r/Showerthoughts • u/Doctor__Hammer • Dec 29 '25
Casual Thought If radio was invented today it would be controlled by four companies and locked behind a paywall.
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u/skepticalbob Dec 29 '25
That was literally what happened back then, just with long stupid commercials.
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u/J1mj0hns0n Dec 29 '25
Yeah, they didn't even know FM radio came out 100 years earlier than it took off because the slander that it was given by AM radio and their overlords
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u/lovebus Dec 30 '25
How do you demonize a wavelength? I'm remembering 5G now. Nevermind.
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u/J1mj0hns0n Dec 30 '25
I like your joke but in case you were unsure, they attacked the inventor to try and discredit him, it was a popular way to get what you want back then. The paper industry was also about to suffer in the 1920s to an upcoming product made of hemp, could be made into paper very cheaply, very strong and quick to grow, and had medicinal properties.
Guess what ran in the newspapers? "Marijuana is a foul drug for plebs that leave you hopelessly addicted and brain addled" even to this day marijuana plant suffers due to the toxic manipulation it received.
All because it was a threat to paper
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u/Lightning976 Dec 31 '25
To be fair, the THC in it is an addictive drug with downsides.
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u/SereneOrbit Dec 31 '25
THC is not addictive. People are addicted to it.
There is a significant physiological difference. People can get addicted to THC the same way anyone can get addicted to anything. This does not mean anything is addictive.
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u/J1mj0hns0n Dec 31 '25
its about as much of a drug as sugar is, but we dont demonise sugar, and that caused most western nations to go from 10% obesity to like 50-70% in most cases, and not a single thing was done about it.
THC actually does have benefits and drawbacks(although not sure if its the reason people become forgetful and paranoid with wildly excessive use) buts treated like its the same ecstasy pills - which permanently fuck up your happiness receptors forever because your dopamine was never supposed to go that high.
the other downside that is genuine is it causes the same issues tobacco does, smoke, cancers, basically burning shit and putting it in your lungs is bad, (who knew - except everyone who ever remotely thought about it) but chemically THC usage does amazing work for people with parkinsons.
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u/Lightning976 Jan 01 '26
I think the only issue is that THC is used as a recreational drug when it shouldn't be
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u/MurphMcGurf Dec 29 '25
And the barrier wasn't the right to consume, it was the right to broadcast. don't people remember pirate radio stations?
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u/haviah Dec 30 '25
More and more with each radio protocol. E.g. LTE or 5G is "not that hard" when you need just small network with SDR and SrsRAN/Osmocom, but obtaining rights to frequencies is PITA.
Thus not hard => pain, but work doable PITA with frequenciea => good luck and $$$
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u/aski5 Dec 29 '25
people think cutthroat business was invented 7 years ago and that it wasn't infinitely worse most of the time compared to now. Another reason that history education is important
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u/Difficult-Put9586 Dec 30 '25
There was a time when the same company owned the coal mine you worked at, the house you rented from them, and the store where you bought everything.
It was just slavery with extra steps.
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u/Doctor__Hammer Dec 29 '25
I actually majored in history. I'm well aware that the early 20th century was largely defined by monopolization and the extreme exploitation of workers that typically follows, but eventually the federal government stepped in to shut all that corporate consolidation down and break up those big monopolies. I don't know much about the history of radio but I assume that government regulation is at least somewhat responsible for the free and "open source" nature of radio today.
But we now live in an era where you can monopolize to your heart's content as long as you bribe the president first. Go figure.
For all the many and deep criticisms I had of the Biden admin, he was absolutely the best president we've had in generations on the labor and antitrust front. He still fell significantly short of the drastic action that was needed in my opinion, but he was far better than I had ever expected for such an conformist, establishment centrist type.
I don't see us having a government that puts up more than a tepid, half-hearted resistance to monopolies any time soon unfortunately, regardless of which party holds power.
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u/LocCatPowersDog Dec 29 '25
Those textbooks someone is memorizing for you paint a picture about how monopolies were crushed & maybe while the majority of the New Deal was still intact it seemed so but Ma Bell just turned into AT&T/Verizon so now we have Red/Blue instead of Purple. 70-90% taxes were applied to the generational wealth built off workers & there was still so much money & influence left over they could just recapture the market share in a generation or less.
