Content-Type: text/html The Superstar Labor Market in Television Abstract Using literature from labor economics, this paper argues that the labor market in television is a "superstar" market in which a few collect large salaries and a large number of applicants vie for jobs. This is because of imperfect substitution among sellers in the market and the inability of applicants to accurately assess their chances of success. It suggests the effects of a labor market on individual behavior and continuing low salaries for new television journalists. _ The Superstar Labor Market in Television Joseph Graf Graduate Student Stanford University (415) 949-2904 [log in to unmask] Mailing Address: Stanford University Department of Communication McClatchy Hall Stanford, CA 94305-2050 The Superstar Labor Market in Television Introduction Media scholars have maintained a steady interest in the wages of working journalists primarily because of our role in training new journalists and our close relationship with the media industry. We have studied the salaries of new reporters in order to tell journalism students what to expect, and we have studied the salaries of all newsworkers as one of the conditions and constraints under which they work. This paper attempts to broaden our thinking about the effect of salaries on journalism training and the behavior of journalists by looking at a literature in labor economics alternately called "winner-take-all" or "superstar" labor markets. We will argue that economists have a model of understanding the labor market in television broadcasting that is helpful. This model forces us to consider that a lopsided labor market with salaries of television news anchors nearly one hundred times those of new reporters is functioning exactly as we should expect, and that this market has a pernicious effect on journalists' behavior. We will end with the suggestion that a better model of the media labor market should include a consideration of political power in the workplace. A large number of college graduates want to enter the field of television news, and starting wages are typically low. Industry observers have speculated that the large number of new job seekers in television drives down salaries, which will increase when these workers, unhappy with poor pay, leave the field. Scholars have taken an interest in this, looking at the success of new graduates in getting jobs or the pay of newsworkers in general and its relationship to job satisfaction and turnover.[1] At the other end of the pay scale, the high salaries of news anchors is of little scholarly but great mass media interest. Both extremes are in the same labor market, and this paper assumes that they are more closely related than previous work suggests. In a superstar labor market supply and demand do not counterbalance each other and reach equilibrium in the familiar manner we expect. If the labor market for television is best described as a superstar labor market, where few actors reap enormous rewards, then low pay for starting television journalists will not drive new college graduates to look elsewhere for jobs. The market will never reach equilibrium, or "clear," but will remain flooded with applicants. Several economists have suggested that this kind of labor market affects the behavior of actors within the market and promotes competition between workers that is socially wasteful. We suggest that there are policy implications of this for journalism educators. While economists have developed a rich body of work in labor markets, it is work that often ignores political or social factors in determining wages. Sociologists have developed wage models that pay greater attention to social relations and political power. Communication scholars bring to this discussion a recognition of the unique characteristics of the mass media and its labor force, such as the constraints of professionalism. Our interest here is ultimately not the labor market, but the effects of the structure of that market on issues such as diversity, media content, and the behavior of the wage earners. Literature It seems that every television journalist who writes his or her memoirs is obligated to include a passage about the dismal pay when they began as a cub reporter.[2] Most early television reporters came from radio and earned low wages in the new medium. There were exceptions, and some prominent journalists earned high salaries even when the feasibility and public acceptance of television news was still a gamble. These high salaries have never been the norm, but are the upper end of the salary structure. This review will first address the growth in salaries of prominent television journalists. Much of this evidence is anecdotal, and some of the reported salaries are estimates made by historians or other researchers. This is one reason why these salaries are often not part of labor market analyses. We then look at survey data about the broad labor market, the scholarly research in journalism salaries, and finally the theoretical work in labor markets. When Douglas Edwards left radio in 1948 to anchor the first television news program he doubled his pay. American television executives chose to use their anchors as the centerpiece of the shows, such as Edwards for CBS, John Cameron Swayze for the "Camel News Caravan" or the ABC Evening News with John Daly, best known as the moderator of "What's My Line?" Swayze's salary was $110,000 a year. Matusow, in her history of television news anchors, notes that this emphasis on personalities is distinctly American. Television news in some other countries emphasizes the news over the anchor, employing news readers "who make no pretense of involvement with the material they read." Despite emphasizing the anchor before the camera, in the early days of television the producer behind the camera, not the reporter or anchor, had the authority over stories because of the complex technical nature of putting together newscasts.