[Marxism] Politics and the radio (from PEN-L)

[Louis Proyect]

> > At 1:49 PM -0700 8/22/04, Doyle Saylor wrote:
> >I think the underlying economic force is the old
> > radio model of one to many broadcasting, and the
>newer internet based technology.
> >
> > That's the model that Bertolt Brecht criticized for
> > not making the best use of radio's potential:
>
>The parallel that is being made here between radio and
>the internet really isn't accurate, given that there
>are technical limits to so-called "two-way" radio.
>Sasha Lilley
><<<<>>>>
>
>shameless self-promotion: below is slightly altered portion of piece that 
>will appear in december 2004 issue of journal _the historian_...   michael 
>hoover
>
>Few (if any) people likely associated radio and politics in the immediate 
>years following Italian Gugliemo Marconi's 1895 invention of the 
>"electronic voice box."
>
>Radio's appearance generally coincided with that of other new technologies 
>at the turn of the twentieth century * airplanes, automobiles, cinema, and 
>electricity, for example - offering people the adventure and excitement of 
>new experiences.
>
>Early radio was contested terrain.  Corporations wanted to use it for 
>commercial purposes; educators and intellectuals wanted to use it for 
>cultural and political objectives; and amateur "ham" operators wanted to 
>use it to communicate with one another.   While business concerns 
>eventually won out, various interests would use the medium to deliver 
>speeches, disseminate messages, hold debates, and offer question and 
>answer programs.
>
>According to Don Moore, politics was introduced into radio when Detroit's 
>Clark Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company was contracted by a 
>navigation company to send 1906 mid-term election returns to ships sailing 
>the Great Lakes.   A decade later, inventor Lee DeForest (whose "audion 
>tube" made for improved reception and provided a foundation for the 
>electronics industry) broadcast presidential election returns on 6 
>November 1916 to about 7000 fellow "hams" operating up to 200 miles from 
>his New York home in the Bronx.
>
>(Interestingly, DeForest foreshadowed the 1948 Chicago Tribune "Dewey 
>Wins" (over Truman) headline when he announced before midnight that 
>Republican Charles Evans Hughes had defeated Democrat Woodrow Wilson).
>
>Fueled by technological improvements in voice quality and transmission 
>dependability of the airwaves, radio became increasingly popular after 
>World War I.
>
>Fewer than one thousand listeners apparently heard Pittsburgh station KDKA 
>announce that Republican Warren G. Harding had defeated Democrat James M. 
>Cox for president in 1920.  The small audience for the broadcast 
>notwithstanding, listeners phoned in to express their support for more 
>election news and stations soon began offering candidates for local and 
>state offices the opportunity to speak "on the air."  Harding occasionally 
>addressed radio audiences during his time as president; Calvin Coolidge 
>continued to do so upon becoming the nation's chief executive following 
>Harding's unexpected death in 1923.
>
>Both the Republican and Democratic parties, no doubt motivated by the fact 
>that the percentage of US households owning radios had grown from a tiny 
>fraction to about 10%, broadcast their nominating conventions in 
>1924.   Republican Coolidge, whose voice expressed poise and exuded 
>confidence, employed the medium to his advantage, first at his party's 
>convention, and then during a largely radio-driven campaign that climaxed 
>with a coast-to-coast broadcast purportedly heard by the largest listening 
>audience in history to that time.  One might say that the victor won 
>voters' hearts and minds by capturing their ears.
>
>Coolidge's Republican "handlers" might well have taken their cue from 
>would-be Democratic candidate William McAdoo who, had he won his party's 
>nomination, intended to run for the nation's highest office via a radio 
>transmitter that he had installed in his home.  Actual Democratic 
>candidate John Davis (nominated after fifteen convention days and 103 
>ballots), who opened his bid for the presidency with a more conventional 
>(for its day) "whistle-stop" train tour, turned increasingly to radio 
>during the course of the campaign.
