Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America. (A Little Rebellion Here And There).

Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America By Jesse Walker New York University Press, 326 pages, $24.95

Though amateurs invented broadcast radio, the amateur spirit did not long prevail. Professionalism took over. As Jesse Walker, an associate editor of Reason magazine, relates in Rebels on the Air, it was government that quickly squelched the diversity and experimentalism early radio promised.

With the Radio Act of 1912, the American government in effect nationalized the electromagnetic spectrum, divvying out user privileges by licensing. What the government was trying to do was rein in the "hams." For a while, it seemed that every other clever lad was making his own crystal set, receiving and sending messages over the ether. These hams had begun experimenting with broadcasting (rather than mere point-to-point communication) a few years before the 1912 Act.

As businesses entered the broadcast game, they turned to hams for expertise. During World War I, the military realized, likewise, that the hams provided the best source of radio communications skills. But the Commerce Department's efforts to solve the problem of radio interference precipitated a larger crisis that Congress tried to fix with the Radio Act of 1927, which created the forerunner of today's Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The bill was not without dissenters. One senator charged it was "fair to only one institution ... the monopoly that will be created under it."

These words were prophetic, if overstated. Radio became, primarily, the domain of business. Competition persisted, but the early promise of a voluntary order--the hidden history that Walker uncovers in his fascinating second chapter--vanished in the advance of Progressive-era regulated capitalism.

Still, the innovative spirit did not die outright: Mainstream radio helped reinvent American ...