"tommyknocker" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo wrote:


"Prime Time" developed during this era, with the idea that people would
listen once they got home from work. The eight hour day was codified
into law during FDR's first term, which in turn created two blocs of
broadcast time-Daytime and Prime Time. Daytime broadcasting was to
housewives and mothers who stayed home all day, consisting of serial
melodramas heavily advertised by soap companies (thus the term "soap
opera"). (The first soap operas were as short as 15 minutes.) Prime Time
was when the man of the house got home from his factory job, and the
whole family gathered around the big, expensive radio in the parlor to
hear regular news and dramas. Most radio stations went off the air
around 10pm and stayed off until 10am the next day.

Until the Federal Radio Act of 1934, many stations shared channels. there
was all-day (6 AM to midnight) broadcasting in larger markets, but in
smaller ones schedules were less because there was not enough net progrmming
to fill them... and even more because the line charges were a major, major
expense.

At the start of the
TV era TV stations followed these same schedules. "Today"-starting at
8am or so-was a radical innovation in 1953. All night TV didn't come
until as late as the early 80s in much of the country.

1953 was the year the freeze was lifted. Until then, there were not enough
channels for every net to have alocal affiliate, and the technology was very
new. Stations expanded as fast as possible and the nets followed suit by
adding salable hours.

Remember, in 1940 there were less than 1000 radio station in the whole
country. The clears covered huge otherwise unserved areas.

I know for a fact that San Francisco stations served most of California
north of the Tehachapis. Sacramento-by far the most populous inland city
of Northern California in the 30s-only had two radio stations.

In 1931, only KFBK was on the air. Fresno had KMJ, San Francisco, Oakland,
Berkley and San Jose had 14 stations. Bakersfield had 1, as did Santa
Barbara, and Stockton had 2.

With the nets having all the major talent under contract, that would
have
been rather hard. And in the meantime, millions of Americans would have
had
to be convinced to buy receivers to get something that they already got
on
the 4 webs.

Actually, most console radios had shortwave. But as a glance at a dial
of a 1930s console radio will tell you, this was intended for listening
to Europe-all the listings on the dial were for European countries.

A lot of consoles had SW, but not all radios had it. there were plenty of
nice kitchen radios and shop radios running around.

There still is no true domestic SW broadcasting if you look at
listenership.
No shortwave station has ever even approached showing up in any US radio
market's ratings. Average, non-SWL folks generally found SW listenining
to
be less attractive than a nice clean local signal if such were
available.
Domestic commercial SW thrived for a while in nations like Ecuador,
Peru,
Bolivia, Indonesia, etc., where there were limited broadcasting
faciliteis,
bad roadways and terrible phone and telegraph services... and high
illiteracy. None of this describes the US, then or now.

Indonesia comprises a thousand islands. Much of South America and Africa
was either impenetrable jungle or uninhabitable bush (desert). AM simply
couldn't cover those vast expanses. As populations have grown and
standard AM and FM stations have penetrated those areas, SW listening
has gone down dramatically.

Africa was left out of my argument, as there was no commercial radio in most
of that continent in the 40's through the 60's. Except for Angola, which I
believe had, like Portugal, commercial stations, the rest depended on state
broadcasters. radio ownership was pretty limited.

Latin America had commercial radio going back to the 20's and 30's. At one
point, there were stations in many countries that only ran on SW, with no MW
facilities. As more stations were licensed in smaller towns, and other
stations increased power, the value of shortwave diminished. By the 60's, it
was mostly a way of communicating with rural areas, often in lieu of the
telephone.

FM hit most of Latin America at the tail end of the 60's. The first
Ecuadorian FM was in 1966; Peru in that year had one FM, Colombia and
Venezuela none, and Chile one. Bolivia had none, and I don't believe
Paraguay had any, either.

The death of SW had already started by the late 50's. It was no longer
economically viable as AM stations learned that if you built a tower instead
of hanging a wire between two poles, you could cover better day and night
than some ratty SW channel. As powers increased on AM, SW stations signed
off. At one point, I had an SW license... but the AM it came with covered
better and more consistently than the SW could, so I handed the license in.