Hello, Everybody!
The Dawn of American Radio
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- ¥1,600
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
"A lively overview" of this pre-internet mass-communication tool and "the entrepreneurs and evangelists, hucksters and opportunists" who flocked to it (Publishers Weekly).
Long before the Internet, another young technology was transforming the way we connect with the world. At the dawn of the twentieth century, radio grew from an obscure hobby into a mass medium with the power to reach millions of people.
When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, innovating styles of mass communication and entertainment while making bedlam of the airwaves. Into this wild new frontier stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization transformed radio into an even more powerful political, cultural and economic force. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallée created the first on-air variety show and America elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who communicated with the public through his famous fireside chats, radio had arrived.
With extensive knowledge, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation's living room.
"Entertaining and informative." —The Denver Post
"Rudel, with extensive professional radio experience, revels in the enterprising personalities who set up shop on this technological frontier. . . .[And] vividly re-creates the anything-goes atmosphere of the ether's early days." —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist and classical music expert Rudel (Imagining Don Giovanni), who has an extensive background in radio broadcasting, offers a lively overview of the birth of radio with an emphasis on the entrepreneurs and evangelists, hucksters and opportunists who saw the medium's potential. He traces the transition from hobbyists to the "radio craze" of 1922 when Americans spent more than $60 million on home receivers that brought the sounds of urban life to rural areas. The first station west of the Rockies, KHJ, prompted the notorious sexual-rejuvenation surgeon John R. Brinkley to open KFKB in 1923 Kansas. By the end of the 1920s, the Federal Radio Commission was established to manage the airwaves, NBC and CBS competed and advertising increased. Along with political campaigns and sports broadcasts, Rudel covers the "love/hate relationship" of newspapers and radio stations. His chapter on "the unholy marriage between radio and religion" details the rise and fall of evangelist Sister Aim e Semple McPherson. Profiles reveal Rudy Vallee's vast appeal and important role in creating the radio variety show. With extensive newspaper research, this is an authoritative and entertaining survey of the early days of dial twisting.
