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MANDATE TO NEWS CONSULT:
THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE FCC'S 1960 COMMUNITY ASCERTAINMENT POLICY
by
Craig Allen
Associate Professor
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-1305
602-965-2857
[log in to unmask]
Mandate to News Consult:
The Untold Story of the FCC'S 1960 Community Ascertainment Policy
ABSTRACT
Despite strides in understanding the contemporary effects of news
consultants, there are few explanations for their emergence and prevalence.
Contrary to claims that news consultants perpetrated a "heist" of local TV
newsrooms, new evidence reveals that the springboard of consulting was an FCC
mandate requiring stations to conduct audience research. Although
research-consulting is believed damaging to journalism, consultants fulfilled
this FCC mandate by advancing a TV newscast fitting the interests and needs of
the majority of viewers.
Mandate to News Consult:
The Untold Story of the FCC'S 1960 Community Ascertainment Policy
News consultants are applied research firms which use information
gathered in surveys, focus groups, and auditorium screenings to structure
television newscasts. Around 425 of the nation's 700 local TV newsrooms have
contracts with one of eight nationally-based consultancies.[1] Since the late
1980s, consulted newsrooms have included practically every local news operation
in the 100 largest markets, where eighty-six percent of the nation's TV viewers
reside.[2] The growth of news consulting has inspired several recent studies of
its contemporary process and effects. Examination of local news "gatekeeping"
affirms that audience research influences the content of newscasts.[3] Other
studies demonstrate the impact of consultants in personnel decisions and in
socializing newsworkers to commercial priorities.[4] Lacking in this
literature, however, is a historical perspective on news consulting and, thus, a
considered explanation for its prevalence. News advising, particularly with
audience research, flies in the face of much that is accepted as normal in
journalism, notably a "free" and "independent" reporting process. At the peak
of his acclaim in the 1970s, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, in a series of
highly-critical speeches, considered news consulting a "fad."[5] Cronkite's
themes were echoed in several popular works that remain widely cited by
scholars, among them Ron Powers' The Newscasters, Marvin Barrett's Moments of
Truth?, Edwin Diamond's The Tin Kazoo, and Jerry Jacobs's Changing Channels.
Unclear is why news consulting rather than disappearing became one of the
dominant forces in television news.
The paper that follows is a narrative history that takes up a
significant question about news consulting: how it got started in the first
place. Existing literature holds that the first news consultant, a firm called
McHugh & Hoffman, had a "blueprint" for news that enabled stations to maximize
ratings and profits; station managers and sales executives subsequently rushed
to McHugh & Hoffman, and to a second and eventually larger firm called Frank N.
Magid Associates, in order to acquire this "magic formula." Powers believed
news consultants perpetrated a "heist" of the news process and strongly implied
their activities violated FCC rules.[6] Barrett and Diamond reached similar
conclusions.[7] In this study, FCC records, correspondence between consultants
and clients, written documents obtained from consultants, and interviews with
individuals directly involved will paint a different and more-penetrating
picture. What became news consulting started as a mandate of the FCC and was
shaped by FCC concerns about the proper assessment of the public's "interest,
convenience, and necessity." The spark was a 1960 FCC policy called "community
ascertainment," which compelled broadcasters to conduct public surveys.[8] The
first company to hire a consultant, a radio-television colossus known as Storer
Broadcasting, was fearful of ascertainment and turned to McHugh & Hoffman, then
a fledgling research firm. Hardly conspiring in a "heist," both McHugh &
Hoffman and Magid entered through the regulatory front door.
Mandate to News Consult
The paper emphasizes that audience research, not advising, is the
substance of news consulting. It will show how information gleaned from
audience research enabled consultants to drive news ratings and profits.
Although these events occurred many years ago, they have vital contemporary
meaning in light of many critical works examining the failings of local TV
news.[9] Those who pin these alleged failings on "commercialism" may be
oversimplifying a much-more complicated situation. From the beginning, news
consultants were conduits connecting local TV stations to the majority of
average television viewers. At the FCC, a research procedure was deemed both
valid and socially desirable for determining the public's "interests" and
"needs." Specifically, research was a solution to what FCC chair Newton Minow
had called a "vast wasteland" of unresponsive television programs. It is likely
that whatever allegedly ails local TV news is not a function of
research-consulting and profit motives so much as a reflection of the audience.
Recent opinion polls documenting the overwhelming public acceptance of local TV
news indeed indicate fulfillment of the FCC's original objective: a local news
satisfying the interests and needs of the majority of TV viewers.[10] To the
extent it fails, local TV news may short the interests and needs only of a few,
those who may not identify with this majority.
Thus, profit motives and public interests may be in harmony, not in
conflict as many insist. As Frank Magid would relate, "The FCC gave us an
important entry point. . . . Community ascertainment gave us our first
indication that the public wanted something different in news from what
professional journalists were trained to provide."[11] According to Peter
Hoffman, who co-founded the first consulting firm with the late Phil McHugh,
"There were two ways you could determine the public's interests and needs. One
was to have some people in a TV station decide this among themselves, the other
was to go out and actually ask the public."[12] Broadcasters were under no
illusion that the FCC rejected the former and demanded the latter. Community
ascertainment eventually would lapse in the 1980s. Yet it was around long
enough to alert many broadcasters to the twin regulatory and commercial benefits
of news-related research.
i. New Plan to Improve TV: Let the Public Speak
The circuitous series of events that led to the formation of McHugh
& Hoffman commenced in 1960, a year that had begun with the FCC sharpening its
regulatory knife but, as always, unsure how to direct this dagger. Although
under the 1934 Communications Act the commission lacked power to censor
television programming, sentiment was running high that something had to be
done. A fitting example of what seemed the failure of the TV industry was the
loophole local broadcasters had found to skirt the FCC's news-and-public affairs
requirement. Even though the FCC had ruled that ten percent of airtime must be
devoted to these topics, most TV stations met the quota by confining peak-hour
nightly newscasts to as few as five minutes and compensating with strips of
low-effort public affairs offerings in viewing "ghettos" in the early morning,
late at night, and on weekends. While low on the FCC agenda, anxieties about
local news were helping the commission hone its overriding concern, the
compulsion of local TV stations to clear hour upon hour of seemingly insipid
network entertainment programming, to profit as a result. In certain respects,
it was arguable whether "local" television could be said to exist. That year, a
study by Gary Steiner, eventually published in his book The People Look at
Television, had found that only three percent of viewers regarded their local TV
stations as "local TV stations." Ninety-seven percent identified only the big
networks, many apparently thinking the networks owned all of the local
channels.[13] Steiner's information added fuel to allegations that local TV
stations were content as lapdogs of the networks, that their mandate to serve
the public was lost in their fixation for quick profits.
From its earliest days, the FCC had sought to assert local standards
as check against the dominance of this network system.[14] Its chain
broadcasting report in 1941, showing how NBC had practically controlled hundreds
of key local radio affiliates, had cleared the way for the 1943 breakup of the
NBC Red and Blue radio networks, the latter to become ABC. The commission's
1946 "Blue Book" had been the hoped-for final word. It had affirmed that "local
self-expression still remains an essential function of a station's operation . .
