Live From Newark, It’s the Columbia Broadcasting System

A 1930s matchbook cover extols the conductor of CBS’s first network radio broadcast.

(www.barlowgenealogy.com)

Eighty years ago today, on Sunday, September 18, 1927, at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the Columbia Broadcasting System, later known as CBS, made its first network radio broadcast. A 22-piece orchestra led by Howard Barlow performed a wide-ranging assortment of music, capped by a now-forgotten opera called The King’s Henchman. The network consisted of 16 stations, ranging as far west as Council Bluffs, Iowa, and as far south as St. Louis. Unfortunately, most listeners outside the Northeast heard only static due to a massive thunderstorm.

The broadcast originated at WOR, in Newark, New Jersey, whose men’s room had been pressed into service as a network control center. Serving as master of ceremonies was J. Andrew White, who had been involved in radio since 1921 and had made the first live broadcasts of a prizefight and a political convention. He was joined by a fellow announcer whom Radio Digest described as follows: “A new personality will make its debut before the millions of Radio’s audience with the opening program in the person of a man whose identity will be concealed behind a black mask and who will be known only as The Voice of Columbia.” Since this was radio, the mask was probably unnecessary. The Voice of Columbia was soon identified as Frank Knight, who can be heard today on just about every collection of old radio programs.

The theory of electromagnetic waves, which forms the foundation of radio, had been developed in the 1880s and 1890s. The technology was first demonstrated around the turn of the century, with the exact date of the earliest transmission depending on how you define radio. The invention of the triode vacuum tube in 1906 gave the technology a great boost, as did the development soon afterwards of ways to transmit radio signals over telephone wires. World War I hastened radio’s development and spread knowledge of its workings (J. Andrew White had been a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps).

The 1920s saw more technological improvements, including better tubes and antennas and sets that ran on household current instead of batteries. As the number of listeners grew, prices for equipment dropped, which further increased the audience. Finally, Congress brought order to the chaotic broadcasting scene with the Radio Act of 1927. At this point, the industry was set to make the leap from a collection of small-time local broadcasters to a big business. The only thing missing was a way to make money from it.

Radio was the first major communication medium in which the user could not be charged by the provider. One obvious solution (though disparaged by many industry figures) was for a broadcaster to sell advertising, but this was far from lucrative at first. Nobody had much data about who listened to what, and in an age of text-heavy print ads, advertisers were unsure of how to get their messages across via the airwaves. Moreover, the amount of advertising that could be put into a program was quite limited--two minutes per hour was a common figure--and the broadcast day could not be expanded at will, like a newspaper or magazine.

Most early radio stations operated on a shoestring, which meant they would put just about anything on the air: lectures on obscure topics, indifferently talented musicians, meetings of civic organizations, whatever filled the time. And the industry’s business models were just as improvised as its programming. Department stores often became broadcasters, hoping to promote their wares and capitalize on the goodwill that would go along with operating a popular station (WOR was run by Bamberger’s). Other station operators included hobbyists, churches, and a wide variety of cranks and hucksters. A Kansas station was owned by a doctor who used it to promote his business of implanting goat glands in men to restore sexual vitality.

In the early days, nobody was quite sure what a network was for either. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the first major radio network, had begun in November 1926 as a joint venture between the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and its associates General Electric and Westinghouse, all of whom wanted to promote the sale of radio equipment. NBC acted as a content provider, charging affiliates for the right to use its programming. But since NBC’s backers had no monopoly on either hardware or content (though they did own some lucrative patents), it was far from clear that this business model would pay. RCA’s announcement of NBC’s formation called it an “experiment.”

CBS had begun early in 1927 as a paper network called United Independent Broadcasters. As soon as it got some money, UIB planned to do the opposite of NBC: It would pay affiliates to broadcast its material, making a profit by selling advertising and sponsorships. UIB had been organized by a talent agent named Arthur Judson, who also hoped it would provide exposure for the artists he represented. The network started calling itself the Columbia Broadcasting System after the Columbia Phonograph Corporation put up $163,000 for a huge load of programming hours, planning to sell phonographs to listeners and broadcast time to advertisers.

Once CBS got past its flashy opening, things went downhill fast. No more sponsors could be found, and after losing an additional $100,000 in the first month, Columbia Phonograph pulled out, though its name remains on the company to this day. Judson and his associates sold the network to a group of Philadelphia investors, who lost more money before reselling it in September 1928 to a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate, William S. Paley.

Paley, a wealthy cigar heir, pumped cash into CBS and started running it like a business. He lost money the first year, but less than the previous owners had, and the next year he actually made a profit, despite the stock-market crash. The ensuing depression may even have benefited the industry, since radio turned out to be the perfect medium for hard times. The feature that had originally made it unprofitable was now a virtue: Anyone with a set, or who knew someone with a set, could listen for free.

And what did they listen to? Top-notch musical acts, from classical to jazz; on-the-scene news broadcasts (which came into being after newspapers refused to share their wire-service reports with the upstart medium); dramas ranging from Shakespeare to soap operas; the country’s best comedians; sports, cooking, society gossip, fireside chats from the President, you name it. Sales of radios took off, and advertisers flocked to buy time.

Networks were the key to all this. Even in the flush 1920s, few individual stations could afford to produce high-quality programming on their own, and during the Depression it was virtually impossible. But with network radio, Americans could stay home and listen for free to a cornucopia of entertainment that would have defied imagination in the Roaring Twenties. Some independent stations managed to stay in business, of course, and they still do; but the medium would never have become nearly as popular without the lure of network programming.

Meanwhile, in early 1928, not long after CBS’s inaugural broadcast, the newly established Federal Radio Commission granted its first license for an even newer medium: television. This, too, would need two decades of technological advances to make it a mass phenomenon. But when the equipment became cheap and reliable enough, it took off immediately, because the broadcast business was well understood and the networks were already in place. More recently, a radio-like progression occurred with the Internet. After becoming simple enough for the general public to use, it went through a period of free-form experimentation led by enthusiasts of various sorts. It achieved widespread popularity, however, only when entrepreneurs figured out how to apply the economies of scale to make a profit from it.

—Frederic D. Schwarz is a senior editor at American Heritage.