Reprint Retrospective: Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934

This is a reprint of excerpts from Susan Smulyan's 1994 book Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934. The selections are accompanied by a recorded conversation about the book between Susan Smulyan, Professor of American Studies and Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center at Brown University, and Kathleen Franz, Chair and Curator of the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History. The reprint and conversation's goal is to encourage historical reflection on advertising's roles as technology and media change. As Smulyan notes about radio's emergence in the 1920s and 1930s, there were concerns about financing the exciting, cutting-edge medium at the time. The commercialization of radio mainly won out, but not without significant debates among a variety of interest groups. Today, there are concerns about the degree to which digital technologies and spaces, especially the Internet, should be commercialized. The dominant media may have radically changed since the 1920s and 1930s, but today's concerns about the shifting roles of advertising and the commercial values that underlie them are not necessarily new.