. . [S]uch programs should not be crowded out of the best listening hours."[15]
The "Blue Book," though, was honored mostly in the breech, with the FCC so
consumed with matters relating to television, including its "freeze" on station
licensing between 1948 and 1952, that enforcement was impossible. Yet
distresses over programming and chain broadcasting that had percolated in radio
not only transferred to the new medium. They grew more intense. The FCC
circulated to licensees its first rules about payola when the quiz show scandals
in 1959 offered a glaring example of how network programs merely switched on by
hundreds of affiliates had created a pathetic public spectacle.[16] Then for
the second time, the FCC brought anti-trust action against NBC, this time
because NBC had commandeered ownership of a local TV station in
Philadelphia.[17] Prominent in every allegation had been annual FCC filings
showing that recently-licensed TV stations had turned profits long before their
owners said they would. Coming out of the "freeze" in 1952, TV stations had
been given regulatory latitude because of the plea that most would lose money
for seven to ten years. Yet seventy-one percent were profitable by 1958.[18]
In 1960, Frederick Ford had served on the commission for only two
years and had been its chair for only a few months. Yet in this short span of
time, Ford had renewed one of the FCC's core debates, that revolving around the
definition of the term "public interest, convenience, and necessity," the
rationale behind the commission's licensing procedures. To renew a license, all
a broadcaster had to do was fill out a four-page questionnaire. If a
broadcaster could document merely that the transmitter had been turned on, a
case could be made that the public interest had been served. Yet characterizing
television as a compendium of game shows, soap operas, and slapstick comedies,
Ford fumed because his FCC had no way to disagree. Summoned to Capitol Hill,
Ford complained at a Senate hearing that under the Communications Act the
commission had no authority to set program standards. "I don't see how we could
possibly go out and say this program is good and that program is bad," Ford
testified. "That would be a direct violation of the law."[19] Still, it was
hard to imagine that viewers in the inner cities of the East were best served by
the same programs as viewers on the farms of the Midwest. If this could be
proven during license renewals, Ford knew, the network-affiliate noose would be
loosened. Accordingly, the main order of business at the FCC through the first
seven months of 1960 was an updated statement on programming policy, its
cornerstone a new and legally-sound idea for better ensuring the public's
interests and needs. Essentially, the FCC decided that if it itself could not
determine interests and needs, then neither could the broadcasters. The public
would have the final say. On July 29, 1960, after a 6-1 vote, the FCC approved
new a policy, which read: "In the fulfillment of his obligation the broadcaster
should consider the tastes, needs and desires of the public he is licensed to
serve in developing his programming and should exercise conscientious efforts
not only to ascertain them but also to carry them out as well as he reasonably
can." News was among fourteen programs expressly placed under the jurisdiction
of this new FCC concept.[20]
Few ears immediately perked, though, the policy have been rendered in
the middle of a presidential election campaign. Ford was an appointee of
outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, and he had signed the new policy statement
as a lame duck FCC chair. Political protocol required that Ford defer
rulemaking until after the national election just three months away. John
Kennedy won the election that November but did not appoint Ford's successor
until just days before the inaugural in January 1961. Thus for almost six
months, the FCC's policy statement was in limbo. When Kennedy took office, 500
radio and television license renewals were backlogged at FCC headquarters.[21]
Kennedy's choice at the FCC was a Chicago lawyer and Democratic party political
insider named Newton Minow, a figure barely thirty-five years old whose interest
in broadcast regulation stemmed from difficulties he had had in arranging "equal
time" for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956.[22] Minow knew in
passing only one member of the commission.[23] He was particularly unfamiliar
to the nation's local broadcasters, who were anxious to learn where he stood on
issues pending before the commission. They invited the new FCC chair to speak
at their major industry conclave, the annual convention of the National
Association of Broadcasters that spring in Washington. Minow accepted the
broadcasters' invitation, and when the convention convened on May 9 he satisfied
their curiosities with a vengeance. Minow's speech before the NAB was the one
made famous by his assertion that the nation's airwaves amounted to a "vast
wasteland." This phrase, however, was not the only passage that had resounded
in the hall that day. The thrust of Minow's speech had been the announcement of
the first full-scale FCC licensing crackdown. Minow expanded on the same
matters Ford, his predecessor, had taken up in the 1960 hearings, that "[t]oo
many local stations operate with one hand on the network switch and the other on
a projector loaded with old movies." Minow said this would change. "I say to
you now," he proclaimed. "Renewal will not be pro forma in the future. There
is nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license." Minow concluded by
informing broadcasters that new instructions on license renewals would be
forthcoming.[24]
Those who had heard the "wasteland" speech, hundreds of local
broadcast owners and managers, already knew what these instructions likely were
to be. Minow was expected to follow through with enabling action that would
give the FCC the power to enforce Ford's July 1960 policy statement. Minow did
precisely this. Although not in so many words, Minow in the "wasteland" speech
had sent a clear message that he favored the idea of deferring public interests
and needs to the public itself, rather than having broadcasters do as they
pleased. The trade publication Variety characterized Minow's position as
"iron-fisted."[25] To unfold in a series of steps, the enabling action ushered
a new procedure Minow's staff began calling "community ascertainment." Under
the plan, broadcasters were to venture into their communities and consult civic
leaders as well as a cross-section of the general public. The objective of this
factfinding was a "prudent, positive and continuing effort to discover and
fulfill the tastes, needs and desires of a [licensee's] community for public
service."[26] After the factfinding, broadcasters were to respond to what they
had learned and, then, at the three-year intervals when their licenses were due
for renewal, make available to the FCC all of the results. A public inspection
file needed to contain a narrative statement that explained how the various
steps had been accomplished. Station managers "must prove they have diligently
studied their markets to find out what people ought to get from radio and
TV."[27] Broadcasters were caught quite off-guard by Minow's endorsement of
ascertainment. Accustomed to renewing licenses with those four-page forms,
owners and managers dreaded reams of time-consuming paperwork. Thus within
three weeks of Minow's speech, fifteen broadcasters had written personal letters
to the FCC in protest.[28] It was mid 1961, and the policy statement had stood
in abeyance now for almost a year, officially as an "interim report" with no
rulemaking. There had seemed a strong possibility community ascertainment would
die in bureaucratic red tape or be reconsidered. FCC commissioner Rosel Hyde
had written a dissent against the policy statement. But with the FCC adamant,
this hope evaporated. Several radio and TV owners filed lawsuits in local
courts alleging the FCC's plan to enforce ascertainment with license revocations
violated original agreements between the commission and the license holders.
Finally in 1962, federal judge David Bazelon in ruling against the owner of
Suburban Broadcasting upheld the FCC's authority to join ascertainment to
license revocations.[29] Community ascertainment was a fact of life for
everyone who owned and managed a local television station.
License revocation was nothing short of the TV death penalty.
Without a license, a broadcaster had to go out of business. Thus not
surprisingly, this new community ascertainment procedure, which demanded volumes
of factfinding and analysis, dramatically heightened broadcasters' anxieties.
It was as if car owners had just been told they needed a college dissertation to
renew a drivers license. The ascertainment documents were not to be submitted
to the FCC, but instead to be kept at the station in files that could be
inspected by any member of the public. This made ascertainment especially
frightening because groups or factions seeking to challenge a license, for
whatever reason, would have access to materials that might bolster their cause.
That this volume of documents would not be sent to the FCC scarcely brought
comfort. To the contrary, the FCC, much like the IRS, planned to conduct
audits. At its discretion, it would select certain stations for on-site
inspections, without announcing these stations in advance. Ultimately, the
broadcasters' disdain over community ascertainment boiled down to the methods
the FCC was mandating, which seemed as nebulous as they were exhaustive.
