Radio for the Future

I

AT various times the searcher among the short waves of radio picks up unfamiliar and exotic call letters, which may remind him of the early experimental days of broadcasting; but the major miracles of radio today are under call letters which the ordinary radio never receives. They contain the combination of a numeral and an X — and the X is for experiment. In W2XAB or W2XBS the experiment is television; in W2XMN it is frequency modulation; in W2XBF it is facsimile transmission — and these three are the revolutionary experiments in communication of our time. They vary in significance; each has social, financial, and technical problems to solve, touching the daily life of the common man; questions of art, monopoly, and the great good of the great number will rise in each.

The layman, reading a ten-line news item about a decision made in Washington, understands just enough to know that ‘something is happening in radio.’ He is not yet seriously disturbed; he is replacing his last year’s radio with a more compact, or more shapely, or bigger, or handier, or even more cleverly advertised radio — but it is basically the same instrument of reception; and he is actually doing this act of faith in radio more often than ever. There seems to be no reason for alarm; but there is excellent reason for interest. What’s new in radio will be of consequence to the citizen.

The simplest of the three major experiments is known in brief as ‘facsimile.’ It is an extension, in effect, of the process by which a photograph of a bomber fallen over London is ‘cabled’ or ‘wirelessed’ to the AP Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, and is relayed to newspapers all over the United States. Facsimile proposes, most dramatically, to send you a photograph of a daily paper; it will be printed, so to speak, in and by your receiver during the night. In the morning, you will have it at hand. The stylus which ‘writes’ the copy may make as many as a hundred strokes for one inch of the facsimile newspaper; so the process is still slow, and the ‘newspaper’ you receive may be rather smaller than the one you buy at a news stand. This is not, however, inherent in the method.

The most active station in facsimile broadcasting is WOR of New York, the Eastern headquarters of the Mutual Broadcasting System; and WOR’s Chief Engineer, J. R. Poppele, describes facsimile as ‘the service that transmits a miniature newspaper through the air waves, into your home.’ (Transmission can be done at night, when many stations are off the air; and reception can be effected by a simple attachment to a radio receiver.) This function may lead facsimile into its most serious opposition. Radio is fulfilling what had been an almost exclusive function of the newspapers (the dissemination of news) and is also sharing in the major perquisite of the newspapers (revenue from advertising). But radio certainly never threatened to supply a physical substitute for the morning paper, until facsimile proved that this could be done.

There are, however, reasonable possibilities of friendly relations. Before facsimile can operate, its original must be set in type; before that, the news must be gathered; so, in production, a division of functions can be foreseen. And in distribution the publisher may use facsimile for his suburban delivery by carrier wave instead of newspaper carrier. But it is too early even to guess at the effect of facsimile on the press.

Perhaps this function of facsimile has been exaggerated. No good reason for wanting a facsimile, when you can get a regular newspaper, has yet been adduced. As the American public becomes more and more habituated to getting its late headlines by radio, its features from tabloids, and its interpretations from newspaper text, the position of facsimile as above all things a transmitter of a miniature newspaper seems to be weak.

In We Present Television, Mr. Poppele lists a number of other uses of facsimile: transmitting information to police and radio cars; sending maps and weather data to airplanes in flight; by press services, transmitting news ‘as well as black-and-white and color illustrations’; in the classroom, cutting mimeographed stencils. He adds that President Roosevelt, when on board ship, frequently receives late news by this service. Since it is, however, so much slower than radio telephony, or telegraphy, or short-wave broadcasting, its advantages in the last-named case seem almost entirely in the nature of publicity.

For the police to pick up a chart or a diagram with great rapidity and be able to study it (because, unlike television, facsimile creates a permanent record) must be a great advantage; facsimile reception in airplanes also seems exceptionally useful. But on the whole one has the feeling that the potentialities of facsimile have not been explored. The lineaments of a fleeing gunman can already reach outlying hideaways before the criminal can reach them — unless he flies a plane as fast as the fastest. But there ought to be dozens of social uses of a new invention like facsimile; I have no doubt that eventually they will be discovered.

