Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991)

Like a juicy page-turner, Ken Burns's two-hour documentary on the history of radio is packed with tantalizing ingredients: power, greed, broken friendships, narcissistic heroes, and tragic players. Adapted from Tom Lewis's absorbing book, Empire follows three Americans who crafted Guglielmo Marconi's discovery of radio waves into a powerful component of the 20th century: foppish inventor Lee de Forest; Edwin Howard Armstrong, the engineer's engineer; and Russian immigrant David Sarnoff, who became head of RCA. This project came between Burns's mammoth Civil War and Baseball documentaries, and he departs from him usual structure. Instead of having actors read the letters of the participants, Burns relies on narrator Jason Robards. Because the subject matter is relatively new, there's abundant information on the three men, including on-air interviews with those who knew them. Burns's ability to marry image and sound (often old broadcasts) is a wonder, making this film as poetic as it is deft. --Doug Thomas Amazon.com

without tesla, there is no radio

I was deeply saddened by the total ommission of Nikola
Tesla from this show about the radio. It is inconceivable that not once is the guy who actually invented wireless mentioned. Very shoddy research.
Tesla was awarded all of the patents that Marconi
had tried to steal from Tesla, and as everyone knows,
Lee Deforest was a hack and who basically
stole most of his ideas from Armstrong.
Thank God Burns didn't do a show about Edison being a genius or I would have had a stroke. April 6, 2007

Pop-sociology fluff.

There is little or nothing on this disc relating to the inventive process, technological or commercial developments, intellectual property issues, or business efforts, in the history of the radio industry.

The disc consists entirely of pop-sociology fluff. There are interviews with elderly people recollecting the first time they heard a radio program. There is footage from old radio programs, that is, from the work done by actors in studios. There are images of glowing radio tubes, with no attempt to explain what is going on. There is footage of Frank Sinatra singing about the radio business. There is commentary on Lee de Forest's love life. This disc is an insult to the viewer.

There is little in the disc to hold the attention of any intelligent child or adult. The disc under review is a real challenge to the mind. What this means is that the task of finding anything interesting in the disc is a real challenge.

The disc claims to have been inspired by Tom Lewis' excellent book, Empire of the Air. I found little resemblance, except in the titles. Tom Lewis' book, Empire of the Air, is a captivating, fact-based, account of the business and commercial interests of the various inventors of the radio, and radio broadcasting. Mr.Lewis' book does not digress into the wasteland of pop-sociology fluff, as does the disc. Tom Lewis' book gets FIVE STARS.

Tom Lewis' book Divided Highways, an accounting of the recent history of the U.S. highway system, also deserves FIVE STARS. If you are further interested in engineering and inventions from the early 20th century, I would also recommend John Van Der Zee's highly readable book about the Golden Gate Bridge: The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. John Van Der Zee also gets FIVE STARS.

But the disc under review is pure junk, an insult to anyone in the radio business or radio industrym, and an insult to any curious child or adult. ZERO STARS for the disc. Yuck. Blaugh. Ick. April 14, 2006

Before Books There Was Oral History

Before Ken Burns, we had books.

In our continuing devolution, our history is being digitized. And history can be distorted, too. Career historians often sense that they are fighting a continuing battle against those who would put faith into the old saying that history belongs to the victors.

But, there's another issue today: history belongs to Ken Burns. At least American history does.

And if he decides to ignore Nikola Tesla, then Tesla will be ignored.

Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and scientist, who was born on July 9 or 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Lika (Austria-Hungary) and died on January 7, 1943 in New York City.

Among many other things, he invented radio after inventing wireless transmission. He also invented a telephone repeater, rotating magnetic field principle, polyphase alternating-current system, the induction motor, alternating-current power transmission, Tesla coil transformer, fluorescent lights, and held more more than 700 other patents.

Radio would not have existed without Tesla's crucial contributions, but he's not even mentioned here.

So, Sarnoff (defined by another writer as "a communist's idea of a capitalist"), deForest and others get the billing, and Tesla vanishes. I'd guess it's because Tesla's not photogenic.

Even though this is (intentionally) a short treatment of a big subject, I don't know how Burns can produce this and still call himself a historian.
September 20, 2005

Lukewarm air

A précis: De Forrest - Bad; Armstrong - Good; Sarnoff - Wicked.

This documentary tells the story of radio through the interlinked biographies of Lee de Forrest, inventor and self-promoter; Howard Armstrong, the engineer's engineer; and David Sarnoff, the immigrant boy who made good. It culminates in the story of Armstrong's suicide, and the ascendancy of television.

The film takes a parochial view of its subject: the lives and times of three Americans. Its agenda, beyond telling the story of radio in a romanticized way, is to do a hatchet job on De Forrest and provide a hagiography of Armstrong, with Sarnoff in a supporting role as The Ruthless Tycoon. The talking heads that leaven the portentous narration are writers and engineers. The writers provide a personal commentary, but the larger social impact of radio is barely addressed. A more gaping hole is the absence of the business story of radio; none of those interviewed provide a commercial perspective.

The most memorable part of the documentary is the collection of vintage photographs. The camera lingers on sepia prints of the twenties and thirties, and the main characters are evoked through many good stills.

An irritating editing conceit is frequent and abrupt cuts to black over vintage radio recordings. The rationale is painfully obvious - "Listen, Dummy, we're talking about an aural medium here" - and the arrhythmic execution simply disrupts the story.

I guess I'll have to go read the book. August 9, 2005

Brilliant Documentary

I've had mixed feelings about what I've seen from Ken Burns before; in both "Baseball" and "Jazz" he spends too much time cutting from the story to a shot of a person staring off into the distance with a glint in their eye and talking in the most maddeningly vague and meaningless terms about "Gee, how wonderful and thoroughly *American* baseball is," and "Man, jazz is just something you have to *feel.*" I have no problem with reflection and emotion in a documentary, but Burns has a fatal weakness for it that ends up inflating what could have been an 8 hour documentary into a 12 hour "epic."

"Empire of the Air" is the first thing by Burns I've seen that has gotten it right. Above all, he is telling us a story here, and it is surely a great one. Lee de Forest, David Sarnoff, and Harold Armstrong are each fascinating figures, and their trials and tribulations, loves and jealousies and even deaths are fascinatingly presented. Burns shows his usual talent for directing and editing, skillfully and seemlessly mixing fascinating archival footage and sound. And we do get the poetic reminescences here that I complained of earlier, though in an appropriate degree, and from unusually eloquent talking heads: Garrison Keillor and in particular the great Norman Corwin. These two artists are able to clearly and articulately impart the magic of radio without some of the repetitiveness and cliches that plagued some of the commentators in "Baseball" and "Jazz."

A little more on some of the characters who inhabited the airwaves -- Jack Benny, Orson Welles, and Fred Allen, to name but a few -- would have been welcome, but perhaps Burns was wise in mostly skimming over them -- they deserve another documentary all their own. What we have in "Empire of the Air" is enough, and the best that I've seen yet from Ken Burns. Highly recommended. December 28, 2004

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