Not long ago, a Japanese electronics firm decided to introduce a tape recorder it had developed into the American market. Since successful marketing of this recorder would depend on a large advertising campaign, the company hired a New York advertising agency to plan and develop the campaign.
The agency quickly decided on the focus of its advertising strategy. The tape recorder had a unique selling point--it could play for many hours without being reloaded. The advertising agency decided to base the entire campaign on this point and looked for a theme that would best illustrate the recorder's uniqueness. After considering many ideas, the agency decided to use the theme of a dance marathon--a form of entertainment that was popular in the United States in the 1930s. Since the dance marathon lasted for many hours it seemed uniquely suited to illustrate the ability of the tape recorder.
Once the agency set out to produce the commercial, it had to find a proper location. After settling on an old hotel in Atlantic City that had an appropriate ballroom, the agency next had to research and plan, thirties costumes, hair styles and makeup.
In addition to solving the special problems of producing a period commercial, the agency had to handle the routine planning that is necessary for all commercials. A script was written, actors, actresses, and a production crew were hired and a shooting schedule was arranged.
The planning for the commercial took several months, the shooting took a few days, and several additional days were spent on the editing. Finally the commercial was finished: it had cost $100,000 and it was 30 seconds long. The only thing left to do was to buy television time to air the commercial. Our story, however, takes a surprising turn. After the commercial was finished, the Japanese company decided that they did not want to market the tape recorder in the United States after all, and so, obviously, there was no use for the commercial. Although the company had to pay the agency, the commercial has never been shown and is now gathering dust in some library.
This true story is a good illustration of advertising in America. Admittedly most commercials that are filmed are actually shown, but this commercial is a good example of the time, human resources, detail, and money that go into the making of a television commercial.
Advertising is a subject that repels some and fascinates others. Regardless of one's position, it is a system we can hardly ignore. Not only is advertising crucial to the support of mass media in America, it is also crucial to the entire American economy. Thus, we would like to look at the system of advertising in greater detail.
THE ROLE OF ADVERTISING IN THE U.S. ECONOMY
Advertising is not a new idea. Immigrants were lured to America by the idea that the streets were paved with gold-an early example of both advertising and propaganda. Slaves were advertised before the Civil War and advertising brought lonely men on the western frontier and mail-order brides together.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century newspapers were filled with advertisements, and late in the nineteenth century, catalogs devoted exclusively to advertising were issued by Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. It was not until the twentieth century, with the advent of broadcasting, that advertising became so widespread and pervasive.
Advertising went hand in hand with the mass production of goods. The mass production and distribution of goods depends on mass consumption, and the best way to encourage mass consumption is by advertising through the mass media, magazines, newspapers, and broadcasting, which can reach hundreds of thousands of people with a single advertising message.
Advertising provides a way to dramatize the marginal difference between products. There is not much difference among the various laundry detergents that are on the market, for example, so the advertiser's job is to create the mythology that one is really better by persuading us that the detergent being advertised will get clothes whiter, works in cold water, and so on. In many cases numerous new goods that we have neither heard of nor knew we needed are advertised. Marshmallows and pop tarts, for example, are hardly necessary to our existence, but advertising makes us believe that they will enhance our lives.
Since advertising helps to distribute mass produced goods and creates a demand for products it is no surprise that it is a major industry. In 1976, an estimated $33 billion was spent on advertising in all media. This was an increase of 18 percent over 1975. Assuming that the country's population is about 215 million, this means that approximately $153 was spent on advertising for every woman, man, and child in America! Because newspapers run so much local advertising, more dollars are spent on newspaper advertising than on any other kind. Newspapers are followed by television (which has the greatest amount of national advertising), direct mail, radio, and magazines. Table 5-1 shows how the ten largest advertisers spend their money.
Yearly broadcast advertising trends beginning in 1960 show that television has steadily increased the volume of local and national advertising it broadcasts each year. During election years, television shows an unusually sharp advertising increase. Radio advertising trends since 1960 show a sharp increase in local advertising and a moderate increase in spot advertising; network advertising has remained about the same from one year to another. These increases indicate that as long as broadcast expenses do not increase disproportionately, broadcasting is in a very healthy economic state.