Nervous station owners who had started working on community ascertainments in
1961, on the basis only of the interim report, had been much confused. As he
had promised, Minow immediately followed up on the interim report with the first
operational guidelines in mid 1961. All of the provisions Minow added related
to methodology. Policies requiring broadcasters to interview civic leaders were
clarified. However, understanding continued to break down over the sketchy
procedures requiring broadcasters to solicit input from the general public.
When the official FCC Rules and Regulations were revised in 1961, broadcasters
read, "Each license or permittee of a commercially operated TV station shall
place in the station's public inspection file documentation relating to its
efforts to consult with a roughly random sample of members of the general public
. . . ." According to the new rules, this documentation had to be a "survey,"
and it had to stratify the population by "age, ethnic, and geographic" criteria.
Finally, the "number of people surveyed" was to be a factor in the commission's
determination of compliance.[30]
The FCC had not used the term "audience research." Yet without a
doubt, audience research was what the FCC wanted. Just glancing at the new
rules, station owners easily could see that terms such as "survey," "random
sample," and "stratification" related to some sort of research procedure. It
was from there that questions had multiplied. Most local stations already paid
heavily for formal research in ratings reports sold to them by Nielsen and ARB,
national ratings services. Could ratings surveys, which were not conducted by
the license holder and which lacked detail, be used in community ascertainment?
Furthermore, most stations routinely gathered inexpensive audience information
by informal means, such as by compiling viewers' comments. Could these informal
measures fulfill the commission's demands? By 1961, many broadcasters knew at
least something about professional research; they were aware, for example, that
it could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Despite periodic claims by
professional researchers that their data could improve performance and
profitability, most television owners and managers had ignored this. Chained to
their networks, local broadcasters considered research an extravagance. Still,
if professional research could serve two purposes--ratings and renewals--it
might be cost effective. What the FCC expected in a community ascertainment
survey likely would be discovered by television stations in the Southeast and
industrial Midwest, which were up for the next round of license renewals. With
Minow's speech at the NAB convention ringing in their ears, the owners of the
largest television properties in these regions--those with the most to lose
should their licenses be revoked--were in a mood to take no chances.
ii. Storer Broadcasting: A Company Needing Research
Notable among these properties were the five stations owned by the
Storer Broadcasting Company. They included WJBK in Detroit, the sixth-largest
television market; WJW in Cleveland, the eighth-largest market; WITI in
Milwaukee, the twenty-first market; WAGA in Atlanta, the twenty-third market;
and WSPD in Toledo, the fiftieth market. These Storer-owned television stations
had licenses due to expire by 1963. As of in 1961 they were classic examples of
network affiliates that confined news productions to fifteen minutes, kept news
investments to a minimum, and skimmed a news audience from adjoining
entertainment programs. Detroit's WJBK had a three-person news department.
Cleveland's WJW loosely had four news people, one a college professor who showed
up at the station only long enough to deliver the news. Milwaukee's WITI and
Atlanta's WAGA, no better, were the largest stations in the country without
network newscasts. They refused to carry them. The "CBS Evening News with
Walter Cronkite" would not be seen in Atlanta until 1966. "At WAGA," general
manager Ken Bagwell explained, "we carried reruns of 'Amos and Andy' until the
sprocket holes wore out."[31]
The moment Minow announced his license crackdown in 1961, the Storer
group accepted audits as a fait accompli. It began plotting an ascertainment
strategy in late 1961, two years before what seemed a certain day of reckoning
with Minow. A shortage of local programming including news while enough trouble
for most local stations actually was a relatively minor worry at Storer. The
company was operating under a regulatory cloud. Although Storer was not
sanctioned, it management had just been implicated in the biggest influence
peddling scandal in the FCC's thirty-five year history. For several days in
March 1960, the nation's capital had buzzed over rumors that Storer had given
free rides on a company airplane and a vacation on a company yacht to then FCC
chair John Doerfer. Acting quickly to head off a certain Congressional
investigation, Eisenhower fired Doerfer.[32] Ironically for Storer, it had been
Doerfer's dismissal that had allowed Frederick Ford to take the reigns at the
commission, and then advance community ascertainment.[33] Storer was tainted
not only by the Doerfer affair. Potentially of greater interest to FCC auditors
were the maneuvers that had enabled Storer to purchase the profit-laden
Milwaukee station back in 1958. It had done this from proceeds gained from its
sale of KPTV in Portland, Oregon, the nation's first UHF station and a spearhead
of the FCC's vision for expanding UHF broadcasting around the country. Storer
had supported KPTV for only four years. Immediately after Storer sold it, KPTV
merged with a VHF station in Portland. The first UHF channel went dark. As a
result Storer was immersed in allegations it was trafficking in local
stations.[34] If this was not enough, there had been rumblings at the FCC about
absentee ownership. Storer was a company based in Miami, where it owned a radio
station. All of its TV properties were hundreds of miles away.
It clearly did not help that Storer was one of broadcasting's big
fish. In 1961, Storer was the nation's sixth-largest broadcast company and
exceeded in size only by the three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC; Westinghouse;
and a company then called Metropolitan Broadcasting, later known as Metromedia.
Founded in Toledo in 1927 by George B. Storer, Sr., the company had started as a
somewhat small yet active and profitable radio group owner. In the 1930s, it
had attempted a radio network to compete with CBS and NBC. While this venture
failed, Storer moved fast when television arrived in the 1940s and obtained
three of the coveted 108 TV licenses granted by the FCC before its "freeze" in
1948. These stations were WJBK, WAGA, and WSPD; WJW, purchased in the 1950s,
also had been a pre-"freeze" station. The Detroit, Cleveland, and Atlanta
stations were affiliates of the dominant CBS network. The Milwaukee and Toledo
stations started with the then-weak ABC network, but later were able to jockey
for stronger affiliations, WITI with CBS, WSPD with NBC.[35] Mainly because it
owned CBS affiliates in two of the ten largest markets, the Storer company was
flush with income as the 1960s began. Its annual revenues in 1961 of $37
million were the largest of any non-network broadcast group. Not only this, on
the eve of its license renewals Storer posted first-quarter 1962 revenues double
those of a year before, remarkable because CBS entertainment programs had just
taken a dip in the ratings.[36] In 1961, George Storer, Sr., the board chair,
relinquished his second position as company chair to his thirty-five-year-old
son, George B. Storer, Jr.[37] Money continued to accumulate, and thanks to the
FCC the two Storers would have a hard time spending it. Under FCC rules,
companies could own only five VHF television stations, a limit Storer already
had reached. Through the mid 1960s, Storer again and again would test these
ownership rules so it could acquire more TV stations.[38] Storer's vision
finally would be realized in the 1990s, when the FCC did relax the rules. In
1994, these Storer stations would form the core of Rupert Murdoch's company New
World Broadcasting, television's first super-group. In the 1960s, Storer did
claim additional UHF licenses in Boston and San Diego, but because the FCC stood
firm and said this was the absolute limit, Storer's wealth started to go
elsewhere. One of the major developments on Wall Street in 1965 would occur
when Storer purchased Northeast Airlines from billionaire Howard Hughes.[39]
Storer then assumed a controlling interest of the Boston Gardens sports arena.
Not long after this, Storer would acquire its first local cable television
franchises, eventually to become the nation's third-largest multi-system cable
operator.[40] This buying spree was made possible by the profits generated from
its original broadcast properties. Thus much had been riding on Storer's first
post-Minow license renewals. Anticipating an inspection, Storer wanted to dress
smartly.