II

In a comprehensive article on the Armstrong system of frequency modulation, Fortune pointed out that facsimile would — or could — bring on a rivalry with newspapers; that television might be considered a rival to the motion picture; but that frequency modulation would create rivalry in radio itself. Frequency modulation is another method of sending audible signals to your radio receiver; you will require a different receiver, but you will tune in by pressing a button or dialing; and you will probably hear the same kinds of programs. In fact, you can do all of these things today in certain parts of the United States, particularly in New England and in New York City; at this moment more than fifty stations have applied for permission to broadcast by frequency modulation, commercial sponsorship is available for programs, and sets are already on the market to receive broadcasts by this new method.

It is probable that during the early months or possibly the first few years of FM broadcasting there will be some variations from the program material now familiar to us. The broadcasters by FM may exploit their system by spectacular transmissions unavailable to the older system of amplitude modulation; they could, for instance, prepare scripts requiring more matches to be lit, more liquid to be poured, more whispers to be whispered — because frequency modulation can transmit these sounds, so treacherous in ordinary broadcasting, with astounding fidelity. I say they could, but I do not think they will. The owner of an FM receiver will want, above all things, good radio entertainment; and the chances remain 100 to 1 that he will be receiving the same kind of entertainment on his FM receiver as his neighbor receives on his AM receiver. According to enthusiasts for FM, he will receive these broadcasts more clearly, with less interference, and with greater pleasure to himself.

Note that, alone of the three new experiments in communication, FM does not, of itself, require new kinds of programs. In fact, one might say that its acceptance by the public depends to a large degree on the programs which the public already adores.

There is, however, one way in which FM may alter the nature of current radio programs. Under the present rules of operation, all the FM stations in a given area transmit with equal effectiveness; as the engineers say, their signal strength is identical; as the layman says, the sound is equally loud and clear on all stations. This means that, while FM may not increase the actual number of stations in a district, it will make the small station technically as effective as the large; there will be no blanketing. So stations devoted to a special type of program (musical, educational, or propaganda) will have a better chance to make themselves heard.

To see why FM may increase the number of stations, you must understand something of the actual nature of this new system of transmission. Obviously its chief significance is technical, and to the layman the technique of ordinary broadcasting is complicated enough. However, a few facts and a good figure of speech may help to explain frequency modulation.

First, some primary facts. Before you hear a clock strike on your radio these things happen : the note of the clock sets up vibrations in the air; they strike some granules of carbon (or other sensitive substance) within the microphone (there are similar granules in the mouthpiece of your telephone). The sound wave now begins its process of being transformed into electrical impulses, strengthened and ready to jump the chasm of the air — or, to be more accurate, to cross the bridge from the transmitter to the receiver.

This bridge is the carrier wave, forgotten man of broadcasting. If you tune in a station a moment before it is scheduled to open, in the morning, you will hear a deep hum; you know your radio is working, although it receives no intelligible sound. That is the carrier wave; and it occupies the specific place in the spectrum which is described in the opening announcement: ‘operates on a frequency of — kilocycles by authority of the Federal Communications Commission.’

The carrier wave is, to our senses, undifferentiated; it is protoplasmic, formless and void. Upon it is imposed the sound wave, giving it shape and meaning. In AM, the sound wave changes the amount of power in the carrier, to create vowels, consonants, or C in alt. In FM the amount of power is unaltered; but the carrier wave is made to shuttle back and forth, for the same purpose. Or, as Mr. Poppele says, think of a searchlight, operated either with or without a shutter. The searchlight casts a beam directly into your window, and uses its shutter to vary the amount of light you receive. Then imagine a searchlight without a shutter, swinging back and forth within given limits; the amount of light is constant — but it doesn’t always hit in the same place. In both cases a message could be transmitted to you. The first corresponds to the present system of broadcasting by modulating the amplitude — the amount of power sent out; in order to reach you with sound which varies and therefore has meaning, the broadcaster modulates the intensity of the electrical energy on which his particular message is reaching you. When he has to overcome static, he multiplies his desired noise (speech or music) to many times the strength of the undesired noise (static). You may do the same thing in a small way if you are listening to a news broadcast when motoring and pass under an iron bridge; as your radio begins to fade, you may still catch the essential word or two by increasing the volume.

