Older media forms do not generally disappear when confronted by newer forms. Instead, they adapt. Although radio threatened sound recording in the 1920s, the recording industry adjusted to the economic and social challenges posed by radio’s arrival. Remarkably, the arrival of television in the 1950s marked the only time in media history in which a new medium stole virtually every national programming and advertising strategy from an older medium. Television snatched radio’s advertisers, program genres, major celebrities, and large evening audiences. The TV set even physically displaced the radio as the living room centerpiece across America. Nevertheless, radio adapted and continued to reach an audience.

The story of radio’s evolution and survival is especially important today, as newspapers and magazines appear online and as publishers produce e-books for new generations of readers. In contemporary culture, we have grown accustomed to such media convergence, but to best understand this blurring of the boundaries between media forms, it is useful to look at the 1950s and the ways in which radio responded to the advent of television.