TeleVISIONS (January/February 1976)

opie veterts: for Bay Area TV stations there’s nowa g Free Speech Messages By Larry Kirkman Impeach Nixon, boycott Safeway, free political prisoners, support gay liberation, keep abortions legal, normalize US-China relations. No, it’s not Smokey the Bear talking. Free Speech Messages like these have been broadcast since 1971 over all the San Francisco VHF stations which have a prime time audience of one and a half million. At commercial rates of $3 per 1000, that time is worth $4,500 per minute, and it’s been used by hundreds ot inaividuals and organizations including the ACLU, NOW, UFW, the local president of the postal workers union, and striking employees of KQED, the public TV Station. Free Speech Messages (FSM) come over the TV or radio looking and sounding very much like any other locally produced public service announcement. But because FSMs are the result of negotiations between citizen groups and broadcasters, they offer some important advantages over the PSA. FSMs are unedited, unprocessed access to specified airtime. Groups and individuals can use this time for “calls to action,” for statements of opinion which are frequently controversial. And these messages must appear throughout the broadcast day — including prime evening hours — not just during the PSA ghetto on Sunday morning and late at night. Most public interest groups fixated on leaflets, lectures and newsletters, have found it hard to believe that they can control their own use of the mass media. But in San Francisco and the other cities where FSMs have developed, the public learns that media use is possible every time one of these unique messages appears on the Bie Int e course of just a few ye month-and-a-half waiting list, without any promotion. After 5 years, Bay Area audiences assume that the FSM is one __of their legislated rights. “Good journalism is not free speech,” and “‘the power of the spot message should not be reserved for profitmaking corporations.” These starting point ideas were expressed by Phil Jacklin, professor of philosophy at San Jose State, and the ad hoc leader of the Committee for Open Media, a loose collection of individuals who pioneered the fight to wrest profit-making-minutes away fram commercial stations. The idea of demanding spot time for statements of public opinion was a creative technique for access, but ii might not have gotten anywhere, if it weren’t for a fortuitous court ruling in 1971. A group of business executives had tried to buy time on a Washington, D.C. TV station to express their opposition to the war in Vietnam. The station refused, citing their 1st Amendment right to “freedom of the press” — their line was that owners of the media must control its content. The federal court disagreed, supporting the business group. Of course, WTOP-TV appealed to the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld the unfettered right of media owners to determine wwhat constitutes free speech. But for a year the broadcast industry was worried. Many stations were willing to barter away a few precious minutes of airtime rather than to risk losing their goldengoose licenses, which the court opinion seemed to threaten. If the court required the right of public access as a condition of licensing, it would be much easier to demonstrate that stations were not acting in the ‘public interest and necessity,” as required by the 1934 Communications Act. In the fall of 1974, the right to access was virtually eliminated by the Supreme Court in CBS vs the Democratic National Committee, which went even further to emphasize the First Amendment justification for broadcast control of all airtime. The Court said that stations could meet the obligation to air all sides of an issue through the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, and weren’t required to allow any party to determine the nature of public debate — even if they were willing to pay for the time. But, until this CBS reversal, for nearly two years, the Committee for Open Media was able to create the momentum to establish the FSM model in San Francisco, and then throughout the country. Pittsburgh came up for license renewal immediately after the successful negotiations in San Francisco. Westinghouse Broadcasting had been the station most anxious to set up FSMs in San Francisco, and the same lawyer for Westinghouse was now faced by the Pittsburgh challenge. In a September 12, 1971 story, Broadcasting Magazine reported the citizen-petition victory as a fact that the broadcasters would have to live with. Soon after, Westinghouse gave over its five Group W stations to FSM access. Another broadcaster reading the magazine article, presented a fitful image of benevolence and voluntarily of newspapers, radio and TV, citizens can oppose this concentration of ownership and frequently negotiate additional provisions in the process. Even in cases where the FCC cross-ownership rules don’t apply, any legal delays that prevent a company from assuming ownership and operation can make anxious businessmen willing to negotiate. The transfer stick was used successfully when TimeLife sold its five stations to McGraw-Hill, and recently in the WMAL case in Washington, D.C. (See Citizen Action, this issue.) One third of the broadcast licenses are in the process of turnover, but most of these are radio stations and it’s rare that the TV stations are in major VHF markets. e In 1975 several petitions to deny were based on the failure of news to adequately present issues, and especially radio’s wireservice indifference to local news. All were rejected by the Commission. e Jacklin has also proposed a new objective of the Committee for Open Media: access for journalists, proposing a legal battle based on the Supreme Court’s reliance on journalistic discretion in the CBS case. This strategy for access would focus on the rights of individual journalists, which could offer greater legal grounds than the worn out public-access approach. e But, Jacklin can see the need for other more popular strategies based on the successful experience of FSM users. There have been no demands on the networks for national access time. There hasn’t been any joint distribution of FSM spots by the cities which have access. e Most of the FSM’s have been produced in the flat studio