The Radio Corporation of America, Essay Example

The Radio Corporation of America (hereinafter: RCA) was a prominent independent electronics firm. RCA’s primary historical and social impact lies in its commercialization of technologies that were vacuum-based and employed for radio transmission and reception. This essentially can be viewed as the beginning of the phenomenon of consumer electronics, as technologies began to available on a public level. RCA thus marks a complete public venture in which technologies become available to homes, and as such, RCA is an evolution of a free market system.

RCA emerged from General Electric, and this aforementioned public market was their field of interest. The possibilities of a licensing policy that “defin[ed] the industry’s product standards” (Chandler, 20) were created by RCA managers. As consequence, RCA essentially determined what kind of consumer products would be available to the American public, through its control of various patents, the licensing of these patents and deciding on such “industry standards.”

RCA expanded with the type of consumer electronics it offered; critical among these products are the phonograph and the television set. RCA essentailly opened new possibilities for consumer electronics, with an ambitious technological development plan and the fostering of new possibilities in such developments with the advent of radically different forms of technological devices. Accordingly, insofar as RCA was a consumer-based operation, this meant that technology was now being developed with the consumer in mind. In this regard, RCA can be viewed as consistent with the shift in the essence of invention and technological progress: technological breakthroughs were no longer the products of isolated inventors with ambiguous intents, but technology was now directly conceived for a consumer-based market. In essence, RCA symbolizes the linkage of technology to a free market consumption based system.

Broadcast networks are independent or autonomous radio and television stations that offer programming for a public audience. (Biagi, 12) The broadcast company essentially originated in America within the free-market capitalist framework, with private companies forming collections of radio stations to offer to the public entertainment and news and information. Thus, whereas the primary service the broadcast network provides is such information, (with the exception of government broadcasting networks) its primary intent is to generate profit and capital. According to this intent, advertising and marketing became a key means by which broadcast networks could earn profit, selling space on their airwaves to independent companies for the marketing of their products. In this regard, the broadcast network can be considered a crucial part of capitalist development, as consumption becomes the means by which such broadcast networks survive: in essence, their primary commitment is to promoting consumption, as opposed to producing quality programming.

Nevertheless, the autonomy of broadcasting networks is monitored by organizations such as the FCC, thus demonstrating a limit to the type of programs that can be presented. With the expansion of First Amendment rights and the diminishment of what is considered to be obscene, broadcasting networks over the last 70 years have begun to offer a more diverse range of programming, which both corresponds to and informs the public’s taste. Thus, while still remaining susceptible to the powers of the FCC, it has gained freedoms in what can be aired. At the same time, what is aired is determined precisely by the constant relation of advertising and programming to generate revenue. Hence, although broadcast networks have changed over the years in terms of what can be aired, and also what kind of technologies broadcast networks use, such as radio, television, and Internet, the essential connection remains between marketing and programming at the heart of American broadcasting, to the extent that such marketing determines the very possibilities of programming. In at least, this sense broadcast networks lack the power of their own autonomy.