nique, that network's signal would be transmitted by multiple outlets across the nation. Under such a system, radio listeners anywhere within the country might find one of the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) two networks at 660 kilocycles, or the Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) network at 880 kilocycles. By freeing up the numerous wavelengths employed for network radio, significantly more broadcasters-at the local, regional, and national levels-could be accommodated. Synchronous broadcasting was not simply a futuristic vision. By the end of 1930, NBC's general engineer acknowledged its technical feasibility. Elsewhere, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began experimental synchronization in 1926, and German and Swedish broadcasters started using the system in 1930.3 In the U.S. context, the synchronous system (also called "synchronization") promised to alleviate tensions caused by the rapid expansion of NBC and CBS during the late 1920s and early 1930s. One such issue, regularly brought to the attention of regulators and politicians by irate radio listeners, was "program duplication." As the networks expanded, national programming transmitted by multiple stations on several different wavelengths seemed to diminish the diversity of programming on U.S. airwaves. Program duplication joined other contentious debates emerging in broadcasting's earliest era, including discussions of advertising on the airwaves and the apparent favoritism toward commercial broadcasters shown by federal regulators. These disputes testify to the vitality of early public debate over broadcasting's influence on American society. Radio's revolutionary characteristics-its creation of a new public sphere, a social arena both massively public and intimately personal-required novel policy considerations. Politicians, broadcasters, critics, regulators, and engineers all wrestled with broadcasting's role in the U.S. context. Issues such as the proper mode of regulation, applicable technical specifications, the acceptability of advertising, the boundaries of speech, and the optimal number of broadcasters were deeply intertwined; no single aspect of broadcasting could be addressed in isolation. Broadcasting, from its birth, stood athwart a nexus of technological, cultural, political, and social considerations.4
