American newspapers have faced competition from new media for over
ninety years. Today digital media challenge the printed word. In the
1920s, broadcast radio was the threatening upstart. At the time,
newspaper publishers of all sizes turned threat into opportunity by
establishing their own stations. Many, such as the Chicago Tribune's
WGN, are still in operation. By 1940 newspapers owned 30 percent of
America's radio stations. This new type of enterprise, the multimedia
corporation, troubled those who feared its power to control the flow of
news and information. In Sound Business, historian Michael Stamm
traces how these corporations and their critics reshaped the ways
Americans received the news.
Stamm is attuned to a neglected aspect of U.S. media history: the role
newspaper owners played in communications from the dawn of radio to the
rise of television. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, he
recounts the controversies surrounding joint newspaper and radio
operations. These companies capitalized on synergies between print and
broadcast production. As their advertising revenue grew, so did concern
over their concentrated influence. Federal policymakers, especially
during the New Deal, responded to widespread concerns about the
consequences of media consolidation by seeking to limit and even ban
cross ownership. The debates between corporations, policymakers, and
critics over how to regulate these new kinds of media businesses
ultimately structured the channels of information distribution in the
United States and determined who would control the institutions
undergirding American society and politics.
Sound Business is a timely examination of the connections between
media ownership, content, and distribution, one that both expands our
understanding of mid-twentieth-century America and offers lessons for
the digital age.
