Multiple Choice, Single Answer

Read the passage and answer the question.

Early radio broadcasting began as an unregulated experiment, with amateur operators and small companies transmitting signals with little coordination, often causing overlapping frequencies and garbled reception. As sets became affordable for ordinary households in the 1920s, demand for reliable programming grew quickly, prompting governments to establish licensing systems that assigned specific frequencies to authorised broadcasters. This shift favoured larger organisations with the capital to secure equipment and studio space, gradually squeezing out smaller amateur stations that had defined the medium's earliest years. National broadcasters emerged in several countries, often tasked with balancing entertainment against public information duties such as news and weather reports. By the 1930s, radio had become a shared domestic experience in many households, with families gathering around a single receiver for scheduled evening programmes rather than tuning in sporadically as earlier listeners had done.