7.4 Radio’s Impact on Culture
Learning Objectives
- Analyze radio as a form of mass media.
- Describe the effects of radio on the spread of different types of music.
- Analyze the effects of the Fairness Doctrine on political radio.
- Formulate opinions on controversial issues in radio.
Since its inception, radio has had an immense impact on American culture. Entire genres of music that audiences now take for granted, such as country and rock, owe their popularity and even existence to early radio programs that publicized new forms of artistic expression.
A New Kind of Mass Media
Mass media such as newspapers had thrived for years before the existence of radio. Audiences initially considered the radio a kind of disembodied newspaper. Although this idea gave early proponents a useful, familiar way to think about radio, it underestimated radio’s power as a medium. Newspapers had the potential to reach a wide audience, but radio had the potential to reach almost everyone at the same time. Neither illiteracy nor even a busy schedule impeded the radio’s success—one could now perform an activity and listen to the radio at the same time. This unprecedented reach made radio an instrument of social cohesion as it brought together members of different classes and backgrounds to experience the world as a nation.
Radio programs reflected this nationwide cultural aspect of radio. Vox Pop, a show originally based on person-in-the-street interviews, attempted to quantify the United States’ growing mass culture. Beginning in 1935, the program billed itself as an unrehearsed “cross-section of what the average person really knows” by asking random people an assortment of questions. Many modern television shows still employ this format not only for viewers’ amusement and information but also as an attempt to sum up national culture (Loviglio, 2002). Vox Pop functioned on a cultural level as an acknowledgment of radio’s entrance into people’s private lives to make them public (Loviglio, 2002).
Radio news offered more than just a quick way to find out about events; it provided a way for U.S. citizens to experience events with the same emotions. During the Ohio and Mississippi river floods of 1937, radio brought the voices of those who suffered as well as the voices of those who fought the rising tides. A West Virginia newspaper explained the strengths of radio in providing emotional voices during such crises: “Thanks to radio…the nation as a whole has had its nerves, its heart, its soul exposed to the needs of its unfortunates…We are a nation integrated and interdependent. We are ‘our brother’s keeper (Brown).’”
Radio’s presence in the home also heralded the evolution of consumer culture in the United States. In 1941, two-thirds of radio programs carried advertising. Radio allowed advertisers to sell products to a captive audience. This kind of mass marketing ushered in a new age of consumer culture (Cashman).
War of the Worlds and the Power of Radio
During the 1930s, the aftermath of Orson Welles’s notorious War of the Worlds broadcast demonstrated radio’s impact and powerful social influence. On Halloween night in 1938, radio producer Orson Welles told listeners of the Mercury Theatre on the Air that his players would treat them to an original adaptation of H. G. Wells’s classic science fiction novel of alien invasion War of the Worlds. The adaptation started like a normal music show, only to the band interrupted by a news flash reporting an alien invasion. Many listeners had tuned in late and did not hear the disclaimer, and the realism of the adaptation led them to believe aliens had actually invaded the country.
According to some, an estimated 6 million people listened to the show, with an incredible 1.7 million believing the account as truthful (Lubertozzi & Holmsten, 2005). Some listeners called loved ones to say goodbye or ran into the street armed with weapons to fight off the invading Martians of the radio play (Lubertozzi & Holmsten, 2005). In Grovers Mill, New Jersey—where the supposed invasion began—some listeners reported nonexistent fires and fired gunshots at a water tower confused for a Martian landing craft. One listener drove through his own garage door in a rush to escape the area. Two Princeton University professors spent the night searching for the meteorite that had supposedly preceded the invasion (Lubertozzi & Holmsten, 2005). As calls came to local police stations, officers explained that they felt equally concerned about the problem (Lubertozzi & Holmsten, 2005).
Although the story of the War of the Worlds broadcast may seem funny in retrospect, the event traumatized those who believed the story. The program fooled individuals from every education level and walk of life, despite the producers’ warnings before, during the intermission, and after the program (Lubertozzi & Holmsten, 2005). This event revealed the unquestioning faith that many Americans had in radio. This event demonstrated the power of radio’s intimate communication style during the 1930s and 1940s.
Radio and the Development of Popular Music
Radio’s impact on music remains one of its most enduring legacies. Before radio, most popular songs would spread through piano sheet music or word of mouth. This necessarily limited the types of music that could gain national prominence. Although recording technology had also emerged several decades before radio, music played live over the radio sounded better than it did on a record played at home. Live music performances thus became a staple of early radio. Many performance venues had their own radio transmitters to broadcast live shows—for example, Harlem’s Cotton Club broadcast performances that CBS picked up and broadcast nationwide.