As at all group-owned television stations, major decisions at Storer
were not left to local station managers. Instead, they were determined at the
corporate level, by executives who had aegis over all operations. By late 1961,
the topic of community ascertainment had reached Storer's highest corporate
echelon, in discussions between company chair George Storer, Jr., general
counsel Warren Zwicky, and a figure named Willard "Bill" Michaels, the vice
president of the television division. These men communicated at a distance.
Storer worked at corporate headquarters in Miami, Zwicky usually in Washington.
Michaels ran the television division from an office in the Detroit suburb of
Birmingham where he was proximate to WJBK, the group's largest property.
Storer's plan was simple: it would not fight the FCC but give the commission
cooperation to the nth degree.[41] "If Minow says 'jump,'" Zwicky was heard to
say, "We are going to answer, 'How high?'"[42] Perplexed about ascertainment,
Storer asked Michaels to find out how much detail would be needed in the public
survey phase of the procedure. In his reply, Michaels estimated that "[i]n each
of the five markets we want questions devised in such as fashion that the
stations ascertain a minimum of five general subjects, which the interviewees
indicate by their answers are of greatest public importance." This, in the
opinion of Michaels, would exceed the requirements of the FCC, which had
indicated that only two subjects, "needs and interests," be assessed.[43]
Zwicky, the lawyer, agreed, insisting the process had to be "serious, complete,
and credible."[44] These executives were undaunted by the first phase of
ascertainment, the interviews with civic leaders. Storer and Michaels decided
that the general managers in Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Toledo
would conduct interviews with the most prominent and highest-ranking civic
officials, and that assistant managers would contact other prominent figures in
the communities. Michaels knew the managers and their lieutenants would not
cotton to this assignment, but he planned to accept no arguments or excuses.
The FCC had stated only that "50 per cent of all interviews must be conducted by
management level employees."[45] Having all of the interviews performed by the
managers, including the general managers, would signal to the FCC "superior
compliance."[46] Whether this could be signaled in the second phase, the public
survey, was a question not so expeditiously resolved.
Indeed, not long after the initial exchanges between Storer,
Michaels, and Zwicky, the public survey had swollen into an albatross. Earl
Kahn, the researcher assigned to McHugh & Hoffman who ultimately supervised the
surveys, recalled "numerous questions" he directed to Zwicky and others, who
seemed only able to give educated guesses. Because of quandaries such as this,
the FCC soon would provide more precise direction. Yet as of 1962, the FCC had
not specified whether the survey interviews had to be face-to-face or if
telephone interviews could be used. Worse yet, the FCC had only broadly hinted
as to the total number of people who needed to be interviewed. As a rule of
thumb, many assumed 100 contacts was about right. However, language mandating
demographic stratifications, which meant the total group had to be divided and
divided again, strongly suggested samples of 200, 300, or larger. There were
loose guidelines over whether survey items could solicit yes-no or multiple
choice responses, or instead needed open-ended commentary. The FCC's language,
having referred to "conscientiously consulting the public," slanted toward the
latter and added to the anguish. Open-ended factfinding was time-consuming and
laborious. Perhaps most troubling was one provision the FCC had specified, that
the survey must be original and defrayed by the applicant, which meant a TV
station could not send someone to the library to look up second-hand digests of
public opinion polls or other published research. According to Kahn, "The
Storer people had an image of their employees dropping what they were doing and
taking to the streets to work on ascertainment."[47] As disruptive and crude as
an employee-conducted survey promised to be, many station owners did opt for
this to get past their first ascertainments.
The five Storer stations were not to be among them. By late 1961,
the Storer executives had decided to relieve their television stations of the
survey burden by hiring a professional research organization. All along it had
seemed that a professional survey was what the FCC really sought, so long as the
licensee initiated the datagathering and used its own resources to pay for it.
Indeed, in a several subsequent statements the FCC would uphold professional
surveys. Nevertheless, Storer's decision to turn to professionals had not been
an easy one because of what seemed inordinate costs. These big fish of American
enterprise became wealthy by riding herd on expenses. Companies in a position
to buy airlines and sports arenas were usually those troubled by the cost of
paper clips, and Storer was no exception. The fee for just one professional
survey, with enough interviews to satisfy the FCC's requirement for demographic
stratifications, was around $5,000. For the same amount, a TV station could
replace a new studio camera, pay a month of utility bills, or defray other basic
costs of doing businesses. The Storer executives had to multiply the $5,000
figure by five to account for all of the TV stations in the group. At Storer
headquarters in January 1962, there had been a gnashing of teeth over the cost
factors. But in the end, indelible impressions of Minow's "wasteland" speech
announcing the licensing crackdown carried the day. Given the tens millions of
dollars at risk in a license revocation, a $25,000 expense looked like a
pittance. While a professional survey satisfied only one part of the procedure,
the certainty it would wow any FCC auditor comforted Storer executives. They
could end all of this confusion and get on with their jobs of running their TV
stations. In early 1962 Storer and Michaels had but one decision left to make:
selecting the research firm. All candidates known to Michaels were market
research operations that had varying degrees of contact with broadcasting. They
included two local firms, Market Opinion Research and Milton Brand and Company.
Additional possibilities were the A. J. Wood company of Philadelphia, Opinion
Research of Princeton, N. J., the Merwyn Field group of Los Angeles, and Burke
Marketing Research of Cincinnati.[48] Michaels also knew of a research firm in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, named as Frank N. Magid Associates. But Michaels saw a
drawback in hiring any of these companies. While they all had impressive
credentials in field research, each strictly was a research supplier with a
forte in gathering data. Because ascertainment reports had to have narrative
statements, Michaels was hoping for a company that could help with the analysis
and the writing. If Storer was going to spend $25,000, Michaels reasoned, then
let the contractor do as much of the work as possible.[49] In early 1962, with
resources to go anywhere in the country, Michaels' search ended almost around
the block from his suburban Detroit office.
That March, Michaels was a paid a visit by two individuals who had
just resigned from key positions at the Detroit-based Campbell-Ewald advertising
agency. Philip L. McHugh had been the vice president of the agency's television
division, Peter S. Hoffman that division's second-in-command. Their mysterious
departure from Campbell-Ewald had just made headlines in trade publications from
coast to coast. Campbell-Ewald was no ordinary ad agency but rather on the
strength of a single local client one of the five largest in the United States
in TV billings. The client was General Motors, the world's largest corporation
and second-largest advertiser. General Motors was spending millions not merely
to advertise on national television. Well into the 1960s, sponsors like GM
controlled entire television programs and hired agencies such as Campbell-Ewald
to produce and direct them. The two men greeting Michaels had been among the
most influential in television. Along with a half-dozen other major credits,
the hottest show then on the networks, NBC's "Bonanza," had been the brain-child
of these two executives. In the meeting, a curious Michaels finally found out
what had happened, that Campbell-Ewald's owners had looked askance at McHugh's
fixation with expensive audience research and then had reacted passively, McHugh
violently, when on the basis of this research McHugh had said that entertainer
Dinah Shore needed to be taken off the air.[50] While this was the kind of
inside intrigue most broadcasters lived for, McHugh and Hoffman were not in
Michaels' office to recite war stories.
