TPIR/MDS suggestion

[rugrats1]

PSAs are not free, either. If you don't pay the station for PSAs, that means less ad revenue, less net income, and less taxes received. It's still a cost of the PSA, albeit deferred. Donations such as the ones to the U.S. Forestry Department for Smokey the Bear resulted in less tax revenue because donations also can lower taxable income.

Actually, PSAs are provided to the stations for free, to be carried whenever space is available. As for who pays for the creation of the ads -- it all depends. For non-profit organisations, ad agencies usually donate their time and money for the creation of the ads. And as for government agencies, tax dollars might come into play.  We shouldn't forget the Ad Council, which is a charitable organisation in itself that handles some PSA campains for non-profit organisations and governmental entities.

But by no means is money exchanged between the organisation or agency and the broadcaster or publisher. If it did, then it wopuld be paid advertising, not PSAs.

A station manager who runs PSAs instead of paid commercials won't have a station to manage for very long.

True, if the station manager chose to run PSAs instead of paid ads from sign-on to sign-off. But of course, there have been many TV & radio stations and publications over the years that folded due to lack of advertising dollars.

But, once upon a time, the use of PSAs was mandatory for TV and radio stations until several years ago -- during that time, stations were required to set aside some time per week for PSAs and public service programming, as part of their condition of their license. Though of course, the stronger stations placed such material during the least-viewed periods -- generally late nights, mornings and weekends.

[Dan Sadro]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Nov 12 2003, 07:19 PM\'] It'll help to quote your larger point, which was:

Public service announcements are, by definition, advertisements. Whether it's "This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs" or "Look at the new $20," they're still advertising a product, service, or opinion.

In an extremely broad sense, I see your point.  I just don't believe it's relevant.

[...]Again, that's economic philosophy vs real world practicality.  A station manager who runs PSAs instead of paid commercials won't have a station to manage for very long.  He's not going to be too concerned about the "big picture" view that the costs got absorbed somewhere else while he's filing for unemployment. [/quote]
 Relevant?  This entire thread has been irrelevant!  The original post was about offering $5000 in nickels instead of a $5000 check in the less-than-3% chance that a contestant spins a dollar and lands on the nickel on the bonus spin during an episode of TPiR.  And much of game show discussion is irrelevant (What is the spelling of the surname of the first champion on the original Sale of the Century?  Who will replace Bob Barker when he's gone?  Who would win a deathmatch between Bob Eubanks and Jim Perry?)

Irregardless of it's relevance, my point is that the following two assertions are incorrect: that PSAs have no cost and that they aren't advertisements.  To a station manager, that might be "true"... to people outside of the biz, it's not.

The non-philisophical economics of the situation is that it's better to get money from advertisers than a third of the same amount from the government.  The station manager doesn't need to understand the "big picture" because that's not part of his job.

Each job has its own "truths" which collide with what the average person thinks.  To someone who works in the broadcast industry, a PSA is not an advertisement, but to Joe Sixpack, it looks like an ad, acts like an ad, so it must be an ad.  Most people would say that the main goal in business is to maximize profits, but if you said it to an accountant, he/she would probably explode.

[Matt Ottinger]

To someone who works in the broadcast industry, a PSA is not an advertisement, but to Joe Sixpack, it looks like an ad, acts like an ad, so it must be an ad.

Actually, my bet would be that most members of the Sixpack household can tell the difference between paid commercial advertisements and PSAs.  And even if they can't, it's not their job to know the difference.  It is the job of broadcast professionals to know the difference.  My point is that it's only in the rarified world of economic philosophy and media theory that the two are the same, and there's just not much real world use for that perception.

This is EXACTLY the same argument I have with economists who try to convince me that over-the-air broadcast television isn't "free".   I see their points, I get their points, but there has to be a word in the English language that refers to a form of entertainment that you watch without handing someone money, and in our language that word is "free".

Irregardless of it's relevance, my point is that the following two assertions are incorrect: that PSAs have no cost and that they aren't advertisements.

But neither of those assertions were made.  The specific point you originally disputed was, "You need to learn the difference between paid advertising and public service announcements."  Economic philosophies or no, there simply is a clear, distinct and significant difference between PSAs and paid advertising, and it is helpful to recognize what that difference is.  Also, even the dimmest of us realize that there is a cost associated with the production and distribution of PSAs.  I'm not aware of anyone making the "assertion" that there is not.

Bottom line is that I'm not saying you're wrong.  I'm just objecting to the flat accusation that WE'RE wrong because we're looking at it as TV professionals rather than macroeconomists.

[chris319]

In addition to what Matt says, there seems to be a problem with the connotation of the word "advertise". In the ivory-tower world of media theorists you could stretch the definition of the word "advertise" to include promos and PSAs. In real-world media economics the semantically more accurate words would be promote or publicize, as the word advertise is universally taken to mean directly paying money for time or ad space.