Broadcasting is the
distribution of
audio or video content to a dispersed
audience via any electronic
mass communications medium, but typically one using the
electromagnetic spectrum (
radio waves), in a
one-to-many model.
Broadcasting began with
AM radio
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transmis ...
, which came into popular use around 1920 with the spread of
vacuum tube radio transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the ...
s and
receivers. Before this, all forms of electronic communication (early
radio,
telephone, and
telegraph) were
one-to-one, with the message intended for a single recipient. The term ''broadcasting'' evolved from its use as the agricultural method of sowing seeds in a field by casting them broadly about.
It was later adopted for describing the widespread distribution of information by printed materials or by telegraph. Examples applying it to "one-to-many" radio transmissions of an individual station to multiple listeners appeared as early as 1898.
Over the air broadcasting is usually associated with
radio and
television, though more recently, both radio and television transmissions have begun to be distributed by cable (
cable television). The receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively small subset; the point is that anyone with the appropriate receiving technology and equipment (e.g., a radio or television set) can receive the signal. The field of broadcasting includes both government-managed services such as
public radio,
community radio and
public television
Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...
, and private
commercial radio
Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship. It was the United States′ first model of radio (a ...
and
commercial television
Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship. It was the United States′ first model of radio (a ...
. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, title 47, part 97 defines "broadcasting" as "transmissions intended for reception by the general public, either direct or relayed". Private or two-way
telecommunications transmissions do not qualify under this definition. For example,
amateur ("ham") and
citizens band
Citizens band radio (also known as CB radio), used in many countries, is a land mobile radio system, a system allowing short-distance person-to-many persons bidirectional voice communication among individuals, using two way radios operating on ...
(CB) radio operators are not allowed to broadcast. As defined, "transmitting" and "broadcasting" are not the same.
Transmission of radio and television programs from a radio or television station to home receivers by
radio waves is referred to as "over the air" (OTA) or
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
broadcasting and in most countries requires a
broadcasting license. Transmissions using a wire or cable, like
cable television (which also retransmits OTA stations with their
consent
Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions as used in such fields as the law, medicine, research, and sexual relationships. Consent as und ...
), are also considered broadcasts but do not necessarily require a license (though in some countries, a license is required). In the 2000s, transmissions of television and radio programs via
streaming digital technology have increasingly been referred to as broadcasting as well.
History
The earliest broadcasting consisted of sending telegraph signals over the airwaves, using
Morse code, a system developed in the 1830s by
Samuel Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...
,
physicist Joseph Henry and
Alfred Vail
Alfred Lewis Vail (September 25, 1807 – January 18, 1859) was an American machinist and inventor. Along with Samuel Morse, Vail was central in developing and commercializing American telegraphy between 1837 and 1844.
Vail and Morse were the f ...
. They developed an
electrical telegraph system which sent pulses of
electric current along wires which controlled an
electromagnet that was located at the receiving end of the telegraph system. A code was needed to transmit natural language using only these pulses, and the silence between them. Morse therefore developed the forerunner to modern
International Morse code. This was particularly important for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication, but it became increasingly important for business and general news reporting, and as an arena for personal communication by radio amateurs.
In 1894, Italian inventor
Guglielmo Marconi began developing a wireless communication using the then-newly discovered phenomenon of
radio waves, showing by 1901 that they could be transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean. This was the start of
wireless telegraphy
Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for ...
by radio. Audio radio broadcasting began experimentally in the first decade of the 20th century. On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in
Glace Bay
Glace Bay (Scottish Gaelic: ''Glasbaidh'') is a community in the eastern part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, Canada. It forms part of the general area referred to as Industrial Cape Breton.
Formerly an incorporated ...
, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the world's first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. In 1904, a commercial service was established to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which incorporated them into their onboard newspapers.
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
accelerated the development of radio for
military communications. After the war, commercial radio
AM broadcasting began in the 1920s and became an important mass medium for entertainment and news.
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
again accelerated the development of radio for the wartime purposes of aircraft and land communication, radio navigation, and radar. Development of stereo
FM broadcasting of radio began in the 1930s in the United States and the 1970s in the United Kingdom, displacing AM as the dominant commercial standard.
On 25 March 1925,
John Logie Baird demonstrated the transmission of moving pictures at the London department store
Selfridges
Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of high-end department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridg ...
