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The first wireless radio program aired in the United States in November 1920 by Westinghouse, broadcasting William Harding\u2019s victory in the presidential race to succeed Woodrow Wilson. When it first came into people\u2019s homes, it was considered a modern marvel. It connected the world through common experiences, beaming live events, entertainment, and breaking news. The wireless rocketed to popularity in the 1930s and became a fixture in 83 percent of American living rooms by the end of the decade. It was the Golden Age of radio, and the technology shaped everything from American culture and politics to family life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As radios became ubiquitous in the latter half of the 1930s, concerns about its societal impact spread. As noted in a 2010 article in Slate, \u201cThe wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936, the music magazine The Gramophone reported that children had \u2018developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker\u2019 and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After World War II ended, there emerged what scholar Vincent Pickard has termed \u201cthe revolt against radio.\u201d As he documents, while the radio market initially grew on a business model that provided free programs as a lure to sell radio receivers, by the 1940s, most American homes already had one or more radios inside them. The business model for radio programs evolved towards advertising, which in the eyes (or, more accurately, the ears) of some critics, led to soap operas and other programs that became increasingly meaningless and even vulgar. As Pickard observes, \u201cThis criticism took shape across grassroots social movements, commentary from varied newspapers and opinion journals, as well as hundreds of letters from average listeners to editors, broadcasters, and the FCC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Impatience reached a peak, leading the Federal Communications Commission in 1946 to publish its Blue Book, a report named after its blue cover that sought to make \u201cthe privilege of holding broadcast licenses contingent upon meeting substantive public interest requirements.\u201d Commercial broadcasters unleashed a political backlash against the report and defeated its proposals, but the episode nonetheless altered broadcasting history, causing the major radio networks to fund documentaries and improve their public interest programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some might look at the revolt against radio and find in this history reason to believe that a challenge to social media might similarly represent a passing political moment, unlikely to lead to lasting regulatory change. While there\u2019s never certainty when predicting the future, there\u2019s reason to believe that, to the contrary, the issues concerning social media will be more, rather than less, impactful. One reason is that current concerns such as nation-state disinformation and terrorist propaganda speak to more serious issues than the debate about banal programming in the 1940s. And a second reason is the global nature of current regulatory proposals. While the United States has traditionally been reluctant to regulate content, given the importance of the First Amendment to the Constitution, among other factors, other nations do not protect freedom of speech to the same degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n