ADVERTISING AND THE MASS MEDIA
TABLE 5-1 Use of Media by Top Ten Advertisers, 1976 (In millions of
dollars spent).
1. Local advertising is not included in this chart.
2. Unmeasured includes point of purchase, direct mail, premiums, and various other forms of advertising and sales promotion.
Source: Figures adapted from Advertising Age, August 29, 1977.
Advertising plays an important role in mass media industries. Not only does it support most media, it also influences media content. Advertising provides 50 percent of magazine income, 75 percent of newspaper, and almost 100 percent of radio and television. If any mass medium is going to be successful it must be able to attract an audience that will be attractive to advertisers. This means that mass media must appeal to mass audiences and that if media content gets too specialized it will lose the audience and hence the advertiser.
The ideal media program for an advertiser is one that attracts a large audience, and does not offend potential consumers of the advertiser's product.
These unwritten rules mean that when media industries plan their content they must seriously consider the advertisers. A television network can run an occasional documentary critical of American business, but if it does it too often it is out of business in America. A magazine that centers on food must be careful not to be too critical of the food industries because it depends on these very industries for most of its advertising.
When media depend on advertising, there is often a very thin line between media content and media advertising. If a newspaper features a page of recipes and every recipe contains olives, you can be pretty sure that the recipes have come from an olive manufacturer rather than a local food editor who has in vented all of these recipes. As any television game show viewer knows, it is impossible to distinguish media content and advertising. Authors who appear on talk shows to promote their books are providing program content but they are also involved in a good deal of self-advertising.
Although publishers and broadcasters are not advertisers, they interact and interrelate with advertisers in many ways. There are some media industries, such as public broadcasting and movies, that do not depend on advertisers for their support. These industries, however, are exceptions to the media industry structure. In our present system, advertising support is a fact of life for most media.
ADVERTISING AND THE BROADCASTER
The most important difference between the print and the broadcast advertiser is that print sales people sell space and broadcast sales people sell time. Unsold time is worse than unsold space. A magazine or newspaper publisher has the option of increasing or decreasing pages depending on the amount of space sold. In broadcasting, however, there is no way to regain unsold time; time that is not sold is gone forever.
Time is also more interruptive than space to media audiences since print advertisements are more easily ignored than are broadcast commercials. Thus, broadcasters must take great care to integrate advertising with broadcast programming.
The integration of commercials with programming is a very complicated process. Commercial broadcasting is precise in its timing, and programs are timed so exactly that they are not a single second long or short. Most broadcast programs start exactly on the hour or half hour, which enables broadcasters to know how much of the remaining time can be used for commercials.
If all commercials were shown at the beginning or end of programs the job of scheduling would be much easier. But since commercials appear at intervals throughout the program, they must be integrated within it. This calls for cooperation between the programming and advertising departments. Typically, program script writers write material that can be interrupted at points at which viewer interest is high. This suits the needs of the advertisers, who obviously do not want viewers switching channels during the commercials. If the program is good enough the viewer will not take the risk of missing anything and will stay with the program through the commercials.
The practice of integrating advertising and programming results in scripts written in a formula style. If you watch a one hour police drama, you will discover that the main criminal is never captured until the last ten or fifteen minutes of the program. There will be close calls throughout the program to keep you interested but the arrest will not take place until the end.
Another aspect of timing in broadcast programming is the placement of commercials within the broadcast schedule. Commercials are run during programs that have an audience likely to be receptive to the product being advertised. Detergent commercials are often placed with daytime serials because their audiences consist largely of women, the potential buyers of the detergent.
Products with a wide consumer appeal are placed in evening programming, which attracts a large general audience.
All networks and stations run material other than commercials with their programs. Virtually all broadcast operations periodically broadcast public service announcements (psa's) which promote nonprofit charitable, com munity, or government organizations. Stations and networks commonly run promotional advertisements (promos) to advertise their programming. Stations are also required by the FCC to identify their call letters and locations at least hourly.
TABLE 5-2 NAB Guidelines for Commercials -------
*Five interruptions per hour are permitted on variety programs broadcast in prime time.
Source: NAB, The Television Code, 17th ed. (Washington, D.C.: January, 1974), pp. 14-17; NAB, The Radio Code, 18th ed. (Washington, D.C.: January, 1974), p. 15.