. Baird's device relied upon the
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk (sometimes Anglicized as Nipkov disk; patented in 1884), also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, rotating, geometrically operating image scanning device, patented in 1885 by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a funda ...
and thus became known as the
mechanical television
Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is a television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a si ...
. It formed the basis of experimental broadcasts done by the
British Broadcasting Corporation beginning on 30 September 1929. However, for most of the 20th century, televisions depended on the
cathode ray tube invented by
Karl Braun. The first version of such a television to show promise was produced by
Philo Farnsworth
Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television. He is best known for his 1927 invention of t ...
and demonstrated to his family on 7 September 1927. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, interrupted experiments resumed and television became an important home entertainment broadcast medium, using
VHF and
UHF spectrum.
Satellite broadcasting was initiated in the 1960s and moved into general industry usage in the 1970s, with DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellites) emerging in the 1980s.
Originally all broadcasting was composed of
analog signals using
analog transmission
Analog transmission is a transmission method of conveying information using a continuous signal which varies in amplitude, phase, or some other property in proportion to that information. It could be the transfer of an analog signal, using an an ...
techniques but in the 2000s, broadcasters
switched to
digital signals using
digital transmission
Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...
. An analog signal is any
continuous signal
In mathematical dynamics, discrete time and continuous time are two alternative frameworks within which variables that evolve over time are modeled.
Discrete time
Discrete time views values of variables as occurring at distinct, separate "po ...
representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an analog
audio signal, the instantaneous signal
voltage varies continuously with the
pressure of the sound waves. In contrast, a
digital signal represents the original time-varying quantity as a
sampled
Sample or samples may refer to:
Base meaning
* Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set
* Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal
* Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
sequence of
quantized values which imposes some
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
and
dynamic range constraints on the representation. In general usage, broadcasting most frequently refers to the transmission of information and entertainment programming from various sources to the general public.
*
Analog audio
Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which, among many possibilities, allows analog audio for later playback.
Analog audio recording began with mechanical systems such as the phonautograph and phonograph. L ...
radio (AM, FM) vs.
Digital audio radio (
HD Radio),
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB),
Satellite radio and
Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM)
*
Analog television vs.
Digital television
*
Wireless
The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks more than quadrupled during the two decades from 1986 to 2007, from 432
exabytes
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
of (optimally compressed) information, to 1.9
zettabytes.
["The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information"](_blank)
, Martin Hilbert and Priscila López (2011), Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
, 332(6025), 60–65; free access to the article through here: martinhilbert.net/WorldInfoCapacity.html This is the information equivalent of 55 newspapers per person per day in 1986, and 175 newspapers per person per day by 2007.
Methods
In a broadcast system, the central high-powered
broadcast tower transmits a high-frequency
electromagnetic wave to numerous low-powered receivers. The high-frequency wave sent by the tower is modulated with a signal containing visual or audio information. The receiver is then
tuned so as to pick up the high-frequency wave and a
demodulator is used to retrieve the signal containing the visual or audio information. The broadcast signal can be either analog (signal is varied continuously with respect to the information) or digital (information is encoded as a set of discrete values).
Historically, there have been several methods used for broadcasting
electronic media
Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created digitally, but do not require el ...
audio and video to the general public:
*
Telephone broadcasting (1881–1932): the earliest form of electronic broadcasting (not counting data services offered by stock
telegraph companies
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
from 1867, if
ticker-tapes are excluded from the definition). Telephone broadcasting began with the advent of
Théâtrophone ("Theatre Phone") systems, which were telephone-based distribution systems allowing subscribers to listen to live
opera and
theatre performances over telephone lines, created by French inventor
Clément Ader in 1881. Telephone broadcasting also grew to include
telephone newspaper Telephone Newspapers, introduced in the 1890s, transmitted news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. They were the first example of electronic broadcasting, although only a few were established, most commonly in European cities. T ...
services for news and entertainment
programming which were introduced in the 1890s, primarily located in large
European cities. These telephone-based
subscription services
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...
were the first examples of electrical/electronic broadcasting and offered a wide variety of programming.
*
Radio broadcasting (experimentally from 1906, commercially from 1920);
audio signals sent through the air as
radio waves
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz ( GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (s ...
from a
transmitter, picked up by an
antenna and sent to a
receiver.
Radio stations
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio sta ...
can be linked in
radio networks to broadcast common
radio programs, either in
broadcast syndication,
simulcast or
subchannels.
*
Television broadcasting (telecast), experimentally from 1925,
commercially from the 1930s: an extension of radio to include
video signals.