[3] The 1948 political conventions in Philadelphia were the first large news events covered by television, but radio news was still king. Until the mid 1950s the 15-minute evening news programs were not considered great investments by the networks. The news shows were not profitable, but were seen as part of the networks' public service role. Television became an important force in political life for the first time at the 1952 political conventions. Walter Cronkite took center stage for CBS and the term "anchorman" was coined, in reference to the strongest person in the booth, akin to the anchor leg of a relay team. The political conventions again highlighted up-and-coming news stars in 1956, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. In the 1960s the networks tried to raise the news anchor to a position of "moral and intellectual authority," hoping such prestige would return higher ratings and advertising revenues. Television executives began to consider the anchor as the most important factor in the popularity of a news program. Matusow writes that television executives "frenetically" believed that the success of whole news divisions relied on the anchor persons, and these anchors extended great personal control over the news operations.[4] Until the early 1970s, salaries for news anchors were very good, but they would dramatically increase in the next decade. During this time news became a profitable enterprise for all three networks. In 1970 Harry Reasoner, at the time in the upper echelon for anchors, left CBS to co-anchor the ABC Evening News at an annual salary of $200,000.[5] Raiding other networks for talent became more common. NBC hired several key executives away from CBS, which had the reputation as the finest television news network. In particular, Roone Arledge of ABC was known for offering top notch producers huge salary increases to jump ship and come to ABC.[6] He was even more generous with on-air employees: He offered Charles Osgood, a writer and radio broadcaster, a salary raise from $120,000 to $500,000 if he left CBS for ABC. Osgood turned down the offer after ABC made a counter offer of more than $400,000 a year. Barbara Walters signed the first million-dollar contract when she agreed to co-anchor ABC's Evening News with Harry Reasoner in 1976.[7] Her salary was paid for equally by the news and entertainment divisions of ABC, and Reasoner was given a raise to $500,000 a year. One of the most well-publicized bidding wars erupted for the services of Dan Rather of CBS in 1979, pushing up salaries, forcing the venerable Walter Cronkite into partial retirement and causing Roger Mudd, another highly paid reporter and occasional anchor, to angrily defect to another network. Arledge offered Rather almost $2 million a year in salary and, in addition, unprecedented power in running the news division.[8] Cronkite was earning about $650,000 a year at the time. A furious bidding war broke out until Rather eventually re-signed a ten-year contract with CBS for about $22 million. Several observers believe this episode significantly and permanently increased salaries for top talent in broadcasting, although salaries were certainly large prior to 1979.[9] This growth in salaries continued in the 1980s. In 1980, most top producers as well as correspondents earned more than $100,000 a year. Reporter Geraldo Rivera earned $1 million a year. At ABC in 1986 executive producers earned up to $300,000, producers up to $125,000 and some correspondents more than $500,000.[10] Ten years later salaries for star anchors and reporters are very high, and this has spread to the large regional, non-national markets. Analysts estimate Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer earn about $5 million a year, Peter Jennings $7 million and Barbara Walters $10 million. At the regional level, established anchors in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles all earn more than $1 million a year.[11] These stars are a very small percentage of the journalists working in television. While the mass media focus on these high salaries, particularly whenever someone signs a new contract, the scholarly literature is concerned almost exclusively with the salaries of the more typical workers. Three comparable national surveys were conducted with similar research goals in 1971, 1983 and 1992. Johnstone, Slawski and Bowman surveyed journalists in 1971 and found the median salary for a television journalist was $11,875. This compared well with journalists in other media. Two other studies of 1970 broadcasting salaries, one using census data and the other a survey of station managers, found salaries somewhat lower. In 1983, Weaver and Wilhoit found the median income of journalists had risen to $19,000. The salaries of television journalists were lower, at $17,031 a year. In 1992, Weaver and Wilhoit found the median income of all journalists was $31,297 and for television journalists it was $25,625. The income growth over the 21-year period did not keep abreast of inflation, so the purchasing power of all journalists declined, and for television journalists it was a more significant decline.