NextIt is either the triumph
or tragedy of the modern broadcast induast industry that a person can travel
to virtually any part of th In "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History," Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the process of settling
the frontier by Europeans ultimately erased the cultural and regional distinctions
that individuals brought to the frontier. The harshness of frontier life required
old practices to be abandoned and created new American institutions. The new
ideas, lifestyles, government, religions, and other phenomena that developed
on the frontier were influenced by their European origins, but they evolved
in ways that made them uniquely American.[1]
Turner saw the frontier as both the place and the process by which American
society developed its unique characteristics. One can view the development of
the broadcast industry in similar terms. Each technological development enabled
additional physical areas of the airwaves to be explored, then occupied, by
various man-made communication devices. As the successive frontier areas of
North America were populated by non-indigenous people, so each frequency in
the spectrum has been utilized by new broadcast technology. With the settling
of each frequency in the spectrum, the world comes closer and closer to a universal
culture, very similar to Turner's description of the making of the unique aspects
of America. As a process, broadcast technology has revolutionized every aspect
of life for all Americans and the vast majority of the rest of the planet.[2]
For Turner, the frontier ended in 1889, the year the frontier's population exceed
the geographer's definition of two inhabitants per square mile. Therefore, a
narrow reading of Turner would preclude any discussion of twentieth century
developments such as the broadcast industry. By adopting a broader perspective
of the frontier, as many later historians have, technological phenomena such
as broadcasting can be explained as frontier phenomena.[3]
Walter Prescott Webb argued that North America represents only one aspect of
a much broader concept of the frontier. For Webb, the story of the American
frontier began much earlier and ended much later than Turner proposed. According
to Webb, to understand America, one first must look to pre-frontier Europe.
By 1500, Europe had exhausted its land base, which caused it to become stagnant
economically and socially. The opening of the North American frontier by European
explorers created a 400 year boom time in history. As a result of the great
wealth of the North American frontier, all of Europe's social, political, and
economic institutions experienced dramatic evolution in response to the windfalls
of the frontier. Of course, America experienced the greatest windfall from the
North American frontier, developing unique institutions as a result. Webb argued
that only by placing America in a global context can one understand the effect
of the frontier on its institutions and character.[4]
In temporal terms, Webb's concept of the frontier fits the broadcast industry
better than Turner's. Webb chose 1930, the year that North America's man to
land ratio exceeded that of Europe's before the opening of the frontier, as
his date for the closing of the frontier. Because the broadcast industry's basic
techniques and technologies had been developed by 1930, the broadcast industry
can be better explained as a legitimate frontier phenomenon using Webb's expanded
time frame. However, Webb's explicit suspicion of science and technology, combined
with his insistence that the frontier was land-based (and therefore finite),
limits the ability to view the broadcast industry solely in Webb's framework.
Furthermore, in direct opposition to Webb's definition of the frontier as ceasing
by 1930, the broadcast industry has continued to expand and develop in a dynamic
manner despite being a boom-born institution.[5]
David M. Potter may provide a more useful framework for understanding the broadcast
industry as a frontier phenomenon. In People of Plenty, Potter argued that Turner
and Webb had both misunderstood the true nature of the historical forces that
have shaped America. Potter accused Turner and Webb of ascribing an almost mystical
power to the land of the frontier that prevented them from a complete understanding
of its true role in the American history. According to Potter, it is not the
frontier experience per se that has influenced America, but the economic abundance
that the frontier held. Potter argued that the unique qualities of American
institutions have developed because of the abundance in resources that the frontier
provided and which allowed America to have an expanding and dynamic economy.
The continually expanding economy provided America the luxury to develop in
ways drastically different from those of Europe.[6]
Both Turner and Webb warned that America's challenge was to retain its unique
and superior characteristics in a frontier less world. This warning was predicated
on the idea that it was exclusively the existence of a geographic frontier that
shaped the character and institutions of America. Potter countered this argument
with the idea that America's challenge is in sustaining an economy that will
support its unique institutions. A technological frontier, like that created
by the broadcast industry, is one possible substitute for the lack of a geographic
frontier.[7]
Potter stated that all important historical forces manifest themselves in a
defining institution. For example, the church is a defining institution of religion.
Abundance, as a historical force, finds its defining institution in advertising.
