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Noah Arceneaux, Assistant Professor Media Studies
San Diego State University
noah.arceneaux@sdsu.edu
Department Stores and Home Shopping, 1911-1950
ABSTRACT
Proponents of interactive television and other new media technologies frequently
promise that the distinction between consuming entertainment and shopping, if indeed
such a distinction still exists, will soon be annihilated. Every item shown on the screen,
from fashion to furniture, could conceivably be purchased by the viewer/consumer with a
few clicks of the remote. In such scenarios, electronic media serves to display goods to
consumers and also makes possible the concept of remote shopping.
This paper explores this particular method for conceptualizing electronic media
by examining ways in which department stores originally promoted radio and television
broadcasting. Before the radio boom of the 1920s, an era dubbed “radio’s pre-history” by
Susan Douglas, department stores experimented with wireless telegraphy and allowed
passengers on luxury liners to place orders while still at sea. In the following decade,
once the practice of broadcasting became widespread, dozens of department stores
operated their own radio stations and sponsored programs on others. Government
regulators and industry critics frowned upon the practice of direct advertising during
radio’s early years, preferring instead the more restrained form of sponsorship known as
indirect advertising. The stores, however, found ways to promote themselves and their
products without alienating listeners. The department store approach to radio led
eventually to the spread of “radio shopping shows” in the late 20s; a female announcer
would describe the sales of the day and provide a phone number for interested customers.
When broadcasting added the visual dimension and television arrived, stores were again
among the earliest group of adopters. They continued to sponsor shopping programs, with
the viewers’ home television screen functioning quite literally as display window.
Admittedly, these historical precedents were not as instantaneous as current ecommerce/home-shopping scenarios, though their existence does indicate that
commercial interests often recognize the retail possibilities of new technologies before
the process of mainstream diffusion has even begun.
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Department Stores and Home Shopping, 1911 – 1950
With the addition of television, by which a picture of the product in colors will
appear before the home radio audience, there is the probability that the
department store counter will be radioed right into the home. It is conceivable …
that at certain hour each morning a department store salesman will unroll a bolt of
fabrics or place other articles before the camera and with colored motion picture
and microphone give a selling talk to several hundred thousand women who have
seated themselves before the radio in their homes and tuned in for the daily store
news.
- Frank Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising (1929)
This prediction, written when a fully functioning version of television was more
of a dream than a practical reality, has indeed materialized. The screens of our
televisions, computers, and an ever-increasing variety of mobile devices are modern day
incarnations of the 19th century department store, broadcasting show windows and an
accompanying fantasy of material splendor to viewers on a continual basis.
Technological innovations, including the growth of the internet and interactive television
systems, have taken Presbrey’s prophetic words to the next level, as the distinction
between “viewers” and “consumers” (if such a distinction ever existed) has been
annihilated. With increasing frequency, users of electronic media are promised that every
item depicted on the screen will one day soon be available for purchase with a simple
click on the remote or keyboard.
In these scenarios, electronic media functions as a two-way form of
communication, allowing advertisers to display their wares to a consumer while also
receiving orders for said merchandise. Or, to paraphrase Frank Presbrey, not only is the
department store counter “radioed” into every nook and cranny of daily life, but the
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shopper is now “radioed” into the virtual department store. For much of the 20th century,
this two-way method for utilizing electronic media was difficult to achieve, though as the
evidence in this paper suggests, retailers and advertisers have been promoting this idea
for decades. Department stores, in particular, were among the first to recognize that the
technologies of the telephone, radio, and television could be used to make “home
shopping” a reality.
This paper is a critical retrospective of department stores and their use of
electronic communications technology during the first half of the 20th century, a
retrospective that illuminates the long, often-overlooked history of such home shopping
scenarios. A secondary goal of this research effort is to uncover particular performance
practices and narrative strategies that retailers used to display (and ultimately sell) goods
to distant consumers. This paper does not assert that department stores by themselves
were the primary originator of the various home shopping methods that exist today,
whether they are called e-commerce, t-commerce, m-commerce, or some other acronym.
Rather than depict the department store as the primary causal link in creating home
shopping, this retail institution is instead viewed as a particular method for organizing
and distributing information, a method centered on selling consumer goods. Explicating
the particular business and advertising practices of department stores is thus intended to
expose underlying truths about communications technology and the process by which
these innovations are created, diffused, and incorporated into daily life.
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Department Stores as Early Adopters
In the first decade of the 21st century, department stores are just one type of
retailer amongst countless others. We might think of them as the giant anchor at one end
of a sprawling mall, or perhaps as an aging store in some once-thriving urban center. It is
instructive to recall, however, that this type of retail institution did not always exist.
Appearing first in France before American merchants duplicated the approach, the
proliferation of department stores was spurred by rising industrial productivity,
urbanization, and new forms of transportation in the second half of the 19th century.i The
stores introduced a new approach to selling consumer goods, an approach that would
eventually become the norm. In this manner, the original role of department stores has
been subsumed by a variety of other retailers. The first department stores transformed
retailing by applying the principles of scientific management and instead of offering a
limited number of goods at a high mark-up, the standard practice of the time, they offered
an extensive variety of lower-priced merchandise under one roof. This arrangement
reduced overhead costs and facilitated centralized control with a handful of managers
overseeing a large number of low paid, often female, clerks. This particular method of
organizing the store also gave rise to the term “department store,” which replaced the
original designation of “dry goods store.”
