US Media at the Dawn of the 21st century

excerpted from the book

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

by Robert McChesney

The New Press, 1999

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The media system exists as it does because powerful interests have constructed it so that citizens will not be involved in the key policy decisions that have shaped it.

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The Quashing of Public Debate

... the dominant mood in the United States is one of resignation and demoralization, not only about media but about other political issues as well. Even among those who deplore corporate concentration and conglomeration, hypercommercialism, and the decline of public service and journalism, and who regard the social and political implications of these trends as extremely negative, there is a fatalistic sense that this is the way it must be. After all, the United States is, always has been, and always will be a business-run society.

But this is not necessarily so. In fact, the nature of the U.S. media system is the result of a series of political decisions, not natural law or holy mandate. Even when media are regulated preponderantly by markets, it remains, in the end, a political decision to turn them over to a relative handful of individuals and corporations to maximize profit. The U.S. media system of the late twentieth century looks substantially different from the media system of the late nineteenth century, and it is diametrically opposed to the press system of the Republic's first two generations. All modern U.S. media (including the advertising industry) are affected directly and indirectly by government policies, regulation, and subsidies. Specifically, the development of radio and television broadcasting has been and remains the province of the political system. At any time the American people might have chosen to establish a truly nonprofit and noncommercial radio and television system; they have always had the constitutional right to do so. The seminal law for U.S. broadcasting was the Communications Act of 1934; it was only recently superseded by the Telecommunications Act of I996.

What is most notable about media policy making in the United States is not that it is important and that it exists, but, rather, that virtually the entire American population has no idea that it exists and that they have a right to participate in it. In I934, for example, there was considerable opposition to corporate commercial domination of radio broadcasting, but those who led the opposition had barely any influence on legislative or regulatory issues in Washington. In fact, the striking feature of U.S. media policy making is how singularly undemocratic it has been-and remains. Crucial decisions are made by the few for the few behind closed doors. Public participation has been minuscule, virtually nonexistent.

This was not an accident-not in the I930s, and not since. The primary reason for this lack of public debate has been that the media and communication industries covered by these laws have unusually powerful lobbies that effectively control the debate and impose boundaries on the "legitimate" range of discussion. The commercial broadcasters, as represented by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), have been a powerhouse since the I930s and are stronger than ever today.

... The NAB and the other corporate media lobbies are so strong not merely because they are rich and give lots of money to politicians' campaigns, though they are and they do. Far more importantly, the corporate media control news and access to the media-something politicians respect even more than money. This

also means the media are in the enviable position of being able to cover political debates over their own existence. Consequently, ideas critical of corporate or commercial domination of the media are basically verboten in the commercial news media, and discussions of key laws and regulations are restricted to the business pages and the trade press, where they are regarded as issues of importance to investors, not as public issues of importance to citizens. The last thing the NAB or the corporate media want is for the American people to get the crazy idea that they have a right to create whatever type of broadcasting or media system they desire.

The corporate media also aggressively subsidize a continuing public relations offensive to promote the view that they are the natural democratic stewards of the airwaves and the media, selflessly "giving the people what they want" and battling to protect the First Amendment. The extent to which this mythology is accepted or internalized by academics, journalists, "liberals," "progressives," politicians of all stripes, and the public at large is the extent to which public debate about communication policy making will be nonexistent or tangential.

... the regulation of the U.S. broadcasting industry has been an abject failure. In many respects the FCC has become the classic example of what is called the "captive" regulatory agency. FCC members and officials sometimes come from the commercial broadcasting industry and often go there for lucrative employment after their stints in "public service."

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... sparks flew when new FCC chair William Kennard had the temerity to suggest that commercial broadcasters should be required to provide free airtime for political candidates. With US. electoral politics wallowing in an almost universally recognized spending crisis that tends to limit involvement to the super-rich and those who represent the super-rich, Kennard argued that it was absurd for candidates to have to pay for TV commercials -some $500 million in I998-to commercial broadcasters to have access to the public airwaves. Kennard backed down from this attack on the broadcast industry's biannual cash cow when members of Congress told the FCC to do so or face full hearings on whether the FCC deserves to remain in existence. Likewise, when Kennard suggested that the FCC might want to roll back some of its own mandated deregulation that had permitted concentrated radio and TV station ownership, the NAB's friends on Capitol Hill announced that it might be time again for congressional hearings on whether the FCC was "overstepping its bounds."

