It is hard to imagine a time without video games, the internet, and television. What did people do for entertainment without going out to a show or dance club? In most cases, during the era before the TV. was invented, people had little choices of daily entertainment. The most cost effective and widely available way to get daily entertainment was the radio. During the early 1900's, the public forms of entertainment were limited. With most people having to travel to an organized event, such as a play or fair, radio shows soon became a popular choice for entertainment.

In the early part of the 20th century, radio technology was somewhat limited. The receivers that picked up radio signals, were limited in availability, and had a sizeable price-tag compared to a dinner and a show. Radio broadcasting stations also were limited to larger cities, if at all. Radio waves broadcasted through the air had a limited range also. With these facts, the early days of the radio were not memorable.

However, with the increasing popularity of radio stations and improved technology, radio began to flourish and became a main standard in American entertainment. By the early 1920's, radio stations had expanded to more cities and towns. Better technology along with more advanced production methods had also driven down the initial costs of buying a personal home radio. Advancements in other radio technologies had also expanded the range of broadcasts to reach homes farther away from cities and towns. With the spreading of the word and people realizing that it was cheaper and easier to be entertained by radio then going to town, radio started to become more and more popular.

By the late 20's and early 30's radio stations began to fully understand the results they were having on the consumers. Radio stations began to broadcast a multitude of programming to cater to the wants of most listeners. Offering music programs, nightly news shows, sport broadcasts, comedy shows, and fictional drama and mystery shows that played out or in some cases were the basically same shows that people 20 years earlier had to travel to go see.

Radio broadcasts paved the way for many of the marketing and selling tool and techniques that are used today by most media outlets. Being that radio broadcast were a free service, they had to use advertising to pay for the electricity and heating of the stations, for the technology used in broadcasts, the income of the people that worked for the stations and the hired comedians, show actors, musicians, and newscasters. Radio started to sell time slots in broadcasting downtime to promote other company's products. The companies would then pay the radio stations for that time. This, as you can tell, was enormously successful. Radio stations pitched any kind of products you can think of from beverages, to food, to car companies, and many other products. With other venues of entertainment losing business because of radio, ironically they turned to radio commercials to promote their local restaurants, dance halls, theaters, and other local forms of entertainment.