John Brinkley and the Birth of Radio Advertising
Despite His Questionable Medical Credentials, He Was a Radio Pioneer
Oct 16, 2009
Part one of this article described Brinkley's rise to fame and wealth, despite his sometimes fatal transplanting of goat testicles into healthy human beings. Keeping constantly on the move had kept him out of trouble for a while, and after that his vast fortune helped grease the wheels when he was in a jam. But his notoriety attracted as much vilification as adoration.
Brinkley’s Radio Stations
During his stint in Los Angeles, Brinkley had toured a radio station, and immediately saw its advertising potential. By 1923 he had earned enough money to start his own station, KFKB, in Milford, which was possibly the first radio station in the state of Kansas. Brinkley used the station to promote his goat glands treatment and a line of patent medicines, but he also broadcast bluegrass and country music, astrological predictions, language lessons, and various other ephemera. His later segment, called “Medical Question Box,” was a huge success, earning him the unbelievable sum over $14,000 a week (over nine million dollars in today’s money) in revenue from medicine sales. But even as his star was rising, forces were gathering against him; several newspapers wrote articles describing his various scams, and agents from California even came to arrest him, though the governor of Kansas refused to extradite him. Thinking better credentials might get his attackers off his back, Brinkley traveled to Europe on a hunt for honorary degrees. The University of Pavia in Italy agreed to grant him one, but it was later rescinded by Benito Mussolini himself.
More heartache followed, as a competing radio station entrepreneur ran a series of unflattering stories on Brinkley, and the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew his radio license. Again undaunted, Brinkley responded by running for office several times (and losing), then finally packing up and moving just across the Mexican border, where he broadcast from a new 50,000-watt station he built, XER. From there he thought he could continue to hawk his medicines and bogus treatments safely out of the grasp of the Feds. But the U.S. government fought back, persuading Mexico to revoke his broadcast license and even later passing a law to crack down on these so-called “border blaster” radio stations that operated without a U.S. license; they called it the Brinkley Act.
The Downfall of John R. Brinkley
His radio station out of business, his credibility in tatters, Brinkley spent the last few years of his life in bankrupt misery. He lost several lawsuits for libel and malpractice, he was investigated by the IRS, and then indicted by the USPS for mail fraud. He suffered three heart attacks, and eventually had to have one of his legs amputated. When he died in 1942 he didn’t have a penny to his name. The only lasting monuments to his legacy are the laws passed to thwart his fraudulent activities, and the mansion he once owned in Del Rio, Texas, which still stands to this day.
Source:
Brock, Pope (2008). Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. Crown. ISBN: 0307339882.
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