There are, incidentally, certain practical advantages in the older, or amplitude, form of modulation; AM can work on a narrow wave band, and this means that it can use longer waves and reach outlying districts; FM, like television, can be accommodated with any flexibility only in the short and ultra-short waves, and has a comparatively short range. This does not work against it for such special uses as police broadcasts, and FM receivers are, in fact, being installed in the police cars in many cities.

In FM your beam or searchlight moves from side to side within the limits of its assigned wave lengths — that is, it moves from a midway point to either extreme, or anywhere between any two points, inside its track. The extent of the side-to-side movement, so to speak, determines the loudness of the sounds you receive; the rapidity of it determines the pitch. And for reasons which are inherent in the character of the wave band on which FM operates, it has relatively little concern with static. It sidesteps interference and it transmits sound with amazing fidelity.

These superiorities of FM are acknowledged, but their significance is at times challenged. If AM were to operate on the same short-wave band as FM, it would enjoy the same advantages; working on long waves, it has tried to overcome static by increase and directional control of power. But it is still troubled; and FM in its happy location has been received without the faintest disturbance cheek by jowl with a generator of electricity. Stations at Albany and Schenectady, sixteen miles apart, made an experimental broadcast on an identi-cal frequency: a motorist, starting from Albany, picked up its station until he came to the midway point, when for a few moments one or the other came in, but never both at the same time; and then for the rest of the way Schenectady not only prevailed, but utterly and completely blanked out the opposing station. When you remember that in an ordinary radio you frequently get interference from stations which are on separated frequencies, the amazing result of the FM experiment with stations on the same wave length becomes most impressive.

About the other peculiar value of FM, its fidelity, there is more difference of opinion. Compared to the cheap AM receiving set, FM is unquestionably superior; compared to a superior AM set, FM is easily as good, but is not remarkably better. In the rendition of ordinary dialogue, for instance, the two sets are so close together that only a highly trained ear could detect any difference; in transmission of the sound effects of common broadcasting and music, FM has the edge. And, as its enthusiasts always say, FM alone can broadcast complete silence. The hum and crackle which constitute silence on AM are absent.

FM’s triumph over static makes it especially important in certain parts of the country. Radio waves travel both in the air and along the ground, and the ground waves are of exceptional importance for true reception. It happens that the terrain of New England is stern, rockbound, and peculiarly unamenable to the passage of these ground waves; and therefore the Yankee Network and its enterprising owner, John Shepard III, have for a long time been anxious to discover a method of broadcasting which would eliminate the poor transmission characteristics of New England’s terrain. When Mr. Paul de Mars, the technical director of the Yankee Network, began to hear about Armstrong’s frequency modulation, he persuaded Shepard that this was the means for circumventing New England nature and the difficulties of broadcasting. At the present moment there are important FM stations in Boston, Worcester, and Hartford, and the prospects of FM in New England are very bright

III

The story of radio in America lacks the glamour of personalities; after Marconi, invention comes either from great research laboratories or from inventors whose names remain entirely unfamiliar. FM makes up for this deficiency because its spectacular advance is the work of a single colorful individual, Major Edwin H. Armstrong.

Major (in the United States Army) Armstrong is a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University. He is a professor who has been able to invest over half a million dollars in one of his inventions — FM — because he had made many more dollars out of others, among them some of the absolute essentials of modern radio broadcasting. Without Armstrong’s inventions — or their equivalents — we might still be in the headphone era of receiving radio; the creation of modern radio might have been long delayed if reception had remained so private and difficult. Words which came into the advertising language stem from the Major’s inventions — the ‘superhet’ which for a year or two replaced eloquent descriptions of console models referred to the superheterodyne circuit which is the basis of modern reception. He has made equally vital inventions in short wave. Some of these have been the subject of controversy and lawsuits; some of his inventions Armstrong has sold to manufacturing companies who crosslicensed them to other companies holding rival patents; the details of the litigations are perhaps as involved and unnecessary to follow as the details of the patents themselves. If, however, in the near future Armstrong has to fight, it will be well remembered that he is not particularly friendly to many manufacturers of receivers and transmitters in the amplitude-modulation field.