To attract shoppers, merchants relied on newspaper advertisements, elaborate
window displays, musical concerts, fashion shows, and other promotions. They quickly
adopted new technologies of architecture, including plate-glass windows and elevators,
and were often the first in their respective cities to install electric lights. In this regard, the
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stores can be seen as miniature World’s Fairs, offering consumers enticing and seductive
visions of the future.
Early Electronic Shopping
Drawing individuals into their physical locations was the primary goal of the
impressive architecture and prolific advertising, though department stores also found that
they could use various forms of communication to reach consumers who might never set
foot on the sales floor. In the late 1860s, numerous dry goods stores issued catalogs so
that customers could order products through the mail, a practice that was greatly boosted
after the government introduced rural free delivery (RFD) in 1896.ii RFD was first
proposed by John Wanamaker while he was serving as the Postmaster General for
President Benjamin Harrison; Wanamaker also established one of the most imitated of all
the department stores.iii Mail-order catalogs proved so effective that two retailers,
Montgomery Ward’s and the Sears-Roebuck Company based their operations on this
technique, relying on the network of rail lines emanating from Chicago to reach
consumers in a vast swath of the Midwest.iv In Canada, the catalog from the Toronto
store Eaton’s was so famous that it was dubbed “the Farmer’s Bible” and was reportedly
used to teach language in public schools.v
The technology of the telephone, with its two-way communicative function, also
proved to be a useful addition to the remote shopping equation. The Jordan Marsh Store
in Boston was reportedly the first to install phones in 1876, and by the start of the
twentieth century, the devices had become a standard feature for department stores.vi
Consumers who had seen a product in a catalog or earlier in person could now
communicate their orders instantly to a store clerk. Conversely, clerks could also initiate
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sales calls and reach out to consumers in the privacy of their own homes. A set of
guidelines published in 1922 advised stores that sales calls were most effective between
10 and 11 in the morning because “evening calls find husbands at home.”vii A 1927
overview of department stores claimed that “the use of the telephone by the store’s
customers” was one of the principal factors behind the growth of these institutions.viii
Perhaps the most dramatic precedent for home shopping, however, did not utilize
mail order catalogs or telephones but rather wireless communication. In the first decades
of the 20th century, the technology of wireless was used almost exclusively for point-topoint communication and was seen primarily as a maritime application. In May 1910,
however, the Washington Post reported that an upscale London retailer was working with
two ships of the Cunard Line to provide a shipboard shopping service aimed at women.ix
Models would “promenade the decks to tempt the wives and daughters of wealthy
passengers to buy clothes.”x The orders would be transmitted via wireless, with the
outfits waiting when the ships docked. A few months later, a second newspaper article
predicted that “every department store” along the East Coast would soon install
transmitters as part of this service and that “bulletins of bargains may be published on
shipboard.”xi These news reports are note-worthy as they do not conform to the
prevailing historical accounts of wireless technology prior to 1920, a period dubbed
“radio’s pre-history” by Douglas.xii In the words of this scholar, “the corporate sphere
publicly expressed indifference towards the invention” at this time, and the historical
scholarship of this period emphasizes the role of amateur operators in the social
construction of American broadcasting.xiii These reports thus indicate a previously
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overlooked aspect of radio’s early history, and also offer further evidence as to the
enduring and integral link between new media technologies and new forms of commerce.
While it is not clear if a bona fide “department-store-ship-shopping service” ever
came to fruition, there are apocryphal accounts of isolated instances. In the summer of
1911, for example, two newspapers reported that a passenger on the Olympic steamship
used the onboard telegraph to play a prank on his friends at the Wanamaker department
store. The New York and Philadelphia branches of this store had recently installed their
own wireless telegraph stations, and W.A. Burpee decided to send in an order for socks
and a toothbrush.xiv When the Olympic was off the coast of Long Island, a biplane
swooped low over the deck, dropping a packet of letters along with the requested items.
The Christian Science Monitor’s account of this event concluded with the insightful
observation that “the wireless telegraph-the aeroplane-the 45,000 ton vessel-each in its
own way a marvel of the present decade” were brought together by a “joking order for
dry goods.” xv It is somewhat ironic that the Monitor deemed this event a joke, as it now
seems as rather prescient insight into the future of electronic communications.
