SOCIAL ISSUES
SOCIAL ISSUES
Impact on Public Interest and Society
As a national resource, value of the electromagnetic spectrum has far- reaching impact for the public and society. Although the spectrum itself has absolutely no intrinsic value until corporations spend billions, at their own risk, to improve the resource, the public owns the airwaves. Scarcity was the basis for government-controlled spectrum allocation, although today’s digital compression technologies have created more extra space than was ever imagined in the 1930s.
Nevertheless, broadcasters must balance their economic goals against their legal commitments. The federal government regulates stations, which promise to serve in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” The station is the focal point of regulation. Although the network often pro- vides the programming, the individual affiliate is responsible to the Federal Communications Commission for the station’s performance of promises made to serve the public. Special interest and pressure groups also can in- fluence the programming policies of broadcasters. Even in a more relaxed regulatory climate where the threat of license revocation is negligible, “sta- tions must consider their relationships with local government and commu- nity leaders and with advertisers” (Owen & Wildman, 1992, p. 151).
The most important stations, the ones with the largest reach, are owned by the networks, of course. Thus, networks have an economic stake in pro- tecting the freedom of stations to provide news and sell political advertis- ing. The economic importance of government regulation is evident by the lengths to which broadcasters attempt to influence legislators. Lobbying organizations like the National Association of Broadcasters exert powerful influence on Congress and the FCC. However, audiences for broadcast tele- vision also make their complaints about program content known to gov- ernment regulators.
Although regulations are a concern, the public behavior of many televi- sion broadcasters is heavily influenced by economic interest: It is good business to offend the least number of viewers. With the growth of pay ca- ble channels, however, broadcasters are in a bind. Some of their national au- dience, often those most desired by advertisers, is attracted to program content that is too adult-oriented for broadcasters. Viewers, for example, want motion pictures on television to be more like the films they see a the- aters. The result has been a slow erosion of standards over the years. For ex-
7. THE BROADCAST TELEVISION NETWORKS
ample, of the original seven dirty words one could never say on broadcast television (as popularized by comedian George Carlin), only four remain. Advertisers serve as willing accomplices to this lowering of standards as long as their products are not targeted by pressure groups.
Not only is program content under constant scrutiny, some categories of broadcast advertising are severely restricted by government regulation or industry self-regulation. Legal products like cigarettes (prohibited by gov- ernment regulation) and distilled spirits (discouraged via self-regulation) are not advertised on broadcast television in the United States, although some stations in Texas began flaunting broadcasting industry guidelines in 1996. Individual states occasionally restrict advertising of services by pro- fessionals like lawyers and doctors.
One interesting dynamic between government and television broadcasting involves political advertising. Broadcasters view elections as money-making opportunities. Legislators, on the other hand, exploit requirements for “equal time” to minimize the cost of advertising under the guise of fairness. For exam- ple, candidates with less money than their competitors can sometimes de- mand television exposure at no or low cost. Other forms of advertising (e.g., print and outdoor) that compete with broadcasters are not subjected to regula- tions, but stations must sell political time at the lowest unit cost.
Other issues, primarily linked to newer digital forms of content and dis- tribution, have surfaced in recent years. The Consumer Federation of America (2002) identified this short list: consumer privacy, multicasting as “direct mail on steroids,” digital divide, and program diversity.
Privacy concerns result when DVRs collect aggregated data about pre- cise viewing behavior and can transmit it back to the manufacturer (who sells advertising that appears on menu listings). The potential misuse of borrowed spectrum set aside for HDTV for the purposes of multicasting, giving each station the means to transmit a half-dozen signals from one channel, is seen as marketing gone wild. The relative lack of access to the World Wide Web by underprivileged publics is the essence of “digital di- vide” issues.
Public interest groups also worry that ethnic diversity is absent on com- mercial television. Interestingly, the groups that track media behavior ap- ply pressure to the broadcast networks rather than the cable networks, despite the latter’s primetime dominance as of the 2001–2002 season. Ac- cording to Discovery Communications, the four-network broadcast share is 45%, but basic cable networks’ share is 46% (Myers, 2002).