Page 94 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Mass Audience 10:39
game of neighborhood basketball – built of various specialists brought
in to serve a particular function at a particular time: pollsters, media
advisers, policy experts, campaign consultants, and the like. Indeed, the
story of the modest resurgence in influence by parties that occurred in
the 1990s is again a story of organizational change in the face of new
modes of communication and information management. The resurgent
modern party did not succeed by returning to the days of centralized,
hierarchical party-based communication, but by reorganizing as a kind
of organized political consultant who could offer a menu of political
services and assistance to networks of candidate organizations. 114 This
“service organization” model of parties highlights their adaptation to
a new organizational environment for communication and campaign
functions. It is in this organizational sense that the pattern of political
change from the first and second information revolutions carries over
into the broadcast era.
From the very beginnings of broadcasting, in the pretelevision period,
the potential for new communication channels eventually to displace the
party in campaign communication was clear. Although it would take
years for the process to mature, the most important political lesson of
radio prior to the midcentury mark was a kind of proof-of-concept:
Use of broadcast telecommunications could build a direct relationship
between politicians and citizens that did not involve party organiza-
tions. One of the first radio broadcasts in the United States occurred on
November 2, 1920, to an audience numbering perhaps a few thousand in
Pittsburgh. 115 In a repetition of the political nature of the first telegraph

114 John J. Coleman, “Resurgent or Just Busy? Party Organizations in Contemporary
America,” in John C. Green and Daniel M. Shea, eds., The State of the Parties:
The Changing Role of Contemporary American Parties (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1997), pp. 367–384.
115 Identification of the first radio broadcast in the United States is a subject of debate.
Many authors cite the Cox-Harding broadcast as the first. Others cite an experimental
broadcast by Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and others an earlier broadcast in San Jose
and an amateur broadcast in Detroit. Part of the dispute stems from problems of
classification as to what constitutes an official or commercial “broadcast” as opposed
to private uses of radio. See: Douglas B. Craig, Fireside Politics: Radio and Political
Culture in the United States, 1920–1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2000); George H. Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 1987); Irving Settel, A Pictorial History of Radio (New York: Citadel
Press, 1960); Christopher H. Sterling and John H. Kitross, Stay Tuned: A Concise
History of American Broadcasting, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing,
1990); Sydney W. Head, with Christopher H. Sterling, Broadcasting in America: A
Survey of Television, Radio and New Technologies, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1982).

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