They wanted his business. In a small office in Birmingham not far
from Storer's television headquarters, the former Campbell-Ewald executives had
established what they were calling a "consulting" firm. As the first broadcast
consultant, the firm "McHugh & Hoffman" would operate just like consultancies in
big business: it planned to coordinate public research studies, analyze
findings, make assessments, and prepare narrated written recommendations.[51] A
particular advantage of McHugh & Hoffman was its exclusive contract with the
nation's largest applied research firm, a Chicago company called Social
Research, Inc. Part of McHugh's dispute with Campbell-Ewald had been the
agency's refusal to spend more money on SRI research projects. Headed by two
well-known academic researchers, W. Lloyd Warner and Burleigh B. Gardner, SRI
was a fixture at the highest levels of American enterprise. It had just been
the subject of a best-selling book by Vance Packard called The Hidden
Persuaders. McHugh and Hoffman had walked out at Campbell-Ewald somehow assured
that backed by SRI they would land a contract with CBS, where McHugh had worked
directly under CBS president Frank Stanton in the 1930s and 1940s, or with the
media department at the Chrysler Corporation, where Hoffman had contacts. To
the partners' dismay, these opportunities were not materializing. Initially,
they thought of Storer as a step down, only later to realize the large scale of
Storer's operations. While McHugh pitched Michaels on the idea that research
could help the Storer stations in the ratings, and Michaels fully intended to
get around to this in due course, the Storer vice president was intrigued at
that moment for one reason: as so-called consultants versed not just in research
but also in programming and analysis, McHugh & Hoffman seemed the perfect choice
as someone to sick on community ascertainment.[52] McHugh was up to the task,
to later confirm with Michaels that "[t]he yearly market studies are of
particular value to Storer management as effectively meeting the Federal
Communication Commissions' requirements." McHugh reiterated, "These studies are
the most complete way to properly sample viewer opinion."[53]
With time of the essence, Michaels went ahead and signed a
preliminary contract with McHugh & Hoffman, corporate chair George Storer, Jr.
contacted by telephone in Miami, finally giving his okay. Because of other
commitments, it was not until weeks later, on May 1, 1962, that Storer was able
to travel north to Detroit to put his signature on the agreement, the first
contract ever between a local broadcaster and an outside research-consultant.
In a small ceremony in Michaels' office, with McHugh, Hoffman, Storer, and WJBK
manager Larry Carino on hand, the contract became official. Its main provision
were professional research surveys in Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Atlanta,
and Toledo at a total cost of $42,500.[54] This was almost double the $25,000,
$5,000 per survey, that Storer had anticipated, and he had momentarily balked.
But McHugh explained that the extra amount would defray consulting services he
and Hoffman would provide the five stations until May 1963, when this one-year
agreement was set to expire. There had been no inkling that these extra
consulting services would steer McHugh & Hoffman into news. Nevertheless, as a
means of complying with FCC requirements, Storer had opened the door to news
consulting.[55]
iii. The Birth of News Consulting
By the late spring of 1962, trained field researchers from SRI had
filtered into the five cities. Storer had wanted these ascertainment surveys
completed by the end of 1962, even though the FCC's staggered deadlines allowed
longer periods of time. On schedule, the results of these surveys, which
contained information from random samples of around 400 people in each locale,
were placed the stations' public inspection files. Oddly, no one from the FCC
examined any of the finished documents. The respective station managers, one by
one, received postcards from the commission with notifications that their
licenses had been renewed. Having dodged a bullet, Storer heaved a sigh of
relief. As for the rush to enlist McHugh & Hoffman in the renewals, WAGA's Ken
Bagwell, later a prominent Storer executive, would state, "It was better to be
safe than sorry." In point of fact, Bagwell and the other Storer managers could
not wait to embrace McHugh & Hoffman, its research something they never would
have had without the corporate level's decision to commission it. As soon as
McHugh & Hoffman had started working at the station level, the dynamics of the
relationship shifted from legal to proprietary priorities. "We knew all along,"
Bagwell would add, "that professional research was there to help your
competitive position . . . [but] in those days you saw it only in big business."
It was too expensive for others. Bagwell said he could "not remember very many
discussions about [the survey portion of] ascertainment after the contract with
McHugh & Hoffman [had been signed]," and that "Michaels wanted it [the survey]
off our backs." Characterizing ascertainment as the "pole" that "vaulted"
Storer into the domain of professional research, Bagwell noted that research
surveys "gave you all sorts of opportunities to ask the public questions about
why [it] liked or disliked your programs . . . . Any manager worth his salt was
going to use research to build the ratings."[56] The FCC apparently had not
entertained this eventuality. Ironically, implemented as a way to contain
profits, community ascertainment wound up an avenue to profits.
As it turned out, Storer was not the only broadcast company to have
its first ascertainments end with a rubber stamp. Rumors spread that no one
from the FCC had looked at anyone's ascertainment filings. While this was not
true, the commission did report that only one percent of renewal applications
were audited.[57] Most broadcasters' first-blush fears about ascertainment
eased when it became obvious the public's interests and needs, as defined by the
public itself under the FCC's mandate, were satisfied by programs already on the
air.[58] What Minow deemed the "vast wasteland" continued, and no licenses were
revoked. By no means, though, did broadcasters regard the licensing crackdown
as bluff and bluster. Minow in a brief two-year tenure as FCC chair had pled
for appropriations that would allow more inspections. While Minow did not
succeed before leaving in 1963, the possibility was ever-present that someone
might. Frederick Ford, the originator of ascertainment, remained on the
commission until the end of 1964. Because ascertainment was upheld by Minow's
successor, William Henry, and the next several FCC chairs after that,
broadcasters were saddled with a procedure they felt served no practical
purpose. They would have been more sanguine had they had a clearer
understanding of what the FCC really wanted. Anxieties recurred at three-year
intervals, as did more confusion. Year by year through the 1960s and 1970s, the
commission circulated materials to clear up questions about ascertainment.[59]
A decade after the policy was enacted, the FCC would publish a sixteen-page
ascertainment "primer," significant because it endorsed the consultants'
research in ascertainment surveys.[60] Inexplicably, just five years before the
demise of ascertainment the commission would publish yet another "primer."[61]
Finally in the 1980s, broadcasters made headway in their complaints when a
conservative trend swept the FCC under chair Mark Fowler. One of Fowler's first
steps in deregulating local broadcasting was dumping community
ascertainment.[62]
Yet after Ford and Minow, the research genie was out of the bottle.
By the time Minow's tenure had ended in 1963, stations that included New York's
WCBS, Chicago's WBBM, Los Angeles's KNXT, Philadelphia's WCAU, Dallas's WFAA,
Miami's WTVJ, and the Twin Cities' WCCO, and St. Louis' KMOX had enlisted McHugh
& Hoffman principally or largely for community ascertainment surveys. McHugh &
Hoffman's main competitor, Frank N. Magid Associates, helped coordinate
ascertainment at its first client, WMT in Cedar Rapids. While without the
ancillary services McHugh & Hoffman provided, community ascertainment was a
provision in contracts Magid would sign with its next six clients, Salt Lake
City's KSL, Seattle's KIRO, San Diego's KOGO, Denver's KLZ, Indianapolis' WFMB,
and New Orleans' WWL.[63] With each new year bringing up another wave of
stations for license renewals, $5,000 or $10,000 research-consulting fees no
longer seemed an extravagance. Yet by no stretch of the imagination were
station owners and managers going to spend this kind of money only to have the
results collect dust in a public inspection file. Lurking in the competed
reports were clues about the audience and, thus, how ratings could be increased.