The style and timing of commercials is controlled by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). The FTC's concern is that commercials are not deceptive or misleading. The FCC requires the advertiser to be identified and requests that broadcasters control the loudness of commercials and distinguish between commercials and program content. The NAB, which has no enforcement power, requests that advertising not exploit children, unfairly attack competitors, or advertise hard liquor, fortune telling, or astrology. They also have guidelines prohibiting the use of medical personnel and the use of children's programming hosts or cartoon characters to advertise products. The most important NAB guidelines involve the length and frequency of commercials and commercial interruptions during broadcast programming. These guidelines are shown in Table 5-2.
The FCC has set no limits on commercials since it approves of the NAB guidelines. Since the NAB has no enforcement power, however, its recommendations depend on the good faith of broadcasters. Although there are many broadcasters who conscientiously follow the guidelines on length and frequency of commercials, there are many who do not.
Even though broadcasters follow NAB guidelines for the amount of advertising time and the number of program interruptions, there is an increase in commercials every year. This increase occurs because commercials are getting shorter. Commercials are now generally thirty seconds long rather than the sixty seconds they were during the 1950s and the early 1960s. For example, if a station is permitted to have nine and a half minutes of commercials in a one hour time period, it is possible for the station to run eighteen different thirty second commercials with the remaining thirty seconds devoted to a station identification and a shorter commercial. Although it is unusual to see eighteen commercials, it is not unusual to see fifteen during a popular prime time program.
The number of commercials run is even greater on independent stations.
For example, it is not unusual for WNEW-TV, a New York independent station, to run twelve thirty-second commercials in a program scheduled from 11:00-11:30 P. M. The commercial chaos is not only the concern of the hapless viewer, it is also a concern to advertisers. They question how any viewer will remember a commercial that is sandwiched in with twelve or fifteen others. Yet there does not seem to be much chance of change. Since the trend is toward shorter commercials, many broadcast and advertising personnel believe that the fifteen second commercial may become the standard length in the near future.
BUYING AND SELLING ADVERTISING TIME
Any advertiser buying broadcast time must make three basic decisions: the best medium for the product, the best type of advertising arrangement, and the best choice of stations or networks.
The Medium. One of the most important pieces of information for the advertiser is CPM, or cost per thousand. CPM refers to how much it would cost to reach a thousand people with an advertising message. For example, if it cost you $1000 to produce and to buy time for your message and your message reached 1000 people, your CPM would be $1. Media vary in their CPM. In broadcasting, prime-time network television has the highest CPM while local radio generally has the lowest. The advertiser must also decide which medium is best suited to the product. In broadcasting the choices are television, AM radio, and FM radio.
Advertisers who are interested in reaching a national audience for their product would probably conduct a national television campaign. Virtually every American home has a television set and a commercial on the highest rated program could reach as many as 80 million people. National television is commonly the choice of advertisers who sell products that all Americans use. Year after year, the largest amount of money for national television advertising is for food and food products, toiletries and toilet goods, medicines, automobiles and soaps, cleansers, and polishes. Radios are found in 99 percent of all American homes. Although national advertisers buy time on network radio, radio time is much more likely to be sold to advertisers who have more specialized products. One of radio's greatest advertising advantages is that it can reach selective audiences. Advertisers reach young listeners on rock stations, older on easy listening stations, people with higher educations on classical music stations, and other listeners on minority and ethnic stations. AM radio also reaches most drivers--in fact the most expensive advertising time on AM radio is when listeners are going to and from work.
When advertisers buy radio and television time they can also choose be tween national time and local time. The majority of advertising time for television is spot and network, while the majority of time sold for radio is for local advertising.
The second choice the advertiser must make concerns the best type of advertising arrangement. When advertising time is sold on a program, the program is considered to be sponsored. If no advertising time is sold the program is called sustaining. Some companies will buy all of the available commercial time on a single program. This is called sole sponsorship and it is the least common way of buying commercial time since it is so expensive.
