On Wed, 2 Aug 2000 23:30:51 -0500 (CDT) Gary Ruskin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Commercial Alert August 2, 2000 Is the creep of commercialism overtaking National Public Radio (NPR)? In its latest step away from its public mission, NPR is planning to spin off its online presence, NPR Online, into an operation that would include for-profit elements. NPR hasn't made its plans for NPR Online available to the public. But insiders say they will likely include for-profit marketing, distribution and e-commerce, as well as banner ads and a mechanism for equity participants. This raises questions about whether NPR is once again turning its back on its non-commercial mission, and how NPR will shield its editorial content from the influence of advertisers. NPR's Board of Directors has not yet made final decisions on how to structure its online presence. Other options under discussion include purely for-profit and non-profit models. "NPR is engaged in intensive discussions with its board and member stations about how we might expand our online presence," said NPR spokeswoman Siriol Evans. The lead advocate for commercializing NPR Online is M. J. Bear, Vice President for NPR Online. Under the most likely plan, visitors to the NPR Online site would see banner ads before they could get to the news. Essentially, NPR Online would become a for-profit filter through which listeners would have to wade to reach the non-commercial editorial content. NPR's internal discussions about its website take place against a backdrop of growing commercial values at NPR, including the increasing use of airtime to play "underwriting credits" which are really corporate advertising, and NPR's lobbying (with the National Association of Broadcasters) against non-commercial low-power FM radio. NPR is so worried about public opinion regarding its steps toward commercialism that it has conducted focus groups to probe public sentiment about the commercialization of NPR. Please tell NPR that you want it to retain its public, non-commercial mission - both on the radio and the Internet - and that NPR Online should be non-commercial. Please call, write or email NPR President & CEO Kevin Klose (202-414-2010, [EMAIL PROTECTED]) and NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin (202-414-3246, [EMAIL PROTECTED]) to express your concern about plans for commercializing NPR Online, and NPR in general. In an age of alarming concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few large corporations, and the decline of public spiritedness in the commercial media, we need bona fide public radio - that is, non-profit radio that accepts no advertising or corporate grants - which would be free of commercial limitations over editorial content. --------------------- Following is an article from the July 29 edition of the Los Angeles Times. NPR May Net Profit By Jube Shiver National Public Radio is considering spinning off its online operations into a profit-making enterprise to help defray the cost of running the nonprofit public radio network. "NPR is engaged in intensive discussions with its board and member stations about how we might expand our online presence," said NPR spokeswoman Siriol Evans. NPR, a network of 644 radio stations, launched NPR Online six years ago. The Web site, which offers newscasts, commentaries and live audio events, attracts 350,000 visits per week and a source close to the network said NPR hopes to make money selling advertising and making merchandising deals. But some critics say such a move could erode NPR's public trust. "It will devalue the brand of NPR as an independent source" of news and information, said Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, an advertising watchdog group affiliated with Ralph Nader. -------article ends here-------- Following is an article about corporate advertising on NPR, from the Washington Post, May 21, 1999. And Now a Word About Our Sponsor; Critics Say Public Radio's On-Air Credits Come Too Close to Commercials By Frank Ahrens Garrison Keillor was the center of attention in a bar at the Washington Hilton the other night. It was the opening night of the annual public radio conference and almost everyone wanted to glad-hand Mr. Wobegon and lavish embarrassing platitudes on public radio's biggest--and perhaps tallest--star. But the meaningful dialogue was going on in a corner of the bar, where some station representatives were discussing Lands' End clothing--the sole corporate sponsor of "A Prairie Home Companion." At the beginning of his shows, Keillor intones: "Brought to you by Lands' End, the people who put great casual clothes at your fingertips." "Can they say 'great'?" asked one station representative in the bar. "It's part of the slogan. You can say the slogan," another replied. "But it's qualitative language," parried the first. And on it went. This Talmudic exchange illustrates an increasing nervousness among public radio people, lawmakers and, most important, listeners: nervousness over corporate funding, called by some "underwriter anxiety." Corporations pay for about 15 percent of public radio programming--a small piece of the funding pie, but the fastest growing: One survey shows a 700 percent increase in corporate funding over the past six years. (By comparison, the nation's more than 600 public radio stations get about 14 percent of their total funding--about $ 60 million this year--from the federal government, a percentage that has remained essentially the same over the last decade.) And the number of program breaks for sponsor announcements has risen from one or two per hour to as many as five. "Corporate support has shifted radically in the past two years" at WAMU (88.5) in Washington, says Kim Hodgson, station president and chairman of the National Public Radio board of directors. "It has gone up significantly." Bob Edwards, host of NPR's "Morning Edition," is even blunter: "Underwriting has kept us alive," he says. But there's also a downside, he says: "It has cut into our air time. If you have to read a 30-second underwriter credit, that's less news you can do." WAMU lists 53 corporate underwriters on its Web site, ranging from Microsoft to Intelsat to American College of Nurse-Midwives. WETA (90.9), the other public broadcaster in Washington, lists 50 public and private underwriters, including Lockheed Martin, Wolf Trap and Chevy Chase Bank. By comparison, WBUR radio in Boston, which aggressively pursues corporate underwriting, lists 315 sponsors on its Web site. The frequency of sponsor announcements isn't the only concern. There is also the issue of content. On some stations, underwriter credits sound like commercials, a trend that troubles listeners, recent surveys show. FCC regulations limit what corporations can say during their promos. No "buy this" pleadings. No price information. And no "comparative or qualitative" language--hence the bar debate over the word "great" in the Lands' End promo. Stations can, however, say the company's slogan. And they can give out telephone