Radio Sales Café

It was August 28, 1922, and radio station WEAF in New York City was airing a ten-minute talk by a representative of a real estate company praising the virtues of fine literature and suburban living. "It is fifty-eight years since Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of American fictionalists, passed away," the executive began. "To honor his memory, the Queensboro Corporation, creator and operator of the tenant-owned system of apartment homes at Jackson Heights, New York City, has named the latest group of high-grade dwellings 'Hawthorne Court'."

All this maneuvering took place when nothing was in cement, broadcasting-wise. As radio historian Susan Smulyan has noted, when KDKA went live in 1920, nobody knew how to make money from this new technology. In fact, one magazine held a contest for the best essay on how to "monetize" radio, as we would say in contemporary jargon. It might amuse Ars readers to learn that pretty much everybody agreed that commercials represented the worst possible option. (emphasis mine)   "The quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising," warned then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. "If a speech by the President is to be used as the meat in a sandwich of two patent medicine advertisements there will be no radio left." RCA Vice President David Sarnoff agreed. Soon he would propose a "super power" system in which a few high powered transmitters would broadcast radio fare to the whole country, the content subsidized by the sales on radio receivers.