It is somewhat hastily assumed that patent litigation is always against the public interest. Yet it is to be remembered that a great deal of the basic progress in the art of the moving picture rose from the long struggle between the Independents and the Trust — the holders of the patents and the would-be infringers. Because the Independents could not get enough equipment, since they were comparatively poor, they exhibited European films — classics made into three-to-five-reel motion pictures. The moment this happened, the Trust was compelled to meet the new competition in length and in quality; so the movies progressed. Had they remained in their half-reel and onereel stage, they might have lapsed after a time into relative obscurity, to be revived, possibly, after radio had entered the field of entertainment.

The stakes in the radio game are enormous. They include not only the investment of the manufacturers of transmitting equipment and the manufacturers of radio receivers, not only the thousands of station owners and the networks and their stockholders. Actually the entire listening public, which means almost the entire population of the United States, and a vast deal of the business of the United States, as represented by sponsors of radio programs, are ultimately involved. The total investment in radio, from your $10 portable to the sponsor’s $10,000 program and the network’s millions for equipment, is nearly five billion dollars. Of that investment the public has the largest share — three billion dollars for sets; not to mention its social investment, the time it gives to radio, the response it makes to radio.

The public interest in FM therefore precedes the interest of any smaller group.

This can be said at once: no instant and revolutionary change is probable. FM is a second method of broadcasting; it is not a substitute for broadcasting. Programs can be broadcast simultaneously, with no added expense in the studio, on both systems; FM does not make AM seem pale and old-fashioned, as the talkies did the movies. Except in a few areas (New England is one) FM will not be able to serve rural communities; and both systems may continue to exist side by side for a long time, as AC and DC coexist, until one is so improved that it can fulfill all the functions of both.

Nevertheless there may be certain grounds for apprehension. New receivers capable of receiving both systems have already appeared, and if the demand is great they may ultimately be low in price; but they will sell chiefly because the consumer who wants to get all the programs will demand an AM receiver. FM will be velvet; and for some time to come there will be few programs on FM which will create a specific demand for the new receiver. A great many of the applications for FM licenses are by established broadcasters. They want to broadcast on both systems; but they do not propose to broadcast different programs. When FM ‘goes commercial’ — that is, when sponsors are paying for the time — the stations will be required by the FCC rules to broadcast no less than two hours of programs not identical with their AM transmissions. This does not, however, signify that the programs will differ in essence; they will probably exploit the virtues of FM to the highest degree, with music taking much of the allotted time.

And here the brutal remark overheard in the corridor at an FCC hearing in Washington is fairly decisive: ‘You don’t need high fidelity to hear “Hi-ho, Silver!”’ The truth is that absolute fidelity is no longer demanded by a nation which drives along on paved roads, next to power generators, and manages somehow to enjoy a news broadcast, a jazz band, and a quiz program, with comedy. The public has never articulately demanded greater fidelity in the way it demanded movies without flicker, or static-less radio. The manufacturers have put receivers of progessively greater fidelity on the market; the consumer has chosen the highest fidelity available in his price range, and in this way he has demanded and has got fidelity. But the public has not complained of not hearing the piccolo clearly in an overture. It has complained of interference and static.

