{"product_id":"a-word-from-our-sponsor-admen-advertising-and-the-golden-age-of-radio-9780823253715","title":"A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen  Advertising  and the Golden Age of Radio","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring 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 \u0026amp; Bowles oversaw Show Boat for Maxwell House Coffee; and Young \u0026amp; 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 \u0026amp; Bowles  Young \u0026amp; 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647135572021,"sku":"ByrdShop_0823253716","price":31.37,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780823253715.jpg?v=1781688979","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/a-word-from-our-sponsor-admen-advertising-and-the-golden-age-of-radio-9780823253715","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}