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Weekly UpdatesAfrican American families, lowest on the economic ladder, were the last to adopt radio. Although the Census data on race and radio ownership are lacking after 1940, it is reasonable to conclude that a majority of African American families did not own radios until well into the 1940s and so were effectively disenfranchised from the listening audience during much of radio's Golden Age. While radio programs of the 1930s may have served to bring a diverse White population together as a single national community, African Americans were largely excluded, not only as performers but also as listeners.
Notes
(1) In addition to the five stations licensed to broadcast in 1921, listeners could also receive signals from several experimental stations, many of which would later become full-fledged broadcast outlets.
(2) The overall radio adoption rates given by industry sources (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 862) vary somewhat from those reported by the U.S. Census. Some broadcasters took issue with the number of radio households reported in the 1930 and 1940 Census and revised the figures upward. A survey conducted by CBS purported to show nearly 2.5 million families with radio had not been enumerated in the 1930 Census, and the National Association of Broadcasters estimated that the 1940 Census was undercounted by almost 800 thousand radio households (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975, Pt. 2, p. 793). Thus, industry sources report overall radio penetration for 1930 as 45.8% while the U.S. Census reports 40.3%. For the years 1940 and 1950, the numbers are much closer with the Census data indicating slightly higher rates of overall adoption than industry figures. At least some of the discrepancy may have due to the different times during the year that the data were selected.
(3) These censuses were chosen since they measured the three decades in which radio adoption took place (by 1950, nearly every U.S. household was radio equipped). During the 1920s, industry sources reported that the percentage of households with radio grew from .2% in 1922 to 10.1% in 1925, 23.6% in 1927, and 34.6% in 1929 (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 862).
(4) In both the 1930 and 1940 Censuses, radio ownership information was inexplicably unrecorded for a relatively small percentage of households. For example, in 1930 this amounted to 2.8% of all households. Percentages in this paper have been calculated based on the number of reporting households.
(5) The percentages are based on the 1940 Census and varied somewhat from 1930 to 1950 as population gradually shifted from the Northeast and North Central states to the South and West. By 1950, the West had 14% of U.S. households. The states were divided into regions as follows: Northeast (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont), North Central (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin), South (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia), and West (Arizona, California Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1953b, Vol. I, pp. 1-8).
(6) In 1950, this definition was modified slightly to allow some unincorporated suburban areas to be included as urban.
(7) By 1950, the Census Bureau had begun to recognize that its system of racial classification lacked "scientific precision," but argued that it was derived from the concept of race "commonly accepted by the general public" (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1953b, Vol. II, Pt. 1. p. 35). Compounding this strategy's vagaries was the fact that the determination of "race" and "color" was generally based on the enumerator's personal observation rather than in response to a question.
(8) The Census Bureau used the term "Negro" to describe those whom enumerators determined were of African American descent. In this paper, the original term has been retained when directly reporting Census findings; otherwise the term "African American" is used.
(9) In 1930 and 1940, those classified as "Whites" represented 89.8% of the enumerated U.S. population. "Negroes" constituted 9.7% in 1930 and 9.8% in 1940 and "other races" made up the remaining .5% and .4%, respectively (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1944, p. 15).
(10) In 1930, the Census listed the South's population as 8,653,481 households, or 28.9% of the total U.S. population of 29,904,663 households. There were 2,803,756 Negro households in the United States. 9.4% of the total U.S.). So while the South had less than one third of all U.S. households, over three-quarters (2,193,357 or 78.2%) of the nation's Negro households were there (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1933, pp. 52-53).
(11) The racial breakdown of all households in 1940 was as follows: The Northeast had 28.9% of all White households, 10.8% of all Nonwhite households, and 27.2% of all U.S. households. The North Central region had 33.6% of all White, 12.1% of all Nonwhite, and 31.6% of all U.S. households. The South had 24.9% of all White, 73.1% of all Nonwhite, and 29.4% of all U.S. households. The West had 12.7% of all White, 4.0% of all Nonwhite, and 11.9% of all U.S. households.
(12) This pattern continued well into the 1940s. A 1946 survey conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on radio use in rural communities found that among its national sample of rural dwellers only 21% of Negroes owned a working radio compared to 79% of Whites (p. 57).
(13) Radio generally followed the S-shaped curve found in the introduction of new technologies described by Rogers (1995, p. 257) in which adoption rises slowly at first, accelerates to a maximum until half the individuals in a system have adopted, and then increases at a slower rate.
(14) This was an average cost--radio sets were available in a wide range of prices and designs. For example, the 1925 Sears catalog featured models ranging from a high-end $150 (or $20 a month after $30 down) to a basic headphones-only two-tube set for $32.50 (Sears Roebuck, 1925/1926, pp. 548-551). Crystal sets were sometimes advertised in the 1920s for as little as $15, but these had no tubes, were relatively indiscriminate in what they tuned, and generally required the listener be located within 5 miles of the station.
(15) As a matter of comparison, it took 15 years for radio to reach 75% of U.S. homes, but it took television only 8 years to reach that level.
(16) The disparity in incomes is somewhat misleading as farm families often grew much of their own food. Yet the fact remains that rural families had less hard currency to buy consumer items.
(17) Large-scale African American migration to the North began early in the century but slowed during the Depression years of the 1930s. It increased again during World War II with the demand for wartime labor.
(18) This conclusion is supported by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) study on radio use in rural communities in 1946. It found that "the lower the income of the household, the more likely it is to be in the group that have never had radios" (p. 47).
(19) When the Federal Radio Commission was organized in 1927, there were 732 stations licensed to operate. By November, 1929, that number had been reduced to 584. While some stations simply quit operating in the face of tough new FRC rules, others were forced off by the refusal of the FRC to renew their licenses. Denial of licenses was based on a case-by-case review and included both technical problems and programming issues. See U.S. Federal Radio Commission (1929).
(20) The states assigned to each zone were as follows: Zone 1 : Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and Vermont; Zone 2: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia; Zone 3: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas; Zone 4: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin; and Zone 5: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (U.S. Federal Radio Commission, 1928, pp. 64-65).
(21) The low-voltage tube was designed to reduce power consumption and lengthen battery life. Operating with filament voltages as low as 1.5 volts, they drew much less current than older types. According to a 1939 RCA farm radio sales brochure, these tubes eliminated the need for charging by extending battery life "up to 1000 operating hours." The implication was that battery drain was so low that consumers could economically switch to more convenient disposable batteries.
(22) According to 1930 Census figures, only 47.8% of the "native White, native parents" population lived in urban areas compared with 73.4% of the "native White, foreign or mixed parentage" group and 80.3% of the "foreign-born White" group (U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 1933 p. 19).
(23) The findings of the previously cited 1946 USDA study on rural radio audiences support this conclusion. When rural Negroes who had never owned a radio were asked why they did not own one, 67% cited economic reasons (p. 54).
References
Abbot, W. (1937). Handbook of broadcasting. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Barfield, R. E. (1996). Listening to radio, 1920-1950. Westport, CT.: Praeger.
Barnouw, E. (1966). A Tower in Babel: A history of broadcasting in the United States: To 1933 (Vol. 1). New York: Oxford University Press.
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