>
>Meanwhile, Robert LaFollette's Progressive Party campaign, strapped for 
>funds as "minor" candidates generally are, financed radio time by raising 
>more money during broadcasts than air-time cost.  LaFollette's dilemma 
>highlighted a crucial feature of radio; broadcasters had limited interest 
>in "public service" broadcasting.  Their principal concern was profit, 
>thus, those desiring to be "on the air" were going to have to pay to do so.
>
>Radio would become a market by 1930; there were more than six hundred 
>stations and about twelve million homes (approximately 40% of the total 
>number of American families) with receivers.
>
>In light of the growth such numbers indicated, the two major political 
>parties leveraged themselves in both the 1928 and 1932 presidential 
>elections, going into debt to pay for advertising time in each 
>instance.  On one hand, the existing political culture quickly integrated 
>radio into "existing patterns of behavior and power" as a system of "paid 
>speech" took hold during political campaigns.   On the other, the medium 
>altered the style of electioneering.
>
>Franklin Roosevelt, whose speaking voice was tailor-made for radio, built 
>upon its prior political use.  FDR had introduced himself to the general 
>public with several well-received speeches broadcast from the 1924 
>Democratic convention; his radio appearances during the 1932 presidential 
>campaigns conveyed character and sincerity. Subsequently, he relied upon 
>radio during his lengthy presidential tenure, the famous "fireside chats" 
>establishing a rapport between himself and the American people that helped 
>sell New Deal programs during the Great Depression and guide the nation 
>through World War Two.
>
>As novelist Saul Bellow writes,
>I can recall walking eastward on the Chicago Midway*drivers had pulled 
>over, parking bumper to bumper, and turned on their radios to hear 
>Roosevelt.  They had rolled down the windows and opened the car 
>doors.  Everywhere the same voice, its odd Eastern accent, which in anyone 
>else would have irritated Mid-westerners.  You could follow without 
>missing a single word as you strolled by.  You felt joined to these 
>unknown drivers, men and women*not so much considering the President's 
>words as affirming the rightness of his tone and taking assurance from it.
>
>(According to Robert Sherrill, before Roosevelt went on the air, a Navy 
>pharmacist's mate would "carefully clean out his sinuses to make his 
>lovely tenor voice resonant).
>
>Speaking from a small basement room (that had no fire place) in the White 
>House FDR maneuvered an end-run around the print media controlled by 
>Republican publishers while making listeners feel as though he had dropped 
>by their house for a chat.  Moreover, this consummate politician 
>apparently warmed to these shrewdly calculated "homey" and "down to earth" 
>appeals to "common people" as well. According to Secretary of Labor 
>Frances Perkins, "His face would smile and light up as though he were 
>actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor with them.  People 
>felt this, and it bound them to him with affection."
>
>In addition to candidate orations and politician speeches, radio lent 
>itself to debate as well as question-and-answer formats, more often in 
>terms of discussions about "issues of the day" rather than elections. 
>Audiences in the 1930s and 1940s, for example, could tune into "Town 
>Meeting of the Air" to listen to panelists discuss important 
>matters.  According to historian Michael Schudson, this National 
>Broadcasting Company (NBC) program encouraged informed citizen 
>participation in government.   Perhaps, although audience research 
>conducted at the time suggested that such fare had little impact on either 
>public opinion or voter turnout.
>
>(One might also question the framing of such programs.  For example, a 23 
>January 1939 "Town Meeting of the Air" broadcast (with a panel that 
>included Communist Party USA General Secretary Earl Browder) considered 
>the question, "Is America Menaced by Foreign Propaganda?")
>
>Still, Republican Thomas Dewey relied upon live radio Q&A broadcasts 
>during his 1946 campaign for New York governor and, two years later, some 
>80 million people are said to have tuned in to hear prospective 1948 
>Republican presidential nominees Dewey and Harold Stassen square off, sans 
>querying journalists, in a brief exchange allowing each man to make an 
>opening statement and issue a closing rebuttal.
>
>
>
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