A few years later, Wireless Age (the official journal of the American Marconi
Company) included two more examples of such a phenomenon. In November 1916, the
wife of a Colombian politician reportedly lost her hat while sailing to New York. In
response, “she immediately went shopping by wireless and ordered a hat,” which was
waiting for her upon arrival.xvi The publication printed another report in the same year
that outlined a system in which passengers aboard an ocean liner could send their dinner
orders via wireless to a restaurant. This account, however, was merely an attempt at
humor, as the report included a list of abbreviated codes that could be used;
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CBQ stood for corned beef and cabbage, while WAS said to stand for “we are
starving.”xvii
In the 1920s, businesses of all varieties discovered that the technology of wireless,
which had been used for years to communicate with ships, was also an effective means to
communicate to a mass audience on land. As they had done previously with newspapers
and telephones, department stores saw the commercial applications of the new form of
media. Indeed, the broadcasting boom of this decade was partially inspired by a
Pittsburgh department store’s ad for radio receivers.xviii After a tentative beginning, the
diffusion of receivers and radio stations reached a fever pitch in 1922, and by the end of
that year, the government had doled out over 600 broadcast licenses to businesses,
newspapers, stores, churches, and universities.xix
According to a comprehensive survey of these 1922 stations, department stores
controlled 30 of them.xx These stations were used to stimulate the sale of receivers, to
generate publicity for the store as a whole, and to promote specific lines of
merchandise.xxi Eaton’s in Toronto, meanwhile, used its radio station to broadcast music
as well as receive wireless orders from shoppers.xxii A September 29, 1921 advertisement
in a Toronto newspaper, The Globe, stated that Eaton’s was offering daily concerts
through its station 9BA.xxiii The station remained open for an additional half-hour after
the broadcasts to receive orders for “radio supplies” from local customers, a possibility
for those who had their own transmitting capabilities. This same store had previously
bolstered its reputation with a widely-distributed mail-order catalog and was now
applying the concept of remote shopping to wireless.xxiv
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Radio Shopping Shows
Department stores’ principal use of radio in the 1920s was not to create remote
shopping scenarios, but rather to promote themselves as benevolent patrons of the
community. They offered free programming to listeners, including classical music,
operatic selections, and informative lectures, with the name of the store mentioned
frequently as the gracious sponsor. This particular mode of advertising, known as indirect
advertising or goodwill publicity at the time, was the dominant practice of the industry, a
practice that Marchand describes as “cultural uplift.”xxv
Government regulators preferred this indirect approach to advertising, though
evidence suggests that some stores created programming a bit more overt in its
commercial appeals. A lecture on fashions of the day, for example, could be used to
promote the relevant department of the store, while still skirting the charge of direct
advertising.xxvi In March 1925, a New York radio station owned by Gimbel’s department
store, WGBS, used its morning show for women as a thinly disguised sales pitch; the
station aired step-by-step dress-making lessons while the store offered special prices on
the necessary fabrics.xxvii
By the middle of the decade, the restrained approach to advertising gave way to
explicit sales messages. Direct advertising, with explicit product and price descriptions,
first appeared during daytime programming and migrated to the evening hours.xxviii The
transition intensified and, according to Barnouw, “the years 1929-32 were a period of
almost spectacular retreat from previous standards.”xxix The economic downturn of the
era spurred the change in advertising tone; sponsors were willing to go further to entice
potential consumers, and commercial broadcasters competed with each other to attract
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paying clients. Advertising agencies established separate divisions, if they had not
already done so, and developed new techniques and programs for the medium.
This change in advertising is typified by the growth of radio shopping shows, a
genre of programming particularly favored by department stores. In contrast to indirect
advertising, in which the sponsor’s name was invoked but products never discussed, these
shows were overt sales pitches. The sales messages were often woven into a flimsy
dramatic narrative, though some shows dispensed with even this pretense. Fictional
female characters typically served as hosts, sometimes using names derived from the
respective store; Burdine’s of Miami, for example, reworked the syllables of its name and
had “Enid Burr” as a spokesperson.xxx When the Dry Goods Economist gave
recommendations for telephone-shopping services in 1922, it claimed that female sales
clerks were more effective than men; in 1935, the National Retail Dry Goods Association
issued similar advice regarding radio-based shopping services: xxxi
Almost all stores use a woman – primarily because her talks are on subjects of
interest to women … Hers must be a good microphone voice. As the window
displays are frequently called the eyes of the store, the broadcaster becomes
known as the voice of the store. This is so important that in some stores a great
part of the cost of the radio program is represented in the salary paid the
announcer.
In 1928, the Fair store in Chicago sponsored a morning shopping show, though
another communications technology was added to the mix ─ the telephone.xxxii Six days
a week on station WMAQ at 10:40 a.m. the store would broadcast “important features in
styles and values.”xxxiii Shoppers could call a designated phone number to place their
orders. Years earlier, this same store had been awarded the first broadcasting license for
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the station that would eventually become WMAQ. The Chicago Daily News was now
running the station, though a commercial relationship with the original owner remained.
A number of articles in Broadcasting from the early 1930s recommended that
department stores sponsor their own shopping shows, often invoking a specific example
of the genre.xxxiv Ira Hirschmann, a department store executive who was particularly
supportive of radio, used the trade journal to advise other retailers of the best ways to
utilize the medium.xxxv According to Hirschmann, Bamberger’s introduced the first
direct selling show in 1927 on WOR, a radio station owned by the Newark department
store. For the first six months, the goal was simply to introduce the store’s announcer.
“After six months, when we felt that the audience was responding to this approach,”
wrote Hirschmann, “we offered merchandise one day and were stormed with orders.”xxxvi
Accompanying one of Hirschmann’s articles was a sample script for a domestic
scene in which all the dialogue revolved around a shirt sale at Bamberger’s.xxxvii The
characters consisted of a woman, her male cousin, and a stereotypical African-American
maid. The presence of the maid was no accident as the store consciously promoted an
elite lifestyle to which its consumers could aspire. A study of Charm magazine, a
promotional venture from Bamberger’s that ran from 1924-32, similarly stressed the elite
appeal of this publication: “Undoubtedly the readership … was skewed to those who
enjoyed a certain economic stature.”xxxviii
A similar shopping show from the John Taylor Dry Goods Company of Kansas
City also appears in the literature on early radio advertising.xxxix Hettinger praised the
success of the “Joanne Taylor” program and noted that everything in the show, from
answering letters from listeners to comical banter with an office boy, was choreographed
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around merchandise.xl According to Hettinger, the show was a proven success; a brand
of chiffon hose promoted by Joanne Taylor outsold two national brands despite a higher
price.xli
Just as department stores had used the least offensive form of indirect advertising
on radio, they found the least offensive way to use direct advertising. A 1931 manual on
broadcasting example, for example, warned that a station could lose the “great mass of its
audience” if direct advertising overtook entertainment: xlii
There are exceptions to this rule where, for instance, a shopping service has been
sponsored by a great department store in a way where price information, style
data, guidance in the selection of commodities, etc., have been worked out in a
type of conversational continuity both pleasing and valuable, thereby creating a
service without any attempt at a program of entertainment.
