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| NBC Broadcasting in the early years of news |
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| The pioneer of Broadcasting |
November 2nd, 1920, a station from Pittsburgh the KDKA did something that no one had done before. Broadcasting a live presidential election American’s got to hear about in real time.
After that people became obsessed, so obsessed that over 500 radio stations had launched worldwide. However, a problem had occurred since there were no set rules. Radio stations would broadcast over each other which caused the frequencies to overlap. Leading to a total disaster.
With the overlap of frequencies radio stations also couldn't reach very far. Pittsburgh couldn't even reach New York.
The solution?
Connecting telephone lines so one program could air everywhere at once.
Now in 1926, GE, Westinghouse and RCA launched the Nation
al Broadcasting Company or as we all refer to it NBC.
At the time NBC had two networks, The Red network for entertainment and The Blue network for news. This was the first time Americans could hear the same program at the same time. Which made broadcasting go National.
NBC had a competitor CBS but luckily for NBC it was failing. 
The early starts of NBC news
Until...
William Paley bought it in 1928. NBC charged affiliates stations for programming, Paley saw this and
flipped this model around, CBS started to give their programming away in exchange for guaranteed ad time. What William Paley did become the blueprint for commercial broadcasting in America.
During this time the Radio Act of 1927 came into play, however in 1934 this was replaced by the FCC. Which established rules that govern broadcasting today. These rules were to help serve "the public interest." In the 1930s the radio truly was the internet of its time. For example, FDR and his fireside chats.
By 1941 the FCC decided that you can't own two networks because it was too much power, so NBC had to sell one of their networks. Which one did they choose?
The Blue Network
In 1943 NBC sold their Blue Network for $8 million dollars, by 1945 it would become ABC. Just like that the big three were born.
NBC, CBS, ABC 
The triple threat of broadcasting
Even as the trio were dominating America, media television was waiting. NBC launched a TV broadcast in 1939 at the World's Fair. After WWII, both NBC and CBS raced to get themselves on the big screen. During this time a fourth network, DuMont would try and compete but ultimately fail in 1956. Which left the big three all over again.
American Broadcasting as we know was set from then on.
Broadcasting still is so important from every streaming platform, podcast, even cable channels are in the shadows of what was built in 1920 through 1951. The Advertising Blueprint, FCC licensing system, even the idea that media should serve public interest came from this time period.
As American's we have so much technology to know what is happening at any point at any time. It's crazy that what we have now came from a presidential election and a bunch of static.
Disclaimer: I used Claude Ai for help in research and the script for my speech.
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