Jazz Age Radio
Directions: Study the photograph and newspaper excerpts about the value of the radio. Then, listen to the short clip from a 1920s radio broadcast (transcript included). Answer the questions that follow.
Questions
Questions
- Listen to about the first 5 minutes of the radio program entitled "A Little Bit of Everything." What are your first impressions of radio in the 1920s? What are they trying to sell on the radio program? What do they mean by "a little bit of everything"?
- Look at the Radio Features. What kinds of programs are offered? To whom do you think they would appeal?
- What are the arguments made for or against the radio in the editorials.
- What is going on in the photographs of people listening to the radio?
- How can you connect radio to the technology of the 21st Century?
Harry Hansen
“Some Meditations on the Radio”
The Nation, March 25, 1925
Literary editor of the Chicago Daily News, Hansen wrote his piece soon after delivering his first radio broadcast.
...I had not, up to that time, thought of it [radio] as a sort of mental hypodermic [injection].I had, as a matter of fact, connected it principally with the national defense, and I remember that originally I had some vague notion about the service the radio would render in times of war, in the matter of expediting[sending]messages, detecting spies, etc. Of course I knew that it was a Tremendous Contribution—to what or to whom I was not exactly sure, but I had heard it styled so by ministers in the pulpit, and I was sure that in time it would be included in school histories under the chapter titled Benefits of Inventions and Discoveries, which explained how much the cotton gin, the locomotive, the telephone, and the motion picture had done for civilization.
By actual contact, however, both as a listener and as a broadcaster, I learned that the radio was associated with that other form of service which is a sort of national rallying cry in America, “Service,” with a capital S, that intangible something, which the merchant professes to confer upon you in addition to the goods for which you pay;.. .
...Its programs were free. You could tune in anywhere without even giving a tithe to the government. As one station sang nightly:
Just set your dial
And stay a while
With W-X-Y-Z.
There it is, up in the air, absolutely free, waiting for you to pull it down with the aid of electricity. Opera and symphonic music, jazz, twenty minutes of good reading, how to cook by Aunty Jane, tales for the kiddies and prayers set to music, even “Now I lay me down to sleep”; sermons and exhortations not to drink, gamble, and blaspheme, with music by the white-robed choir; advice on how to spread your income by investment brokers; advice on how to make your shoes last longer by shoe salesmen; talks by the mayor on civic duty, on “Your Boy” by the master of the Boy Scouts; on the right sort of boys by the head of the Y.M.C.A., and the right sort of girls by the head of the Y.W.C.A.; barn dances, recitals of music schools, whole acts of plays, speeches, speeches, speeches.
E.E. Free [science editor]
“Radio’s Real Uses”
The Forum, March 1926
Radio broadcasting is spectacular and amusing but virtually useless. It is difficult to make out a convincing case for the value of listening to the material now served out by the American broadcasters. Even if the quality of this material be improved, as it undoubtedly will be, one must still question whether the home amusement thus so easily provided will sufficiently raise the level of public culture to be worth what it costs in time and money and the diversion of human effort. It is quite possible to argue, indeed, that the very ease with which information or what-not reaches one by radio makes it just so much the less valuable. In educational matters, as in commerce, men usually value things by what they cost. Culture painlessly acquired is likely to be lost as painlessly—and as promptly.
Is the whole radio excitement to result, then, in nothing but a further debauching [morally corrupting] of the American mind in the direction of still lazier cravings for sensationalism? I believe not. There are at least two directions, quite different ones, in which radio has already proved its utility and its right to survive. One of these is its practical service as a means of communication. The other is its effect, continually growing more evident, in stimulating the revival of that exceedingly useful and desirable creature, the amateur scientist.