Advertising: Mass Media: Radio

While magazines were the first to create a national market for advertising in the waning decades of the nineteenth century, it was not until the arrival of radio that a truly mass audience could be created. Initially radio was a toy for wealthy early adopters, but by the 1930s it had become ubiquitous. If anything, the Depression was actually good for radio. Advertisers, looking for the most exposure for the fewest dollars, increasingly chose radio over newspapers. By 1939 about 80 percent of Americans owned radios.