When I was growing up in the Sixties, AM radio ruled the airwaves. It was where all the music and talk shows and news outlets were to be found. And accordingly, it was where the advertisers poured their money. Commercials were, of course, rife.

FM had no commercials when I was growing up. AM ruled the airwaves.

When looking up the reasons for this on the internet, AI said the following:

AM radio was the dominant radio technology in the 1950s and early 1960s in the United States. The reason for this was due to the fact that AM radio had been around for a longer time than FM radio, and it was more established. Additionally, AM radio was more accessible to the general public, as it required less expensive equipment to produce and receive signals. FM radio, on the other hand, required more expensive equipment, and it was not as widely available as AM radio Furthermore, the sound quality of FM radio was not as good as AM radio in the early days of FM radio. 

We had a friend of my older brother’s who roomed with us on Jackman Street, Dick Singer. He had a AM/FM Tuner and turntable, and he often played, if I remember correctly, an FM jazz radio station. In the mid-to-late-Sixties, more of us had such consoles. There was a lot of music that was being played, and I remember that the sound of FM was full and richer than AM, and wondering why it wasn’t more popular.

And the beautiful thing about it was that FM had few, if any commercials.

Predictably, that did not last. Any new market that opens up and expands draws the attention of advertisers. Few things, if any, are free.

That, of course, happened with the internet as well. More than one person noted their early fears that the internet would become one more place selling us one more thing we didn’t need.

Not needing something, but craving it nonetheless, seems to be capitalist model. But even if that’s not completely true, aren’t we always trying to advertise and sell something? We try to sell ourselves to our future girl and boyfriends. We “buy” friendship by offering our friendship in exchange. We tout the superiority of one idea over another: Jesus over Mohammed, Capitalism over Communism, realism over surrealism, Pepsi over Coke. Not strange, really. I think it was Jean-Paul Sartre who said that when we choose for ourselves, we choose for others, too. I might say “each to his own,” but hell, I drink Coke because it’s the best drink. I think you should drink it too. I believe in God, and I think you should too.

There are exceptions, no doubt, but they only reinforce the rule.

Now we have something not new but which has taken off: reels, those snippets of movies, comedy specials, of intellectuals in stage debates — the late Christopher Hitchen, Jordan Petersen, Neil DeGrasse Tyson — that are positively addictive. We save them, we share them. They fit the bill for breaking up boredom. Before the internet, people use to read whatever was in front of them. The back of the cereal box at breakfast, the magazines at the dentist’s office or the local hair stylist/cutter, the waiting rooms of the world. Aside from the fees paid to get the internet, and if you don’t count the time they gobble up out of our day, they were otherwise free to watch. Until we became addicted.

Create the need, then monetize it. The way of FM radio, the way of the internet, the way with Netfliks and YouTube. And now the innocuous reels.

Hmm. I’m scratching my head. I can’t watch them anymore without being interrupted multiple times by ads telling me where to eat or where to shop. Makes me mad.

Double hmm. I wonder how I can monetize my website and this blog.

(Sigh.) I’ll get back to you all on that.