We have yet to ask an obvious question: Just what, exactly, was so enrapturing about Amos 'n' Andy? It was not necessarily the patter and gags. Despite The New Yorker's enthusiasm, another early critic panned the show's national debut in the New York Sun: "Their lines are not good and there is no pretense of whatever to carry out the illusion of comedy. It is a straight dialogue between two common-place 'darkies' and is without even the saving asset of a well thought-out situation…on first acquaintance they hardly attract a second glance." Indeed, there were other regional radio minstrel shows in the 1920s, not much funnier, and none reached an audience anything close to that of Amos 'n' Andy.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 319