Before streaming services, cable TV, and YouTube, the only source of entertainment other than books that people had was the radio. The first broadcast aired in 1910, and since then, radio has been the reason behind some of the most popular songs today.
The Beginning
Inventor Lee deForest was the first to come up with the idea of suspending microphones in the air at the Metropolitan Opera House, thus giving tenor Enrico Caruso the chance to sing to hundreds of people all over New York City.
After this life-changing event, radio continued to grow and grow. Initially, however, people were skeptical of the radio and its electromagnetic waves. In fact, people believed these electromagnetic waves were responsible for droughts and even sick children. Eventually, people began to warm up to the radio.
The Rise of the Radio
One of the reasons why more and more people started buying radios was due to the fact that they would oftentimes broadcast important events. By 1924, there were 1400 radio stations. By the 1930s, over half of American homes had radios in them.
Things began to progress for the radio after cars in the 1940s began to come with their own radios. When the television came to be in the 1950s, people feared that radio would soon be extinct. This was not the case, however, all thanks to the help of publicly funded broadcasting that would eventually give birth to National Public Radio in 1969.
Radio Today
Over the next several decades, radio began to flourish and still does to this day but in a much different way. Commercial broadcasting also became increasingly popular as well as music broadcasting, which is still popular today. But thanks to the Internet, young people don’t listen to traditional radio but instead become their own “programmers.”
Interestingly enough, over 100 years after the first broadcast, the Metropolitan Opera continues to make its performances available to everyone on the Internet. Luckily, the radio transmission is much more clear these days.