Sarnoff never understood that NBC’s real business was selling attention, not hardware.

Evidence

Perhaps because of his empire’s stake in selling the hardware, he never seemed either to fully grasp or appreciate NBC’s true mission as an attention merchant. Perhaps he simply didn’t like the association with advertising and its hucksters. “We’re the pipes,” Sarnoff liked to tell his associates, sounding like an industrialist of a previous generation. His success in broadcasting, though considerable, was never premised on catering to audiences, but rather on domination pursued by overwhelming force, lobbying for helpful laws or imposing tough technical standards on affiliates, with the ultimate aim of burying or buying his competitors. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 346

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the ‘pipes’ fallacy across industries — companies that think they sell infrastructure while actually selling attention, and what that blindness costs them.
• XREF: connects to: Amos ‘n’ Andy converted NBC into a seller of audience attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 323