It all started with the radio
Radio broadcasting originally developed as a means for companies to sell radios. But once commercial entities realized that many households listened to their radios a significant amount of time every day, they began to explore this medium as a way to get their message out to the masses. If one had to pick a single event that started the era of radio broadcasting, it would probably be the radio program broadcast by station WEAF in New York City on August 28, 1922. This was a ten-minute advertisement for suburban apartment housing. By Christmas of that year, several New York department stores joined the fray, running ads for their stores.
By the end of the 1920s, radio advertising had advanced dramatically. It was now dominated by ad agencies that took control of schedules by buying available airtime and selling it to their customers. They also handled the creative aspects of commercials and shows and, in fact, even created entire series that were designed to sell one product or another. These efforts paved the way for the genesis of television advertising that would begin in a few more decades.
The era of the sole sponsor
Full-time telecasting didn’t really take hold until 1948, as it took the United States that long to recover from the Depression and World War II. At that time, the number of televisions reached the critical mass necessary to be considered a medium that could reach the masses. Since television was a totally new phenomenon, that is, it offered both sound and moving images, the advertising industry entered this field with caution, not sure which methods would work best to promote its products. clients on television. In other words, should it continue to be treated like radio advertising but with visuals, or would it take an entirely new approach to reach television audiences in a meaningful and effective way?
After study and many surveys, advertising agencies determined that the most effective way to reach consumers with a strong message would be to create programs featuring a single product or product line from a single company. From this concept sprang the typical television shows of the 1950s, including such titles as the Kraft Television Theatre, the Colgate Comedy Hour, and Coke Time. As with radio, these television shows were produced by advertising agencies for their clients rather than by the studios, as is common practice today.
This practice worked very well for clients for a while. But as television became more popular and more people watched it, the television networks increased the costs of doing business (i.e. more eyeballs = more total dollars spent to reach everyone) and this upward pressure on the cost of delivering a production on television (plus the ever-increasing costs of creating new content) forced a massive change in the relationship of all parties: the advertising agencies, the clients/sponsors, and the television networks. A solution had to be found to keep this powerful advertising medium profitable for sponsors.
Enter the era of conceptual magazine advertising
NBC executive Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver came up with a solution that would work and would also be very network-friendly. He introduced the “magazine concept” of television advertising. In this arrangement, sponsors would purchase blocks of time (typically one to two minutes) on a show rather than sponsor an entire show. This idea would allow for a variety of sponsors (up to four was the number envisioned) for a show. Like a magazine, the networks would now control the content since no advertiser would “own” a particular show.
Like all new ideas, Masson Avenue originally resisted this one, but after some experimentation, they found that this method would work very well for a variety of packaged goods companies that make a cornucopia of brands, like Procter and Gamble with products. as disparate as Tide (laundry detergent), Crest (toothpaste) and Jif (peanut butter).
In 1960, the magazine concept dominated television advertising, as it has ever since. Instead of relying on audience identification with a specific show, sponsors now spread their messages throughout the programming in an effort to reach as many consumers as possible. The ability to spread out their ad dollars to reach a broader segment of the population proved to be very effective for sponsors. Where before they were locked into a specific block of time every day or every week on a particular network, they could now choose the times and networks they wanted their message to be seen on.
This evolution of the concept of magazine advertising is truly the birth of the most modern television advertising. The one exception is the infomercial, which is really a throwback to the sponsored show model used in the early days of television advertising.