The Development of American Television as an Advertiser‐supported Medium — as seen by the Contemporary American Press

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 uses by advertisers of the presentation of products or services. The profitability of television selling was forshadowed in 1947.