Page 152 - Culture Society and the Media

142 CONTROL OF THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRIES
few can afford even to contemplate the prospect’ (Royal Commission on the
Press, 1977, p. 9). Moreover, after launching, a new paper faces the problem of
building up a readership while paying the market price for raw materials, labour
and publicity. Increasingly these costs require capital backing of the kind that is
only available to the conglomerates, who can subsidize the initial loss-making
period out of the profits from their other enterprises. It is no accident that
Britain’s latest national daily, the Star, is backed by the Trafalgar House
shipping and property consortium, or that the (short-lived) weekly news magazine
Now was able to draw on the resources of Sir James Goldsmith’s Cavenham food
group. Without this kind of support a successful launch is more or less
impossible as the collapse of the Scottish Daily News clearly illustrated (see
McKay and Barr, 1976). Other sectors, such as record and film making, where
production costs are relatively low, are rather more open at the level of initial
market entry. But independent producers still face the problem of securing
adequate national and international distribution for their products, and here again
the power of the large corporations is crucial since they increasingly command
the major channels of dissemination. For supporters of the ‘consumer
sovereignty’ position, however, arguments about the barriers to effective
competition are ultimately irrelevant since they see all cultural producers, large or
small, as equally subject to the final veto of consumer demand. At this point in
the Marxist argument capital makes an appearance in another form—advertising.
Theorists of capitalism’ start from the undisputed fact that the core commercial
media of television, radio and the press get most of their income and profits from
their advertisers and not from their audiences. This they argue turns the ideal of
‘consumer sovereignty’ on its head and makes the advertisers the real figures of
power and their demands for predictable audiences the major determinant of
supply (see Smythe, 1977). However, the advertisers’ dominant role in financing
the core commercial media need not necessarily mean that audience wants are
secondary or insignificant. On the contrary, opponents argue, since advertisers
are interested in reaching as many of their target audience as possible, consumer
preferences are still the most important factor in the situation. This counter
argument is persuasive, but oversimple. For, as James Curran has pointed out:
‘advertisers are not equally interested in reaching all people. Some people have
more disposable income or greater power over corporate spending than others,
and consequently are more sought after by advertisers’ (Curran, 1978, p. 246).
As a result, the distribution of advertising (and therefore commercial viability)
follows the general distribution of social wealth with media producers trying to
attract either mass audience or affluent minorities while paying relatively little
attention to the poor and disadvantaged. The effects of this imbalance are
particularly evident in the national press where even Marxism’s sternest critics
admit that the fact that an editor ‘must either produce a newspaper which will be
read by the millions or one which will attract the big spenders’ means that ‘the
rich and the business executives are the only minority groups fully catered for’
(Beloff, 1976, p. 14). As well as affecting the number and range of