style of editorial comments recorded in one take. Some have made use of slides, film clips, but none have used video to pre-produce a message, and none of the “Good journalism is not free speech,” and “the power of the spot message should not be reserved for profit-making corporations,” are the principles of the Committee for Open Media. invited Phil Jacklin to set up FSMs on WHAS-TV in Louisville, Kentucky. Other cities followed: in New Orleans, a Vista nae Started CURB, Citizens United to stations to carry them. FSMs are now on in Boston, Denver, and Columbus, Ohio, but in other markets broadcasters have been immovable, virtuously denouncing demands for access as “extortion.” Comforted by the Court and a compliant FCC, broadcasters decided they could risk litigation when citizen groups challenged their licenses. They would rather spend $3,000 on legal fees than give into demands for access. As a result, Jacklin, his allies in the broadcast reform movement, and the lawyer-strategists at Citizens Communications Center have realized some of the limitations of a purely legal strategy. At a January meeting in Washington they concluded that the struggle may depend on involving a much broader constituency to add public pressure to the weakening legal levers. A precedent in this area is the effort by the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting to forge a public interest coalition in favor of more public affairs programs on TV (see Citizen Action, this issue). Though media-reformers acknowledge that the job of broadening public access to broadcast spot time is. getting harder, there still remain a number of new strategies, legal and other, which are currently pending: e One effective stick is to file challenges before the FCC against requests for transfers of broadcast properties. Because the FCC has adopted regulations prohibiting new media buyers from acquiring monopolies _ themselves for Free Speech Messages produced O on negotiations have set technical standards for the kind of small format production of spots that is now within the range of public interest groups. Many of the news location, and edited material that would make these calls to action enormous!y more forceful. e Radio provides the least expensive format for people who want mass media access to produce their own. Weak organizationally, without paid staff, public interest groups have had to make a decision about the best use of their time and this has led them to concentrating on TV instead of the fragmented radio audience. There are simply too many radio stations to contact and visit, they complain. In response, in 1974, COM in the Bay Area called two meetings where all the radio stations sent representatives. The major proposal was for the stations to fund a one stop access center at the cost of about $6,000 per year, per station, to produce 20 minutes of weekly airtime. Even though COM was unable to get this commitment from the broadcasters, radio has shown itself to be a more accessible medium. KFRC, the number one rock station, plays what they call a consciousness raising minute every hour, and KNBR, a 50,000 watt AM station plays a 30-second spot every hour. Audio production is in fact within reach of any group that has the resources to put out an offset newsletter. But the fear of the media and the degradation of amateurs has been ingrained in most people so deeply that the possibility of becoming electronic producers is rejected out of hand. LS SSS SSS SSS SSS SSS SSS FSMs: negotiation Send three people into your TV or radio station targets. Ask to see “‘the public file.” The FCC requires every station to keep one and make it available to the public at anytime without prior appointment. Don’t meet with the station manager until you have studied their operations. Look especially at their last license renewal application: section IV-B, the statement of program service. Look for the composite week, a selection of seven days from the station’s program log. And study spot messages, asking what percentage of the spot time is commercial. Request a meeting and send a written proposal including a list of requirements similar to these: The stations produce two spots a week and broadcast those spots and two others independently produced, 8 times each, throughout the day, including prime time. The play time for the spots must be designated in advance by the stations. This will make it possible for you to monitor them, and to build a regular audience. The spots should be scheduled so that each one has half the reach of commercial spots on the station, especially to get xnumber of adult-impressions. Messages which are independently produced must have equal consideration with station produced spots, based on reasonable technical standards agreed upon in advance. They must publicize the opportunity to do these spots, and they cannot reject any request on the grounds that it is controversial or contrary to their own views. As long as it’s not obscene or a lootery, they have to let anything on. Finally, the above agreements should be submitted by the station to the FCC as an amendment to their present license application. That means, if they break the agreements, you have strong grounds for a license challenge. They are supposed to meet with community people anyway. The FCC requires it as part of the station’s official effort to “ascertain community needs and problems.” At the meeting they will say they do all sorts of good things and that these spots aren’t necessary. You will say that none of the “good things” they do provide substantial audience exposure for unedited messages from people. They will say the whole idea is unworkable. You will point out that the feasibility has been established in San Francisco and other cities. If the station refuses, you can conduct a legal battle _ over license renewal. Licenses are renewed every three years. The stations are grouped by region in three month time slots. Obviously a station will be most suscep tible to your demands right before application renewal time. Phil Jacklin, COMMITTEE FOR OPEN MEDIA, c/o Philosophy Department, San Jose State University, San Jose, California 95192, (408) 277-2875. CITIZENS COMMUNICATIONS CENTER, 1914 Sunderland Place N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 296-4238.