From: nlns@igc.apc.org (New Liberation News Service)
Newsgroups: rec.mag
Subject: The Media Monopoly (part 7)
Date: 5 Oct 1992 01:36:58 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

/* Written  5:27 pm  Sep 28, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 7)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

Part 7 -- The High Cost of Free Lunches



"With no ads, who would pay for the media? The good fairy?"
		   -- Samuel Thurm, senior vice-president,
                      Association of National Advertisers

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Newspaper publishers are "...engaged in a strange act. They sell 
their boiled pine trees [i.e. newspapers] for about one-third 
less than they pay for them." The newspaper publishers pull off 
this magic through the help of advertising fees. "Americans do 
not get their newspapers and magazines at less than cost. They do 
not get their radio and television free. They pay for 
everything." Americans pay for the advertising which supports 
these media by paying *extra* for the goods being promoted in the 
advertisements. And ironically, "All of this is never made clear 
to them in the communications they most depend on -- the 
advertising-supported newspapers, magazines, and commercial 
broadcasting."

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*               Daily Papers (averages)                        *
*                                                              *
* 1940 -- 31 pages, 12.5 pages ads (40%), 18.5 pages "news"    *
* 1980 -- 66 pages, 43 pages ads (65%), 23 pages "news"        *
****************************************************************
Note in the above chart that most of the "news" pages added 
between 1940 and 1980 "...were not 'news' but were in a grey area 
between real news and ads, an area called 'fluff' in the trade. 
Most fluff is wanted by advertisers to create a buying mood."

This blurring of the distinction between "news" and advertising 
is becoming more and more of a problem. More and more, "Revenue 
Related Reading Matter [fluff]" is pretending to be hard news. 
"Heavy sections of newspapers -- like fashions, food, and real 
estate -- were created as advertising bait. Sometimes the 
material in the special sections is genuinely useful and is 
produced by professional journalists. More often it is a mixture 
of light syndicated features and corporate press releases."

And, according to Bagdikian, "Fluff continues to spread."

You pay money for your newspaper, but publishers are not much 
interested in what type of paper you want. Or rather, they are 
much more beholden in their attitude toward their advertisers 
than they are towards their reading public. "Every serious 
survey, including those by the newspaper industry itself, makes 
clear that readers want more hard news." But publishers have 
consistently ignored their readership's wants in favor of 
submitting to the demands of their advertisers. "In the security 
of their domination of the market, newspaper publishers have been 
converting newspapers into agencies for merchants."


The history of advertisers' relationship with various media shows 
a consistent pattern. The normal sequence of events is for the 
advertiser to start out having a minimal influence and to wind up 
having a huge influence over the content of what is disseminated. 
For example:

*** "Ads in early magazines were segregated in the back pages 
since editors assumed they were an intrusion on the reader. But 
in the 1890s... advertising agencies insisted that ads be moved 
from the back of magazines to the front... The influence of 
advertising on magazines reached a point where editors began 
selecting articles not only on the basis of their expected 
interest for readers but for their influence on advertisements. 
Serious articles were not always the best support for ads. An 
article that put the reader in an analytical frame of mind did 
not encourage the reader to take seriously an ad that depended on 
fantasy or promoted a trivial product."

*** "When radio became a nationwide medium in the 1920s it was 
the fastest-growing industry in national history... The most 
popular stations were noncommercial... Millions of Americans were 
tuning in to university lectures, taking correspondence courses 
by radio, and listening to drama, music, and debates."
    "As the 1920s progressed so did commercials." Because large 
quantities of radios had already been sold, the educational 
stations were no longer necessary as stimulants to the sale of 
radio receivers. Commercial stations "...used their influence in 
government to force educational stations to give up popular 
frequencies and broadcast times... In a dozen years the powerful 
system of noncommercial broadcasting in the United States had 
been destroyed... By the 1930s, radio made all its money from 
advertising and created its programs to support advertising."

*** "In the first years of mass television, whole programs were 
produced and controlled by single advertisers." These were the 
"golden age" programs, so-called because "...they were coherent 
and had unobtrusive commercials."
    Then, after the spectacular success of a lipstick company 
(Hazel Bishop) when it bought a "spot advertisement" on 
television that was not attached to any particular show, 
"Companies, dreaming of similar leaps in sales... rushed to buy 
commercial time." The creation of "spot advertising" and 
consequent elimination of single-sponsorship of a program caused 
a subsequent change in the contents of t.v. programs. "Networks 
created a new kind of program that was less emotionally involving 
than plays by Chayefsky, new programs that created a 'buying 
mood.'"


As the amount and length of commercials grew, so did complaints 
from the viewing public regarding the proliferation of these ads. 
The media monopoly replied that radio and television broadcasting 
were free, "...that advertisers gave the public something for 
nothing." But of course, this particular truism is never debated 
in the mass media. "[It] has become an article of faith that mass 
advertising is essential to the preservation of a free press and 
'free' broadcasting."

"Radio and television are not free... An increasing number of 
economists find that mass advertising is a major instrument by 
which big firms keep prices artificially high... mass advertising 
restrains competition by preventing new products from new 
companies from reaching the public." In addition, we all pay for 
these mass advertisements in higher prices at the store. This is 
demonstrated, for example, in the lesser cost of generic products 
compared to that of heavily advertised name brands.


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 7