The First TV Commercial Ever Was A Rip-Off At $9

There's an interesting article at Wired.com about the first official television commercial. It was a ten-second ad for Bulova clocks, and it ran during a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies way back on July 1, 1941. Bulova paid $9 for the ad, which seems like a mere pittance compared to today's million-dollar ad rates, but (and this is assuming that my math is right), it was actually a rip-off. First, you've got to adjust the $9 for inflation, bringing it to $134 today. Multiply that by three for the price of a thirty-second spot and you've got $402, which still seems like a good deal until you factor in the audience for this ad, which was only 4,000 people. Compare that to the most expensive ad rates today, the Superbowl spots, which cost $2.7 million this year but reached an audience of 95.7 million. At 1941's rates, an ad that reached that many people would cost just over $9.6 million -- that's 3.5 times more expensive than the rates today.