The Influence of Advertisers on Early Radio

The radio was the entertainment center of the home in the early 20th century.

When Guglielmo Marconi started experimenting with Morse code transmissions in 1895, he unleashed a technology still going strong today. Radio broadcasts started as private ventures more akin to ham radio than modern controlled networks, and the broadcasters soon discovered that advertising was a great way to fund their expensive hobbies. Broadcast advertising and radio grew up together, each exerting a strong influence over the other.

Barter

In 1912, "Doc" Charles Harold in San Jose, California, traded on-air promotions for the loan of phonograph records from the Wiley B. Allen Company. Barter rapidly became the currency of choice, with hobbyist broadcasters trading promotional messages for music and radio equipment from local and national dealers. Barter is still a large part of the radio business; most prizes given out in on-air radio contests are donated by advertisers.

Broadcast Advertising

In 1916, the DeForest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Company's "Highbridge Station," 2XG in New York City began advertising products made by the owner's company until the derision of Western Electric (part of AT&T) engineers shamed him out of it. Only five years later, AT&T began promoting broadcast advertising as the ideal means for supporting radio programming. In 1922, AT&T announced its plan for "toll broadcasting," traditional broadcasting interspersed with the commercials that paid the bills.

Toll Broadcasting

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who was in charge of regulating radio waves, tried to eliminate toll broadcasting by giving stations using the scheme last choice of broadcast bands. He also wanted to limit them to short-distance broadcasts and advertisements consisting of nothing but the station call letters and the name of the sponsor. This scheme went nowhere, and the secretary of commerce was relegated to observing what the market did with radio instead.

Royalties and Patents

AT&T, through deals with General Electric and Westinghouse, believed it had cornered the market on broadcast radio. However, it was unable to cover the entire radio spectrum with broadcasts, and hundreds of other radio stations cropped up, many using AT&T's own advertising scheme. AT&T sued one station and threatened the others into paying patent royalty fees. Then the music industry sued for royalties. Between the many fees and lawsuits, even radio stations that had resisted commercial interruptions were forced to sell air time or go out of business. By 1925, the industry was agreed: Advertising was a necessity in financing the radio business.

Sponsorships

Listeners loathed advertisements. Radio stations found a way to minimize them by using sponsored hours. "The Lucky Strike Hour" interspersed jazz music with advertising readings by an announcer -- and its sales went up nearly 50 percent. Other companies quickly followed suit. Texaco sponsored an hour from the Metropolitan Opera, while "The Health and Happiness Radio Show" and "King Biscuit Time" made stars out of Hank Williams and Sonny Boy Williamson. Shows with the sponsors' names in them gave way to "Abbott and Costello" and "Burns and Allen," comedy shows that integrated sponsor messages into the script in perhaps the first broadcast product-placement advertising. Many of these shows migrated into broadcast television after World War II, leaving radio primarily with commercially interrupted broadcasting once more.

References

• United States Early Radio History: Financing Radio Broadcasting
• MIT: Contacting the Past -- Early Radio and the Digital Revolution
• "Brought To You By"; Lawrence R. Samuel; 2002

Resources

• History and Old Time Radio