A similar manual, also published in 1931, singled out WOR as a station that found
success with informative talks during the day: “The advertisers have found that they can
talk more in the daytime and that housewives do not find the talks offensive.”xliii
Hirschmann’s claim that Bamberger’s was the first to employ overt advertising,
like other similar claims, was not accurate. Two stations in Shenandoah, Iowa, both
owned by seed companies, used their airwaves for direct selling years earlier.xliv
According to Doerksen, KFNF, the first of these two stations, added an extensive range
of items to its inventory and become a virtual general store of the air. Imitators popped up
in other rural areas.xlv Unlike WOR, these rural “direct sellers” did not seek to build
goodwill in the audience before advertising their merchandise; they were explicitly
commercial out of the gate.
But if direct selling began prior to 1927, the year Bamberger’s introduced such a
show, that year indeed saw a marked expansion of this technique. In January 1927, a
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station in Boston launched with the unusual moniker of “Air Shopping News.”xlvi Using
the call letters WASN, fifteen different department stores controlled separate blocks of
airtime. The various programs consisted of musical numbers, news of the day, and sales
information, all supplied by female announcers.xlvii According to one contemporary
account of WASN, the direct selling technique was already fairly common in the
Midwest.xlviii In October 1927, the Dry Goods Reporter additionally noted that a station
in Nauvoo, Illinois had begun to broadcast prices on behalf of a local department store.xlix
Television On/As the Sales Floor
As they had done with earlier communications technologies, department stores
were again among the first industries to recognize the commercial possibilities of
television. These retailers promoted the technology through the display of functioning
receivers, installing in-store television systems, and by sponsoring home-shopping
programs in the 1940s and early 1950s.
The public demonstrations of television by department stores have received scant
attention in previous scholarship, though repeated references to these particular
establishments are numerous within the literature of the period. British inventor John
Logie Baird, for example, demonstrated a version of mechanical television in 1925 in
Selfridge’s department store in London, one of the most heralded early displays of a
functional television system.l Three years later, the same store boasted that it was the
first in the world to sell television receivers, an event that attracted attention from
Selfridge’s American counterparts.li In the United States, the inventor Philo Farnsworth,
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working for the Philco company, sent his system of electronic television on a tour of
Midwestern department stores in 1934.lii In 1939, RCA publicly unveiled its own version
of electronic television at the celebrated World’s Fair, though more Americans were
exposed to the technology with an extensive cross-country exhibition that soon followed.
Farnsworth (perhaps in an attempt to keep up with a rival) organized a similar exhibition
that traveled to 88 department stores, introducing more than three million viewers to the
technology.liii “In most cases the stores underwrote the costs,” recalled Gamble, “for the
purpose of demonstrating the practicality and popular appeal of television, both as a retail
advertising medium and as an instrument of entertainment.” The television receivers, in
other words, could function both as a consumer good themselves but also as a means of
displaying even more consumer goods to potential shoppers.
In a history of communications technology in the first decades of the 20th century,
Wurtzler has outlined how public demonstrations, similar to these in department stores,
had also been used to promote the telephone and the phonograph when these respective
technologies were still novelties.liv Before a technology can be merchandised and
marketed, potential users must first be educated about its potentials, and these television
demonstrations thus conformed to an established business practice. The fact that these
displays of television took place on a literal sales floor attached an undisputed air of
commercialism to this new technique for visual communication.
These demonstrations may have been temporary, though some retailers
experimented more permanent closed-circuit systems. In April 1939, Bloomingdale’s in
New York televised a fashion show of women’s hats, an event that the store called a
“peep into the future of merchandising.”lv Images of the models were transmitted from a
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studio inside the store to specially constructed viewing booths, called kinets, on the third
floor. According to a newspaper account, the store planned to place kinets in various
locations to stimulate sales: “For example, while a woman is being fitted for shoes she
can see the latest styles in dresses on the television screen and be encouraged to buy
one.”lvi
A proposed plan for a more widespread application of this sales technique did not
come to fruition, perhaps because of the limitations of available technology. A
description of Bloomingdale’s programming stated that the models’ movements were
extremely limited and they “were forced to fit themselves into rigid arm and back
supports in order to stay in focus.”lvii The cameras, likewise, could not move, and
instead, the talent was on a sliding platform that moved in and out of frame. Development
of in-store television, along with most all other television-related activities, was further
slowed by the FCC-mandated wartime freeze.
Department stores, while expressing some ambivalence about the then-primitive
systems of television, were more supportive of the technology than other industries.