*
Cable radio
Cable radio or cable FM is a concept similar to that of cable television, bringing radio broadcasting into homes and businesses via coaxial cable. It is generally used for the same reason as cable TV was in its early days when it was "community ...
(also called "cable FM", from 1928) and
cable television (from 1932): both via
coaxial cable, originally serving principally as transmission media for programming produced at either radio or
television stations, but later expanding into a broad universe of cable-originated
channels
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
.
*
Direct-broadcast satellite
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...
(DBS) (from c. 1974) and
satellite radio (from c. 1990): meant for direct-to-home broadcast programming (as opposed to studio network uplinks and down-links), provides a mix of traditional radio or television broadcast programming, or both, with dedicated satellite radio programming. (See also:
Satellite television)
*
Webcasting
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...
of video/television (from c. 1993) and audio/radio (from c. 1994) streams: offers a mix of traditional radio and television station broadcast programming with dedicated
Internet radio
Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
and
Internet television.
Economic models
There are several means of providing financial support for continuous broadcasting:
*
Commercial broadcasting: for-profit, usually privately owned stations, channels, networks, or services providing programming to the public, supported by the sale of air time to advertisers for
radio or
television advertisements during or in breaks between programs, often in combination with cable or
pay cable subscription fees.
*
Public broadcasting: usually
non-profit, publicly owned stations or networks supported by license fees, government funds, grants from foundations, corporate
underwriting, audience memberships, contributions or a combination of these.
* Community broadcasting: a form of
mass media in which a
television station, or a
radio station, is owned, operated or
programmed, by a community group to provide programs of local interest known as
local programming. Community stations are most commonly operated by
non-profit groups or
cooperatives; however, in some cases they may be operated by a local
college or
university, a
cable company or a municipal government.
* Internet Webcast: the audience pays to recharge and buy virtual gifts for the anchor, and the platform converts the gifts into virtual currency. The anchor withdraws the virtual currency, which is drawn by the platform. If the anchor belongs to a trade union, it will be settled by the trade union and the live broadcasting platform, and the anchor will get the salary and part of the bonus. This is the most common profit model of live broadcast products.
Broadcasters may rely on a combination of these
business models. For example, in the United States,
National Public Radio (NPR) and the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS, television) supplement public membership subscriptions and grants with funding from the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, ...
(CPB), which is allocated bi-annually by Congress. US public broadcasting corporate and charitable grants are generally given in consideration of
underwriting spot
An underwriting spot, known as sponsor credit ( ja, 提供クレジット, Teikyō kurejitto) in Japan, is an announcement made on public broadcasting outlets, especially in the United States, in exchange for funding. These spots usually men ...
s which differ from commercial advertisements in that they are governed by specific
FCC
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdictio ...
restrictions, which prohibit the advocacy of a product or a "call to action".
Recorded and live forms
The first regular television broadcasts started in 1937. Broadcasts can be classified as "recorded" or "live". The former allows correcting errors, and removing superfluous or undesired material, rearranging it, applying
slow-motion and repetitions, and other techniques to enhance the program. However, some live events like
sports television can include some of the aspects including slow-motion clips of important goals/hits, etc., in between the
live television telecast. American radio-network broadcasters habitually forbade prerecorded broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s, requiring radio programs played for the Eastern and Central
time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it ...
s to be repeated three hours later for the Pacific time zone (See:
Effects of time on North American broadcasting). This restriction was dropped for special occasions, as in the case of the German
dirigible airship ''
Hindenburg'' disaster at
Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, prerecorded broadcasts from war correspondents were allowed on U.S. radio. In addition, American radio programs were recorded for playback by
Armed Forces Radio
The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas. Headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, AFN's broadcast operations, which i ...
radio stations around the world.
A disadvantage of recording first is that the public may learn the outcome of an event before the recording is broadcast, which may be a "
spoiler". Prerecording may be used to prevent
announcer
An announcer is a voice artist who relays information to the audience of a broadcast media programme or live event.
