The development of radio in the US shows the debates about how the new medium of communications should be controlled and financed. Generalisations about capitalist business ethics having uncontested sway in creating an advertiser‐supported, private‐sector medium rest on ignorance of the...

Television became a possible medium for advertising in the late 1930s but its emergence as a major medium dates from 1947. Arguments about the likely effectiveness of television as a source of entertainment attracting large numbers of viewers were coloured by fears of responses to ill‐devised...