Generally when it is done, it is done for occasional specials such as the Bell Telephone Hour and the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Rather than engaging in the costly and restrictive practice of sole sponsorship, most advertisers prefer alternating or participating sponsorship. In alternating sponsorship advertisers agree to buy so many commercials at specific intervals such as every other week. Participating sponsorship, also known as scatter plan buying, occurs when several sponsors buy time in one or more specific programs. The advertiser also has the choice of appearing in the program on a regular or irregular schedule and of buying one commercial or several. Participating sponsorship is the most common way of buying broadcast time.
Rather than buying from the networks, many advertisers prefer to buy spot time from individual radio and television stations. This time can be bought in ten, twenty, thirty, and sixty second lengths, but the thirty-second spots are the most common. The main advantage of spot time is that the advertisers can buy into the markets that will do them the most good. Although this option is also available when buying network time, it is even more flexible in spot television. An example of buying spot would be an advertising campaign for grits.
Since grits are not widely eaten outside the South, a grits company would probably do best with an advertising spot campaign designed to reach Southern markets. Advertisers are also able to buy the highest rated stations in a market when they buy spot time and if they have a limited budget they only buy into as many markets as they can afford. Thus, spot time is useful to advertisers who have specific needs, who want only the highest rated stations, and who want to reach specialized markets.
The last choice the advertiser makes is the best network or station on which to advertise. To aid in this choice both networks and stations publish rate cards that list how much radio and television time costs throughout the broadcast day. Station rate cards also list their coverage area, power, frequency, ownership, and network affiliation. Standard Rate and Data Service, a monthly publication, summarizes rate cards for all stations throughout the country.
AM Radio. The broadcast day in radio is generally sold by time periods. The time that attracts the greatest number of listeners is the most expensive; this is called drive time-the hours when people are commuting to and from work. On most stations, drive time is from 6-10 A.M. and afternoon from 4-7 P.M. A commercial bought for a drive time period will appear at any time during that period. The next most expensive time is daytime, between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M., followed by evening time, from 7 P.M. to midnight, and nighttime, from mid night to 6 A. M. All of these time periods are for weekdays; weekend rates are classified separately. Radio usually refers to its time in classes of A, B, C, D, or AAA, AA, or A. Depending on the classification the station uses, A time or AAA time is the most expensive. Radio stations also sell Run-of-Station (ROS) time, which means that the station can run the commercial whenever it pleases. ROS time is always cheapest on a rate card.
FM Radio. The most expensive time for FM advertising will vary from station to station. Unlike AM, FM stations usually do not consider the category of drive time since many cars still do not have FM radios. Prime time for FM radio varies depending on the type of station and its audience. An FM station in a college town might have its largest number of listeners in the evening, while a beautiful music FM station might have a large daytime audience of home makers. When a station owner owns an AM/FM combination, time is often sold in an AM/FM package with commercials appearing on both stations. This package is often cheaper than an AM package alone.
Television. The most expensive television time is prime time, which runs from 6 P.M. to 10 P.m. or 7 P.M. to 11 P.M. depending on the part of the country in which you live. Prime time is followed by fringe time-the hour or so that occurs before and after prime time. Some stations' rates are based on only two classifications: prime time and nonprime time. Other stations have five or six different rate classifications, all based on the size of the viewing audience at different times.
Networks and stations offer advertisers a variety of discount plans. Some offer frequency and quantity discounts--the more spots an advertiser buys and the more often they are run, the cheaper they are. Stations also have weekly package plans for a flat rate. These plans offer a number of spots spread over different time periods during the week. In radio, for example, an advertiser might buy a weekly package consisting of one-third drive, one-third daytime, and one-third weekend. In television, the package might consist of a combination of prime time, fringe time, and weekend time. Additionally, a television advertiser often has the choice of buying time that will occur in a fixed place in the broadcast schedule or cheaper time that is preemptible. Preemptible time can be changed to a different place in the broadcast schedule based on the need of the station. There are also two different rate classifications for preemptible time. The most expensive call be preempted with two weeks notice; the cheapest can be preempted until broadcast time. As well as permitting advertisers to buy cheaper time, preemptible time allows the station greater flexibility. Time not sold by broadcasters can never be regained. Preemptible time gives broadcasters a greater chance of selling their time, and it also offers them a chance of reselling it if a higher bidder comes along.