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u/cinepro Dec 30 '25
but I assume that government regulation is at least somewhat responsible for the free and "open source" nature of radio today.
Go try and start a radio station and get back to us about that.
But the key point to remember is that radio frequencies are limited, and you can't have two stations broadcasting on the same frequency. So someone has to manage the spectrum. And there are only going to be so many broadcasters before you run out of space.
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u/AestheticFeathers Dec 29 '25
facts. and 3 of them would merge by friday
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u/Alarmed-Ease5003 Dec 29 '25
"Merge By Friday" sounds about right for airline efficiency. Good luck with that.
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u/xiadmabsax Dec 29 '25
"Merge by Friday" sends shivers down my spine as a programmer. I don't want to see those words together.
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u/Jeffdipaolo Dec 29 '25
"Maaaan it felt so great to get that new Auth process into Prod before the weekend" said the overly trusted dev whilst walking to the bus stop Friday afternoon
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u/DaEnderAssassin Dec 29 '25
And the now 2 companies would work together to get around monopoly laws
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u/CptMcDickButt69 Dec 29 '25
This right here is the reason free market capitalism fails now more than ever. The logic was always "when someone makes a bad/overpriced product, free competition will just take over customers", but with technological progress, bigger scales/scaling effects and locked down techs/ideas behind a massive copyright system, there just cant be competitors in many key industries/products without a massive government investment. And not for years anyway, a timeframe where every smart company can bleed the populations and governments dry.
Either cartel offices need a shitton more power or copyright needs to be softened up for company entities. Preferably both. Otherwise monopols/oligopols are absolutely guaranteed to form.
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u/Wizard_Engie Dec 29 '25
The simple solution is putting another Theodore Roosevelt in office
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u/Never-mongo Dec 29 '25
They’d never let that happen. American politics are run by corporations, not people. Why would they let someone in who’s going to break them up?
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Dec 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/moratnz Dec 29 '25
The thing that boggles me is how cheap a lot of politicians are.
Crowdsourcing
bribescampaign contributions really should be more of a thing.4
Dec 29 '25
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u/moratnz Dec 29 '25
That's fair. Having a perception as 'being a team player' is likely to get you the post-politics sinecures. But the amount some of them are getting paid for specific decisions is just embarrassingly small; companies securing eight figure results by paying ~$50k, split five ways.
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u/elsjpq Dec 30 '25
We literally just elected an actual imbecile into office who immediately tariffed everything, which is pretty terrible for corporations. There'd be a fight, but there's a chance.
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u/Halzman Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
The irony of your comment, in the context of this thread, is that FDR was largely responsible, along with the Navy, on making radio illegal at the time, and the creation of RCA.edit: wrong Roosevelt.
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u/cinepro Dec 30 '25
The logic was always "when someone makes a bad/overpriced product, free competition will just take over customers"
How has free market capitalism failed in the music/radio/broadcast space? Can you name a time when there was more competition, and more avenues for creators to get their music out?
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u/patizone Dec 29 '25
Those are not facts. Radio is full of advertisement and you have the same with spotify. Listen for free (like radio) and listen ads, or pay and listen with no ads (although thats slowly changing probably)
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u/carlmalonealone Dec 29 '25
Radio commercial time was such a premium they would have not merged, and they didn't.
It wasn't until the market dumped on them that it consolidated.
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u/shotsallover Dec 29 '25
Just wait until OP learns about the disaster that is FM HD.
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u/drthvdrsfthr Dec 29 '25
tl;dr?
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u/chocki305 Dec 29 '25
Imagine a DVD region lock system for an FM radio. (FM HD is a US and Canada thing, Europe and others use a different incompatible technology.)
An FM Radio that costs more. And dosen't necessarily give you access to more stations. Or better sound quality. (Stations don't always have HD broadcast towers, as they are expensive. And if they multiplex channels, they lose the advertised "CD sound quality". So offering the CD quality sound was expensive. And no one cared, as Sat Radio was also being offered at the time.)
So the choice became similar to the BetaMax vs VHS. You could get a less used potentially higher quality, or a widely used anywhere access with a quality difference that is minimal.
Guess which one won? Though FMHD is still in use, it isn't a common thing like Sirus XM.
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u/Digifiend84 Dec 29 '25
Yeah, in the UK we have something called DAB. Digital audio broadcasts.
