Marshall McLuhan on Commercial and Public Media

In June 1977, McLuhan visited Australia and was a guest on Monday Conference, a popular live ABC television show hosted by Robert Moore.

In this excerpt Professor McLuhan takes a swipe at public broadcasting, then he can be heard just off-mic, saying to Moore, "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to sneak off and have a pee!".

McLuhan debated his ideas with Moore and took questions from a feisty studio audience made up of members of the media and advertising industry, including TV boss Bruce Gyngell (see Part One at 14 mins), and young Derryn Hinch (see Part Two from 3 mins). For full interview go to http://abc.net.au/rn/mcluhan/videos.htm


McLuhan had been brought to Australia to address a broadcasting conference organised by Sydney radio station 2SM, and the Monday Conference was broadcast from the ballroom of the Sydney Hilton Hotel.

Lecture Seven

As defined in the 2006 WGBH Educational Foundation Conference: Open Content and Public Broadcasting, public media is, "in general, media whose mission is to serve or engage a public". In this, its primary focus is not to turn a profit, but to be of public service.  

Including traditional publicly-funded broadcasters and networks as well as public uses of new platforms and distribution mechanisms (eg. Internet, podcasting, blogging), the public media landscape is comprised of ABC, SBS and their digital channels in the realms of television and radio. 

The international public media landscape is far-reaching:

Unlike profit-driven commercial media, whose business is in generating audiences, public media is primarily government funded and exists in support of public and democratic processes. This public value, according to the BBC, concerns imbedding a 'public service ethos', weighing public value against market impact, and public consultation or interactivity. 

More extensively, the Broadcasting Research Unit defined public service broadcasting as involving:

- Geographical universality

- Universality of appeal 

- Special provision for minorities

- A special relationship to the sense of national identity and community

- A distancing from all vested interests

- Competition in good programming rather than competition for numbers

- Guidelines which liberate rather than restrict 

The ABC is responsible for producing television channels such as ABC, ABC 2 and 3, ABC News 24, as well as ABC radio stations like Radio National and Triple J. It comprises many interest areas such as documentaries, comedy, religious programming, science, drama and news. It was founded as a "nation building project" - a tacit answer to the kind of nation we thought we would be - and is seen as reaching far and deep into Australian minds. 

The SBS produces SBS, SBS 1 and 2 and SBS radio. It was launched primarily as a result of Paul Keating's 'Creative Nation' initiative as a keen multicultural channel, "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". Therefore, its interest areas were highly concentrated on world news, current affairs, Indigenous cultural works as well as sport, comedy and reality. 

The function of public media can be seen as nationally centred - thereby encouraging nation building, nation heritage, national identity and national conversations - focussing on 'the press', entertainment, utility, social and propaganda. Although public media is of public service, it is still commercially associated. These associations evidence themselves in programs like BBC Worldwide, ABC Commercial as well as things like The World Game Shop and PBS. These are money-making mechanisms which are put into action in order to recycle as funding towards further publicly-concerned programs. Of course, a primary component of public media is news, with 41% of the Australian public getting their news from the ABC. Considering the number of news outlets available in our country, this is quite an outstanding figure!

The serious, broadsheet, importance-focussed and considered style of public media is criticised as being boring, elitist, of limited interest, poorly presented and out of touch. However, as Robert Richter maintains, public media is the last bastion of long-form investigative media, voicing opinions largely "ignored by commercial media". 

Challenges of public media, like commercial media, is attaining and maintaining an audience. In order to do this it may be necessary for public media to improve its quality, become more relevant, engage with the democratic process, inform the public and aim for independence - which is difficult when it is government funded. However, its ownership by the government means an ownership by the people, thus public benefit must prevail. Its independence, however, must survive possible allegations of bias and agenda, opinion and funding difficulties. 

The SBS and ABC are highly influential broadcasting mediums within our Australian society. I believe the ABC is governed by a character to ensure independence, objectivity and national representation. However, in programs such as The Drum, the shift to more opinion-based commentary is prevalent. I see SBS as reflecting the diversity of Australia in its championing of a multiplicity of voices. I fully support its privileging of ethics, which I believe should underpin the practice of journalism. 

Distinguishing public from commercial

Nigel Milan

"The difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens"

- Nigel Milan, former Managing Director of SBS

Trust and Interest in Commercial Media

Nine's, "The ones you can trust" and Seven's, "The one to watch" are words heard in almost every Australian household. Commercial media seeks to familiarise itself with its audience - gaining their trust and attention in order to survive.

For example, Seven's Sunrise, the country's top-rating breakfast television show, aims to achieve a familial environment . "There is a suggestion of a living room in the arrangement of chairs and furniture", and keen faces press against the windows that open onto Martin Place - Sydney's main thoroughfare. These faces are those of the 'Sunrise family'. Being a proper member of the sunrise family involves signing up online, where you receive newsletters and discounts at certain shops and are able to send stories into the show - "The show's website boasts that its point of difference is that viewers set the agenda."

