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A. Stage One: Unregulated Broadcast Experimentatiation
(1906-1927)

Reginal Fessenden's offshore airwaves transmission on Christmas Eve of 1906 inaugurated broadcasting and the ensuing stage of experimentation. [20] The technology was quickly grasped and widely explored around the globe. The first regularly scheduled radio broadcast in the United States commenced in November 1920, in Pittsburgh. Owned by Westinghouse Electric, radio station KDKA was created to stimulate the sale of radios. Many other radio stations quickly commenced regular broadcasting. In less than two years, there were 382 stations in operation. In just over four years, there

were over 600 stations on the air. By 1927, just seven years since the establishment of the KDKA, the number of radio stations had escalated to 732. [21] And religious organizations were into broadcasting from the beginning. For, of the 600 stations identified by Popular Radio magazine in January 1925, sixty-three were owned by churches and pare-church organizations. [22]

By 1924, station owners discovered that they could sell time to business organizations to promote their products, and the rush to develop privately owned commercial radio was underway. Religious stations did not fare well under the stiff competition of a market that quickly turned commercial. In fairly short order, many of these radio pulpit preachers turned out to be short on the capital needed to keep up with the rapidly rising costs and technology of broadcasting, to say nothing of the political capital needed to protect themselves from the assaults of those who, for commercial reasons, coveted their broadcast licenses. While some religious broadcasters were blasted off the air by stations with greater power, others faced license challenges by commercial stations. Some were squeezed out by heavy-handed deals, others sold their licenses, and others still simply ceased to broadcast. Those who remained would face even stiffer challenges during the second stage of broadcasting.

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