The Dawn of American Radio

Long before the internet, another young technology was transformed–with help from a colorful collection of eccentrics and visionaries–into a mass medium with the power to connect 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, at once setting early standards for radio programming and making bedlam of the airwaves. Into the chaos stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization guided the technology’s growth. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallee created the first on-air variety show and America elected its first true radio president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, radio had arrived.

In Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation’s living room and forever changed American journalism, politics and entertainment.


In this conversation we speak with Anthony Rudel, author of “Hello Everbody: The Early Days of American Radio” about those early days and just how in many ways those days were similar to what we see today.

At:
http://conversationsontheroad.com