[Peace-discuss] Money isn't speech? It's the anniversary of radio's refutation of that

[Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

August 28. The first paid radio commercial was broadcast on this date in 1922. Radio was big business, only no one could figure out how to make any money from it. Selling the equipment generated revenue, but eventually everyone would own a radio and sales would drop off. Amateur stations across the United States had dabbled in paid advertising, but the business of selling airtime originated from AT&T, who owned WEAF in New York City. They called it "toll broadcasting," and it followed their practice of charging by the minute for long-distance telephone calls. So anyone who happened to be tuned in to WEAF at around five p.m. heard an ad for the Hawthorne Court Apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens. The announcer appealed to weary Manhattanites: "Friend," he said, "you owe it to yourself and your family to leave the congested city and enjoy what nature intended you to enjoy." Queensboro Corporation, the real estate developer who owned the apartments, paid $50 for a total of 10 minutes of airtime over five days. With that transaction, radio solved its revenue problem. Over the next few months, the station sold more ad time to the Queensboro Corporation, and it wasn't long before an oil company and American Express jumped on the bandwagon. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover did not approve of this business model: "It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertising chatter," he said.

--<http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/08/28>.