According to a 1945 survey of 250 stores, half of them planned to use television
advertising, or “visual-broadcast merchandising” in the vernacular of the day. lviii In this
same survey, approximately ten percent of these stores planned to install in-store, closedcircuit systems, similar to the experimental one in Bloomingdale’s. The pages of the
television trade press of the 1940s were filled with blue-sky scenarios about the benefits
of television screens on the sales floor. In November 1945, for example, Television
magazine noted that DuMont, General Electric, and RCA had all developed systems, with
installation costing an estimated $32,000 to $65,000.lix According to this same article,
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the video programming could include indirect advertisements for the entire store,
promotions for specific items, or instructional lectures on the proper care of garments. If
straight entertainment was preferred, the magazine advised that everything featured on
screen, from the clothes the actors wore to the furnishings in the background, could be
promoted with a commercial announcement.lx In today’s environment, with the
distinction between television and the Internet blurring with each passing day, similar
predictions are something of a cliché.
Department stores sought to transform selling into a science in the 19th century
and television offered the possibility of streamlining the sales process even further. One
proposed use of in-store television was to broadcast a moving line of merchandise, thus
exposing the entire contents of the store to a stationary viewer.lxi In the only scholarly
analysis of 1940s department store television (beyond this current project), McCarthy
reprints an advertisement from the period that showed a graphic representation of such a
system, a scenario she likens to Raymond Williams’ concept of flow in television
programming.lxii Here, the distinction between consuming the visual programming and
the actual consumption of material goods was entirely erased. In 1948, the Department
Store Economist recognized that such programming, combined with the telephone, could
eventually remove the need for stores as physical entities; home viewers could simply
order merchandise and have it shipped to them.lxiii
The biggest experiment with in-store television was conducted in the fall of 1945
in Philadelphia.lxiv Gimbel’s, working with RCA, conducted the three-week promotion,
known simply enough as “Shop By Television.” In the 1920s, this department store
controlled no less than four radio stations so its pronounced interest in television was not
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without precedent.lxv A glass-enclosed control room was constructed in the store’s
auditorium with twenty telesites stationed at various locations.lxvi Short programs, each
arranged around the merchandise from a specific department, were televised from the
auditorium every half-hour. Staging a television production as a theatrical spectacle, with
some audience members able to see the proceedings in person while others experienced
the electronically-mediated programs on the small screen, was also a continuation of
older practices; many departments stores, including Gimbel’s, had staged similar
spectacles when radio was a new medium.lxvii
According to an RCA analysis of the promotion, “entertainment was not used as a
feature of any show,” though a separate review of the event indicates that Gimbel’s made
at least some attempt to infuse dramatic elements into the sales pitch.lxviii In one program,
for example, a mother and adult daughter awaited the arrival of an infant from an
adoption agency. As they walked through the nursery room, they praised the features of
the crib, the high chair, dresser, etc. Granted, such a program may not qualify as
entertainment to jaded audiences of today, though it does indicate that the programs were
more than close-up shots of products. The RCA report also stated that a program
featuring “Uncle Wip” featured no merchandise and served merely as institutional
advertising; this was the namesake character of Gimbel’s Philadelphia radio station WIP
who had presented bed-time stories since 1922.lxix
A survey of store visitors seemed to suggest success; 89% of all respondents
considered it an aid to shopping.lxx A review of the experiment in Televiser, however,
was not so enthusiastic.lxxi According to this article, viewers said that programs were too
long, the acting and lighting were poor, the sounds of the studio audience were
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distracting, and that television receivers did not function properly. If Gimbel’s was
indeed satisfied with the experiment, the store did not follow up with a permanent
installation of a closed-circuit system.
In a June 1946 editorial, Television stated that two recent demonstrations of instore television were less than impressive because of the outdated, pre-war equipment
that was used.lxxii “Shop By Television,” likewise, had used the older technology, a
factor which may have contributed to the negative comments. The last major push for this
merchandising strategy was in 1947 when RCA teamed with the Allied chain of
department stores for a “Television Caravan.”lxxiii The equipment traveled to 22 stores,
though the programming for this event was sponsored by ten advertisers and was not
limited solely to the stores’ merchandise.
McCarthy writes that the plans for in-store television ended in 1949, and it is
unclear from trade journals if any systems were permanently installed.lxxiv The expense
of installation contributed to retailers’ reluctance, and by the end of the 1940s, television
was beginning to lose some of its magical appeal. The household penetration rate of
television was just under ten percent in 1950, though viewers had already learned that the
recommended place to experience this technology was within the home.lxxv The
automated flow of commodities that in-store television promised was not to be
experienced within the literal confines of the store, but within the privacy of the domestic
sphere.
