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- History of Broadcasting: Radio, 1940-1945
- Isolationism
- Adolf Hitler Nazi Party comes to power in Germany, 1933
- Benito Mussolini marches into Ethiopia, 1935
- memories from World War I
- FDR Good Neighbor Policy towards Latin America, 1934
- Congress passed Neutrality Act, 1935
- American suspicion towards the Soviet Union and its alliances
- America First movement
- Escalation of Axis Powers
- Japan invaded China, 1937
- Germany invaded Austia and Czechoslovakia, 1938
- Kristallnacht, November 1938
- German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, 1939
- Germany invades Poland, 1939
- France and Great Britain declare war against Germany, September 3, 1939
- US Enters World War II
- isolationism persisted throughout 1940–1941
- Japan allies with Axis Powers
- Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941
- US declares war against Japan, Germany, and Italy
- Wartime Challenges
- recruitment drives and draft
- manufacturing switched to wartime production
- conservation and rationing of resources
- sale of war bonds to finance war
- women entered the workforce
- racial segregation persisted
- Japanese internment
- Radio and the War Mobilization Effort
- inspiring a nation to unify behind the war
- bringing new voices to the definition of national identity
- disseminating wartime messages and news to the American public
- reassuring and entertaining troops overseas
- spreading the values of American democracy over the world
- moved away from mass entertainment, consumerism, and distraction
- functioned more as a guardian of national and public interest
- Wartime Radio Programs
- Fireside Chats, but little else political programming
- addressed themes through “morale-building” programming
- radio features
- documentary
- dramatization
- common theme: ideal of e pluribus unum
- We Hold These Truths
- The occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, 1791
- Norman Corwin, writer and producer
- narrated by James Stewary
- broadcast on the “Combined American Radio Networks"
- funded by the Office of Facts of Figures
- listened to by about 60 million people
- The Radio Audience
- “who is the broadcast audience?”
- audience could complete and return “applause cards"
- advertisers demanded an independent audit of broadcast audience
- Association of National Advertisers
- Archibald Crossley
- Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting
- telephone recall method, 1930
- disadvantage: memory
- C.E. Hooper
- Hooperatings, 1932
- telephone coincidental method
- disadvantage: affluent telephone owners distorted survey sample
- Nielsen Company
- Audimeter, 1942
- automatically registered radio listening
- disadvantage: can’t determine specific demographics
- Communications Research
- Harold Laswell: radio as wartime propaganda
- Water Lippmann: democratic potential and danger of mass media
- Payne Fund: studies on movies and juvenile behavior
- Frankfurt School: mass culture
- can the public be trusted to make up its own mind?
- was radio simply too powerful and persuasive to remain a free medium?
- Government-Industry Cooperation
- government agencies produced entertainment and information with the theme of unification and mobilization
- Office of War Information
- did not take over press and radio networks
- distribution site for programming and information
- commercial media remained independent
- operated Domestic and Overseas Branches
- Armed Forces Radio Service, radio for American troops overseas
- Foreign Information Service, later the Voice of America
- War Advertising Council, advertisers pitched morale and wartime messages
- Radio Network News
- networks began to establish news bureaus across the nation and overseas
- news commentators were obliged to deliver commercials
- Murrow and Kaltenborn refused to deliver integrated advertising
- CBS announced that newscasters would function not as commentators, but as analysts with a less-personalized and neutral style
- Changes to Radio News during the War
- factual reports broadcast at their source
- voices of eyewitnesses and participants
- special news bulletins interrupted programming
- Murrow in London
- Edward R. Murrow
- “This is London”
- descriptive language, almost poetic
- resilience of Londoners during the war
- CBS reporters
- Edward R. Murrow
- Lowell Thomas
- Eric Sevareid
- William L. Shirer
- Chet Huntley
- Elmer David
- Charles Collingwood
- Howard K. Smith
- NBC reporters
- H.V. Kaltenborn
- George Hicks
- ABC reporters
- H.R. Baukage
- Martin Agronsky
- Raymond Gram Swing
- A New Network
- Report on Chain Broadcasting
- May 1941
- no license should be granted to a station owned by a company that owns two networks
- Edward Noble acquired NBC Blue for $8 million
- American Broadcasting Company, October 1943
- station WJZ became WABC
- Frequency Modulation Radio
- improved radio technology
- developed by Edwin Armstrong, 1930s
- spectrum battle
- advocates of static-free radio, led by Armstrong
- backers of television, led by Sarnoff
- FCC reassigned FM to 88–108 MHz, rendering early FM stations obsolete
- commercial FM would not emerge until the 1960s
- Television
- RCA and CBS developing television throughout the 1930s
- RCA baked a black-and-white standard on VHF band, interfering with early FM
- CBS advocated a color system on UHF band
- FCC sided with RCA, in 1945
- VHF band
- allocated only 13 channels for national television service
- television would provide a seamless transition from wartime manufacturing to consumerist production after the war
This outline is based on material from Michele Hilmes, Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States. 4th ed. Boston: Cengage, 2014.