Past

Thesis

Public radio stations arose from an American tradition of public service and a distrust of commercialism.  Technological advances, private foundation support, government regulation and funding were key factors in the establishment of public radio.  A combination of these forces and an unconventional funding model has made public radio stations a major force in American media.

The Pre-History of Public Radio

The origins of public radio predate radio. Americans have a long tradition of seeking enlightenment from sources outside the marketplace. Public education is one example. So are libraries, which got a huge boost when philanthropist Andrew Carnegie built nearly 17 hundred in America between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that same time thousands of Americans attended summer camps called Chautauquas, named after a lake in New York State where the first event was held. They brought statesmen, poets, teachers, musicians, and actors to small town communities. The goal was uplift, inspiration, education and entertainment. Former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt called Chautauquas “the most American thing in America”. From its earliest days, many wanted radio to be like that. But it was not to be until many years later.

Were it not for a lack of vision, radio may never have existed. Winston notes that in the 1880s and early 1900s telephone news channels transmitted information in Paris and Budapest. Elsewhere opera lectures and other services were disseminated through phone lines. Phone exchanges could have been designed to allow one phone to go to many different receivers but they were not. Winston calls this a mark of phone’s repression that allowed broadcasting to take on the role of transmitting from one to many. The result was a much more centralized, undemocratic and controllable technology that served commercial interests well. This centralization played a large role in the suppression of public service radio until government intervened in the 1960s.  Winston suggests that if phone exchanges could have permitted one to many transmissions, they would have leapfrogged broadcasting and brought us the interconnection of the web a century earlier.

Radio Arrives

Radio broadcasting was the fourth development that made the late 19th and early 20th centuries the most revolutionary technological period in world history. Telephone rapidly connected individuals for real time conversations over long distances. Electricity brought light to the night, radically improved industrial processes, and transformed home life. The automobile fundamentally altered development and personal geography.  Radio marked the beginning of the mass broadcast media, which would dominate the 20th century.

In 1901 the New Century Dictionary defined ‘broadcast’ as the process of scattering seeds. By 1907 the primary definition of broadcast was to scatter or disseminate radio messages.  The sales of radio sets and parts rose by more than 600 percent between 1922 and 1928. In 1920 there was one licensed radio station. By 1922 more than five hundred stations were on the air. The supervening need was the desire to communicate across long distances to large numbers of people. Everyone wanted to build a radio transmitter – telephone and telegraph companies, newspapers, department stores, religious groups, electronic equipment manufacturers, universities and hobbyists.   Barnouw writes that for a time after World War 1, before government regulations caught up with the burgeoning technology, anyone could build a radio station (Barnouw 1966).

In this innocent pre-regulatory era broadcasters were transmitting on the same frequencies, creating chaos for listeners. Radio stations would voluntarily turn off their transmitters for ’silent nights’ to clear the airwaves as a public service so radio listeners could pick up radio stations from far away.  By 1927 federal regulators began to bring order by assigning frequencies but the new communications medium was advancing more quickly that the regulators could handle.

What is radio for?

From the start, some felt that radio should be dedicated to public service not private profit. In 1922 the magazine Radio Broadcast asked how would broadcasting be financed. Among the ideas under consideration – endowments funded by public-minded millionaires, city or state financing, a donation supported fund controlled by an elected board. Advertising wasn’t even on the list. Stations sold airtime, but the concept of the commercial was undeveloped. In 1924 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, then the radio czar, said, “If a speech by the President is to be used as the meat in a sandwich of two patent medicine advertisements, there will no radio left.” Early newscaster H.V. Kaltenborn’s raised the question in the essay “Radio: Prophet or Profiteer?” (Barnouw 1966).

Barnouw recounts how commercial interests began to take over broadcasting in America over the resistance of those who believed in a public service model. A prime factor was the Great Depression, which forced broadcasters to find revenue-producing models to survive. Yet as late as 1931 most radio shows were still unsponsored.

The Communications Act of 1934 gave the Federal Communications Commission the power to license radio stations, allocate frequencies and call letters.  Broadcast interests do not own their frequencies. They hold a license granted by the federal government for the “public interest, convenience and necessity”.  Throughout the history of broadcasting there has been a debate over the meaning of public interest. Do businesses serve the public interest by serving the largest possible audience, and making a profit in advertising revenue? Do non-commercial goals that better serve the nation and our democracy? How can both co-exist?

