Editing History of broadcasting (section)

====1920s====
By 1919, after the war, radio pioneers across the country resumed transmissions.  The early stations gained new call signs.  A few early stations, notably 8MK (later known as WWJ in Detroit) were started by newspapers, but in those early years, radio and newspapers regarded each other as competitors. One early station, 8XK in Pittsburgh, became [[KDKA (AM)|KDKA]] in 1920; its ownership has asserted that it was the first radio station in the US, but that claim is controversial <ref>{{cite web|first=Donna|last=Halper|date=July 2020|url=https://www.thebdr.net/when-broadcasting-really-began-refuting-the-kdka-myth-again/|title=When Broadcasting Really Began|website=The Broadcasters' Desktop Resource}}</ref>

Madison Avenue early on recognized the importance of radio as a new advertising medium. Advertising provided the major funding for most stations. The United States never had a licensing fee for set users.<ref>{{cite book|first=Susan|last=Smulyan|year=1994|title=Selling radio: The commercialization of American broadcasting, 1920-1934|publisher=Smithsonian Inst Press|isbn=9781560983125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXe4AAAAIAAJ}}</ref>

Radio in education began as early as April 1922, when Medford Hillside's WGI Radio broadcast the first of an ongoing series of educational lectures from Tufts College professors.  These lectures were described by the press as a sort of "wireless college."<ref>{{cite news|title=Tufts College to Give Radio Lecture Course|newspaper=Olympia (WA) Daily Recorder|date=March 25, 1922|page=5}}</ref>  Soon, other colleges across the U.S. began adding radio broadcasting courses to their curricula; some, like the University of Iowa, even provided what today would be known as distance-learning credits.<ref>{{cite news|title=U of I Offers Full Credits in Air School|newspaper=Rockford (IL) Daily Register|date=October 5, 1925|page=4}}</ref> [[Curry College]], first in Boston and then in Milton, Massachusetts, introduced one of the nation's first broadcasting majors in 1932 when the college teamed up with WLOE in Boston to have students broadcast programs.  This success led to numerous radio courses in the curriculum which has taught thousands of radio broadcasters from the 1930s to today.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.curry.edu|title=Curry College - Home|website=www.curry.edu|access-date=26 March 2018}}</ref>

By 1931, a majority of U.S. households owned at least one [[radio receiver]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Craig|first=Steve|year=2004|title=How America Adopted Radio: Demographic Differences in Set Ownership Reported in the 1930–1950 U.S. Censuses|journal=[[Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media]]|volume=48|issue=2|pages=179–195|publisher=[[Routledge]]|doi=10.1207/s15506878jobem4802_2|s2cid=145186571|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233149747}}</ref> In 1934, several independent stations formed the [[Mutual Broadcasting System]] to exchange syndicated programming, including ''[[The Lone Ranger]]'' and ''[[Amos 'n' Andy]]''. Prior to 1927, U.S. radio was supervised by the Department of Commerce.  Then, the Radio Act of 1927 created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC);<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Radio Act|journal=Central Law Journal|date=March 4, 1927| page=158 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GW8tAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA158}}</ref> in 1934, this agency became known as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A [[Federal Communications Commission]] decision in 1939 required [[NBC]] to divest itself of its [[Blue Network]].  That decision was sustained by the Supreme Court in a 1943 decision, National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, which established the framework that the "scarcity" of radio-frequency meant that broadcasting was subject to greater regulation than other media. This [[Blue Network]] network became the [[American Broadcasting Company]] (ABC). Around 1946, ABC, NBC, and CBS began regular television broadcasts. Another TV network, the [[DuMont Television Network]], was founded earlier, but was disbanded in 1956; later in 1986 the surviving DuMont independent stations formed the nucleus of the new [[Fox Broadcasting Company]].<ref name="DTNHWS">{{cite web|url=https://dumonthistory.com/9.html|title=DuMont Television Network Historical Web Site|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101027143941/https://dumonthistory.com/9.html |archive-date=2010-10-27 }}</ref>