Dave’s Take

For the majority of my life I’ve watched Public Service Announcements (aka-PSAs) on my television warning me of the dangers of everything from smoking to dropping out of school. Some of the most memorable PSAs are as burned into my brain as much as any book or movie I’ve enjoyed. Who can forget the anti-liter campaign featuring an actual Native American Chief with a tear in his eye as he witnesses the destruction of his land by litterbugs? How about the series of spots reminding viewers to wear their seatbelts featuring the world famous Crash Test Dummies? Every time I see an old Perry Mason rerun, I think of the powerful anti-smoking PSA made by William Talman shortly before he died of lung cancer.

Despite their effectiveness and backing from the National Ad Council, the American broadcast PSA has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur. While once protected by law, the public service announcement of the 21st century is now mostly confined to paid placement. Thanks to the removal of regulations during the Reagan administration, television and radio stations are no longer bound by law to provide a certain percentage of their airtime for free to PSAs. Despite the proliferation of cable and satellite channels, the powers that be apparently find PSAs to be too intrusive to the profitability of broadcasters. And that’s a shame.

We need well produced PSAs as a daily reminder of the kind of important issues we are all too busy to think about or to teach others, including our children. A properly produced PSA can cut through clutter and can leave a lasting impression on viewers, especially young viewers. If anyone doubts this, they only need look to the cutting edge anti-smoking campaign that has been running since the big tobacco companies settled with the government. The “Truth” PSAs have been incredibly successful in cutting teenage smoking in the states that have funded their airing. The reason for their success? Truth. They don’t lecture or depend on the claims of exaggerated side effects like the ineffective anti-drug campaigns of the past. They show smoking like it is – a filthy, dirty habit that will eventually kill you.

Despite their success, the majority of young viewers will never see the Truth spots because their states elected to steal the tobacco settlement money they received and divert it to funding the daily expenses of government. This is just one more example of a bureaucratic blunder that has a direct and deleterious impact on the daily lives of Americans. The public needs to demand a return of mandated funding and airing of Pubic Service Announcements. They are a proven method of bettering our lives without having to reinvent the wheel.

Do you remember how broadcast pundits predicted what the future of television would be in the year 2010? How they proclaimed there would be a channel for everyone, regardless of their interests? How the utter abundance of cable and satellite channels would be so unlimited as to be profitable regardless of the specificity of their program’s topics? Well, it’s now 2010 and the pundits didn’t quite get it right.

Sure at first, during the 90s, the availability of hundreds of broadcast channels seemed to be headed in the “anything goes” approach, but then reality set in for everyone. Production companies came to the undeniable conclusion that you really couldn’t make money on simply broadcasting puppies all day, despite their overwhelming cuteness. Cable companies discovered people might like to watch a burning Yule log in fireplaces for an hour on Christmas morning, but that it wore thin the other 364 days each year. In short, in order to make money in the new millennium of entertainment you had to do what has always been done – diversify.

New start-ups like Court TV which were buoyed by early success of big trials like O.J. and the Menendez brothers felt like they had tapped into the collective psyche of America, only to discover that the day to day coverage of ordinary people’s legal problems didn’t generate the viewers they were lead to believe existed. After several years of struggling to build brand loyalty, they threw in the towel and renamed their network truTV. They also diversified their programming to include shows like Cops, Forensic Files, Operation Repo and the old standby, paid programming. Likewise, the Sci-Fi Network watered down their only science fiction programming along with a name change to the ambiguous Syfy so they could show anything they deemed money making. Even the big-brained enticing History Channel slowed down on smart shows and began broadcasting blue-collar shows like Pawn Stars and Axe Men.

Today’s broadcast landscape is not quite the utopia of targeted programming we were promised, but does it really matter? America is a diverse pot of stew and as a reflection of that diversity, so is our entertainment. For those who insist on topical purity in their viewing there’s always the Internet, where rumor has it cute cat videos are abundant.

As anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the past five years knows, smart phones are riding a wave of popularity unseen previously in the mobile market. According to a study by Rubicon Consulting, smart phone sales are on the rise and the demand for them will only continue to grow. Despite the recession and record unemployment, smart phone sales increased over 10% in 2009 and this year’s sales promise to drive smart phone penetration to over 33% of all mobile phone sales. And with those increased sales, comes the inevitable increase in the number and richness of mobile ads.

Now, the god of all things cyber, Google is once again breaking new ground by designing ways for publishers to run bigger, more dynamic Google ads for smart phones equipped with HTML capabilities. Utilizing the newest smart phones, including the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android, Google based advertisers can now send and post ads featuring images, music and more characters than their predecessors. Where are these ads hiding, waiting for some unsuspecting mobile surfer to download their ilk? They are being imbedded in search engine results pages and free applications, forcing users to view them in order to get their requested information.

Not only are mobile searchers getting hit with these cutting edge annoyances already, but Google has guaranteed their numero uno position by engineering new advertising units that can be imbedded directly into all mobile apps without the need for special mobile landing pages. These are already in play with most iPhone free apps, but how long until they are a mainstay with paid applications? Personally, I don’t mind passive ads on free downloads, but when I shell out cash for something, I definitely don’t want to have to view any ads or promos when I use the program. I will also avoid any apps that carry ads that will feature music and video to annoy me. Will advertisers listen to people like me? Doubtful, but who knows?

Pity the magazine publishers. It seems no matter what their strategy, people just don’t want or need their product any more. Blame it on the Internet; blame it on the economy; blame it on the proliferation of style over content, but don’t blame the decline in magazine subscriptions to rising prices. Despite the majority of pubs lowering their subscription costs, customers simply aren’t buying their rags at any cover price.

A recent survey of the top 344 magazines revealed that despite a decision by nearly 75% of the publishers to reduce their per-copy subscription price, paid subscriptions continue to decline. According to the study recently completed by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, cheaper magazine prices have failed dramatically to spur sales. Even when major titles like US News & World Report, Newsweek and Time all cut their rates to a mere 75 cents a copy, readers still weren’t interested.

I firmly believe the magazine biz is absolute proof that pay walls will never work for the vast majority of Internet content. Like magazines, news and opinion websites simply don’t have the timeliness or unique content to merit additional charges. After all, when was the last time you really read any “news” in Time or Newsweek that hadn’t been analyzed to death by TV pundits and other web-based sources? Exactly.

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It appears that the downward spiraling economy is taking a toll on another fabric of society – the jury pool. The Los Angeles Court Systems are complaining of a new and highly disruptive trend in seating citizens for jury duty – the economics of service. It seems that the California courts are having a difficult time in finding people who can afford to take the time off jury duty can require. And not only are those being asked to serve attempting to beg off on hardship clauses, they are becoming more militant in their persuasive techniques.

In a recent case involving a civil suit regarding a severe emotional distress case, potential jurors not only asked to be excused, but once denied that out, decided to yell their objections from the actual jury box. The case in point involved a decorated Sheriff’s deputy suing a supervisor for duress over alleged gay lifestyle charges. Two jurors who were denied dismissal due to economic hardship, forced their own dismissal by one stating in open court, “I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don’t think you could have such distress from that.” Their spontaneous outburst spurred the rest of the jurors to express their doubts loudly as well, forcing the judge to dismiss the entire pool and try the case himself.

In another case involving asbestos damages, 66 of the 107 prospective jurors were excused for purely financial reasons. They simply couldn’t afford to take the time off work and had no choice but to decline the request. Even under the threat of a $1,500 fine, a lot of Los Angelinos are refusing to honor their $15/day duty. Experts maintain that even if California raised their jury pay to the whopping $40/day they’ve been trying to get for decades, it would make little difference. Apparently Justice is broke as well as blind in California.