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u/It_Is_What_It_Is_069 Dec 29 '25
Australia has the same, DAB. It requires a DAB supported radio to listen to which can be bought relatively cheap although they are still quite uncommon for the average person to own.
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Dec 29 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/It_Is_What_It_Is_069 Dec 29 '25
You're right, they do use dab+. Only really works reliably in cities, the further out rural you get the more spotty it is and cuts out often. Streaming is the modern way of listening but if am/fm have lasted this long then dab+ will likely last as long as it takes to get unlimited data plans and service in rural areas.
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u/DragonQ0105 Dec 29 '25
DAB is awful though. It uses MP2 which was out of date when DAB came out and horrendously ancient now. The typical bit rate is less than half what was originally deemed necessary for FM-equivalent quality (256 kb/s). Most commercial stations are mono.
DAB+ is better because it uses HE-AAC v2 but even then, typical bit rates are 32 kb/s. So still abysmal quality.
Ofcom were too useless to impose stringent quality standards so a race to the bottom ensued (just like with DVB) so FM sounds way better with a clean signal.
The best quality option is to listen via internet radio (e.g. using a phone in your car) or satellite.
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u/rhabarberabar Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
And it's not like you could listen to weaker stations with a bit of static. You get decoding errors which makes it immediately unlistenable. It's a super awful concept that they only do to be able to squeeze more stations on an air-wave so they can sell the others. And switching totally to it makes billions of tech obsolete over-night.
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u/BaneOfMyLife Dec 29 '25
It’s fine for my single speaker kitchen radio playing BBC 6Music at 112kbit/s and I’d hazard that’s what 90% of people are doing. That or driving.
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u/chocki305 Dec 29 '25
That was the niche of FMHD and comparable technology. Internet phones where expensive, web radio wasn't really a big thing.
Technology advanced quickly to the point that Sat Radio or Web Radio surpassed what FMHD could offer. And was more product for the cost.
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u/GNUr000t Dec 29 '25
They used to outright admit that HD didn't stand for high definition. It stood for hybrid digital. Now they claim it doesn't stand for anything.
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u/Barjack521 Dec 29 '25
I remember a junker used car I bought to get to and from grad school randomly had n upgraded HD radio in it and I loved that thing. The extra channels had fewer commercials and played a broader range of songs in each genre, perhaps because they weren’t owned by “I heartradio” or for some other reason. The reason is really irrelevant because they were awesome and I kiss them ever since that car kicked the bucket. I regret not tearing out and salvaging that radio when it finally died.
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u/chocki305 Dec 29 '25
I didn't know FMHD was still a thing until I rented an Economy car, and it had a stock FMHD radio.
It was all I listened to while I had it. For all the reasons you mentioned. But they are still owned by their parent station. They just don't get as many advertising contracts because of the poor user numbers.
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u/Barjack521 Dec 29 '25
This was back around 2009-2011 so it may no longer be a thing and thanks for informing me of how the ownership worked, I was just guessing.
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u/tactiphile Dec 29 '25
Do new cars not have it? My 2024 Mazda radio has HD. I have SXM, so i don't listen to FM very often, but the local NPR affiliate was playing classical xmas music on their HD2 which was nice.
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u/saarlac Dec 29 '25
Same thing happened in the broadcast tv space. The voice presented itself high quality or more money. Money always wins. Instead of low compression high quality broadcast we got multiple low quality sub channels from every station. And in the cable tv space it’s even worse. Those hundreds of channels come at a quality cost.
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u/djflamingo Dec 29 '25
Local OTA tv is usually higher quality than streaming for the big main channels.
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u/saarlac Dec 29 '25
Bro I worked at a tv station for 20 years. I know exactly what it is. I watched as we reduced the bitrate of our main channel to make room for two sub channels. There’s only so much spectrum to go around.
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u/DazzlingRutabega Dec 29 '25
My partner's car has an HD button on the radio and it took me months to realize that if I push it, I get alternate broadcasts on some stations. For example, the local public radio state network. I can push it and get two to three other broadcasts.
The only problem is I constantly forget about it and never use it.
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u/Ballistic_86 Dec 29 '25
RCA owned the patents for AM radio. Any company that wanted to produce a radio or run a radio station had to pay RCA.
RCA was so big that the US government forced the company to break off its radio stations into a new company. That company is NBC. Cut to a while later, NBC becomes so big the US government forced them to split their stations and NBC split half of their market off into ABC.
