Radio: Riding The Wave

*RADIO SOUNDS ARE EVERYWHERE

*99 percent of America’s homes have radios.

*95 percent of America’s cars have radios, and radio reaches three out of five adults in their cars at least once each week.

*40 percent of Americans listen to the radio sometime between 6 a.m. and midnight.

*Weekly online radio listening is at an all-time high, nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population.

*TIME FRAME: 1899 - TODAY

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1887 - Physicist Heinrich Hertz began experimenting with radio waves, which became known as Hertzian waves—the first discovery that led eventually to the development of radio broadcasting.

Today - The radio industry is concentrated primarily into large groups of stations that use standardized formats, but satellite and Internet radio are splitting the audience into smaller digital pieces.

*BROADCASTING IS BORN

* Guglielmo Marconi - used the results of three discoveries by Morse, Bell and Hertz to expand his idea that messages should be able to travel across space without a wire. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden and Lee de Forest, advanced the Marconi discovery to create today’s radio.

* Lee de Forest - called himself the father of radio because in 1907 he perfected a glass bulb called the Audion that could detect radio waves. He began what he called “broadcasts” from New York and then from the Eiffel Tower.

* Reginald Aubrey Fessenden - began wireless experiments in the United States in 1900 when he set up his National Electric Signaling Company to attempt to send voices by radio waves. Fessenden’s 1906 experiment is considered the world’s first voice and music broadcast.

* David Sarnoff - 21-year-old wireless operator relayed news from Nantucket Island, in Massachusetts, that he had received a distress call from the Titanic on his Marconi wireless.

*FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

REGULATES THE AIRWAVES

*As amateurs competed with the military for the airwaves, Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912 to license people who wanted to broadcast or receive messages.

* The government sanctioned a private monopoly formed by General Electric, Westinghouse, AT&T, Western Electric Company and United Fruit Company. General Electric (GE) bought out American Marconi and its patents, and in 1919, these companies pooled the patents they controlled to form Radio Corporation of America (RCA)

The nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air in 1920. KDKA announcer Louis Kaufman stands with members of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team in 1925, the year the Pirates won the World Series.

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*RADIO AUDIENCE EXPANDS QUICKLY

* Blanket Licensing - In 1923, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sued several stations for payment. Eventually the stations agreed to pay royalties to ASCAP through a blanket licensing agreement, which meant the stations paid ASCAP a fee ($250 a year at first). In exchange, the stations could use all ASCAP licensed music on the air. Eventually another licensing organization, Broadcast Music, Inc., or BMI, also would collect broadcast royalties.

* Commercial Sponsorship - Once station owners agreed to pay for their programs, they had to figure out where they would get the money. Advertisers paid for programs through their advertising; the American public paid for the programs indirectly by supporting the advertisers who supported radio.

* Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927, which formed the Federal Radio Commission under the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce due to the shortage of air space.

*RADIO NETWORKS

EXPAND

David Sarnoff (left), who began his broadcast career as a wireless operator, eventually became president of RCA. William S. Paley (right), who launched CBS radio, often battled with Sarnoff. The continuing competition between Sarnoff and Paley shaped the early development of American radio and TV broadcasting.

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*RADIO AT WORK

*General Manager – runs the radio station.

*Program Manager – oversees what goes on the air, including the news programs, the station’s format and any on-air people.

*Account Executives – salespeople who sell the advertising for programs.

*Traffic Department – schedules the commercials, makes sure they run correctly and bills the clients.

*Production Department – helps with local programming, if there is any, and produces local commercials for the station.

*Engineering – keeps the station on the air.

*Administration – pays the bills, answers the phones and orders the paper clips.

*DIGITAL AUDIO DELIVERS

INTERNET AND SATELLITE

RADIO

*Narrowcasting – Segmenting the radio audience

*Digital Audio Broadcast – A new form of audio transmission that eliminates all static and makes more program choices possible.

*Satellite Radio – Radio transmission by satellite, with limited or no advertising, available by subscription.

*HD Radio – Hybrid digital technology that improves sound quality and makes it possible for radio stations to transmit real-time text messaging along with their programming.

In 2013, Apple launched iTunes Radio, a music service available on the Internet. A

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Television: Changing Channels

*TIME FRAME: 1884-TODAY

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1884 - In Germany, Paul Nipkow patents the Nipkow disk, which forms the basis for TV's development through the 1920s.

1907 - The word television first appears in the June 1907 issue of Scientific American.

Today - HD is the standard for broadcast TV. Television programming is delivered on more than 125 channels by over-the-air broadcast, cable, satellite and the Internet.

*VISUAL RADIO BECOMES TELEVISION*The word television first appeared in the June 1907 issue

of Scientific American.

*Before then, experiments in image transmission had been called “visual wireless,” “visual radio” and “electric vision.”

*The first major technological discovery to suggest that pictures also could travel was the Nipkow disk.

*On September 11, 1928, General Electric broadcast the first dramatic production, “The Queen’s Messenger”—the sound came over station WGY, in Schenectady, N.Y.

*NBC television’s commercial debut was at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City at the Hall of Television.

*NBC and CBS were the original TV networks.

*In 1943, ABC, the third major network, grew out of NBC’s old Blue network.

*TELEVISION OUTPACES RADIO

* In 1949, the year began with radio drawing 81 percent of all broadcast audiences.

*By the year’s end, television was grabbing 41 percent of the broadcast market.

*The two major corporate executives who developed television—Sarnoff and Paley—also held the country’s largest interest in radio.

*Sarnoff and Paley used their profits from radio to develop television, foreseeing that television eventually would expand their audience and their income.

*Broadcast news, pioneered by radio, adapted awkwardly at first to television.

*Television offered variety shows, situation comedies, drama, Westerns, detective stories, Hollywood movies, soap operas and quiz shows. The only type of show television offered that radio did not was the talk show. (However, radio eventually created call-in programs, radio’s version of the TV talk show.)

*TELEVISION AT WORK* Sales – department sell the

commercial slots for programs. Advertising is divided into national and local sales.

* Programming – department selects the shows that you will see and develops the station’s schedule.

* Production – department manages the programs the station creates in-house. This department also produces local commercials for the station.

* Engineering – department makes sure all the technical aspects of a broadcast operation are working: antennas, transmitters, camera sand any other broadcast equipment.

* Traffic – department integrates the advertising with the programming, making sure that all the ads that are sold are aired when they’re supposed to be.

* Promotion – department advertises the station—on the station itself, on billboards, on radio and in the local newspaper.

* Public Affairs – department helps organize public events, such as a fun run to raise money for the local hospital.

* Administration – handles the paperwork for the station—paychecks and expense accounts, for example.

* SIX DEVELOPMENTS THAT WILL AFFECT TELEVISION INDUSTRY OVER NEXT DECADE

1. Station ownership changes

2. Shrinking role of networks

3. Accuracy of ratings

4. Growth of cable and satellite delivery

5. Profitability of sports programming

6. Spanish-language TVMichigan college basketball players Tim Hardaway, Jr. (foreground), and Jon Horford, use iPads to watch a rerun of the 2013 NCAA playoff game in which he played the night before. Hardaway is an example of what the Nielsen Ratings Company calls the Zero TV audience. Currently about 5 percent of the U.S. population, these people have no need for a traditional TV and instead watch programming on computers, tablets and mobile phones.

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