Radio networks mainly played swing jazz, giving the bands and their leaders a widespread audience. Popular bandleaders including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey and their jazz bands became nationally famous through their radio performances, and a host of other jazz musicians flourished as radio made the genre nationally popular (Wald, 2009). National networks also played classical music. Often presented in an educational context, this programming had a different tenor than did dance-band programming. NBC promoted the genre through shows such as the Music Appreciation Hour, which sought to educate both young people and the general public on the nuances of classical music (Howe, 2003). It created the NBC Symphony Orchestra, a 92-piece band under the direction of famed conductor Arturo Toscanini. The orchestra delivered its first performance in 1937 and became so popular that Toscanini stayed on as conductor for 17 years (Horowitz, 2005). The Metropolitan Opera also enjoyed great popularity; its broadcasts in the early 1930s had an audience of 9 million listeners (Horowitz, 2005).
Regional Sounds Take Hold
The promotional power of radio also gave regional music an immense boost. Local stations often carried their own programs featuring the popular music of the area. Stations such as Nashville, Tennessee’s WSM played early country, blues, and folk artists. The history of this station illustrates the ways in which radio—and its wide range of broadcasting—created new perspectives on American culture. In 1927, WSM’s program Barn Dance, which featured early country music and blues, followed an hour-long program of classical music. George Hay, the host of Barn Dance, used the juxtaposition of classical and country genres to spontaneously rename the show: “For the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but from now on we will present ‘The Grand Ole Opry (Kyriakoudes).’” NBC picked up the program for national syndication in 1939. It still broadcasts today, making it is currently one of the longest-running radio programs of all time.
Shreveport, Louisiana’s KWKH aired an Opry-type show called Louisiana Hayride. This program propelled stars such as Hank Williams into the national spotlight. Country music, formerly a mix of folk, blues, and mountain music, became seen as a suitable genre for national audiences through his show. Without programs that featured these country and blues artists, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash would not have become national stars, and country music may not have risen to become a popular genre (DiMeo, 2010).
In the 1940s, other Southern stations also began playing rhythm and blues records recorded by Black artists. Artists such as Wynonie Harris, famous for his rendition of Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” received airtime when White disc jockeys tried to imitate the sound of Black Southern musicians (Laird, 2005). During the late 1940s, Black individuals owned and operated both Memphis, Tennessee’s WDIA and Atlanta, Georgia’s WERD. These disc jockeys often provided a measure of community leadership at a time when few Black individuals held powerful positions (Walker).
Radio’s Lasting Influences
Radio technology changed the way that musicians performed popular music. Because of the use of microphones, audiences could hear vocalists better over the band, allowing singers to use a greater vocal range and create more expressive styles, an innovation that led singers to become an important part of popular music’s image. The use of microphones similarly allowed individual musicians to perform solos or lead parts, less encouraged practices before radio. Radio’s exposure also led to more rapid turnover in popular music. Before radio, jazz bands played the same arrangement for several years without it getting old, but as radio broadcasts reached wide audiences, musicians had to produce new arrangements and songs at a more rapid pace to keep up with changing tastes (Wald).
The spotlight of radio allowed the personalities of artists to come to the forefront of popular music, giving them newfound notoriety. Phil Harris, the bandleader from the Jack Benny Show, became the star of his program. Other famous musicians used radio talent shows to gain fame. Popular programs such as Major Bowes and His Original Amateur Hour featured unknown entertainers trying to gain fame through exposure to the show’s large audience. Major Bowes used a gong to usher bad performers offstage, often contemptuously dismissing them, but not all the performers struck out; such successful singers as Frank Sinatra debuted on the program (Sterling & Kitross).
Television, much like modern popular music, owes a significant debt to the Golden Age of Radio. Major radio networks such as NBC, ABC, and CBS became—and remain—major forces in television, and their programming decisions for radio formed the basis for television. Actors, writers, and directors who worked in radio simply transferred their talents into the world of early television, using the successes of radio as their models.
Radio and Politics
Over the years, radio has had a considerable influence on the political landscape of the United States. In the past, government leaders relied on radio to convey messages to the public, such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” The government also used radio as a way to generate propaganda for World War II. The War Department established a Radio Division in its Bureau of Public Relations as early as 1941. Programs such as the Treasury Hour used radio drama to raise revenue through the sale of war bonds, but other government efforts took a decidedly political turn. The federal Office of Facts and Figures (OFF) funded Norman Corwin’s This Is War! to directly garner support for the war effort. It featured programs that prepared listeners to make personal sacrifices—including death—to win the war. The program also featured directly political content, declaring the New Deal as successful and bolstering Roosevelt’s image through comparisons with Lincoln (Horten).
