Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
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Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio is a non-fiction book by Tom Lewis, a history of radio in the United States, published by HarperCollins in 1991. The book was adapted into both a 1992 documentary film by Ken Burns and a 1992 radio drama written and directed by David Ossman.
Burns' documentary first aired on PBS on January 29, 1992, narrated by actor Jason Robards. The film focused primarily on the three pioneers of radio in America--David Sarnoff, Lee DeForest and Edwin Armstrong--but it did not ignore Guglielmo Marconi and Reginald Fessenden. It interspersed audio and musical highlights of "old time" radio with the stories, achievements and bitter feuds between each other. Among the historians featured is radio and television historian Erik Barnouw.
Broadcast on public radio, the radio drama originated from Washington's WETA-FM. The cast included Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Bonnie Bedelia, David Ogden Stiers, Ed Asner, Harry Shearer, John Astin, John Randolph, Norman Corwin, Peter Bergman, Philip Proctor and Rene Auberjonois,
The source of the title is from a quote by Lee DeForest mentioned in the film.
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