Empire of the Air
2 videos • 1,571 views • by UNUM Ken Burns I decided to make Empire of the Air, which aired in 1991, after listening to my friend Tom Lewis talk passionately about the topic. We were intrigued by the notion that, in an era absolutely saturated by the mass medium of television, we have so quickly and completely forgotten how a different mass medium -- radio -- had dominated American consciousness and culture for nearly half a century. This is the complicated backstage drama of the early days of radio -- an era more often than not smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. Pursuing the story of radio illuminated for me larger American themes about the vitality of our inventiveness and our unapologetic commercialism. It also introduced me to three extraordinary men whose genius, friendship, and rivalry ultimately interacted in tragic ways.