Nature of the Mass Communicator

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Publishing a newspaper or operating a TV station requires control of money, manage­ment of personnel, coordination of activities, and application of authority. To accomplish all of these tasks, a well-defined organizational structure characterized by specialization, division of labor, and focused areas of responsibility is necessary. Consequently, this means that mass communication will be the product of a bureaucracy. As in most bureaucracies, decision making will take place at several different levels of management, and channels of communication within the organization will be formal­ized. Thus many of the decisions about what gets included in a newspaper or in a TV program will be the result of committee or group decisions. Further, this means that decisions will have to be made by several different individuals in ascending levels of the bureaucracy and that communication will follow predetermined and predictable patterns within the organization. On occasion, this leads to communication problems and misunderstandings. On other occasions, decisions will be made that have to satisfy various individuals at several different levels of the bureaucracy, and that results in end products that seldom resemble the original idea of the creator.

Another important factor that characterizes the mass communicator is the presence of multiple gatekeepers. A gatekeeper is any person (or group) who has control over what material eventually reaches the public. Gatekeepers exist in large numbers in all mass communication organizations. Some are more obvious than others, for example, the editor of a newspaper or the news director at a TV station. Some gatekeepers are less visible. To illustrate, let's imagine that you have the world's greatest idea for a TV series. You write the script, check possible production companies, and mail it off to Universal Studios in California. A clerk in the mailroom judges by the envelope that it is a script and sees by the return address that it has come from an amateur writer. The clerk has been instructed to return all such packages unopened with a note saying that Universal does not consider unsolicited material. Gate closed.

Frustrated, you decide to go to Los Angeles in person and hand deliver your work. You rush in from the airport to the office of Universal's vice president in charge of production, where a receptionist politely tells you that Universal never looks at scripts that were not submitted through an agent. Gate closed. You rush out to a phone booth and start calling agents. Fourteen secretaries tell you that their agencies are not accepting new writers. Fourteen closed gates. Finally, you find an agent who will see you (gate open!). You rush to the agent's office where he or she glances through your script and says, "No thanks" (gate closed). By now the point is probably clear. Many people serve as gatekeepers. In our hypothetical example, even if an agent agreed to represent you, the agent would then have to sell your script to a producer who, in turn, might have to sell it to a production company which, in turn, might have to sell it to a network. There are many gates to pass through.

In the newsroom, an assignment editor decides whether to send a reporter to cover a certain event. The reporter then decides if anything about the event is worth reporting. An editor may subsequently shorten the story, if submitted, or delete it altogether. Obviously, gatekeepers abound in mass communication. The more complex the organization, the more gatekeepers will be found.

It costs a large sum of money to start a mass communication organization and to keep it running. Recently, the Houston Chronicle was sold for more than $400 million. A dozen magazines formerly owned by CBS were sold to a French company for about $700 million. U.S. News and World Report brought $167 million. In Los Angeles an FM station was sold for nearly $110 million and a TV station was bought for $510 million.

Once the organization is in operation, expenses are also sizable. In the early 1990s, it cost approximately $4 to 5 million annually to run a small daily (one with a circulation of about 35,000 to 40,000). A radio station in a medium-sized urban market might spend $700,000 annually in operating expenses. A TV station in the top ten markets might need more than $10 million to keep it going. These economic facts mean that only those organizations that have the money necessary to institute and maintain these levels of support are able to enter into the production of mass communication.

Media economics have contributed to another trend that made itself evident at the end of the decade: consolidation of ownership. Companies that have strong financial resources are the likeliest to survive high operating expenses and are better able to compete in the marketplace. Consequently, by 1991 a number of global media giants had emerged that dominated the field. The biggest of these companies is Time Warner Inc., formed in 1989 by the merger of Time, Inc., with Warner Communications.

Since we are talking about money, we should also note that most mass communication organizations exist to make a profit. Although there may be some exceptions to this generalization (the public broadcasting system, for example), most newspapers, magazines, record companies, and TV and radio stations in the United States strive to produce a profit for their owners and stockholders. Although it is true that radio and television stations are licensed to serve in the public interest and that newspaper commonly assume a "watchdog" role on behalf of their readers, if they do not make money, they go out of business. The consumer is the ultimate source of this profit. When you buy an album or a movie ticket, part of the price includes the profit. Newspapers, TV, magazines, and radio earn most of their profits by selling their audiences to advertisers. The cost of advertising, in turn, is passed on by the manufacturers to the consumer. Thus, although the process may be direct or indirect, the audience eventually pays the bills.

Since the audience is the source of profits, mass communication organizations compete with one another as they attempt to attract an audience. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever watched television or passed a magazine stand. The major TV networks compete with one another to get high ratings. Millions of dollars are spent each year in promoting the new fall season. Radio stations compete with other stations that have similar formats. Some even give away prizes for listening; others play more music. Record companies spend large sums promoting their records, hoping to outsell their competitors. Daily newspapers compete with weeklies and radio and television. Time competes with Newsweek. Motion picture companies gamble millions on films in an effort to compete successfully.