Earliest broadcast commercial radio?

[1940LaSalle]

Many / most sources credit Westinghouse's experimental station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, as the first commercial radio station, taking to the air in November 1920 (although some claim primacy for WJR in Detroit). I recall reading years ago about experimental voice and music broadcasts as early as 1915, and it's well established that wireless Morse code communications were used in 1914 during the war. Thus: could the interval between Marconi's transatlantic experiment in 1901 and KDKA first broadcasting be shortened reasonably, and if so, by how much? While we're at it, TV first went commercial (in a manner of speaking) in the late 1930s (OK, maybe a few thousand receivers in the New York area, but still...): how would that get accelerated?

 

[Dan1988]

Many / most sources credit Westinghouse's experimental station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, as the first commercial radio station,

That's just Westinghouse propaganda; AMRAD's experimental station, 1XE, was already broadcasting in 1917, and there were some others as well - there are some in California that have a better claim. If AMRAD continued to function today or if another company, like GE, purchased AMRAD early on, than 1XE and its successors would be seen as the first commercial radio station.

Having said that:

I recall reading years ago about experimental voice and music broadcasts as early as 1915, and it's well established that wireless Morse code communications were used in 1914 during the war. Thus: could the interval between Marconi's transatlantic experiment in 1901 and KDKA first broadcasting be shortened reasonably, and if so, by how much?

There was even Reginald Fessenden's famous 1906 experimental broadcast of O Holy Night and other holiday music from a transmitter in MA, so pushing radio broadcasting sooner rather than later is possible. One thing to keep in mind is that non-commercial and educational stations outnumbered the commercial ones in the early years and continued all the way to General Order 40, which deliberately sought to eliminate all forms of non-commercial media from the airwaves (which didn't always work out as planned, as is the case with WHA, the flagship of Wisconsin's public radio network). Even before General Order 40, many Americans who had an opinion on the subject would prefer anything other than commercial means to fund broadcasting. So one main thing should be that expanding commercial broadcasting earlier should not come at the expense of non-commercial media. The trick for expanding commercial broadcasting, and doing it earlier, is basically keeping them all at the "experimental" stage, in which case many more stations would be recognized as the first (KCBS, for example, which started broadcasting just a mere couple of years after Fessenden's experiment) and maybe even other stations ITTL could take Fessenden's idea and run with it.

 

[marathag]

Well, you need voice transmission for it to be really popular with the masses.
In WWI, you had more CW Morse sets supplanting spark-gap boxes, so that clears up the RF Spectrum.
Next, you need Diode and Triode tubes to make superhetrodyne and automatic gain control circuits. The amplifier and selection circuits lets you recieve weak signals from small antennas, and stay locked on.
You now have a radio that almost anyone can tune by turning one knob.
All the bits were present during WWI, but not all out together until after the War.

 

[marathag]

Another thing, Radio possession by citizens was illegal after the US entered the War, and all radio stations, such as they were, were taken over by the Navy. All amateur radio activities were prohibited, even magazine and book publications covering radio.
This slowed radio development in the US till May, 1919 when the restrictions were ended for publication, and not til October for Broadcasting.
So keepnthe USA out of the War, and voice radio is advanced.