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About RCA - The Rise of RCA Victor
Radio's popularity in the U.S. market created new opportunities for RCA, which had been marketing radios built by GE and Westinghouse. In 1929, the three partners consolidated their research and development, manufacturing and marketing. RCA purchased Victor Talking Machine Company for $154 million and began manufacturing radios and phonographs in Camden, New Jersey.
The newly-formed RCA Victor created the RCA Radiotron Company to manufacture radio tubes, and a Westinghouse tube factory at LaSalle and Michigan Streets in Indianapolis (which already was producing 20,000 tubes a day) became a key supplier of RCA Radiotron tubes. Concerned about monopoly in the industry, the federal government moved against the fragile radio combine in 1931. GE and Westinghouse withdrew in 1932. Sarnoff moved quickly to capitalize on new opportunities. Within a few months after Al Jolson's voice was heard by moviegoers, RCA had dusted off an old sound-on-film technique and introduced it as RCA Photophone.
The mighty Radio Corporation, with its new manufacturing base and existing talent pool at NBC, was moving to Hollywood. The Radio Corporation of America joined with a chain of vaudeville theaters to open RKO movie studios, which had a successful string of Fred Astaire movies before faltering. In the depths of the Great Depression, construction began with the huge "city within a city" named Rockefeller Center. The jewel in the Rockefeller crown would be Radio City, anchored by the new headquarters for RCA and the network studios of NBC. The radio network, actually split between the NBC "Red Network" and the NBC "Blue Network," made stars out of crooner Rudy Vallee and humorist Will Rogers. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had urged the creation of RCA as assistant Navy secretary after World War I, put the medium to work during his "fireside chats." |
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