A Word from Our Sponsor

Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio

Cynthia B. Meyers

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Hardback

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English

Fordham University Press
01 December 2013

Radio; Social & cultural history; Popular culture; Advertising & society; Radio & television industry

During the ""golden age"" of radio, from roughly the late 1920s until the late 1940s, advertising agencies were arguably the most important sources of radio entertainment. Most nationally broadcast programs on network radio were created, produced, written, and/or managed by advertising agencies: for example, J. Walter Thompson produced ""Kraft Music Hall"" for Kraft; Benton & Bowles oversaw ""Show Boat"" for Maxwell House Coffee; and Young & Rubicam managed ""Town Hall Tonight"" with comedian Fred Allen for Bristol-Myers. Yet this fact has disappeared from popular memory and receives little attention from media scholars and historians. By repositioning the advertising industry as a central agent in the development of broadcasting, author Cynthia B. Meyers challenges conventional views about the role of advertising in culture, the integration of media industries, and the role of commercialism in broadcasting history.

Based largely on archival materials, A Word from Our Sponsor mines agency records from the J. Walter Thompson papers at Duke University, which include staff meeting transcriptions, memos, and account histories; agency records of BBDO, Benton & Bowles, Young & Rubicam, and N. W. Ayer; contemporaneous trade publications; and the voluminous correspondence between NBC and agency executives in the NBC Records at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

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. In recounting the history of this form, Meyers 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 1940s.

By: Cynthia B. Meyers
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 749g
ISBN: 9780823253708
ISBN 10: 0823253708
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 01 December 2013
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Cynthia B. Meyers is an Associate Professor of Communication at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She received her Ph.D. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews for A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio

""This is a terrific and much-needed book. Cynthia Meyers tells the compelling story of one of the most productive yet hidden cultural forces of the twentieth century.""-Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin, Madison