Joe Burns, assistant professor of communications, gave a lecture in the Pottle Music Building Auditorium last week about the then and now of radio.
He spoke about the start of radio and how it has progressed since inventor Nikola Tesla was first awarded a radio patent in 1900, though it was revoked and given to Guglielmo Marconi in 1904, because in 1901, Marconi was the first to transmit and receive radio signals from across the Atlantic Ocean.
Ironically, Marconi was using multiple patents from Tesla, like the Tesla coil, to execute his own invention. Tesla then sued the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company for infringement in 1915 but the case never made it to court.
After Tesla died in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated his patent. As confusing as it sounds, the competition between these two men ignited a spark which changed the world for the better.
Over the years, radio has made communication possible for the mass population in the best, and worst of times, and the best part is it’s free. Now, if it was not for the radio, Communication during disasters would be incredibly difficult.
The radio used to be the center of attention in just about every household nationwide between 1920 and 1950. It first gravitated to the modern automobile when modern color television swept the nation in the early 1953, and now it has gravitated toward the internet. Free apps like Pandora and I Heart Radio, and costly satellite radio have fine-tuned what radio used to be. Though Burns, a former radio disc jockey himself, feels and the satellite radio out today isn’t as threatening to the free public radio as one might think.
“It gave a lot of FM and AM jocks who were pushed out of their stations [another chance]. However, satellite radio does very well as long as we keep buying new cars. But as a radio person, paying for radio made me shudder a little bit,” Burns said. “I hate that I’m paying for something that should be done better on the [free] radio. With talk radio, it’s a human being talking about real issues doing a hell of a show.”
At the closing of his lecture Burns made the point that disc jockeys are trying their hardest to entertain us as listeners because they simply love being on the radio, so we should give them a chance and tune in instead loading that iPod dock in our car.
I agree with him one hundred percent. Radios are in our cars so we can listen to our news and music safely while we travel, and still pay attention to the road. We don’t get distracted and have to read anything, stare at any bright screens or get interrupted by a text message or Facebook alerts. Dr. Burns didn’t speak much on the future of radio, but it looks like free FM and AM radio is staying right where it is as long as we keep buying new cars.