Old English 'brad' (wide) + Norse 'kasta' (throw) — scattering seed widely, repurposed for radio in the 1920s.
The transmission of programmes or information by radio or television; to transmit by radio or television; originally, the act of scattering seeds widely over a field by hand.
A compound of 'broad' (from Old English 'brād,' wide, spacious, from Proto-Germanic *braida-) and 'cast' (from Old Norse 'kasta,' to throw). The original meaning was agricultural: to broadcast seed was to throw it broadly across a field rather than planting in rows. When radio transmission was invented in the early twentieth century, the farming metaphor was borrowed