Communication eassy 7 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Communication eassy 7 - Essay Example The stock market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression would be played out on the airwaves of the radio for everyone to develop a common myth. Yet, radio was relatively slow to catch on. With little governmental control, the media giants of CBS and NBC struggled to reshape society, and only succeeded due to the commitment of a few visionary men. By 1910 radio had become a curiosity and few outside the military and marine ship operators understood its true potential. Yet, over the next 50 years it would transform our society from a loosely disconnected fabric of social groups to a cohesive group with a national identity. To understand the transformation it is necessary to examine the rapid social change of the 1920s. Entertainment, news, economics, politics, and technology all went through a rapid modernization (Crowley and Heyer 218). One of the driving forces behind this movement was the radio. People became connected in a way that was previously unknown. Newsprint could not incite the emotion and texture that sound gave to the stories and events. Through the 1940s, radio got more people involved in electoral politics by making them feel like they were a part of the democratic process (Bartlett 91, Crowley and Heyer 225). Radio became a mass outlet for ideas and products. It cultivated the concepts of fashion and fad. The country began to view themselves as a cohesive unit, with common values, common goals, and shared ideals. When we view the media giants of NBC and CBS it is easy to believe that the radio propelled these companies to success. However, quite the opposite is true. The fact is that these companies made the radio popular rather than the radio making the companies successful. In 1916 the American Marconi Company rejected David Sarnoff for offering the idea of a home radio to provide musical entertainment (Crowley and Heyer, 234). Sarnoff would leave Marconi and spend years