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TV: Battleground
of Representation. (Part
3) |
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The number of theorists arguing against a reliance on numbers to represent people really reached its peak in the late 70’s and early 80’s with books like Cole’s 1981 collection of writings, Television Today: A Close-Up View. Here, the great man of audience-as-numbers himself, Arthur C. Nielsen, waxes lyrical on the efficacy of numbers and sampling techniques: TV ratings are a tool designed for a specific job. With their limitations kept firmly in mind, their users get from them valuable information and highly usable information otherwise unobtainable. Just as you do when you sample a bowl of soup. So, if a sponsor decides that his offering needs more salt, don't blame the spoon (p196). Nielsen democratically shares the same pages as market researcher David Chargall who succinctly demolishes the programmer’s ability to use ratings as anything but a rough guide due to statistical error brought about by small sample sizes. Unfortunately, this criticism didn’t work. The practice still applies today even in the ABC and SBS. Perhaps it could be said it is handled a little more sensitively in Australia than in America, but, since the 80’s Australian television fiasco, innocence has been lost and furious competitive and counter-programming strategies are de rigueur (simultaneous programming of Married with Children on 9 and 7, and the same for Mother and Son of ABC and 7, due to older rights contacts being held by rival broadcasters). Television, globally and locally, commercially and non- or quasi-commercially has lost it 'soul', its unsullied commitment to content, in a pact with institutional imperative. This seems to be at the heart of the critics' debate. The Belly of the Beast "If the business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge put it, then television is the art of business, and programming is the practice of that art. The triumph of vulgarity is essentially the goal of programming. It entails finding what the largest audience wants to see, and then repeating that entertainment until the audience is worn out" (Twitchell 1992, p218). Gitlin provides an insight into the operations of these large dominant structures. Earlier, criticisms of the "hegemony" of mainstream television industry (in Lazere p244) develop into practical examples in Inside Primetime, a cynical look at the practices of the management of large commercial broadcasters. This is the first critical look at the inner workings of institutional television and provides a starting point for understanding their existing power base. His much-cited interviews are credible proof of a lack of cultural 'sensitivity' within an industrial context, for example, quoting the vice-president of CBS, Arnold Becker, "I'm not interested in culture. I'm not interested in pro-social values. I have only one interest. That's whether people watch the program. That's my definition of good, that's my definition of bad." (p 31). Interested to see practical differences, and of course there are some, I asked Bob Donahue, the then Head of Scheduling at the ABC, a so-called public service broadcaster, what he saw his main task as: "My primary duty is to make sure the reach of the ABC, that is to say the number of people who use and watch the ABC on a regular basis, as opposed to a night by night ratings, remains high and my job is to actually push it higher. It's currently around 90% of viewers who use the ABC once a month... my aim is 100% ...the way the ABC looks on air is basically my responsibility". It is obvious that the ratings are an easy way for commercial and non-commercial managements alike to make decisions, using them as a summary or representation of ‘market conditions’ that must be managed or controlled to support an optimum environment for institutional expansion and longevity. In this case, the market conditions are all the viewers of television; the audience. As Ian Muir, ex head of AGB McNair Anderson, the Australian rival to Nielsen, put it recently, "Television station management in both commercial and national sectors of the industry depend upon audience measurement information as the basis for sound decision making in both programming the station or network and in maximising advertising revenue (in the case of commercial stations). The use of audience measurement information in the programming function is essential given the competitive nature of television broadcasting and the availability of the information to all players in the game. The management team which is the most creative in its use of this information will gain significant competitive advantage" (Muir p67). Here a culturally creative use of television is forgotten, to be neatly replaced by an institutionally creative use of knowledge that delivers maximum advertising dollar to the station with the best "team". Culture, the thing I assume the three earlier sample writers are concerned about, is only a commodity like audiences, like the programs, like the stations themselves, left to the depredations of a few ‘creative’ teams (Skase, Lowy, 'you only get one in your life' Bond) seeking to gain a competitive advantage. "What is fundamental, and has never changed, is that where a show is placed is infinitely more important than the content of the show" (US network programmer Michael Dann). Culture,
alternative as much as mainstream content, is circumscribed by ratings
(cf the failure of CBS's ART Channel, the easy win for ITV when it opened
in competition to the BBC in 1972, etc.) and is relegated to the margins
of commercial television or to public service broadcasters who valiantly
try to ignore the figures. However, both SBS and ABC not only 'follow
the ratings', their head programmers rather indecently pour over the dailies,
the next-day ratings figures for the previous 24 hour period, the first
thing every morning. |
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