These are the most common ways of selling time to radio and television. Additionally, however, some radio and television stations engage in practices known as trade-outs and bartering. Trade-outs is a practice whereby a station gives a company advertising time in exchange for goods and services. For example, a station airs commercials for a local office supply store and the store in turn gives the station office furniture. This practice, which began in the late 1920s, is still used by some stations. Bartering usually occurs at the national level. In some barter arrangements, advertisers provide shows that are already produced and filled with their own commercials with the exception of some spots that are left empty for the local station to sell. In other barter arrangements, the barter house provides prizes or premiums to the station in return for the right to sell a certain amount of the station's time to barter house customers. Neither trade-outs nor bartering are common to all broadcasters-the practices are more likely to be used by stations that have the lowest ratings in their particular markets.
In some situations, products are advertised by promotional announcements rather than by commercials. This practice is very common in shows that offer prizes. This type of advertising is not free. If the product is cat food, Worcestershire sauce, or a similar low price item, the manufacturer donates the produce and pays a $250 promotion fee. Merchandise that costs between $350 and $1500 is traded for time, while the network pays the wholesale price for more costly items. If the network wants to give away a car, for example, it has to pay the dealer's cost. For every ten seconds the car is shown, the car's price is reduced by $300 for a daytime show and by $1400 for an evening show.
ORGANIZATIONS CONCERNED WITH ADVERTISING
Advertising Agencies
There are presently almost 6,000 advertising agencies in the United States. Of this number, 200 are major agencies that together do 70 percent of the total volume of business. The major advertising agencies are located largely in New York City, although they may have numerous branches throughout the United States and the world. They are likely to plan national advertising campaigns, while the smaller agencies are more likely to work on regional and local ac counts. Table 5-3 shows the top twenty advertising agencies that advertise on radio or television.
TABLE 5-3 The Top 20 Advertising Agencies and Their Radio-TV Billings,
1976
Any large corporation that wishes to advertise is likely to plan its campaign through an advertising agency. Since many of these companies have their own advertising, public relations, and marketing departments, these departments will work hand-in-hand with the agency. If the company has several products, it is likely to work with several agencies, each handling a different product line.
These companies pay the advertising agency based on the amount of work done. The negotiated fee is determined by the amount of media time or space that is bought and the cost of producing the print ad or the broadcast commercial.
Large agencies that handle mass media accounts usually break down their staff into the following areas of responsibility: Management is responsible for running the agency. Management hires and fires key personnel, develops the agency style, and finds new accounts. Plans group consists of department heads who help to set the strategy and direction for various accounts. Account management acts as a liaison between the client and the agency and oversees the planning and execution of the advertising campaign. Creative consists of the art directors and copywriters who plan the content of the commercials.
Generally the work of producing the final product is done by outside specialists. Media specialists plan, select, and buy media time. Research tests commercials for their effectiveness. Often the agency hires special research companies for this testing rather than doing it within the agency. Accounting handles billing of clients and all other day-to-day financial needs of the agency.
Media Buyers
Media buyers have always been a division of advertising agencies. In the 1960s, however, some of these specialists broke away from the agencies and formed their own companies. Media buyers buy time for the advertiser or the agency and are not involved in the creation of the commercial. They will plan which stations to use, buy the time, and check to see that the commercial is properly run. Media buyers also offer the advantage of buying large blocks of radio-tele vision time at wholesale rates to resell to their clients at a price below the card rates of the individual stations. These services are paid for in two ways-either by a fee based on the total billings of the media buyer's client or on a percentage of the money saved for the client.
---------- Music - New York Times, October 31, 1976, F3.
DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE
The music most often heard in the United States is the humble jingle. Although the jingle may be no more than half a minute long the business of getting it recorded and on the air requires many people and months of work.
The advertising agency writes or provides the idea for the lyrics.
The lyrics are then sent to a number of musicians who compose the music and make demonstration tapes called "demos." The agency then chooses the best music and pays the musician. Payment for a local or regional commercial generally ranges from $1000 to $2500. A jingle for a national campaign, however, can bring the successful musician anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000. The jingle musicians lose their right to the music once it is sold to the agency. They have the satisfaction of knowing, however, that they have a bigger audience than Brahms, Beethoven or Bach ever did! Source: James C. Condon, -Those Who Stand (Unnoticed) Behind the .....)