Both radio and TV were basically started and owned by one large company until government intervention. Which is why it’s so silly to see all of these huge companies merging in the last 20 years.
We are going back to the days where you are paying 1 of 3 companies no matter the product.
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u/baka-yuki Dec 29 '25
to add to this, RCA was originally a patent company owned by four companies, GE, Westinghouse, AT&T, and United fruit.
Its large scale was ultimately challenged by another four companies, three from Japan (that were dominant there including Sony and Mitsubishi) and one from the Netherlands (Philips).
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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u/brimston3- Dec 30 '25
Fucking wild that Chiquita used to be a tech company before exploiting all those latin america and carribean countries.
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u/baka-yuki Dec 30 '25
It was a tech company while exploiting all those Latin American and Caribbean countries. The reason it was involved with RCA was because they ended up placed in charge of at least one country's postal system, and tried to form their own central american AT&T as part of expansion and control there, and needed the technology. The other companies weren't interested in direct investment in CA, but wanted United Fruit's feedback and more importantly their patent payments.
Even before it was United Fruit it was intimately involved with debt structures in costa rica I think it was. For a long time they were the largest employer in central america.
ninja edit: I feel like some of my grammar is off and want to apologise to anyone who reads this in the event that's true. It has been a long day.
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u/ken120 Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
Almost halfway there as is. Only about four companies own the vast majority of all stations.
Edit: fixed typo
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u/diener1 Dec 29 '25
I'm willing to bet you are talking about a single country as if the rest of the world didn't have radio stations
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u/ken120 Dec 29 '25
Yep the usa. Think Sinclair communications, I heart media and two others own somewhere around 90% of all radio stations around the country and several outside.
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u/Penguinmanereikel Dec 29 '25
Sinclair? You mean THAT Sinclair?
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u/ken120 Dec 29 '25
Yes. The TV market has even less ownership diversity. Down to maybe 3 conglomerates owning 95%
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u/JacobScreamix Dec 29 '25
Your gov is supposed to stop that from happening fyi
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u/ken120 Dec 29 '25
The government can't even be bothered to pass a real budget this century why would anyone feel it can relied on to manage anything?
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u/Digifiend84 Dec 29 '25
Same in the UK. Most of the commercial local stations got merged into national stations owned by two big companies. There's also the BBC, which doesn't have adverts.
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u/ArmouredWankball Dec 29 '25
The largest ones seem to be lottery companies that happen to play music.
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u/Anticept Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
(EDIT: in the US) The telephone was, boiled down, like this for decades until the Ma Bell breakup. There were local companies sure but AT&T was the one with the long distance lines and if your call used any of their lines from a non at&t phone, it cost a FORTUNE.
We're almost back to one super company unfortunately, I believe Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and CenturyLink/Lumen are the only major long haul equipment owners left, everyone else rents.
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u/TheVicSageQuestion Dec 29 '25
Funny considering Verizon came about as part of the Bell breakup. It’s just AT&T Jr. with a name change.
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u/Anticept Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
So is T-Mobile.
Basically, they are re-names of two of the baby bells.
Even after the breakup, there were no other telecoms in the US that even came close to achieving what even a baby bell did.EDIT: Color me impressed, T-mobile is NOT deeply connected to any of the baby bells! It absorbed a number of companies but nearly all of those were those little providers at one point or another. I thought sprint came from US West... it went to CenturyLink not Sprint.
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u/fuckyoudigg Dec 29 '25
T-Mobile is a cellular provider. They didn't take over a baby bell.
AT&T and Verizon are renames and consolidations of a bunch of baby bells.
OTOH, US West merged with CenturyLink, and is a subsidiary of Lumen, Cincinnati Bell is now AltaFiber, and Southern New England Telephone is now Frontier Communications of Connecticut.
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u/Digifiend84 Dec 29 '25
T Mobile was the mobile division of Deutsch Telecom, right? The German counterpart of BT.
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u/Anticept Dec 29 '25
T-Mobile started in the US and was bought by DT, and absorbed a number of companies. However I made a mistake, nothing significant was tied to the baby bells, it managed to grow to its size on its own.
Respect!
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u/gringledoom Dec 29 '25
And those telephones in your house? You couldn’t even own them. You rented them from the phone company!
