Page 173 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

152 Critical investigations in political economy

social communications. Greater attention to media work cultures links to the
need for an expanded account of governance, including how formal regulation
and informal rules influence practices such as commercial integration in news,
entertainment and social media. Where postmodernists have tended to argue that
the separation of media and advertising is irretrievable, a revised radical approach
can inform a more nuanced analysis of the conditions in which commercial
communications and media content combine and influence one another.
So we need a revised mapping of the main factors that tend to strengthen
marketers’ influence on media and communications services and countervailing
forces. Here I draw on Curran’s (2002) essay ‘Renewing the Radical Tradition’ in
seeking to identify for media–advertising relationships what that essay considers
for media as a whole, in the same effort to offer a conceptual mapping and
toolkit for a more open interrogation of influences operating in specific instances.
The focus here is on the power of marketers to influence editorial, operational or
strategic decisions by communication providers in ways that favour marketing
communications messages and interests. In conjunction with each of the factors
identified below, we need to consider a structural dimension (economic), sectoral
dimensions (institutional cultures shaping relationships in how communication
services are organised) and behavioural dimensions (interactions of specific agents,
such as particular brand marketers, agencies and media firms). We need to
consider specificities of firms, forms and formats, which have different norms and
expectations influencing behaviours and which together form the institutional
and cultural contexts for media–advertiser relationships.

Factors that tend to enhance advertising influence on media

1 Media dependence on advertising finance

In general, we can say that the impact of any channel’s ad-carrying role on
the fashioning of its non-advertising contents is proportional to the extent of
its dependence on such revenue.
Wernick (1990: 100)

Dependence on advertising finance is the single most important way in which
advertising influences media content. The level of dependence varies according
to such factors as the proportion of total revenue made up from advertising, and
reliance on particular advertisers or groups of advertisers. The dependence of
media on advertising revenue tends to influence media decisions at various
levels, from corporate-strategic to operational and editorial.

2 Market conditions and the structural influence of ad finance

The second key factor is the way advertising finance influences how media
markets are organised. The structural effect of advertising finance is to grant