Television Shopping Shows
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Sponsoring early television shows proved to be a common practice for department
stores, and a number of them did so as early as 1945. At the time, the distinction between
a commercial and a program was nonexistent and Macy’s five-minute series, which aired
every Wednesday on New York station WABD, functioned as both.lxxvi Other department
stores took the basic premise of their radio shopping shows, in which listeners could
order products immediately via the telephone, and added the visual element. In 1946, for
example, the Fair Store in Chicago sponsored a weekly series with the appropriate title
“Let’s Go Teleshopping.” A contemporary review of one program described its
content:lxxvii
One program was built around the well-known trials of a male shopper with a
huge gift list. His difficulties were solved when the store’s personal shopper
quickly, and interestingly presented a string of live models who featured fashions,
perfumes and other gift possibilities…The audience was invited to order over the
telephone. No mention of department store locations is made, since they feel that
most teleshopping will be done via the telephone. (emphasis added)
In 1949, the Hecht Company, a Washington, DC-based department store, debuted
its own version of such a program, “Shopping at Home.” According to Weinstein’s
history of television in that city, Hecht’s venture was the first and most successful homeshopping program in DC.lxxviii A female host accompanied by a male, comic sidekick
presented a series of items to home viewers, while forty phone operators sat off-camera
ready to take orders. An executive from the store later recalled that items were selected
with price in mind, since they didn’t want to “use merchandise priced beyond what you’d
be willing to spend for something that you hadn’t seen first.”lxxix The female host of the
program viewed her role less as advertising as much as a consumer reporting: “I think
merchandise, timely, priced right, is newsworthy and interesting.”lxxx
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An overview of this phenomenon from 1950 listed several department stores
across the country that were currently engaged in direct sales via television.lxxxi
Philadelphia was named as the “hottest TV town in the country, as far as department
stores are concerned.” In the 1920s, this same city was also the most active single
location in terms of department store radio stations, and in both cases, Gimbel’s was the
most active local retailer when it came to broadcasting. Its publicity director claimed
credit for some of the first commercial demonstrations on DuMont’s New York station
WABD.lxxxii In the spring of 1945, Televiser credited Gimbel’s with sponsoring the first
televised fashion show, which appeared on three stations.lxxxiii The following year, the
store initiated a regular series over WPTZ in Philadelphia, “All Eyes on Gimbel’s.”lxxxiv
The first part of the half-hour show was a dramatized commercial “usually about one of
Gimbel’s lesser known departments,” and the remaining time was given over to Uncle
Wip “with his talented, precocious youngsters.”lxxxv A history of this particular station
claims that this was in fact the first fully sponsored television series.lxxxvi Establishing
definitive firsts in any field is notoriously difficult, and even if these claims are not
entirely true, taken together they do suggest that Gimbel’s was much less reluctant than
other businesses about embracing the new medium.
“All Eyes on Gimbel’s” was eventually replaced with “The Handy Man,” a show
that featured demonstrations of various products “mixed with visual gags and a lot of
good-natured patter.”lxxxvii Uncle Wip, meanwhile, got his own self-titled show on
another local channel, becoming perhaps the first spin-off in television history.lxxxviii In
1949, the store sponsored “Gimbel’s Television Breakfast Carnival” through yet another
local station.lxxxix Airing from 10:00-11:00 a.m. each day, the show was designed to boost
21
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
sales of specific merchandise. Broadcast directly from the housewares department, the
store credited “Breakfast Carnival” with doubling sales in that area.
In the 1950 Sponsor article, David Arons of Gimbel’s provided a lengthy
explanation of the rationale behind these various shopping programs:
The entire show is commercial…It is virtually impossible for the audience to
determine where the commercial starts and leaves off. The commercial pitch is
indirect and completely interwoven with the program material…We are obliged to
present a never-ending, ever-changing parade of articles of merchandise. And no
outside medium yet devised affords a more effective means of such presentation
than television…We do not use television as a teaser. We use it as a salesman.
Conclusion
A full history of home shopping, and the technological developments that have
made the current situation possible, is beyond the limited time-frame of this current
study. It is apparent, however, that that the growth of interactive, shopping scenarios
(whether relying on television systems or the internet) is a phenomenon with longstanding precedents. It is as if the grand department stores of a hundred years ago and
their associated practices have splintered into countless fragments. Their approach to
retailing and technological adoption has persisted, been shared and copied by the industry
as a whole. The connections between retailing, advertising, and electronic technology are
not so clearly articulated as they were in the department stores of the 1940s, though these
connections remain. In such examples as the “Breakfast Carnival,” for example, Gimbel’s
was both the point of production for the visual message as well as the point of
consumption; the sales floor was the studio. Home shopping networks are the most
obvious incarnation of this genre of programming, while e-commerce websites take the
show window as screen analogy to its logical extreme. Some of the examples presented
22
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
above no doubt seem comical to contemporary readers, though the basic logic underlying
them – namely, that new methods for electronically transmitting messages to distant
individuals can also be used to facilitate remote shopping - continue to inform media
practices. The persistent characterization of shopping as a primarily feminine activity, for
example, which stands out so strongly with this historical examples may have weakened
in the past years, though shows little signs of disappearing.
The media industries of present are in the midst of significant changes as digital
technologies change the way we communicate, get our news, buy products, listen to
music, and entertain ourselves. In the press, such technologies are generally depicted as
the principal agents of these changes, as if society has unleashed an autonomous genie
that can never be rebottled. Many of these changes have been dramatic, though a more
comprehensive view of communications technologies takes into account the myriad of
ways in which pre-existing attitudes, cultural practices, and social institutions affects
their development and diffusion. This is the lesson to be taken from department stores
and their use of electronic communications technologies, as the phenomenon cannot be
fully understood in isolation. We must consider the era’s economic structure, attitudes
toward material acquisition, gender roles, available technology, and theories of
advertising. Our television and computer screens do indeed function as department store
windows, and it is instructive to realize that this development did not come about by
accident. Innovations in communications technology are motivated by a variety of
factors, and in the United States, the desire to reach remote consumers has been one of
the most persistent.
