Anything Goes Radio Reprograms America 1920 to 1940
Radio defined and shaped popular culture, unifying the nation through a common medium during difficult times. Unexpectedly bursting onto the airwaves in 1920, radio technology created challenges and opportunities for providing popular content. Watch to hear about the evolution of radio from Dr. John Smith, Lehigh University History Professor Emeritus.
The article “Anything Goes: Radio Reprograms America 1920 to 1940” from soundQuality.org discusses the transformative impact of radio on American society during the early 20th century. It highlights how radio emerged as a unifying medium, especially during challenging times, by providing accessible entertainment and information to a broad audience.
In the 1920s, radio technology advanced rapidly, leading to widespread consumer adoption. By 1930, approximately 40% of U.S. households owned a radio, and this number grew to 83% by 1940. citeturn0search11 This proliferation allowed radio to become a central fixture in American homes, offering a variety of programming that ranged from music and drama to news and educational content.
The article also touches upon the initial resistance to commercializing radio. Notably, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover once expressed concerns that advertising could inappropriately interrupt important broadcasts, such as presidential speeches. Despite such reservations, commercial sponsorship became the primary funding model for radio stations, intertwining media and advertising in ways that continue to influence broadcasting today.
Furthermore, the piece draws parallels between the early days of radio and the advent of the internet. Both technologies experienced periods where their potential applications were not immediately clear, yet they eventually became integral to daily life and had significant political and cultural impacts.
In summary, the article emphasizes radio’s role in reshaping American culture between 1920 and 1940, serving as a catalyst for unifying the nation and setting the stage for future media developments.

Transcript
0:06
all right now maybe the uh the crowd isn't so big uh because tomorrow is the
0:12
Super Bowl and probably everybody is out there buying all their stuff for tomorrow but it's kind of appropriate
0:20
that what I want to talk about the Super Bowl go together because tomorrow we
0:26
will be annoyed over and over again with the huge number of commercials that are
0:32
going to interrupt the game and of course where did all this come from of course media and commercials first came
0:40
together with radio but the interesting thing about that was though it it was
0:46
not obvious uh even Secretary of uh Commerce
0:51
Herbert Hoover said that that radio should not be commercial because a
0:58
presidential speech could be sandwich between two patent medicine ads and he
1:03
didn't think that was appropriate but we know that eventually of course radio did become commercial but it did take a
1:10
while and it was not without opposition and without uh you know without
1:18
controversy oops too far all right so another
1:24
interesting thing about radio I think is there are some interesting parallels with the internet uh again how do we pay
1:32
for the internet uh through ads popup ads commercialism in fact commercialism
1:39
right is the way we run all our media uh it's not like we had to do that uh there
1:45
are other alternatives to life the other interesting thing about both both both
1:52
radio and the internet the technology was in place before anybody knew what to do with it uh you know and particular
2:00
with the internet you know the government the defense department builds this system to connect a couple of
2:06
University computers together and like nobody used it uh but the guys the the
2:14
young computer engineered guys who had access to this system they started
2:20
creating little groups to talk about the Grateful Dead Or to talk about science fiction and then of course there's this
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guy named Ray Tomlinson who came up with the idea of email right which then uh
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you know was really the first way that the internet really took off uh and of course the other aspect is that both
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radio and the internet have had political impacts probably not anticipated when the media uh first
2:46
developed and of course I just want to give a shout out here to our exhibit
2:52
over here about Edward Armstrong uh the great independent inventor who uh really made radio
3:00
broadcasting the radio industry possible with his invention of a vacuum tube that
3:05
you could use for broadcasting and also is development of tuning circuits so you
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could actually tune in radio now when we think of Thomas Edison
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we always think of the light bulb right but what what is it as well known as
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maybe the most important thing that Thomas Edison ever did and God knows why
3:30
he did it he stuck a wire into a light bulb in 1883 and guess what he found he
3:36
found there was a current uh and there wasn't the electron hadn't even been discovered yet uh he didn't know what
3:43
the heck was going on but this is the beginning of All Electronics and I always wonder what if Edison hadn't done
3:50
that experiment uh what if Would we not have any computers Would we not have any
3:57
transistors uh was electronic somehow intuitively obvious that somebody else
4:02
