K-State
Kansas State University's Michael Krysko, associate professor of history, has published a new book that explores radio's propensity to traverse political and cultural borders.
"Contested Airwaves: American Radio at Home and Abroad, 1914-1946," published by the University of Illinois Press, spans a tumultuous period encompassing two world wars and investigates the often-hostile reactions provoked by border-crossing broadcasts considered to be foreign, unwelcome and even threatening to many outraged and protesting listeners.
In trying to make sense of varied listener and policymaker reactions, "Contested Airwaves" considers how radio engaged the knowledge, assumptions and prejudices that fueled such animosities.
As American radio broadcasting became increasingly tethered to commercial entertainment programming, widespread opposition to non-English language broadcasting grew in intensity during the 1930s.
"Even Groucho Marx weighed in with his complaints," Krysko noted about the increasingly widespread concerns about foreign language broadcasting before the U.S. entered World War II.
According to Krysko, efforts to use broadcasting to teach languages across borders floundered in the face of the misunderstandings and prejudices that infused the radio educators' approaches. Fierce diplomatic controversies about national rights to radio frequencies and cross-border interference pit nations against each other in futile battles.
"I particularly enjoyed writing about listeners who were utterly so furious about what they heard on the radio that they took time to write some angry missive and mail it to whomever they held responsible for supposedly un-American broadcasts," Krysko said. "The emotion and hyperbole often infused into these letters often offered insight into more pervasive ideas about race, ethnicity and nationalism that ran through American society in the first half of the twentieth century."
John Brinkley, a pioneering broadcaster and nearly successful Kansas gubernatorial candidate, figures prominently in the study. He was the spark for a decade-long U.S.-Mexico radio dispute that spanned the 1930s. It erupted when he began broadcasting from south of the U.S.-Mexican border deliberately intending to interfere with some of the most popular American radio stations.
"The road to completion for this book was a really long one and I’m both delighted and relieved it’s finally finished. I first researched John Brinkley in the late 1990s, never imagining that I might someday wind up at Kansas State University just a few miles away from John Brinkley’s old stomping grounds in Milford," Krysko said.
A member of the Department of History since 2006, Krysko teaches and writes on the history of technology and U.S. foreign relations. "Contested Airwaves" is his second book and is part of the University of Illinois' series in the History of Media and Communications.