1941. The first television commercial

The moment

Tuesday, 1 July 1941, 2.29 in the afternoon. NBC’s New York station, WNBT, is about to carry a ball game from Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Philadelphia Phillies. Before the first pitch, the few thousand sets in the city show a clock face over a map of the United States, and the station announcer, Ray Forrest, reads the line Bulova has paid for: “America runs on Bulova time.” The bill is nine dollars, four for air time and five for station charges [5]. It runs about ten seconds. Then the ball game. That morning the Federal Communications Commission’s new rules had come into force, and television, after a decade of experiments, was allowed to sell.

What came before

Radio had already written the business model, and the unit of sale was the programme, whole. Advertisers, through their agencies, owned the shows outright. Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, who would later run NBC, began at Young and Rubicam making programmes for the agency’s clients, because that is where programmes were made [9].

What held television back was the lack of an agreed technical standard. The National Television System Committee recommended 525 lines on 8 March 1941, the FCC approved it on 30 April and authorised commercial operation from 1 July, and on 2 May it licensed ten stations, WNBT holding licence number one [7].

Bulova’s is called the first legal commercial because earlier experimental broadcasts had carried sponsor mentions nobody could be paid for. How long it ran is less settled than the date. Most accounts say ten seconds, others nine or twenty; Ad Age in 1995 described a “Bulova Time Check” with a ticking second hand, and the clock-over-a-map clip that circulates online is a reconstruction [5]. Then the war. From April 1942 to October 1945 the government halted production of new receivers, and in 1946, 8,000 American households owned a set.

What it changed

On 2 July 1941 a marketer could buy seconds of attention, by the clock, in front of a moving picture with sound, inside the home. That unit, the paid spot, is what the Bulova bill records. For the next fifteen years almost nobody bought it that way.

Texaco Star Theater opened on NBC on 8 June 1948 with Milton Berle, when fewer than 2 percent of households had a set [8]. Households with television went from 172,000 in 1948 to 3.9 million in 1950, 30.7 million in 1955 and 52.7 million in 1965 [1].

Households with TV setsHouseholds with radio sets

Radio took forty years to reach 50 million homes; television did it in nineteen, from the first commercial licences to 1963.

Source: US Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (1975), Series R 104-105, figures as of 30 June. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: thousands of households.

Show the data

Year	Households with TV sets	Households with radio sets
1946	8	33,998
1947	14	35,900
1948	172	37,623
1949	940	39,300
1950	3,875	40,700
1951	10,320	41,900
1952	15,300	42,800
1953	20,400	44,800
1954	26,000	45,100
1955	30,700	45,900
1956	34,900	46,800
1957	38,900	47,500
1958	41,924	48,500
1959	43,950	49,450
1960	45,750	50,193
1961	47,200	50,695
1962	48,855	51,305
1963	50,300	52,300
1964	51,600	54,000
1965	52,700	55,200

Television advertising was $58 million in 1949, 1.1 percent of all US advertising. By 1954 it was $809 million and had passed radio and magazines; by 1960 it was $1.6 billion and 13.6 percent of the total, second only to newspapers [2].

TelevisionRadioMagazinesNewspapers

In 1949 television carried one dollar in a hundred of US advertising; by 1960 it was one in seven, and newspapers were the only larger medium.

Source: Robert J. Coen, McCann Erickson, Coen Structured Advertising Expenditure Dataset as compiled by Douglas Galbi, 2008. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: millions of US dollars (current).

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Year	Television	Radio	Newspapers	Magazines	Total all media	TV share of total (%)
1949	58	571	1,911	458	5,210	1.1
1950	171	605	2,070	478	5,700	3.0
1951	332	606	2,251	535	6,420	5.2
1952	454	624	2,464	575	7,140	6.4
1953	606	611	2,632	627	7,740	7.8
1954	809	559	2,685	629	8,150	9.9
1955	1,035	545	3,077	691	9,150	11.3
1956	1,225	567	3,223	758	9,910	12.4
1957	1,286	618	3,268	777	10,270	12.5
1958	1,387	620	3,176	734	10,310	13.5
1959	1,529	656	3,526	832	11,270	13.6
1960	1,627	693	3,681	909	11,960	13.6
1961	1,691	683	3,601	895	11,860	14.3
1962	1,897	736	3,659	942	12,430	15.3
1963	2,032	789	3,780	1,002	13,100	15.5
1964	2,289	846	4,120	1,074	14,150	16.2
1965	2,515	917	4,426	1,161	15,250	16.5
1966	2,823	1,010	4,865	1,254	16,630	17.0
1967	2,909	1,048	4,910	1,245	16,870	17.2
1968	3,231	1,190	5,232	1,283	18,090	17.9
1969	3,585	1,264	5,714	1,344	19,420	18.5
1970	3,596	1,308	5,704	1,292	19,550	18.4

But the thing being bought was still the programme. Most 1950s shows had a single underwriter, and, as the historian James Baughman puts it, “commercials and product plugs were routinely integrated into programs, including those for children” [12]. Weaver, now at NBC, set out to break that with the magazine concept: the network makes the programme and sells insertions to several advertisers, the way a magazine sells pages [9]. Today, from 14 January 1952, and Tonight, from 1954, were built as vehicles for it [10]. Erik Barnouw: “Now Weaver was determined that control should shift to the networks” [11].

