Where Marketing Insight Meets Media Genius

An American Media Timeline 1700 to 2013

Compiled by Gary Winters

Marketing Manager

1775 Isiah Thomas publishes the Massachusetts Spy, which circulation jumped to 3,500 during pre-revolutionary crisis

1704 Boston Newsletter begins publication

1704 The first newspaper advertisement, an announcement seeking a buyer for an Oyster Bay, Long Island, estate, is published in the Boston News-Letter.

1729 Benjamin Franklin begins publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia, which includes pages of "new advertisements."

1721

1787 Literacy in U.S. is 60% of 3 million Americans. (15) Sources: Wikipedia; McSweeney’s, State of Publishing

1851 The United States Postal Service offers newspapers a cheap delivery rate.

1830 715 newspapers are published in U.S.

1856 The first full-page newspaper ad is published in the New York Ledger.

1860 New York Herald is nation’s largest circulation paper with 77,000 daily copies.

1870 5,091 newspapers are published in the U.S.

1846 The Associated Press formed and five New York newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama in order to bring news of the Mexican Ware north more quickly than the USPS could deliver it.

Sources: Wikipedia

1873: First illustrated daily newspaper published in New York.

1877 James Walter Thompson buys Carlton & Smith from William J. Carlton, paying $500 for the business and $800 for the office furniture. He renames it after himself and moves into general magazine advertising. Later, he invents the position of account executive.

1882 Proctor & Gamble begins advertising Ivory soap with an unprecedented budgetof $11,000.

1872 Aaron Montgomery Ward produced the first mail-order catalogue for his mail order business.

1903: The first tabloid style newspaper, the Daily Mirror is published.

1900 N.W. Ayer establishes a “Business Getting” department to plan advertising campaigns based on prospective advertisers’ marketing needs.

1914 The Audit Bureau of Circulations is formed, standardizing auditing procedures.

1926 Radio Corp. of America buys New York radio station WEAF from AT&T and renames it WNBC. It forms the first radio network with 19 stations and within a year the National Broadcasting Co. is launched.

1920 Associated Advertising Clubs of the World (1920) reports the proportion of the total advertising investment of the United States was placed at $1.284 million, of which $300,000,000 was estimated as direct advertising.

1917 Direct Mail Advertising Association was established.

1933: A war breaks out between the newspaper and radio industries. American newspapers try to force the Associated Press to terminate news service to radio stations.

1922 AT&T’s station, WEAF in New York, offers 10 minutes of radio time to anyone who would pay $100. The Queensboro Corp., a Long Island real estate firm, buys the first commercials in radio ad history.

1926 Radio Corp. of America buys New York radio station WEAF from AT&T and renames it WNBC. It forms the first radio network with 19 stations and within a year the National Broadcasting Co. is launched.

1929 Paul Siegel founded Advo offering private service delivering by hand in Hartford, CT.

1940 1,878 daily newspapers are published in U.S. steady decline ever since.

1939 NBC experiments with a telecast of TV’s first baseball game, Princeton vs. Columbia.

1941 With 7,500 TV sets in New York City, NBC’s WNBT begins telecasting July 1. The first TV spots, featuring a Bulova watch that ticks for 60 seconds, air as open-and close-time signals for the city’s schedule.

1938 Radio surpasses magazines as a source of advertising revenue.

1948 First Cable TV services begin delivering broadcast channels to communities in Oregon, Arkansas and Pennsylvania (6)

1946 Advo begins mail delivery in Hartford.

Sources: Wikipedia; Television & Cable Factbook

1954 CBS becomes the largest advertising medium in the world.

1954: There are more radios than there are daily newspapers.

1952-53 I Love Lucy captures the highest ever network rating: 67.3

1954 The term “junk mail” was first used.

1950 There are 96 commercial TV stations in U.S. Nine percent, or 3,880 U.S. households, have a TV. (5)

1955 Average time spent watching TV is 4 hours and 51 minutes.

Sources: Wikipedia; Television & Cable Factbook; Nielsen Ratings Co.

1967 Lester Wunderman coins the term Direct Marketing.

1976 First basic cable network, launched via satellite, was Ted Turner’s superstation WTCG in Atlanta

1972 HBO is among first cable programs to emerge. CSPAN in 1977, Nickelodeon and ESPN launch in 1979 (6)

1960 Almost 90% (87%), or 45,750 U.S. households, have a TV.

1965 Nearly 100% of TV ads on networks were 60 seconds in length. (2)

Sources: Wikipedia; Television & Cable Factbook

1984 Daily newspaper circulation in U.S. peaks at 63.3 million.

1983 Newspapers begin publishing Total Market Coverage vehicles to reach non-subscribers.

1980 Ted Turner creates CNN.

1982 Gannett Co. launches USA Today.

1980 The Columbus Dispatch becomes the first newspaper to go online. Eleven others were also a part of CompuServe dial-up service (9)

1983 Time Magazine publishes its issue naming the computer as the “Machine of the Year.”

1984 The Macintosh personal computer is officially introduced by Apple.

Sources: Wikipedia; USA Today; Time Magazine; Poynter institute (9)

1993

Sunday circulation in U.S. peaks at 62.6 million

1993 The Internet becomes a reality as 5 million users worldwide get online.

1990 57% of TV households subscribe to cable; there are 79 cable networks (6)

1991

A DOS version of AOL is issued by Steve Case.

