Amos ‘n’ Andy converted NBC into a seller of audience attention

Evidence

First, while NBC might have originally considered itself a way to demonstrate the excellence of RCA’s radios, after Amos ‘n’ Andy it was now clearly and irresistibly in the business of selling the attention of enormous audiences to those who could pay for and use it. The broadcaster thus definitively became an attention merchant, in the model pioneered by Benjamin Day at the New York Sun. Some ironies would be papered over: never mind that a sponsor had had to beg to buy the airtime (at a premium) in order to show NBC just how much attention radio could theoretically capture and sell the next time; the attention was now and ever after the broadcaster’s product to develop and to resell to the highest bidder. Needless to say, there would never be a backward glance to the days when the network existed to sell the hardware! — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 323

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes Benjamin Day’s New York Sun attention-selling model from earlier chapters — ties the radio revenue shift back to the penny press precedent. — connects to: Amos ‘n’ Andy was the first broadcast show audiences scheduled their lives around — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 314; Amos ‘n’ Andy marked radio’s decisive turning point; Sarnoff never understood that NBC’s real business was selling attention, not hardware. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 346
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the attention-harvesting infrastructure theme: the broadcaster pivoting from selling hardware to selling attention parallels how platforms pivot from their original product to harvesting users.

Broader Connections

• Amos ‘n’ Andy marked radio’s decisive turning point #expands (0.88)
• Sarnoff never understood that NBC’s real business was selling attention, not hardware. #corroborates (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 346