Radio phoning is becoming a problem of large dimensions. At present it is almost a national sport and if every body does not possess a receiving outfit, it is because he lacks either imagination or money. Interest of the older people is only less intense. In many neighborhoods people are stringing wires to catch the ether wave currents. Parents are now installing radio phones to instruct the youngsters—and to entertain themselves. Programs of high-power sending stations are suited to all ages and tastes. The prima donna soprano sings “Coming Thro’ the Rye”; a tenor pours into the transmitter the tones of a favorite air form “Trovatore”; the rising young pianist plays something from Brahms or Chopin; and there is jazz for the dancers. On Sunday evening a group of people in a parlor listen to an eloquent divine who is 20 miles away, and afterward the host takes up a collection for him. Then there is a news service through the day, if anybody wants it, and the weather service later; last of all, the official government time to compare with the clock in the corner.
Many stations throughout the state are taking the sermons of a well-known preacher now holding a meeting in Raleigh. In some towns the apparatus for receiving is fitted up in a church and the congregation assembles at the same time of those in Raleigh. But there is a serious side to it, and a conference is now in session with Secretary Hoover trying to work out a plan for legislation on the subject of the use of radio. Mr. Hoover says that the real questions to be defined is who is to do the broadcasting?—that is to say, the transmitting in the definite zones. Too many broadcasters would spoil the phoning. It was in danger of becoming unprofitable and a nuisance. “Regulation,” the Secretary of Commerce pointed out, “will need to be policed if there is not to be great prejudice to the majority.”
A national “asset” must not be allowed to pass into uncontrolled hands. The truth of the matter, of course, is that not even the electricians know how the tapping of the ether waves is to be prevented. Radio telephony, they admit, is in its infancy.
“Commerce,” observes the Philadelphia Record, “wants to harness the expanding waves, which are now flowing loose and free, for its own purposes. The government is vitally interested. The radio phone is a good deal more than a toy. Imagination cannot set bounds to its development. There are said to be 700,000 schools, colleges and churches, as well as factories, shops and homes, fitted with receiving apparatus, and there are 15,000 stations licensed by the United States government under a statute that was enacted to regulate radio telegraphy before telephony came. There must be a considerable number of unlicensed amateur sending stations. A conference is now in session in Washington. How to bring order out ether wave chaos is its business. To regulate use of the air by the host of radio phone promoters and enthusiasts is a poser. Nobody wants to restrict the American boy’s yearning to hear all that is going on in the universe, but the treasures of the great discovery must not be wasted.
From the editorial page of The Monroe Journal, March 7, 1922, John Beasley, Editor.
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