would have discovered it of course we don't know because all we know is what happened but we do know that Edison's
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experiment did lead uh to the development of the key technology for radio the vacuum tube and of course what
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you have here it's basically a light bulb right and and when it's operating through a vacuum uh it sends out a
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stream of electrons and if you put a Charged plate on it those electrons will
4:29
stream over to the plate of course the next big step in the technology uh that really turned it back
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into was to put another uh in between the light bulb and that plate you put in
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another circuit uh which then can be used to modify the current flowing
4:47
across you can then amplify currents you can also use this as a switch to turn on
4:52
and off and that's it I mean that that's All Electronics is I mean that's all our computers are you know our whole comp
4:59
Lex system of the world is based on basically simple uh physical phenomena
5:05
that was first demonstrated in vacuum Tu okay now the the early history radio is
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really a mess uh there were these competing companies uh all of whom had
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patents from the different people uh who were involved their buddy Armstrong had sold as patents to
5:23
Westinghouse uh AT&T had the patents of leader Forest uh and GE had patent by
5:30
Irving langmere it's one of the most bizarre things in history Lea Forest
5:35
built a vacuum tube a physical vacuum tube in 1907 patented it but it wouldn't
5:42
work because he didn't understand the principle uh Irving langere at GE got
5:50
that thing pumped all the air out of it so that it was a vacuum and it worked uh
5:56
and so and so that's why G GE had a position I here because lere but it's so
6:02
strange that that def far built the right device but he thought it was based on ionized gas inside the the light bulb
6:10
which was wrong uh and then all langere had to do was pump out the air and the dart they work like a charm so what you
6:18
had was a patent mess uh uh during World War I radio turned out to be rather
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useful um and after the war uh these companies in the United States formed
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RCA we basically forced the Marone company which was British uh to give up
6:35
uh all their American patents to us uh they owed us several billion dollars after the war so we had a little bit of
6:42
Leverage over the British uh so we created GE created this thing called the radio Corporation of
6:48
America um and so they came up with this incredibly complex agreement uh AT&T of
6:54
course thought that radio was going to be used for wireless telepan uh um GE and Wesley House were
7:01
basically electrical manufacturers who wanted to sell radio sets but the interesting thing was
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this agreement was signed in 1920 and it does not include
7:15
broadcasting they didn't have any idea about what the heck radio was actually
7:21
going to be used for they thought it might be used for you know for individual people more like an internet
7:28
individual people talking to each other and one of the fun things you could do was they call them distance fiend cuz
7:34
you know at night right radio signals will go very far at night in fact when I was a kid a teenager and I wanted to
7:42
find out what the latest rock and roll songs I listened to WBZ in Boston I
7:47
listened to a a station in Cleveland I listened to a station in Chicago uh that
7:52
you can pick up at night see that was because they were using the lower frequencies at that time they thought
7:59
that the high frequencies would be useless uh short wave so short wave is better in the day yeah and the lower
8:05
frequencies are better night yeah thank you okay so that's what they thought but
8:10
then uh the Westinghouse company in Pittsburgh uh what just decided hey
8:17
wouldn't it be kind of interesting if we just broadcast something uh we just broadcast something and uh so they
8:25
started broadcasting things and guess what they found out people loved it people wanted it and they wanted they
8:31
wanted more and they wanted more and so in the 1920s broadcasting really took
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off but but it was totally a disorganized industry there were
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hundreds and hundreds of small local radio stations and a lot of them by like
8:47
a furniture store would have a radio station uh and basically a lot of these very small local radio stations were set
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up uh just kind of to promote the person who was running the radio station and of
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course there's a problem here that uh it actually cost some money uh to run a
9:08
radio station and they weren't getting any Revenue uh so that that kind of became a bit of a problem uh and again
9:16
uh broadcasting was still seen throughout much of the 20s uh the 1920s
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uh broadcasting wasn't really see deemed as critically important to the industry
9:28
because when they really wanted to do with sell radios of course because you know in the 1920s it's really quite
9:35
remarkable uh the growth of this industry in 1922 a thous 100,000 radios were sold
