Media Moves Millions: When Radio was Snap Chat!

Hear this right… HERE!  Right at this Exit sign!


Exit 41 I-278 Brooklyn Queens Expressway, to Northern Boulevard (IND Queens Boulevard Line), Jackson Heights, Queens ​

​Can you imagine, spending $50 on a radio advertisement and generating a return of $150,000?  That's a return on investment of three thousand percent!  Wow.
 
​Well it happened right here in Jackson Heights, Queens.  That’s because from the printing press to Television to Facebook to Snap Chat, new media SERIOUSLY impacts the way people live.  Famed documentary film-maker Ric Burns explored the impact of radio when it first was introduced back in 1922.  Believe it or not,  back then radio excited the engagement of teenagers just as Tic Toc does today.   So here is a quick snapshot of media through the ages.

Before and ​after the American Revolution, newspapers were the primary way people got their news. They often would be distributed by the Town Crier who would walk around villages and loudly proclaim the latest news often augmenting this with the sale of pamphlets: “Hear ye, Hear ye… Queens Man put to death for killing his neighbor. Read all about it.”

​The tech of journalism was different too and it impacted how the papers were treated. Before 1900, newspapers were printed on  cotton which was sturdier than paper. Cotton lasted months.  Newspapers were expected to be handed around. So most folks got "second hand news.”  That is where the phrase derives from: second hand news is old news. As in old handed around news papers.  No surprise, newspapers made of cotton from this era are still in good shape.

By World War One, however, cotton was replaced by cheap paper — which meant the newspaper was less resilient and more disposable. News Papers after this period eroded in weeks.  So consumers bought their own editions and tossed them afterwards. 

Yet newspaper circulation became more targeted. In one household, Dad might read one Newspaper while Mom would read another.  Also, in an attempt to keep abreast of current news, papers came out in the morning and also in the evening.  In the morning a family would get the  New York Times and in the afternoon, another newspaper would arrive at doorsteps: The Evening Post.

The adaptation of media to modern lifestyles was essential for success.  It conformed with how people lived.  With the advent of subway commuting around 1900, publishers began to make more money with single sheet paper tabloids instead of fold out newspapers. Jam-packed strap-hangers preferred to peruse the thin copy, large images, and single leaf tabloids of say the Illustrated Daily News — today’s Daily News — over the unwieldy erudite New York Times.

Predictably these dailies targeted the masses with sordid stories about millionaires and immoral ladies -- preferably both. And more eyeballs meant more money from ads. These cheap paper tabloids quickly faded and grew jaundice -- but so-called Yellow Journalism boomed.


According to the Ric Burns and James Sanders companion book to Ken Burns' PBS Series, NEW YORK, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, the impact of the new media of radio was even more staggering.


While papers reached thousands, radio could reach millions.

Although first broadcast commercially in 1920, it was not for 2 more years that the first radio advertisement was transmitted.


On August 22, 1922 on NYC Radio Station WEAF ran a 10 minute advertisement for an apartment complex right here in Jackson Heights, Queens.  The response was overwhelming. The advertiser who had paid just $50 for the airtime quickly sold $150,000 worth of apartments.


Driven by the vast new scale of radio, not just media but also the advertising industry in New York exploded.

That’s because, for the first time a single product could be sold to the entire nation at once.  Already the nation’s leader in culture, fashion, and publishing, no surprise New York City excelled in the new art of heightening the power of advertising.


And so what "Wall Street" was to Finance, "Madison Avenue" became for media and advertising... and both were headquartered  in the Big Apple.


#RicBurns #NewYork #NEWYORKANILLUSTRATEDHISTORY #JamesSanders  #NewYorkTimes #DailyNews #Radio #newmedia #JamesSanders #PBS #PBSNEWYORK

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The 2 Roads of Wes Moore

If you had the RoadSpoke app… hear this here:


EXIT of the Day: EXIT 22 I-95s Delaware Expressway to I-676, SR 30 to Wayne PA, in Philadelphia PA


“The subject of this EXIT has an amazing resume. He was a troubled youth,  then an Army Ranger, a Decorated Combat Veteran, a Rhodes Scholar,  an investment banker, then the CEO of the Wall Street billionaires' favorite philanthropy, The Robin Hood Foundation -- which channels opportunity to urban neighborhoods. Today he is a Best Selling Author, and Best Friend Forever of none other than Miss Oprah Winfrey.  He also serves as the Governor of Maryland and a lot of smart money -- from both Democratic and Republican circles -- speak of him as a future Presidential Candidate.​

But we had a hard time figuring off what Exit to place this story.  It could be placed at Baltimore, Maryland, The Bronx, or even beside a tiny tropical sugar town of Trelawny Parish on the Caribbean Island of Jamaica.


The story is about one man named Wes Moore.  It is a story about being born along the mean — then plummeting.  It is a fight against the odds, falling and bouncing back to reach the highest height -- a J Curve, if you will, which every person experiences. The best part of this trajectory is Wes Moore’s story is not even half-way done. What heights will he attain?


Remarkably this Wes Moore wrote a Best Selling book about 2 Black Kids from Baltimore both named Wes Moore. 

Both started along the same mean, each chose a different path. The Other Wes Moore is now spending his life in prison, convicted of murder.  The Book itself is entitled, THE OTHER WES MOORE. ​​

As for the EXIT of the Day, we chose an offramp that takes you to Wayne, Pennsylvania which is the home of Valley Forge Military School, a dormitory prep school which marked the bottom of our Wes Moore’s plunge and from which he rose to succeed in so many things. ​

You see, in Baltimore Maryland, as a 3 year old child,  little Wes witnessed his father's death from a rare virus.  Moore's mother then took him to live in The Bronx with his grandparents. His grandfather, Dr. James Thomas, was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. His grandmother was a retired school teacher from Trelawny Parish, Jamaica.


A smart kid, Wes got financial assistance to attend the elite Riverdale Country School.  When Moore's grades fell, he got into trouble with the law.  His mom yanked him and  enrolled him in Valley Forge Military Academy off the approaching EXIT.  It was here that he learned discipline and he began to rise.


It was here too that he first parachuted which gave him the desire later to lead combat troops with the 82nd Airborne. ​

He went on to attend Johns Hopkins University where graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001. He  also won a Rhodes Scholarship and attended the University of Oxford in England. In 2005, abandoning a Wall Street Job, Wes volunteered in the Army to serve and see combat in Afghanistan.

Later, Wes became President of the Robin Hood Foundation.  New York City based Robin Hood Foundation  is one of the most innovative and well funded non-profits investing tens of millions annually in providing solutions to the War on Poverty. Managing a philanthropy led him to politics and so, harnessing the money and contacts he made on Wall Street,  Wes ran for governor of Maryland, his first home. Wes now serves as the governor of that great state.

​In addition to leading crusades against poverty, Wes is a strong advocate for Veterans Affairs and has produced TV Shows with Oprah Winfrey and TED Talks about reintegrating veterans into society.

Wes is married to Dawn Moore with two young daughters.  He lives in Maryland's Governor's mansion, many many Exits from the Other Wes Moore — who is still his friend.


So it only seems appropriate that we credit EXIT 22 with being the right road for Wes Moore.  Down this Exit, Wes Moore drove to the Valley Forge Military Academy that changed his direction in life.  So it is the correct choice for our EXIT of the DAY.”   


#WesMoore #TheOtherWesMoore #ValleyForgeMilitaryAcademy #RobinHoodFoundation #RiverdaleCountrySchool #82ndAirborne #Army #TrelawnyParish   #TedTalks #Oprah
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