Welcome to the Age of Radio "See the new Bremer Tully 'Screen Grid' model, at your dealer today," is a verbatim quote from a tape I have of a 3-minute radio commercial that aired on WEAF in New York City back in the early age of radio. The three minute skit was a little drama about a grousing husband who always had to take his mother-in-law with him wherever he and his wife went. Eureka! Now, with the Brimatelli radio, mother-in-law can stay at home and listen to opera. Advertisers paid what was known as a toll on this AT&T- run station. The advertiser had to provide the storyline, as the broadcaster was simply providing transmission, not programming. This format evolved from a three-minute drama that featured product as hero into fifteen-, thirty- and sixty-minute variety programs whereby the advertiser was featured in commercials which sandwiched the entertainment product. Thus came shows like "Kraft Theater," "Camel Caravan of Stars," and "Texaco Theater." That model changed into the sponsorship of programs that were eventually provided by the broadcasters and networks to come. It's interesting to note here that Westinghouse got into broadcasting to sell their radios, not advertising time. It took a few years to figure out who brought what to the table and how products were going to support and be marketed through this new mass medium. The same is surely true for today's new medium, the Internet. What is also interesting to note, as we move forward in time, is that the evolution of commerce-driven media is dynamic; it doesn't sit still. We evolved away from the elongated commercial that focused only on the product, but we do seem to be moving back toward it now by way of "info-mercials," that feature the product and it's surrounding advantages for the entire lenth of the purchased air time. So, sometimes the pendulum seems to swing back and forth, while other times it swings one way, never to be seen again. Certain things work4ed in radio that also prooved viable in TV, while other things deciedely did not. Some radio stars and program models smoothly made the transition from radio to TV in the late '40s and early '50s; others were less fotunate. The ventriloquist act of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy seems preposterous as radio fare, yet it was a smash hit for many years. Weirdly, the act didn't do nearly as well on TV, where you could see what was going on. It's counterintuitive, like some other things we've seen lately. Some practices from programming and marketing will successfully make the leap profitably from one medium to the next, some won't. Still others will emerge in the new medium that didn't exist in the old. Some of the new medium babies, like AOL, will successfully penetrate the older media and some won't. After now having observed many iterations of humans interfacing with media, one thing seems stable enough -- we like to sit for long periods of time in front of things we build, be they fires, radio, TV, books or computer screens. What we stare at and interact with changes, but the people who make chairs have a pretty safe future ahead of them. |
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