Tom Black was
Smithsonian Magazine
's first Director of Advertising. He joined the magazine in September 1969 and retired in the spring of 1994. During his tenure, the magazine became one of the major success stories in publishing, mushrooming from an initial circulation of 164,000 to over 2 million, making it the leading magazine in the so‑called quality field. From the beginning, the magazine's readership ranked high in such demographic factors as level of education and disposable income. Black and his sales force, however, had problems at first trying to sell a magazine which many advertisers associated with a musty, dusty museum complex in Washington, D.C. Just when sales were at their lowest ebb, in the summer of 1971, sales turned the corner and took off. Black's father, Howard Black, was
Time
Magazine's first ad salesman, and Tom grew up with Henry Luce, the father of modern magazine publishing, as a frequent guest in his parents' home. After serving in World War II, Tom Black joined J. Walter Thompson, then the world's leading advertising agency, as a trainee but soon decided that he was more interested in being a part of a new and growing enterprise. He joined the fledgling sales force of ABC Television and wrote the network's first rate card. After a short stint with
The March of Time
newsreel operation, he found himself on the sales force of
Life Magazine
, where he spent most of the 1950s, switching over to
Time
for much of the 1960s. In 1969, at the age of 45, Black was looking for a new challenge when he was contacted by former
Life
editor Edward Thompson, who was starting a new magazine for the Smithsonian Institution. As Black modestly recalls it, Thompson probably remembered a favor Howard Black had done years before for Thompson and
his son in making Tom Black
Smithsonian
's first ad director.
