Footnote #: 182
Refers to Dialogue: “Somehow the idea came along”
Time: 00:35:02
Truth Value: Omission
Keywords: “Great Man” Theory, Puffery
There was already one “border blaster” station (XED, which began broadcasting on November 9, 1930, with a regular schedule from 6:00 PM to midnight) when Brinkley “somehow” got the idea. Brinkley announced he would open his own in January 1931. We’re leaving that out because we’re continuing to feed the implication that he alone invented all these wonderful ideas.
You’re not giving him enough credit here. The idea for a huge radio station in Mexico came to him in one of two ways: either he saw what XED was doing and built on it, or he thought it up out of thin air. Either way, XED was not a border blaster in any way shape or form. It was a docile little station broadcasting at 10K watts creating no problems and causing no remark. If Brinkley was inspired by it, he was like Mark Zuckerberg, who took a little college-campus idea of somebody else’s and turned it into Facebook. Whether he did that or just had a blinding vision one day, the border blaster (not a term till he got going) was absolutely his idea.