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Also in peacetime, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation established what many consider the first commercially owned radio station to offer a program to the general public. They charged no user fees to listeners and carried no paid advertisement, but was financed by Westinghouse in the aim of increasing their sales of home radios.

Other manufacturers soon followed Westinghouse s example. General Electric Company broadcast on station WGY. RCA (Radio Corporation of America) was another manufacturer aimed to produce home radios for entertainment. One more important early broadcaster was the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT & T). Its significance was its aim of being the first to explore the possibilities of toll broadcasting.

According to the estimates by the National Association of Broadcasters, in1922 there were 60000 households in the United States with radios, by 1929 the number had reached 10million. This was the Golden Age of radio. However, the sales could not further increase without advertisement. The sale of advertising time begun with the growth of American Broadcasting. By 1934 almost 600 radio stations were broadcasting to more than 20million homes in the United States. American commercial radio broadcasting had grown to$100million industry by the middle of that decade.

As a medium between the battlefield and listeners at millions hauses, radio reached its peak influence and prestige during the World War II (1939-1945. Both the German leader Adolf Hitler and American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had often used the radio to bypass the press and directly address the general public.

Radios success urged technology companies to make huge investments in the research and development of a new form of broadcasting called television, or TV. Because of its complicated and expensive technology, the amateurs were not active in the development process of television as they were in radio. The invention of television was a long and coordinated process. The successful transmission of an image in 1884 by German inventor Paul Nipkow, with a mechanical system known as the rotating disk. This was future developed by Scottish scientist John Logie Baird who broadcast a televised image in 1926 to an audience at the Royal Academy of Science in London. The earliest U.S patent for an all-electronic television was granted in 1927 to Philo T. Farnsworth. Meanwhile, the three mass communication corporations- General Electric, Westinghouse and RCA were cooperating with each other closely. During the 1930s, several companies around the world were actively preparing to introduce TV to the public.

Two of the companies, MBC and CBS, had made vast fortunes from radio broadcasting and dominated the television industry. The remaining two, ABC and DuMont Television Network were competing with the disadvantage of having no background in commercial broadcasting business. Other companies not in the business of broadcasting, including Paramount Pictures and the Zenith Corporation, exposed postwar plans to enter the field but were effectively blocked by unfavorable governmental regulatory decisions that were lobbied for by the broadcasting giants. Due to lack of competition, during 30 years of American television, the Big Three s collective share in the business during the primetime hours was typically 95 percent or more.

By the early 1960s, 541 of 600 television stations were commercial and on air, broadcasting daily to about 90 percent of the houses in the United States. By the early 1990s, those numbers had increased 1062 commercial and 338 public stations, and broadcasts were reaching 98 percent of houses in the United States.

As it is understood from the historical development, process of media, the media and its instruments are improving in parallel to the technological developments. Today s media moves toward a dominant age of computers and Internet. Replacement of TV, Radio, newspapers and other instruments of media by online facilities, resulting in cheaper and utilized mass communication.

The final point reached in this marathon is the interconnection of more than 50 million computers all around the world. Although originally Internet was meant to serve simpler needs, nowadays it is becoming a medium of commercial activities and a source of information. People are exchanging their ideas, knowledge and feelings on the net rather than by conventional means of interpersonal communication. The rapid growth of this new type of media so far is certainly evidenced that there is more to come in the near future.

As an example, one important benefit of Internet being used by the whole population in a society may be the return to direct democracy. Can people decide on the issues of national politics even without leaving their homes ? Can this new medium of communication be used as a tool to realize what was once seen as the impossible ?

Certainly, the physical limitations are disappearing in small scale for now. However, the speed of technological advancement will one day overcome the problem of time and space and thus will enable democracy to be performed as it was in ancient Greece.

As presented up to this point, there is a mutual bond between media and democracy throughout history. In this entire time media has served democracy in various ways from election campaigns to warfare propaganda. However, this service has not yet reached its final limits. From the current situation it is obvious that media will be an indivisible part of democracy in the future by providing it its best form ever thought in the history of mankind.

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