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Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
i
For the history of department stores, see William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise
of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993); Susan Porter-Benson, Counter Cultures:
Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1986); Elaine S. Abelson When Ladies Go A-Thieving : Middle-Class
Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); H.
Pasdermadjian The Department Store; Its Origins, Evolution, and Economics (London: Newman Books,
1954); Frank Mayfield, The Department Store Story (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1949); John
William Ferry, A History of the Department Store (New York: Macmillan, 1960).
ii
Leach, Land of Desire, 44.
iii
Leach, Land of Desire, 182-184.
On Montgomery Ward’s and Sears, see William Cronon, Nature’s Metroplis: Chicago and the Great
West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 334-339.
iv
v
Eaton’s information from Mayfield, The Department Store Story, 43.
vi
Jordan Marsh information from Hendrickson, The Grand Emporiums, 54; Leach mentioned a number of
stores that implemented phone order systems in the early 1900s, see Land of Desire, 133.
Frank H. Williams, “The Busy Little Telephone Improves the Shining Sales Total,” DGE, 16 September
1922, 25.
vii
viii
J. Russel Doubman and John R. Whitaker, The Organization and Operation of Department Stores (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1927), 14.
ix
“Dressmaking By Wireless,” Washington Post, 18 May 1910, 6.
x
“Dressmaking By Wireless,” Washington Post.
xi
“Shopping in Midocean,” Washington Post, 15 August 1910, 6.
xii
Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1987).
xiii
Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 194-195.
xiv
“Modern Invention and Some New Socks,” Christian Science Monitor, 14 August 1911, 15.
xv
“Modern Invention and Some New Socks,” Christian Science Monitor.
xvi
“Shopping by Wireless,” Wireless Age, November 1916, p. 115.
xvii
“Ordering Dinner by Wireless,” Wireless Age, February 1916, p. 303
xviii
Christopher H. Sterling and John Michael Kittross, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting,
3rd edition (Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 65.
xix
Ibid., 69.
xx
“Who Will Ultimately Do the Broadcasting?,” Radio Broadcast, April 1923, p. 522-526.
24
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
Arthur Wiesenberger, “Radio Merchandising in Department Stores: A Survey Covering the Underlying
Principles of Radio – Its Merchandising and Advertising Possibilities in Department Stores,” (NY: Bureau
of Research and Information of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, 1922).
xxi
These details on Eaton’s radio station from a Toronto Globe advertisement reprinted as part of the
article “Radio in Department Stores,” Radio News, December 1921.
xxii
Eaton’s advertisement in the Globe reprinted as part of the article by Victor Rawlings, “Radio in
Department Stores,” Radio News, December 1921, 485.
xxiii
xxiv
Frank M. Mayfield, The Department Store Story (New York, Fairchild Publications 1949), 43.
xxv
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), especially Chapter Four, “Abandoning the Great Genteel Hope: From
Sponsored Radio to the Funny Papers,” 88-116.
xxvi
Wiesenberg, “Radio Merchandising in Department Stores,” 20.
xxvii
“Dressmaking Lesson Given by Radio,” DGE, 4 April 1925, 22.
xxviii
Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 124.
xxix
Barnouw, Tower of Babel, 237.
xxx
Frank W. Spaeth, ed., Radio Broadcasting Manual: The Radio as a Publicity Medium for Retailers, An
Appraisal with a Resume of Experiences (New York: Sales Promotion Division, National Retail Dry Goods
Association, 1935), 20.
xxxi
Spaeth, Radio Broadcasting Manual, 20.
Chester F. Caton, “Radio Station WMAQ: A History of Its Independent Years, 1922 – 1931” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Northwestern University, 1951.) The reference to the Fair store’s program is on 325. This
same dissertation states that one year earlier, in 1927, the local Davis Department Store also sponsored a
regular shopping program on WMAQ. The Davis-sponsored program was the first on that particular station
“entirely devoted to advertising,” 254-255.
xxxii
xxxiii
This quote from a Fair store advertisement, Chicago Tribune, 2 December 1928, section 6, 17.
See “Lapel Mike for Department Stores,” Broadcasting, 1 May 1933, 14; William C. Roux, “Radio as
a Medium for Department Stores,” Broadcasting, 15 November 1933, 9; Duke Murta, “Getting Our
Money’s Worth Out of Radio,” Broadcasting, 15 May 1934, 7; Margaret Fitzgerald, “Department Store
Crumbs or a Slice?,” Broadcasting, 15 June 1934, 11.
xxxiv
I. A. Hirschmann, “Applying Radio Broadcasting to Retail Advertising,” Broadcasting, 1 March 1932,
7, 26 and also L. A. Hirschmann [sic], “What Retailers Should Know About Radio,” Broadcasting, 1
November 1932, 9.
xxxv
xxxvi
Hirschmann, “Applying Broadcasting to Retail Advertising.”
xxxvii
Hirschmann, “Applying Broadcasting to Retail Advertising.”
