A SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING

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By Olumide T. Agunbiade

INTRODUCTION
Radio and Television are the primary means by which information and entertainment are delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world. The term broadcasting refers to the airborne transmission of electromagnetic audio signals (radio) or audiovisual signals (television) that are readily accessible to a wide population via standard receivers(Berker & Robert 1992).

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Broadcasting is a crucial instrument of modern social and political organization. At its peak of influence in the mid-20th century, national leaders often used radio and television broadcasting to address entire countries. Because of its capacity to reach large numbers of people, broadcasting has been regulated since it was recognized as a significant means of communication.

Beginning in the early 1980s, new technologies–such as cable television and videocassette players–began eroding the dominance of broadcasting in mass communications, splitting its audiences into smaller, culturally distinct segments. Previously a synonym for radio and television, broadcasting has become one of several delivery systems that feed content to newer media.
The Emergence of Broadcast Communication
Throughout history, long-distance communication had depended entirely upon conventional means of transportation. A message could be moved aboard a ship, on horseback, by pigeon, or in the memory of a human courier, but in all cases it had to be conveyed as a mass through space like any other material commodity.

A.     Radio Broadcasting: The "Golden Age" of Radio

The story of radio begins in the development of an earlier medium, the Telegraph the first instantaneous system of information movement. Patented simultaneously in 1837 in the United States by inventorSamuel F.B. Morse  and in Great Britain by scientists Sir Charles Wheatstone  and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, the electromagnetic telegraph realized the age-old human desire for a means of communication free from the obstacles of long-distance transportation.
Early evidence of a systematic scheme for broadcasting to the general public can be found in a 1916 memorandum written by David Sandenoff an employee of Marconi's U.S. branch, American Marconi, which would eventually become the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
In an effort to boost radio sales in peacetime, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, established what many historians consider the first commercially owned radio station to offer a schedule of programming to the general public. Known by the call letters KDKA, it received its license from the Department of Commerce (which again held regulatory power following the end of the war) in October of 1920 and operated from the roof of a Westinghouse factory.
Other manufacturers soon followed Westinghouse's example. General Electric Company broadcast on station WGY, transmitting from its corporate headquarters in Schenectady, New York. The president of RCA,Owen D.Young, gave Sarnoff permission to develop company sales of radios for home entertainment.
Sarnoff soon opened stations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and in 1926 he began organizing theNational Broadcasting Company (NBC), an RCA subsidiary created for the purpose of broadcasting programs via a cross-country network of stations.
In  Nigeria  and in the many countries that followed its lead, broadcasting was developing in a different way. Radio owners paid yearly license fees, collected by the government, which were turned over directly to an independent state enterprise, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC, in turn, produced news and entertainment programming for its network of stations. The editorial and artistic integrity of the BBC was to be insured by its funding mechanism, which was designed to isolate it from immediate political pressures.
By 1954 almost 1100 radio stations were broadcasting to more than 30 million homes in the United States. The radio had emerged as a familiar household item, usually built into a substantial piece of wooden furniture placed in the family living room. It became the primary source for news and entertainment for much of the nation. Despite the Great Depression that affected the economy of the United States during the 1930s, American commercial radio broadcasting had grown to a $100 million industry by the middle of that decade (Berker & Robert 1992).

Radio broadcasting reached the height of its influence and prestige worldwide duringWorld War II (1939-1945), carrying war news directly from the battlefront into the homes of millions of listeners. American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt  had often used the radio to bypass the press and directly address the American people with his so-called fireside chats during the Great Depression, and he continued these throughout the war. The radio speeches of German leaderAdolf Hitler helped set the conditions for war and genocide in that country, and the radio appeal from Japanese emperorHirohito  to his nation for unconditional surrender helped end World War II following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
B. Television Broadcasting
Radio's success spurred technology companies to make huge investments in the research and development of a new form of broadcasting called television, or TV. Unlike radio, television broadcasting did not go through a period of experimentation by amateurs. It was obvious to commercial broadcasters that there were enormous profits to be made from such an invention, and the dominant companies in communications technology raced to perfect it.
The invention of television was a lengthy, collaborative process. An early milestone was the successful transmission of an image in 1884 by German inventor Paul Nipkow. His mechanical system, known as the rotating disk, was further developed by Scottish scientist John Logie Baird, who broadcast a televised image in 1926 to an audience at the Royal Academy of Science in London(Daramola, 2000).
By the mid-1950s, the three leading broadcasting companies (NBC, CBS, and ABC, which collectively became known as the Big Three), had successfully secured American network television as their exclusive domain. It was not until the mid-1980s that a fourth company,News Corporation, Ltd, owned by Australian-born executiveRupert Murdoch, broke their monopoly with the establishment of the Fox television network.

