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UNITED STATES EARLY RADIO HISTORY
THOMAS H. WHITE | |
| s e c t i o n 19 |
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The introduction of vacuum-tube amplification for telephone lines allowed AT&T to experiment with sending speeches to distant audiences that listened over loudspeakers. The next step would be to use the lines to interconnect radio stations, and in December, 1921 a memo written by two AT&T engineers, J. F. Bratney and H. C. Lauderback, outlined the establishment of a national radio network, financially supported by advertising. General Electric, Westinghouse and RCA responded by forming their own radio network, however, unable to match AT&T's progress, in 1926 they bought out AT&T's network operations, which were reorganized to form the National Broadcasting Company. EXPERIMENTAL RETRANSMISSIONS Beginning in early 1919, General Electric began a series of radiotelephone tests using a high-power alternator-transmitter at NFF, the Navy station located at New Brunswick, New Jersey, communicating with a lower-powered vacuum-tube transmitter aboard the U.S.S. George Washington, which was sailing in the Atlantic ocean. An unusual feature of this testing was that, due to the reception configuration, signals received at NFF were automatically retransmitted by that station, thus, everything received from the George Washington was in turn widely heard via NFF's longwave signal. On July 4, 1919 an Independence Day entertainment program was broadcast from the George Washington, which was heard as far inland as North Dakota. Theodore Gaty, noting the remarkable range of this reception, contacted General Electric radio engineer Ernst Alexanderson, and Re Mr. Corum's Letter in January QST from the April, 1920 QST noted that what had been heard in North Dakota was in fact the NFF retransmission. The April, 1920 Electrical Experimenter reviewed an impromptu joint transmission that resulted in Music 400 Miles by Radio, as a concert broadcast from the government station in Chicago, Illinois was picked up and retransmitted by its counterpart in Detroit, Michigan. U.S. NAVY EXPERIMENTS More organized efforts followed, now using telephone lines to connect the radio stations. On Memorial Day (also known as Decoration Day), May 30, 1922, two ceremonies featuring speeches by President Warren G. Harding were broadcast by a pair of Navy stations--NOF in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C., and NAA in Arlington, Virginia, using lines provided by the local telephone company. The first event was the Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery, reported in the May 28, 1922 New York Times article Nation to Hear Harding, followed later that same day by the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, reviewed by The President Speaks to the Greatest Radio Audience in the World, from Popular Radio for August, 1922. The Navy hoped to continue the series with the dedication of the Francis Scott Key Memorial in Baltimore, Maryland, as noted by Entire City to Hear Address by Harding from the May 29, 1922 Baltimore Sun. There were even plans to add a third Navy station -- NSS in Annapolis, Maryland -- to the network. However, the Navy broadcast never took place, as an article about the President's Visit in the June 13 issue of the same newspaper stated that that "Much disappointment has been expressed at the unwillingness of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company to arrange for a direct wire from the fort to the radio stations at Anacostia, Arlington or Annapolis". (Interestingly, the telephone company was willing to provide a line from the dedication site to the Baltimore American broadcasting station, WEAR, in Baltimore). AT&T DEVELOPS ORGANIZED RADIO NETWORKING Large companies are often slow to innovate. A notable exception occurred when the research and experimentation by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company -- the largest company in the world -- on public address systems, long-distance telephone lines, and vacuum-tube radio transmitters led to the development of national radio networks. AT&T had closely monitored advances in radio telephony, including Reginald Fessenden's December 21, 1906 alternator-transmitter demonstration at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, although at the time it decided the technology was not yet ready for commercial development. In 1915, taking advantage of the recently developed vacuum-tube transmitters and receivers, AT&T conducted radiotelephony tests originating from the Navy's NAA in Arlington, Virginia. At the time of the 1915 Arlington tests, AT&T President Vail announced the company was planning to add radiotelephone links to the Bell telephone system, and AT&T continued to build experimental radio stations to test telephony ideas. In "Radio Telephony", appearing in the July, 1919 issue of Telephone Engineer, the authors, E. B. Craft and E. H. Colpitts, had noted that "the connection of a wire system to a radio system is no more complicated than connecting two wire lines", and in July, 1920, the first telephone line using a radio link in the U.S. was constructed, connecting Catalina