T207 1st Edition Lecture 4 Outline of Last Lecture I The Telephone Outline of Current Lecture II The Radio Basics III The Radio in the Beginning Current Lecture The Radio Basics o Guerilla radio stations that operate without a license Can pretty much play and do whatever they want Radio licenses are given out by the FCC Public interest is thought of when you get radio licenses Prohibits certain things since anyone can listen to the stations regardless of age o Excludability problem no control over who listens to it or interferes with it o Radio is always limited by range o Radio is not an expensive technology Amateurs were able to create radios out of miscellaneous things around their house Things that were making the technology better or worse Transmission distance wattage Clarity frequency spillover More uses makes it more valuable There are economies of scale limitations o 1912 is the first time you see licensing of an abstract thing such as the wireless o How do you create a business model from the wireless There are political consequences and the excludability problem Through the use of advertising eventually Before this they tried to profit off of the sales of the radio o Wasn t very sustainable First ads weren t really ads but were still ads at the same time o BBC was funded by taxes o US radio has to get funding from ads 1920 1922 was when radio really became broadcast radio In 1923 there were over 500 broadcast stations o Cost for the radio device went up o 1924 over 2 million stations More interference Government would have to step in to regulate This is an example of tragedy of the commons The Radio in the Beginning o Guiermo Marconi was considered the father of radio There were other inventors that helped make radio what it is today Lee de Forest discovered things that were already discovered Edward Howard Armstrong wanted to enlighten people David Sarnoff created a powerful communications company o Lee de Forest Probably the man most responsible for bringing broadcast radio to the American public Marconi company had made it to America by 1899 Transmitted first dot and dash message in 1896 Marconi seemed to always be ahead of de Forest de Forest became president of the de Forest wireless telegraph company Spade detector Sent 572 words to England from Coney Island wireless station Technically stole this idea from someone else Audion tube was something his ex business partner thought was worthless First radio tube de Forest didn t quite understand how it worked October 1907 Ferrar was the first singer to be heard on the radio o de Forest could technically be seen as the first broadcaster and DJ eventually would start a fourth radio company and would broadcast from a real radio station o in 1915 de Forest and Marconi begin to get in patent fights divided up the market both were using each other s patents illegally o military blocked patent disputes during WWI 400 radio operators trained a month during this Golden age of radio invention All inventors pooled their patents o RCA was created in the 1920s Pooled 1200 to 2000 patents to take down British Marconi and American Marconi AT T was part of this and did a lot of research and development Partial minority stakeholder in RCA o Essentially competing against itself 1926 AT T liquidated RCA assets back to RCA o Promised to stay out of radio as long as RCA stayed out of the telephone industry o 1922 2 out of 1000 households had a radio o 1925 10 out of 100 households had a radio o 1909 Public Performer Right Broadcasting songs over the radio was covered by copyrights Just the same as if a performer performed a song of someone else s to a large audience o 1920 to 1927 was a big time for radio There was enough interference for regulation More people owned radios More stations were broadcasting