Behind the Fireside Chat

"Mr. Hearst."

The other party cut him off. "I understand what you're saying, but this matter is no longer within my control."

Hearst narrowed his eyes. "Is someone else beside you?"

There was silence on the other end for a moment.

Then an unfamiliar voice came through the telephone, clear and calm.

"Good luck, Mr. Hearst."

Click.

The call ended.

Hearst stood frozen, receiver in hand.

That voice felt like a mockery, sending a chill up from the base of his spine.

He quickly made a second call, to the Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS.

"Paley, it's me. Over there—"

"Mr. Hearst, I'm sorry, but I can't help you with this. The White House has already made the arrangements..."

The other man's voice was just as stiff, just as formulaic.

"Paley, listen to me—"

"Goodbye, Mr. Hearst."

Click.

The third call brought the same words, the same tone, the same ending.

The fourth...

The fifth...

The sixth...

Hearst set down the receiver and slumped back into his chair.

He understood.

Roosevelt had not merely "thought of" using radio. He had acted on it directly.

While Hearst and his peers were still discussing how to exert further pressure, the people at the White House had already moved first and "arranged" every major broadcasting company in the United States.

Hearst's fingers trembled slightly.

He recalled something he had said thirty years ago: "Whoever controls information controls the country."

Now, someone was trying to take that control from him in a way he had never imagined.

At the same time, in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta...

Similar scenes were playing out in the offices of countless media tycoons.

Some slammed down their telephones, some smashed glasses, some cursed loudly, and some collapsed into their chairs, unable to speak for a long time.

But no matter what they did, the outcome was the same:

Roosevelt's speech would enter thousands of homes by radio at eight o'clock that evening.

They could not stop it.

Yet in countless small towns across the country, in those crude wooden houses, those crowded apartments, and those farms battered by the cold wind—

The reactions of ordinary people were completely different.

"The president wants to talk to us?"

An unemployed worker in Chicago was squatting on a street corner, basking in the sun. He stared blankly for a moment.

"How's he gonna talk to us? We ain't in Washington."

"They say it'll be on the radio. Every station will carry it, so everyone can hear it!"

The worker fell silent for several seconds, then rose, dusted off his backside, and headed home.

He had an old radio at home, one he had bought on installments three years earlier.

His wife had complained that the thing was a waste of money, but he loved listening to music in his spare time and could not bear to sell it.

Now, that radio had suddenly taken on a different meaning.

"Radio? The president? Why would he talk to us?"

At a small farm by the Mississippi River, an old farmer sat on the doorstep, smoking.

His son had returned from town with the news.

"Don't know, but everyone in town says this time is different. It ain't the made-up nonsense in the newspapers. It'll be from his own mouth."

His son spoke.

The old farmer was silent for a long time.

Then he got up, went back inside, carried the dust-covered radio into the yard, and began fiddling with its antenna.

In a cramped apartment in Brooklyn, New York, a Jewish immigrant family sat around the dining table.

The husband had just lost his job, while the wife worried about what they would eat tomorrow.

Their radio sat in the corner and was usually only used for music.

But tonight, they would turn it on.

"What do you think our new president will say?"

"Don't know, but it'll be better than the garbage in the newspapers."

"The newspapers say he wants to become the emperor of the United States."

"The newspapers also said Hoover could give us a good life."

In a coal-mining town in Ohio, unemployed miners gathered in a bar, talking animatedly.

That evening, in the Diplomatic Reception Room on the first floor of the White House.

The doors stood open. Cables crawled out through the gap and ran along the edge of the hallway carpet toward the distant power room.

Inside, four NBC microphones had already been lined up before the fireplace.

Several technicians crouched on the floor. Some adjusted the knobs on the audio amplifiers, while others checked the cable connections...

Two men stood near the window.

They were NBC president Merlin Aylesworth and CBS president William Paley.

But the expressions on their faces at that moment were like those of men who had just swallowed a handful of bitter medicine.

If tonight's broadcast succeeded, if Roosevelt truly managed to bypass the media and send his voice directly into millions of homes, then Hearst's band of media tycoons, and even the capitalists standing behind them, would hate them to the bone.

But what could they do?

Earlier that day, Bureau agents had barged straight into their offices.

Then came a string of threats, just short of pressing guns to their heads.

Of course, they had not failed to resist.

Merlin had tried to fob them off with technical difficulties. "The president's voice has to cover the entire country? That's far too difficult technically. The signal can't reach that far. It's simply impossible!"

But to his surprise, the other side immediately retorted:

"You can connect hundreds of local stations across the country into one network through telephone lines. The White House signal can be sent simultaneously by telephone line to Boston, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. Each station can use its own transmitter to broadcast locally. Isn't that the same system you use to air concerts and boxing matches?"

What was more, the other side even knew the technical specifications of the broadcast network.

That left Merlin utterly dumbfounded.

NBC had been building its broadcast network since 1926. They did indeed use that very system to air concerts and boxing matches.

But those were internal matters. How could they know so much about it?

And how could the White House have thought of using such a method to carry the president's voice to every citizen?

Footsteps sounded from the doorway.

The two men looked up at the same time.

William Woodin entered first.

Behind him came Arthur Ballantine and other senior Treasury Department officials.

There was another person in the crowd, a man in his twenties standing among several high-ranking Treasury Department officials, conspicuous as a crane among chickens.

Merlin and William Paley could not help but study him.

Of course, if they had known that the leak of their technology and the threats they had received were all thanks to this young man, they would surely have rushed over to give him a few choice words.

"Kid, as you can see, the method you proposed has been confirmed to be technically feasible."

Roosevelt's tone was steady, but the slight upward curve of his lips revealed something else.

It was the excitement of being about to send his voice into millions of homes, into tens of millions of ears.