Has the public demanded an increase in the number of stations? The proponents of FM look forward to more competing networks, more effective local stations; and they imply that the need for stations now is great, the room for them small. In the neighborhood of Chicago there are 18 stations; in and around Los Angeles, 16; in and around Boston, 10; in and around St. Louis, 7. I do not know whether anyone has discovered how many different small stations, outside of the networks, the average local listener turns to, especially since push-button, pre-set receivers have given another powerful advantage to the big stations. The only pertinent data I have found come from a survey made by Wayne University. In Detroit, which has four network and four non-network stations, about 60 per cent of all listening (April 1940) was to commercial network programs. A considerable amount of listening to network sustaining programs must be added. And a decisive figure is this: 90 per cent of the families in Detroit listen regularly to network stations; 25 per cent listen regularly to non-network stations. Irregularly, we all listen to small stations; nearly everyone has a favorite. I, who am professionally interested in radio, and even professionally interested in what regional radio could develop, listen to two non-network stations often, and perhaps to two others occasionally, out of the 25 stations available to me in New York City. Would I listen to many more if they existed? Only if they were doing something which the other stations were not.

Radio has created enormous appetites which it may not be able to satisfy. Commercial and sustaining network radio has created an impressive appetite for good music; both network radio and regional radio have created an interest in certain kinds of educational broadcasting; in the past year or so, the national and local broadcasters have made listening to news and to the analysis of news a positive habit of the people. At the same time, radio has developed its more typical programs: comedy, quizzes, dramatic shows, revues, and so forth — and of course the daylight serial. It may become impossible for stations to supply all the music, all the drama, all the analysis of news, that the people want. Therefore the specializing station — if its programs are sufficiently well made to attract the judicious — becomes a useful contributor to society. Quite possibly FM networks will develop; but they will not spring up in numbers in one day. No one can say what the socially ideal number of networks may be; up to a point, diversity and competition may give life; after that, they may merely crumble away the interest of the public by scattering it, by having too many stations with too few good programs.

We are living in the midst of a rather nasty world, which is attempting to destroy all diversity in favor of a new horror called totality. We have had, in this country, a fairly steady trend toward unity, which, unlike totality, embraces diversity. We are all antimonopolists, and we have relished, from our earliest experience with radio, the power to turn off whatever we do not like. So everything which points to a greater diversity should be cherished now, as another reassertion of our democratic belief that all men need not think alike, or be alike, provided they are nearly enough alike to accept one another’s differences. But even here there are some qualifications.

One of the reasons why network broadcasting has been so free of onesided argument is that the great networks recognize the physical limitations of their instruments. They have said that they cannot make room for one opinion and refuse room to another because the rejected opinion might never find any way to reach the public. The National Association of Broadcasters has set itself certain ethical standards based on the assumption that the number of effective broadcasting stations is limited. When that number is suddenly multiplied by a high coefficient, the network broadcasters may stick to their standards; but the opportunity for propaganda stations increases. That is the danger corresponding to the advantage which the small stations will give.

The advantage comes to the scholarly, the thoughtful, the amateur of the arts — the citizen who, by training and habit, responds to the variety of human interests, not merely to the stimulus of excitement, humor, escape and release, by which the ill-informed average man is condemned to live. The small station may multiply the number of good citizens, by satisfying more and more desirable appetites; the large station will still serve the large number. It should. It has an obligation, not altogether financial, to reach and interest a large number of people. To forget this, making radio uninviting to the majority, would be a stupidity; no socially responsible person would imperil the power of radio in order to satisfy the legitimate needs of the uncommon man. That function is perhaps the one least ably fulfilled by contemporary broadcasting (which is just about twenty years old); and possibly the advent of FM stations may render the entire position of radio more tenable. For no one has yet discovered how to make the programs wanted by the few anything but a bore and a deterrent to the many. It has not yet been proved that direct education can be advantageously done on the air, or that the air can advantageously use education. But proof is ample — supplied by commercial and noncommercial broadcasters alike — that public taste improves if one makes no sudden and violent effort to uplift it, and if one is satisfied with the good, not the best. The great experiments in the social uses of radio are only beginning; FM may be the technical medium for which they have been waiting.

I have put down all the details of the public interest because in the end it may be decisive. I doubt whether forty million families will scrap their present radios overnight and demand FM receivers; but the rapidity of turnover is going to be important. For about $10,000, a radio station can add an FM transmitter to its equipment. Manufacturers will not be entirely averse to making new receivers as well as old. Possibly in a five-year period the whole revolution may have occurred, without bloodshed.

