The first presidential radio address in United States history was delivered by President Warren G. Harding on June 14th, 1922. He delivered a speech in Baltimore, MD and it was broadcasted by WEAR (now WFBR). Perhaps more historic than this was the first official radio address delivered in 1921 regarding the recent election results. Equally important was the first annual address delivered by President Calvin Coolidge in 1923. This innovation established a continuing tradition of regularly scheduled addresses that were meant to inform the public about the President's agenda. However, it was not until the year 1933 that the official presidential weekly radio address was truly popularized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR captivated the nation with his famous fireside chats that were delivered during nights, when families often gathered around the radio and could afford to spend some time actively listening to the presidential messages. Ever since then, U.S. presidents have given weekly addresses, though some (Nixon, Ford, Carter, H. Bush) chose to engage themselves in the tradition less than others (Reagan, Clinton, W. Bush). Nonetheless, presidents have realized the strategic potential of radio ever since the end of WWI, when the industry was officially commercialized and the market first began to flourish from coast to coast. It is plausible that radio will one day be rendered obsolete by the proliferation of the Internet and increasing reliance on television news, but these are topics that will discussed later in light of the research I have conducted.
[...] Interpretation of Results As can be seen in the tables I have presented, there does not exist compelling evidence to suggest that the weekly radio addresses had any significant influence on the issues attended to by major media outlets. I have developed a quantifiable measure of the messages' effects in Table which measures the range between the difference of the mean value and standard deviation for a given issue. A value that lies below this range implies a highly deviated value from the mean, and thus a negative correlation, while a value lying above this range should imply a positive correlation. [...]
[...] These results are quite puzzling, as there clearly exists no trend whatsoever in the relationships between media coverage of an issue and the time that the president discusses it in his radio address. Overall, we observed five positive correlations, two negative correlations, and six negligible correlations in the time studied. The fact that there is no consistency whatsoever in these findings suggests that the effects of the radio addresses were in fact inconsequential and the positive correlations were most likely attributable to other causes. [...]
[...] Issue Selection Each weekly radio address that the president gives is limited to a certain amount of time (in my three month study the shortest address was 3:29 minutes and the longest was 4:58 minutes), and therefore he must select what he wishes to discuss with great care. Perhaps more importantly he must select what he wishes not to talk about, and this is empirically evident as the Bush administration visibly emphasizes repetition of statements. In the fifteen unique radio addresses that were analyzed, President Bush narrowed his speeches down to six predominant and recurring themes: American competition, health care, energy, Iraq, immigration, and the economy. [...]
[...] (cite Iyengar I think for this Given this rationale, we can expect the Presidential weekly radio address to serve as a form of political communication that discusses issues pertaining to what the median voter cares about while spinning the issues in favor of the President's policies. Because the weekly radio address is the most frequently afforded opportunity to the President to deliver an uninterrupted speech, he is sure to promote the goals of his agenda in an attempt to assure the median voter that his administration and his party are consistently on point and moving in the right direction. [...]
[...] This method will allow for a narrower search and thus increase the likelihood of isolating the issues discussed in the radio address from other speeches given on similar topics. In light of this, I have chosen to eliminate Iraq from my research because the president gives no unique initiatives in his radio addresses. Rather, he broadly discusses issues of violence that were ubiquitous in the media at the time of concern. The initiatives I will focus on will be the following: American Competitiveness Initiative, Medicare prescription drug coverage, Advanced Energy Initiative, comprehensive immigration reform, and permanent tax relief. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
