Public Service Ads a Hot-Button Issue

Stations aired no more PSAs on average in late 2007 than in 2002, when Kaiser did its previous study, it said. Nearly half of cable and broadcast PSAs ran between midnight and 6 a.m., with 60 percent on TV stations in that slot. “Maybe insomniacs are well-informed,” said Adelstein. “We need to see a significant increase.” Stations and cable networks also ran 10 seconds an hour on average of so-called paid PSAs, often sold at discount to non-profits, said Kaiser. PSAs run at no charge more than doubled on average to 15 seconds an hour from 7 on cable networks CNN, ESPN, MTV, Nickelodeon and TNT. CBS Executive Vice President Marty Franks found fault with the study’s conclusions, saying Kaiser didn’t consider spots’ “quality” in audience share or geographic reach. Some on the panel said the airtime for PSAs would be worth billions annually if sold for ads. Each year radio and TV stations give PSAs $7 billion worth of airtime, excluding network ads, and they are “spread fairly evenly through all dayparts,” the NAB said.

Copps said the FCC’s rulemaking notice on broadcast localism could have included an examination of PSA rules. The notice was approved at the Dec. 18 FCC meeting, and the text released Thursday. (See separate report in this issue.) Copps said he can’t assess whether the FCC should require PSAs or consider them in license reviews until the agency issues a long-awaited rulemaking on DTV public interest rules. “At the end of this crusade, we can have a media that’s safe” for kids and others, he told the panel. PSAs are “an important part” of serving the public interest, he said.

The failure to do the public-interest rulemaking, when the ground has been laid for almost a decade, makes difficult deciding on the role of PSAs in FCC rules, Adelstein said. He also noted that some have First Amendment concerns about mandatory PSAs. “We need quantifiable requirements” for digital multicasters, he said. The FCC should approve public service requirements that it can easily measure, unlike current standards which are “vague” and essentially say ‘You have to be nice to your community,'” said Adelstein. The FCC could consider whether to mandate PSAs as part of reviewing public interest rules. But commissioners can’t address the rules in the first place because “there seems to be a refusal by the commission” to take up the issue, he said.

Commissioner Deborah Tate said the agency walks a fine line, “balancing” public interest with industry’s need to focus on the DTV transition. “We don’t need to lose track of the word ‘donation,'” she said, noting the almost $1 billion value broadcast and cable assign their PSA campaign on the DTV transition. “There is always room for improvement,” but many PSAs are on local issues, “something that my colleagues talk about a lot,” added Tate. “We must proceed cautiously” in rules that could limit broadcasters’ “flexibility,” she said.

Multicasting’s added programming capacity won’t be a panacea to flood the airwaves with PSAs because the technology isn’t a money-maker and so may not be widely used by broadcasters, Franks said. Besides, he said, no amount of such ads might ever be sufficient given demand for them. “No one has ever made a nickel off the multiplex,” so it’s wrong to think that such streams need tougher public interest rules, he added. “There is no local broadcaster that I'm aware of, and I'm happy to stand corrected, that has figured out how to do multiplexing beyond the radar loop,” he said. “There’s nothing on the drawing board of the major broadcast networks.” Fox has just one multicast channel, said Senior Vice President Maureen O'Connell. “We've spent a lot of time and money and haven’t figured it out,” she added. “First we have to figure out if it’s a viable business model.”