As the 2018 federal budget takes shape, funding for public
broadcasting is one of many issues generating debate. In my last post, I
presented different perspectives on whether the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB) should continue to receive funding. In this post, let’s look
at the history of radio and television broadcasting to understand how and why
the federal government has gotten involved in these media.
The potential for broadcast media like radio and television
to educate and inform citizens was recognized quite quickly after their
invention. As soon as physics instructors heard about radio through scholarly
communication networks, they began using it to teach students about the
physical properties of waves, and many of the first licensed radio stations
belonged to universities. The public interest in radio was galvanized when KDKA
Pittsburgh, a commercial station, broadcast live results of the 1920 presidential
election. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt used his
“fireside chats” to reach a national radio audience and foster a sense of unity
and hope, while commercial networks expanded their broadcasts to encompass
news, entertainment and public interest broadcasting. Educational, religious,
cultural, agricultural, and labor interests also saw radio broadcasting as a
way to further their missions and clamored for more bandwidth (Gibson 1977).
The laboratory research required to develop television was
conducted by commercial broadcasters and the manufacturers of radio receivers,
rather than universities. Nevertheless, educational institutions were many of
the first to receive TV broadcast licenses, and commissions exploring the
future of television in the 1940s and 1950s regularly discussed its potential
for serving the public interest. Proposals for a national education television
network appeared as early as 1952, and education laws passed by the Johnson
administration in the 1960s laid down the legal justification for why
government support of educational broadcasting would serve the public interest.
This activity culminated in the 1967 report Public Television: A Program for Action
by the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. The commission argued
that commercial conglomerates were unable to meet the full needs of the
American people; what was needed was a decentralized network of noncommercial,
local stations creating content for their communities. Stations would receive
steady federal funding free of government interference, thanks to a chartered
agency that would disburse funds and support the broadcasters. It would be the
creation of “a new and fundamental institution in American culture,” public
television (Gibson 1977).
President Johnson asked Congress to take up this vision, and
after extensive hearings and debate in both houses, the result was the Public
Broadcasting Act of 1967. This law established the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB) as the corporate entity which would disburse funds and
manage relationships between local broadcasters. During the next two years, the
nation’s public broadcast system took shape as broadcasters, programming
organizations and donor foundations raised money, built partnerships and
decided who would do what. National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) were created to help develop programming and
coordinate decision making among stations (Gibson 1977). PBS programs debuted in 1969
to solid ratings, with 1.46 million households tuning in to the premiere of Sesame Street (Day 1995, 160).
Government involvement in the early development of broadcast
media served the purposes of regulating scarce bandwidth and encouraging
technical innovation. The first radio-related laws outfitted all US Navy ships
with transmitters for safety, and required broadcasters to register with the
Secretary of Commerce to avoid interfering with ship-to-shore channels. As the
AM radio bandwidth filled during the 1920s, broadcasters were supposed to share
stations by agreeing to transmit at different times of day and using limited
power, but initially no one had authority to enforce cooperation between
stations. When the Commerce Department tried to sue the Zenith Radio
Corporation for hijacking a Canadian channel to gain extra broadcast time, a
federal court dismissed the case. Beginning the very next day, stations
“engaged in an orgy of broadcasting with unlimited time, unlimited power,
unlimited channel shifts, and unlimited interference” (Gibson 1977, 7). Sales of radio receivers
plummeted and listeners demanded that Congress enact regulation, setting in
motion a chain of events that would lead to the creation of the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934. A remarkably similar situation occurred
after the FCC authorized VHF television broadcasting in the 1947, as new
television stations proliferated, causing widespread interference and
compelling the agency to regulate channel assignments more carefully (Gibson 1977, 70).
Like any technology, radio and television underwent long
periods of technical innovation to arrive at a point where they could reliably
sustain a mass audience. When the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi invented
radio in 1895, he could only transmit in code. University and World War I
military researchers added the ability to transmit voice and music using
amplitude modulation (AM), and it was voice transmission that transformed radio
from a scientific curiosity into a tool for civic engagement. The AM bandwidth
rapidly filled, and regulatory agencies struggled to balance the needs of
commercial and public broadcasters; however, FCC endorsement of frequency
modulation (FM) radio in 1940 opened a new spectrum for public broadcasters,
and they lobbied for stations to be set aside for educational purposes. In the 1950s and 1960s, the FCC was similarly
active in promoting the use of UHF television frequencies by mandating that
receivers be able to tune both types of channels and reserving bandwidth for
educational broadcasters (Gibson 1977).
Studying the history of radio and television shows us that
the federal government has played important roles in managing scarce resources
of bandwidth and funding, and encouraging technical innovation that enabled
these media to reach a broader audience and fulfill their potential. In the 1960s,
this led to the creation of public broadcasting as a new American institution. What
challenges has public television faced since then, and will the new budget
proposal bring an end to public broadcasting as we know it? We’ll turn to these
questions in the next post.
Sanjeet Mann
Arts & Systems Librarian, Armacost Library
Sanjeet Mann
Arts & Systems Librarian, Armacost Library
Sources
Day, James. The Vanishing Vision: The inside Story of
Public Television. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Gibson, George H. Public Broadcasting: The Role of the
Federal Government, 1912-76. New York: Praeger, 1977.
