Regulating the Government's Airwaves: Creation of the Interdepartmental Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC)

Abstract

Commercial interests and unequal power among government departments dominated the institutionalization of radio policy in the United States in the 1920s. These interests and government-sponsored radio endeavors diverged then so no viable government-owned radio operation emerged to compete with, or to complement, commercial radio. The struggle among these entities ultimately formed the Interdepartmental Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC), the agency responsible to-day for regulating government spectrum with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. This article chronicles IRAC's early years to passage of the Radio Act of 1927, when the split between government and private uses for radio truly took hold.