Television and other media
Some announcers work in television production, radio or filmmaking, usually providing narration ...
s from deviating from an officially approved
script during a
live radio broadcast, as occurred with
propaganda broadcasts from Germany in the 1940s and with
Radio Moscow
Radio Moscow ( rus, Pадио Москва, r=Radio Moskva), also known as Radio Moscow World Service, was the official international broadcasting station of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1993. It was reorganized with a new name ...
in the 1980s. Many events are advertised as being live, although they are often "recorded live" (sometimes called "
live-to-
tape"). This is particularly true of performances of musical artists on radio when they visit for an in-studio
concert performance. Similar situations have occurred in
television production ("''
The Cosby Show
''The Cosby Show'' is an American television sitcom co-created by and starring Bill Cosby, which aired Thursday nights for eight seasons on NBC between September 20, 1984, until April 30, 1992. The show focuses on an upper middle-class Africa ...
'' is recorded in front of a
live television studio
audience") and
news broadcasting.
A broadcast may be distributed through several physical means. If coming directly from the
radio studio at a single station or
television station, it is sent through the
studio/transmitter link to the
transmitter and hence from the
television antenna
A television antenna (TV aerial) is an antenna specifically designed for use with a television receiver (TV) to receive over-the-air broadcast television signals from a television station. Television reception is dependent upon the antenna as ...
located on the
radio masts and towers out to the world. Programming may also come through a
communications satellite, played either live or recorded for later transmission. Networks of stations may
simulcast the same programming at the same time, originally via
microwave link, now usually by satellite. Distribution to stations or networks may also be through physical media, such as
magnetic tape,
compact disc (CD),
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
, and sometimes other formats. Usually these are included in another broadcast, such as when
electronic news gathering (ENG) returns a story to the station for inclusion on a
news programme.
The final leg of broadcast distribution is how the signal gets to the listener or viewer. It may come over the air as with a
radio station or
television station to an
antenna and
radio receiver, or may come through
cable television or
cable radio
Cable radio or cable FM is a concept similar to that of cable television, bringing radio broadcasting into homes and businesses via coaxial cable. It is generally used for the same reason as cable TV was in its early days when it was "community ...
(or "
wireless cable") via the station or directly from a network. The
Internet may also bring either
internet radio
Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
or
streaming media television to the recipient, especially with
multicasting allowing the signal and
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
to be shared. The term "
broadcast network
A terrestrial network (or broadcast network in the United States) is a group of radio stations, television stations, or other electronic media outlets, that form an agreement to air, or broadcast, content from a centralized source. For example, ...
" is often used to distinguish networks that broadcast an over-the-air television signals that can be received using a
tuner (television)
A tuner is a subsystem that receives radio frequency (RF) transmissions, such as FM broadcasting, and converts the selected carrier frequency and its associated bandwidth into a fixed frequency that is suitable for further processing, usually be ...
inside a
television set with a
television antenna
A television antenna (TV aerial) is an antenna specifically designed for use with a television receiver (TV) to receive over-the-air broadcast television signals from a television station. Television reception is dependent upon the antenna as ...
from so-called networks that are broadcast only via
cable television (
cablecast) or
satellite television that uses a
dish antenna. The term "
broadcast television" can refer to the
television programs of such networks.
Social impact
The sequencing of content in a broadcast is called a
schedule. As with all technological endeavors, a number of technical terms and
slang have developed. A list of these terms can be found at
List of broadcasting terms.
Television and
radio programs are distributed through radio broadcasting or
cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
, often both simultaneously. By coding signals and having a
cable converter box
A cable converter box or television converter box is an electronic tuning device that transposes/converts channels from a cable television service to an analog RF signal on a single channel, usually VHF or 4, or to a different output for digi ...
with
decoding equipment in
homes, the latter also enables
subscription-based channels,
pay-tv
Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, but ...
and
pay-per-view services. In his essay,
John Durham Peters John Durham Peters (born 1958) is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. A media historian and social theorist, he has authored a number of noted scholarly works. His first book, '' Speaking int ...
wrote that
communication is a tool used for dissemination. Peters stated, "
Dissemination
To disseminate (from lat. ''disseminare'' "scattering seeds"), in the field of communication, is to broadcast a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience.
Meaning
Dissemination takes on the theory of the traditional view ...
is a lens—sometimes a usefully distorting one—that helps us tackle basic issues such as interaction, presence, and space and time ... on the agenda of any future
communication theory in general".
Dissemination focuses on the message being relayed from one main source to one large
audience without the exchange of
dialogue in between. It is possible for the message to be
changed or corrupted by government officials once the main source releases it. There is no way to predetermine how the larger population or audience will absorb the message. They can choose to listen, analyze, or ignore it. Dissemination in communication is widely used in the world of broadcasting.
