Radio-TV Timeline

Early History

• 1880s: Heinrich Hertz produces electromagnetic waves.
• 1899: Guglielmo Marconi sends the first wireless telegraph message across the English Channel.
• 1906: Reginald Aubrey Fessenden introduces human speech to radio.

Radio

• 1919: Frank Conrad of Westinghouse starts to broadcast music from his home outside of Pittsburgh.
• 1920: KDKA broadcasts the national election returns.
• 1922: WEAF in New York becomes the first commercial station.

Networks

• 1926: David Sarnoff starts the NBC network.
• 1928: William Paley buys CBS and begins a network.
• 1934: The FCC is created. 1939: Sarnoff demonstrates television at the World’s Fair in New York.
• 1940: WNBT becomes first regularly operating television station.

Technology

• 1941: FDR’s declaration of war against Japan is broadcast on radio.
• 1943: The federal government forces Sarnoff to sell its second television network, which becomes ABC.
• 1947: Bell Laboratories develops the transistor.
• 1949: Cable television begins operation.

Rock 'n' Roll

• 1948: Gordon McLendon creates the all-news format on KLIF in Dallas.
• 1951: Alan Freed launches rock ‘n' roll on WJW in Cleveland.
• 1956: Ampex introduces videotape.
• 1961: FCC Chairman Newton Minnow declares television as “a vast wasteland.”

TV News

• 1963: JFK assassination considered a milestone for television news coverage.
• 1980: Ted Turner begins CNN.
• 1988: Rush Limbaugh begins his national broadcast.
• 1996: Congress passes the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which includes greater deregulation of the broadcast markets.
• 1998: U.S. television starts transition to digital television.