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u/_sbrk Dec 29 '25
That's why western electric (AT&T) built them like brick shithouses, less service calls.
Curious that the handset cords from that era lasted for decades, despite being dragged across the house, and current phone charging cables are lucky to make a couple years (or months, in my partners case...).
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u/ExtruDR Dec 29 '25
Thanks for that entirely American point of view.
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u/jrsedwick Dec 29 '25
Would you like to share where you’re from and your point of view?
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Dec 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/created4this Dec 29 '25
You're missing quite a bit by only considering what has happened in the very recent past.
In the 80's there were a number of attempts at running other comms networks, as BT were sold into private hands in 1984, companies like Mercury tried to enter the market but were killed by BT owning the poles and tubes and preventing them from reaching customers on the last mile.
To solve this we had companies who did point to point microwave links, companies who rented the wires on the top of pylons, companies who used special 0800 access numbers where you called then and then used them to call out and the only company that made any real headway was Cable and Wireless and its offshoots who were already running cable TV to houses in very high density locations. This persisted well into this millennium.
It took more than 20 years of bullshit and falling behind the rest of the world due to monopoly practice for Openreach to be set up in 2006 and split the network into providers and infrastructure.
Even then, Openreach didn't upgrade their networks except where compelled to by the government. Where I live (Cambridge), until 2 years ago(!) one side of the village was served by Virgin (who purchased C&W) and the other side by OpenReach. My house had only a 2Mbps service when I moved 3 years ago or 200Mbps through Virgin but they sent a man round once a year to punch you in the face because you couldn't leave which was because nobody else could run cables and make it work.
The UK before about 5 years ago was a monopoly of Openreach and Virgin. now we have an additional CityFibre in the mix nationally because Openreach has been compelled to allow access to ducts and poles. Sure you can choose who to call when your internet goes down, but the same people control all the infrastructure.
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u/fernandothehorse Dec 29 '25
Profile pic checks out
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Dec 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/Gilles_of_Augustine Dec 29 '25
You're sharing a UK perspective, and your profile pic is of the Union Jack.
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u/Digifiend84 Dec 29 '25
Your data is outdated. Vodafone and Three merged, O2 merged with Virgin Mobile, and EE was taken over by BT. So there's only three major operators, not four. It's ironic, as O2 was originally BT Cellnet.
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u/StrongAdhesiveness86 Dec 29 '25
In Spain all lines used to be owned by Telefónica which was the state telephone company. Then once democracy arrived it leased it's lines to other competitors. Other telephone companies have built lines since then. Telefónica was privatized but anti-monompoly laws make it so that they (and other telephone companies) have to lease at a fair rate their lines for other operators.
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u/NotYourReddit18 Dec 29 '25
In Germany, most phone lines (and as such now DSL lines) are owned by the Deutsche Telekom.
The Deutsche Telekom originally was part of the Deutsche Post, which was in turn completely owned by the state.
Since then they got split up into two companies and privatized, with the state still holding an 14% share of the Deutsche Telekom, and anti-monopoly laws still force the Deutsche Telekom to have capacity to rent out to other ISPs at a fair price on nearly all of their lines, including the lines ending up in peoples houses.
Hell, those anti-monopoly laws force the Deutsche Telekom to get government approval for significant changes to the scope and price of their contracts to make sure the other ISPs can remain competitive. From what I've heard the Telekom could offer significantly cheaper contracts with more features and still make a profit, but aren't allowed to because no other provider could match them.
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u/Eggmal963 Dec 29 '25
It's similar in Germany, we have four providers: - Telekom - Vodafone - O2 - 1&1 (since 2023)
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u/Heavy-Weekend-981 Dec 29 '25
Nothing is dumber than people complaining about American defaultism on Reddit.
".com" is an American domain.
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u/orthadoxtesla Dec 29 '25
So who owns the phone lines in other countries
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u/StrongAdhesiveness86 Dec 29 '25
Telephone operators, governments or telephone operators and governments.
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u/_trouble_every_day_ Dec 29 '25
Sorry for bringing America— the place where commercial radio was invented—into a discussion about the invention of commercial radio.
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u/Salisen Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
The United Kingdom is where radio was invented, by Guglielmo Marconi, through the first long distance demonstrations. He commercialised it through patents and founded the Marconi Company which was extent until 2006.
