Financing of media. Was: Mixed economy???

[Trond Andresen <Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stephen (please give full name) says

>
> Also, I'm not certain that the advertisers are always the ones to instigate
> an influence attempt on a station. Occasionally an activist group from
> the right wing gets a twitch about a type of programming going on and
> informs the advertisers that they are going to organize a boycott of their
> products if they continue to advertise on such-and-such programs.
>

We haven't seen that phenomenon in Norway yet, commercials in radio and
TV was first allowed in 1988. The right-wing pressure groups are also
nearly non-existent. Anyway, as long as a pressure group have to work
by threatening the advertisers with product boycott, then the pressure
group will lose its weapon if we institute a "commercial pool" like I
described earlier.

That said, there are more probklems with commercially-financed media.
Assume now that commercials are fairly divided between stations, so
that they get the same amount of spots in minutes, but of course
revenues dependent upon the listener support. Assume that there is a
tax/subsidies system to assure that stations with a public service
profile get revenues enabling them to employ the necessary manpower,
since this is the most expensive type of radio per minute broadcast.

One problem is the cutthroat competition with newspapers. If
legislation of the above type is instituted for radio and TV, the
newspapers will whip up a campaign like this:"use us instead, we do not
interfere with your self-evident right to choose where to place your
ads". And this will work, I have first-hand experience with the
mentality of advertisers. So then you also have to make some reforms in
newspaper financing. I will return to this topic.

Anyway, I have tried to suggest a platform where people like Herb and
me can agree in spite of  disagreements in political outlook.
Now I am going to leave that platform, and describe what  I really want
the most (the communist comes out of the closet):

The main source of financing for TV and Radio should be taken in
through taxation, not through advertising. Like for the BBC in U.K. or
the NRK in Norway, which btw is still by far the most popular TV and
radio corporation in Norway. the reason for this extremist view is that
I want to REMOVE advertising interests completely (or at least nearly
so). My experience with those interests is that they exert their
influence in a thousand subtle ways on the programming profile of a
station, not the least indirectly through self-censorship.

Does my proposal then mean that everyone can start a radio/TV station
and suck comfortably on the state tit independent of what they deliver?
No, this may be organized along the same lines as suggested earlier:
Monitor listener/viewer support, and give a station a share of the
total state pot proportional with the stations popularity and the
stations share of manpower-intensive programming (within some limits,
of course, but I am not going into details here). As a blocking
mechanism against all sorts of zeroes starting new stations all the
time, demand that the station must show a minimum support before it
qualifies for any state subsidies. At the other end, taper off
subsidies at the margin when stations get real big, to keep them on
their toes, avoid monopolies and to compensate for economies of scale.

In Norway we today have a mix of mainly state subsidized broadcasting
(one national TV channel and three national radio channels) and private
(one national TV channel, a handful of local TV channels, one national
radio channel, and 250 local radio channels). IMO all those - not only
NRK - should be financed from the same tax-financed pot, and money
should be shared according to a set of rules along the lines described
above.

The fundamental reason for this insistence on non-commercial financing
of media may be explained by an analogy: If we look at society as an
organism, then media is an important part of the brain/nervous system.
For the health of the whole individual, we have to ensure that it does
not misuse drugs, because then thinking will be impaired and the
individual will be damaged in the long run. Financing of media through
advertising (and remember: Even most newspapers are mainly financed by
ads, not by the buyers/readers) is for society what chronic drug
dependency is for an individual. But I am no teetotaller: Just as an
occasional drink or a joint does no big damage, I see advertising
having some presence in radio and TV, but only as a very secondary
financial source, and also portioned out after the rules that I have
proposed earlier.

Re Herb's point about technological advances making direct subscription
possible, through scrambling/descrambling. Yes, this is interesting for
the future, but for as long as radios and most TVs are not equipped for
this today and will not be so for many years yet, I opt for the
solution sketched above. I have some other misgivings too, but some
other time: I also have to do some work in my protected, tenured, state
subsidized profession. the university would be a fantastic place if it
wasn't for all those students!


Trond

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