Although McHugh & Hoffman officially was a "broadcast" consultant as
of March 1962, it did not begin referring to itself as a "news" consultant until
the end of that year. Magid remained strictly a research supplier until 1968,
when it assumed a more active role at WWL. Formal news consulting would not
begin at Magid until 1969. The birthplace of news consulting had been the
Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, where Phil McHugh and Peter Hoffman were
the headline attractions at a managerial retreat convened by Michaels on
September 8, 1962. Topping the agenda were the consultants' proprietary
analyses of the just-completed Storer ascertainment studies. McHugh stood in
front of an easel and told Michaels and the managers, much as Steiner had told
the FCC, that viewers did not readily identify any of the Storer stations, only
their networks. McHugh's good news was evidence network entertainment programs
did satisfy viewers' interests and needs, the FCC's judgments notwithstanding.
Yet McHugh's downside was his conclusion that unless Storer reduced its
dependance on the networks the company never could control its own destiny.
McHugh went on to explain that average people formed loyalties to local TV
stations much the way they grew loyal to baseball and football teams, and that
this loyalty was rooted in local newscasts, the one program consistently seen
night after night, week after week. "[A]utomatically staying with one [network]
is a clearly diminishing practice even in quite low status groups," the studies
had affirmed.[64] Moreover, according to McHugh, viewers had a tendency to
stick with a certain local station if it could be trusted for local news.[65]
As McHugh would elaborate in latter documents circulated to Storer and other
clients, "Viewers express a want and perceive a need for a television station to
have a close connection between them and the community [and] express a wanting
perception for a 'dialogue' with the stations."[66] Local news was "the primary
factor determining overall station position relative to its competition. The
station that is #1 in early news [will see] a higher rating in prime time than
the #3 station, irrespective of the network. . . . [A] station's local newscast
ratings are the 'leverage' factor placing the station either #1 or #3."[67]
The Storer managers quite simply could not believe what they were
hearing. Prior to this, local news had been kissed off and discussed only in
terms of meeting the FCC's ten percent-of-airtime licensing quota. Indeed, the
original plan at Colorado Springs was to have McHugh talk about perceptions of
childrens shows, locally-produced variety programs, cooking shows, off-network
syndicated reruns, and afternoon and weekend movies, the bulk of Storer's
non-network fare.[68] McHugh's recommendation that local news serve as Storer's
"top priority" rightfully caused a stir. "It is an expensive area to develop,
because it takes qualified newsmen, cameramen, and directors behind the scenes,"
he stated. Nevertheless, "it is an area where future investment must be made
over the years if the goal of the Storer television stations is to be number
one." When one of the managers inquired as to the level of this investment,
McHugh estimated that between forty and seventy-five thousand dollars would be
needed each year at each of the five stations. Because none of the Storer
stations were spending anywhere near those amounts on news, another manager
wondered whether McHugh was realistic in predicting dramatic returns on these
outlays. "We can only report what we have learned from these studies," he
replied. "News is the major ingredient toward the Storer stations becoming
number one in their markets." The next key question was directed at Michaels.
Would not he, the division vice president, look askance at a station manager who
might have to report a loss because of these sizable news investments? When
Michaels told the managers not to worry, and later decreed, "[You must] follow
the McHugh & Hoffman recommendations," the consultants--now "news"
consultants--had a green light to proceed.[69]
It mainly was because of McHugh's revelations about local TV news, an
area Storer barely even had considered, that McHugh & Hoffman's one-year
contract was renewed. Its relationship with Storer would continue for eighteen
more years. Serious news consulting effectively began in 1963 and 1964, when
McHugh & Hoffman's research was freed of ascertainment concerns and could
concentrate on why people watched--or did not watch--television news. A
governing finding was that average people appreciated but did not warm to
existing television newscasts because they were perceived as too boring or too
complicated, and featured newscasters merely reading news stories out loud.
There was little visualization. "[T]he average viewer is able to talk at length
about television without mentioning [news] programs," one study had shown.[70]
For example, McHugh & Hoffman's studies in 1963 tabbed second-year CBS anchor
Walter Cronkite as a stick-in-the-mud, his only hope "his willingness to display
some emotion and allow the public to see and think of him as a person." When
Cronkite did exactly this later that year, while covering the Kennedy
assassination, his research "Q-scores" soared. NBC's Chet Huntley and David
Brinkley then were better liked than Cronkite but nevertheless perceived as "too
patronizing and condescending, [with] lower status people . . . prone to feel
that occasionally Huntley or Brinkley flaunts his superior knowledge in the
viewer's face."[71] Results from Toledo tended to typify what average viewers
preferred as an alternative. In the ascertainment surveys, viewers expressed a
need for "a more friendly, neighborly" newscast "which shows more interest in
the people."[72] A watershed in the development of local TV news consulting was
the 1964 annual study in Cleveland for Storer's WJW, in which findings resounded
with positive impressions of a highly-visualized and personality-oriented
newscast on competing station KYW. Visibly departing from the network style,
KYW, under news director Al Primo, had christened this new concept "Eyewitness
News." "Viewers remark with considerable frequency that the 'Eyewitness News'
on Channel 3 [KYW] has been interesting." As one respondent put it, "They seem
to do anything to get a good picture." "Seeing for yourself," another
commented, "makes it easier to understand."[73] KYW's surge in the ratings both
in Cleveland and in Philadelphia, where the station moved in 1965, resulted in
McHugh & Hoffman's orders to emulate "Eyewitness News" at the five Storer
stations and at its other clients. In 1968, when McHugh & Hoffman was hired by
the ABC-owned stations, and joined Primo at WABC in New York, it became
instrumental in using its research to further perfect "Eyewitness News." From
here, the thread of news consulting and "Eyewitness News" is picked up and
extensively treated elsewhere in the literature.[74] Yet there had been a long
prelude. "The idea we had a magic formula and pandered to the audience was
ludicrous," Hoffman maintained. "Phil [McHugh] and I knew next to nothing about
news. All we had to go on was the research, where the people kept telling us
'The newscast needs to be improved.'"[75]
iv. Conclusion
Thirty-five years after Minow's enactment of community ascertainment,
neither the TV news research process nor those in control of it have changed.
McHugh & Hoffman, the first consultant, and Magid, the second consultant,
continue to thrive, with nearly 200 newsroom clients between them. Moveover,
today's five other nationally-based research-consulting firms-- Audience
Research & Development, Reymer and Associates, Primo Newservices, Broadcast
Image, and Clemensen, Sheehan & Rovitto--were founded in the 1970s and 1980s by
figures who had trained at or had close working relations with Magid or McHugh &
Hoffman. Following interviews with a cross-section of news directors for a 1990
article in the RTNDA Communicator, Karen Frankola noted that it is "almost
impossible to talk to a news director who says he can do his job without
research."[76] Concurring, author Craig Allen in a 1995 study of anchor hiring
found the nation's station managers and news directors in strong agreement that
research as performed by news consultants is both essential and standard
operating procedure.[77] Thus for many reasons more scholarly investigation
into news consulting is indicated.
A question open for further historical studies of local news is the
point in time at which community ascertainment stopped being the main rationale
for the hiring of consultants. Determining exactly when audience research was
accepted purely for ratings enhancement would offer important clues about the
emergence of local TV news as a profit center. In the case of the first five TV
stations to hire a consultant, the Storer outlets, this occasion came early,
within two years of the first assignment in 1962. Still, other evidence
suggests that several years passed before owners and managers viewed research as
more than a toll paid the FCC. A delayed reaction, perhaps until the early
1970s, would affirm the historical testimony of both Frank Magid and Peter
Hoffman, who maintain their first clients were principally motivated by the
FCC's requirement. Important supporting evidence may be the FCC's ascertainment
"primer" in 1971, which acknowledged an influx of inquiries from licensees
seeking to use Magid, McHugh & Hoffman, and other professional research firms in
ascertainment studies.[78] In any case, it remains clear that while
ascertainment did not account for the rapid expansion of news consulting in the
1980s, this FCC mandate did put news consulting in motion and established a
research regimen still in use today.
