A sales floor in the sky: Philadelphia department stores and the radio boom of the 1920s.(Report)

On March 18, 1922, two rival department stores in Philadelphia launched radio stations, projecting their sales floors far beyond the immediate, physical boundaries and into the ether (Barnouw, 1966, p. 100). WFI, operated by Strawbridge & Clothier, was first on the air with local politicians, dignitaries, and musicians broadcasting from a glass-enclosed studio on the store's fourth floor. WIP, located inside the nearby Gimbel's store, unveiled its operations approximately 45 minutes later using a similar studio arrangement. By the end of that year, two other department stores in the same city, Wanamaker's and the Lit Brothers, launched their own dedicated radio stations. The phenomenon of "department store radio stations" was not unique to Philadelphia, however, as 30 such establishments across the country erected their own transmitting towers during the radio boom of 1922 ("Who Will Ultimately," 1923). An astonishing variety of groups, including radio manufacturers, newspapers, churches, universities, and small businesses of every stripe rushed to create radio stations at the time, although it was unclear how these operations would be funded. A commercial system of broadcasting developed in which privately owned stations, using government-licensed radio frequencies, sold airtime to advertisers. Those stations using different economic models found survival difficult and most adopted the commercial system, affiliated with one of the growing networks, or withered away (Sterling & Kittross, 2002).

While department stores accounted for only a fraction of the 600 plus broadcast licenses that were doled out in 1922, raw numbers do not reveal the significance of this phenomenon (Sterling & Kittross, p. 69). Before the radio boom, these stores pioneered new techniques in advertising and adopted new technologies, including electric lights, elevators, and plate glass windows, before these mainstays of modern life became common (Abelson, 1989; Leach, 1993; Pasdermadjian, 1954; Porter-Benson, 1986). They frequently sponsored musical concerts, with opera being especially popular, and several of the larger stores built their own theatres (Tyler, 1992). Building upon these traditions of advertising, technological innovation, and public entertainment, stores were often the first in their respective cities to establish radio stations. These stations demonstrated how radio programs could be fashioned around certain types of merchandise, how the airwaves could be used for advertising, how women could be targeted as consumers, how broadcasting could be staged as a public spectacle, and perhaps most significantly, how this new form of mass communication could be transformed into a source of profits.

Using the four Philadelphia department store radio stations as the focal point of analysis, this study argues that the commercialization of the American radio industry was not a dramatic paradigm shift in the late 1920s as much as a continuation and professionalization of ongoing practices. The commercial system was not artificially imposed upon the industry by a handful of corporations, but was rather a culmination of practices that had been developed by department stores and other pioneering broadcasters. Certain practices that historians have associated with a later period in radio's evolution were present to some degree from the very beginnings of broadcasting. Investigating the origins of the commercial system of broadcasting is relevant today as this particular method for funding electronic media continues to influence and inform contemporary practices. The latest innovations in electronic media bring advertisements into every conceivable nook and cranny of daily life, yet the process by which commercialization occurred in the early radio industry has not been sufficiently explored.

Today, department stores are just one type of retailer among countless others, but in the 1920s, they were still a distinct cultural institution. Many of their original business practices, such as a reliance on spectacular advertising and the positioning of shopping as a leisure time activity, have become commonplace. The intersection of department store and radio history is thus an intersection of divergent trajectories. Whereas the stores were at the leading edge of new techniques in distribution, display and advertising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these roles would be played in the future by broadcasting.

