Major Developements in Radio History

The radio has taken 9 years to reach a 50 percent penetration of U.S. Households according to the book. The radio was invented in 1895 by Italian physicist and inventor Guglielmo Marconi. Since then technology has allowed the radio to use a combination of audio techniques to achieve the sound quality. Some techniques the radio uses are volume changes, a number of different audio tracks and sound effects. These techniques are used to capture the attention of an audience and spread information.

Radio stations today brand themselves by the sound and genre of their music. For example, If I am looking for a country station then I would turn to a station that plays predominantly country music. Or if I want to listen to a combination of all genres of music I am sure you will be able to find the station on the radio that includes what you are looking for. I agree when the book said that putting music into genres may have a setback. This could deny someone being categorized in the right sound that they feel their music should be in. With the Internet offering many options of listening to music, often the music you may be listening to on the Internet could have a bad message or be too explicit for the song to be played on radio stations. Therefore artists may not get the chance to broadcast their music like they intended to. You see many artists now switching up their styles so they sell more records and so they can listen to their songs being played on the radio stations. This represents the struggle of creating real music because an artist’s then will have to decide if they want to continue making music that is from their heart or making music that allows them to continue making money that they don’t necessarily enjoy.

The radio is not only for promoting music. Sometimes while they are changing from song to song you hear commercials or advertisements being played. A lot of companies invest their ads being displayed on radio stations because they know that people are often tuning in to the radio station. Some advertisement companies even expand their ads and try to get them promoted on as many radio stations as they can just in case people are not listening to the radio station they are being advertised on.

As well as commercials on radio you also have talk shows taken place throughout the day on radio stations. This is where you may receive information about news and what is going on in the world. This is an easy way to receive news if you do not feel like turning on the television or looking information up on the Internet. The radio has been around for many years and still is known to be one of the major ways for entertainment and mass media.