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At what point has media not been supported by advertising in the last 100+ years?

How would I have heard about anything computer related in the 80s in the small town south about computer products?

Even today I would have never heard about Backblaze, Linode etc if it weren’t for podcast ads.

I wouldn’t hear about local concerts, events etc either.

Quite the opposite for me. As a child I grew up in a "small" town of 30-40.000 I think, I would go to the store to see what was new including computers, I would swing by the local cinema to see what was coming. I don't recall advertising was in paid newspapers either. I would know about books from the library. It was far less advertisement driven and all about reputation and recommendations from experts, professionals and store owners.

In the 80s when I grew up. The library had two books on AppleSoft Basic. I learned the intricacies of the //e from InCider and buying books and software based on sending in a card in the back of the magazine where you could circle the products you were interested in.

The store owners were far from “experts”. They were either minimum wage workers at Sears who were in school or sales people selling to businesses.

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