“What if” is a dangerous way to start a blog post. Dealing with hypotheticals, at least from the perspective of history, is often an exercise in futility and frustration due to the fact that we often have a good idea of the second- and third-order effects that may have happened.
In this case, however, I am briefly stepping away from my routine of discussing history and personal experiences to mull over a “what if” that came to mind last night:
What if advertising revenue was prohibited from media outlets?
To provide context, I had to bring up three posts for relevance and to see/show how my mind works…
Things Always on my Mind from 21 Feb 2018 closed with a brief statement about advertising during debates four years ago:
With costs ranging from $400,000 to $600,000, the active an passive approach to deterring threats to the students is noteworthy; however, an interesting contrast could be maintained when noting that CNN’s rate for a 30-second spot during the 2015 Republican debate was as high as $200,000.
Something to Consider from 2 Mar 2018 expanded on that idea and was presented as a possible solution of reallocating some of the money made from advertising to work towards making schools a bit safer for the students:
I see a chance to promote an idea, create/execute a solution, and get the major actors in the arena of public opinion to be put in the difficult position (for them) to “walk the walk” as opposed to the routine of “talk.”
Finally, Something to Consider (Revisited) was written on 15 May 2018 to clarify my thoughts in a more presentable form:
With one side initiating a public commitment (and therefore, challenge) to meet their opponents’ contribution, dollar for dollar, towards the singular goal of making as many schools in the template provided by Southwestern. Not limited to these two or three initial contributors, the potential for national momentum and interest may generate a growing number of committed donors working beyond political affiliation, class, and region.
Which brings me to this recent question of “what if…?”
Moving this beyond the (to date, unattended) issue of trying to rally antagonistic entities towards a better goal, I wonder what would be the consequences of removing the lure of money from the service of providing news.
Here is the problem, as I see it…
Either end of the political spectrum stands to financially benefit regardless of who is in office. Whether one party dominates or the other is inconsequential to their bottom line; they will squawk regardless of who is in power. We have seen this grow in influence and scope in relation to the increasing reach and audience of the media.
So, what happens if you take away monetary incentives?
Yes, I fully realize that one simple action inevitably has serious repercussions later down the line, just like I understand that one cannot fully divorce money from politics. However, by doing so, perhaps this would force whomever is left to rely on donations – possibly as a 501c organization…. which has the benefit of making them tax-exempt but also much more transparent to the general public as to where money comes from.
Just for the sake of understanding what figures I am pondering, a look at the combined cable TV advertising revenue from Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg was around $2,505,200,000 in 2017.
Two… point five… billion dollars… and that wasn’t an election year.
Digital revenues…?
…$90,391,816,000.
That is a lot of influence; that is also a lot of excellent reasons why pulling advertising from media would never happen.
Earlier this week, I wrote on censorship:
However, much of the debate on censorship is not about details – it is about one simple and inevitable facet of being human: control… political, social, or both.
I have never thought of myself as a student or practitioner of philosophy, but one of the biggest fans of this blog gave me a much-needed inspirational boost as he discussed an idea I had written about and in doing so, also gave me a different perspective of what I write about and what this may mean for the future.
What is the point of this post?
To give us – the reader and the author – food for thought and – inevitably – later elaboration.
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Reblogged this on DAVEBOOK and commented:
I believe that getting money out of politics would be a good thing, but it’s just not going to happen, except in my imaginary utopia.
The general problem with removing money from advertising on TV (and presumably radio?) is that the revenues aren’t used for political promotions, but to purchase programming (and to make some profit, of course).
As we have discussed many times, Radio Stations have to pay to carry, say, Rush Limbaugh. In return, they are “given” a certain amount of “commercial time” which they then sell to whoever will pay for it to help offset – and in a perfect world make more than it costs – the price of having Rush on the station. This is made even odder by the fact that Premier Networks required iHeart Media (nee Clear Channel) their stations to carry these shows, which are, of course, produced by Clear Channel (Premier is a subsidiary). Most radio Stations – and I would presume TV Stations – spend most of their time chasing ad dollars to keep their heads above water.
Nothing used to drive me battier than people wanting me to pitch for a political candidate or issue. No, I would tell them, buy an ad on the station or buy a service or product from the advertiser. That way we keep the shows on the air that talk about your candidate or issue.
In any case, while Ad revenues are astronomical, I know that – at least in talk radio – it’s generally a barely break even money proposition. We’d make about $5 Million/year in ad revenue, and spend about $5.2 Million keeping the station running. Only subsidies from stations that weren’t political (i.e. Adult Contemporary Music) made enough to subsidize the stations in the cluster that were loss leaders, usually, Talk and niche music stations.
It is something to think about though. Money = power. If money also equals speech, then by definition speech is power.
And one thing we know about humans, they hate giving up power…
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When I came up with this idea, there was a big part of me that realized that there was very little I knew of advertising revenue and how it relates to operational costs… I still don’t, but to paraphrase from “Stripes”: “…I am willing to learn… will they send me someplace special?” (Yes, I know that it’s “we/us” but it didn’t fit exactly).
Local TV and radio aren’t the issue, in my opinion. They are geographically limited (somewhat) and, therefore, more in tune with the regional attitudes and pulse. What I was thinking of were the larger, corporate media types who often muddy the waters with political advocacy disguised as “news.” Like I said at the beginning: hypotheticals are frustrating and futile at times. Sure, you have the whole “Final Countdown” scenario which is infinitely entertaining (John Birmingham’s “Axis of Time” series was simply amazing, if you liked that movie, by the way), but most of the time, an idea has to come from somewhere…
“Money = power. If money also equals speech, then by definition speech is power.”
This is very true, and the heart of the current issues with censorship on social media. However, I think that it is more like “money=power=speech.” Yeah, it’s sort of a mess, but if you think of it as a triangle it makes sense from the idea that power equates to public opinion/support. Inevitably, I will spend a lot of time mulling this over… so thanks for that! lol
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