140 ChaPter 3
As noted above, radios and record players were mass produced, thereby
creating a way for virtually every American to listen to songs and radio shows,
and which prompted the creation of a commercial radio industry. Henry
Davis, a vice president at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which had
founded the Radio Corporation of America [RCA] in 1919, authorized his
engineers to set up KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in November, 1920—
the first commercial radio station [they also started up station WBZ in
Springfield, Massachusetts]. Soon, Americans throughout the country listen-
ing to local radio stations were introduced to the great Italian opera singer
Enrico Caruso, and popular American composers like Irving Berlin and Cole
Porter. Soon, radio stations began to broadcast not just music, but audio
shows, both comedy and drama, much like today’s television shows. In
September 1920, station WWJ in Detroit had an announcer on air describing
a boxing match between Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and Billy
Miske. Just a couple months later, WTAW in College Station, Texas broad-
casted the first college football game, The University of Texas versus the
Mechanical College of Texas [now Texas A&M]. And the following year, on
August 5th, 1921, KDKA had announcer Harold Arlin describe the action at
a game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies—the first
professional baseball contest to be on radio.
By 1922, almost 600 stations were broadcasting music, shows, and sports—
as well as advertisements for hundreds of products—to millions of Americans,
who embraced this new entertainment and consumer culture. Soon, networks
moved beyond their local base. In 1926, RCA and General Electric [GE]
founded the National Broadcasting Company [NBC], headed by Henry Davis
who moved over from Westinghouse. A year later, the Columbia Broadcast
System [CBS] was born. Americans now knew what was happening not just
all over the country, but all over the world. They followed Charles Lindbergh’s
nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1928, listened to results of the
presidential election, heard experts talk about the issues of the day, continued
to listen to sports and music, and of course heard countless commercials.
Radio, at the same time, reinforced the status quo, with stories praising celeb-
rities and economic leaders, analysis that condemned people with different
political views, shows with offensive stock ethnic figures like Sicilian mobsters
and miserly Jews, and outright racist shows like “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” which fea-
tured two Blacks acting in a stereotypical minstrel show fashion in what