Today we will look at the ways in which technological and administrative advances in communications and media distribution helped unite America in the 1930s.
A few lectures ago, we saw the economic impact of new manufactured goods on the American consumer market, and the radio figured prominently in that discussion. We also saw how radio also helped popularize the musical genre of jazz. Yet radio was doing more than just transform American music - it was changing the way Americans shared experiences.
Radio syndication or a "radio network" was first pioneered by AT&T, who had a newr monopoly on the nation's telephone system. Believing that it was not going to be important in its business future, AT&T sold its interest in the network for $1 Million dollars and in 1926, NBC was formed. Syndication was not anything new, newspapers having syndicated columns for decades, but radio syndication meant that Americans of a broad spectrum could enjoy the same entertainment and music from coast to coast like the "Amos n' Andy" show and the Grand Ole Opry which first broadcast live in 1925. Starting in the late 1920s, it also meant that they could also experience live events together, uniting the nation in a common experience in a way that had not before been possible. Radio also enabled people from all over the country to feel like they were part of something greater.
Boxing was a much bigger sport in the 1930s than it is today, and the two heavyweight championship fights between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling were not only landmark national events, but they had profound political overtones both in terms of race in America and the growing antagonism between Nazi Germany and the rest of the Western world.
The syndication of broadcast news also became a powerful weapon in uniting the nation. Newspaper syndication had been joined by radio news syndication as well as newsreels shown before movies. This type of news, shown before popular movies and referenced in Hillerman's Seldom Disappointed, helped shape opinion about the coming war.
Media syndication also intensified the role that celebrity played in America, and in this regard we will look at the rise and fall of one of the country's biggest superstars in the 1920s and 1930s, aviator Charles Lindbergh.
A video of Lindbergh's famous 1927 Transatlantic Flight.
A much sought-after home movie of the Lindbergh Baby shortly before his kidnapping:
Lindbergh making an anti-war speech:
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