Building on Marconi's wireless telegraphy, regular public broadcasting began around 1920 with stations such as KDKA in Pittsburgh and, in Britain, the BBC from 1922. Radio delivered news, entertainment and official messages simultaneously to millions of dispersed households for the first time. It bound suburban and rural populations into a shared national culture without requiring them to gather in city centres. Transmitter masts and studios became fixtures of the urban scene.
Radio created instantaneous mass communication that reached the dispersing suburb, weakening the city centre's monopoly on public information and entertainment.
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