A Wavelength for Every Network: Synchronous Broadcasting and National Radio in the United States, 1926–1932

Today he is remembered as the "father of Silicon Valley." ¹ But before he introduced David Packard to William Hewlett and before being named provost of Stanford University, Frederick Terman was a prodigy in the field of radio engineering. On 20 March 1929, the twenty-eight-year-old Stanford University engineering professor offered the San Francisco section of the Institute of Radio Engineers a revolutionary vision for American broadcasting. Terman explained how tests of a new system—called isochronous, or "synchronous," broadcasting—made feasible a network radio structure in which "30 chains averaging 100 stations each might put 30 programs within reach of practically every listener in the country." The problem of regulating broadcast licenses would be significantly eased; in fact, Terman concluded that "the ultimate problem of broadcasting may be to find enough stations to fill up the chains." ²

Simply stated, synchronous broadcasting is the process of precisely synchronizing the transmission of identical wavelengths by two or more broadcast transmitters. By 1929, the system had already been proven effective, as stations WBZ and WBZA in Massachusetts both broadcast at 990 kilocycles without significant interference problems. Terman and others envisioned a national system in which any prospective network could be assigned a wavelength, and with proper application of the synchronous technique, that network's signal would be transmitted by multiple outlets across the nation. Under such a system, radio listeners anywhere within the country might find one of the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) two networks at 660 kilocycles, or the Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) network at 880 kilocycles. By freeing up the numerous wavelengths employed for network radio, significantly more broadcasters—at the local, regional, and national levels—could be accommodated.

Synchronous broadcasting was not simply a futuristic vision. By the end of 1930, NBC's general engineer acknowledged its technical feasibility. Elsewhere, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began experimental synchronization in 1926, and German and Swedish broadcasters started using the system in 1930. ³ In the U.S. context, the synchronous system (also called "synchronization") promised to alleviate tensions caused by the rapid expansion of NBC and CBS during the late 1920s and early 1930s. One such issue, regularly brought to the attention of regulators and politicians by irate radio listeners, was "program duplication." As the networks expanded, national programming transmitted by multiple stations on several different wavelengths seemed to diminish the diversity of programming on U.S. airwaves. Program duplication joined other contentious debates emerging in broadcasting's earliest era, including discussions of advertising on the airwaves and the apparent favoritism toward commercial broadcasters shown by federal regulators.

These disputes testify to the vitality of early public debate over broadcasting's influence on American society. Radio's revolutionary characteristics—its creation of a new public sphere, a social arena both massively public and intimately personal—required novel policy considerations. Politicians, broadcasters, critics, regulators, and engineers all wrestled with broadcasting's role in the U.S. context. Issues such as the proper mode of regulation, applicable technical specifications, the acceptability of advertising, the boundaries of speech, and the optimal number of broadcasters were deeply intertwined; no single aspect of broadcasting could be addressed in isolation. Broadcasting, from its birth, stood athwart a nexus of technolog-ical, cultural, political, and social considerations. ⁴

Synchronous broadcasting promised to reframe much of the debate. It addressed the issue of spectrum scarcity by offering the possibility of significantly more broadcast stations. By allowing more broadcasters on the air, synchronization would foster a more competitive broadcasting environment and provide the national audience an opportunity for more diverse programming. More effective exploitation of the broadcast spectrum had the potential to ease tensions surrounding federal regulation and licensing. While not completely solving the scarcity problem (for example, it would not allow an unlimited number of broadcasters), synchronous broadcasting provided a promising technical alternative to the status quo during the first two decades of U.S. broadcasting. Politicians, members of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), and a sizable subset of the broadcasting community recognized its potential and enthusiastically...