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Jul 31, 2023 · In 1939, the first broadcast TV program aired, and the first licensed TV commercial hit airwaves in 1941. The very first TV commercial Bulova, an American watch manufacturer founded in 1875, paid for the first advertisement aired on television.
Since the 1920s, American advertising has grown massively, and current advertising expenditures are eighty times greater than in that decade. New media–radio, television, and the Internet–deliver commercial messages in ways almost unimaginable 80 years ago.
In 1946, 8,000 US homes owned TV sets, and by 1960 that number increased to 45.7 million—so began the Golden Age of TV advertising. Brands started to push the boundaries of commercial marketing and tried out jingles, storytelling tactics, celebrity endorsements, infomercials, and comedic relief.
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Television in the United States, the body of television programming created and broadcast in the United States. American TV programs, like American popular culture in general in the 20th and early 21st centuries, have spread far beyond the boundaries of the United States and have had a pervasive influence on global popular culture.
Until the fall of 1948, regularly scheduled programming on the four networks—the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS; later CBS Corporation), the National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), and the DuMont Television Network, which folded in 1955—was scarce. On some evenings, a network might not offer any programs at all, and it was rare for any network to broadcast a full complement of shows during the entire period that became known as prime time (8–11 pm, Eastern Standard Time). Sales of television sets were low, so, even if programs had been available, their potential audience was limited. To encourage sales, daytime sports broadcasts were scheduled on weekends in an effort to lure heads of households to purchase sets they saw demonstrated in local appliance stores and taverns—the venues where most TV viewing in America took place before 1948.
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Although a television set cost about $400—a substantial sum at the time—TV was soon “catching on like a case of high-toned scarlet fever,” according to a March 1948 edition of Newsweek magazine. By autumn of that year, most of the evening schedules on all four networks had been filled, and sets began appearing in more and more living rooms, a phenomenon many credited to comedian Milton Berle. Berle was the star of TV’s first hit show, The Texaco Star Theatre (NBC, 1948–53), a comedy-variety show that quickly became the most popular program at that point in television’s very short history. When the series debuted, fewer than 2 percent of American households had a television set; when Berle left the air in 1956 (after starring in his subsequent NBC series The Buick-Berle Show [1953–55] and The Milton Berle Show [1955–56]), TV was in 70 percent of the country’s homes, and Berle had acquired the nickname “Mr. Television.”
May 24, 2023 · 1941-1955: TV Advertising Is Born. In June of 1941, the FCC lifted its ban on TV advertising, and commercials hit the airwaves one month later. The ad for Bulova watches above became the first commercial on television — or at least the first legal one. Any TV advertising tests that aired before weren’t compensated due to regulations.
Although some forms—radio and television commercials and Internet advertising, for example—are uniquely American, the history of advertising must begin in Europe. This unit surveys key moments in the development of modern American advertising practice.
Dec 18, 2023 · United States. Television remains one of the most popular and effective advertising channels worldwide. Despite the ongoing digitalization of the advertising industry and the proliferation of...
