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The expansion of television through a proliferation of channels on cable, the advent and popularity of talk radio, and the entry of major media companies and new upstarts on the Internet at the beginning of the twenty-first century heightened awareness of the necessary scramble for audience by these medra entities. Indeed, the almost simultaneous expansion of these media channels has produced a frenzy of marketing ploys and a backlash of criticism about the excesses of these new undertakings, and objections to their blandness while they sought the lowest common denominator. One might conclude that this convergence constituted a rather unique period in US media development, but in reality, it shared many similarities with the creation and expansion of the first mass medium, the Penny Press, 170 years earlier.
When, in the 1830s, Benjamin Day and other newspaper publishers transformed the daily newspaper from a narrowly focused and sparsely distributed publication to a broad-based, massproduced medium, societal changes were in place to enable this new medium to flourish just as they were with the advent of new media in the last half of the twentieth century. Technological developments, common interests among the potential audience, and literacy in the case of newspapers and lersure trme in the case of television made these media changes possible. But, just as electronic media companies "sell" their media channels through hyperbolic communication, Day and his cohorts did so as well, especially in New York City and other East Coast cities.
An analysis of the first two years of The Sun in New York shows that Day demonstrated a range of product creation and marketing concepts long before these concepts had names: critical mass, tipping points, product differentiation, barriers to entry, building communities, and, of course, interactivity. Day's medium generated controversy that resembled new media figures of the twentyfirst century: Matt Drudge and the complaints about inappropriate forms of journalism; Bill Gates and predatory pricing; Steve case and pervasive branding. As television, radio, and Internet companies would discover 150 years later, Day faced problems with convincing an audience that the new medium was worth the expense or time, with plagiarism of content and ideas, and with demonstrating the difference between his news product and that of the competition. In addition, Day was...