Commercialization of Broadcasting

Most historical accounts of radio conclude that the commercial model dominated the industry by the late 1920s, a period that coincides with the passage of the Radio Act of 1927 (Benjamin, 1998; Mander, 1984; Severin, 1978; Spalding, 1964). The Radio Act provided legal and regulatory approval to the commercial system, which had already developed but was not yet dominant. Beyond that, however, the actual beginnings of radio commercialism remain unclear. AT&T's introduction of "toll broadcasting" at WEAF in 1922 has become the milestone to demarcate the formal beginning of paid advertising on the radio, though as Doerksen (2005) has indicated, the practice existed prior to this date. AT&T's role in the growth of commercial broadcasting was overemphasized by the first generation of radio historians, including Archer (1938) and Banning (1946). According to Douglas (1987), the commercial system was created by business and government leaders to serve their own interests and was in place as early as 1922. Selling airtime, however, was not the dominant practice at this date, and by ending the study in 1922, Douglas offers a "black box" model that obscures later events. Hilmes (1997) agrees with Douglas on the early commercialization of the industry, though the focus of this research is its ramifications, not the process by which it occurred. McChesney (1993) locates commercialization in the early 1930s, focusing on reformers who fought Congress and corporations in order to establish alternative systems of radio. Smulyan's (1994) monograph, the only to date specifically focused on radio's commercialization, also stresses the corporate attempts to control the industry while incorporating the attitudes of the public into the argument; listeners desired some form of nationalized radio, though not necessarily the commercial system. Smulyan outlines a deliberate campaign to "sell" the commercial system to the industry, and like McChesney, presents a scenario in which commercialism arises in the mid-20s to corrupt an already developed media technology.

Government regulations in the 1920s greatly influenced the development of the American radio industry, and the works of Benjamin (1998), Rosen (1980), Streeter (1996), and Slotten (2000) focus on specific legal actions and the attitudes of regulators in order to explain commercialization. Both Benjamin and Slotten invoke Hawley's concept of the "associative state" to explain the practices of Herbert Hoover, who as Secretary of the Commerce Department was most responsible for government radio policy in the 1920s (Hawley, 1974). Guided by the vision of an associative state, Hoover believed that free enterprise should regulate itself with minimal government control. Radio's commercialization was thus not the result of government inaction, but a byproduct of deliberate policies.

The previous literature documents the role of government regulators and major corporations in the rise of commercialism. Still lacking are more accounts of the countless smaller stations of the era, and the full tapestry of 1920s radio history has yet to be revealed. Doerksen (2005) took an important step in this direction with history of "rogue" stations that concludes that commercialization occurred not because corporations controlled the industry, but precisely because they did not. Smaller, independent stations openly embraced advertising, and according to Doerksen, the commercial-resistance, which previous historians have described, was actually an elitist sentiment. The present study is a counterpart to Doerksen's work, exploring the commercialization of radio by documenting a previously overlooked group of stations; in this case, those of department stores.

The First Store Stations

The beginning of the broadcasting boom is typically dated to November 1920 when Westinghouse established KDKA in Pittsburgh, a development sparked by an advertisement for "wireless receiving kits" from the Joseph Home department store (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 65). Following Westinghouse's venture, other businesses followed suit and the transition from wireless telegraphy to broadcasting was underway.

Given the fluid, erratic nature of the early broadcast industry, identifying the "first" department store radio station is perhaps futile, if not impossible. Evidence indicates that at least two stores were involved with some form of broadcasting before the spring of 1922. In September of 1921, Eaton's in Toronto broadcast daily musical concerts using the call letters 9BA (Rawlings, 1921). 9BA also functioned as a receiving station, allowing local customers to transmit orders for radio supplies to the store. This same store previously bolstered its reputation with a widely distributed mail-order catalog and was now applying the concept of remote shopping to wireless. At approximately the same time, Hamburger's department store in Los Angeles unveiled its own station, 6XAK, using a 5-watt transmitter (Rawlings, 1921). At the start of 1922, the station changed from an experimental to a commercial broadcasting license and switched to the call letters KYJ (Radio Service Bulletin, January 1922). Most of the programming consisted of musical concerts, lasting one hour each afternoon, though the station also broadcast the 1921 World Series. In addition to using the airwaves to attract attention to its parent store, the Hamburger station was an educational venture. A classroom was built to teach students about radio. Given the novelty of the technology, department stores at the time realized that educating the (potential) consumer was a vital part of the sales effort (Arceneaux, 2006).

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