The debate over between public interest regulation and commercial practices came to head in 1946. The Federal Communications Commission issued a report called Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licenses. Because of the color of the cover stock the report came to be known as the blue book.  The blue book documented radio company’s promises to provide of non-commercial programs to serve the needs of organizations like the American Legion and the Boy Scouts of America. Then the report examined the radio stations program logs to see what they actually aired. The blue book revealed that the vast majority of programs were relentlessly commercial. The report included statements from industry leaders like the heads of CBS and NBC about commercial excesses and the need of non-commercial programs to provide balance, to deal with subjects sponsors would not fund and to serve minority interests and non-profit groups [Barnouw 1966].

Outside the radio business the blue book was praised as an overdue corrective for excessive commercialism. . The entertainment magazine Variety wrote, “The FCC recommendations … could serve as a primer for the operation of a good radio station.”

But broadcasters harshly condemned the FCC report. National Association of Broadcasters president Justin Miller said the idea that people owned the air was “hooey and nonsense” (Barnouw 1966). The FCC was blasted for being un-American. Although the commission defended the blue book, in the event they didn’t follow through on its conclusions. They renewed the broadcast license of a radio station their own report showed had blatantly ignored their guidelines. This led to Lee De Forest, called by some the ‘father of radio’ for his patents that helped make radio broadcasting possible, to write

“What have you gentlemen done with my child? … You have sent him out in the streets in rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie woogie, to collect money from all and sundry for hubba hubba and audio jitterbug. You have made him a laughingstock to intelligence, surely a stench to the gods of the ionosphere..” (Barnouw 1968 p. 234)

Note how De Forest’s condemnation is against commercialism and the spread of popular culture through radio. The first educational broadcasters, primarily based at colleges and universities, kept both of those forces at bay.

What does public service broadcasting mean?

Progressives denounced what they called the corrupting influence of commercialism in mass media.  But among progressives Mitchell describes two poles of opinion. Journalist and political philosopher Walter Lippman argued for a professional mass media that would “manufacture consent” by consulting disinterested social scientists to identify important societal problems and propose solutions. Lippman felt that the media should tell the public what experts think because the world was too complicated for individual citizens to know enough. At the other end of the spectrum John Dewey argued that democratic processes made for the best decisions, not just the expert opinion. But both agreed that media shouldn’t just reflect commercial interests. Dewey’s perspective later flourished in Pacific Radio and through community radio stations. Public radio began in the Lippman tradition and later evolved into a hybrid of these two streams.

By the 1930s radio companies realized the wealth of networks. It was expensive to hire top-flight talent, produce elaborate radio dramas, and bring orchestras to perform in radio studios, but the network could feed these programs to hundreds of radio stations. It was what Benkler calls the industrial information economy. The cost was high but there were economies of scale. The identical product could be distributed at a nominal extra charge to reach a nationwide audience.  The added advertising revenue brought in by the benefits of networking not only paid for the costs but also provided huge profits.

Radio filled what Winston calls  the supervening need of businesses to reach customers in an efficient way. Radio fit perfectly with the booming consumer product industry in the early 20th century, which perfected industrial models of production and needed to reach a national customer base. Magazines like Reader’s Digest, Time, and Life duplicated radio’s national reach, but radio was reaching out all day, every day.

The Radio networks played the same role as TV networks in the 1960s through the 1990s. They were a common commercial and cultural thread that tied together the country. Radio stars rivaled movie stars in popularity. This began to change in mid century.

Radio bows

Between 1948-1952 108 television stations went on the air. Radio network ratings plummeted as listeners turned away from their most popular shows to the alluring new cathode ray tube in living room. This is shown by the January ratings for one of radio’s biggest stars, Bob Hope, over a four-year period.

1949 23.8
1951 12.7
1953    5.4  (Barnouw 1966)

The big stars went from radio the TV.  The big radio networks became TV networks. This was the first of many times that radio was declared dead. But instead radio operators adapted. Radio stations became more locally focused. They dabbled with new formats to compete. Recorded music presented by a disc jockey became the dominant radio format.  Between 1948 and 1952 radio operators started to reach out to the Black community with stations focusing on rhythm and blues music.  (Barnouw 1966)

Another technological innovation set the stage for the rise of public radio. It was frequency modulation or FM radio. FM was originally developed in 1933. It provided a clearer, noise free signal compared to AM.  In the words of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagan FM had “no static at all”. A second major advantage of FM was the ability to broadcast in stereo.

Winston explains that sometimes new technology overshoots market needs because it provides qualities that users do not (yet) know they want. In the early years FM radio overshot. The AM signal suited most music aired on radio. Recording studios often mixed their records through a small AM radio car speaker to tailor the sound for the place where most listening took place. One place where FM did take hold was at college and University radio stations. As part of their mission to edify the masses these stations broadcast classical music, which took full advantage of FM’s superior sound quality. These radio stations were a refuge from the “rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie woogie”.

