Everyone ought to check out this new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation which offers a damning analysis of the ways that television stations are serving the public. We own the airwaves and TV stations get free licenses by promising that they will serve their communities. I tend to think that real service to a community would mean local news about critical local issues or emergency notifications or coverage of local elections, etc... However most television stations point to their weather and local sports coverage as public service - that and all the PSAs they give. I always wonder if non-profits would need to run PSAs if the issues they were working on - hunger, homelessness, domestic abuse, etc... - were actually being covered by the local TV news. But why would TV news spend their money producing hard hitting journalism when they can just run PSAs produced by local non-profits and claim to be serving the public?

Well it turns ou that event he PSAs they run are measly nods to public service. This report outlines that " broadcast and cable stations in the study donated an average of 17 seconds an hour to PSAs – totaling one-half of one percent of all TV airtime. The most frequent time period for PSAs to air was between midnight and 6 a.m., accounting for 46% of donated PSAs across all stations in the study; looking only at broadcast stations, 60% of donated PSAs ran overnight." The full press release is below.

Clearly stations are trying to do the bare minnimum. In this case, PSA seems to stand for "Pretty Sorry Attempt."

We need to define the public interest better so this sort of thing can no longer pass for acceptable.

Washington,
D.C. – While the media
environment is evolving rapidly, television continues to be the dominant medium
used by the American public. TV advertising is therefore still a core component
of most major public service campaigns, on topics such as childhood obesity,
drunk driving, or cancer prevention. To help inform the work of non-profits
seeking to communicate with the public, the Kaiser Family Foundation is
releasing a new, updated study that examines the extent and nature of public
service advertising (PSA) on both broadcast and cable television.

The report –
Shouting To Be
Heard (2): Public Service Advertising in a Changing Television
World – found that broadcast and cable stations in the
study donated an average of 17 seconds an hour to PSAs – totaling one-half of
one percent of all TV airtime. The most frequent time period for PSAs to air was
between midnight and 6 a.m., accounting for 46% of donated PSAs across all
stations in the study; looking only at broadcast stations, 60% of donated PSAs
ran overnight. The time period with the fewest donated PSAs was during prime
time (8-11 p.m.), with 13% of all donated PSAs.

The most common issue
among donated PSAs was health (26% of all donated PSAs), followed by fundraising
(23%), family and social concerns (12%), community organizations or events (8%),
and volunteerism (6%).

“PSAs can be an
important tool, but obviously they have to be seen to be effective,” said Vicky
Rideout, vice president and Director of Kaiser’s Program for the Study of
Entertainment Media and Health. “With so little airtime being made available,
making sure PSAs get seen frequently by their target audience can be a daunting
task.”

This report updates a
previous study released in 2002 which allows for some comparisons over time.
While the time allotted to donated PSAs increased from 7 seconds to 15 seconds
per hour on cable television during this period, overall, there was no
statistically significant change in the average amount of time donated to PSAs
when broadcast television was factored in. Also during this period, the study
found that paid commercial advertising increased from 11:45 of ads per hour to
12:25. In addition, during this period the proportion of donated ads featuring a
Web address increased form 32% to 75%.

The Kaiser report was
released today at a forum that featured Federal Communications Commission
Members Michael Copps, Jonathan Adelstein, and Deborah Taylor Tate along with
representatives from News Corporation, CBS, Time Warner, Univision, the Ad
Council and the American Legacy Foundation. A webcast of the event will be
available after 5:00 p.m. ET today at http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia012408pkg.cfm.

Additional key
findings:

Time Allotted to
Donated PSAs

• English-language broadcast stations
  assessed by the study (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) donated an average of 18 seconds
  an hour to PSAs. The cable stations (CNN, ESPN, MTV, Nickelodeon, and TNT)
  donated an average of 15 seconds an hour. The Spanish language network
  (Univision) donated an average of 29 seconds per hour to PSAs. (The overall
  average across all types of stations was 17 seconds an hour).
  
• Most donated PSAs were 30 seconds
  long. Twenty-two percent were less than 30 seconds, and 10 percent were longer
  than 30 seconds.

Time of Day Donated
PSAs Are Run

• The amount of time donated to PSAs
  ranged from 9 seconds an hour during prime time, to 32 seconds an hour after
  midnight.
• Just under half (46%) of all time
  donated to PSAs occurred between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., across all
  stations in the study. On the broadcast stations, a greater proportion of
  donated PSA airtime occurred during the overnight hours (60%), compared to 38
  percent for the cable stations, and 35 percent for the Spanish language channel.
  

Issues Covered in
Donated PSAs

• Health was the most common PSA
  topic, accounting for 26% of all donated PSAs. A wide variety of health issues
  were addressed, with the most frequent being fitness (6% of all donated PSAs),
  cancer (4%), HIV/AIDS (3%), and overall wellness (3%).
• Environmental issues accounted for
  4% of all donated PSAs.

Viewer Follow Up

• A large majority of all donated
  PSAs included some type of provision for viewers to follow up on information
  presented in the spot: for example, a Web address (75%) or a toll-free telephone
  number (38%). Eighty-five percent included one or the other.
  
• The proportion featuring a Web
  address increased from 32 percent in 2000 to 75 percent in 2005, while the
  proportion with a toll-free telephone number decreased from 49 percent to 38
  percent over the same period.

Local vs. National
PSAs

• One in five donated PSAs (20%)
  specifically addressed a local issue, cause or event, while 80% were national in
  scope.

Paid PSAs

• Instead of relying on donated
  airtime, some corporations, non-profits, and government agencies purchase
  airtime for public service messages. In addition to donated PSAs, the study
  found that there was an average of 10 seconds an hour devoted to paid PSAs.
  
• Paid PSAs got better airtime than
  those relying on donated time: 27 percent ran after midnight (compared to 46
  percent of donated spots); 19 percent ran during prime time (compared to 13
  percent for donated spots).
• A little more than a third (37%) of
  paid PSAs were sold at some type of discount – either a special nonprofit rate,
  or being part of a “match” in which sponsors purchased one spot and got another
  for free.

Advertising and other
non-programming content on TV

• Across all channels in the study, a
  little more than one out of every four minutes – or 27 percent of all airtime –
  was devoted to non-programming content (16:25 per hour, up from 15:35 in 2000).
  This includes 21% of airtime that is spent on advertising, and 4% that is spent
  on promos.
• The amount of time dedicated to
  advertising increased from 11:45 per hour in 2000 to 12:25 in 2005 – a
  statistically significant increase of 40 seconds an hour.
  
• The four major broadcast networks
  and their affiliates aired considerably more non-programming content per hour
  (18:47) than did the cable stations in the study (15:04).