Island, California with the mainland Meanwhile, AT&T was experimenting with wired long-distance transmissions, sent to public address systems over special telephone lines. In April, 1919, the company used its lines to bring Victory Liberty Loan drive speeches made in Washington to outdoor gatherings listening to loudspeakers in New York City. On November 11, 1921 this was expanded into a transcontinental hookup, as President Harding's Armistice Day speech at the Arlington Memorial at the National Cemetary in Arlington, Virginia was simultaneously heard, again over loudspeakers, by audiences in New York City's Madison Square Garden and San Francisco's Civic Auditorium --the story of "an epoch in communication", as "science, manifesting itself in the telephone art, has united the East and the West", was covered with great pride by Our Tribute in the December, 1921 issue of AT&T's Long Lines in-house publication. Beginning in 1920, AT&T and the local phone companies began to provide telephone lines to individual stations, allowing them to pick up local speeches and events for their broadcasts. Although the traditional approach to increasing radio coverage was to simply use more powerful transmitters, AT&T's work showed that it was possible to achieve the same objective using telephone wires to link less powerful radio stations together. This soon evolved into a plan developed by AT&T to link stations together across the nation. An October, 1921 memo from AT&T's Department of Development and Research reviewed the possibilities of "a network of wires extending to all the important centers of the country" to connect "loud speakers and radio stations". AT&T eventually dropped the idea of including public address systems, and settled on developing a radio-only national network. In mid-December, 1921, a few weeks after the Armistice Day hook-up, a memo prepared by J. F. Bratney and H. C. Lauderback, two Commercial Engineers in the AT&T's Department of Operation and Engineering, outlined the proposed network, consisting of stations located in 38 cities. Probably the most interesting feature was the casual assumption that the broadcasts would be supported by advertising, which would be a very controversial idea for another half-decade. AT&T's intention to set up nationwide radio broadcasting was formally announced on February 11, 1922, and publicized in articles such as National Radio Broadcast By Bell System, which appeared in the April, 1922 issue of Science & Invention. (Most early references to multi-station connections referred to the setup as a "chain" of stations, although the later development of more complicated interconnections led to the more modern term of "networks" of stations) AT&T initially expected that it and its subsidiaries would build, and own, most if not all of the stations in the proposed national network. The costs of constructing a high quality broadcast station were very high, and AT&T also felt it had, through patent rights, the exclusive right to sell advertising over the airwaves. But it was caught by surprise by the broadcast boom of 1922, when, ignoring the sober economics of what they were doing, hundreds of companies and individuals went ahead and built broadcast stations of their own. Also, AT&T's rights to a monopoly of radio advertising turned out to be both shakier and more controversial than it expected, so it relented, and began licencing other stations to carry on-air advertising. Ultimately AT&T would not need to build or own the stations in its network, just link up with stations that others had constructed. AT&T would actually build broadcasting stations in only two cities: New York City -- WBAY and WEAF (now WFAN) -- and Washington, D.C. -- WCAP, licenced to the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. In addition, AT&T allowed its Western Electric subsidiary to sell a limited number of its radio transmitters to other companies and organizations -- in the January, 1923 Radio Broadcast, the twenty-five Western Electric Broadcasting Stations in the U. S. were listed, many of which became among the best known stations in the country. Most of AT&T's network broadcasts originated from WEAF in New York City; thus the network was generally called the "WEAF Chain". However, company circuit charts marked the inter-city telephone links in red pencil, so the chain of stations was also known as "the red network". From 1922 until 1926 AT&T would be the most important company in the programming side of U.S. broadcasting. Following a shaky start, its advertising-supported radio network would set the standard for the entire industry. The earliest experimental network programs were one-time hookups using tempory lines. The telephone company saw the need for permanent links, and the first longterm connection had its origins in an unlikely source. Col. Edward H. R. Green was one of the weathiest individuals in the United States, and in 1922 he began establishing a radio laboratory on his Round Hill, Massachusetts estate, reviewed by World's Richest "Fan" Booms Radio by Jack Binns, in the March, 1923 Popular Science Monthly magazine. Green's efforts eventually included a broadcasting station, WMAF, using a Western Electric transmitter. In