The Radio: Past and Present :: Expository Essays Research Papers

The Radio: Past and Present â€Å"He shoots!!! He scores!!!† these are famous words that Foster Hewitt made famous broadcasting a hockey game on the radio (â€Å"The Early Years†). It was words like these that the public became used to because there was no television. The radio served as the first medium to hear things live as they happened. This gave sport fans the opportunity to sit down and tune into a game anytime they like. The radio started off big and then took a dramatic fall due to the introduction of the television. However, radio found new ways to attract the public. Radio broadcasting was introduced to the public in the early 1920s (Potter 226). There was only one type of broadcast protocol in the 1920’s and 30’s being AM radio(The Early Years). In 1921 there were only five AM radio stations, and only about 1% of all households in this country had a receiver (Potter 226). A receiver was basically another name for a radio because at this time radios were very expensive and there were not enough radio stations to make the system work. However, in 1923 there were over 500 stations to pop up which in turn led to increased sales of receivers to the general public (Potter 226). With the popping up of more radio stations the more receivers were being bought which meant that many people in the public were tuning into these various radio stations for information and entertainment. Radio was on the rise and it seemed that there was nothing slowing it down. Radio was at the top of its game during the 1930’s and 1940’s (Potter 226). In 1930 50% of all households had at least one radio, and by 1947 this had increased to 93% (Potter 226). Bye 1936, there was an average of one receiver per household, and in ten years, this had doubled (Potter 226). Sports fans loved the radio because not only could they hear live broadcast but if they missed the game they could get stats all day long. There was only one catch to sports fans listening to games on the radio. Some radio stations did not have enough money to broadcast the games live so they would have a telegraph operator transmit information back to the studio where sounds such as crowd noise, the crack of the bat, and other sounds of that nature were being generated while the game was being played elsewhere (â€Å"Going, Going, Gone!)).