“Mr.
Hearst.” The other party cut him off.
“I understand everything you’re saying, but this is no longer something I can control.” Hearst narrowed his eyes.
“Is someone else there with you?” Silence lingered on the other end of the line.
Then a stranger’s voice came through the receiver, clear and calm.
“Good luck, Mr.
Hearst.” Click.
The line went dead.
Hearst stood frozen, the receiver still in his hand.
That voice felt like a taunt, sending a chill crawling up his spine.
He immediately dialed a second number—Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).
“Paley, it’s me.
What’s going on over there—” “Mr.
Hearst, I’m sorry.
There’s nothing I can do.
The White House has already made the arrangements…” The voice on the other end was just as stiff, just as formulaic.
“Paley, listen to me—” “Goodbye, Mr.
Hearst.” Click.
The third call.
The same words.
The same tone.
The same outcome.
A fourth…
A fifth…
A sixth…
Hearst slowly set the receiver down and collapsed back into his chair.
Now he understood.
Roosevelt hadn’t merely thought of using radio.
He had already acted.
While Hearst and the other newspaper magnates had been discussing how to tighten the pressure, the White House had moved first, securing every major radio network across the country.
Hearst’s fingers trembled slightly.
He remembered something he had said thirty years ago.
“Whoever controls information controls the nation.” Now someone was trying to take that control away from him—using a method he had never imagined.
At the same time, in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta…
Similar scenes were unfolding inside the offices of media tycoons across the country.
Some slammed down their telephones.
Some smashed their coffee cups.
Some erupted in furious curses.
Others simply sank into their chairs, unable to utter a word.
But no matter what they did, the result would be the same.
That night at eight o’clock, Roosevelt’s speech would be carried by radio into millions of American homes.
There was nothing they could do to stop it.
Meanwhile, in countless small towns across the country—in modest wooden houses, crowded apartment buildings, and wind-beaten farms—the reaction from ordinary Americans was entirely different.
“The President’s gonna talk to us?” An unemployed laborer in Chicago, squatting on a street corner enjoying the sun, blinked in surprise.
“How’s he gonna talk to us?
We ain’t in Washington.” “They say it’s over the radio.
Every station’s gonna carry it—you can hear it anywhere!” The worker fell silent for a few seconds.
Then he got to his feet, dusted off his pants, and started walking home.
There was an old radio in his house, one he’d bought on installments three years earlier.
His wife had always complained it was a waste of money, but he’d loved listening to music and could never bring himself to sell it.
Now, that radio had suddenly taken on a whole new meaning.
“Radio?
The President?
What’s he got to say to folks like us?” On a small farm along the Mississippi River, an elderly farmer sat on his doorstep smoking a pipe.
His son had just returned from town with the news.
“I don’t know.
But everyone’s saying this time’s different.
It won’t be those made-up stories from the newspapers.
It’ll be his own words.” The old farmer sat in silence for a long while.
Then he stood up, went back inside, carried out the dust-covered radio, and began adjusting the antenna.
In a cramped apartment in Brooklyn, New York, a Jewish immigrant family sat gathered around the dinner table.
The husband had just lost his job, and his wife was worrying about how they would find food for the next day.
Their radio sat in the corner, normally used for nothing more than listening to music.
But tonight, they would turn it on.
“What do you think our new President’s gonna say?” “No idea.
But it’ll be better than the crap they’ve been printing in the newspapers.” “The papers say he wants to make himself Emperor of the United States.” “They also said Hoover was gonna give us all a better life.” In a coal-mining town in Ohio, unemployed miners crowded into a bar, talking animatedly among themselves.
That evening, the Diplomatic Reception Room on the first floor of the White House.
The doors stood open.
Cables snaked out through the doorway, ran along the edge of the hallway carpet, and disappeared into the distant electrical room.
Inside, four NBC microphones had already been lined up in front of the fireplace.
Several technicians crouched on the floor, some adjusting the knobs on the audio amplifiers while others inspected the cable connections.
Standing near the windows were two men.
They were Merlin Aylesworth, president of NBC, and William Paley, president of CBS.
Yet both men wore expressions as though they had just swallowed a mouthful of bitter medicine.
If tonight’s broadcast succeeded—if Roosevelt really managed to bypass the newspapers and deliver his voice directly into millions of homes—then Hearst and the other media magnates, along with the capitalists backing them, would hate them with a passion.
But what choice did they have?
Early that very morning, agents from the Bureau had marched straight into their offices.
What followed was a barrage of threats—just short of pressing a gun to their heads.
Of course, they hadn’t surrendered without a fight.
Merlin had tried to hide behind technical difficulties.
“You expect the President’s voice to reach the entire country?
That’s technically impossible.
The signal can’t travel that far.” But the other side had immediately shot back: “They said you can link hundreds of local radio stations into a single network using telephone lines.
The White House signal can be sent simultaneously through those lines to Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and every other major city.
Each station then uses its own transmitter to broadcast locally.
Isn’t that exactly the system you already use for concerts and boxing matches?” What was even more shocking was that they even knew the technical details of the radio network.
Merlin had been left utterly dumbfounded.
NBC had been building that network since 1926, and concerts and boxing matches were indeed broadcast using precisely that system.
But that was an internal matter.
How could they possibly know so much about it?
And how had the White House come up with the idea of using that very system to carry the President’s voice into every American home?
Footsteps echoed from the doorway.
The two men looked up at the same time.
The first to enter was William Woodin.
Behind him came Arthur Ballantine and several senior Treasury Department officials.
Among them was one man in his twenties, standing out conspicuously amid the group of high-ranking Treasury officials.
Merlin and William Paley couldn’t help but study him with curiosity.
Of course, had they known that both the leak of their technical system and the threats they had received were all thanks to this young man, they probably would have stormed over to give him a piece of their mind.
“My boy, as you can see, the method you proposed has now been confirmed to be technically feasible.” Roosevelt’s tone remained calm, but the slight curve at the corner of his mouth betrayed something else.
It was the excitement of a man on the verge of sending his voice into millions of homes—into tens of millions of ears.