1991 Cheers is the highest rated TV show of the season with a 21.3 rating (14)

Sources: Google; Editor & Publisher; Pew Center

1996 Cable residential broadband is introduced (6)

1996

230 North American newspapers have websites on the Internet or Dial-up, up from 60 in 1995.

1996 Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launch Hotmail (reference to html). It was the first web-based email system, and make email available to anybody with Internet access.

1997 Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Google - changing its name from BackRub

1997 The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger. Shortened to “blog” in 1999.

Sources: Google; Wikipedia; Comm100

1999 Internet advertising breaks the $2 billion mark and heads toward $3 billion as the industry, under prodding from Procter & Gamble, moves to standardize all facets of the industry.

1998 Cable networks triple to 171 networks

1998 AOL announces it has 15 million subscribers to its dial-up service.

1998 4% of U.S. adults get news online at least weekly.

1999 “Fear.com: Newspapers are on the Web because they have to be, but they’re still trying to figure out what to do there.” Chip Brown, AJR, June 1999.

1999 2,200 radio stations broadcast their signal on the Internet.

Sources: Pew Center; TV and Cable Factbook

2002 Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces on Google.

2000 12 billion e-mails are sent per day. By 2008, it will be 247 billion.

2001 Apple introduces the I-Pod.

2001 10 million Google searches per day. By 2009, it is estimated to be 300 million

2002 Readership of newspaper classified ads in 67 metro markets surveyed by The Media Audit declined more than 11% in three years.

2001 XM Radio’s first satellite was launched and service began. Sirius Radio began service in 2002.

Sources: Google; Apple; Sirius; XM; Forbes; Wikipedia

2003 The National Do Not Call Registry was created to offer consumers a choice whether to receive telemarketing calls at home.

2004 The number of wired cable households in U.S. peaks at 71%. (3)

2004 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook. (7)

2003 Linked-in and Skype are introduced.

2003 CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a $16,000 penalty for spamming e-mails.

Sources: Google; Facebook; Wikipedia

2007 14% of U.S. homes have a HD Capable TV.

2005 Average time spent watching TV is 8 hours and 11 minutes.

2005 Google Earth and Google Maps are released.

2006 Jack Dorsey, inventor of Twitter, sends his first tweet: “just setting up my twttr.”

2005 Slate names “podcast” the word of the year.

2007 Valassis purchases direct mailer, ADVO, for $1.2 billion. Launches Red Plum in 2008.

2007 Digital Video Recorders are available in 17% of U.S. households.

2008 XM and Sirius received FCC permission to merge.

2008 Google’s index of web pages reaches 8 billion.

2007 Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone.

2007 62% of Americans are part of a wireless, mobile population. (13)

Sources: Google; Nielsen, Sirius/XM

2011 The number of wired cable households in U.S. drops to 60%. (3)

2009 Half (51)% of TV ads on networks were 30 seconds in length. 39% were 15 seconds, 7% were 60 seconds. (4)

2010 Facebook users surpass 100 million.

2010 Steve Jobs introduces the I-Pad.

2009 Newspapers start Select Market Coverage vehicles to reach non-subscribers.

Sources: Nielsen, NTI: People Meter sample; Kantar Media; NCTA

2011 ESPN is the highest rated cable channel with a total weekly cume day audience of 35%. (2)

2011 Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) reaches 30.7% - a new high in the U.S. (3)

2011 81% of U.S. homes have a personal computer.

2011 There are 1,381 commercial TV stations in U.S. (5)

Sources: Nielsen; DBS

2012 Nearly all U.S. homes (97%), or 114,700 households have a TV.

2012 CBS records the highest weekly cume (73%) among broadcast stations. (2)

2012 Comcast is nation’s largest cable provider with 22 million subscribers. (6)

2012 73% of U.S. homes have a HD capable TV.

2012 Facebook users surpass 1 billion.

Sources: Nielsen Television Activity Report; Facebook; Comcast

2012 Cable networks jump to 800; 93% of U.S. households have access to cable broadband (6)

2012 84% of cable subscribers have a DVR.

2012 1,427 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. (up from 1,382 in 2011) 981 Sunday Newspaper in the U.S. (highest ever, up from 900 in 2011)

Sources: Nielsen; Newspaper Association of America; NCTA

2012 1,100 Cable Operators companies in U.S. (6)

2012 Twitter users top 200 million and @ladygaga edges out Justin Beiber as the top Twitter account: 33,265,051 followers

2012 NCIS is the highest rated TV show of the season with a 12.3 rating.

2012 Pandora and Spotify pose serious competition to satellite radio.

Sources: Twitter; Nielsen; NCTA

2013 55% of U.S. adults say they use mobile media to keep up with the news, up from 42% in 2012.

2013 80% of U.S. adults say they used one or more mobile devices in the past 7 days.

2013 50% of large tablet news consumers downloaded one or more news apps from newspapers.

2013 CT1Media – the media group that publishes the Hartford Courant records more than 21.5 million page views each month.

Sources: Reynolds Journalism Institute; CT1Media

2013 CT1Media – the media group that publishes the Hartford Courant records more than 21.5 million page views each month.

Sources: CT1Media

Sources: CT1Media

Where Marketing Insight Meets Media Genius

For More Information

Contact: Gary Winters

Marketing Manager 321-283-5268

gwinters@intersectmediasolutions.com