Radio's impact on the world

I was inspired to write this post when I came across a link to the original recording of War of The World's. For those of you who don't know what War of The Worlds is I'll sum it up real quick. In 1938 Orson Welles broadcasted a radio show about aliens invading the planet over the air waves. The unique part about it was that people actually believed the earth was being invaded and a panic ensued. There countless stories of farmers shooting water towers believing that they were UFOs. The hysteria got so bad Welles himself had to go on the radio and announce that it was just a story, and he had to apologize for scaring so many people. 

This story alone is enough to show the impact that radio had on society. Before the radio was common place the quickest way to get news was with a newspaper. This had several drawbacks firstly newspapers needed to be physically distributed and secondly once they were written that was it. No live edits could be made once the paperboy started selling them on the streets. Radio changed this and allowed for constant updates and a continuous flow of information across the nation. Radios reached more people than newspapers in a shorter time. Most people could afford a radio at the time and so it became common practice to sit around and listen to stories and news bulletins on your radio. 

The radio was the first true mass media device, one message could be delivered to a massive audience quickly and uniformly. The radio helped to shape the basis of today's mass communication markets and practices. Without the radio mass media would not have been possible and it still serves as a distribution channel for artists all around the world to this day.