[12] Surveys of broadcast news managers by Stone reached similar conclusions, but his work illustrates salary differences in broadcast journalism due to the division of labor and the size of the media market. In 1994 workers at television stations in larger media markets generally earn more than their counterparts in smaller markets, and workers in positions of authority such as executive producers and news directors earn more than workers with less authority. Top anchors at stations in large markets earn the highest median salary, and this is disproportionately larger than workers in other areas at the station. This proportion increases with the size of the market. Specifically, in a market ranked between 51 and 100, the median salary for a top anchor is 2.7 times the median salary of a reporter. In a market ranked between 26 and 50, top anchors earn 3.3 times a reporter. In the top 25 markets anchors earn 4.3 times the reporters. While workers in any position earn more when they move to large-market stations, the earnings difference due to the division of labor grows as well (see chart 1).[13] The labor market in television news is estimated to be about 30,000 workers. Of those, only roughly 30 percent work in a top 25 market and only a handful of them can compete for the top salaries. The television news labor market consists of a large pool of newsworkers generally earning low salaries, less than their counterparts in other media. Differences in earnings are determined by the division of labor and the size of the market. A variety of non-structural, individual factors also affect earnings, such as age, number of years in the profession, gender and education, but we do not consider those factors here. At the top of the market is a select group of anchors and reporters, most of them in the national market, who command salaries as much as one hundred times that of a starting television reporter.[14] Becker, Stone and Graf began to analyze this market with a study that was able to test a formal neoclassical model of supply and demand in the labor market for entry-level journalists.[15] This study was unique in that it not only used survey data for the labor supply of entry-level workers (new graduates from journalism schools looking for jobs), but it also had a measure of market demand (news media managers reported number of employees hired in the past year). They found a gross oversupply of labor in the television job market.[16] Becker et al suggested that the glamour and prominence of television broadcasting in American society acted as a "wage differential." Positive wage differentials are salary rewards given to those willing to accept difficult or dangerous working conditions, such as hazard pay for dangerous assignments or a night differential given for those willing to work at night. Negative wage differentials are losses in pay workers are willing to accept for more pleasant working conditions. The theory of wage differentials in this market would suggest that the public visibility, job satisfaction and perceived glamour act as "benefits" that may offset low pay.[17] Frank has suggested that relative prestige of a profession compared to others may also act as a differential, and higher prestige positions may be able pay less in exchange for greater status.[18] Because different media draw from a labor pool that overlaps (some workers move between media, for example, from newspapers to television) the hypothesized impact of wage differentials in the media labor market would be both as a negative differential allowing broadcast employers to pay less and a positive differential requiring other media employers to pay more in order to attract labor. There are several confusing aspects of the broadcasting labor market that defy this description. First, some research about attitudes among journalists suggests that wage differentials do not play a major role. Surveys consistently find that television journalists are not more satisfied with their jobs, nor do they report having greater autonomy or prestige than other journalists report. Often television journalists report less job satisfaction. In a 1991 survey, more journalists in television than in other media reported that they chose journalism because of "the engaging nature of the work or a general 'fascination' with it," but television journalists were not more likely than other journalists to report other psychic rewards from work, such as an aptitude for journalism or idealistic notions of the press. Among prospective journalists, one survey of college students found that broadcasting students (including radio) had less pride in their chosen field and placed greater emphasis on salary, the one benefit they should not expect to receive. None of these surveys truly captures the concept of a wage differential, nor do they address the possibility of a perceived differential among students in the form of greater prestige. However, the data do not suggest the existence of greater job satisfaction among television journalists that acts as a sort of wage differential.[19] The second and related aspect of the broadcasting market that has not been adequately explained is the continued large numbers of applicants attempting to enter the market. Although accurate measures of the labor demand do not exist prior to 1991, there is anecdotal evidence that television station managers have for some time felt that there was a large pool of entry-level applicants. Market theory is unclear on how long it should take before the market should reach equilibrium, which is the point when the labor supply and demand roughly stabilize. While poor information about job prospects and the lengthy training period through college might create a lag of years between an oversupply induced decline in salaries and the expected decline in entrants into the labor market, it is reasonable to argue that we should have seen the market work as expected by now. Nonetheless, despite low financial rewards workers continue to enter the television news labor market. Theory While communication researchers have been interested in what journalists earn, economists and sociologists have been more concerned with why they earn it. There are large bodies of labor literature in both disciplines. Economics has built upon a foundation of neoclassical assumptions and regarded the forces of the market as the most important factors in determining wages, while sociology has looked at the importance of structural factors and social relations in the labor market as important factors that economics ignores. An organizational theory of structural economy stakes out a more middle ground that includes a consideration of power relationships in determining income while not completely rejecting the neoclassical explanation.