For the most part, then, the FCC's notion of regulation owes more to its support of the commercial interests than to its being the public's watchdog of their activities. The commercial broadcasters have become de facto owners of the public airwaves, and challenges to broadcast licenses on the grounds that a commercial broadcaster has failed to provide a public service are virtually impossible to win. In I 998, for example, the FCC rejected a license challenge in Denver, despite evidence that the Denver stations had provided appalling trivia and violence-laden news, with virtually no local public affairs coverage. If there is no viable threat that a station-owner might lose its license if it fails to provide a public service, or if such failure is not otherwise severely punished, there can be no meaningful enforcement standards for public service on commercial broadcasters.

Yet even in this barren landscape there has been a clear devolution of how commercial broadcasters can fulfill their commitment to public service. In the I920s, for example, it was widely accepted that radio broadcasting could not provide a public service at all if its primary means of support came through advertising. When the Communications Act of I934 was passed, creating the FCC, commercial broadcasters fulfilled their public service obligations with what were called "sustaining" programs, meaning shows that had no advertisers. At one time, sustaining shows occupied as much as 40 percent of the schedule (most of it during periods which advertisers expressed no interest in purchasing). When advertisers finally came to purchase the entire day, public service programming "ghettos" were established-late at night and very early in the morning, and especially on weekends. The quality of these programs tended to be so deplorable that hardly anyone could advocate their continuation, and commercial broadcasters were able to have the regulations relaxed. Even more importantly, they were able to gain approval for the idea that public service programs could include advertising.

By the I 990s, public service on commercial television had been reduced to the occasional do-gooder public service announcement (PSA) from the Advertising Council, a public relations group underwritten by the advertising industry. And even here, the commercial broadcasters have fought to limit their commitment to what has remained of public service. In I 997 the NAB argued that its members could run fewer PSAs because they were running so many commercial advertisements with public service messages, like Budweiser's "Know When to Say When" campaign. That same year the commercial networks insisted that the Advertising Council tailor spots that would feature each network's stars, so the PSAs would promote not only safe sex or moderate drinking but also the network's upcoming shows. At first the Advertising Council protested this distortion of public service, but eventually it caved in. "We're going backwards in terms of media opportunity," Ruth Wooden, the Ad Council president, stated in I998. In addition to promoting media fare in Ad Council PSAs, Wooden has begun to link nonprofit groups to corporate marketers, so advertisers will sponsor PSAs for nonprofit groups and causes. These PSAs will, of course, also mention the corporate sponsor. "Good nonprofits have great credibility and ruboff value" for advertisers, Wooden enthuses. "Talk about brands!" Notions of public service in U.S. commercial broadcasting may have never been sublime, but by now they have certainly become ridiculous.

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Although the communication lobbies have successfully neutered any and all political challenges to their control over broadcasting and the media, the legislative process makes it impossible to keep the public entirely shut out. During those rare instances in which Congress is considering legislation for the overall regulation of broadcasting and communication, it is customary that there be congressional committee hearings on what the public interest is and how it might be served by the proposed legislation. Hence in I934 and again in the mid-1990s the great fear of the NAB was that these hearings might generate publicity and provoke formerly uninterested Americans into a newfound interest in media policy. The industry's goal on both occasions was to push to get the laws passed without any congressional debate, leaving the "controversial" matters to be discussed behind closed doors at the FCC or some other toothless advisory body-in other words, out of the "glare" of public attention.

' In I934, there was an organized campaign to have a significant sector (25 percent) of U.S. radio broadcasting channels turned over to nonprofit organizations. The NAB managed to get the relevant congressional committee to reject the idea of discussing the matter itself and, instead, to authorize the new FCC to hold advisory hearings after the law had been passed. Two of the three FCC members responsible for the hearings told the NAB in advance that there was no way they would approve the idea. The hearings were held without any publicity in the autumn of I934 and were flooded with material generated by the NAB. Some of the most principled activists for public service broadcasting refused to participate, or else made token appearances simply so they could protest the kangaroo court nature of the proceedings. Afterwards- to no one's surprise-the FCC reported that commercial broadcasting was doing a superior job of meeting the public interest and that nonprofit broadcasting was unnecessary.

It will seem tragic or comical, depending upon one's mood and perspective, that these sham hearings of I934 were the only instance of a formal public deliberation on the matter of who should own and control broadcasting in the United States and for what purpose it should be conducted. This is a "deliberative process" worthy of the old Soviet Union or the type of corrupt police state exemplified by Suharto's Indonesia or Mobutu's Zaire.

