FOREIGN

The story of radio begins in the development of an earlier medium, the telegraph, the

first instantaneous system of information movement. Patented simultaneously in 1837 in

the United States by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse and in Great Britain by scientists Sir

Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, the electromagnetic telegraph

realized the age-old human desire for a means of communication free from the

obstacles of long-distance transportation. The first public telegraph line, completed in

1844, ran about 64 km (about 40 mi) from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland.

The usefulness of telegraphy was such that over the next half century wires were strung

across much of the world, including a transatlantic undersea cable (about 1866)

connecting Europe and North America. The instantaneous arrival of a message from a

place that required hours, days, or weeks to reach by ordinary transport was such a

radical departure from familiar experience that some telegraph offices were able to

collect admission fees from spectators wanting to witness the feat for themselves.

David Marc (2000) added that despite its accomplishments, telegraphic communication

was limited. It depended on the building and maintenance of a complex system of

receiving stations wired to each other along a fixed route.

Scientists in many countries worked to devise a system that could overcome the

limitations of the telegraph wire. In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi transmitted

a message in Morse code that was picked up about 3 km (about 2 mi) away by a

receiving device that had no wired connection to Marconi's transmitting device. Marconi
had demonstrated that an electronic signal could be cast broadly through space so that

receivers at random points could capture it. The closed circuit of instant communication,

bound by the necessity of wires, had at last been opened by a so-called wireless

telegraph. The invention was also called a radiotelegraph (later shortened to radio),

because its signal moved outward in all directions, or radially, from the point of

transmission. The age of broadcasting had begun.

Unable to obtain funding in Italy, Marconi found willing supporters for his research in

Britain, a country that depended on the quick and effective deployment of its worldwide

naval and commercial shipping fleets to support its empire. Marconi moved to London in

1896 and founded the British Marconi Company to develop and market his invention for

military and industrial uses. Within five years a wireless signal had been transmitted

across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Newfoundland, Canada. Marconi was

awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909.

Broadcasting advanced on other fronts as well. In 1904 the United Fruit Company hired

American inventor Lee De Forest to help build a series of radio broadcasting stations in

the Caribbean basin for the purpose of facilitating greater efficiency in shipping

perishable goods from Central America to ports in the United States. These linked

stations, which shared current information on weather and market conditions,

constituted the first broadcasting network. The work of Canadian inventor Reginald

Fessenden, later elaborated upon by De Forest, allowed for the broadcast transmission

of a wider range of sounds, including the human voice.

As published on article of John S. Belrose in IEEE Spectrum (1992), the first radio

broadcast for entertainment and music was transmitted from Brant Rock,

Massachusetts to the general public on December 24, 1906. This pioneering broadcast

was achieved after years of development work by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden who

built a complete system of wireless transmission and reception using amplitude

modulation (AM) of continuous electromagnetic waves. This technology was a

revolutionary departure from transmission of dots and dashes widespread at the time.

Following the first successful transmission of entertainment and music was the birth of

commercial radio broadcasting as discussed by Baudino and Kitross (1977) where

Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA was a world pioneer. Transmitting with a power of

100 watts on a wavelength of 360 meters, KDKA began scheduled programming with

the Harding-Cox Presidential election returns on November 2, 1920. A shed, housing

studio and transmitter, was atop the K Building of the Westinghouse East Pittsburgh

works. Conceived by C.P. Davis, broadcasting as a public service evolved from Frank

Conrad's weekly experimental broadcasts over his amateur radio station 8XK, attracting

many regular listeners who had wireless receiving sets.

Radio regulation was then enforced to eliminate different stations from broadcasting on

each other’s airwaves as summarized by Jones and Quillan (1985) where broadcasting

regulation was laid with enactment of the Radio Act of 1912, which required for the first

time that all radio transmitters and operators in the United States be licensed by the

Federal government. Unfortunately, Congress neglected to include in that Act any

authority for withholding of licenses, and in Hoover v. Intercity Radio Co., the court held

that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover had to grant a license to any applicant for it
under the act. As users of radio proliferated on a virtually unregulated basis, the

resulting chaos on the airwaves soon made it clear that additional regulation was

needed, and congress responded with the Radio Act of 1927.

The 1927 Act was a quantum leap in regulation. Congress did not content itself with

curbing interference among users of the spectrum, but instead included in the new Act

provisions relating to programming, licensing and renewal, and many other aspects of

broadcasting not related to electronic interference. Those provisions were incorporated

seven years later into the Communications Act of 1934.

The 1934 Act created the Federal Communications Commission, which, like the Federal

Radio Commission it superseded, was clearly intended to do more than police the radio

spectrum to prevent radio interference.