As radio became more lucrative and the demand to commercialize radio grew stronger, the number of educational radio stations began to dwindle.  Frequencies were grabbed up by businesses. Faced with obliteration, in 1940 educational broadcasters succeeded in getting the Federal Communications Commission to set aside five channels on the newly created FM radio band. Five years later another 15 frequencies on the low end of the FM band were assigned to non-commercial educational radio stations (Ostroff).  To this day travelers to a strange town today can usually find public radio by searching at the left hand end of the dial. This government intervention provided a place where public service broadcasting to exist, but there were few people listening, little strong programming content, nor was there a viable funding model.

By the 1960s popular music led by the Beatles began to become more sophisticated and highly produced. Musicians and producers began to take full advantage of advances in audio technology to produce dense recordings with wide dynamic range. Stereo became a tool used (and overused) in many popular psychedelic music recordings.

As the burgeoning baby boom youth culture adopted the music, the demand grew for the higher quality radio signal of FM. Commercial FM radio stations played rock music outside the realm of top 40 music playlists featured on AM radio. They represented part of the major cultural shift in the 60s. Listening to ‘underground’ FM music stations was as big part of 60s culture as drugs, sex and rock and roll. Young people bought into FM radio and hi-fidelity equipment. There was a huge base of potential listeners to FM that did not exist when AM ruled. Educational radio was in the right place at the right time but still lacked the means to flourish.

Public Radio Arrives

By the 1960s non-commercial radio stations at Universities and colleges, along with some a few independent educational organizations, operated low power stations that often could only reach a couple city blocks. Most had no full-time staff and were overseen by school faculty. Half the stations had budget of less than $20,000 dollars (Mitchell). Philanthropic foundations operating from the philosophy of Lippman and Dewey about mass media stepped in to change the situation.

In 1967 the Carnegie Foundation funded a landmark report “Public Television: A Program for Action” calling for public funding of television to serve un-served audiences. Commercial media could serve the mass audience; public TV would serve the sub audiences. Following the tradition of the BBC in the UK, the Carnegie report imagined a public broadcasting as a showcase of the best aspects of the diverse American society. It was felt this would educate and uplift society.

Radio was not mentioned in the Carnegie Foundation report.  The power of television dominated the national mind space. The NBC, ABC and CBS networks reached all Americans and defined national media. Although radio retained a huge national audience, the predominance of local programming led policy makers to overlook its role. The first legislation drawn up based on the Carnegie report’s recommendations was the Public Television Bill, creating the Corporation for Public Television.

Herein lies a mysterious footnote in the history of public radio. Mitchell alludes to prominent radio backers present in the Senate offices of the lawmakers who were key players in drawing up the legislation. By the time the bill emerged from the backrooms every place the word television was written the words “and radio” had been added. In 1967 the names were changed to the Public Broadcasting Act and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

CPB funded the creation of National Public Radio. The manager of a Buffalo New York public radio station Bill Siemering wrote a consensus statement for National Public Radio’s purpose. Siemering’s parents had toured as actors with Chautauquas.

“National Public Radio will serve the individual; it will promote personal growth; it will regard the individual differences among men with respect and joy rather than derision and hate; it will celebrate human experience as infinitely varied rather than vacuous and banal; it will encourage a sense of active constructive participation, rather than apathetic helplessness.” (Mitchell p. 55)

Siemering proposed a new program for the fledgling national network that would contain some hard news but the primarily emphasis interpretation, investigative reporting on public affairs, the world of ideas and arts  – the ‘why, how and who’ rather than the “what, where and when” of the day’s events The name of NPR’s first program, All Things Considered, came from engineering and operations head George Geesey. It was meant to convey a range of interests and thoughtfulness of consideration (Mitchell).

Educational radio stations based primarily at colleges and Universities gradually added All Things Considered and a few years later Morning Edition to their classical music schedules. The NPR News/Classical format would dominate public radio from the mid 1970s to early 1990s.

As soon as politicians got involved in funding public broadcasting, they sought to influence it.  A 1971 public TV documentary “Banks and the Poor” produced by National Educational Television contained criticism of financial institutions work in the housing, personal loan, and consumer credit areas. Peter Flanigan, Assistant to the President Nixon, wrote to a public broadcasting official “Herewith another example of NET (National Educational Television) activity that is clearly inappropriate for a government supported organization.”  (Public Broadcasting Policy Base)

The Nixon administration tried to pack the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with politically sympathetic members. In 1972 Nixon vetoed the pubic broadcasting act, arguing that too much funding was going to national entities. Nixon argued that federal funding should support local stations instead.

