East End Libraries Present: “And Now a Word from Our Sponsor,” via Zoom

Throughout the 1950s, advertisers were fully in charge, controlling the content of a large part of prime time, and selling their products through live demonstrations, celebrity testimonials, inventive animation, and ads that integrated directly into the program. With the shift away from full sponsorship to 30-second “participating” spots in the 1960s, a new era of creativity emerged, as advertisers embraced new techniques and approaches in order to reach new generations of consumers. This talk will look at how advertising changed during television’s first two decades and the important role it played in convincing viewers that the key to happiness lay in quite literally buying their way into the American dream.