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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Radio was vital in my early days I learned the other day that 82 percent of Americans were born after World War II. This means that we of the 18 percent who were born before 1945 probably have an obligation to tell the others something about those years of financial depression and military conflict. Since I have this "bully pulpit," as Theodore Roosevelt would have called it, I try to write something about once a month on the subject of "those good old days." Of course, they were not all really good, just old. Today's subject is radio. I grew up in the decades of the 1920s and '30s when the only source of home entertainment, other than printed material, was radio broadcasting. Individual stations sprang up like weeds after the first broadcasts were heard in 1920. KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first station on the air by many accounts, followed quickly by dozens of others around the country. At first, these stations didn't know what they should broadcast, so they were on the air for only a few hours at night; but soon they added their own orchestras and entertainment programming. In those early years, the musician's union used its power to require that every time a record was played, the announcer would introduce it with "The following is a phonograph record." They hoped that the requirement would lead to more jobs for more musicians, but it probably didn't. Anyway, that little ritual disappeared in 1927 when Congress enacted the Radio Act, which set up the Federal Communications Act with the power to grant or take away the use of the airways. Within a very short time, what had begun as an experiment became both a successful business and an art form of sorts. In 1927, David Sarnoff, a former telegraph operator for American Marconi, left that company to found Radio Communications of America, better known by the initials RCA. In 1926, the new company purchased the radio station WEAF in New York for, believe it or not, $1 million. It was to be the flagship of a network of stations to be known as NBC, and CBS was founded in 1927 to provide competition. The crash of 1929 caused a temporary slowdown in the expansion of the network, but by 1940, Stanton had an NBC station in every major market. When things were toughest economically in the mid-'30s, the networks built a program schedule featuring comedians, crime dramas, adventures and musical shows. One fourth of all families in the country did not have a steady income, but those with a little money were easily influenced by radio advertising. There were afternoon shows aimed at the housewife. These were soon called "soap operas," or just "soaps," because Procter and Gamble sponsored most of them. When the talk of war grew louder, the networks realized that they should set up news departments. They hired some of the brightest stars from the print media and set up bureaus in New York, Washington, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. NBC, CBS, and the upstart network Mutual also took the first tentative steps toward establishing bureaus overseas in London, Paris and Rome, for starters. While NBC was the oldest network, CBS got a jump on it by hiring Edward R. Murrow as European news chief based in London. He was given the power to hire anyone within budgetary constraints. In this country, many of the reporters were given their own 15-minute daily programs, and most were given editorial freedom to laud or condemn political figures. There were many reporters who grew famous during the war, such as Eric Sevareid, Fulton Lewis, Jr., Elmer Davis, Lowell Thomas. As the coverage of World War II got underway in 1939, reporters in Europe would feed stories back to New York by short wave or overseas telephone systems. Next week, we'll write more on the early days of radio. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA