Why were early radio broadcasts heard by such a small audience? [originaltext]

It was an Italian inventor who created the first wireless device for setting out radio signals in 1895. But not until the American inventor Lee De Forest built the first amplifying vacuum tube in 1906 did we get the first radio as we know it. And the first actual radio broadcast was made on Christmas Eve of 1906. That’s when someone working from an experimental station in Brand Rock, Massachusetts, arranged the program with two short musical selections of poem and brief holiday greeting. The broadcast was heard by wireless operators on ships with a radio through several hundreds miles. The following year, De Forest began regular radio broadcasts in New York. These programs were similar to much what we hear on radio today. In that, De Forest played only music. But because there were still no home radio receivers, De Forest’s audiences consisted only of wireless operators on ships in New York Harbor. There is no doubt that radio broadcasting was quite a novelty in those days, but it took a while to catch on commercially. Why? Hmm, for the simple fact that only a few people, in fact, only those who tinkered with wireless telegraphs as a hobby owned receivers. It wasn’t until the 1920s that someone envisioned mass appeal for radio. This was radio pioneer David Sarnoff who predicted that one day there would be a radio receiver in every home.