9:43
for a value of $5 million in 1924 two years later 1.5 million radios were sold
9:50
with a value of $100 million in 1929 45 million radios were sold for a value of
9:58
600 m milon this industry just explodes it's and basically the idea is that that
10:04
GE and Westinghouse and these they basically they're broadcasting is there to sell
10:10
radios um but of course at some point right everybody's got a radio uh and
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once everybody's got a radio then then what's broadcasting for uh and one of the interesting okay what could you
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possibly use radio for uh and one of the interesting things was public service um
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and one of my favorite ones was the United States Department of Agriculture
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uh came up with a program in the middle 20s called Aunt Samy who was Uncle Sam's
10:40
wife uh and what Aunt Sammy did was they broadcast helpful modern information
10:47
basically out to the Rural America to the farm wives and what they would do is
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they would send out the scripts and then they would get a local woman to actually read the script on the radio so the
10:59
accent was right right so that the the person listening to it would think it was a neighbor who was talking to them
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uh one here's a typical program recited um a stanza of dog roll verse told
11:13
several jokes and explained how to select a care for lolium for the kitchen floor directed how to roast wheedies the
11:19
modern way how to use vinegar left over from a jar of pickles and how to put up cucumber relish def find what a vitamin
11:26
was enumerated the five foods essential to the daily diet listed what food should be taken from dishes with fingers
11:34
and ended up offering the menu for the day meatloaf with brown gravy scalloped potatoes carrots or beets fresh sliced
11:42
tomatoes and lemon Jell-O dessert well one thing it's it's really kind of interesting now I don't know if these
11:47
Farm wives were insulted that you know I mean they knew how to cook right they
11:53
knew what to make and yet here's this friendly neighbor I guess telling them this is the Modern Way
11:59
yeah this is you know this is this is what we know more about food and another
12:05
another idea about radio was that it could be used for cultural uplift uh you
12:10
know we could now get um you know we could take the best of of high culture
12:16
and we could everybody could have access to high culture you could put operas on the radio right uh and one of the most
12:22
important here was uh was tanini uh and his orchestra on the NBC
12:28
Network uh providing classical music for Americans uh but then funny things
12:35
happened on the way uh people found out that they really liked other kinds of
12:40
music and one of the one of the most important on was Jimmy Rogers the singing Breakman who was the father of
12:47
country music and what was really interesting too is that that his country music was incredibly popular in the
12:53
cities and I guess because of a lot of people had just come from the country there was a big Mig ation from the
13:00
countryside to the cities in this era and people were feeling a little nostalgic uh for for their past life and
13:06
so country music became incredibly popular and of course the other
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incredibly popular music of the 1920s and 30s of big band music uh and one of
13:19
the interesting way the way this music kind of got on the radio was that one of
13:24
the biggest problems that early broadcasters had was how do you fill up up all these hours I mean you know radio
13:32
I mean there was one famous thing where the guy stick his microphone out the window and said ladies and gentlemen the
13:37
sound of New York traffic I mean you know it was very demanding to fill up so one of the things they would do late at
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night is they would just go to a ballroom and they would just just you know these big bands would be playing in
13:49
ballrooms and of course the music became incredibly popular uh promoting this
13:55
popular music now advertise in as I pointed out before there were a lot
14:01
there was a lot of skepticism that advertising would not work on the radio
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um and that radio was not the po po the proper place for advertising in fact
14:12
that the early days the the type of advertising was very much like we have on NPR today uh this fine program was
14:21
brought to you by the good folks down at the local hardware store I mean it was just kind of institutional ads now one
14:28
of the one of the the first breakthroughs here uh was
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um a little bit more uh commercial oriented advertising and it's
14:39
interesting WF in New York uh was an AT&T station um and because of the legal
14:46
agreement between the various companies they claimed that they were the only ones that could sell
14:53
airtime that that that that that no other radio station legally was allow
14:59
allowed to sell airtime in the early 1920s and so WF Pioneer and one of the
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most popular time bought ads was the uh the
15:10
the The Click Click CLE or anybody know French what's C what is it the Cleo the
15:17
Cleo club uh esimo band uh and and and so they and what they really did they
