06: OTTO Communications Timeline - The Radio

The Radio. Who still listens to the radio? A lot of people. 

The Radio was invented in the 1920s, starting out as morse code and communicating news to broadcasting assemblies and playing music. This invention shaped the future of marketing and advertising. Being able to broadcast important assemblies and election returns was something the country needed. 

 

The longer the radio was in use the more people realized they could make money off it. First off in order to make money, the radios needed to be accessible to everyone, so the Crystal Radios were the first to be used and manufactured and were easy to make yourself at home. They averaged at about $2.50 in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, therefore making it possible for everyone to have one. 

                        Crystal Radio

Secondly, people needed to advertise their business on the radio, so they have a way of reaching more people than imagined. These companies would pay radio stations to play their advertisement so that everyone listening to that station would hear it and spread the ad from word of mouth. This was a big change in the advertising and marketing industry because companies needed to think of ways to convince people to want their products without them seeing the product. The growth of music being played on the radio helped this problem. Thus, jingles. Companies would make catchy songs to play on the radio so the listeners would constantly have their jingle stuck in their head therefore never forgetting about the company, making a higher chance of purchasing. 

 

Not only did companies and listeners want to have easy access to radios, but they also wanted to be able to listen to it on the go. It was an inconvenience to have to wait around the radio to hear everything you wanted to hear an not be able to do anything else because of the radio not being portable. To help this problem, Chevy was the first car company to install radios into vehicles. This change made radios even more popular thus, more companies buying ads, and more consumers buying products. The radio was an invention that was great for the economy.