Page 150 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

ADVERTISING

(and the political process in general), and the force of commercial
pressures on access to broadcast airtime, make some degree of
change inevitable in the years to come. How much, and how quickly
it will be implemented, remains to be decided. Before long, however,
there will be hundreds of channels transmitting into people’s homes
by cable and satellite. The uses to which such channels might be
put are difficult to foresee, but paid political advertising on the
American model, on some of them at least, is clearly a possibility.

Further reading
Diamond and Bates’ The Spot remains the best source of
further reading on American political advertising. Margaret
Scammell’s Designer Politics: How Elections are Won (1995)
includes political advertising in its examination of British
political communication before the era of New Labour.
Martin Rosenbaum’s From Soapbox to Soundbites examines
party-political campaigning in the UK since 1945. Andrew
Wernick’s Promotional Culture (1991) presents critical
perspectives on the allegedly damaging effects which the
steadily more sophisticated use of commercial advertising
techniques by politicians has had on the quality of modern
democracy. For a recent study of politicians’ use of public-
access broadcasting see McNair et al., (2002).

129