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RADIO BROADCAST
Vol. I No. I
May, 1922
RADIO CURRENTS
AN EDITORIAL INTERPRETATION
TWO years ago the only interpretation of the word "receiver" would have been a man appointed by the courts to take over a bankrupt firm. But such is not the case to-day — "receiver" also refers to the hundreds of thousands of people who are nightly "listening in" to the various radiophone broadcasting stations distributed over the country. What attitude are they going to take in the. future in regard to the amount and kind of broadcasting these stations give? In other words, are the hundreds of thousands of families which now get their evening entertainment at home instead of going out to the theatre or movie, going merely to receive what is "handed out" to them gratuitously by the manufacturing companies, or are they going to exert their influence in such a way that the entertainment offered them is determined by themselves. The question is a broad one and of rapidly growing importance; there are many peculiar angles to the problem which make it different from any apparently similar one, in fact the problem is probably unique. A few of its phases are pointed out in this discussion.
In this latest application of scientific achievement there are two essential parts, a transmitting station from which the radio broadcasting is done and the station at which it is received. If you have a receiving station, you come under our classification of receiver, and it is in your
attitude toward the transmitting station that we are interested. Did it ever occur to you how very helpless you are in this new activity? You turn on your switches and wait — if you hear nothing you conclude the transmitting station has not started so you wait and wonder what is going to be sent out when it does start. It may be a selection from " Aida", wonderfully executed, or it may be nothing but a scratchy, cracked, phonograph record. You have nothing to say about it, you pay nothing for it, and, still more to the point, you have no rights in the matter at all. You are not alone in this game of watching and waiting — there are hundreds of thousands of others, and soon there will be millions of people doing the same thing.
The rate of increase in the number of people who spend at least a part of their evening in listening in is almost incomprehensible. To those who have recently tried to purchase receiving equipment, some idea of this increase has undoubtedly occurred, as they stood perhaps in the fourth or fifth row at the radio counter waiting their turn only to be told when they finally reached the counter that they might place an order and it would be filled when possible. Also to the man who has the reputation among his friends of knowing something about radio, this rapid rise of interest in radio has been forcibly brought home. He is scarcely engaged in conversation before the familiar phrase sounds — " I suppose everybody else has been bothering you, but my boy