Theoretically, advertising is necessary only when supply exceeds demand. When
the economy is able to produce more than the population can consume, competition
between producers necessitates product differentiation. Advertising is the medium
that creates the needed differentiation in the minds of the consumers. Therefore,
according to Potter, advertising is the ultimate expression of abundance.[8]
The broadcast industry has proved to be the greatest medium for advertising
known in human history. Moreover, because advertising is the primary means of
revenue for the broadcast industry, it has virtually always acted as the catalyst
for the industry's every development. If advertising is the signifying American
institution and the broadcast industry its primary medium, it follows that to
understand American culture, one must study radio and television. Of course,
many become uncomfortable when discussing the idea that anything that is presented
on television or radio is culture, preferring to direct attention to classical
music, ballet, or another form of high culture.
Potter stated that advertising--and its medium, broadcasting--were the least
understood aspects of American culture. In the decades since, much scholarship
has been devoted to many aspects of popular culture. The idea that popular forms
of entertainment, such as radio and television, are legitimate cultural forms
and therefore worthy of study is not one that has developed without a generous
helping of controversy. Although popular culture studies gained a significant
measure of legitimacy in the 1970s and 1980s, such studies remain an area of
academia that many traditionalists consider highly suspect. Despite these concerns,
one likely would learn much less about America's culture by studying its orchestras
and ballet companies than by studying its television and popular music.
In order to understand popular culture, one must first dispel the notion that
it is harmful to society. Since the development of mass communication technologies
in the late nineteenth century, many people have feared how popular culture
might negatively influence society. This point of view reached its zenith in
the 1950s with the publication of Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent,
which accused popular culture of creating juvenile delinquency, sexual perversion,
and a host of other social ills.[9]
Despite Wertham's warnings, popular culture ironically began to be taken more
seriously in the 1950s with the ideas of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan's first publication,
The Mechanical Bride, expressed the idea that all forms of communication, whether
popular or serious, are art, and therefore worthy of serious consideration.
In his seminal work, Understanding Media, McLuhan expanded this idea to observe
that mass culture (all non-serious cultural forms), is not an evil force in
society, but merely an extension of the human psyche. Mass culture had come
to represent a new way of communicating for human society and, as such, was
neither good nor bad. McLuhan's ideas shifted the focus from content analysis
to analysis of the media themselves. As a result, the negative term mass culture
was replaced by the more neutral popular culture.[10]
Because of Mcluhan, many writers--both popular and academic--were beginning
to take popular culture seriously in the late 1950s. It was not until Herbert
Gans published Popular Culture and High Culture that this area of study attained
an intellectual foundation and focus. In many ways, Gans' book laid the groundwork
for all pop culture writing that followed.[11]
Gans argued that human society has traditionally defined culture in terms of
social class. Gans identified high culture as the art forms that generally have
been patronized only by the upper classes, such as ballet, opera, and classical
music. All the cultural forms of the middle or lower classes are considered
low culture or popular culture. Gans contended that all cultural forms are equal
and the stratification of culture along class lines is merely a reflection of
the hegemony of the economic elite. Gans argued that to understand a culture,
one must understand not only the culture of the economic elite, but also the
cultural forms of all of society's classes. Gans suggested that popular culture
forms are probably a more effective yardstick of a society's attitudes and concerns
than those of high culture.[12]
With this distinction in mind, an examination of radio and television is perhaps
one of the best ways to understand the culture of Oklahoma. Oklahoma, as a state,
has existed during roughly the same time frame as that of the broadcast industry.
Oklahoma began its road to statehood in 1889, and Marconi tested his first radio
device in 1897. As Oklahoma developed as a state, the broadcast industry developed
from a hobby among a very few individuals to a multinational industry that now
touches virtually every living person.
Oklahoma's broadcast industry has developed in a somewhat predictable pattern,
much of which the history of the American frontier demonstrates. In its primary
stage, from 1915 to 1930, the broadcast industry developed out of the same sense
of optimism and limitless possibilities that drove people to settle the frontier.
Like many other industries that developed on the American frontier, the broadcast
industry was made possible by using technology adapted from Europe. In its secondary
stage, from 1930 to 1960, the broadcast industry brought wealth and prominence
to many Oklahomans much like those settling the frontier experienced. In its
tertiary stage, 1960 to present, Oklahoma's broadcast industry followed the
patterns of many other frontier industries by becoming dominated by external
capital, ownership, and management.