The quiz shows took the programme from the sponsors. The $64,000 Question went on CBS on 7 June 1955 for Revlon; Twenty-One followed on NBC for Geritol. When Charles Van Doren told a House subcommittee on 2 November 1959 that he had been fed the answers, the hearings exposed producers and sponsors rigging outcomes, Congress made fixing a crime in 1960, and the networks took programme control for themselves [14][15]. From then on the sponsor was a buyer of time, and the agency’s job on television was the spot.

The last change was the length of the unit. Through the 1960s the standard commercial was sixty seconds. The cigarette ban took tobacco off the air from 1 January 1971, the last spot running at 11.50 that night during Johnny Carson’s programme, and tobacco had bought sixty-second units almost without exception [16]. The networks replaced the lost revenue by selling halves. The thirty-second spot became the standard.

The thirty-second unit the networks adopted after 1971 became the most expensive half-minute in media; Super Bowl I ran on two networks, and the NBC price is used for 1967.

Source: Superbowl-ads.com, "Average Cost of Super Bowl Ads Breakdown by Year", publicly reported network rate cards and press reports, 1967 to 2025. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: US dollars (current).

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Game year	Super Bowl	Network	Average cost per 30 seconds ($)
1967	I	NBC	37,500
1968	II	CBS	54,500
1969	III	NBC	55,000
1970	IV	CBS	78,200
1971	V	NBC	72,500
1972	VI	CBS	86,100
1973	VII	NBC	88,100
1974	VIII	CBS	103,500
1975	IX	NBC	107,000
1976	X	CBS	110,000
1977	XI	NBC	125,000
1978	XII	CBS	162,300
1979	XIII	NBC	185,000
1980	XIV	CBS	222,000
1981	XV	NBC	275,000
1982	XVI	CBS	324,300
1983	XVII	NBC	400,000
1984	XVIII	CBS	368,200
1985	XIX	ABC	525,000
1986	XX	NBC	550,000
1987	XXI	CBS	600,000
1988	XXII	ABC	645,000
1989	XXIII	NBC	675,000
1990	XXIV	CBS	700,400
1991	XXV	ABC	800,000
1992	XXVI	CBS	850,000
1993	XXVII	NBC	850,000
1994	XXVIII	NBC	900,000
1995	XXIX	ABC	1,150,000
1996	XXX	NBC	1,085,000
1997	XXXI	FOX	1,200,000
1998	XXXII	NBC	1,291,100
1999	XXXIII	FOX	1,600,000
2000	XXXIV	ABC	2,100,000
2001	XXXV	CBS	2,200,000
2002	XXXVI	FOX	2,200,000
2003	XXXVII	ABC	2,200,000
2004	XXXVIII	CBS	2,302,200
2005	XXXIX	FOX	2,400,000
2006	XL	ABC	2,500,000
2007	XLI	CBS	2,385,365
2008	XLII	FOX	2,699,963
2009	XLIII	NBC	2,999,960
2010	XLIV	CBS	2,954,010
2011	XLV	FOX	3,100,000
2012	XLVI	NBC	3,500,000
2013	XLVII	CBS	3,800,000
2014	XLVIII	FOX	4,000,000
2015	XLIX	NBC	4,250,000
2016	L	CBS	4,800,000
2017	LI	FOX	5,400,000
2018	LII	NBC	5,235,000
2019	LIII	CBS	5,200,000
2020	LIV	FOX	5,600,000
2021	LV	CBS	5,600,000
2022	LVI	NBC	6,500,000
2023	LVII	FOX	6,800,000
2024	LVIII	CBS	7,000,000
2025	LIX	FOX	7,300,000

Eighty-five years on, the unit survives and the pipe has changed. In May 2025 streaming took 44.8 percent of time spent with the television screen, more than broadcast and cable combined [25]. Connected television advertising was $9.7 billion in 2020 and $23.6 billion in 2024 [26].

StreamingCableBroadcast

The Gauge began in May 2021 with cable at 39 percent and streaming at 26; four Mays later the order had reversed, and streaming alone exceeded the two linear categories together.

Source: Nielsen, The Gauge, monthly reports for May 2021, May 2022, May 2023, May 2024 and May 2025. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: percent of total TV usage.

Show the data

Month	Streaming	Cable	Broadcast
May 2021	26.0	39.0	25.0
May 2022	31.9	36.5	24.4
May 2023	36.4	31.1	22.8
May 2024	38.8	28.2	22.3
May 2025	44.8	24.1	20.1

Connected TVSocial videoOnline video

The spot moved to the connected set faster than it moved to any earlier pipe, but the fastest-growing video dollars in 2024 were social, where the programme is the creator's.

Source: IAB, 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, Guideline estimates, April and July 2025, p. 8. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: billions of US dollars.

