The first radio commercial aired on station WEAF in New York City in 1922.

The first officially recognized “commercial” to be broadcast on radio was heard on WEAF in New York City. Couched in a monologue about the nineteenth century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, the announcer spoke for ten minutes, eventually leading the listener to a description of a place called Hawthorne Court—a collection of apartments in nearby Queens. The Queensboro Realty Company, who was selling the units, had paid $100 for ten minutes of what was called “toll broadcasting.” While other radio stations had been putting informal advertisements or “plugs” into their programs through a barter system, this was the first time a radio program was actually scripted and paid for by a sponsor for the explicit purpose of generating business. This first foray into the field of broadcast advertising led to a decade of turmoil and competition, as well as a study by the government. Newspapers, naturally threatened by the competition this practice would bring to their own medium, editorialized on the “objectionable” practice of luring listeners in with public interest programming only to subject them to crass and selfish promotions. Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, questioned the advisability of allowing such a potentially vital source of information and entertainment to be “drowned in a sea of advertising chatter.” In 1932, Congress ordered a study of the role of advertising in radio, and it was concluded that radio would not survive without the benefit of sponsored programming. Radio/broadcast advertising was here to stay.

ReadWriteThink
Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising (6–8) provides students with the opportunity to look at mass media in a critical way. Students become aware of the tremendous amount of advertising that they are exposed to on a daily basis. By looking at advertising critically, students begin to understand how the media influence people, politics and culture.

In Identifying and Understanding the Fallacies Used in Advertising (9–12), students deconstruct fallacious images and messages in advertisements and demonstrate their understanding of the fallacies through multimedia presentations.

Students examine their own listening practices and compare them to published reports on American radio listeners in Audio Listening Practices: Exploring Personal Experiences with Audio Texts (9–12).

Science NetLinks
In order for radio advertising to be possible, the technology the radio uses needed to be invented! In The Little Transistor That Could (6–8), students learn about a development that had a huge impact on the development of modern life—the transistor. Students look at the some of the constraints that affected the development of the transistor and examine the wide-ranging effect of a single innovation. Students examine how the engineers at the Bell Labs used knowledge of science and technology, together with strategies of design, to solve practical problems.

EconEdLink
In What’s Your Angle? (3–8), students learn about market research and ways to influence consumer behavior through non-price competition and ways to make their products or innovations more appealing to consumers through advertisement.

Two basic functions of advertising are introduced in Did You Get the Message? (3–8). Various techniques used to achieve these objectives are also explained. During the assessment activity, students view telev