The History of Radio

When people tuned in to their sets for sports, weather, news, and entertainment during the first half of the 20th century, they heard what they looking for, but, ironically, did very little "looking." This was radio-a stepping stone to what would eventually become television-and it had a history of its own.

Those who had a hand in its foundation, however, did not know at the time what they were inventing. James Maxwell, for example, was one the first to investigate electromagnetic fields and in 1888 Heinrich Hertz succeeded in sending electromagnetic signals through space.

Perhaps the most significant early milestone was achieved by Guglielmo Marconi, who conducted several important tests with radio equipment in 1901 and then managed to send a wireless signal across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. Radio, in essence, was born that day.

Hardly an exact science, it took more structured form five years later when Lee De Forest organized electronic signals in a vacuum tube, facilitating voice transmissions, and interest in both the device and its potential steadily increased.

Equipped with little more than a crude set located in his garage, for instance, Doc Herald began broadcasts three years later and helped others build crystal sets with the knowledge he had so far amassed. Numerous amateurs quickly followed suit.

The first organization to exploit this innovation was the American Marconi Company. Headed by David Sarnoff, who first served as its messenger and ultimately worked his way up to its executive, it was able to broadcast within a 50-mile radius, thus bringing entertainment into the homes within this area by 1916 and replacing what had previously been little more than amateur-run "talks" given by "tinkerers" with crude sets.

The ability to reach so many with a single device, however, soon signaled potential for radio equipment manufacturers, such as Westinghouse, General Electric, and AT&T. Pooling their patents, they purchased the American Marconi Company and formed the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA.

The first division within it occurred when Westinghouse and General Electric employed their patents to manufacture broadcasting and receiving equipment, while AT&T concentrated on telephone communications. Nevertheless the most successful of the original three, the latter demonstrated the impact communication could have when it was offered $100, then a considerable sum, by a Long Island real estate firm to disseminate information about the homes they had available for sale during ten minutes of air time, and listener response proved overwhelming. Radio advertising was born.

Placing it on the path to unprecedented growth, AT&T itself became independent and formed its own station, WEAF, connecting it with Boston radio station WNAC in 1923. It was only the beginning of its network of affiliations and reach.

Still comprising the other half of RCA, Westinghouse and General Electric, aware of its partner's growth, followed suit, forming their own station, WJZ. Since they did not receive advertising support for the venture, however, it barely limped along for two years until AT&T sold them its own WEAF station in 1926, enabling the combined Westinghouse and General Electric concern to develop into the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC, which owned half the stock, while the original RCA held the other half.

Reflecting their US broadcast areas, a chart with either red or blue lines indicated the cities to which, respectively, WEAF and WJZ transmitted.

With success came monopoly-and federal government intervention. Deeming the arrangement anti-competitive, the government itself forced NBC to sell its blue transmission network, shedding itself of its WJZ station, which subsequently became the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC.

A third, independent network, soon controlled by William S. Paley, was formed the following year, CBS.

What began as a hobby for amateurs had evolved into a multiple-corporation business with incredible reach. But, because of the extensive use of the airwaves, demand soon exceeded their capacity and the system's overburdened use often resulted in unclear transmissions, with one station overlapping others.

Although Congress had anticipated this dilemma when it had created the Radio Act of 1912, its solution of requiring station licenses for all transmitters did little to ameliorate the system's overtaxed usage, since the license was easy to acquire and offered no operational restriction.

While conditions were improved when a separate license category for commercial broadcasting companies was created, President Hoover went a step further by determining which radio stations would be granted air access and which ones would not.

The act, needless to say, sparked controversy and was deemed unconstitutional. Eugene F. McDonald, for example, who owned station WJAZ in Chicago, claimed that the president had exceeded his authority by making such determinations and this prompted the subsequent Radio Act of 1927, which advocated that broadcasting services could only be provided by private enterprises and that the public itself would determine the types of programs they wished to hear.

Although it ameliorated most of the early obstacles, the definitive Communications Act of 1934 was ultimately established.

"Control" during these nascent times, however, was often subtler. Sponsors and advertisement agencies, for example, needed to reach as many listeners as possible in order to insure the maximum sales of their products, but felt this exposure hinged upon the quality of the shows with which they were associated. If they paid stations for advertising time and they coincidentally ran poor quality programs, they felt that the number of people reached would decline as they turned the dial in search of better features and that the shows themselves were reflective of their goods and services. Resultantly, they were able to exercise a certain amount of control over a program's production and arrangement.

During the 1930s, radio and the advertising it attracted prospered. Three large stations provided news, information, and entertainment to millions across the country who only needed to turn a dial to access it.

The foundation of many later-popular television mysteries, comedies, adventures, juveniles, and even soap operas, including "When a Girl Marries," "Mary Noble, Backstage Wife, "I Love a Mystery," "Gangbusters," and "The Shadow," was laid during this time, while these venues enabled many early actors and actresses to gain their initial exposure.

Radio became the mainstay of American entertainment for some two decades, until another emerging technology, television, appeared in the 1950s, offering both audio and visual aspects. Nevertheless, it was both the beginning and the future, since it continues to serve the purpose for which it was created-provide the information and entertainment listeners wish to hear.

How Hispanic Radio Evolves to Changing Audience

"There just has been an explosion in Spanish language," said Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of corporate communications for the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, D.C. "The growth in Hispanic has been remarkable."

The juggernaut expansion of Spanish-language radio reflects in large part the mushrooming U.S. Hispanic population, currently estimated around 54 million, but it's also fuelled by an audience of avid radio fans and a music-loving culture.

