Regulation Before Regulation: The Local-National Struggle for Control of Radio Regulation in the 1920s

Abstract

The standard narrative of U.S. radio policy history before 1927 focuses almost exclusively on the federal level, ignoring the vibrant and far-reaching policymaking that was occurring at a wide range of sites below the federal level during this era, especially municipalities. Such local regulation became an important structuring “other” of federal policy, resulting in political, legal, and cultural struggles over not just the narrow question of the reach of federal jurisdiction over radio, but the larger question of the place of local autonomy in an age of national economic and political consolidation.