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kind of embedded of course they embedded the name of the ginger ale and the name of the and and so they thought okay this
15:31
is this is an okay kind of advertising uh we're providing people entertainment uh the advertising is not
15:38
too intrusive uh and and this became kind of a model for advertising in the early
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years of course one of the biggest um things that happens in radio
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in the 1920s is the form of wired National networks the two of them uh NBC
15:58
and Columbia and what they did is AT&T basically decided that they're going to get out of the radio business uh and so
16:05
what they did was they made a deal with these guys that that they would pay a huge amount of money to AT&T to send
16:12
their stuff over the wires and of course this also creates a monopoly right nobody else can break into this system
16:19
in fact right you know NBC had had two networks the red and the blue one of which became ABC so if you think about
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the major networks that went in into television the the three networks that dominated American Media uh were the
16:34
three that were basically formed in the 1920s for radio and of course the the
16:40
quest one of the big questions still was can you sell on radio uh will PE is
16:47
Radio an appropriate medium for getting people to buy things now one industry
16:53
that that went into radio advertising early was the candy industry uh the
16:59
candy industry was shifting to branded products uh from what had been I guess
17:04
taking candy out of a barrel uh and so the industry wasn't sure that branded
17:09
products were going to work this was going to be a risky thing to do anyway so they said well we might as well take
17:16
another risk so let's put it on the radio and one of the the early ones was the Betty Jane Candy Company who began
17:23
to advertise on the radio and it worked uh sales way up uh it became a very
17:31
popular kind of candy probably the biggest thing supporting radio advertising was the the fight to the
17:38
death battle between Lucky Strike and camels uh to be the number one cigarette
17:44
brand in the country they spent huge amounts of money on advertising and
17:49
radio to promote uh each other's product of course the
17:55
other what were they going to be advertising and of course they're going to be advertising increasingly lots of
18:00
radio shows and this was very interesting too because radio shows were expensive to put together and still the
18:08
the the revenue situation wasn't all that good for a lot of the radio
18:14
stations even on the networks but another phenomena that we have in the 1920s is the growth of the modern
18:21
advertising agencies who are advertising in lots of media magazines right
18:27
newspapers and they increase they start to then think that advertising agencies
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at first they're skeptical but the ad agencies start to think that well maybe we could sell on the radio but what they
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increasingly start to do is they produce the whole thing they
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they produce the content they actually they they they write the scripts uh they
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hire the actors uh they sometimes embed commercials in the middle of the script
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uh so radio radio becomes increasingly commercial in the 1920s and particularly
19:05
in the 193s and of course what what also happens in the 1930s in the early days
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like with the with the esimo club radio performers were Anonymous uh
19:19
because the advertisers did not want the audience to be distracted to be
19:27
distracted by the name of the star uh but by the 1930s this began to change uh
19:35
a Rudy Rudy Valley um and of course the other thing in the 1930s is that that a
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lot of people are now coming from Vaudeville uh in the 1920s you know Ville was thought of kind of crass uh a
19:50
lot of the jokes might not have been appropriate for um a broader audience of
19:57
course there was a lot of ethnic and racial humor in Vaudeville that again they thought maybe not appropriate for a
20:03
national audience but Vaudeville wasn't doing well in the 1930s and a lot of vaudville uh performers moved over into
20:11
radio and also some of the major singers uh like Rudy Valley turned over of
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course the perhap the biggest Vaudeville star uh of course Eddie caner uh who
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brought uh ethnic Jewish humor uh to the radio and it turned out that people
20:29
people people really liked it because I I should have had a of course Amos and Andy Amos and Andy became you know two
20:37
white men who who acted like they were New Black new York City cab drivers
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became absolutely the most popular uh radio show there ever was uh it had an
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enormous audience so radio they found out well you know we can deal with with
20:54
ethnic and racial issues um as long as it's not as you know as long some of the
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I don't know some of the more crass aspects that you would have heard in Vaudeville uh were left
21:09
out now and they said not everybody uh was excited about what had happened to