John E. O’Connor and Charles F. Cummings, “Bamberger’s Department Store, Charm Magazine, and
the Culture of Consumption in New Jersey, 1924-1932,” New Jersey History 102, no. 3-4 (Fall/Winter
1984), 15.
xxxviii
25
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
xxxix
The Radio Broadcasting Manual (1935) from the NRDGA includes a script for one of the Joanne
Taylor programs, 65.
xl
Herman Hettinger, Practical Radio Advertising (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938), 245-246.
xli
Hettinger, Practical Radio Advertising, 245-246.
xlii
Frank Arnold, Broadcast Advertising: the Fourth Dimension (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1931),
79.
xliii
Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Radio in Advertising (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931), 86.
xliv
Doerksen, American Babel, 78-87.
xlv
Doerksen, American Babel, 84.
xlvi
“Sales Promotion By Radio,” Journal of Retailing 3, no. 1 (April 1927): 26.
xlvii
Donna Halper, Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting (Armonke, New
York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001), 47.
xlviii
xlix
“Radio Publicity,” Journal of Retailing 3, no. 4 (January 1928), 15-16.
“ ‘Station GCH’ Hits the Broadcasters,” Dry Goods Reporter, October 1927, 29.
l
Gordon Honeycombe, Selfridges: Seventy-Five Years, The Story of the Store, 1909-1984 (London: Park
Lane Press, 1984), 57.
li
“Television Department Opened by Selfridge,” Dry Goods Economist, April 21, 1928, 11.
Michael Woal and Linda Kowall Woal, “Forgotten Pioneer: Philco’s WPTZ,” 42, in Michael D. Murray
and Donald G. Godfrey, eds., Television in America: Local Station History from Across the Nation (Ames,
IA: Iowa State University Press, 1997).
lii
Bud Gamble, “The Television Tour of 88 Department Stores,” Televiser, Fall 1945, 48. McCarthy cites
this same article (p. 64), suggesting that the event was orchestrated by RCA. According to the article,
however, both RCA and Farnsworth toured their respective equipment around the country. Gamble
managed the tour of Farnsworth equipment. Additional must be done to determine if this was a completely
separate enterprise or merely part of the larger RCA promotional venture.
liii
liv
Steven J. Wurtzler, Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2007.)
lv
“Television in Store Carries Hat Styles,” New York Times, April 27, 1939, 28.
lvi
Ibid.
I. A. Hirschmann, “Television – A New Dimension in Department Store Advertising,” Television,
Spring 1944, 10-11.
lvii
lviii
lix
“Department-Store Survey Weighs Television,” Television, January 1945, 13.
Mary Gannon, “Television and the Department Store,” Television, November 1945, 7-15.
26
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
lx
Gannon, “Television and the Department Store,” 10.
lxi
T.R. Kennedy, Jr., “Many Uses Foreseen for Television,” New York Times, July 23, 1944, X5.
lxii
Anna McCarthy, Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space, (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2001), 70-71.
“Table Top Receivers Popularize Tele,” Department Store Economist, September 1948, 113; cited in
McCarthy, 84.
lxiii
“Gimbel Television Poll” (Market Research Department, RCA-Victor), November 15, 1945; A copy of
this report is held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
lxiv
lxv
These stations included WIP (Philadelphia), WAAK (Milwaukee), WGBS (New York), and WCAE
(Pittsburgh).
Gannon, “Television and the Department Store,” 11.
lxvi
Noah Arceneaux, “Department Stores and the Origins of American Broadcasting, 1910 – 1931,” (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Georgia, 2007).
lxvii
“Gimbel Television Poll,” 2; Gannon, “Television and the Department Store,” 12.
lxviii
lxix
The Uncle Wip program first appeared in a program listing for the station in April 10, 1922 edition of
the Philadelphia Inquirer; The show was a staple of WIP programming from then on.
lxx
“Gimbel Television Poll,” 3.
“Gimbel’s (Phila.) Stages 3-Week Intra-Store Video Demonstration,” Televiser, November-December
1945, 36.
lxxi
lxxii
“Editorial: How to Hurt Television in One Easy Lesson,” Television, June 1946, 40.
lxxiii
“Industry News in Brief,” Television, May 1947, 4-5, 38.
lxxiv
McCarthy, Ambient Television, 65.
lxxv
Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 864.
lxxvi
“Commercials,” Television, June 1945, 24-25.
lxxvii
“Advertising,” Television, Feb. 1946, 32.
David Weinstein, Women’s Shows and the Selling Television to Washington, D.C.,” Washington
History, Spring/Summer 1999, 4-23, 90.
lxxviii
lxxix
James Rotto, cited in Weinstein, 14.
lxxx
Ruth Crane, cited in Weinstein, 15.
lxxxi
“Department Store TV,” Sponsor, April 24, 1950, 30-31,58-59.
lxxxii
David Arons, “30-Day Experiment Doubles Sales,” Television, May 1949, 21, 31.
27
Department Stores and Home Shopping / Arceneaux / ICA Pre-Conf. May 2008
lxxxiii
“Gimbel Bros., Phila., on NBC Video Network,” Televiser, Spring 1945, 41.
lxxxiv
“Gimbel’s (Phila.) Launches Tele Series on WPTZ-Phila.,” Televiser, July-August 1946, 33.
lxxxv
Ibid.
lxxxvi
Woal and Woal, “Forgotten Pioneer: Philco’s WPTZ,” 52.
David Arons, “Television Becomes Sell-A-Vision at Gimbels-Philadelphia,” Television, June 1948,
22-23, 42.
lxxxvii
A list of all department stores advertising on television in 1948 lists the “Uncle Wip” program on
WCAU-TV; see Television, September 1948, 35.
lxxxviii
lxxxix
David Arons, “30-Day Experiment Doubles Sales.”