Radio (Finally!)
By this time, a parallel universe was being planned - a universe of radio waves, wires, and electrons. The plan had got its start in the offices at Madison Square Garden.
Julius Hopp was the Garden's manager in charge of all musical events. One day, hearing people discuss the fight, he recalled that his boss once had voiced an interest in "someday" incorporating radio into the venue's events. The fight was not an MSG event, but it was Tex Rickard's, and that was close enough. Hopp suggested to his superiors that the fight might serve as suitable content for a pilot radio broadcast. He also reminded them that recently, a local political convention had been aired via a little experimental station, with the assistance of a radio enthusiasts' group. The broadcast had earned positive reactions in the newspapers. It is not clear if he spoke directly to Rickard, but someone did, prompting Rickard to order Hopp to follow through on the idea.
Through the amateur radio people who had volunteered for the convention broadcast, Hopp approached several organizations, the most useful of which for his purposes proved to be the National Amateur Wireless Association, and the project took off. Hopp was admitted to a world of willing volunteers, experts, and innovation. Radio people got excited about the project, and they wanted to make it work. The cooperation was impressive, and the parameters of the technical approach soon were set.
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Pragmatics
The broadcast - incidentally, some say that the word "broadcast" was coined by those who worked on this very project - was to be a fundraiser for the ongoing relief work in post-war France. People would go to registered public venues (e.g., theatres) to listen, and they would make donations. People with crystal radios would be free to listen in their homes.
Some engineers and businesses declined the chance to participate - there still was uncertainty about audio broadcasts, especially with respect to connecting radio loudspeakers, and a failure would not look good. Nonetheless, dozens of people, groups, and businesses chose to work on the project. Not only did they donate their time; they loaned the project use of valuable, and sometimes unique, equipment.
Confident that the broadcast would work, Rickard added another criterion for choosing the site for the bout: it would have to be compatible with the requirements for the broadcast.
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Goin' to Jersey City
The site Rickard chose was a mostly vacant spot in Jersey City, near a railroad yard. Those attending the fight could drive to it, or they could reach it from almost any direction by public transit. On it, he would build an immense, temporary octagonal stadium. At first, it was to have a capacity of 70,000, but thanks to the ever-swelling demand, he bought a lot more lumber. The capacity of the final stadium was 90,600.
New York Times, July 1, 1921
General Electric offered the use of a new transmitter it was constructing for the military. It was more powerful than any other transmitter in the world. It was sent by rail from upstate New York, and installed on the site by RCA. A four-wire antenna, 450 feet long, was strung at Hoboken, between a railroad yard light tower and the highest point on the clock tower of the DL&W terminal, at an average height of 250 feet. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy until Woodrow Wilson had left office in January 1921, reportedly was the person who arranged to keep clear a radio frequency which the Navy normally employed to communicate with its blimps.
Poorly retouched photograph of broadcasting antenna
https://earlyradiohistory.us/century2.htm
Telephone lines were installed at ringside, in the press boxes, and at a broadcast booth a short distance from the stadium (i.e., the ringside announcer sat amidst the noise and described the fight into a telephone; in the quiet broadcast booth, another announcer would listen to the phone, and repeat the words he heard into the broadcast microphone).
International news reporters benefited from the temporary installation of 200 telegraph key stations, each supplied with its own operator, to whom foreign correspondents dictated reports during the fight, reports which went directly by wire to South America, Europe, Japan, and the Philippines.
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