Clarifying that major consulting firms were first and foremost
research entities simultaneously clarifies that these firms are best conceived
not as manipulators but rather as feedback channels, in effect conduits, that
direct audience inputs into newsrooms. The crux of the "gatekeeping" process
and other aspects local TV news may not be newsroom by-play so much as
perceptions lodged in the minds of the viewers. A 1994 study led by Dan
Berkowitz lent some support to a viewer-first, consultant-as-conduit model. In
it, findings suggested that research inputs and audience surveillance--not the
presence of news consultants per se--were the main criteria to which news
managers were acclimated. They also were the probable elements leading to the
socialization of newsworkers.[79] In the 1991 book Making Local News, Phyllis
Kaniss interviewed many newsworkers who reiterated the comment of one, that "the
operative principle we think about all the time is people, people, people."[80]
It is unlikely such a view could be so widespread without direct input from the
people themselves. A starting point for expanded investigation may be "news
coorientation," a theory which accepts a balance between the degree newsrooms
"lead" and "follow" the audience.[81] Local TV news may reside at the far end
of the "followership" extreme. This may be a function of the fact that local
television stations, unlike newspapers and networks, are licensed by the
government and held accountable as "followers."
Finally, with a clearer picture of how research-consulting emerged,
many new questions confront those who judge news consulting from a normative
perspective. No individual has been more celebrated in critical research that
Newton Minow, whose policy for redeeming the "wasteland" was systematically
soliciting the interests and needs of the public. Curiously, in debates
relating to standards for entertainment programming, the critical community
applauded ascertainment at its inception and then pleaded that it continue
during deregulation. Yet the same critical community deplored news consulting.
The normative literature must make up its mind whether hearing the "voice of the
people" is or is not desirable. A critique in the New York Times stated, "Those
who oppose the broadcast consultants such as Magid do so on the ground that no
one but a trained journalist should make judgments about news content."[82] Yet
Minow and his associates plainly stated that the public shall have a voice in
television programming. Explicitly, news was granted no exception.
NOTES
[1] . The seven nationally-based research consultancies include
Frank N. Magid Associates, Marion, Iowa (140 clients); Audience Research &
Development, Dallas, Tex. (110); McHugh & Hoffman, Southfield, Mich. (45);
Broadcast Image, Inc., San Antonio, Tex. (40); Reymer & Associates, Detroit
(35); Clemensen, Sheehan & Rovitto, Fairfield, Conn. (30); and Primo
Newservices, Old Greenwich, Conn. (25).
[2] . Charles Butler, "Consulting Firms and Stations Forming a More
Potent Partnership," View, Apr., 1988, pp. 22-24.
[3] . Roger David Maier, "News Consultants: Their Use By and Effect
Upon Local Television News in Louisiana," paper presented before BEA, Apr.,
1991; Betsey Peale and Mark Harmon, "Television News Consultants: Exploration of
Their Effect on Content," paper presented before AEJMC, Aug., 1991.
[4] . Dan Berkowitz, Craig Allen, and Diana Beeson, "Newsroom Views
About Consultants in Local TV: The Effects of Work Roles and Socialization,"
paper presented before AEJMC, Aug., 1994; Mary A. Bock, "Smile More: A
Subcultural Analysis of the Anchor/Consultant Relationship in Local Television
News Operations," Drake University masters thesis, 1986.
[5] . "Cronkite extols virtues of, need for longer news periods,"
Broadcasting, Dec. 20, 1976, p. 32.
[6] . Ron Powers, The Newscasters, (New York: St. Martin's, 1977),
pp. 78-94.
[7] . Marvin Barrett, Moments of Truth?, (New York: Crowell, 1975),
pp. 89-112; and Edwin Diamond, The Tin Kazoo, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1975), pp. 87-109.
[8] . Useful period studies of community ascertainment appear Mark
C. Hafer, "The Impact of Community Ascertainment: An Analysis of Television
Station Ascertainment Reports to the F.C.C., University of Georgia masters
thesis, 1980; and in John D. Abel, Charles Clift, III, and Frederick A. Weiss,
"Station License Revocations and Denials of Renewal, 1934-1969," Journal of
Broadcasting 14 (1970): 411-21.
[9] . See "Why Is Local TV News So Bad?," American Journalism
Review, Sept., 1993, pp. 19-27.
[10] . See results of 1995 national Bullet Poll on local TV news in
"Viewers give local news high marks," Electronic Media, Sept. 4, 1995, pp. 1,
29.
[11] . Frank Magid, interview with author, Marion, Iowa, June 17,
1993.
[12] . Peter Hoffman, interview with author, McLean, Va., June 20,
1994.
[13] . Gary A. Steiner, The People Look at Television, (New York:
Knopf, 1963), pp. 304-305.
[14] . See In re Great Lakes Broadcasting Company, Docket 4900,
(1928), RG 173, Office of the Secretary, Records of FCC, Washington, D.C.
[15] . Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, Pt. 5,
Sec. A, FCC, Mar. 7, 1946, RG 173, Records of the FCC, Washington, D.C.
[16] . FCC Report and Order, 19 RR 1569, 601-1141, Sept. 21, 1960,
Dockets, Records of the FCC, Washington, D.C.
[17] . U.S. v. RCA, 17 RR 764 (1959).
[18] . FCC Annual Report, 1958, p. 17, RG 173, Box 1, Dockets,
Records of FCC, Washington, D.C.
[19] . Frederick Ford, testimony before Subcommittee on
Appropriations, United States Senate, 86th Congress, 2nd Session, HR 11776:775,
Congressional Record.
[20] . Programming Policy Statement, July 29, 1960, FCC 60-970, R.G.
173, Entry 35, Box 11, Office of Secretary, Records of FCC, Washington, D.C.
[21] . "FCC Still Sitting On 500 License Renewal Applications,"
Variety, Jan. 18, 1961, p. 51.
[22] . Newton Minow, interview with author, Chicago, Ill., Jan. 5,
1989.
[23] . "Minow Now FCC's Big Fish," Variety, Jan. 11, 1961, p. 31.
[24] . Text, Newton Minow speech before National Association of
Broadcasters, Washington, D.C., May 9, 1961, R.G. 173, Box 1, Records Relating
to Chairman Minow's Speech, Records of the Executive Director, Records of FCC,
Washington, D.C.
[25] . Jay Lewis, "Some NAB Convention Post-Mortems," Variety, May
17, 1961, p. 33.
[26] . Programming Policy Statement, July 29, 1960, FCC 60-970, R.G.
173, Entry 35, Box 11, Office of Secretary, Records of FCC, Washington, D.C.
[27] . "A sharper FCC eye on programs," Broadcasting, Aug. 1, 1960,
p. 35, 38.
[28] . Analysis of Letters Received, June 1, 1961, RG 173, Box 1,
Records Relating to Chairman Minow's Speech, Records of the Executive Director,
FCC Records.
[29] . Henry v. FCC, 302 F.2d 191; 371 U.S. 821 (1962).