[20] Simply put, neoclassical theory extends the general theory of value to the labor market and holds that market forces determine workers' salaries by ensuring they are paid in accordance with their marginal productivity.[21] Wages are the price of labor and, barring any extraneous influences, they are determined by supply and demand. Wages adjust to the point where supply and demand are equal, and the market "clears," or reaches equilibrium. If the supply of labor is too great (too many workers) some will be unemployed and willing to work for less, driving down wages. The law of marginal productivity is based on an assumption of the perfect market, an abstraction that makes clear the relationship between production, a fixed labor supply and wage levels. Labor theory has been broadened and expanded upon by human capital theory and the theory of compensating differentials. Human capital theory argues that the productivity of workers is not simply their working efficiency, but it is embodied in their skills, training, education and experience. This is why highly educated workers can often command higher salaries.[22] Compensating wage differentials are increases in salary for work that is disagreeable or dangerous. Both theories fit into the neoclassical framework. The theory of structural inequality in sociology challenges this model in several ways. First, proponents of structural inequality have argued that the assumptions of the neoclassical conception of the labor market, such as perfect information available to all actors in perfectly competitive markets, are so abstract and distant from reality that the model is not useful. And second, neoclassical theory is considered fundamentally flawed because it does not consider the role of power in determining wages. In the broadcast news labor market, high wages are sometimes associated with power in the workplace. Highly paid anchors who are nonetheless not part of management can exert great authority in hiring and news decisions. We want to focus on work on labor economics that is clearly within the neoclassical camp, and some extensions of that work that move beyond the limitations of the model. Rosen attempted to explain why salaries for a select few "superstars" were so high in labor markets in fields such as professional comedy, classical music, and the mass media.[23] He suggested there were several common elements to these markets that made them "superstar" markets, or "winner-take-all" markets, which is a term coined by Frank and Cook.[24] This is a bit of a misnomer. Frank and Cook identify markets where a small group of individuals reap rewards far greater than everyone else in the market. (There is no single winner.) Along with Rosen, they identified several key aspects of these labor markets. We will use both terms interchangeably. The market is the mechanism that matches buyers with sellers and sets prices. The market that allocates workers to jobs is the labor market. The buyers are employers and the sellers are workers. The term "television labor market" will refer to buyers and sellers of labor engaged in producing and distributing television news content. Some workers can move fairly easily between the television news labor market and other media labor markets, such as journalists who move back and forth from broadcast to print, and workers can be in more than one labor market at the same time. So while the television labor market is fluid with movement of participants, it is conceptually distinct. Rosen noted two common elements in winner-take-all markets, or what he called the "phenomenon of superstars."[25] First, the market and the rewards are dominated by a small group of individuals, presumably the most talented in that activity. Labor theory does not offer any explanations for this talent, what economists call "box office appeal," and despite the great effort television professionals make to cultivate and identify their talent, there is no guarantee of what characteristics make an individual more appealing in the market.