State controlled Media - USA beginning 1919...
>A media that aligns itself with some geopolitical objective could only exist within a state controlled media, name your country.>
Do you know the history of the major TV networks starting with NBC?
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Radio’s Rise During World War I
And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.
Dylan’s verse from “When the Ship Comes In” personifies the climate of 1914. The world’s seas were chained together by a vast network of underwater cables. The cables connected colonial satellites like never before. Telegraphy had been a boon to Britain. In concert with land-grab, colonial powers were grabbing communication rights, even if it wasn’t on their own shores. Dylan’s fourth verse, though, speaks for a more covert hostile takeover and the first of its kind: Imperialism in the airwaves.
Map of Telegraph Cables Before WWI
Map of the world’s telegraph cables prior to the rise of wireless and World War I
No longer did physical lines — susceptible to sabotage or destruction by foreign enemies — have to be laid on the bottom of the ocean. The “chains of the sea” were broken. Ships could openly communicate with each other. Because radio waves could be intercepted by any enemy, cryptography (”to get the ship confused”) soon followed and Marconi’s invention of radio telegraphy had turned into a weapon of war.
As soon as government had recognized this power, even free-market and democratic governments abandoned their laissez-faire tenets in place of eminent domain and national security. Wireless telegraphy was the origin of the military-industrial complex, and the most salient case example was in the formation of RCA, which sprouted from Marconi’s invention.
Colonial Growth of Cable (1898-1914)
In the early 1900s, Britain had a virtual monopoly over cross-continental telecommunications. More importantly, a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi had approached Britain with his new invention: wireless radio. The War Office of Britain was amused by Marconi’s contraption and fortuitously just in time for their Second Boers War. Britain’s imperial prowess in distant colonies was soon trumped by its prowess of the airwaves and land-line telegraphy. Their two-pronged system of submarine cables and transatlantic wireless communication was unparalleled, and extremely powerful in the years preceding World War I.
Despite the fact that the U.S. was far behind Britain in its adoption of Marconi’s invention, it still saw the power inherent in wireless. A victory in the Spanish-American War meant that the U.S. had to communicate with their newly acquired “protectorate” in the Phillipines. The U.S. was irked at the fact that all communiqué between Washington and the Phillipines had to go through a foreign cable (Britain’s), across the Atlantic, in a circuitous route through the Mediterranean and around Asia. In 1903, Commercial Pacific Cable established a direct line from San Francisco to Manila (Headrick and Griset 566).
Then, in 1904, President Roosevelt appointed a board to discuss wireless telegraphy. Already, British-owned Marconi had constructed stations across U.S. coasts. The board recommended that the Navy operate all coastal stations. Perhaps to quell any public opposition, it proposed “free commercial ship-to-shore service.” If the recommendation had gone through, the U.S. would have had a state-owned wireless monopoly. As it turned out, the press caught wind of the proposal for government-operated airwaves, and it was widely considered a “blatant attack on private enterprise” (Headrick, 125).
Stock Certificate for the American Marconi Company
The engraving for the Marconi company’s stock certificate in 1913
Corporate Wireless Property Grab
The corporations, however, took the place of government in snatching up as many stations as it could. United Fruit Company (the progenitor of Chiquita) had their Tropical Radio subsidiary for their fruit shipments from the banana republics and had captured much of the South American market. Western Union set up a wireless shop to try to capture the lucrative transatlantic market. In time, the U.S. corporations, vast and disparate, would form stations across the world, from Hawaii to China, the Dutch East Indes, Liberia, Cuba, Brazil, and far beyond – it was a type of corporate empire unseen in history and the largest ever. The government idly stood by, often ineffectually using wireless technology in Naval operations until the 1910s, yet encouraging private enterprise to build up the infrastructure.
Next week, we’ll see how the outbreak of World War I affected the United States, its tenuous ties with both the Britons and the Germans, and the beginnings of the formation of RCA, which marked the true beginnings of the military-industrial complex. Most importantly, we’ll find out what set in motion a government-controlled media enterprise unprecedented in history.
This is part 2 of a three-part entry on wireless radio telegraphy during World War I. In part 1, we saw the British dominance in wireless prior to World War I and the early ties between government and business. This week, we’ll follow the outbreak of the war, how it affected the Marconi wireless telegraph stations, and how General Electric cemented a permanent place as a corporation cozy with the the Defense industry.
While the shot was heard ’round the world, the British Marconi Company was touring the German radio station at Nauen. Right up until the very declaration of war, British Marconi and German-owend Telefunken were on friendly terms, but the “halcyon days,” as W.J. Baker calls them came to an end (Baker W.J., 158).
At the time, Germany’s Nauen was the largest station in the world, carrying signals as far away as the South Pacific. For Germany, a country that depended on telegraph cables in the English Channel (susceptible to British sabotage) — nothing was more important than wireless communication. On July 29, moments after the British Marconi scientists left Nauen, the German military took over the gigantic 300,000 watt, 750-foot transmitter (Coe 214-215). Only days later, the British followed suit, ending all wireless messages and sequestering stations across the British Empire (Baker W.J., 158). Then, came the moment that allowed wireless to shine. The Brits cut Germany’s only land-line connection to the outside world. Without Nauen’s wireless towers, Germany would have lacked communication.
The Radio Station at Nauen, Germany
Nauen’s radio tower served as a vital hub for communication. Without the behemoth towers of Nauen, German would have had to depend on telegraph cables, which were often sabotaged by allied forces.