addition, as noted in A Broadcasting Station De Luxe by W. A. Kimball from January, 1924 Radio News magazine, in order to provide programming for his somewhat isolated location, beginning on July 1, 1923 he paid AT&T to establish the first permanent link between broadcasting stations, for simulcasting the program offerings of WEAF. By early 1926, the "WEAF Chain", had expanded to nineteen cities in the Northeast and Midwest, as it slowly spread from its base in New York City. CONSOLIDATION UNDER THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY While this developmental work was being conducted, the radio broadcasting boom of early 1920s occured. After AT&T began organizing its radio network, the three companies that comprised the "radio group" -- General Electric, Westinghouse, and their jointly-owned subsidiary, the Radio Corporation of America -- responded by creating their own, smaller, network, centered on WJZ (now WABC) in New York City. But, blocked by AT&T from using telephone lines to connect their stations, this other network had to find some other way to link up stations. Initially leased telegraph wires were used. However, the telegraph companies hadn't been in the habit of employing acoustics experts or installing lines with more fidelity than what was needed for basic telegraph service, so this often resulted in low fidelity broadcasts accompanied by loud hums. Also tried was connecting the stations using shortwave radio links, but this couldn't meet the reliability or sound quality requirements. Another idea that was investigated was increasing transmitter powers, to create a small number of "superpower" stations of up to 50,000 watts. But although higher power helped individual stations increase their regional coverage, it was unable to achieve the reliability and flexibility provided by local stations linked together by high-quality phone lines. At this point, the radio group got a break -- after four years of increasing success in the broadcasting arena, AT&T decided that it no longer wanted to run a radio network. In May, 1926, it transferred WEAF and the network operations into a wholly-owned subsidiary, the Broadcasting Company of America. Then came the bombshell announcement -- AT&T was selling WEAF and its network to the radio group companies for $1,000,000. (RCA's David Sarnoff was fond of saying "when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade". In this case, the strategy became "buy the other guy's lemonade stand".) At this point a new company was formed, the National Broadcasting Company, which took over the Broadcasting Company of America assets, and merged them with the radio group's fledgling network operations. AT&T's original WEAF Chain was renamed the NBC-Red network, with WEAF continuing as the flagship station, and the small network that the radio group had organized around WJZ became the NBC-Blue network. In September, 1926 NBC's formation was publicized in full-page ads Announcing the National Broadcasting Company, Inc. that appeared in numerous publications. The new network's debut broadcast followed on November 15, 1926. NBC's first president was Merlin H. Aylesworth, the energetic former director of the National Electric Light Association. Ben Gross, in his 1954 book I Looked and I Listened, included a biographical sketch of Aylesworth, noting that "If there is one man who may be said to have 'put over' broadcasting with both the public and the sponsors, it is this first president of NBC." In the October, 1929 Popular Science Monthly, Frank Parker Stockbridge interviewed Aylesworth about NBC's daily task of Feeding 13,000,000 Radio Sets, with Aylesworth noting that at this stage "The main purpose of broadcasting is not to make money. It is to give the public such increasingly better programs that people will continue to buy and use radio sets and tubes", reflecting the joint ownership of the network by General Electric, Westinghouse and the Radio Corporation of America, all of which sold radio equipment to the general public. |
| "By this time AT&T, RCA's former ally, had cut loose, and was operating a broadcast station of its own--WEAF. It was better on a technical end than we were. The late Raymond Guy sums it up in his reminiscences recorded many years later at Columbia University's Oral History Research Office: 'AT&T did things with a more thorough knowledge of what they were doing.... They just knew more about telephony than we did, as you might expect. They had the best telephone engineers in the world. The entire Bell Laboratories were at their disposal.' Aside from the normal pride which engineers take in their profession, this kept us on our toes; but the technical competition with the telephone company was an uphill fight, as Ray Guy implied, and I would be the last to deny. WEAF, cautiously at first, began to sell time and develop an income. When WJZ-WJY went on the air May 15, 1923, neither we nor WEAF were paying the artists. After a while, WEAF was in a position to do so, and we were not, until the National Broadcasting Company was organized and WJZ became the key station of the Blue Network, later taken over by the American Broadcasting Company".--Carl Dreher, Sarnoff: An American Success, 1977. |