Radio is dead-Long live the Radio.pdf - Universidad del País Vasco

Welcome to the third age of radio: understanding radio's present from radio's past
Ellington’s broadcasts, though, were part of a new use for wired technologies that
had been used in the remote broadcasts from cabarets and theatres at WHN. This
shift was based upon a new commercial model of ‘toll broadcasting’, where stations
sold segments of broadcast time to people who wanted to communicate with their
audiences. Network broadcasting re-imagined the remote, shifting it from a technology
of programme origination to one of distribution. Toll broadcasting made even
more sense if you could sell broadcast time over a larger number of transmitters,
sending the programming down a wired network.
In turn this approach gave rise to the development of sponsored programming,
in which a company would promote its products during entertainment programmes
that they had created to target a specific audience. The most profitable times
to broadcast were during the daytime, to attract women who worked at home,
and during the evening, to family audiences. Night-time broadcasts were the least
attractive to toll broadcasters. And of course that’s where Ellington fitted in. His
band could attract enough dedicated followers to make the late evening and early
morning broadcasts worthwhile.
1930-31 on WJZ & WEAF
In September 1930, the Ellington Orchestra’s Cotton Club performances could be
heard on the two flagship stations of the National Broadcasting Corporation’s Blue
and Red networks WJZ and WEAF (Steiner, 2008). As the key network controlled
by RCA, NBC became the main company pushing for the integration of US radio
into network system and connecting radio with that other new form of entertainment
moving pictures. WJZ and WEAF were its originating stations. That is the programmes
for the whole of the US were made in two New York-based stations and
then sent around the continent on the AT&T wired network, and then transmitted on
AT&T wireless radio broadcasts.
RCA also set up RKO as its talking pictures division to exploit new electronic recording
technology, and then aimed to use its radio stars as its new talking film stars.
On of their early attempts involved NBC’s Amos and Andy radio show featuring
two white comics impersonating black Americans in a stereotyped way that would
be completely unacceptable today. Their first feature -- Check and Double Check
-- cleverly also used the Ellington band in a sub-plot, and then tried to promote the
whole multi-media package in a networked RKO Theatre of the Air special on the
24th October 1931 (Gabbard, 1996).
This moment summed up the basis of radio for the next 15 years: big stars make
a film in Hollywood and a radio series in New York, and cross promote their acti-
The Radio is dead. Long live the Radio!
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