FDR’s Fireside Chats
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era radio talks, or “fireside chats,” remain one of the most famous uses of radio in politics. While governor of New York, Roosevelt had used radio as a political tool, so he quickly adopted it to explain the unprecedented actions that his administration would take to deal with the economic fallout of the Great Depression. His first speech took place only one week after his inauguration. Roosevelt had closed all of the banks in the country for four days while the government dealt with a national banking crisis, and he used the radio to explain his actions directly to the American people (Grafton, 1999).
Roosevelt’s first radio address set a distinct tone as he employed informal speech in the hopes of inspiring confidence in the American people and of helping them stave off the kind of panic that could have destroyed the entire banking system. Roosevelt understood both the intimacy of radio and its powerful outreach (Grafton, 1999). He was thus able to balance a personal tone with a message intended for millions of people. This relaxed approach inspired a CBS executive to name the series the “fireside chats (Grafton, 1999).”
Roosevelt delivered a total of 27 of these 15- to 30-minute-long addresses to estimated audiences of 30 million to 40 million people, then a quarter of the U.S. population (Grafton, 1999). Roosevelt’s use of radio served as both a testament to his skills and savvy as a politician and the power and ubiquity of radio during this period. At the time, no other form of mass media could have had the same effect.
Certainly, the government has used radio for its purposes. Still, it has had an even greater impact on politics by serving “the ultimate arena for free speech (Davis & Owen, 1998).” Such infamous radio firebrands as Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest whose radio program opposed the New Deal, criticized Jews, and supported Nazi policies, aptly demonstrated this capability early in radio’s history (Sterling & Kitross). In recent decades, radio has supported political careers, including former U.S. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and presidential aspirant Fred Thompson. Talk show hosts have gained great political influence. Before he died in 2021, some viewed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as the de facto leader of the Republican Party (Halloran, 2009).
The Importance of Talk Radio
Modern talk radio programs demonstrate an important contemporary convergence of radio and politics. The genre that became popular in the 1980s features a host who takes callers and discusses an assortment of topics. Talk radio hosts gain and keep their listeners by sheer force of personality, and some say shocking or insulting things to get their message across. These hosts range from conservative radio hosts such as Sean Hannity to so-called shock jocks such as Howard Stern.
Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine
While talk radio first began during the 1920s, the emergence of the format as a contemporary cultural and political force occurred during the mid- to late-1980s following the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (Cruz, 2007). This doctrine, established in 1949, required any station broadcasting a political point of view over the air to allow equal time to all reasonable dissenting views. Despite its noble intentions of safeguarding public airwaves for diverse views, the doctrine had long attracted dissent. Opponents of the Fairness Doctrine claimed it had a chilling effect on political discourse as broadcasters, rather than risk government intervention, avoided programs some may find divisive or controversial (Cruz, 2007). In 1987, the FCC under the Reagan administration repealed the regulation, setting the stage for an AM talk radio boom; by 2004, the number of talk radio stations had increased by 17-fold (Anderson, 2005).
The end of the Fairness Doctrine allowed stations to broadcast programs without worrying about finding an opposing point of view to balance the stated opinions of its host. Radio hosts representing all points of the political spectrum could say anything that they wanted to—within FCC limits—without fear of rebuttal. Chapter 14 “Ethics of Mass Media” will explore the topics of media bias and its ramifications at greater length.
The Revitalization of AM
The migration of music stations to the FM spectrum during the 1960s and 1970s provided a great deal of space on the AM band for talk shows. With the Fairness Doctrine no longer a hindrance, these programs slowly gained notoriety during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1998, talk radio hosts railed against a proposed congressional pay increase, and their listeners became incensed; House Speaker Jim Wright received a deluge of faxes protesting it from irate talk radio listeners from stations all over the country (Douglas). Ultimately, Congress canceled the pay increase, and various print outlets acknowledged the influence of talk radio on the decision. Propelled by events such as these, talk radio stations rose from only 200 in the early 1980s to more than 850 in 1994 (Douglas).
Coast to Coast AM
Although political programs unquestionably rule AM talk radio, that dial also houses a kind of show that some radio listeners may have never experienced. Late at night on AM radio, a program airs during which listeners hear stories about ghosts, alien abductions, and fantastic creatures. It’s not a fictional drama program, however, but instead a call-in talk show called Coast to Coast AM. In 2006, this unlikely success ranked among the top 10 AM talk radio programs in the nation—a stunning feat considering its 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. time slot and bizarre format (Vigil, 2006).
Originally started by host Art Bell in the 1980s, Coast to Coast focuses on topics that mainstream media outlets rarely treat seriously. Regular guests include ghost investigators, psychics, Bigfoot biographers, alien abductees, and deniers of the moon landing. The guests take calls from listeners who ask questions or talk about their own paranormal experiences or theories.
