In the 1930s, the U.S. government worked quickly to address accessibility and programming issues with radio and later, television. In other countries, people had to pay to listen to the radio, whereas the U.S. established a system that would allow the public to access the radio for free, with advertisements of course. But what a gift to have free access to information--and this is something I think we fail to appreciate in certain circumstances. So many countries, even today, have limits on the kinds of information their people have access to, and the U.S. largely does not have these limitations--a true rarity. 

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) was established in 1934 to oversee that both the broadcasting industry and the airwaves belonged to the public by granting station licenses and requiring stations to demonstrate that “some of the programs the aired were in the ‘public interest.’” There is a really great episode of the West Wing that addresses this when public broadcasting channels want to limit the amount of time they air to R/D conventions, and Josh Lyman refers to this requirement. The FCC also forced RCA to sell its radio network NBC blue, which would later become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).