Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest

by Bogart,Leo

• ISBN13: 9780765806055
• ISBN10: 0765806053
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-08-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

American mass media are the world's most diverse, rich, and free. Their dazzling resources, variety, and influence arouse envy in other countries. Their failures are commonly excused on the grounds that they are creatures of the market, that they give people what they want. Commercial Culture focuses not on the glories of the media, but on what is wrong with them and why, and how they may be made better.This powerful critique of American mass communication highlights four trends that sound an urgent call for reform: the blurring of distinctions among traditional media and between individual and mass communication; the increasing concentration of media control in a disturbingly small number of powerful organizations; the shift from advertisers to consumers as the source of media revenues; and the growing confusion of information and entertainment, of the real and the imaginary. The future direction of the media, Leo Bogart contends, should not be left to market forces alone. He shows how the public's appetite for media differs from other demands the market is left to satisfy because of how profoundly the media shape the public's character and values. Bogart concludes that a world of new communications technology requires a coherent national media policy, respectful of the American tradition of free expression and subject to vigorous public scrutiny and debate.Commercial Culture is a comprehensive analysis of the media as they evolve in a technological age. It will appeal to general readers interested in mass communications, as well as professionals and scholars studying American mass media.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Transaction Edition	xi
Acknowledgments	xxvii
Introduction	3	(12)
I. Fundamentals
What Are ``The Media?''	15	(18)
The Notion of ``Media''	15	(2)
Information and Entertainment	17	(3)
Media as Pastime	20	(2)
Why Media Unify and Differentiate	22	(2)
Literacy, Leisure, and the Origins of the Media System	24	(3)
Packaging Ongoing and One-Shot Media	27	(6)
The Media System	33	(32)
How Media Interpenetrate	34	(6)
Competition and the Media System	40	(1)
The Growth of Multimedia Enterprise	40	(5)
The Concentration of Media Power	45	(4)
Globalization	49	(2)
Synergy, Software, and Conflicts of Interest	51	(3)
The Changed Goals of Media Management	54	(2)
Pressures for Profit: The Book Business	56	(2)
Newspaper Chains	58	(2)
The Marxist Explanation	60	(5)
II. Advertising as the Driving Force
The Presence of Advertising	65	(28)
Media and the Culture of Consumption	65	(3)
Advertising as a Component of Commercial Culture	68	(2)
Only in America?	70	(4)
Historical Origins	74	(2)
Messages, Messages	76	(2)
Lies, Damned Lies, and Advertising Claims	78	(2)
The Varieties of Advertising	80	(2)
The Content of Television Commercials	82	(4)
Politics, Media, Advertising	86	(4)
Advertising and National Values	90	(3)
Paying the Piper, Calling the Tune	93	(29)
Corrupting the News	94	(5)
Content and Advertiser Sensitivities	99	(2)
Vigilantes, Boycotts, Self-Censorship	101	(2)
Sponsorship	103	(2)
Sponsors and Soap Operas	105	(2)
Televised Sports	107	(1)
Producing Media Content to Serve Advertisers	108	(3)
Target Marketing	111	(4)
Advertising and Media Survival	115	(2)
Advertising Dominance and Newspaper Survival	117	(5)
Advertising by the Numbers	122	(21)
Managing the Advertising Function	122	(4)
Scientism and the Concentration of Advertising Power	126	(3)
Evaluating Advertising Performance	129	(1)
Research and the Computer	130	(3)
Research as an Instrument of Power	133	(2)
The Problem with Surveys	135	(2)
The Tyranny of Audience Measurement	137	(2)
Beyond Statistics	139	(4)
III. Flaws and Failures of Commercial Culture
The Pursuit of Sensation	143	(31)
Innocent--and Not-So-Innocent--Pleasures	143	(4)
Are Sales the Measure of Success?	147	(1)
What is Good, True, or Beautiful?	148	(2)
One Culture, Two, or More?	150	(2)
Changing Standards	152	(1)
Film in the Age of Television	153	(3)
Exploiting Eroticism	156	(2)
The Fictional World of Television	158	(2)
The Appeal of Violence	160	(3)
Media Experience and Media Substance	163	(3)
Media as Change Agents	166	(3)
Measuring TV's Effects	169	(5)
The News as Entertainment	174	(29)
Information-Rich But Ignorant	175	(1)
Defining the News	176	(3)
Is the News a Bore?	179	(4)
Television as Intruder	183	(2)
The Newscaster as Celebrity	185	(2)
Politics as TV Spectacle	187	(2)
Faked News and Docudrama	189	(2)
The Unreality of ``Reality Television''	191	(5)
The Unique Functions of Newspapers	196	(2)
The Need for Press Competition	198	(5)
Believing in the Make-Believe	203	(18)
Fictions and Facts	204	(1)
Reconstructing Reality	205	(1)
Words Spoken and Written	206	(4)
History as Fiction	210	(2)
Journalism and Literature	212	(2)
Pictures Do Not Lie?	214	(7)
IV. Dynamics of Commercial Culture
The Manufacture of Taste	221	(26)
The Appeal of the Familiar	221	(3)
The Churning Audience	224	(1)
Distributing and Promoting	225	(4)
Music and Musical Taste	229	(2)
Cynicism and Profit	231	(3)
The Taste-Molders	234	(1)
Rationalization	235	(4)
Selling Out	239	(8)
Managing Commercial Culture	247	(19)
Media Entrepreneurship	248	(4)
Switching Careers and Switching Values	252	(1)
Media Tycoons	253	(4)
The Media Habits of Media Executives	257	(5)
The Public Interest	262	(4)
Media Support and Media Substance	266	(21)
Advertising's Dwindling Share	266	(2)
Advertisers' Choices--and the Public's	268	(2)
What If There Were No Advertising Support?	270	(2)
Ad-Supported Media and Others	272	(2)
Fiction as Part of Everyday Life	274	(6)
The Changed Economics of Television	280	(3)
Spectrum Scarcity and the Problem of Choice	283	(4)
V. Is There a Better Way?
Reform, Restructure, or Leave It Be?	287	(38)
Professionalism and Media Practice	288	(2)
The Need for Media Criticism	290	(4)
Should Choice Be Restricted?	294	(1)
Government and Culture	295	(3)
Political Power and Media Power	298	(3)
Pressures on Public Broadcasting	301	(3)
Toward a National Media Policy	304	(4)
Media and the Sherman Act	308	(2)
The Politics of Telecommunications Policy	310	(6)
Media Content and Media Policy	316	(2)
Putting Media Issues on the National Agenda	318	(7)
Appendix: A Note on the Measurement of Expenditures on Media	325	(3)
Notes	328	(43)
Index	371