What World War I allowed the U.S. to do (whether intentional or not) was to build up a telecom infrastructure that would surpass even Britain’s. Despite the fact that it was corporate-owned, it was still government-influenced. As far back as the earliest days of the war, the spectre of military representatives were regularly described as presiding over groundbreaking ceremonies for major wireless stations. Hawaii’s Kahuku station was fast-tracked to be completed just months after the war broke out in Europe. Honolulu’s Pacific Commercial Advertiser quotes an official from Kahuku’s transpacific wireless unveiling on September 25, 1914:
“We celebrate today opening Marconi radio plant of O’ahu. The radius of action is upwards of 5,000 miles, and insures communication in time of war, regardless of any cutting of the cable.”
The quote was from Major-General Carter who, along with Rear Admiral Moore, Brigadier General Edwards, and “other prominent members of the Navy” were present at the unveiling.
Kahuku Power House Unveiling
The Honolulu Advertiser (then known as the Pacific Commercial Advertiser) reported on the fast-track inauguration of the Kahuku Wireless station. Kahuku was originally planned to be completed much later, but a war in Europe meant government interventionism.
Despite Wilson’s non-interventionism, the U.S. took a strong stance on building up its military infrastructure. United States’ apparent neutrality in the war was challenged when Germany’s station in Sayville New York was taken over by the government in 1914. Tensions were growing. War-hawks were squawking. On the other hand, Daniel R. Headrick in The Invisible Weapon says that “nationalistic officers of the U.S. Navy perceived American Marconi as a foreign firm, and an agent of British imperialism, and thus an enemy” (126).
The Navy, along with General Electric, was on a corporate war path to take out British Marconi. They signed contracts with American corporations to illegally produce patented Marconi apparatus. When Marconi took the case to the court in the case of Marconi Wireless v. Somin it was summarily decided that the U.S. government acted lawfully and only owed Marconi “just compensation” on the basis of “an exercise of the power of eminent domain” (“Patents”, 339). Soon, the U.S. had joined the war in 1917 — and like Germany and Britain in 1914, the military had come in to administer all wireless communications.
Please see part three to find out what happened to wireless telegraphy after the Great War, and to see how the Military-Industrial Complex also found its niche in the dominance of the country’s greatest media corporations.
End of World War I and the RCA Monopoly
October 1st, 2007
Inside the Marconi Oahu Building
The interior of the Kahuku Marconi Wireless building remains very much like it was during its 1914 inauguration, except now — instead of high-power transformers, wireless transmission keys, and antennae apparatus — you have above-ground pool-like structures containing shrimp krill.
Editors Note: This is part 3 in a three-part series on Marconi Wireless and government takeover over vital communications networks during times of war. I highly suggest taking a look at Part I here and Part II here before continuing. I hope you enjoy the narrative! There will be more special series’ arriving in the future!
Marconi Satellite Image, HawaiiWhat came from the war was a vast network of powerful communication hubs. During the war, these hubs were under the control of governments like never before. Unique to the U.S., when compared with other allies, was its insistence on holding on to influence over these radio holdings. Wireless had gone from a “mere adjunct to visual signaling” to a vital factor upon which armies, navies, and air forces had relied (Baker 177).
And government reliance had come at a cost so long as Marconi retained control of the patents. As General Electric was about to ship off a huge order of strategically important high-frequency alternators to British Marconi, Admiral Bullard and Captain Hooper, at the behest of President Wilson, stepped in and offered a lucrative government contract to GE. In exchange, GE would purchase American Marconi outright. In October 1919, the sale was completed and spawned the Radio Corporation of America (Harbord 60).
Guided into being by the President’s top Navy advisors, RCA provided integral services to the U.S. military – free from foreign investments or patent disputes. It also provided another outlet that was yet to be realized, but would soon have an indelible effect on American perception and ideology. In 1926, the giants of GE, Westinghouse, and RCA took their boldest step of all: they joined forces to form NBC — the first major broadcasting network.
Government and Corporate Alphabet Soups Blend (1926-1943)
As a private enterprise, NBC had some rather undeniable statist roots — after all, its parent company was GE (who most recently filed the largest tax return in history). It took over nearly a decade after FCC assumed oversight over radio corporations before it begin investigating the network’s practices. By that time, NBC had split into its “red” and “blue” holdings. Congressional hearings in 1941 only led to a perceived slackening of the anti-trust rules against NBC.
Blue Network Advertisement, 1947
If it weren’t for the Department of Justice, NBC would have likely retained its control of the Blue Network. As it turns out, in 1943, it was forced to divest from its Blue holdings (selling them to the entrepreneur behind Life Savers and former commerce underscretary, Edward J. Noble). Still, though the ties between Blue and Red remained. Noble took the networks he had acquired from NBC and formed ABC.
At the cusp of the television revolution, the Second World War had begun, but not before three corporations — ABC, NBC, and CBS had claimed the lion’s share of communications in the country. In these three networks the ties to government were undeniable. And at the outbreak of World War II, this would prove invaluable. From CBS, CEO William S. Paley served as a colonel in the psychological warfare branch in the Office of War Information; from NBC, came the stalwart ties from its past inception as a Navy-formed corporation; and at CBS, a former undersecretary of commerce and confidante of NBC at the helm.
Administration Building of the original Marconi Building (later RCA)
Administration Building of the original Marconi Building (later RCA)
These three corporations began the new era of television with a new type of psychological control over ideas and thoughts — and one more more potent than even radio had been during Marconi’s time.
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