Why did radio come to prominence in the 1920s?

Question

Why did radio come to prominence in the 1920s?

Answer 1

Because they were bored:-)

Truthfully, the technology that became the basis of radio were starting to become a table top size to receive and didn't require a room to use it. Plus at the same time Amateur radio operators (Hams) and other radio experimenters were starting to broadcast with the medium and were starting to put programs on to entertain..something that all people could enjoy from the warmth of their home without having to go out to say the movies.

Hince radio began in the 1920s, pretty much high peaked in the late 1940s for general entertainment and finally has become the medium we know today roughly in the Early 1960s

Answer 2

Just like everything else it had to do with money, sponsors could reach a wide audience fairly inexpensively and at the time broadcasters could send out their signals hundred of miles.  People wouldn't have to leave their farms and spend hours traveling just to see a show in a tent or a vaudeville theatre and could get the biggest and best stars of the day right there in their parlor.  

Just a side note I used to work for a radio station that was founded back in the twenties that started when a traveling show came to town, sold radios that could pick up the signal from the theatre and then whether you were at the show live or back home on the farm you could still hear the show.  Of course then once the traveling show left you were stuck with a radio that was out of range of what was being broadcast in other towns the traveling company went to.  Eventually the FCC put a stop to it and a lot of the mobile station licenses were sold to local folks, a few of them are still around with the same call letters; at least a couple in Oklahoma (where I worked through the 90s) and I know of one in Kansas