[26] The second element of a superstar market is the strong relationship between the size of the market the individual can reach and salary. Rosen calls this "one's own market" and he means essentially the availability of that person's talent to others. Rosen proposes a formal model to explain these labor markets. In a superstar labor market, the function for the seller looks like a convex curve much more steep than the ordinary labor market and this convexity explains much of the observable consequences. This convexity means that at the top of the pay scale small differences in talent mean disproportionately larger differences in earnings and at the bottom small differences in talent mean almost no increase in pay (chart 2 is a simple illustration of the model). For most superstar labor markets, including broadcasting, the proportion of earnings to talent becomes magnified as it nears the top of the scale. The top ten tennis players earn millions of dollars, while the rest of those ranked only among the top 100 earn much less. This skewed distribution of earnings is possible because of imperfect substitution among sellers. If you prefer watching your favorite anchor, watching two hours of another news show is not an adequate substitute. In winner-take-all labor markets that imperfect substitution is more pronounced than in other markets. As Rosen put it: Lesser talent often is a poor substitute for greater talent. The worse it is the larger the sustainable rent accruing to higher quality sellers because demand for the better sellers increases more than proportionately: hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance. If a surgeon is 10 percent more successful in saving lives than his fellows, most people would be willing to pay more than a 10 percent premium for his services. A company involved in a $30 million lawsuit is rash to scrimp on the legal talent it engages.[27] The second feature of superstar markets is the strong relationship between the size of the market the individual can reach and salary. The potential size of an individual's market in the media is closely related to changes in communication technology. Frank and Cook pay particular attention to the impact of communication technology in creating and sustaining these markets. When the phonograph was invented suddenly the finest symphony orchestras expanded their markets around the globe and salaries correspondingly rose for a select group of musicians and conductors. The market for classical music has never been larger than it is now, yet the number of full-time soloists on any given instrument is also on the order of only a few hundred. ... Performers of first rank comprise a limited handful out of these small totals and have very large incomes. There are also known to be substantial differences in income between them and those in the second rank.[28] Radio allowed vaudeville performers previously confined to a stage to expand their potential markets across the country, and a select group of highly paid stars emerged. One television anchor can command a huge market; millions of people tune in for his or her services of reading the news. The concentration of output in the market on a few individuals is possible because of communication technology, which has also limited the size of the market. Technological and policy limitations on the number of radio and television stations early in the history of broadcasting created a market that was small. High barriers to entry, particularly for the national market, made the addition of more competitors unlikely.[29] The better sellers can and do handle more buyers. More talented sellers have markets and salaries that are exponentially larger than their talent would indicate. As the overall market grows in size the most talented receive the greatest salary increases and the distribution of salaries becomes more skewed. Conversely, as the market decreases in size we should expect the range of salaries to contract. The implication for the individual worker is that it is advantageous to operate in the largest possible market. As a worker moves up the salary scale by gaining "box-office appeal" or by moving across the division of labor (a reporter becoming an anchor, for example) it becomes proportionately more advantageous. A reporter who moves to the anchor slot in a small market enjoys a nice raise. The same job change in a top market makes the reporter a multi-millionaire. Rosen proposes that at least two elements must be present in order for a winner-take-all market to arise.[30] The first is the previously mentioned point that poor talent is an inadequate substitute for greater talent. The second is that the activities in question allow a duplication of services such that an individual can deliver his or her services to an enormous audience. The role of communication technology at this point is crucial. In many (but not all) winner-take-all markets media allow a duplication of effort with very little or no cost to the seller. The media act as what Rosen calls a "cooperating resource" in sustaining large personal markets. The cost of producing a broadcast does not rise in direct proportion to the size of the market, so it still costs the same to produce the news regardless of whether 10 million or 20 million people choose to tune in. Bowbrick, another economist, makes the point that what is important is not only attractiveness or talent of superstars, but the lack of repulsiveness. He cites the finding by a pollster that some movie stars have a negative appeal, where their presence in a film repelled more movie-goers than it attracted, and notes the strong possible effects of this. As he wrote, "If the Magnificent Seven had each been hated by a different 14.28 percent of the population, there would have been no audience."[31] It is important then that news broadcasters not only be preferred, but that they not be disliked by the audience. This becomes more important when we consider that television news viewing is often a social act, and one viewer in a group could reject a broadcaster for the entire group. We want to turn now to work by Frank and Cook that is less constricted by mathematical economic models and more cognizant of the real-world effects of winner-take-all markets. They address the wasteful social costs of superstar markets. First, these markets attract too many contestants and second, they encourage unproductive consumption and investment among contestants vying for the top spots. Rosen's economic model describes a market with a large number of low paid workers, but it does not explain why more people are clamoring to enter the market. There is an enduring observation in television that students are attracted to "glamour, recognition and respect, all of which are endearing elements of the business."