As radios became ubiquitous in the latter half of the 1930s, concerns about its societal impact spread. As noted in a 2010 article in Slate, “The wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936, the music magazine The Gramophone reported that children had ‘developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker’ and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of
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