[30] . FCC Rules and Regulations, 47 CFR 73.191 (1961), RG 173, Box
2, Office of the Secretary, FCC Records, Washington, D.C.
[31] . Kenneth Bagwell, interview with author, Phoenix, Ariz, May
14, 1994.
[32] . "How Doerfer's hopes died," Broadcasting, Mar. 14, 1960, pp.
32-33.
[33] . "Ford: Soft-spoken but firm," Broadcasting, Mar. 14, 1960,
pp. 34-36.
[34] . "FCC Okays Storer Purchases," Broadcasting, Apr. 1, 1957, pp.
54, 58.
[35] . See "Retrospective: George B. Storer, Sr.," Broadcasting,
Nov. 11, 1974, pp. 30-31; "Respects to George B. Storer, Jr.," Broadcasting,
June 5, 1961, p. 107; and "Respects to Peter Storer," Broadcasting, Jan. 7,
1963, p. 89.
[36] . "Storer first quarter double that of '61," Broadcasting, Apr.
16, 1962, p. 74.
[37] . "A combination businessman, engineer, sportsman,"
Broadcasting, June 5, 1961, p. 107.
[38] . In 1965, Storer appealed to the FCC for television license in
Miami, to have the call letters "WGBS," the initials of founder George B.
Storer; Phil McHugh to Stanton P. Kettler, Apr. 14, 1965, Box 17, McHugh &
Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[39] . "Storer Has Option On Toolco's 55% of Northeast Air," Wall
Street Journal, June 3, 1965, p. 1.
[40] . Storer Annual Report 1968, Storer Broadcasting Company,
Miami, Fla., July 1, 1969, pp. 2-3.
[41] . See "Program log comments get specific," Broadcasting, Oct.
21, 1961, p. 66.
[42] . Peter Hoffman, interview with author, McLean, Va., June 20,
1994.
[43] . Willard Michaels to George Storer, Jr., Phil McHugh, and
Peter Hoffman, May 16, 1962, Box 16, McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[44] . Warren Zwicky file, undated, Box 17, McHugh & Hoffman
Records, Southfield, Mich.
[45] . Primer on Ascertainment of Community Problems by Broadcast
Applicants, 57 FCC 2d 418, 441 (1976), Pt. C, Question 24.
[46] . Kenneth Bagwell, interview with author, Phoenix, Ariz., May
14, 1994.
[47] . Earl Kahn, interview with author, Scottsdale, Ariz., Mar. 14,
1994.
[48] . Peter Hoffman to Willard Michaels, May 9, 1963, Box 17,
McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[49] . Contact report, Phil McHugh and Terry Lee, Mar. 9, 1962,
McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[50] . Peter Hoffman, interview with author, McLean, Va., June 20,
1994.
[51] . "McHugh, Hoffman Form TV Consultancy," Broadcasting, Mar. 5,
1962, p. 58.
[52] . Contact report, Terry Lee and Phil McHugh, Mar. 3, 1962, Box
17, McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[53] . "A Report to Storer Broadcasting Company," May 1964, p. 30,
Box 17, McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[54] . Phil McHugh to Willard Michaels, Aug. 13, 1962, Box 17,
McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[55] . Memorandum, Willard Michaels to Storer general managers, May
9, 1962, Box 17, McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[56] . Kenneth Bagwell, interview with author, Phoenix, Ariz., May
14, 1994.
[57] . Terry R. Ellmore, Broadcasting Law and Regulation, (Blue
Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab, 1982), pp. 116-117; also see Abel, et al., "Station
License Revocations," pp. 411-21.
[58] . Hafer, "Impact of Community Ascertainment," pp. 5-15.
[59] . "Renewal forms ready," Broadcasting, June 4, 1962, p. 5.
[60] . Primer on Ascertainment of Community Problems by Broadcast
Applicants, 27 FCC 2d 650, 682 (1971).
[61] . Primer on Ascertainment of Community Problems by Broadcast
Applicants, 57 FCC 2d 418, 441 (1976).
[62] . Deregulation of Commercial Television, 56 RR 2nd 1005 (1984),
Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C.
[63] . Frank Magid, interview with author, Marion, Iowa, June 17,
1993.
[64] . "Continuing Trends in Television, 1962," Feb. 26, 1963, p.
14, McHugh & Hoffman Reports, Southfield, Mich.
[65] . Earl Kahn, interview with author, Scottsdale, Ariz., Mar. 14,
1994.
[66] . "Relationship Between Local TV Programming and TV Stations'
Revenues," McHugh & Hoffman, Inc., undated, p. 11, McHugh & Hoffman Reports,
Southfield, Mich.
[67] . "Television News Trends of the 1990s," Jan. 17, 1990, p. 7,
McHugh & Hoffman Reports, Southfield, Mich.
[68] . Station Managers Questions file, 1962, Box 18, McHugh &
Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[69] . Meeting minutes, McHugh & Hoffman and Storer general
managers, Sept. 8, 1962, Box 17; and Willard Michaels to Storer general
managers, Sept. 13, 1962, Box 17, both McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield,
Mich.
[70] . Ira O. Glick and Sidney J. Levy, Living With Television,
(Chicago: Aldine, 1962), p. 135.
[71] . "Continuing Trends in Television, 1962," Feb. 26, 1963, pp.
77-79, 83-84, McHugh & Hoffman Records, Southfield, Mich.
[72] . Toledo report, July 1962, p. 60, McHugh & Hoffman Reports,
Southfield, Mich.
[73] . Cleveland report, July 1964, pp. 61-62, McHugh & Hoffman
Reports, Southfield, Mich.
[74] . Joseph R. Dominick, Alan Wurtzel, and Guy Lometti,
"Television Journalism vs. Show Business: A Content Analysis of Eyewitness
News," Journalism Quarterly 51: 213-218 (1974); Av Westin, Newswatch, (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1982), pp. 210, 222, 23; Powers, The Newscasters, pp.
147-157; Geraldo Rivera and Daniel Paisner, Exposing Myself (New York: Bantam,
1991), pp. 76-137; Joan Lunden, Good Morning, (New York: Berkley, 1987), pp.
69-104.
[75] . Peter Hoffman, interview with author, McLean, Va., June 20,
1994.
[76] . Karen Frankola, "Who Uses Consultants And Why?," _RTNDA
Communicator, Aug., 1990, p. 12.
[77] . Craig Allen, "Priorities of General Managers and News
Directors in Anchor Hiring," Journal of Media Economics 8:111-24 (1995).
[78] . Primer on Ascertainment of Community Problems by Broadcast
Applicants, 27 FCC 2d 650, 682 (1971), Part B, Question 37, and Appendix A.
[79] . Dan Berkowitz, et al., "Newsroom Views About Consultants,"
pp. 14-18.
[80] . Phyllis Kaniss, Making Local News, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), p. 120.
[81] . Hugh M. Culbertson, "Three Perspectives on American
Journalism," Journalism Monographs 83 (June 1983); Hugh M. Culbertson,
"Reporters and Editors--Some Differences in Perspective," Newspaper Research
Journal 2:17-27 (January 1981); and Steven Chaffee and Jack McLeod,
"Sensitization in Panel Design: A Coorientation Experiment," Journalism
Quarterly 45:661-669 (Winter 1968).
[82] . Johanna Steinmetz, "`Mr. Magic--The TV Newscast Doctor,'" New
York Times, Oct. 12, 1975, p. 2-25.
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