According to 2014 figures from Nielsen Audio, 93.1 percent of Hispanics listen to the radio every week, as compared to 91 percent of Americans overall (including Hispanics). Latinos also tune in more than most other demographic groups, listening an average of 12 and 43 minutes weekly; only African-Americans top Latinos in listening time, by 16 minutes, and that tends to be an older audience as compared to Hispanic radio listeners, who skew younger.

The peak time for Hispanics to tune in is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. as opposed to the morning and afternoon drive general-market peak times. "With a lot of Latinos in service industries, they're listening at work," said Federico Subervi, a journalism professor at Kent State University in Ohio who has studied Spanish-language radio.

Latinos' love for music is also evident. They spend more on music - $135 per month, as compared to the average of $105, according to Nielsen.

That combination of factors has helped to almost double the number of Spanish-language stations just since the turn of the century. In 2001, the first year of Nielsen Audio's statistics, there were 600 Hispanic AM/FM outlets; in 2014 there were 1,001. The trend in digital radio has followed suit: in 2010, Nielsen Audio reported 661 Hispanic HD and online streaming channels; in 2014, 820.

The growth trend shows no sign of slowing. As Latino immigrants move into new areas across the country following jobs, radio stations are being launched or reformatted to serve them. Mexican regional (the most popular Hispanic format), for instance, can now be heard in southwest Florida, traditionally a bastion of tropical music, on 105.3 FM, (WZSP) La Zeta, while Latin pop tunes debuted on Cleveland's airwaves last year on 87.7 FM (WLFM) La Mega.

"A lot of entrepreneurs see market opportunity," said Tomás Martínez, chief executive officer of Miami's Solmart Media, which owns WZSP-FM and WZSS-FM, a Mexican regional dance music station, also in southwest Florida.

A bigger audience base is resulting in better quality AM and FM frequencies switching to Spanish-language than in the past, when it was typically small AM stations who broadcast Hispanic formats, said Frank Saxe, managing editor of InsideRadio, an industry trade journal. "As the economy improves, more broadcasters are willing to take the risk," Saxe said.

Spanish-language broadcasters are also on the forefront of the digital radio trend. With Latinos' higher than average usage of smartphones, Hispanic radio has embraced digital from simply requiring on-air talent to be active on popular social media platforms to making major investments in online strategies.

Entravision Communications, one of the largest Hispanic radio owners with 49 stations, last year acquired Pulpo Media, an online advertising service for Hispanic consumers, to ramp up its mobile and digital advertising efforts, in a deal worth $18 million.

New York-based Sun Broadcast Group, which operates Sun Latino, the largest independent U.S. Hispanic network with 283 affiliates, earlier this year signed with Shazam, an app that allows listeners to key in to their smartphones for more information about a song playing on the radio, to offer as part of its programming service to stations.

Digital efforts are particularly a must for Spanish-language radio to remain relevant to the growing population of English-dominant Hispanics, industry observers say. Entravision, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif., will be launching coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign in English on some of its broadcast websites later this year.

Others broadcasters, are flipping formats to bilingual or all English to appeal to the 18 to 34 demographic with varying degrees of success. Univision Radio, the largest Hispanic radio company with 69 stations, flipped Dallas station 107.9 KESS-FM from a regional Mexican format to mostly English rhythmic hits in 2012, but in 2013 returned to regional Mexican.

"Since the Hispanic population is a younger population, there's more urgency among Spanish-language operators to adapt programming to the younger listener," Saxe noted. "But bilingual formats haven't really caught on."

English-preferring listeners simply tune in to general market stations when they want that programming and to Spanish stations for Hispanic-oriented programming that general market stations don't provide, he said.

That's the key reason why broadcasters predict that robust demand for Spanish-language radio will continue. "We offer music that we grew up with, information that affects our lives in the Hispanic community," Martínez said. "Take immigration. You won't find one general-market station that will spend five minutes on how to get your papers."

An ongoing challenge for Spanish-language stations is accurate ratings. Ratings services have long found it difficult to sign up enough Hispanics to wear Portable People Meters that record their radio and TV consumption throughout the day. Immigrant families, in particular, are suspicious of the device and reluctant to participate. When Nielsen can't enroll a representative sample of a demographic group, it weights the sample using statistical calculations. Radio executives complain that practice can lead to one family's listening habits being counted disproportionately and skewing listenership measurement.

"The PPM rating changed things significantly," noted Sean Ross, editor of Ross on Radio newsletter. "It coincided with diminishing Spanish-language and urban ratings."

Many broadcasters, including Martínez, advocate that the industry move to a "return on investment" model to sell advertising, which requires attributing an action taken by the consumer to the advertising campaign, which can be done via social media or websites.

For Spanish-language radio, the issue is particularly important. Besides the danger of skewed ratings, ad rates have traditionally been lower than general market stations. Wharton of the NAB said he is hopeful that will change as advertisers see the importance of reaching Hispanic consumers. "Over time, that will work itself through because the economic pie that Latinos represent. They deserve fair market value for the listeners they deliver," he said.

Looking ahead, Spanish-language radio is predicted to keep growing with a wider variety of formats, and more mobile and online delivery and advertising. The bottom line: "Hispanic stations offer a product the general market doesn't offer," Martínez said.

Christina Hoag is a freelance writer and editor. She has covered the U.S. Hispanic market and Latin America for the past 15 year for the Miami Herald, Business Week, Latin Trade and many other publications.