[32] This is belied by the poor ratings of job satisfaction among broadcast journalists, but we must remember we are talking about people hoping to enter the labor market, not those already in it. Frank and Cook argue that superstar markets attract contestants not because there is a demand for their services but because of our own inability to accurately estimate our chances of success. This is similar to the reason why we play the lottery. We overestimate our chances of success and our own abilities because we don't know or can't accurately estimate our chances of winning. There is a social cost to this. These are workers who could be producing more output and greater social benefit doing something else, but instead are competing for low wages in broadcasting. The second social cost of the superstar market is its incentives for participants in the market to engage in wasteful behavior. According to Frank and Cook, "The winner-take-all payoff structure encourages another form of waste in that it invites -- indeed, virtually compels -- competitors to take costly steps to enhance their prospects of winning."[33] In the early days of television, journalism tenets and organizational practices served to restrain competition for the services of the top anchors. Networks hired from their own ranks, often moving well-known radio announcers to television. As the profitability of newscasts grew the pressure to break these unwritten rules grew. Roone Arledge of ABC ignored them altogether and dramatically drove up the salaries of network anchors when he bid for the services of Dan Rather at CBS. What Frank and Cook consider to be the greatest problem of superstar markets are these "mutually offsetting, and socially wasteful, patterns of competitive investment."[34] Television anchors are engaged in a positional arms race. The rewards depend not only on their absolute performance (the highest ratings) but on their performance relative to others (winning the time slot). Contestants invest in improving their performance because the rewards of winning are so high. Athletes in a superstar market push themselves to train because if they improve only a tiny amount, if they add 5 mph to their fastball or their tennis serve, the rewards are huge. Likewise, the individual rewards for a few ratings points are huge, but the difficulty is that it is not clear exactly what an anchor must invest in to improve ratings. Consequently, great investments are made in the hopes of great reward. For some anchors, these investments have been voice coaches, hairdressers, skills training or even plastic surgery. If two anchors are evenly talented (i.e. popular) then even the smallest investment by one would yield a slight advantage and a much greater personal reward. Networks, too, are locked in this arms race. If they could agree to limit salaries they would remove the incentive for individuals to make these investments. Instead, networks make competing investments as well. ABC and NBC invest a great deal in correspondent training programs that include voice coaches as well as professional critiques and mentorship.[35] There is a great incentive both for the individuals and the news organizations to invest in news anchors. This is socially wasteful in real terms: If all news anchors wore blue jumpsuits ratings would most likely remain the same and society would be saved the wasted expense on clothes. Whether this is a valuable insight in terms of journalistic norms is another question. Frank and Cook clearly think so, and they see greater media scrutiny of elected officials and media sensationalism as the result. Winner-take-all markets in media and culture are of course nothing new. Nor, for that matter, is our fascination with matters lurid and sensational. So why have the offerings of popular culture been catering so much more overtly to this fascination in recent years? ... The dynamic processes just described are only part of the story. More fundamental has been growth -- both in the top prizes at stake in cultural markets and in the openness of the competition for these prizes. These changes not only make it more tempting for any given player to break with tradition, they also simultaneously weaken the social forces that hold industry norms together.[36] The Cable News Network (CNN) is worth special mention because it was an effort to alter the rules of the marketplace to keep salaries low. When CNN was launched, with a very low budget, it hired several dozen known correspondents from the major networks, but it also hired hundreds of college students at salaries far below usual wages.[37] At CNN, the story was preeminent, not the reporter or anchor on the scene, and this altered the salary structure and consequently the dynamic of news gathering. According to Jon Katz, a journalist and media critic, [CNN] has managed to avoid the cumbersome, expensive and increasingly dubious anchor star system that has bogged down the networks. On CNN, the story is the star, not the anchor. Few viewers can name CNN reporters yet, a fact that leaves CNN producers free to pursue stories quickly, cheaply and without regard to tender anchor sensibilities.[38] Another observer wrote, "Turner's Atlanta-based empire tries to avoid the cult of anchor personality because, as CBS, ABC and NBC all have painfully learned, an anchor star means megabuck salaries."