Broadcasting focuses on getting a message out and it is up to the general public to do what they wish with it. Peters also states that broadcasting is used to address an open-ended destination.
There are many forms of broadcasting, but they all aim to distribute a signal that will reach the target
audience. Broadcasters typically arrange audiences into entire assemblies.
In terms of media broadcasting, a
radio show can gather a large number of followers who tune in every day to specifically listen to that specific
disc jockey. The disc jockey follows the script for his or her radio show and just talks into the
microphone.
He or she does not expect immediate feedback from any listeners. The message is broadcast across airwaves throughout the community, but there the listeners cannot always respond immediately, especially since many radio shows are recorded prior to the actual air time.
Broadcast engineering
Broadcast engineering is the field of
electrical engineering, and now to some extent
computer engineering and
information technology, which deals with
radio and
television broadcasting.
Audio engineering and
RF engineering
Radio-frequency (RF) engineering is a subset of electronic engineering involving the application of transmission line, waveguide, antenna and electromagnetic field principles to the design and application of devices that produce or use signals w ...
are also essential parts of broadcast engineering, being their own
subsets of electrical engineering.
Broadcast engineering involves both the
studio and
transmitter aspects (the entire
airchain
In broadcast engineering for radio or television, the airchain or transmission chain (UK) (sometimes air chain (US) or just chain (UK)) is the path or route an audio or video signal takes on its way through a radio station or television station.
...
), as well as
remote broadcast
In broadcast engineering, a remote broadcast (usually just called a remote or a live remote, or in news parlance, a live shot) is broadcasting done from a location away from a formal television studio and is considered an electronic field producti ...
s. Every
station has a broadcast
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...
, though one may now serve an entire station group in a city. In small
media markets the engineer may work on a
contract basis for one or more stations as needed.
See also
Notes and references
Bibliography
* Carey, James (1989), ''Communication as Culture'', New York and London: Routledge, pp. 201–30
* Kahn, Frank J., ed. ''Documents of American Broadcasting'', fourth edition (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984).
* Lichty Lawrence W., and Topping Malachi C., eds, ''American Broadcasting: A Source Book on the History of Radio and Television'' (Hastings House, 1975).
* Meyrowitz, Joshua, ''Mediating Communication: What Happens?'' in Downing, J., Mohammadi, A., and Sreberny-Mohammadi, A. (eds), ''Questioning The Media'' (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1995), pp. 39–53
*
* Thompson, J., ''The Media and Modernity'', in Mackay, H., and O'Sullivan, T. (eds), ''The Media Reader: Continuity and Transformation'' (London: Sage, 1999), pp. 12–27
International bibliography – History of wireless and radio broadcasting
Further reading
* Barnouw Erik. ''The Golden Web'' (Oxford University Press, 1968); ''The Sponsor'' (1978); ''A Tower in Babel'' (1966).
* Covert Cathy, and Stevens John L. ''Mass Media Between the Wars'' (Syracuse University Press, 1984).
* Tim Crook; ''International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice'' Routledge, 1998
* John Dunning; ''On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio'' Oxford University Press, 1998
* Ewbank Henry and Lawton Sherman P. ''Broadcasting: Radio and Television'' (Harper & Brothers, 1952).
* Maclaurin W. Rupert. ''Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry'' (The Macmillan Company, 1949).
* Robert W. McChesney; ''Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935'' Oxford University Press, 1994
* Gwenyth L. Jackaway; ''Media at War: Radio's Challenge to the Newspapers, 1924-1939'' Praeger Publishers, 1995
* Lazarsfeld Paul F. ''The People Look at Radio'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1946).
* Schramm Wilbur, ed. ''Mass Communications'' (University of Illinois Press, 1960).
* Schwoch James. ''The American Radio Industry and Its Latin American Activities, 1900-1939'' (University of Illinois Press, 1990).
* Slater Robert. ''This ... is CBS: A Chronicle of 60 Years'' (Prentice Hall, 1988).
* Sterling Christopher H. ''Electronic Media, A Guide to Trends in Broadcasting and Newer Technologies 1920-1983'' (Praeger, 1984).
* Sterling Christopher, and Kittross John M. ''Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting'' (Wadsworth, 1978).
* Wells, Alan
''World Broadcasting: A Comparative View'' Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.
External links
Radio Locator for American radio station with format, power, and coverage information.
– History of broadcast transmitter
– Broadcast Industry Glossary
{{Authority control
Telecommunications