Show the data

Year	Connected TV	Social video	Online video
2020	9.7	9.5	7.0
2021	15.2	13.8	10.0
2022	18.6	16.3	12.2
2023	20.3	19.5	14.2
2024	23.6	23.7	16.6
2025 (est.)	26.6	27.2	18.6

The Mad Men thread

The series runs from 1960 to 1970 inside a Madison Avenue agency, the years when the spot replaced the show.

Rosser Reeves at Ted Bates made the hard-sell spot the template. His Anacin commercial, hammers pounding inside a drawn skull and the promise of fast relief, was a fifty-nine-second film that cost $8,400; Reeves said Anacin came to Bates at $18 million a year in sales, went to $54 million within eighteen months, and spent $86 million putting that one film on the air [13]. His rule for the medium puts the decade in one sentence: “The purpose of a commercial is not to entertain the viewer but to sell him” [12].

Bill Bernbach at Doyle Dane Bernbach took the other road. Mark Tungate reads the industry as “this constant tug of war between two schools: the creatives, who believe art inspires consumers to buy, and the pragmatists, who sell based on facts” [17]. When DDB took Volkswagen to television it kept the print voice: one Beetle, one fact, a dry narrator, the 1964 “Snow Plow” spot asking how the man who drives the snowplough gets to the snowplough [23]. It is still the cleanest demonstration spot we know.

Leo Burnett in Chicago turned Marlboro into the cowboy in the mid-1950s, and on television the cowboy rode to the theme from The Magnificent Seven until the ban took him off the air [22].

David Ogilvy came to the medium late. The television chapter in Confessions of an Advertising Man, in 1963, is short and leans on borrowed research: commercials that set up a problem, “then prove the solution by demonstration, sell four times as many people as commercials which merely preach about the product” [18]. By 1983 he had rules of his own, ranking problem-solution, demonstration, testimonials and the derided talking head among the formats “found to be above average in their ability to change people’s brand preference” [19]. Twenty years in, his rules and Reeves’s had mostly converged; Ogilvy’s just had better manners.

Stephen Fox opens The Mirror Makers with the medium’s permanent reputation: “Practically everyone dislikes it. Advertising interrupts radio and television programs” [20]. The interruption was the business.

Two set pieces deserve the record. The series gives the Lucky Strike line “It’s toasted” to its lead in 1960. American Tobacco’s own history dates the first “IT’S TOASTED” newspaper ad to January 1917 and records that George Washington Hill retained Albert Lasker’s Lord and Thomas late in 1925, eight years after the line [21]. The Kodak Carousel pitch is the series’ invention: Kodak’s timeline records the first Carousel projector in 1961, and its agency for most of the century was J. Walter Thompson [24].

Applied: if you are a B2C brand

Say you sell a regional snack brand in four states and your media plan is social video and connected television. The record gives you one distinction, between attention you own and attention you rent. Most media plans we see at Brave New split the budget by channel and never by that line.

Texaco owned Tuesday night; when the audience arrived, it arrived for Texaco. That is what a creator series with your name on it, or your own channel, is today. You fund the programme, you carry a bad season, and the audience is yours for as long as you keep making it. The quiz scandals are the warning that comes with ownership. The moment the sponsor’s thumb shows on the content, the audience leaves and the regulator arrives.

Connected television is the Bulova unit. You rent fifteen or thirty seconds in someone else’s programme, and the record on how to spend them has not changed since Reeves and Ogilvy argued about it: one claim, one demonstration, the name early and often. The sixty-second spot died when the tobacco money left and the networks sold halves to fill the hole. So when a platform offers you six seconds, ask what the six replaces.

Applied: if you are a B2B brand

Say you sell cybersecurity to mid-size banks and someone proposes a branded video series: a chief information security officer interviewing peers, your logo on the title card. Start where Weaver started, with control of the programme.

If you sponsor someone else’s series, you are the 1950s advertiser without the 1950s power. You get the adjacency and they keep the editorial. If you make the series, you are NBC in 1952: you fund it, you set the format, and the audience, a few hundred security and risk officers at the banks you want, is yours for as long as the programme is worth their time.

The quiz-show lesson applies with more force here. Your buyers are paid to detect manipulation. A series in which every guest endorses your category, or every episode ends on your demo, is Twenty-One with the answers handed out in advance. Keep a wall between the people who sell and the people who book guests and cut episodes, and let a guest say something your sales team would rather they had not. It is the only reason the audience comes back.

Measure it by who returns for the second episode. Berle’s audience in 1948 was tiny, and it bought the sets.

What to do with it

1. Add an ownership column to the media plan. For every line, mark whether you own the programme or rent the time, what it costs to keep owning it next quarter, and what you lose if you stop.
2. Build the spot on one claim. State it in the first three seconds and demonstrate it once. Test the fifteen against the thirty on the same claim, and do not let the platform’s default length decide.
3. If you fund a programme, write the Weaver rules before episode one: who sets the format, who books the guests, what the sponsor may never touch. Put them in the production contract.
4. Run a quiz-show audit on any series you already have. Count the episodes where the outcome favoured you. If it is all of them, your audience has noticed.
5. Price attention in Bulova units. Divide each channel’s spend by the seconds of attention it bought, and compare owned programme with rented spot on the same line. Keep the one whose cost per second falls as the audience grows.