Coast to Coast’s current host, George Noory, has continued the show’s format. In some areas, its ratings have even exceeded those of Rush Limbaugh’s (Vigil, 2006). For a late-night show, these kinds of high ratings do not happen often. The success of Coast to Coast serves as a continuing testament to the diversity and unexpected potential of radio (Vigil, 2006).
On-Air Political Influence
As talk radio’s popularity grew during the early 1990s, it quickly became an outlet for political ambitions. In 1992, nine talk show hosts ran for U.S. Congress. By the middle of the decade, it had become common for many former—or failed—politicians to attempt to use the format. Former California governor Jerry Brown and former New York mayor Ed Koch both started as politicians in the mid-1990s and went on to host AM talk shows (Annenberg Public Policy Center, 1996). Both conservatives and liberals widely agree that conservative hosts dominate AM talk radio. Many talk show hosts followed in the steps of Rush Limbaugh, who began his popular and profitable program one year after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and lasted until his passing.
During the 2000s, AM talk radio continued to build. Hosts such as Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly furthered the trend of popular conservative talk shows, but liberal hosts also became popular through the short-lived Air America network, which closed abruptly in 2010 amid financial concerns (Stelter, 2010). Although the network did not succeed, it provided a platform for such hosts as MSNBC TV news host Rachel Maddow and Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Other liberal hosts such as Bill Press and Ron Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan, have also found success in the AM political talk radio field (Stelter, 2010). Despite these successes, liberal talk radio often cannot sustain itself (Hallowell, 2010). To some, the failure of Air America confirms conservatives’ domination of AM radio. In response to the conservative dominance of talk radio, many prominent liberals, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have advocated reinstating the Fairness Doctrine and forcing stations to offer equal time to contrasting opinions (Stotts, 2008).
Freedom of Speech and Radio Controversies
While the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives radio personalities the freedom to say nearly anything they want on the air without fear of prosecution (except in cases of obscenity, slander, or incitement of violence, which Chapter 15 “Media and Government” will discuss in greater detail), it does not protect them from being fired from their jobs when their controversial comments create a public outrage. Many talk radio hosts, such as Howard Stern, push the boundaries of acceptable speech to engage listeners and boost ratings, but sometimes radio hosts push too far, unleashing a storm of controversy.
Making (and Unmaking) a Career out of Controversy
Talk radio host Howard Stern has managed to build his career on creating controversy—despite multiple fines for indecency issued by the FCC, Stern remains one of the highest-paid and most popular talk radio hosts in the United States. Stern’s radio broadcasts often feature scatological or sexual humor, creating an “anything goes” atmosphere. Because his on-air antics frequently generate controversy that can jeopardize advertising sponsorships and drive away offended listeners—in addition to risking fines from the FCC—Stern has a history of uneasy relationships with the radio stations that employ him. In an effort to free himself of conflicts with station owners and sponsors, in 2005 Stern signed a contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, a private company exempt from FCC regulation, so that he can continue to broadcast his show without fear of censorship.
Stern’s massive popularity gives him a lot of clout, which has allowed him to weather controversy and continue to have a successful career. Other radio hosts who have gotten themselves in trouble with poorly considered on-air comments have not shared his luck. In April 2007, Don Imus, host of the long-running Imus in the Morning, received a suspension for racist and sexist comments made about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team (MSNBC, 2007). Though he publicly apologized, the scandal continued to draw negative attention in the media, and CBS canceled his show to avoid further unfavorable publicity and the withdrawal of advertisers. Though he returned to the airwaves in December of that year with a different station, the experience resulted in a major setback for Imus’s career and his public image. Similarly, syndicated conservative talk show host Dr. Laura Schelssinger ended her radio show in 2010 due to pressure from radio stations and sponsors after her repeated use of a racial epithet on a broadcast incited a public backlash (MSNBC, 2007).
As the examples of these talk radio hosts demonstrate, the issue of freedom of speech on the airwaves often gets complicated by the need for radio stations to make a profit. Outspoken or shocking radio hosts can draw in many listeners, attracting advertisers to sponsor their shows and bringing in money for their radio stations. Although the hosts may offend some listeners and may stop them from tuning in, as long as the hosts continue to attract advertising dollars, their employers usually allow the hosts to speak freely on the air. However, if a host’s behavior ends up sparking a major controversy, causing advertisers to withdraw their sponsorship to avoid tarnishing their brands, the radio station will often fire the host and look to someone who can better sustain advertising partnerships. Radio hosts’ right to free speech does not compel their employer to give them the forum to exercise it. Popular hosts like Don Imus may find a home on the air again once the furor has died down, but radio hosts concerned about the stability of their careers should remember the practical limits on their freedom of speech.
