Broadcast Advertising

On 28 August 1922, station WEAF in New York carried an advertisement from the Queensboro Corporation for an apartment complex. The fee was fifty dollars. It is held to be the first radio commercial in the world. The practice of the day, though, was «toll broadcasting» — selling the airtime itself — a different thing from slipping a short spot between programmes. What is interesting is that this road was not welcomed at first. In February of that year, Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, told the first National Radio Conference that it was inconceivable to let so great a possibility for education, news and entertainment be drowned in advertising chatter, and that the ether belonged to the public. Today's common sense — free content is paid for by advertising — took hold against the wishes of the regulator at the top. Programmes, too, were made at first not by the stations but by the sponsors. Soap manufacturers holding the daytime serials is where «soap opera» comes from. The tide turned in the late 1950s, when it emerged that quiz shows had been feeding contestants the answers. With sponsors shown to be holding the programmes themselves, Congress amended the law and the networks took control of production back.