Page 98 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Mass Audience 10:39
the population. 129 The televised spot ad also developed as a mass tech-
nique in Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign. 130 By the time an audience esti-
mated at 75 million watched Eisenhower’s first inaugural address in 1953,
television had arrived as the new force in political broadcast communi-
cation. 131 And by the 1956 presidential rematch, nearly one-third of the
expenditures for national campaign committees went to broadcasting,
with television the dominant medium. 132
One of the crucial political developments in the years that followed
was the discovery by political figures that individual, candidate-based
organizations could exploit and use this new medium as well or better
than the party committees. Availability of the new medium meant that
campaign communication could easily be managed by specialized orga-
nizations focused candidate by candidate and campaign by campaign.
It was not just that citizens would respond to candidates on the basis
of individual characteristics rather than party identification, but that the
partiesasorganizationshadnoparticularselectiveadvantageatdominat-
ing the new modes of communication and information. The structure
of one important form of information and communication had been
changed by the technology. The mass audience, defined by the media
market, provided a new structure and new opportunities for informa-
tion management and communication, and that brought organizational
change and adaptation.

Parallel to this story of organizational change involving parties and cam-
paigningistherelationshipbetweenthebroadcastrevolutionandinterest
groups. Research on the use of broadcast media by political organiza-
tions other than parties prior to the 1970s is sketchy. It is clear, though,
that a broad range of groups experimented to advantage with radio and
then television from the earliest. In the 1920s, for instance, women’s
organizations such as the National League of Women Voters and the

129
Sterling and Kitross, Stay Tuned; Reinsch, Getting Elected; Head, Broadcasting in
America.
130
Diamond and Bates, The Spot; Head, Broadcasting in America.
131
Reinsch, Getting Elected.
132
There are several markers of television’s ascendance over radio, even though sales of
radio receivers were booming and audiences growing. By 1956, average radio station
advertising revenues from all sources were half of what they had been in 1946, as
commercial and political advertisers shifted to television. By the early 1960s, polls
first showed that television had become the most widely used and the most trusted
medium for news. See: V. O. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 5th ed.
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964); Head, Broadcasting in America.

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