evertheless all the major American broadcasting players are still in place. Elsewhere, the new distribution technologies had much less effect on the old broadcasting structures than had neo-liberal political thinking. Unless politics intervened to prevent it, there was little to suggest that the same essential pattern of relative containment that had been seen in America would not happen in these other countries too.

By the mid-1990s, there were thirty major nationally distributed cable channels.

now require the specific permission of copyright holders, stations, networks, producers, syndicators, etc., on a programme-by-programme basis before they could import signals—an impossibility.

FCC imposed even stricter regulations on the importation of distant signals, wiping out most of the legal advantages gained by the cable industry

the broadcasters could still charge the advertisers for their viewers whether they were reached through the cable or through the air.

However, on the contrary, poor reception and limited small town and rural choice were the basis of cable’s steady and consistent growth throughout this period,

They had found a way to side-step FCC regulations which prohibited the free-air re-broadcasting of signals; the Commission had nothing to say about sending television pictures down a wire.

The nemesis of the UK cable industry was GPO and BBC insistence on a form of universal service whereby, for example, the huge variety of possible UHF signals was curtailed in the interests of maximising reception. In Britain, as in most European states, the original thirteen VHF and the current sixty-nine UHF bands were used to ensure that every household received the same signals clearly

As had happened with radio cable, improvements in transmission reduced cable television’s attractiveness. Only municipal regulations forbidding roof antennae kept it alive,

Cable has stood ready to supplant broadcasting from the very beginning of both radio and television; its failure so to is a further vivid example of the operation of the ‘law’ of the suppression of radical potential.

They seemed incapable of discerning, even vaguely, what roles each would play in the future process of information dissemination, even though a large number of social commentators of the time were able to define those roles with amazing clarity.

6. The broadcasters were to bear all costs of the new service.

hey were not bound by the agreement and were, therefore, free to respond to listener demand for news and the availability of sponsor money to support the news programs.29

1. A seven member committee was to be set up to supply limited news for broadcast.

This report called for government control of radio in the United States, giving as reasons that every other major country in the world had placed broadcasting under governmental control, and also stating that the only way that broadcasters could be prevented from giving false and inaccurate news is by direct government control.

also decided that newspapers should refrain from publishing radio programs except as paid advertising

First, radio broadcasting was not free. It was under government control, and, therefore, the potential for propaganda was too great

while Hearst, gradually buying up a string of radio stations across the country, was meeting the broad- casters' challenge on their own ground by broadcasting news from his papers

They stopped reading the papers and went to other sources which would tell them about radio, and the listings returned.5

their advertising revenues were dropping, while those of radio were on the increase

Concern for technical control was giving way to concern for standards and taste.

The very speed of development in the United States was given as a reason for governmental action.

from being an ‘attic experiment’ radio became a ‘household utility’.

In the first few months of 1922 the numbers increased dramatically—26 in January, 14 in February, 27 in March, and 88 in April. By the first of May there were 219 registered radio stations in the United States, broadcasting news bulletins, weather and market reports, concerts, lectures, and commentaries on outside events. In the month of May itself 99 new stations were started.8

Broadcasting was thus deliberately recognized as being more important than point-to-point communication.

The new organization was a product of American nationalism, and among its articles of incorporation was the rule that ‘no person shall be eligible for election as a director or officer of the Corporation who is not at the time of such election a citizen of the United States’.

‘Public Service Broadcasting Company or National Broadcasting Company’, which would include on its Board of Directors not only business men but ‘a few men from outside, prominent in national or civic affairs’

‘did not arrive until the situation in America forced the hands of the authorities here to allow it.

Binns, like Marconi ten years earlier, was the perfect media hero.

Finding suit­ able cylindrical objects was not always easy; some boys used broken baseball bats or old curtain rods for lack of anything else.

Hundreds of schoolboys in every part of the country have taken to this most popular scientific fad, and, by copying the instruments used at the regular stations and constructing apparatus out of all kinds of electrical junk, have built wireless equipments that in some cases approach the naval stations in efficiency."14

He became an explorer

men had to have forceful, commanding personalities, as well

rise of the boy inventor-hero as a popular culture archetype.

His equipment was extremely powerful, and he had the ability to "destroy" the messages of others at will.

After months of rigorous training and drilling, the First Unit finally sailed on March 2, 1918. Led by Grace Banker, a 25-year-old graduate of Barnard College, they were America’s first female soldiers.

some operators took a pay cut to serve the Army

Previously, only suffragists and temperance activists paraded en masse. Now yeomanettes matched their strides to men, establishing new precedents for acceptable public behavior.

The Secretary insisted on equal compensation, too. Female yeomen earned $28.75 per month, the same as men. The Navy provided no housing for females, so it paid women an additional $1.25 per day for billeting. Female recruits received free uniforms and medical care, and were eligible for war risk insurance. Most worked ten hours per day, six days a week, including night shifts. They wore the same insignia as men.

United States became the world’s first modern nation to enlist females

They were soldiers, not angels.

We know less about what changed men’s minds.

soldiering has established qualifications for full citizenship