AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — During President Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, he looked to calm nerves and explain policies by speaking directly to the American public through the radio.

He did this with “Fireside Chats”, designed as a way for the president to talk with listeners.
Between 1933 and 1944, President Roosevelt gave upwards of 30 fireside chats to the American public, with the first Fireside Chat being about the bank crisis.

“I think the first hundred days were, FDR was nothing if not a brilliant politician, and I think the first hundred days were important in that he got people believing in him. He did that primarily through what are called “Fireside Chats,” which is where he spoke directly into Americans’ living rooms through the radio and told them to gather around the radio and he would explain things, like the Emergency Banking Act and things he was going to do,” said Dr. Tim Bowman, head of the Department of History at WTAMU.

According to the University of Virginia, an estimated 60 million people listened to that first Fireside Chat.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats
On the Bank Crisis	March 12, 1933
Outlining the New Deal Program	May 7, 1933
On the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program	July 24, 1933
On the Currency Situation	October 22, 1933
Review of the Achievements of the Seventy-third Congress	June 28, 1934
On Moving Forward to Greater Freedom and Greater Security	September 30, 1934
On the Works Relief Program	April 28, 1935
On Drought Conditions	September 6, 1936
On the Reorganization of the Judiciary	March 9, 1937
On Legislation to be Recommended to the Extraordinary Session of the Congress	October 12, 1937
On the Unemployment Census	November 14, 1937
On Economic Conditions	April 14, 1938
On Party Primaries	June 24, 1938
On the European War	September 3, 1939
On National Defense	May 26, 1940
On National Security	December 29, 1940
Announcing Unlimited National Emergency	May 27, 1941
On Maintaining Freedom of the Seas	September 11, 1941
On the Declaration of War with Japan	December 9, 1941
On Progress of the War	February 23, 1942
On Our National Economic Policy	April 28, 1942
On Inflation and Progress of the War	September 7, 1942
Report on the Home Front	October 12, 1942
On the Coal Crisis	May 2, 1943
On Progress of War and Plans for Peace	July 28, 1943
Opening Third War Loan Drive	September 8, 1943
On Teheran and Cairo Conferences	December 24, 1943
State of the Union Message to Congress	January 11, 1944
On the Fall of Rome	June 5, 1944
Opening Fifth War Loan Drive	June 12, 1944

WTAMU Associate Dean of Communication, Art, Theater, and Dance, and an expert on organizational crisis communication, Dr. Kristina Drumheller, said these chats provided transparency to the American public.

“In crisis communication, we would argue that is one of the best things that you can do, right? Is to be transparent, and let audiences know what is going on. What talk in terms of stakeholders, so who has a stake in the message that you are sending and for a president, you are talking about the whole country, but often a global message,” said Drumheller.

According to Christopher H. Sterling, the “chats” nearly always focused on a single issue, and as FRD described the problem and what the administration was doing about it, FDR used direct and simple language, with clear examples or analogies. He added that Roosevelt spoke slowly as well, typically 120 to 130 words per minute while the political norm of the time approached 175 to 200 words, and often for clarity and emphasis on key points, he sometimes spoke as few as 100 words a minute.

According to the Census Bureau, in 1930, approximately 40% or approximately 12 million households of the U.S. population owned a radio. When Roosevelt’s first fireside chat was broadcast on March 12, 1933, approximately 19.3 million households owned a radio. By the 1940 Census, 28 million households, or 82.8% reported radio ownership. By the time of his final chat on June 12, 1944, 32.5 million households owned a radio.

According to the University of Virginia, in 1916 wireless receiving sets were selling for between $35 ($1,033.26 in 2023 when calculated for inflation) and $200 ($5,904.35 in 2023 when calculated for inflation), but in the early ’30s, the cost came down to an average of $10 ($214.70 in 2023 when calculated for inflation).

“Now it didn’t necessarily help everybody, if you can’t afford to eat, you probably can’t afford a radio either, right? So there are limitations to what are messaging can do, especially through medium like that. So there are plenty that FDR did not reach and I think that is an important thing… But I think that an important question is ‘Who was hearing the message and who wasn’t?’ We do talk about two-step flow theory, it’s a little outdated now, but would somebody hear the message and then share the message with others who didn’t have radio and what did that look like? So that would probably be a way some people were sharing messages, but again did people who were the hardest hit by the Depression, were they hearing those messages? He was assuring some people, there was a lot of people who probably didn’t care because he was too far removed from their experience,” said Drumheller.

The Fireside Chats legacy would continue after FDR with nearly all presidents using radio, television, and even social media to speak to the nation.

“When you can use the radio well when you can use TV well, because TV was the same thing, when TV came out, it started ‘oh, you have to look good if you are come across well, right? So that changes the way you are going to do your message, right?… Social media, I only have 144 characters or 260 characters or whatever each level gave you, how do I create that message, how do I give a short blip that is effective,” said Drumheller.

Sterling added the term “Fireside Chat”, comes from CBS broadcaster Harry Butcher on the occasion of the second one.

During the first “Fireside Chat, the broadcast was from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room with President Roosevelt actually sitting next to a fireplace.