Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio

IMDb 7.6 1991 • 113 min • DocumentaryHistory

Director

Ken Burns

Country

US

Plot Summary

For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.

Top Cast

Jason Robards
Jason Robards Narrator (voice)
Red Barber
Red Barber Self - Radio Announcer
Erik Barnouw
Erik Barnouw Self - Historian
Ken Bilby
Ken Bilby Self - Biographer of David Sarnoff
Norman Corwin
Norman Corwin Self - Writer