French monarchy
Thoughts & Commentary on Media History
By the 1920’s radios were beginning to be sold and people were buying them but they needed something to listen to. There was now a need to broadcast to these radios. KDKA was the first radio station and it was located in
In the piece "Do They Earn Their Pay" By Robert Eichberg the female radio broadcaster Ida Baily Allen and her advertising schemes over the air in 1934 is discussed. The article begins by discussing how the wages for a radio broadcaster were low. So in order for them to get money they had to seek other alternatives to make money. one alternative was advertising. During her time as a radio broadcaster Ida Baily Allen used a product for 15 cents and used it to her own benefit by telling listeners to send proof of purchases to attain that certain product from the radio station. this tactic was very successful that the cash return for these proof of purchases was 304,500 dollars. soon after Ida Baily Allen used this the station made sales on various products. this is my opinion is the first move in advertising products over the radio.
In the Creation of the Media, Starr speaks on Pornography filtering the society. This passage spoke on the issue and how it is a disgrace. "Studies of state intervention in the nineteenth century usually emphasize such measures as factory legislation, public health, and social insurance, but there was also increase in moral regulation, particularly relating to sex, popular culture, and the protection of children. IN the United States, these concerns intersected after the Civil War in growing public preoccupation with obscenity- or as we call it, "pornograpy ," a term that had not yet acquired its modern meaning. Like other movements of moral reform, the campaign had a coercive side, aimed at suppressing vice, and a moralist didactic side, aimed at propagating alternatives thought to more wholesome, pure, uplifting" (Starr, 236).
Paul, Starr. A Creation of the Media
"As dynamic this folded, prices for the telephone service fell sharply.
Independent phone companies generally offered lower rates than Bell, and though
Bell cut its rates every where, they were lower where it faced rival. Overall,
from 1895, to 1909, the revenue that Bell received per phone dropped by 55
percent, Bell claimed that the cause of lower rates was primarily improved
efficiency, not competition. Competition created pressure on Bell, however, not
only to become more efficient, but also to adapt equipment, services, and rate
plans to meet demands for low-cost-service. Bell intorduce a less expensive
phone set for rural use, and it expaneded party lines in order to make service
available on cheaper basis"(Starr, 202).
Jackson talks about how listening to the radio, like enjoying the sound of soft music is soothing until a whinning voice goes over the music saying, "Good Morning! Have you used Hare's Soap?" in somewhat creates a small problem for people who do like interuptions while listening to the radio.
The moral of Katherine M. Mead's tale on "Henny Jenny" in 1901 was to pin point corruption occurring in the city and the extent reformers used to fight against it. In the tale Jenny, who is a reformer, is on her way to to inform or to help the masses (workers, elites, politicians) to get out of corruption but stumbles upon other important people along the way. The gang includes a doctor, a political candidate, a city developer, a chronic kicker and Jenny herself who all agreed to take part in rousing the masses. However, the last person that they came upon was a boss. The boss in this case and to my insight is symbolic to an oppressor who refuses to let these reformers to go to the masses and tell them about the city's corruption. He may also be symbolic to Capitalism which in the early 1900's took control of the government and the economy. The reformers who may be workers, or just people who are challenging this economic system, and/or helping other workers to rise against the corruption of the system is being led by the boss who ultimately forces them to work on a machine or possibly did something worse. This is explicit at the end of the tale where the boss shows them to a machine instead of showing them the way to the masses to inform people about corruption and "threw them down". This document showed that in some ways, ideally or non-ideally muckracking by reformers helped people to fight against corruption during the industrial period.
This article "Minute Men of the Air" by William S. Dutton, it describes to us the invention of Mr. Maxim which is the silencer and how it took place in the field of ordinance and electricity and that the public knows of this invention. This article states that Mr. Maxim is one of the world's famous radio amateur.
“The Future of Radio Advertising in the
The invention of the radio was a massive innovation that should still be astounding people threw the world but does not according to Durstine. “Yet so swiftly do people condition themselves to the miraculous, once it is absorbed into their lives, that tendency is to toss off appraisals of radio with about as much thought as is used in flipping a cigarette end into a fireplace.” Durstine is here describing the common American, who does not appreciate what they have but take it for granted once something new comes along the appreciation of an innovation is treated as if been there and done that phase. The typical radio audience is “a tired, bored middle-aged man or women whose lives are empty and who have exhausted their sources of outside amusement when they have taken a quick look at their evening paper.” The typical radio audience enjoys and appreciates the comfort of radio listening but because of there own stereo type they are not usually the typical public speaker who denounces radio.
“The Impending Radio War”- By: James Rorty
“At the bottom the issue is part of the larger conflict between exploitation for private profit and the increasingly articulate movement for public ownership and operation of essential public services… In this conflict the citadel of radio is the key position, because the control of the radio means increasingly the control of public opinion.”
The on going “Radio War” Rorty is speaking of is the control that private and public business elite have over the information and words being said on the radio. Today’s radio airwaves are protected by SAR which are associates who distinguish what can and cannot be said on the radio; therefore making its listeners only know what they want to know. If you are a radio listener your opinion is being formed for you; the opinions said on the radio are not those of its viewers or even its disc jockeys but the radio “Big Business Elite”. The business elite as well as educators know this and use it to there advantage to promote there ideas and sales in there opinion according to Rorty.
Chapter Nine-
“Whereas newspapers and magazines had begun among the elite and evolved in a more popular direction, movies acquired a lowbrow image at an early point in their history and faced a challenge in achieving respectability.” [Page 296, Paragraph 2, Line 2]
Chapter Eight-
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic…The question in every case is whether the words used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.” [Page 282, Paragraph 1, Line 12]
The First Amendment was taking a beating; moral behavior and free speech was being addressed in courts. The com stock law treated discussion about sex, birth control as an obscenity and not apart of freedom of speech. The Espionage Act was used to stop people from talking about the government and its policies. This censorship was put into place by the government to suppress speech of its citizens that in fact undermined the amendment of freedom of speech. The right of freedom of speech was interpreted by the courts and not based on the constitution itself; leaving its people without its rights to speak freely.
Chapter Seven-
“Deep changes in society are often as important for the reactions they provoke as for the direct effect they produce.”[Page, 233, Paragraph 1, Line 1]
During the 1900s the population was increasing, many immigrants from southern and eastern
Chapter Six-
“Since organizations with a large stake in an existing technology are likely to try to preserve their investment- in today’s idiom, they are reluctant to “cannibalize” their current business-any policies or legal decisions that give them influence over the new medium may retard its introduction.” [Page 193, Paragraph 1, Line 2]
Because most of the large businesses invested in the telegraph system for communication purposes it became important for the business to preserve the system. These same businesses had no investment in the telephone company so they were not willing to bring in the new technology to replace what they already owned. They were the first ones to try to stop progress; corporate heads did not want to spend money on innovations in the communication sector of there business because all the money invested on the previous innovation in communication would go to waste.