In 1928, Paley made a bold offer to the nation’s many independent radio stations. The CBS network would provide any of them all of its sustaining content for free—on the sole condition that they agree to carry the sponsored content as well, for which they would, moreover, receive a handsome check. In short, Paley was offering a full slate of programming, and paying stations to take it—an apparent win-win deal, considering they were often desperate to fill their hours anyhow.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 340