November/December 2000 | Contents

IT'S TIME TO TREAT BROADCASTING LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS

BY LAWRENCE K. GROSSMAN

Television treated this year's election campaign as if it were merely a game, and covered this year's Summer Olympics as if it were an election campaign. "Rather than reporting on what the candidates stand for and providing analyses of the relative merits of their positions, network news is far more likely to reduce an election to a game -- more likely to tell voters why candidates said something than what they said," concluded the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which studied the networks' coverage of the presidential primaries.

And at the Olympic games in Sydney, rather than spend enough time televising what people wanted to see -- the events themselves -- NBC overdosed on treacly personality features about the participants.

The pattern of shrinking political coverage by the old-time networks was set during primary season. The Annenberg Center found that the average network spent just 36 seconds a night reporting what the candidates had to say during the primary weeks. CBS averaged 42 seconds, ABC 39 seconds, and NBC 29 seconds. When it came to the presidential debates, NBC skipped the first one, opting for baseball over public service. Fox TV, even more callous, snubbed them all. It couldn't resist making a killing by running entertainment and baseball in the presidential debate time slots. The former rake in money. The latter, broadcast without commercials, cost money.

Local stations played the game the same way, sacrificing politics for profits. The University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication found that sixteen of the nineteen TV stations in its national sample devoted an average of only 39 seconds a night to what the candidates had to say during the height of the primary campaigns. Top stations in Philadelphia and Tampa averaged just 6 seconds a night. The rest of their campaign news was devoted largely to spin and strategy.

Like television sports, television news has turned into a vast commercial market place, a network profit center instead of loss leader. Broadcast news, once considered a basic public-service responsibility in exchange for the broadcasters' free use of the airwaves, is now shaped entirely by bottom-line pressures. Feature stories on a candidate's favorite sandwich, best golf shot, or kissing style are far less demanding and more entertaining than thoughtful, hard-headed analyses of their positions on medical care, educational reform, or tax policy. Solid issues pieces take time, require journalistic expertise, and risk losing the audience -- time that TV is no longer willing to give, expertise that few television reporters possess, and a possible audience loss that no broadcaster is willing to absorb. Better to take the easy way out and speculate about political strategy, the candidates' personalities, and the latest poll results.

To attract the public's attention in the absence of free TV time or meaningful TV coverage, campaigns do what companies have been doing for years -- buy lots of commercials, estimated at almost a billion dollars' worth this election year alone. It's a sweetheart deal for broadcasters. Politicians give broadcasters the public airwaves free of charge and the broadcasters sell back the airwaves to the politicians at election time for millions of dollars. The thirteen NBC stations that belong to GE should pocket almost $40 million in campaign ads this year. The Fox TV-owned stations should take in almost $15 million. Yet neither group could find the time to carry all the presidential debates.

Political spots spike broadcasters' profits every four years. The growing glut of campaign commercials fills so much time they create a scarcity, enabling broadcasters to raise their prices to every advertiser. Television stations in New York and Philadelphia alone took in $21 million from candidates in a single U.S. Senate primary race in New Jersey, principally from the multimillions spent on campaign commercials by Democrat Jon Corzine, the ex-Wall Street mogul. Meanwhile, an Annenberg study found, the top-rated stations in New York and Philadelphia devoted just 13 seconds a night to what the New Jersey candidates had to say during the final two weeks of the primary campaign.

As Mark Danner put it so well in the New York Review of Books (September 21), this system "has left American television increasingly rich, American politics increasingly corrupt, and American voters increasingly ignorant." To make sure American television stays rich, American politics stay corrupt, and American voters stay ignorant, American broadcasters pour millions of dollars into lobbying to kill campaign finance reform that would limit how much money can be spent on TV and would require free TV time for candidates.

Specifically, as reported by CJR ("Media Money," September/October), from 1996 through 1998, the National Association of Broadcasters and five major media conglomerates -- ABC, CBS, A.H. Belo Corp., Meredith Corp., and Cox Enterprises, spent millions of dollars to defeat a dozen campaign-finance bills mandating free air time for political candidates. As the Center for Public Integrity discovered: ABC and the NAB spent more than $5 million lobbying against the Fairness in Political Advertising Act of 1995. The NAB, Belo, ABC, and CBS spent almost $10 million lobbying against passage of the Fairness in Political Advertising Act of 1997. More than $6 million was spent by Gannett, the NAB, CBS, and Meredith to defeat the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act of 1997. Several million dollars were spent by the same media companies to defeat the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 1997 and 1998 and the Public Voice Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1997. And, according to the center, that's only a partial list.

Notwithstanding the many stories on television news devoted to scandals involving money and politics, not a word has appeared about the broadcasters' high-price lobbying against campaign-finance reform, which Charles Lewis, director of the center, calls broadcasting's "dirty little secret."

It's time to bury the outdated public policy that treats American broadcasters as a privileged breed who operate as "public trustees" of the public airwaves. It's a myth and has been a myth for years. The industry long ago abandoned its special responsibility to serve "the public interest, convenience, and necessity." Let's treat broadcasters no differently from other businesses.

Cable operators pay 5 percent of their revenue to the municipalities whose streets and other facilities they use to string their cable. Cellular phone companies now have to buy from the federal government the electromagnetic frequencies they use. Ranchers pay to graze their cattle on public lands. Oil companies pay to drill in offshore waters. Let broadcasters, too, pay a fee to the federal government for the public frequencies they not only use but also buy and sell to each other so profitably. Having foregone their public-interest obligations, they can readily afford the price.

Lawrence K. Grossman, a former president of NBC News and PBS, is a regular columnist for CJR.