Page:Columbia Journalism Review volume 2 issue 1.djvu/4

 PASSING COMMENT

The new Congress has been poking into several branches of journalism, seeking evidence of monopoly, statistical fraud, and subversion. Here is a progress report.

Ratings: too much competition?

One part of the house of journalism that appears to be in disrepair is that cloudy window of broadcasting, the ratings industry. In hearings that lasted a month, a House subcommittee armed with eighteen months of staff research turned up improvising, doctoring, and falsifying of the statistics that are supposed to tell what the public is watching and hearing. One company (Pulse) had done so much toying with its results that the chairman, Representative Harris of Arkansas, asked its president if he were running a "con game."

If it is a con game, it has worked with the consent of the clients. Ratings are compiled to be sold. Despite the dominance of the A. C. Nielsen Company, there is enough competition to influence the ratings services to tailor their product to what the customer wants. If the customer happens to be in the market for unvarnished truth, fine; if he is using ratings to attract advertisers, he is under pressure to employ the service that helps his promotion.

If such asked-for distortion concerned only raters, broadcasters, and advertisers, inaccuracy could be considered a private matter. But the public is involved, too, for the programs it sees are chosen in gréat measure by ratings. As an analysis in Variety demonstrates, the television networks have deleted from next year's schedules all but a handful of shows that fell below a 30-per-cent share of the audience (Nielsen) in the 1962-1963 season.

The public interest is the presumable cause of the™ investigation. It reflects no credit on the broadcasting industry that its guardianship was so weak as to offer Congress good cause for intervention. Now that intervention has taken place, it is still not too late for remedial action.

Before government supervision of ratings becomes an actuality, the industry can take hold. It can, for

example, revive the idea of a single body representing all users of ratings, comparable to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Ratings, to be sure, will never have the firmness of audited circulations, but they can be improved—and they must have the stamp of honesty and disinterest. An industry should be able to count eyes and ears for itself.

Monopolies: slicing the pie

The often-postponed investigation of monopoly in mass Communications by Representative Celler's antitrust subcommittee had a three-day run early in March. Before its recess, the committee heard from Newton N. Minow and the Federal Communications Commission on joint holdings in newspapers and broadcasting.

The chief revelation of the study submitted by the FCC staff was that total monopoly—control of a community's newspapers, television, and radio by a single corporation—was rare. In fact, the study showed that a pure monopoly of three media exists in only one community in the United States. That city is Zanesville, Ohio (population 39,077), where the Littick family's Zanesville Publishing Company owns the daily newspaper, 63 per cent of the television station, and 60 per cent of the AM radio station. (Other towns have newspaper- radio monopolies.)

The only good reason for singling out Zanesville here is to show that it is beside the point. Any investigation that purports to show the state of communications in this country cannot do so by reference to outdated definitions of monopoly. Single-owner control can exist today only in the country's Zanesvilles.

The Review trusts that the committee will also take up the more pertinent matter of the nationalization of ownership. The list of owners of newspapers and television and radio stations in large cities shows that control in many cities lies in the hands of oligopolies—groups of national corporations that divide markets like pies.

In Atlanta, for example, two newspapers, a television station, and a 50,000-watt radio station are held by the Cox group. The two other television stations are parts of the Storer and Crosley groups. There is no locally owned major outlet.

Minneapolis and St. Paul, to take another case, are split among the Cowles group (two newspapers 2 Columbia Journalism Review