IV

Last May 20, the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light, as the current phrase runs, to Major Armstrong and FM. The frequency most desirable for this system was the channel then used by the television station of NBC. When this channel was handed over to FM, the headlines naturally made of the event a setback to television, a corresponding advantage to FM. The Federal Communications Commission had postponed the establishment of fixed standards in television for six months or so, and had in that way served notice that it did not consider television ready for general public acceptance. On the other hand, it implied that FM was ready. The most favorable interpretation of the event, up to last August 29, was that FM had at least drawn even with television. The publicity for television had been very great; but the first year’s broadcasts, while admirable in many ways, had not overcome the indifference of the general public.

But on August 29 an event occurred which definitely altered the situation. The Columbia Broadcasting System announced that its engineers had demonstrated to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission a system of television by which true color was transmitted. As I am now speaking of an event in which I had a small share, assisting in the preparation of the materials for the original demonstration, I should say that here I am not entirely unprejudiced. To me the transmission of color by television is not only an astounding engineering achievement, but the true basis of a great television art. To check my enthusiasm, here are the opinions of some outsiders. Federal Communications Chairman James L. Fly has said: ‘I am not a television expert and do not want to pose as one, but I must say I was tremendously interested in the new system. The scheme has a basic simplicity that indicates its practical possibilities. I do not doubt that if we can start television off as a color proposition instead of as a black-andwhite show, it will have a greater potential acceptance with the public. It should be hoped that other leading engineers will take an interest in television’s color possibilities and see that it is further developed. Color television has realism, clarity, definition and life.’ The head of a company making a distinguished documentary series said in private that he considered all black-andwhite moving pictures to be on their way out, on account of the competition with color television; Gerald Cock, the head of British television from its earliest days, spoke of a miracle, and said frankly that if television could start with color the public response would be multiplied many times over.

The significance of color is twofold: color instantly enlarges the range of subject matter, and color definitely overcomes some of the major difficulties of black-and-white television. Demonstrations of color are usually made with an ordinary black-and-white receiver adjoining. On the color receiver you recognize smaller objects; you can get a sense of greater perspective; quite apart from its enormous psychological effect, the color in television makes the picture apparently more detailed, and far more easy to see. The physical pleasure — the actual surprise and delight of seeing color truly transmitted — is a positive enchantment.

It is not yet certain what the next step in television may be. After the hearings scheduled for March 20, the FCC may decide that recent technical improvements justify a second effort to interest the public in colorless television. These improvements are toward greater definition and clarity; but whether the average spectator will see and care for the difference cannot of course be told. The FCC may decide that color television is not yet perfected to the point that it should be offered to the public without further experiment, and may therefore decide to give the go-ahead signal to black and white; or it may decide to set no standards at all for another six months after April 1, in the hope that color will, at the end of a set period, be instantly practicable, or need so long a period of further experiment as to justify a second attempt with monochrome television.

Efforts to spread black-and-white television on large screens, in theatres, are going to be made in the near future, to offset the interest in color; commercial sponsors may create more attractive programs. Whether the promise of color will deter people from buying television without color is something for manufacturers to speculate upon.

Here we have the beginnings of a possible feud within radio itself. Facsimile and frequency modulation can coexist — that is to say, you can actually receive your FM radio programs while your facsimile is being printed. Television is rather exclusive. It does, of course, carry its own voices, its sound; but most of the space in its wave band it needs for itself. At the present moment, television works by modulation of amplitude; but there is always a possibility that it also may be transmitted by modulation of frequency. Then, perhaps, these two will lie down in peace together.

The professional people say this: that you cannot interest the public in two new developments, both connected with radio, at the same time. About that I do not know. Being myself associated with television, and prejudiced in its favor, I believe that the development which offers new kinds of programs is going to be more important to the public than that which offers a new kind of transmission of programs.

But the history of invention shows that new engines create new possibilities — the photographic film, electric light, the photoelectric cell, have all had their effects on the arts; and a new way to transmit whatever the ingenuity of man devises may bring new materials and new methods into play.

These things also are for the future.