[39] One of CNN's most highly paid anchors, Bernard Shaw, earned about $300,000 in 1989, much less than top anchors elsewhere. In economic terms, this is an effort by CNN to partition the market. A partitioned superstar market is when a market served by one or a few superstars is broken into more markets each served by a slightly different kind of supplier. One example is cable television, which has expanded the possibilities for comedians and musicians to appear, breaking up the market and offering greater opportunities for more performers. As we saw before, a smaller superstar market reduces the salaries of the most highly paid. Discussion Rosen's work is important for two reasons. First, it explains two of the most interesting aspects of the labor market in broadcasting -- high numbers of low paid workers and high salaries for a select few. Second, and much more importantly, Rosen uses a neoclassical economic model. We should not underestimate this point. The neoclassical model of how a labor market should work is compelling and broadly accepted, and we use it here to explain a phenomena that observers in our field argue is an aberration. It is not, but a market working as it should. If the television labor market is best described as a superstar market, then there are several implications. First, the low salaries and large number of applicants will not change the market. The law of supply and demand is at work here, but not in the manner in which we typically expect, so the market is not going to "clear" and broadcasting salaries for young journalists are not going to rise in the next few years. This is a pot of gold we have promised to broadcasting students for many years and we should stop. The market is already at equilibrium. We should not expect any change in the large number of applicants and low salaries, nor any change in the labor market because of those factors. Secondly, television managers do not need to raise entry-level salaries in order to attract applicants into the field. In other words, any changes in the demand side of the market will not be driven by supply. As much as we would like to tell students that the salary structure will change, it will not unless the fundamental structure of the market changes. There may be a compelling reason to raise salaries in order to attract a different type of applicant than those currently available, but there is no reason to raise salaries to continue to encourage students to apply. Because of this, Frank and Cook's conjecture about the effects of a superstar market is interesting. They state, without much evidence, that the superstar market squelches diversity in the market of media content. That is a sweeping claim, but intuitively appealing. There is a sameness to broadly popular prime time television and network news. It seems that the economic structure of this market must have an impact on such things as the media content produced by the newsworkers in the market. Likewise, it seems that the market and journalistic professionalism are closely related. Journalistic values promote a similarity of product. This similarity of product makes the product more substitutable, and the communication technology makes it more of a public good; nearly costless to reproduce and hence available to everyone. Despite the insights from thinking about the labor market with this economic analysis, the initial criticisms of a neoclassical market raised early in this paper remain. Rosen's analysis offers useful insights, but it does not address power in the labor market. As anchors rise to the top of their profession they acquire political power along with high pay. Network anchors have enormous authority over the content of the news, the appointments to the top reporting assignments, and the hiring of substitute or co-anchors.[40] Much has been written about the power of news anchors in the political arena, but this is power exercised in the workplace. Any complete analysis of the broadcasting labor market must consider it, as well as a greater consideration of the effects of the labor market on the behavior of broadcast journalists, the implications for the training system for journalists and the importance of economic structural factors in the construction of news. NOTES [1] . See Lee B. Becker, Gerald M. Kosicki, Thomas Engleman and K. Viswanath, "Finding Work and Getting Paid: Predictors of Success in the Mass Communications Job Market," Journalism Quarterly 70 (Winter 1993): 919-933; David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 80-87; and Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 91-98. [2] . Chet Huntley began his broadcasting career in 1939 at $75 a week See Barbara Matusow, The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983): 90; Harry Reasoner, Before the Colors Fade (New York: Alfred A. Knopf): 25-28; and Sam Donaldson, Hold on, Mr. President! (New York: Random House): 34-35. [3] . Matusow, The Evening Stars, 51-74. [4] . Ibid, 3, 7. [5] . Ibid, 135. [6] . "He thought nothing of offering a producer who was making $35,000 a year at CBS an additional $50,000 a year to come to ABC." Ibid, 20. [7] . Ibid, 20, 27. [8] . Ibid, 27. [9] . Ibid, 37. Estimates of Rather's 1979 contract including benefits begin at about $20 million for 10 years and run as high as $35 million for 10 years. See Cecilia Capuzzi, "The ABCs of Making News Profits," Channels (March 1989): 30-35. [10] . Gunther, Marc, The House that Roone Built: The Inside Story of ABC News (Boston: Little, Brown and company), 233. [11] . Elizabeth Lesly, "Time to Say Goodnight, Dan?" Business Week, 26 August 1996, 27; Bill Carter, "Sawyer Makes a New Deal with ABC," The New York Times, 