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Station Representatives
Independent and affiliate stations do not have access to every advertiser who is planning a national spot advertising campaign. Since these advertisers may be anywhere in the country, no station has the time or financial resources to pursue them. To get some of this advertising money, the station signs on with a station representative. These "reps" have offices in major advertising centers and act as sales agents for many different stations. Station representatives provide national advertisers with information about an individual station's coverage, ratings, advertising prices, and availability and give the station they represent advice on advertising rates and programming trends. Station reps are paid by a commission of 5 to 15 percent of the sales they make for the station.
THE PROBLEMS OF ADVERTISING
The role that advertising should play in broadcasting was debated as early as the 1920s. The arguments that were heard then are very similar to those heard today. Critics complain that advertising puts too much emphasis on consumption, that it has an adverse and even dangerous effect on children and adults, and that it uses huge amounts of money that could be better spent for the public good. The general public, however, has a generally favorable attitude toward broadcast advertising. When polled by the Roper Organization, 74 percent of those queried believed that commercials were a fair price to pay to watch television. 9 At least one group of people, however, is saying that some programming should have no commercials at all. In 1970, Action for Children's Television (ACT) filed a petition with the FCC requesting the commission to ban commercials from children's programming. Although the FCC received 100,000 letters in support of the ACT petition, it decided that a total ban might affect the amount and quality of children's programming and so it decided not to ban commercials.
The complaint most often received about commercials by the Federal Communications Commission in 1973 was that advertising was offensive, in bad taste, or both. The commission also received many complaints about the amount of advertising and false or misleading advertising." These and other issues are often as great a problem to the broadcaster and advertiser as they are to the viewer and listener.
Offensive Commercials
Television writers and members of the broadcast industry are fond of the concept that radio and television are guests in your living room. Broadcasters say that, as guests, they should be on their best behavior--specifically, they should not offend anyone. The main problem is deciding just what is offensive. When broadcasters first advertised a product that offered relief for hemorrhoids, the entire industry was in an uproar. Yet in the early 1970s, when the broadcasters and advertisers decided to advertise sanitary napkins on television, there was very little controversy.
During the late 1960s and 1970s, many of the advertising complaints have come from members of identifiable protest and pressure groups. Many women have been upset by the sexual stereotyping in commercials: to them, portraying women only as housewives or beauty queens is highly offensive. Mexican Americans, Italians, and blacks have also complained about the stereotyping in advertising and programming. In fact, in the mid-70s many women's groups organized and demonstrated at annual meetings of major advertisers to protest the stereotyping of women in the company's commercials.
Excessive Commercials
Since commercials provide the main support of the broadcast industry they cannot be eliminated completely. The question, then, is how many commercials are needed to support the commercial broadcast system. The answer lies in how well one thinks the industry should be supported and how much profit broadcasters should be permitted to make. If the broadcasters increase their commercials they usually increase their profits.
How many commercials and commercial interruptions should be in a program is somewhat controlled by the guidelines set by the NAB in its radio and television codes. Additionally, the FCC has stated that program-length commercials are not in the public interest. These are programs in which the program content and commercials are so interwoven that the program itself be comes a commercial. For example, a station broadcast a program on Colorado real estate eighteen times over an eight-month period. The station was notified that it was in violation of FCC rules.
False and Misleading Advertising
In the past, many commercials were filled with exaggerated claims. When the consumer movement began to grow, consumer groups pressured the government to put some restraints on advertising. Acting on these complaints against specific advertising, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began to use its al ready existing power to investigate and stop advertising that gave false information or misled the public. FTC powers will be more fully discussed in Section 10. Basically, the FTC can order advertisers to provide research that backs up the claims they made in advertising. If a company says, for example, that its insect spray kills roaches, it had better be able to prove it. Additionally, the FTC can force advertisers to go on the air and correct previously misleading commercials in a process known as corrective advertising. This has been done in the past, for example, by advertisers for Profile bread and Ocean Spray cranberry juice.
The main problem with FTC action is that it is so slow that the commercial may be broadcast for several months before the FTC bureaucracy can bring about a change. Also, the FTC can only deal with facts and evidence-proving that a certain toothpaste will not lead to greater popularity is almost impossible.