Few stories are simple, and understanding the story of the development of the
Oklahoma broadcast industry as a frontier phenomenon and musicians' role in
this process defies easy explanation. If frontier historian Ray Allen Billington's
assertion that the frontier exists for the stripping away of resources for Eastern
processing and sale is true, then understanding what resource is utilized by
the broadcast industry is problematic. Only up to a point is one able to argue
that musicians were a resource utilized by the the Eastern broadcast industry
because, after 1970, few Oklahoma musicians had access to local broadcast stations.
If musicians no longer are actively developed or promoted by local broadcasting
outlets for export to the larger national markets, how does broadcasting remain
a frontier phenomenon?[13]
The answer lies in an understanding of what the broadcast industry's primary
resource is, and how that resource has changed over time. In the early stages
of the industry, talent was the raw material extracted on the frontier and exported
to the East (or West) for processing and consumption nationally. As the broadcast
industry became more centralized, it no longer needed to search the frontier
for its performers. The centralization of the broadcast industry caused a shift
in how it valued the frontier areas. After centralization occurred, the broadcasting
industry valued frontier areas only for their audience.
Audience is the most important and valuable resource for the broadcast industry.
A station's or program's audience-share influences every aspect of the broadcast
industry, from what types of programs are produced and who performs in them
to how products are sold and how much money stations can charge to advertise
the products. The audience ultimately determines all value in the broadcast
industry. Similar to many aspects of the frontier economy, as the broadcast
industry in Oklahoma developed and became profitable, interests outside of Oklahoma
increasingly came to determine how the local industry operated.
From the 1890s to the 1990s, the broadcast industry progressed from a highly
disorganized and decentralized industry characterized by an acute attention
to local markets to a highly organized and centralized industry characterized
by acute attention to national and global markets. In the broadcast industry
of today, the creation and maintenance of national and global markets can rarely
afford the luxury of excessive attention to local markets. The broadcast industry
is geared toward making profits based on economies of scale. When sales and
profits must be based on hundreds of millions rather than tens of thousands
of dollars, regional or local distinctions cannot be considered. Because of
the standardization of programming that has accompanied the global expansion
of the broadcast industry, the same industry that first celebrated regional
idiosyncrasies ironically now hastens to erase them.[14]
One should not bemoan the changes that the broadcast industry has brought about
in Oklahoma's culture, for there are numerous benefits to Oklahomans of a national
and global broadcast industry. Although programming decisions are made by station
management, programming ultimately reflects the tastes of the audience, which
is free to tune to other stations. With the advent of network broadcasting,
Oklahomans apparently began to hold Eastern-style programs in such esteem that
few complained when the local, more indigenous style programs ceased to be aired.
Over the years, this pattern of marginalizing indigenous culture seems to have
repeated itself with each new phase in broadcasting technology; with each new
wave of technology, regional culture has continued to erode. Despite the increasingly
homogeneous broadcast industry, many of the unique qualities of Oklahoma culture
persist and likely will continue to evolve in ways uniquely Oklahoman.
Next
[1] Frederick Jackson Turner,"The
Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Annual Report of
the American Historical Association for the Year 1893, (Washington: American
Historical Association, 1893), 190-227.
[2] Ibid, 201.
[3] Ibid, 200.
[4] Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952),
1-28.
[5] Webb, The Great Frontier, 18-19, 288-294.
[6] David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 75-80, 142-166.
[7] Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History,"
227; Webb, The Great Frontier, 413-418; Potter, People of Plenty, 111-127.
[8] Potter, People of Plenty, 166-188.
[9] Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart, 1954);
James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile in the
1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 109-126.
[10] Marshal McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, (New
York: Vanguard Press, 1951); Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension
of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), 3-20.
[11] Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation
of Taste (New York: Basic Books, 1974) i-xi, 3-45.
[12] Musicologist Paul Honigsheim and others surely hinted at the equality of
cultural forms a decade or more before Gans. K. Peter Etzkorn, ed., Music and
Society: The Later Writing of Paul Honigsheim (New York: John Whiley and Sons,
1973), 201-230; Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture, 3-45.
[13] Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage, (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1966), 153-179.
[14] Broadcasting, Nov. 24, 1986, 63-88.
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