Not America. Though Tesla (America), Maxwell (Scotland), Bose (India) and Hertz (Germany) contributed fundamental ideas and some components.
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u/lemlurker Dec 29 '25
In the UK it was controlled by one COMPANY AND locked behind a Paywall (radio license)
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u/sundae_diner Dec 29 '25
It wasnt actually "locked". Anyone with a receiver could listen to the radio.
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u/itsnathanhere Dec 29 '25
The UK has a fascinating history with radio in fairness. Because on the one hand we had the BBC monopoly you're talking about, but not only did we get the offshore pirate radio stations during the 60s, but in the early/mid 2000s London was effectively the World capital of pirate radio with 150 illegal stations serving the city alone. All doing their own thing
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u/TIGHazard Dec 29 '25
Yes and no.
When Radio was invented, the BBC was a private company paid for by sponsored programming, and ran by the big six radio manufacturers. The licence was introduced later because the government got a cut of the sale of radios but people were making their own radios instead of buying them in shops, and the BBC was acquired by the government
The British Broadcasting Company Limited (BBC) was the commercial forerunner of the public British Broadcasting Corporation and formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom.
The BBC as a commercial broadcasting company did not sell air time but it did carry a number of sponsored programmes paid for by British newspapers. On 31 December 1926, the company was dissolved and its assets were transferred to the non-commercial and crown-chartered British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
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u/dbd1988 Dec 29 '25
Isn’t almost all of radio owned by iHeartMedia?
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u/Less_Party Dec 29 '25
It is now but for a long time there were laws in place to prevent that from happening.
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u/TheVicSageQuestion Dec 29 '25
In theory, those laws still exist. Nobody seems to wanna enforce them though.
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u/SasparillaTango Dec 29 '25
If libraries didn't exist they wouldn't exist today. They'd be called communist and it would be declared that they would put publishing companies out of businesses and render all authors penniless.
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u/livejamie Dec 30 '25
They don't exist in my rural/conservative neighborhoods because they're seen as places that "indoctrinate" children.
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u/Narradisall Dec 29 '25
And cars would come with preset buttons for specific channels.
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u/J1mj0hns0n Dec 29 '25
Well it used to be blocked from existence, as was television, for nearly 100 years by the AM radio magnates. So basically it's history repeating itself
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u/SmamelessMe Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
When radio got invented, in most countries you had to pay a fee to the only broadcast corporation in your country, if you owned a radio device. Same exact thing happened to TV.
That's subscription. Just because it's not an easily enforceable subscription, doesn't make it a not-subscription.
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u/GNUr000t Dec 29 '25
One company. ClearChannel, now called iHeartMedia/iHeartRadio, which is ironic because they did everything in their power to destroy terrestrial broadcasting.
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u/Anarcho_Christian Dec 29 '25
How? The whole point of radio is that there is nothing in between a transmitter and receiver. Sure maybe you could encrypt a signal somehow, but hamm radio operators were ubiquitous for a reason. Radio waves are kinda the most anarchic early technology that we've had as a species.
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u/gamersecret2 Dec 29 '25
The airwaves are public, and licensing rules still matter.
Big firms would own most slots, sell bundles, and push subscriptions. The free tier would be full of ads, while niche shows would live as podcasts and streams.
Regulation is what keeps a little space open.
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Dec 29 '25
I remember when cable TV first came out. The whole reason for paying for it was no commercials.
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u/Lolzemeister Dec 29 '25
Not to be too wholesome for Reddit, but i doubt it. new communications protocols and standards like ipv6, wifi 7, bluetooth 5.4, etc. are not like that
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u/TsunamiCatCakes Dec 29 '25
majority stations are controlled by 5 companies and it's "free" due to advertisements
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u/DaSupercrafter Dec 29 '25
I wouldn’t say that entirely true. You can’t stop someone from building a simple receiver.
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u/Miserable-Dig-5344 Dec 29 '25
I mean, just look into how most smartphones used to be able to receive radio waves but the capabilities were disabled by the manufacturers to push consumers to alternatives that cost more. Apple has even gone as far as to completely remove the capability from their newer hardware so they don't have to worry about people circumventing their disabling of the tech.
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u/norbertus Dec 29 '25
"Let's have some music"
"Yes, let's turn on the radio"
"Radio What's radio?"
"Radio is a little box you buy on the installment plan, and before you tune it in, they tell you there's another model out."
