Too much advertising (in 1926)

Once upon a time back in the lo-fi 1990s, there was a great zine called Primary Documents, which was made up of old articles arranged around a theme. For instance, they’d do an issue with a title like “The March of Radio: Technology and Utopia,” and it would be made up of articles published when radio was new on the American scene, and it would be quite fascinating to compare to contemporary rhetoric about, say, the Internet.

Anyway I was thinking about this recently, and actually paging through my copies of Primary Documents, and then decided to see if any of that material had ended up online. It has! Here (on the site of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, don’t ask me why) is that very “March of Radio” issue. I was really happy to see this, which always struck me as particularly wonderful: A satire of the incursion of advertising every-which-where, published in the New York Sun in 1926, called “What Radio Reports Are Coming To.” It begins:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the annual Yale-Harvard game being held under the auspices of the Wiggins Vegetable Soup Company, makers of fine vegetable soups. The great bowl is crowded and the scene, by the courtesy of the R. & J. H. Schwartz Salad Company, is a most impressive one.

The Yale boys have just marched onto the field, headed by the Majestic Pancake Flour Band, and are followed by the Harvard rooters, led by the Red Rose Pastry Corporation Harmonists, makers of cookies and ginger snaps.

The officials are conferring with the two team captains in midfield under the auspices of the Ypsilanti Garter Company of North America. They are ready for the kickoff. There it goes! Captain Boggs kicked off for Yale by courtesy of the Waddingham Player Piano Company, which invites you to inspect its wonderful showrooms….

Etc. The rest of that one is here.