Word from Our Sponsor

In the early 1930s, admen entered a new medium, radio, which few were sure could be profitable, and helped transform it into a major vehicle for advertising and American popular culture by seeking to serve both their audiences' interests and the commercial imperatives of their clients, the advertisers. Mediating between audiences' desire for entertainment and advertisers' desire for sales, admen combined "showmanship" with "salesmanship" to produce a uniquely American form of commercial culture. As comedian Jack Benny once informed his radio audience, an ad agency hires "the musicians, the writers, the actors. They do everything!" Advertisers, or "sponsors," paid for and controlled most radio programming from the late 1920s until the early 1950s, hiring advertising agencies to create, produce, write, and manage their programs in such a way as to sell their wares. Relying on a fresh survey of neglected archival sources, A Word from Our Sponsor revises traditional historical accounts of the "golden age" of radio by revealing the role of these sponsors and admen behind the scenes - by examining, for example, Blackett-Sample-Hummert's soap opera "empire," Young & Rubicam's soft-sell comedy hits, BBDO's corporate image building, and J. Walter Thompson's exploitation of Hollywood star-power. A Word from Our Sponsor thus enriches and corrects our understanding not only of broadcasting history but also of advertising history, business history, and American cultural history from the 1920s to the 1950s.