Radio in the 1920s American Home
The radio receiver of the 1920s was a piece of furniture, a social institution, a source of national culture, and a medium of family life that fundamentally reshaped the way Americans spent their evenings. By 1930, more than 12 million American households owned a radio set, and the device had become the central technological object of the middle-class home.
This page is about the radio in the home — the set, its price, its place, and the listening culture it created. For the technology and prehistory, For the station most often credited as the first commercial broadcaster,
The Radio as Furniture
The early radio set was a piece of technical equipment. The 1920s saw the transformation of the set from a technical device into a piece of furniture — a wooden cabinet, often with elaborate decorative detailing, designed to be displayed in the parlor or living room. The most famous styles included the “cathedral” style (a tall, arch-topped wooden cabinet) and the “console” style, the most popular of the late 1920s, a large combination radio-phonograph cabinet that was the centerpiece of the middle-class living room.
The most prestigious manufacturers included Atwater Kent, RCA (with the “RCA Radiola” line), Sparton (famous for its blue-mirrored “Sparton Bluebird” set), Zenith, Philco, Crosley, and Stromberg-Carlson. The sets ranged in price from about $50 for a basic crystal receiver to more than $300 for a high-end console, with most middle-class buyers paying about $100 to $150. The sets were sold through the new chain stores like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. The purchase was a major household decision; the set was often the most expensive object in the home after the piano and the car.
The Price Trajectory
The price of a radio set in the 1920s followed a steeply declining curve. The first commercially available sets, in 1920–21, sold for $200 to $500. The “Radiola” line introduced by RCA in 1922 at $135 brought the price into the middle range. The “cat’s whisker” crystal set, a simple receiver with no batteries or tubes, sold for as little as $5 to $25 and was the entry-level device. By 1926, the basic multi-tube receiver was selling for $75 to $150. By 1930, the price was well under $100. From about 60,000 households in 1921, set ownership grew to 4.5 million by 1925 and 12 million by 1930. The radio was no longer a luxury; it was a mass-market consumer durable.
The Batteries Problem
One of the most distinctive features of the early radio set was its dependence on batteries. The first sets required three different batteries: the “A” battery (6 volts) to heat the filaments of the vacuum tubes, the “B” battery (22.5 to 90 volts) to power the plate circuits, and the “C” battery to bias the tube grids. The A battery was a lead-acid storage battery that had to be recharged periodically; the B and C were dry-cell batteries replaced every few months. The solution was the AC-powered set, introduced in 1927–28, which drew current directly from the household electrical outlet. By 1930 the battery-powered set was a thing of the past.
The Position of the Radio in the Home
The 1920s radio was, in most homes, the centerpiece of the parlor or living room — the formal “front room” used for entertaining. The set was placed where it could be heard from the dining room and the kitchen. The radio was a communal technology in a way that no later consumer electronics device would be. The entire family gathered around the set in the evening, listened together, and discussed what they heard. This was a sharp contrast to the individual model of later technologies — the personal transistor radio, the personal television, the personal computer, the personal smartphone — which each person uses alone. The 1920s radio was a family experience, and the memory of the family gathered around the set was a powerful cultural image for decades. The prime listening hours were the evening — generally from about 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. — when the family was home from work and school. The schedule, published in the daily newspapers and in weekly publications like Radio Broadcast (1922), introduced a new kind of time discipline into American life. The 6:00 p.m. news, the 7:00 p.m. program, the 8:00 p.m. drama — these became fixed points in the family’s day. The radio schedule, in effect, became a new kind of household clock.
The National Culture
The most important cultural consequence of the radio was the creation of a national culture — a shared set of references, jokes, music, and news that all Americans could draw on. Before radio, the United States had been a country of regional and local cultures. The radio, in just a few years, made the country into a single cultural market.
The first nationally popular radio program was Amos ‘n’ Andy, which began on Chicago’s WGN in 1926 and moved to NBC in 1928. By 1930, Amos ‘n’ Andy was heard by an estimated 40 million listeners a night. The two white actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll played the two Black characters, and the program’s depiction of African Americans reflected the era’s racial stereotypes. Other national programs of the late 1920s included the Maxwell House Show Boat (1929), the Cities Service Concerts (1927), and the A&P Gypsies (1924). The same jokes, the same music, the same news were heard in Maine and California, in Minnesota and Texas.
The Radio and the Phonograph
The radio’s first major competitor in the home was the phonograph. In fact, the two technologies merged: by the late 1920s, most console sets combined a radio and a phonograph, with a turntable and a record storage compartment. The combined radio-phonograph console was the most popular single consumer electronics device of the late 1920s, and it remained a mainstay of middle-class homes into the 1950s. The phonograph industry adapted by adopting electrical recording (developed by Bell Labs in the mid-1920s), which dramatically improved sound quality. The two technologies were partners in the new home entertainment system.
The Role of Women
The 1920s radio was, in many ways, a woman’s medium. Women were the primary household consumers of the programming — the daily dramas, the cooking shows, the homemaking advice, the music. They were also the primary operators of the set. The 1920s saw the emergence of a “household program director” role for women. Advertisers recognized the importance of the female audience; the first major sponsored programs, including the Eveready Hour, were aimed at women.
The Radio Family and the Cultural Image
The 1920s saw the development of a powerful cultural image: the “radio family,” gathered around the set in the evening. The image appeared in advertising, in magazine illustrations, in the first network dramas, and in popular culture generally. The image was aspirational: it suggested that the “modern” American family, with a radio in the parlor, was part of a national community of similar families. The image had a dark side: it assumed a particular kind of family (white, middle-class, nuclear, and equipped with disposable income) and excluded many of the Americans who were not part of that model. The “radio family” was a cultural ideal, not a universal reality.
The Radio and the News
The radio was also an instrument of news and information. The first radio news programs were simple readings of newspaper copy, but by the late 1920s the networks were producing their own news, and the radio was beginning to rival the newspaper as a source of current information. The 1932 FDR fireside chats would demonstrate the political power of the medium, but the foundation had been laid in the 1920s. The radio was the medium through which the country first heard its presidents and its political conventions.