Answer: Farming

Long before the term broadcasting was associated with radio and television, it was an agricultural term. In farming to, broadcast is to, literally, broadly cast seeds over tilled soil.

Early radio engineers in the Midwestern United States co-opted the term from agricultural practices and applied it as a metaphor for the way a radio tower spreads radio signals over the land within its effective range. The term was then later applied to television and remains the most popular word for describing the distribution of audio and video content via mass communication media.