In 1986 federal funding for public radio began to be funneled directly to public radio stations. The stations paid dues to support National Public Radio’s production of All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Although the intent may have been to muzzle strong national news coverage, this actually insulated NPR and other national public broadcasting entities from political pressure. Public radio stations developed strong listener constituencies in their local communities. Subsequently when Congress members attempted to cut public broadcasting funding because they didn’t like what NPR or public television was doing, angry local listeners would call and defend that funding. But by the mid 1980s public radio was developing a stronger source of funding that would soon dwarf federal money and the support from the colleges and universities that started the stations.

“Please call now with your pledge.”

Outside the network of non-commercial stations developed at colleges and universities a different flavor of public service broadcasting arose. In 1949 Lewis Hill, conscientious objector and Washington, D.C. newsman, started the Pacifica Radio network in 1949 at radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California. Pacifica embraced the democratic public service media model espoused by Dewey. Pacifica rejects any federal or corporate funding. Volunteer programmers from all walks of life are encouraged to use the airwaves to express their cultural and political interests.  It’s a pre-internet example of Benkler’s observation that we are not the rational human beings of conventional economic assumption. We do things not just for money but also for pleasure, personal satisfaction, and a desire to make the world a better place.

In the 1950s FM radio frequencies were not yet valuable. Pacifica secured prime frequencies in Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Houston. In the late 1960s the community radio movement, espousing many of democratic beliefs of Pacifica, established independent non-commercial radio stations in smaller cities like Seattle, Portland, St. Louis. Many of the people working in pubic radio today have been strongly influenced by their experiences working at Pacifica and in community radio. But the strongest influence has been in fundraising.

Pacifica’s Lewis Hill came up with the idea of listener-supported radio. The pledge drives which provide the bulk of financial support for Pacifica and community non-commercial stations originated with the belief that if you were providing a service that people valued, they would voluntarily pay for it.  Public radio stations affiliated with colleges and universities that aired National Public Radio programs embraced the listener-sponsored funding model. The bulk of financial support for these radio stations comes from voluntary listener contributions. This model mirrors the plate being passed in church. Public radio supporters believe they are helping a higher cause. Listener-supported radio confounds conventional economic expectations about how people act. Why would people pay for something they could get for free?

So Here We Are

Public radio stations have emerged from the American tradition of non-commercial education, edification and uplift.  The technological innovation of frequency modulation opened up broadcasting outlets that public broadcasters were quick to seize. Government communications policy and funding provided public radio with the lift to get off the ground. Today ten percent of Americans listen to public radio stations. An innovative listener-sponsored funding model sustained public radio and helped National Public Radio grow into the country’s pre-eminent radio network.
Until 4 to 5 years ago, all metrics measuring the health of public radio (listenership, financial support, influence on American life) were rising at a steady rate. But in recent years listenership has leveled off and even begun to drop. How public radio stations have been addressing the challenge? You’ll see, when our term paper continues.

Sources

Anonymous (Feb 7, 2000) Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers  Public Broadcasting Policy Base, A service of Current Newspaper and the National Public Broadcasting Archives. Retrieved February 7, 2009 from http://www.current.org/pbpb/nixon/nixon69.html  A fascinating account drawn from correspondence between the Nixon White House and public broadcasters in the early days of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Barnouw, E. (1966) A Tower in Babel. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Volume I – 1933. Oxford University Press.  An anecdote laden, lively chronicle of the early days of radio.

Barnouw, E. (1968) The Golden Web. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Volume II – 1933 to 1953. Oxford University Press.  The focus shifts to television.

Mitchell, J. (2005) Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio.  Praeger Westport Connecticut London 2005
Ostroff, D., Wright, J. (1998) Perspectives on Radio and Television. Telecommunications in the United States  Fourth Edition Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Mahwah, New Jersey London. p. 583, 584 retrieved electronically February 6, 2008 from http://books.google.com/books?id=6TB4bDZ7KxkC&pg=PA583&lpg=PA583&dq=history+of+non-commercial+radio&source=web&ots=n-sfxyg4nH&sig=9iAqFf_4Fb36HXh4YYAt07xB9J4&hl=en&ei=RSONScH_CpGUsAO6yPT-CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA584,M1

Winston, B. (1998) Media Technology and Society. A History: from the Telegraph to the Internet. Routledge