ADVERTISING AND PROGRAM CONTENT
Perhaps the greatest concern about broadcast advertising is the extent to which it influences the content of television programming. Sometimes advertisers have a direct influence. During the 1976-77 season, several advertisers, including General Motors and Sears, Roebuck, stated that they would no longer advertise on programs with excessive violence." The effects of this deci sion were apparent in the program schedule for the 1977-78 season: there were no new police/adventure series and several of the existing ones were dropped.
In most cases, however, advertisers have had a more indirect influence on program content. With few exceptions, programs that cannot attract advertisers are never broadcast. Therefore, when networks, stations, and independent producers develop programs and program ideas, they develop those ideas and programs that they hope will attract advertisers. For example, they know that advertisers, particularly in prime time, are interested in audience members between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine because these viewers have the greatest buying power. Producers would never create a program for older people for this time period because it would never sell. Producers also know that advertisers are wary of too much controversy; a "successful" documentary producer, for example, has a better chance of getting a program aired about railroads and rivers than programs about abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment.
Since program producers are well aware of the industry's structure and of the necessity for advertising revenue, they work to fulfill the needs and expectations of the advertisers. In this way advertising influences most of what we see on television.
Advertising Research No one knows why some commercials work and others do not. Even favorites of the public and prize winners in advertising competitions are sometimes unsuccessful in motivating people to buy the product.
Whether a commercial will work is a subject of great interest to advertisers--especially when they have a quarter of a million dollars invested to make and run the commercial. Specialists in advertising research use a wide variety of techniques to predict the success of a commercial. Some show commercials in theaters to an audience whose members can turn a dial indicating interest or disinterest at any given moment. Other research organizations simply ask their audiences to judge commercials; some make telephone calls to discover which commercials people remember. Still other researchers use sophisticated technology to measure contractions in the pupil of the eye or reactions from muscles and nerves in the fingers.
Although a number of research techniques have been developed, no single one can claim unqualified success. Only two things are known for certain: that although people like the commercial they may never buy the product; and that no amount of advertising can sell a poor product-at least not more than once.
It has often been said that television exists to deliver audiences to national advertisers. By the same token radio could be said to exist for local advertisers.
Certainly all roads in the broadcast industry lead back to the advertiser. Stations are valued according to their ability to reach the largest possible audience with the advertiser's message. Programs are geared to those groups that include the most active consumers who are most likely to pay attention to radio and television commercials. Even a good part of the government regulation of broadcasting is concerned with advertising.
No program in radio or television is immune from the need to attract advertisers. Creativity, innovation, and originality are all valued in programming if they can attract advertising dollars. Walter Cronkite will be permitted to read the evening news for CBS for as long as advertisers are attracted to his program. As long as commercials on his show sell for top dollar, producer Norman Lear can continue to turn out programs on social themes. The broadcast industry is open to virtually any ideas as long as it is legal and it makes money.
People work in the commercial broadcast industry because it is a very good way of making money. Broadcasting is a major business in the United States and even though it deals with the products of information and entertainment its primary function, as with any other business, is to make money. Virtually all of this money is made from advertising, and without advertising we would not have a broadcast system as we know it today.
NOTES
1. John Blair ar Company, Statistical Trends in Broadcasting, 13th ed. (New York: Blair Television Blair Radio, 1977), p. 1.
2. Ibid., pp. 12, 25, 40
3. Peter M. Sandman, David M. Rubin, and David B. Sachsman, Media: An Introductory Analysis of American Mass Communications, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 127.
4. NAB, The Radio Code, 18th ed. (Washington, D.C.: NAB, January 1974); NAB, The Television Code, 17th ed. (Washington, D.C.: NAB, January 1974).
5. Advertising Age, February 14, 1977, p. 34.
6. Stephanie Harrington, -To Tell the Truth, The Price is Right, - New York Times Magazine (August 3, 1975).
7. Otto Kleppner, Advertising Precedures, 6th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1973), p. 571.
8. Elizabeth J. Heighton and Don R. Cunningham, Advertising in the Broadcast Media (Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1976), pp. 43-44.
9. Broadcasting, April 4, 1977, p. 42.
10. FCC, 39th Annual Report, p. 220. 11. Ibid., p. 82.
12. Advertising Age, February 14, 1977, p. 1.