The Golden Age of Radio --- Today?

Okay, WI television had not been invented, and radio maintained its media domination? I'm looking at this mostly from a North American perspective, but I'd be interested in how this would pan out everywhere else.

Variables:

1) Local AM (mediumwave) radio maintains its dominance well into the present age. Armstrong et al. invent FM, but it's primarily used in a way similar to a HD radio sub-channel: more of a supplement to the 'standard' AM programming. Actually, this was the way FM was used in the 50's and into the early 60's -- as a relay for AM programming. Remember that AM/MW is better designed for spoken word, and FM is better designed for music. I think AM's decline in many parts of the world has much to do with TV's gradual dominance in newscasting, dramatic/sitcom entertainment, as AM was a strong spoken word medium. There are outlier examples, like AM conservative talk radio in the US, but I reckon that most people now associate "radio" with FM music programming and not as much with news broadcasting.

2) International broadcasters maintain extensive shortwave networks. Over the past 20 years the BBC (for example) has reduced World Service to Europe and North America, and this has only accelerated since widespread Internet access. Seems that the big broadcasters think that the "developed West" can afford streaming audio and FM relays, and that the saturation of these technologies in these markets obviates the need to direct their transmitters to W. Europe and N. America. WI these supplemental technological options did not exist, and shortwave programming remained supreme.

3) Taking off on 2) the Internet must never have been developed in order for this WI to truly work. That's a big issue here, but maybe it can still work.


Some effects:

1) Advertising radically changes from OTL TV experience. The elimination of visual association/enticement afforded by television would shunt advertising technique towards the spoken word and greater description. One way this was done in the radio age/early TV age was product sponsorship within programs. This worked well for radio since the product could be placed within the plot/narrative and described within context.

2) "I don't want my MTV." The OTL trajectory from AM 3-minute singles to FM album format to MTV videos to post-MTV streaming video would not likely have taken place. Record labels, the RIAA, radio networks, record shops, and other industry concerns would have more control over track selection and the narrowing of consumer options. I excluded FM purposefully since album-oriented stations radically changed the 45 dominated AM market. As an aside, I wonder if the LP would have taken off if FM never developed. ??? Essentially, no strong FM development = no 60's DJ culture and the transformation of the market model from 45's/EPs to LPs and more ...

3) News dissemination. I have a suspicion that people select a news network to watch not only because of political ideology etc. Rather, I think that decor and the presentation of anchors and pundits goes a long way towards roping viewers in. CNN has quite a different aesthetic than Fox News for example? A modern radio-only world would have leveled these differences while maintaining ideological slant.

4) Propaganda. How would nations with tight media control (North Korea, China, former USSR, Burma among others) develop in this ATL? How would lack of television affect the course of OTL political history (especially the dissolution of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc?) I'm thinking that the enhanced focus on shortwave would have kept the Soviet sphere more closely bound. Interestingly, the Warsaw Pact countries had different FM frequencies than Western Europe. In fact, I think that Russia, some of the former USSR states, and former Soviet satellites now use both frequency sets. Should FM not have developed as in OTL West, would this dual system have developed? Or, would FM also remain marginalized behind the Iron Curtain as much as it would be in the ATL West?

Enjoy!
 
Last edited:
No Internet and no TV

The internet isn't a big factor here, since it didn't become a factor until much latr than TV, so its development would be different. Certainly, no TV implies no commonly available way to put moving pictures over the wire, thus, the net, if it's there, would be still pictures, words, and sounds.

And it would be easy enough, IMVHO, for the net not to develop as a universal medium...either multiple, incompatible nets, or no net..the technology staying expensive and/or military.

For no TV, you need a reason it doesn't happen. It was being developed in several places, an idea who's time had come. So, why it doesn't happen can impact the timeline.
 
Thanks

Good comments, thanks. You are right that the Internet is a wholly independent variable here. I disagree, though, that TV is inevitable.

"Inevitable" technological innovation does not always translate into commercial viability. The best example I can think of right now is video telephony. (Suspend the current discussion for a moment.) I remember watching a documentary about the 1964 World's Fair which showed a clip of beaming visitors talking to other visitors from across the fairgrounds using "Picturephone" technology. This fusion of television and telephony never really took off until Skype, et al, even though I remember failed attempts in the 80s and 90s to bring video telephony to the masses.

Why didn't video telephony take off until the turn of the 21st century? Not sure -- perhaps expense, lacklustre picture and sound? But even the innovation of fiber optics could not get this idea off the ground in a meaningful way. Perhaps the Internet's ability to utilize communications systems in extremely diverse ways facilitated the use of technologies that previously would have required very expensive infrastructures of limited use. Video telephony did not take off until the widespread availability of broadband and fast personal computers, a combination that offers a much larger degree of communications options. Hence video telephony needed futher technical refinement AND greater accessibility (lower cost innovation, versatility) to take off.

TV is a logical extension of the radio medium, like video telephony is a logical extension of the telephone. But TV as a medium of communication requires more than technological possibility. TV could be stopped by something as simple as advertiser reluctance to sponsor TV programmes due to contentment with current revenues. Or perhaps, (especially in the political cases I mentioned earlier) radio proved more capable than TV at spreading propaganda. Maybe radio manufacturers could not find a method of cathode-ray tube production profitable enough to support television manufacture. Or, individual broadcast stations were unwilling to invest in TV transmission systems. The US FM and VHF TV channel assignments evolved in the late 40's/early 50's, and I could see potential TV broadcast stations shying away from a technology with rapidly changing legislative standards.

I think that economics and cultural development, not just technological possibility, affect history in significant ways.
 
Won't this severely stunt the progression of technology? Military systems that rely on visual output, security, the development of computer systems to name a few.
 
Different flavors of inevitable...

In saying that TV was almost inevitable, I didn't mean commercially. I just meant that the technology will, IMVHO, be developed to a point where it works, and might be a curiousity or something seen in schools, museums, etc.
 
Top