Broadcasting dramatically changed life in every country it was introduced. Radio brought news and information from around the world into homes. The experiences of professionally crafted drama and music, historically a privilege of the elite, became services expected by the general public.
Until the mid-1950s the relationship between local radio stations and their national networks was similar to the current situation of television stations. The advent of television, however, changed radio radically, forcing it from its primary position in mass communications to a secondary role. Today most radio stations originate almost all of their own entertainment programming, much of which is prerecorded music.
Most of today's television programming genres are derived from earlier media such as stage, cinema, and radio.Other television program types include talk shows, sports coverage, children's programming, game shows, and religious programs, all of which originated on radio. New program types are rarely introduced in broadcasting, since audience familiarity plays a key role in determining programming.
 The Regulation of Broadcasting
Broadcasting has been subject to regulation almost since its inception. Government involvement in the United States, as in most other countries, has always been at the national level, primarily because the broadcasting signal moves through the air without regard to political borders.
The 1996 Telecommunications Act cancelled limits on the number of AM, FM, and TV stations a single company or individual could own, with a few exceptions on radio station ownership. The Act introduced a requirement for television manufacturers to install in sets a computer chip, popularly known as the v-chip, to allow television owners to filter out violent programming. The Act also introduced a requirement for a ratings system, similar to that used in the motion-picture industry, to be developed by the FCC.
 With the exception of the v-chip requirement, regulation of broadcasting has lessened in the 1990s, reflecting its relative decline in importance as new, nonbroadcasting technologies, such as the internet  and cable television, reach ever-wider audiences in the United States.
 CONCLUSION
From the early 1920s through the early 1980s, broadcasting was the only effective means of delivering television and radio programming to the general public. Functions once exclusive to broadcasting are now shared in industrially advanced societies by two other means of mass communication: 1) closed-circuit delivery systems, such as commercial cable television, pay-per-view, and modem-accessible databases, which transmit sounds and images to paid subscribers rather than to the general public; and 2) self-programmable systems, such as the videocassette recorder (VCR), the video game, and the CD-ROM, which allow the user more control over content and scheduling. As of the mid-1990s, however, broadcasting remained the most important component of mass communications, even in countries where the newer systems are available and growing.
It is estimated that there are about 1.6 billion radios and 800 million television sets in use worldwide, with more than half concentrated in North America, the European Union countries, and Japan. In developing societies, such as China, India, Brazil, and Egypt, nearly all citizens own or have access to a radio; television, on the other hand, remains an exclusive privilege of a small but expanding class of people.
New broadcast delivery systems continue to be developed. One of them, Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), provides the viewer with a personal antenna capable of bypassing closed-circuit systems to capture satellite signals. However, most of the channels available from satellites require subscription fees and licenses, making DBS a form of narrowcasting (transmission to a specific group rather than to the general public).
Regardless of the meaning that broadcasting may aquire in the future, the years in which broadcasting dominated mass communications will be remembered as a period when vast national populations shared political and cultural events, such as the address of a leader, a singer's performance, a comedian's monologue, a tear-jerking drama, or a sports event. Although still possible, assembling so large an audience for any single event is becoming increasingly rare as the number of listening and viewing alternatives available to society continues to increase(David, 2000).
References
David, M. (2000),Bonfire of Humanities: Television, Subliteracy and Long-Term Memory Loss, London:New House Press.
 Daramola, I, (2000) Introduction To Mass Communication, Lagos: Rothan Press Ltd.
Berker, S.L & Roberts, C.L. (1992), Discovering Mass Communication, New York: Harper Collins Press.