The Backstory: Radio: A voice in the dark

Stop and think about the impact of radio on our world. For thousands of years, storytelling, music, news, and entertainment were all in person. Suddenly, this gadget arrives and opens up the world to us. What did we hear, and how did it change us?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, I want you to sit back, close your eyes
and just listen. Now, imagine it's a hundred years ago,
and what it must have felt like the very first
time you, your family, your neighbors heard a famous voice
or a stranger's voice coming out of a wooden box
in your home a radio. Telephones were still new, TV's

(00:21):
didn't exist. For music, you either went to a concert
or you had to make it yourself. Suddenly all of
that was at your fingertips. I'm Patty Steele. How that
whisper in the dark changed our world forever? That's next
on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Getting a

(00:43):
little personal here, But I've spent my entire adult life
on the radio. When I was a kid, I would
lie in the dark and I would listen to those voices,
and it somehow felt more intimate to me than TV
ever did. It was a voice right inside my ear,
a whispur in the dark, and I wanted to be
part of it. So how did this gadget this thing?

(01:09):
Those voices, the music suddenly right there inside your home
change our world forever? We don't really stop to think
about how the advent of radio changed the way we
got information, her music, were entertained, and most importantly, eased
our loneliness. Broadcast radio's arrival was a seismic shift in

(01:29):
the early twentieth century. Telephones, which were also pretty new
at that point, as well as shipped to shore wireless telegraph,
sparked its birth. In the beginning, it seemed like just
a fad for kind of early techies. By nineteen twenty three,
one percent of US households had a radio. By nineteen

(01:50):
forty seven, less than twenty five years later, eighty two
percent of us were radio listeners. Instead of leaving the
house for live sports, music, new comedies, and drama, he
would settle on the living room couch and flip on
the radio, pretty often housed in a big, ornate piece
of wooden furniture. Before the arrival of radio, the only

(02:12):
way to get news was the not very timely coverage
provided by newspapers or hanging out at the local tavern.
Imagine what it felt like, for the very first time
to hear live broadcasts from war zones, or from reporters
and witnesses who'd been on the scene of huge political, criminal,
and cultural events. Imagine hearing music symphonies big bands, singers

(02:37):
that most people had never had any access to, and
it was right there in your home or in your
neighbor's home, since not everybody could afford this gadget. We
heard the voices of politicians, movie stars, and inventors for
the very first time. In nineteen twenty nine, Thomas Edison

(02:59):
spoke to Coast on the radio during celebrations for the
fiftieth anniversary of the light bulb, just days before the
crash of the stock market and the start of the
Great Depression. Of course, that offered even more content than
you can ever imagine, as folks tried to get through
those days together. The voices of icons captured on the

(03:20):
radio included inventors Alexander Graham Bell and George Washington Carver,
presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, aviator Amelia Earhart. We heard King
Edward the Eighth abdicate the throne of England so he
could marry an American divorcee. We also heard the voices
of regular folks, including a number of Civil War veterans,

(03:40):
and in nineteen thirty three, Joseph Hazelton. You know who
he is, well back then he was in his eighties.
He spoke on the radio about watching the assassination of
President Lincoln back in eighteen sixty five. He was working
at the time as a twelve year old errand boy
at Ford's Theater, living in a world so innocent that

(04:02):
a broadcast like orson Wells War of the World in
nineteen thirty eight, which was just a fictional story of
aliens arriving on Earth to make war, could cause coast
to coast panic. And radio sold us stuff like never before.
When people we admired told us how much we needed
a certain kind of appliance or soap or coffee, we

(04:23):
really listened and we bought. By the nineteen forties and
the outbreak of World War II, everybody was connected to
what was going on through the magic of radio. We
heard President Franklin Roosevelt declare war on Japan, saying December seventh,
nineteen forty one, a date which will live in infamy.

(04:45):
Through breaking news reports, we followed the war like we'd
never been able to before. The President did regular broadcasts
which were called fireside chats to keep us informed and
give folks the feeling that we were all in this together.
And we got wrapped up in the titillating world of crime.
We became fascinated with the mafia, with reports from the

(05:07):
field on the gangster's exploits. We heard live broadcasts from
Hollywood and followed the personal lives of stars shared by
gossip reporters. In July of nineteen forty five, New York
City faced a big newspaper strike. Radio brought people the news,
and Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia took to the radio to read

(05:28):
the comics to kids and anybody else who wanted to listen. Hence,
speaking of entertainment, there were full blown theater type productions
of mysteries, comedies, game shows, and westerns. Music became more
accessible than ever before, especially for people who in the
past had almost no access to it. There was big

(05:48):
band music, symphonies, opera, and pop, and there were talk
shows where famous people were interviewed and radio stars spoke
about everything from gardening to child raising, relationship chips, to
the news. By the nineteen fifties, TV began to take
over so much of what radio had been about over
the past decades, and that's when radio saw its opportunity

(06:12):
to take a deep dive into the younger generation, playing
their music and talking about the things that mattered to them.
Radio made superstars of acts like Elvis Presley, The Beatles,
Rolling Stones, The Supremes, Jackson Five, Elton, John Madonna, The Eagles, Beyonce,
Taylor Swift. It keeps going hand onion too other genres
like alternative rock, R and B RAP. Today, everything, even

(06:36):
our favorite radio personalities, are available on a screen. But
for early and mid twentieth century folks, the picture was
just as vivid, maybe more so. Your imagination. What you
see when you close your eyes and just listen can
be way more thrilling than someone else's idea of what
you should see. Iconic CBS newsman Charles Osgood, who just

(07:00):
recently died, wrote about his love for radio, saying we
can whisper in the listener's ear and take them anywhere.
No television set that's made, no screen that you can find,
can compare with that of radio the theater of the mind.

(07:27):
If you have any ideas for stories you'd like me
to take a deeper dive into and share, you can
direct message me on Instagram at real Patty Steele or
on Facebook at Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories
a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,

(07:51):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Free to reach out to me with comments and even
story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on
Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the backstory
with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't know

(08:13):
you needed to know.