Early radio networks existed to sell radio hardware, not programming

Evidence

For example, in 1920 Westinghouse, a leading manufacturer and seller of radio hardware, established KDKA in order to sell radio through programming. Westinghouse would later have shared ownership with General Electric (GE), another manufacturer and seller of radio hardware, and with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), a jointly owned subsidiary of Westinghouse and GE of NBC. It therefore is no surprise that Merlin H. Aylesworth, NBC’s first president, believed that “the main purpose of broadcasting…[was] not to make money” but instead “to give the public such increasingly better programs that people will continue to buy and use radio sets and tubes. And that works to the advantage not only of the manufacturing companies whose money is invested in the National Broadcasting Company, but to all makers of radio equipment, and the general public as well.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1304

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core thesis that attention industries originate as hardware-sales strategies; also parallels modern platforms selling devices to serve attention businesses (e.g. Amazon’s Kindle, Google’s Pixel).
• SEED: Angle: ‘When content was free because hardware was the product’ — history showing today’s hardware-as-service bundling repeats a century-old radio model.