor for advertising appropriations; the gross advertising carried by the networks jumped from $4,000,000 in 1927 to $10,000,000 in 1928 to $19,000,000 in 1929. Magazines recognized the threat; the Saturday Evening Post ran many articles about stage and screen but paid the scantiest of editorial attention to radio.” (Peterson,