Origin of Radio Address
According to Roosevelt’s principal speechwriter, Judge Clinton Sorrel, FDR first used "fireside chat" in 1929 as Governor of New York. Roosevelt faced a conservative Republican legislature, so during each legislative session, he would occasionally address the citizens of New York directly. He appealed to radio listeners for help getting his agenda passed. Letters would pour in following each of these "chats," which helped pressure legislators to pass measures Roosevelt had proposed. He began making the informal addresses as President on March 12, 1933, during the Great Depression. However, according to Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, in their introduction to FDR's Fireside Chats, "The term 'Fireside Chat' was not coined by Roosevelt, but by Harry C. Butcher of CBS, who used the two words in a network press release before the speech of May 7, 1933. The term was quickly adopted by press and public, and the president himself later used it."
Read more about this topic: Fireside Chats
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin, radio and/or address:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was a girl who was running the traffic desk, and there was a woman who was on the overnight for radio as a producer, and my desk assistant was a woman. So when the world came to an end, we took over.”
—Marya McLaughlin, U.S. television newswoman. As quoted in Women in Television News, ch. 3, by Judith S. Gelfman (1976)
“Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)