Practically in your lap ...

Image courtesy Ad*Access/John Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing history, Duke University. Used by Permission.

The early days of television were certainly a lot more dynamic and unpredictable than they later became, either in the three-network era, the cable era that followed, or today's hundreds of channels. The very first national network, DuMont, advertised heavily for its television sets, since after all, how could you watch the DuMont network if you didn't have a set? Print ads sought to appeal to the more prosperous of the soon-to-be postwar generation, whose shoppers -- at least when it came to electronics -- were presumed to be men. Thus this racy advert, which ran in the New York Times in 1945.