Blog Post #4: The Affect of Governmet Regulation of the Radio Industry

     When control of radio waves was returned to public power after the end of World War One, there was what can only be described as frequency chaos. There were too many stations attempting to transmit on limited frequencies. The government attempted to rectify this situation with the Radio Act of 1927.
     The Federal Radio Commission was created from the act. It became their job to bring order to the
airwaves. Standards were set for the burgeoning radio industry, and frequencies became organized, and programming was limited at certain times of day. These regulations did rectify the problem of interference, but it largely ignored the monopolies that had been bred from the loose regulations after the war and made it more difficult for smaller companies to find airtime.
      AT&T had quickly rose to domination of the radio since they were able to use their already established telephone lines to link several stations. The government made them choose between their monopolies, and they stayed with telephones, effectively passing the radio monopoly to RCA (which set up NBC). The only real challenge to NBC was CBS, and both conglomerates quickly had their own station and affiliated stations. The new federal regulations didn't account for this, but both companies allowed for the rapid rise and growth of the radio industry that was seen in the 1920s.


Here is a link to an interesting article detailing the history of AT&T and NBC in the early days of radio.