| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920–1960. By Hugh R. Slotten. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. xviii, 308 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-6450-X.)

Hugh R. Slotten, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's history of science department, assesses the interplay between industry and government officials and points of view at a series of crucial junctures in the innovation of broadcast technology. He notes that "before the 1970s and 1980s, few government officials seriously questioned the regulatory policies established as early as the 1920s and 1930s for the broadcast industry" and describes how technical and policy experts interacted on the introduction of new radio or television technical standards over four decades. 1

Chapters begin with the role of Herbert Hoover's Department of Commerce during the initial broadcast boom. Hoover called four national radio conferences (1922–1925) to develop a regulatory approach to a totally new medium, as he operated with only limited legislative guidance before 1927. In contrast, the role of the 1927–1934 Federal Radio Commission in creating (with a 1928 AM allocation scheme still largely used today) a "radio paradise" was relatively easy thanks to legislative discretion and supportive courts. Prior to the mid-1930s, policy concerned only AM radio. . . .

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