Due to problems that plagued AM radio, such as static and skywave interference that

morphed into the creation of an entirely new radio transmitting system, FM radio was

invented by Edin Armstrong as statedd in an article by Waldbillig (2012). But

development was stalled by the Depression, then by RCA and NBC chairman David

Sarnoff, who was a friend of Armstrong and later bitter rival who felt threatened by

Armstrong's fledgling FM radio network. Sarnoff, who's entire NBC network was built on

AM radio and it's use of national radio lines provided by AT&T soon realized a network

that could be relayed wirelessly in sparkling clean, crystal clear high fidelity at that time

and to anyone could singlehandedly DESTROY his entire empire. Many other AM radio

networks such as Mutual and CBS felt the same way. So they quickly cut off all ties to

Edwin Armstrong and lobbied the FCC to make radical changes to FM radio, namely to

stall the inevitable public reaction if FM ever gained a strong enough foothold.
After WWII, the FM radio band was moved from 42 to 50 MHz to 88-106 MHz, then it's

present 88-108 MHz band about a year later. The reason for the move up in part, due to

Sarnoff and his compadres lobbying efforts, but also because radio signals below 54

MHz were prone to the tropospheric skip effect, which can cause interference on

stations hundreds of miles away on the same frequencies (On the 88-108 MHz, it still

occurs sometimes, but much less frequently.) But Edwin Armstrong took the decision as

a devastating blow. This meant his few listeners and stations would have to upgrade to

newer and expensive equipment just a few short years after he unveiled them. Many of

the earliest FM stations did not make the upgrade because of the staggering cost it

would make the switch to the new FM band for both his stations and the listeners.

The invention of radio made a global trend as written on Woodford’s article (2018)

where free music, news, and chat wherever you go! Until the Internet came along,

nothing could rival the reach of radio—not even television. Altunian (2018) also added

that AM/FM radio can feel like pure magic. When you switch on the radio, you can hear

music, voice, or any other audio entertainment being broadcast from a source located

hundreds – or even thousands – of miles away!

LOCAL

In 1922, a Mrs. Redgrave, an American, began test broadcasting from Nichols air field

with a five-watt transmitter. This would put her ahead of Henry Hermann who began test

broadcasts from three stations in June 1922.

Lent's (1978) collection of histories of broadcasting shows that Philippine radio was

probably the earliest in Asia, ahead of Chinese radio by at least six months and at least

as early as, if not earlier than, New Zealand radio.

Hermann, owner of the Manila-based Electrical Supply Company, wanted to broadcast

music to a number of radio receiving set owners, and test the business potential of

broadcasting. The manuals as well as Lent indicated that Hermann went on the air

armed with a temporary permit, but neither writer identified exactly whom or which

institution gave Hermann this permit to operate experimental radio stations. Two years

into the experiment Hermann replaced the experimental stations with a 100-watt station

with the call letters KZKZ. However, Hermann soon after gave up on the commercial

potential of radio. On October 4, 1924, with KZKZ but a few months old, he sold it to the

Radio Corporation of the Philippines (RCP)

Lent (1973) traces the appearance of the first radio station outside of Manila to 1929

when RCP put up KZRC (Radio Cebu), a one-kilowatt experimental station in Cebu City.

Much of the programming was patterned after American broadcasting and was indeed

run by Americans. At first, sponsors did not directly advertise their products but
mentioned only their names as sponsor of particular shows, or titled the shows after

their product, for example Klim Musical Quiz or The Listerine Amateur Hour.

Among the early pioneers, Francisco "Koko" Trinidad is regarded by broadcasters and

broadcast teachers and students of the past three decades as the father of Philippine

broadcasting,

According to the research papers done by Elizabeth Enriquez (2001), early regulation of

broadcasting was begun in 1931 when the colonial government (of the USA) began

realizing the business potential of radio, and thus passed the Radio Control Law

creating the regulatory body Radio Control Board. The board examined applications for

licenses to operate radio, allocated band frequencies, and conducted inspections for the

office of the Secretary of Commerce and Industry

In 1947, when the new republic was a year old, Trinidad represented the Philippines to

a conference of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Atlantic City in the

United States. The current regulatory body is the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters ng

Pilipinas (KBP).

Enriquez (2001) added that originally, as a colony of the USA, four letter call signs

beginning with KZ-- were in use. Trinidad remembers insisting on changing the first two

call letters of Philippine radio to RP, to stand for Republic of the Philippines, in lieu of the

American KZ. Koko wanted the world to know about the newly independent republic

through the radio call letters. The ITU rejected the call letters RP because of the amount

of trouble it would take to secure the approval of the entire international body, and the
international changes that might have become necessary for such a change. However,

the ITU, which decided to punish Germany for using radio for propaganda and to

advance the cause of Nazism, deprived Germany of its right to use the broadcast

airwaves. The ITU then gave the Philippines the right to use the call letter D (which had

stood for Deutscheland, or the German name of Germany).