Communication: Hey! What's Doing? (3)

Consumer credit was also making it easy for the American population to buy on time, even when they did not have the money. Newer products were continually being produced flooding the buyers market with enticing advertisements that awakened an irresistible urge of "Ooooooh... this I must have." So by the end of the 1920s "nearly half of the American population had purchased automobiles, radios, and other consumer goods such as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners.

In 1925, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released statistics indicating that of the 26,000,000 homes in the United States, 5,000,000, or 19.2 percent, had radio receivers, though the number of broadcast listeners was estimated at 20,000,000. In his Historical Dictionary of the 1920s (1988), James S. Olson notes that sales of radio went from $60 million in 1922 to $843 million in 1929. It is estimated that by 1929, approximately 35 to 40 percent of American families owned radios, and the number ran considerably higher, in some cases up to 75 percent, in both wealthy suburban and larger metropolitan areas." (36)

For more information about Early Radio Broadcasting, visit the Communications Page of thehistorybox.com.

The radio had its high priority in just about every household as a form of recreation from early morning until far into the night . Since then television, computers, the internet , cell-phones and pod-casting, have been playing an integral form of communication in our lives as well as revolutionizing the use of leisure time.

Sources Utilized to Document Information

So everybody, Hey, what's doing? :-)

Contact: miriammedina@earthlink.net