Video: 'The First Radio Commerical'

(Monday, August 28, 1922, 5:15 p.m. EDT) — WEAF (now WFAN) of New York City, owned by the Western Electric subsidiary of AT&T, made the first-ever broadcast of an advertisement today — a radio commercial for a newly opened Queensboro Apartments complex in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, near the just-completed #7 subway line.

Radio was still new in 1922, having transitioned from amateur operators and homemade receivers to a corporate enterprise just a year prior.

Queensboro Realty, a New York City realty company, paid Toll Broadcasting $100 (over $1200 in today’s money) for 10 minutes of time to air the spot.

A man identified as H.M Blackwell spoke on behalf of Queensboro Corporation, which had paid $50 for 15 minutes of airtime on WEAF and used it to advocate suburban living and to promote Hawthorne Court and the purchase of the rent-to-own apartments in Jackson Heights.

Referring to the advantages of an “apartment-home” where one could “enjoy all the latest conveniences and contrivances demanded by the housewife and yet have all of the outdoor life that the city dweller yearns for but has deludedly supposed could only be obtained through purchase of a house in the country.”

It closed with the statement, “You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your family to leave the hemmed-in, sombre-hued, artificial apartment life of the congested city section and enjoy what nature intended you enjoy.”