You all know about advertising commercials on the radio. You have listened to them all of your life! When you get an emotionally connected ad in front of your audience, they will buy from you. Give us a call if you have any questions about advertising.
Check out the links to the right for info about current forms of radio advertising, how to make radio ads, a growing list of radio shows and an extensive list of all every radio station in America by states and cities.
For your enjoyment, here is an article about the history of radio.
Broadcast Radio – Heroes and History
Unfortunately, history sometimes forgets certain people whose ideas and inventions have been significant, even world-changing. For example, when you think of the light bulb, you immediately think of Thomas Edison, or maybe Nikola Tesla, but what about William Sawyer and Albon Man? They had U.S. patents for the incandescent lamp. Did Edison infringe on their patents? How about Joseph Swan? He had a patent for his incandescent lamp in England. If you dig into the history of lighting, you will find these people, but their names are overshadowed by Edison.
When it comes to the development of radio, several names have been forgotten. This is not an exhaustive list but some of the men who made contributions which were turning points:
Heinrich Hertz was a German physicist, the first to prove that you could transmit and receive electric waves wirelessly, that electricity can be transmitted in electromagnetic waves. He conducted experiments in sending and receiving these waves during the late 1880s. Although he thought his work had no practical use, today it is recognized as the fundamental building block of radio and every frequency measurement is named after him (the Hertz). Sadly, he died of blood poisoning at age 37.
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor who, in 1884, a year after coming to the United States, sold the patent rights for his system of alternating current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. Tesla established his own lab where he invented, among other things, the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio. He made the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis in 1893.
Ernst Alexanderson, a Swede, developed the first alternator to make transmission of speech (as opposed to the dots and dashes of telegraphs) possible. He held 344 patents and “virtually invented everything General Electric did in the field of AM, FM, and TV.” He invented the Alexanderson alternator, an early radio transmitter used between 1906 and the 1930s for longwave long distance.
Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian, developed a way to combine sound and radio carrier waves. His first effort to transmit this mixed signal failed. But in 1906, using Alexanderson’s Alternator, Fessenden made the first long range transmission of voice from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. On Christmas Eve of the same year, he broadcasted the first program of music and voice ever transmitted over long distances.
Edwin Armstrong was a WWI Army officer and a Columbia University engineering professor. He was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who developed FM (frequency modulation) radio and the superheterodyne receiver system. His inventions are considered by many to provide the foundation for cellular phones.
Guglielmo Marconi, famous Italian creator, spent most of his working life in England where he introduced many of the first uses of wireless telegraphy to European navies. He established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in 1897. His radio apparatus is widely considered to be the reason that over 700 people survived the Titanic disaster in 1912.
Lee DeForest, credited with being the “father of American radio,” was a direct competitor to Marconi at the turn of the century (1899), when he was the chief scientist at the U.S.’s first radio firm—American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph. Later, in 1912, Marconi took over the company’s assets after several financial scandals. DeForest invented the first practical electronic amplifier, the three-element “Audion” triode vacuum tube in 1906.
Frank Conrad had minimal formal education when he joined Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh in 1890 as a 16-year-old apprentice. It didn’t take long for him to rise to the position of assistant chief engineer by 1921. He had already established an amateur radio station in his home in Wilkinsburg in 1919, with the call letters “8XK,” broadcasting music and entertainment to local listeners. Westinghouse officials and Conrad quickly realized the commercial potential of radio. They applied for a license for station KDKA, which, on Nov. 2, 1920, launched commercial broadcasting by transmitting the results of the Warren Harding–James Cox presidential election. Conrad’s work at Westinghouse included shortwave radio experiments, work on radio transmitting equipment, and more. He held more than 200 patents for such inventions as electric clocks, automobile starting, lighting, and ignition devices, and the round watt-hour electric meter, which measures the consumption of electric energy and has become a common home installation.
Some important dates include 1910, when there was the first radio transmission from an airplane, 1912, when the Federal regulation of American airwaves began and amateurs had to be licensed and ships had to have a radio and trained operators. In 1917, all U.S. radio stations not needed by the government were closed as WWI began. In 1927, the Federal Radio Commission was established to bring order to chaotic airwaves.
Radio broadcasting quickly became a popular form of entertainment and information dissemination, with the first regularly scheduled radio program airing in the United States in 1920. By the mid-1920s, there were hundreds of radio stations across the country, broadcasting music, news, and other programming to a rapidly growing audience. Radio also had a profound impact on politics and society, providing a platform for political speeches and debates and allowing people to stay informed about current events even in remote or isolated areas.
The 1930s saw the emergence of commercial radio networks, which linked multiple radio stations together to broadcast programming to a wider audience. The most famous of these networks was the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which was established in 1926. Radio also became an important tool for advertisers, who used the medium to reach a large and captive audience.
With the advent of World War II, radio took on a new role as a means of communication and propaganda. Governments around the world used radio to reach large audiences and transmit information to troops, while broadcasters provided news and entertainment to soldiers and civilians alike. After the war, radio continued to be a major source of information and entertainment, but television began to emerge as a rival medium in the 1950s and 1960s.
Despite the growing popularity of television, radio continued to evolve and adapt, with the introduction of FM radio in the 1950s and the development of new formats and programming styles in the 1960s and 1970s. The development of new digital technologies in the late 20th century, such as satellite and Internet radio, further expanded the reach and impact of radio.
Today, radio is an integral part of our daily lives, with millions of people tuning in every day to listen to music, news, sports, and other programming. Radio has come a long way, and its impact on the world continues to be felt today. Despite the rise of new media and technology, radio remains a powerful and influential tool for communication, information dissemination, and entertainment.
They say the golden age of radio was in the ’30s and ’40s but there are millions upon millions more people listening to radio today than there were back then. Traditional broadcast reaches about one third of America each month and when you include digital radio, it’s two thirds of America listening each month!
If you are ready to get advertising information, call now!