21:16
radio in the 1930s there had been a lot of idealism in the 1920s cultural uplift
21:23
uh educating people radio could be a great educating you know everybody can we you can put programs on here that can
21:30
educate people even people living in small towns in the middle of nowhere can now have access to high culture uh to
21:38
all kinds of um you know of educational things uh but by the 1930s there really
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started to be a a big backlash uh a significant backlash and
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of course one of the one of the interesting aspects about radio in the early days is uh what did the listeners
21:57
think uh and out of the radio industry know what people thought um in the early
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days it was letters they encouraged people to write letters about the content and people did people did write
22:10
a lot of letters uh to the radio station by the 1930s you start to get a more
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scientific approach of calling people on the phone sampling trying to get a
22:21
better idea who listen but when radio came under
22:27
criticism uh some of the people in the industry weren't too happy about the
22:33
people who were criticizing it Roy Duron who was one of the principles of the great bbdo advertising firm he insisted
22:42
that radio filled the needs of radio typical listeners a very tired bored
22:48
middle-aged man and woman whose lives are empty and who have exhausted their outside sources Amusement when they took
22:55
a quick look at the evening newspaper uh you know and this is kind of an
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interesting phenomenon too in this period this idea of the masses in in in the cultural world
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there's this idea that there's the great bulk of people are kind of an individual
23:16
and a homogenized Mass uh you know and they're not very
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interesting they're not very smart uh they're just like Roy dorstein explained
23:27
them they're just kind of very d uh not interesting people in fact it was a very famous book written by a a
23:33
Spanish philosopher in 1929 called the Revolt of the masses what he argued in that book is the masses think they have
23:40
their own culture they think they know things uh High culture is really what's
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important the masses should be looking up to us they should they shouldn't be going after Jazz you know this
23:52
degenerate form of Music they should be listening they should realize that classical music is really the good thing
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uh you know so so there is this whole concept of the masses um in the 19
24:09
1920s and 30s and Duron said who are the PE who are the people who are criticizing radio well they're people
24:16
with full lives with books to read with parties to attend with theaters to visit with friends whose conversational powers
24:23
are interesting radio provides a vast source of delight and entertainment for the barren lives of
24:30
millions uh I mean pretty arrogant
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uh uh the NBC president uh alsworth echoed durston the most bitter critic of
24:42
radio he said is the recluse the intellectually Superior person who voluntarily separates himself from the
24:49
living breathing moving America in which he lives these folk do not belong to the great vibrant mass and soul of America
24:57
so one of the things that they ended up doing was um analyzing all the letters
25:02
that were sent in to determine how smart and educated the people who sent the letters were CBS claimed that of 10,000
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listeners to the American School of the air um the U the networks did put on
25:16
some education programming to basically undermine the education stations uh you know they threw a little
25:23
bit out there so they had the American School of the air they said that 80% of
25:28
their letters came from persons of a high order of intelligence um NBC even sorted Letters
25:35
by the type of paper the grammar and the spelling but the famous historian will
25:41
Durant was asked to study another sampling and he inferred that most of the letters came from invalids Lonely
25:48
People the very aged the very youthful hero worshippers and mischievous
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children uh were the people who listened to to radio
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uh and of course another interesting aspect of of course of this new medium
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is that new media seem to disorient people uh you know even going back to
26:11
the to the printed book uh you know when when books came out there was a lot of weird stuff that was printed one of my
26:17
favorite one was the asilis Native Americans in America who didn't have
26:23
heads but they had their their face and everything on their stomach uh you know I mean you could you know once books
26:29
books became cheap right and so you could you could print anything right same thing happens with radio and of
26:35
course the most famous uh episode here was when uh when they broadcast the War
26:42
of the Worlds as a radio drama uh even though they warned people and told them
26:47
before and after that it was just a dramatization the nation went into a panic because they really thought
26:53
martians were Landing in New Jersey and of course a lot of people wonder why New Jersey J uh really would would the
