If you watch the Super Bowl today, you will join an estimated 130 million
viewers. Aware of this bonanza, CBS Television, the carrier of the game,
has promptly inflated the ad prices to a record $2.3 million for 30
seconds. Yet, the network found so many buyers that it could pick and
choose to whom it wanted to sell the available spots.
According to Advertising Age, Anheuser-Busch will be favored with more
time than anybody else: nine slots for a total of five minutes. Pepsi-Cola
will get three minutes. The other advertisers did not buy more than
1½ minute each.
To satisfy the most urgent needs, CBS reserved three 30-second spots
to the makers of erectile dysfunction remedies: Pfizer's Viagra, GlaxoSmithKline's
Levitra, and Eli Lilly's Cialis. Frito-Lay will feature a fight over
chips between grandma and grandpa, with the kids actually getting them.
Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, and Buena Vista Pictures
will peddle their latest movies. The White House spent $4.3 million
on two slots for its campaign against the use of illegal drugs.
Two advertisers, however, were rebuffed: the People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the MoveOn.org Voter Fund. Wanting to
match the artless humor in the Anheuser Busch spots, PETA proposed to
show two scantily dressed women snuggling up to a meat-eating pizza
deliveryman. When the guy remained unimpressed, the ad concluded: "Meat
can cause impotence." The CBS censors ruled the beer commercials
proper but the plug for vegetarianism improper.
"We have a policy against accepting advocacy advertising,"
explained CBS spokesperson Dana McClintock. It remains a mystery, however,
why arguing against meat consumption is advocacy but recommending beer,
soft drinks, movies, and erectile dysfunction remedies is not.
MoveOn.org, an Internet-based organization of political activists, was
willing to spend $2 million on a 30-second spot asking the simple question:
"Guess who is going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"
CBS claimed it could not sell spots airing "controversial issues
of public importance." Yet, CBS has no qualms offering its own
daily commentaries on "controversial issues of public importance."
Regardless of their rationales, all electronic media arrogate to themselves
the right to decide what should, or should not, be shown, whether it
is advertising or national and international news. The television networks
are in fact America's most powerful censors. Under dictatorial regimes,
the government is the censor. In our country, each of the oligopoly
of five giant media conglomerates owns a television network and thus
exerts extraordinary power to impose information on their audiences,
or withhold it. The public needs to know that CBS is owned by Viacom,
NBC by General Electric, ABC by Walt Disney; CNN by TimeWarner, and
Fox by News Corporation.
When somebody finds fault with their censoring of news or advertising,
they promptly denounce such criticism as attack upon freedom of the
press. They shrewdly ignore, however, the fact that the airwaves belong
to all of the people who, in theory at least, have a right to know what
they want to know.
Owning radio and television licenses is a privilege, not a right. That
is why the public, through the Federal Communications Commission, ought
to be able to tell the electronic media how they are to operate. While
the prices for their services are determined by what the market will
bear, they are not entitled to practice unauthorized and arbitrary censorship.
Viacom, the parent company of CBS, seems eager to acquire an even larger
stable of television, radio, movie, and publishing companies. For that
reason, Viacom has been persistently pressing the Bush administration
to have the FCC lift the remaining limits on media consolidation. That
purpose would certainly not be served if CBS allowed advertising critical
of the President's management of the nation's finances.
Although during the Super Bowl broadcast Bush bashers will not be seeing
the anticipated MoveOn.org ad, they still might enjoy the sight of a
donkey becoming a member of Budweiser's team of Clydesdales.