Early radio executives doubted daily serial programming could hold listeners

Evidence

The conventional wisdom, wrote the magazine, was that “people won’t listen to talk on the radio. They’d rather talk themselves.” … Informed that the show was a “daily blackface act,” then President H. C. Cox said, “Do you mean to tell me that you believe an act can go on a network at the same time every day in the week, five days in succession?” The answer was yes. “I think you should go back to Chicago,” said Cox. “It’s very plain to see that you know nothing about radio.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s broader attention-merchants thesis that advertisers had to force new formats past industry inertia.