As Margaret Simons said in her fabulous book, "The Content Makers",

"Mel and Kochie are parents. They know what it means - they smile ruefully at the audience and at each other - to be up all night with a crying baby. The Mother's Group will be up soon. Breaking news passes on a ticker at the bottom of the screen - war, politicians' claims, the weather - while Kochie and Mel smile and chat and follow up the issues that drive viewers' lives, still trying to send them into the day with a smile."

The competition between news stations is palpable. They need to be creative with not only their content but their method of distribution. Channel Nine is known for its closed-off culture, where what they give is dependent solely on the value of what they can take. Simons spoke of not even being able to get an interview with the network, one of their corporate public relations "hacks" in fact saying, "What's in it for us?". Contrastingly, she presents her interaction with Channel Seven as "light and friendly" as she was "welcomed into the newsroom" personally by their news director, Chris Willis.

Ratings are the tell-all of commercial media success. "Every morning they hit the desk of the newsroom executives, and there are teams of specialists who analyse them. They show, minute by minute, how each channel rated the previous day. It is possible to see the movement of the audience - not only what they watched, but when they switched channels, where they went and for how long, and who switched off altogether." It has been found that there are some "reliable turn-ons and turn-offs", which lend themselves to the value of that which is concerned with everyday life - health and transport news, for example, followed by what is happening in the viewer's locality and "stuff about the weirdness of folk". It is also said that any picture of politicians in Parliament causes the ratings graphs to dive. "It's so grey in there", Chris Willis says, "People switch off in droves".

It is also made evident that television news cannot cover everything, or even most things. "Television must have pictures...It's not like newspapers, where there are dozens of people and dozens of stories. A camera crew and reporter might hang around somewhere all day waiting for the shot. A news item that takes one and a half minutes to tell might take an hour and a half to edit, and getting the story might take a whole day. 'You have to be selective' says Willis...The big push at Channel Seven is to be more proactive, to move away from following up what was in the morning's newspapers." In this, it shows the need for individuality in order to attain interest from which they can gain trust. They must strive for originality and interactivity.

"The way of the future is interactivity, says Peter Meakin. That's why Sunrise has been such a success, 'because of the feel and the reality of constant interaction with the viewers.' Interactivity is the means by which free-to-air television can, if it wishes, campaign - at least on issues the public is already concerned about. In 2006, Sunrise launched a 'Cool the Globe' campaign on global warming, including regular items on how to reduce power consumption and offers of a free kit for viewers with a form letter to be sent to politicians...In November the Sunrise presenters took part in protest marches calling for government action on global warming. The Sunrise program became greenhouse=gas neutral, adding up all the energy used by cameras, lights and so forth and reducing it or offsetting it by planting trees. It became the first media outlet to be declared Greenhouse Friendly by the Federal Government. The proper position for a television station, says Meakin, is to be a little ahead of the audience but not too far ahead."

 VS. 

The role and influence of media

To be able to participate in community life and make political choices, citizens heavily rely on information. They need to know what is going on and the options that they should weigh, debate and act upon. An essential element for a functioning public sphere, therefore, is information. 

Whereas formerly, communication mostly happened on a face-to-face basis in large and complex societies, (mass) media has evolved as the principal source of information. It acts as a transport medium for the information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere. Ideally there should be a wide range of media, that represent the diverse opinions and viewpoints on issues of public interest existent in a society and which are independent of the state and society's dominant economic forces.

Media, therefore, decides which topics and issues are on the agenda or not; which individuals or societal groups are given broadcasting time or publishing space and which aspects and facts are presented or suppressed. The media has the ability to influence public opinion and those controlling the media are to a certain extent capable of altering the nature of discourse in their desired direction.

The Public Sphere - Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

According to social critic and philosopher Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."

The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publications of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. This notion of the public sphere is produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies, the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.

Media Watch

"There was a time, not so long ago, when running a media company - be it one that specialised in newspapers, in radio, in television, or in all three - was a pretty simple job.
Keep the costs within bounds, use your clout to ensure that governments didn't permit too much competition, make sure your content delivered audiences of a quality and in a quantity that your advertisers expected, and the money rolled in."

- Johnathon Holmes

Johnathon Homes speaks to Fairfax Media's CEO, Greg Hywood:

Some very interesting and quite profound words, I believe, were spoken by Hywood in this interview:
"Just because you're interested in celebrity...doesn't mean that you're not interested in what's happening in Libya, or...in the Japanese earthquake, or what's happening with economic policy out of Canberra. People can juggle a lot of balls"