27:00
Martians really want to pick New Jersey and and kind of an interesting sidelight to this a couple weeks after this um
27:08
this radio drama the DuPont company at at the New York World's Fair announced
27:15
that nylon and and they said that nylon was made from coal air and water magic
27:23
right the modern technology the modern technology uh wasn't Arthur Clark said that that uh
27:31
any advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic uh to to the average person and of
27:39
course there's the political uses of radio right as we know uh New Media New
27:45
Media provide um different ways to to connect with people and also the number
27:52
of people you connect with you know in the 1928 election Herber who
27:58
was a very old-fashioned politician and of course in the old days um a lot of times a politician's strength and
28:06
virility were on how long they could talk you know and I always think you ever see these big pictures of like
28:12
Teddy Roosevelt and people with these giant crowds there were no microphones
28:17
how in the world could people I mean PE they must have had great voices uh to be
28:22
able to yell out and be able to talk to a large Crow well Herbert Hoover took
28:27
the same approach to radio and also how long he could speak um on Tuesday
28:34
October 4th 1932 at 8:30 p.m. Harbert Hoover went on the air to give a speech about the
28:41
political about the upcoming election and here's listeners confidently awaited
28:47
the president's concluding remarks confidently and also impatiently for at
28:53
9:30 Mr edwi comes on the air Mr Hoover had only arrived at 2 of his 12-point
29:00
program the populace shifted in its Myriad seats wives looked at husbands
29:05
children allowed to remain up till 10:00 on Tuesdays looked in alarm at the clock
29:11
20,000 votes shifted to Frank con Roosevelt at 9:45 Hoover had arrived at0
29:18
4 2 million Americans switched off their instruments and sent their children to
29:23
bed weeping in in New York alone station wef
29:29
was pelted with 800 foam protests um and another station was swamped by 6,000
29:36
telephone calls uh complaining about so you know and and but Roosevelt of course
29:42
as we know um came up with a very um very uh intriguing and effective way of
29:49
communicating to the American people realizing that people listen to their radios um in their home in their living
29:56
room and Roosevelt adopted the style of talking to people as if he were sitting there with them his first one of course
30:03
in 1933 shortly after he took office talking to people about the banking
30:08
crisis and why they had shut down the banks and how they were going to reopen the banks and he
30:14
really this talk really took down the level of panic and people started putting their money back in the banks uh
30:22
shortly after Roosevelt gave this talk and of course throughout Roosevelt's uh time as president you know he was able
30:28
to um communicate with the American people rather effectively through his Fireside chests but they're also um
30:36
again uh media are are neutral and can be used for many purposes in the United
30:44
States in the 1930s two radio demagogues UI long of Louisiana who basically ended
30:50
democracy in Louisiana and father Coughlin who was basically Adolf Hitler's mouthpiece in the United States
30:57
uh Drew huge radio audiences uh and this is from um uh you know a a a book about
31:05
about these guys and how their rhetoric expounded faith in Simple Solutions and blamed Wall Street financiers wealthy
31:12
Industries corrupt politicians uh their rhetorical style sought the submission of the audience to
31:18
the rhetoric by undermining the individual otor capacity for three for free thought and individual expression
31:26
the over identity of the audience capture the audience in a cult of unthinking affirmation and to
31:31
systematically incapacitate the audience's inl so as to disable their ability to question and of course radio
31:39
radio was the great means of there and unfortunately there was another guy
31:45
there's another guy who found radio to be quite useful and that was Adolf
31:50
Hitler uh in the 1930s his minister of production Albert Spear uh wrote in his
31:57
this very interesting Memoir inside the Third Reich Hitler employed to Perfection the instruments of technology
32:04
to dominate its own people by means of such means of Technology as the radio
32:09
and public address systems 80 million persons could remain subject to the will of one individual and his minister of
32:16
propaganda Joseph Goble said real broadcasting is true propaganda means
32:21
fighting on all battlefields of the spirit generating multiplying destroying Exterminating building and undoing
32:28
propaganda is determined by what we call the German race blood and Nation
32:33
so I guess that's I think that's pretty much uh my I don't want to end on such a
32:39
a dire note there but I guess the point here is that that with media we should be suspicious of media uh we should not
32:47
accept uh everything we hear and see on media we need to remain skeptical uh
32:53
media can be used to present information or misin information
32:59
um in many different ways and and and we do have a weakness I think to be
33:04
disoriented by New Media and uh it's something I think we need to fight
33:09
against and be skeptical uh be skeptical of everything
33:14
you see here and read is about the only message I can end with all right thank
33:21
[Applause] you produced radios that could only rece
33:27
frequency and distributed what they in in Germany at that time they distributed
33:34
