COVID-19 has made my television a noisy, cranky companion. Even without a giant flat screen and limited cable channels, the screen still lives. I am a huge admirer of friends who do not own a TV. I confess that whether or not I even turn it on, I am not ready to part with it, but I like to imagine life before television.
The story of television, of course, starts with radio. Sales of advertising time on air was not widely practiced at radio stations. Some even objected to the commercialization of radio, among them Herbert Hoover, who said in 1924, “I believe the quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising.” There was opposition to the “invasion of people’s homes with commerce”on the grounds that it would lead to entertainment programs pitched to the mass audience, thereby limiting radio’s potential educational and social benefits. WHAT?
How to measure who is listening and to what? In 1930 the Association of National Advertisers, along with the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, devised a ratings system. Several thousand people were polled by telephone and asked to recall the programs they were listening to.
Used to seeing silent pictures, listeners learned how to create their own images from their imaginations for radio dramas created with sound. Certain performers specialized in reproducing baby cries, animal sounds, or blood-curdling screams. Props were often built by the sound-effects specialists themselves. Thunder was simulated by shaking a large sheet of metal; galloping horses were reenacted by pounding coconut half shells in a sandbox; and the crunch of footsteps in the snow was created with bags full of cornstarch. Specially designed boxes were created to reproduce the sounds of telephones and doors. Sound engineers kept a large supply of shoes and various floor surfaces on hand to reproduce the sounds of footsteps.
I find it encouraging that radio and phone podcasts are really getting noticed. The stories are unlimited and unlike cable news, there are no requirements for good hair.