Flintstones commercial

Ad Exec promises television will subdue husbands (1949)

J. David Cathcart, an advertising executive wrote in defense of television’s pacifying effects on men predicting that with reduced stress thanks to TV’s intervention in American homes, men

may live longer. But, just to be sure that this doesn’t hurt TV sales, let me hasten to point out, girls, that while your men may, therefore, be around longer, they’ll be little bother. Just put them in the corner, leave them alone, let them look and listen, they’ll be no trouble at all. What more could you ask?

[Cathcart, J. David. "Will TV Play Hob with our Design for Living" in Sales Management (1 March 1949): 54] Quoted in Boddy, William. New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004: 52.

I wonder if he consulted for motorola:

New York Daily News 1950.

Let’s Go Mr. Dreamer

This ad campaign ran in women’s magazines and in more general magazines such as Life in 1952. Like the Hulu commercials (below) it appears that part of the appeal of the medium is its capacity to turn the viewer’s brain into mush. The question I have is whether this type of approach would work/does work if the person whose brain is being turned to mush was a woman or a child — subject positions who have been the site of a great deal of anxiety about TV’s detrimental effects.

Prince Ali’s Magic Tube

This advertisement for Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation ran in Collier’s in 1944 — before television sets were even in mass production–reassures audiences that this newfangled device isn’t as new as it may appear.

Hulu Ad #4 Dennis Leary

Notice how all of the viewers in each of these commercials are men. They bear a striking resemblance to the male spectators depicted in early TV commercials.

Hulu commercial #2 Eliza Dushku

Hulu Superbowl 2009 commercial