In 1996 there was nowhere near the organized opposition to corporate commercial broadcasting that existed in I934, but the NAB wanted to leave nothing to chance. Just as the emergence of radio broadcasting had demanded a new federal code, so now the emergence of digital technologies necessitated a new statute to accommodate the convergence of communication industries. Once momentum built for a new law by the early and middle 1990s, each of the corporate sectors wanted to get the best deal it could, but none wanted the law to linger in Congress, risking public notice. Just weeks before the law was passed, most observers predicted that due to severe fights between the various corporate interests, it would be impossible to get the bill through. But the communication lobbies all decided to bury the hatchet, and they pushed the law through at breakneck speed. The last thing the communication corporations would want was to have this remain a live issue through a presidential election, especially with a gadfly like Ross Perot capable of piping up about the type of corporate welfare and special-interest politics this law exemplified. In the I992 presidential campaign, Perot had thrown a monkey wrench into the best-laid bipartisan plans to sneak NAFTA and GATT through Congress by raising a stink about the issue.

The wording of the Telecommunications Act of I996 is accordingly void of detail on many issues, for these are matters to be determined down the road by the FCC and others. The core premise of the bill was to eliminate restrictions on firms moving into other communication areas-for example, phone companies moving into cable television and vice versa, or long distance phone companies moving into local service and vice versa-and then to eliminate as many regulations as possible on these firms' behavior. A few crumbs were tossed to "special interest" groups like schools and hospitals, but only when they didn't interfere with the probusiness thrust of the legislation.

Proponents of the Telecommunications Act promised that deregulation would lead to genuine market competition, the result being much better service and lower prices. Market forces would serve the consumer where regulation had failed. The notion that the bill had something to do with encouraging actual competition was of course a public relations ploy designed to mask the nature of capitalism and conceal how these markets actually work. Had this bill been structured to establish competitive industries, the corporate communication lobbyists who pushed for the bill-and who, it is rumored, actually wrote portions of it-would have never let it see the light of day.

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The one media sector most thoroughly overturned by the Telecommunications Act has been radio broadcasting. The Telecommunications Act relaxed ownership restrictions so that a single firm can own up to eight stations in a single market. In the twenty months following enactment of the new law, there has been the equivalent of an Oklahoma land rush as small chains have been acquired by middle-sized chains, and middle-sized chains have been gobbled up by the few massive giants who have come to dominate the national industry. Since I996 some one-half of the nation's eleven thousand radio stations changed hands, and there were over one thousand radio firm mergers.

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When one ponders these developments in radio, the implications for media of the Telecommunications Act of I996 become more starkly evident. Relative to television and other media technologies, radio is inexpensive for both broadcasters and consumers. It is also ideally suited for local control and community service. Yet radio has been transformed into a engine for superprofits-with greater returns than any other media sector-for a small handful of firms so that they can convert radio broadcasting into the most efficient conduit possible for advertising. As one Wall Street analyst put it, "we're not sure what radio could do for an encore." Another called the I998 U.S. radio industry "the best of all worlds today." Yet another Wall Street analyst enthused, "Nobody knows how big these companies can get. That plays very well [on Wall Street]." Across the nation, these giant chains use their market power to slash costs, providing the same handful of formats with only a token nod to the actual localities in which the stations broadcast. On Wall Street, the corporate consolidation of radio is praised as a smash success, but by any other standard this brave new world is an abject failure.

And worse may be on the way. One leading "industry guru" predicted early in I998 that a similar consolidation would soon take place in TV station ownership, as the FCC extends the relaxation of ownership restrictions in accord with the I996 Telecommunications Act. The leading station-owning company not associated with a network-the Sinclair broadcast group-plans to more than double its number of stations to over one hundred by 2000. Like the new radio giants, Sinclair's recipe for profit is slashing costs to the bone and giving the advertisers what they want. One media researcher projects that the number of TV station owners will fall from 658 in I994 to around one hundred by 2000 or 2001. And, as in radio, a small handful, all but one or two owned by first-tier media giants, will dominate the twenty-five to fifty largest markets.

Conclusion

The clear trajectory of our media and communication world tends toward ever-greater corporate concentration, media conglomeration, and hypercommercialism. The notion of public service- that there should be some motive for media other than profit-is in rapid retreat if not total collapse. The public is regarded not as a democratic polity but simply as a mass of consumers. Public debate over the future of media and communication has been effectively eliminated by powerful and arrogant corporate media, which metaphorically floss their teeth with politicians' underpants. It is, in short, a system set up to serve the needs of a handful of wealthy investors, corporate managers, and corporate advertisers. Its most important customers are affluent consumers hailing from the upper and upper-middle classes. The system serves the general public to the extent that it strengthens and does not undermine these primary relationships. Needless to say, the implications for democracy of this concentrated, conglomerated, and hypercommercialized media are entirely negative.

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

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