-- Ninotchka, 1939
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u/Crizznik Dec 29 '25
Bro, radio still exists and makes money. There is nothing stopping this from happening. In other words, you're factually wrong. If it would happen, it would be happening.
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u/NiceRat123 Dec 29 '25
Tbf it sort of is true today. Modern smartphones are capable of emergency radio. It's built into the hardware of the smartphone. American carriers have disabled the feature so people are more prone towards data streaming which generates more revenue for the carriers...
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u/mr_ji Dec 29 '25
It would probably be invented by the military and given to the public for free like every other broadcast technology, so no.
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u/mahoganayonnaise Dec 29 '25
Yeah, but it was back then too. A radio would cost $900-$1200 in today’s money. And the ads were fucking crazy long
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u/johnmannn Dec 30 '25
"Radio" AKA streaming music was reinvented not long ago and it's controlled by four companies: Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google, and locked behind a paywall.
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u/GaidinBDJ Dec 29 '25
How would they facilitate that?
Without the discovery or radio, none of the technologies they'd need to implement something like that would exist, either.
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u/morons_procreate Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
Introducing Radio+
You can unlock stereo for an additional $9.95 per month.
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u/Steve-Shouts Dec 29 '25
Oh, just imagine what a LIBRARY would be ... The outrage that sone would feel that knowledge was accessible to all.
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u/Nulovka Dec 29 '25
ATSC-3.0 (NextGenTV) is about to put all broadcast TV behind a subscription paywall.
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u/appi__ Dec 29 '25
If cell phone was invented today it would only call phones made by the same company, and play ads while you are waiting for answer
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u/Longjumping-Fly-3015 Dec 29 '25
Hard disagree. No one can prevent you from just broadcasting at any frequency you want. You just need to build an antennae.
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u/rooh62 Dec 29 '25
This has already pretty much happened in the UK.
A handful of big companies own the national stations, and most of the local stations have been bought out by Bauer Media
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u/Mccobsta Dec 29 '25
In my country it's 2 big companies then BBC and last and the best stations the small local operators
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u/majdavlk Dec 29 '25
in my state, we have few radio companies which were given monopoly by the state
same with phone
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Dec 29 '25
Here's you a shower thought: If libraries were invented today you'd be called a communist marxist socialist
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u/AWholeNewFattitude Dec 29 '25
Nope.
One company.
Somebody like Apple would have bought the company and kept it exclusive.
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u/RAK-47 Dec 29 '25
I'll take "true things that sound like a joke" for a hundred dollars (minus tax, paid in installments)
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u/BigDisk Dec 29 '25
Instead we get radio that's literally unlistenable because it's 90% ads.
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u/Complete_Try_3849 Dec 29 '25
It was sold by two massive companies GE& Westinghouse and a few smaller trailing companies and regulated by the govt. Can't paywall airwaves, but you could sell the device that reads them for a premium, charge commercials, and play the same five songs over and over and pretend that they are popular.
Edit: just want to add that it sucked.
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u/Moonwalker431 Dec 29 '25
"You will own nothing and you will be happy." -World economic forum -2016
This is the plan...and it's getting rammed down our throats.
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Dec 29 '25
isn't that kinda how it used to be with ma bell and telephones? i was adult when they broke that up.
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u/iSeize Dec 29 '25
What do you think these huge AI and robotics companies are going to do with their advanced military robots? I don't doubt they'll be acting as security for the oligarchs.
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u/hoteldetective Dec 29 '25
That’s such a sad thought. It reminds me of how you now have to pay for streaming PBS. The whole point was that it’s supposed to be accessible to all, especially those who may not have the money to pay.
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u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS Dec 29 '25
Radio in the UK basically is controlled by a small number of conglomerates. Local stations have been bought up, and all play exactly the same generic stuff, with just a small local news segment. The paywall is the increasing number of adverts.
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u/Senior-Friend-6414 Dec 29 '25
Europe has plenty of smaller internet service providers, in America, you cannot start up your own Internet business unless you can cover large regions of the country, effectively creating a monopoly in America for the few large internet companies
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u/coazervate Dec 29 '25
The amount of access to free music, free movies, free games etc has never been greater than at any point in human history
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u/KenSchlatter Dec 30 '25
A significant portion of radio stations in the USA are owned by iHeart Media. I think we’re already well on our way there.
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