‘Television presents a vicious triangle’, JJ Nance, a Zenith Radio Corp executive explained to Wall Street analysts. Television shows were far more expensive to make than radio programs. Producers needed advertising revenue to cover the costs. But advertisers demanded large audiences. ‘We can’t get a mass audience’, Nance said, ‘until we have provided the American people with assured continuous entertainment, pleasing enough to stimulate the buying of receivers by the million’. Hence the vicious triangle: attracting viewers required programs, which required advertising, which required viewers...
