Book Review—Clifford J. Doerksen, American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age

Abstract

In authoring this book, Clifford Doerksen’s primary purpose was to provide a sense of what early independent radio stations were like and what they meant to people who listened to them (p. ix). In fact, Doerksen has done much more. American Babel chronicles some of the most remarkable stations and personalities in broadcast history. The book provides a wealth of information regarding the social context of early radio. Doerksen has revealed how socioeconomic standing influenced attitudes about advertising and programming. Above all, he has exposed the volatile utopianism that surrounded the birth of broadcasting and the bitterness of the warfare over proper cultural content. In seven chapters, we are given scholarly accounts of previously overlooked stations and controversial radio personalities who made significant contributions to radio history. The following are highlights pertaining to the stations and individuals profiled by Doerksen. In the first chapter, titled “The Education of Frank Bannister,” we read of the tribulation of a salesman who entered the radio business and found that a pyramid of prestige existed among stations. Some were characterized as “cheap” or low class, whereas others were “high class.” A station’s place in the hierarchy depended on its programming and advertising. Disapproval of advertising and common music such as jazz or country was a class attribute correlated to economic and educational status. Lower class listeners overwhelmingly preferred entertainment to “cultural” programs. Bannister observed the highbrow standards of discretion at WWJ, an NBC affiliate. WWJ management claimed “a good radio station had to be run at a loss. Commercialism ... would impair the entertainment value of programs and lose audiences” (p. 3). “Serving the Masses, Not the Classes” is the second chapter. The title is a spin-off slogan from George Schubel’s New York City-operated WHN radio station. Seeking revenue to keep his start-up station going, WHN began to broadcast vaudeville acts. Known as “cabaret broadcasting,” telephone hookups were used from speakeasies, and some of the clubs were controlled by organized crime. Responding to the station’s lack of gravitas, Nils Thor Granlund, who arranged WHN programming, offered no apologies: “The policy of the station is not to educate the masses. ... Let someone else elevate them” (p. 27). Granlund also instituted payola to gain additional revenue. Pay-for-play arrangements were already common in the 1920s. Chapter 3, “Brows High and Fevered,” tells the story of WHAP, an independent station that joined the 1925 crowded airwaves in New York City. WHAP defined itself as the antithesis to stations like WHN. WHAP blossomed forth as a purely philanthropic station behind the financial support of railcar factory millionaire William H. Taylor. Doerksen surveys the transformation of WHAP from a station of elite cultural pro-