(Login Nafana) Forum Owner Posted Apr 3, 2008 2:58 AM
Early broadcasting was a chaotic time because the government wasn't prepared to handle it. Before 1920 all radio was point-to-point communications- so the idea of broadcasting entertainment out to the public was something new and the government didn't know how to deal with it. The first broadcast station KDKA, was given a license by the Dept of Commerce which handled ship and shore station licenses. KDKA was assigned to operate on 833-Khz, a vacant frequency a little above the usual ship and shore stations. Once the idea of broadcasting begin to catch on other people wanted to build stations to broadcast so they were given the same frequency- the "broadcasting frequency". Ofcourse this soon resulted in chaos as more and more station went on the air and began interfering with each other. Finally in 1923 Congress reacted to all the complaints from broadcasters and listeners and established the Federal Radio Commission (forerunner to the FCC) to regulate broadcasting. The FRC created a band of frequencies from 550-1300-Khz so stations could spread out and wouldn't interfere with each other as much. The larger stations were assigned the lower frequencies while the smaller low-powered stations were put on the upper frequencies which didn't go as far. Eventually most of the low power stations were weeded off as broadcasting became a business with lots of new rules about how it was to be done.