numbers and Web addresses, just like on commercial radio. The increase in corporate sponsorship has its origins in 1995, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed cutting all public broadcasting funding. That experience energized public radio to aggressively pursue corporate money, lest they wander into the congressional cross hairs once again. WAMU, for instance, has seen its underwriting grow from $ 526,000 in 1995 to an estimated $ 2.2 million this fiscal year. Most of the increase has come from corporate sponsors. (A one-time, 10-second announcement on "Morning Edition" costs $ 325.) At WETA radio and television, the figures grew from $ 16.5 million in 1995 to $ 18.6 million last year. The attraction is mutual. Corporations love to advertise on public radio, which owns perhaps the most cherished demographic around: well-educated, upper-middle-class listeners who have expensive tastes and the money to indulge them. Moreover, they trust public radio much more than other listeners trust commercial radio, a sentiment borne out in listener surveys. Corporations hope some of that trust rubs off on them when they sponsor shows. But listeners chafe when they hear too many underwriter credits. How many is "too many" is unclear. A 1998 study by Audience Research Analysis of Rockville found that 77 percent of public radio listeners think "the on-air mentions of business support are getting more prevalent than in the past." And 35 percent of those surveyed found the promos "more annoying" than in the past. "As long as our messages are not so intrusive and overextended beyond what listeners think is reasonable" they are willing to accept underwriting credits, says Jim Harman, manager of corporate advertising for General Electric, which sponsors public radio and TV shows. "The question is: At what point, contextually, do we start to run into problems with station managers and listeners?" Harman says his company has not sensed "underwriter anxiety," but that may be because GE has been sponsoring public broadcasting for nearly three decades. In addition to objecting to the mere presence of corporate underwriting, people sometimes bristle when the "wrong" corporations sponsor their favorite shows. Example: Angry listeners called WAMU several years ago when they heard that a show was sponsored by the National Agricultural Chemical Association, which advertised its products as "safe." WAMU worked with the organization to omit the word "safe." Calls slacked off, though Hodgson doesn't know if that was prompted by the omission or because the group changed its name to the National Crop Protection Association. WAMU took more flack last year for accepting sponsor money from the Nuclear Energy Institute--the lobbying arm of the atomic power industry. The ads with its slogan--"nuclear technology contributes to life in ways you probably never thought of"--aired during NPR's "Morning Edition." Upset listeners mistakenly thought the spots were being read by "Morning Edition" host Edwards and mounted a modest e-mail campaign suggesting that NPR was in the pocket of the nuclear industry. The ads, which also appeared on commercial radio stations here, were read by WAMU's Bill Redlin, who the station says is not a journalist but an announcer who reads underwriting promos as well as traffic reports and news headlines. Still, public radio managers are constantly working on inventive ways around the FCC rules, creating promos laden with adjectives and lengthy explanations: "the blue-chip company" and "18 million customers worldwide" and "converting natural gas to sulfur-free synthetic fuels." Some promos are so obscure as to be rendered impotent, providing their own unintentional guard against commercialism: "Support for National Public Radio comes from Archer Daniels Midland Company--bringing Novasoy-brand isoflavones to consumers throughout the United States." Regardless of their clarity, the increasing frequency of underwriters' messages prompted two congressmen--Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.)--to draft a bill last year that would tighten the FCC rules, essentially allowing underwriters to have only their names read on air. The bill would also deliver up to a 60 percent increase in federal money for public radio to compensate for the likely funding loss from corporations. Though the legislation died last year (Tauzin plans on reintroducing it), its mere existence is significant: Ten years after President Reagan said public broadcasting should consider airing commercials and five years after Gingrich threatened to kill all public funding, some members of Congress are worried that public radio may be becoming too commercial. It's not just lawmakers and listeners who are taking note of the advertising on public radio. Because public radio is tax-exempt, some commercial broadcasters feel it's unfair that public stations can air what essentially is the same advertising and not have to pay the same taxes. "It's not an even playing field," says Jim Farley, vice president for news at WTOP (1500 AM). Farley recently "took a page out of NPR's playbook," he says: His reporters got new Cellular One cell phones in return for an on-air credit. The increased presence of corporate underwriters has led some listeners and even those within public radio to fear that underwriters might influence the news coverage in the segments they sponsor. A three-part series that begins airing next week on "Marketplace," a business show produced by Public Radio International, finds little evidence that corporate underwriting has affected news coverage. Still, the series notes that "Marketplace" itself aired stories about General Electric being indicted for price fixing but largely ignored a 1990 boycott of the company by people who objected to its participation in the nuclear weapons industry. The show's general manager now calls that lapse a "mistake." GE provides more than a quarter of the funding for "Marketplace. But for all the fear of Big Business meddling, the biggest threat to editorial content comes not from corporations but from philanthropic foundations, says J.J. Yore, a "Marketplace" producer. "Foundations have a point of view, and they ask, 'Are you covering health issues,' for instance, and 'Is it appropriate coverage?' " says Yore. "Then they can weigh their funding that way." Public radio star Garrison Keillor puts in a plug for Lands' End at the start of "Prairie Home Companion." -------article ends here------- Commercial Alert opposes the excesses of commercialism, marketing and advertising. Commercial Alert's web address is <http://www.essential.org/alert/>. Commercial Alert's materials are distributed electronically via the commercial-alert mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To subscribe to the commercial-alert mailing list, go to <http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/commercial?alert> or send the word "subscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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