17 February 1994, section C, p. 22; LaWanda Edwards, "Baltimore's television salary sweepstakes." Warfield's Business Record, 4 March 1994, 1; and Tim Kiska, "Anchors away," The Detroit News, 9 May 1996. [12] . John W.C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski and William W. Bowman, The News People: A Sociological Portrait of American Journalists and Their Work (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 134, 132 & 235; Kenneth Harwood, "Earnings & Education of Men & Women in Selected Media Occupations," Journal of Broadcasting 20 (Spring 1976): 233-237; Irving E. Fang & Frank W. Gerval, "A Survey of Salaries and Hiring Preferences in Television News." Journal of Broadcasting 15 (fall 1971): 421-433; Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist, 80-85; Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s, 92-95. [13] . Vernon Stone (1996). Television and Radio News Research [WWW document]. URL http://www.missouri.edu/~jourvs/ [14] . These estimates are taken or derived from data provided by Stone, Television and Radio News Research. [15] . Lee B. Becker, Vernon A. Stone and Joseph D. Graf, "Entry-Level Pay: Is Oversupply an Explanation for Low Wages?" Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (autumn 1996): 519-533. [16] . Job applicants outnumbered jobs by nearly 10 to 1. This ratio declines significantly if only highly qualified applicants are considered instead of everyone seeking a job. However, the measure of labor supply did not include those applicants from outside journalism education trying to enter the field. About 91 percent of new hires in 1991 were from journalism programs, so graduates from outside journalism were increasing the labor supply by roughly 10 percent. Clearly, there are many more job seekers in the field than jobs. See Becker et al, "Entry-Level Pay: Is Oversupply an Explanation for Low Wages?" [17] . See Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Robert S. Smith, Modern Labor Economics: Theory and Public Policy (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 244-245. [18] . Robert H. Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). [19] . Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s, 49-124. They found that 25 percent of television journalists gave the "engaging nature" response as opposed to 10 percent of the total population. See also Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work; Johnstone, Slawski & Bowman, The News People; and Margaret H. DeFleur, "Foundations of Job Satisfaction in the Media Industries." Journalism Educator, 47 (spring 1992): 3-15. One survey found more journalists in broadcasting (including radio) agreed with the statement that they had a sense of pride in their field, although fewer broadcasting journalists reported a commitment to the profession. See Lee B. Becker, Jeffrey W. Fruit & Susan L. Caudill, The Training and Hiring of Journalists (Norwood, NJ: Ablex): 149-150. The professional values of journalism students are also discussed in Becker, Fruit & Caudill, 49-50. [20] . John H. Godard, "The Political Economy of Control: An Organizational Theory of Structural Inequality," Work and Occupations 20 (3) (August 1993): 337-367. [21] . J.R. Hicks, The Theory of Wages (New York, Macmillan, 1973). [22] . G. Becker, Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). [23] . Sherwin Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars," The American Economic Review 71 (December 1981): 845-858. [24] . Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 2-5. [25] . Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars," 845. [26] . See Jon LaFayette, "Sawyer fight stirs issue of news pay." Electronic Media, 14 February 1994, 1. '"What really can't be projected with any great accuracy is the audience base that those people may or may not bring to a program," says Eric Braun, manager of consultation and research at TV consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. "The linkage between ratings and that sort of qualitative evaluation is very difficult to draw."' [27] . Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars," 846. [28] . Ibid, 845. [29] . Barriers to entry for national networks have been overcome first by national and international cable networks and then by new non-cable networks such as Fox. [30] . Sherwin Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars," The American Scholar (Autumn 1983): 449-460. [31] . Peter Bowbrick, "The Economics of Superstars: Comment," The American Economic Review 73 (June 1983): 459. [32] . Terry Likes, "Monday memo; broadcasting education commentary." Broadcasting, 3 September 1990, 17. See also Tomorrow's Broadcast Journalists: A Report and Recommendations from the Jane Pauley Task Force on Mass Communication Education (Greencastle, IN: Society of Professional Journalists, 1996). [33] . Frank and Cook, 9. [34] . Ibid, 126. [35] . Jeff Gremillion, "On the Fast Track to Network News; Star School." Columbia Journalism Review 33, January 1995, 32. [36] . Frank and Cook, 198. [37] . Whittemore, Hank, CNN: The Inside Story (Boston: Little, Brown and company, 1990), 35. [38] . Jon Katz, "Despite their power, a media critic argues, TV's pampered stars are turning into an endangered species." The Newsday Magazine, 9 December 1990, 11. [39] . Jay Sharbutt, "Bernard Shaw: Cable News' Mr. Anchor; CNN's No-Nonsense Reporter has found a place alongside Rather, Jennings and Brokaw." Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1989, 8. [40] . See Jon Katz, "Despite their power, a media critic argues, TV's pampered stars are turning into an endangered species." The Newsday Magazine, 9 December 1990, 11; and Matusow, 3, 27.