radios to the public that could only receive one frequ yes oh yeah yes which is the station they want you to listen
33:40
to and they outlawed tun yeah yeah they outlawed tuning yes um in the in the
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really interesting book midnight in Chernobyl uh there's a in in the Ukraine
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during the Soviet era people had radios on in their houses and they were supposed to be on 24 hours a
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day um and and it was just constant Soviet propaganda um I went to Russia and
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people had wir systems only turned one station government St yeah but people
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are usually pretty clever right I mean in in in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union people were able to subvert you
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know they were able to subvert you know the authorities that try to tap into other sources of
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information same with the same with the internet recently the
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Soviets you know turned off certain courts of the internet yeah
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yeah yeah I mean I mean there's been a constant battle right
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between and uh information becoming incredibly available to everyone and
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other people are not liking the idea that everybody and try to narrow narrow
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the options that that people have and uh not let them have information know I
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just one really interesting after World War II vaner Bush the guy who ran all the American
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R&D programs during the war that produced the atam bomb and radar and synthetic Rubber and penicillin and DDT
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he came up with the idea of the of an Internet that was based on microfil which is really interesting he had the
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idea in 1945 that we were going to make all information available to everybody
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and we're going to do it with microfilm and so everybody in their house would just have a wall uh full of microfilm
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you know but of course the idea is that what happened is that people hate
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microfil it's not easy to use uh people hate microfilm readers but but um you
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know bush had the idea of the internet he just just had the wrong technology um in
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1945 yeah I was just going to say you know it's clear that history repeats
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itself over and over and over and if if if we taught the history of radio or the
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history of broadcasting in elementary school we might have smarter voters and
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elector we might have a more aware you know uh population well I mean I just
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think I mean to me it's just you know having taught College for 35 years to me
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it's just um it's it's it's analytical thinking you know it's the ability to
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and even you know just when when you have kids read a document in a class and
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then you say to them okay what's this person try to do to you what's the point what are they trying to tell you on this
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document can you deconstruct the argument here I have a heart it's it's a
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hard thing you know it's not it's it's a hard thing for them to do and I'm not sure what the best way to teach it is
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but you you just have to people just have to be critical and and think for themselves I the other thing is don't
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think you're stupid I guess don't think that the other people are going to tell you what's true think for yourself you
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know don't just okay yeah well they said it well it must be true no you know
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there is such thing as logic you know I mean there there are ways to approach
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information to try to figure out whether you whether you you know what
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you consider uh it's validity or or whether it's a legitimate argument or
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whether it's just
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nonsense anything else this has been wonderful oh thank
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you Don we appreciate sharing your expertise knowledge and humor with us
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too goodies a little good for you for the
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Grands sckers here yes ickers are okay a stickers
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