Learning Object Transcript: Dallas W.

Smythe
Commodity of Audience and Their Work

Audience Commodity Audience Work Reference: The media sees the audience as follows: A commodity
that will be sold. A workforce. Viewers become a commodity when they are exposed to advertisements.
Advertisers present "problems" to the audience. As such, advertising producer goods are not a priority
for advertisers.

Let's ask and answer a few questions that should be able to identify and describe the audience more
precisely:

1. What do advertisers buy with their advertising expenses?

As difficult business people - they don't pay for advertising, or from altruism. What they buy is a public
service with predictable specifications that will pay attention to the predictable amount and at certain
times for certain means of communication (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and
third-class letters) in certain market areas. 4 As the audience's collectivity is a commodity. As a
commodity they face in the market by producers and buyers (the latter being advertisers). Such markets
set prices in the familiar mode of monopoly capitalism. The markets and commodities traded in this
market are special. Audience commodities contain specifications known in business as "demographics."
Specifications for audience commodities include age, gender, income level, family composition, urban or
rural location, ethnic character, boat owner, car, credit card status, social class, and, in the case of hobby
and fan magazines, dedication to photography, electric train models, sports cars, philately, do-it-yourself
crafts, foreign travel, curly sex, etc.

2. Are the audiences homogeneous?

Not at all, even though they all have the same features produced by mass media and prices and are sold
in the oligopolistic market to advertisers that they use for services that earn their income, that is, still
advertising advertisers because their expenditures are productive from the advertiser's point of view.
Audiences produced for sale to advertisers are divided into two groups: products produced in
connection with marketing consumer goods and producer goods. The latter are usually produced by
trade or business media (magazines, newspapers, or direct letters). Buyers of producer goods are usually
institutions (government, in the case of "military sales ventures," or private companies) who might buy
objective quality specifications. In addition, such advertisements are a relatively small part of the whole;
Therefore, the following analysis ignores this audience category. The second and most important
audience class is produced for advertisers marketing consumer goods. Once again, this audience is
divided into two classes: The first is for the producer of what Julian L. Simon (1970, p. 71) calls
homogeneous package goods (HPG) which have some common features. [1]

3. How do advertisers ensure that they get what they pay for when buying audience power?

After all, skeptics ask, how do advertisers know that I am in the listener? And even if I am in the room
when the television is on, why does he think that I pay attention to the advertisement (may I pay
attention when I enter the refrigerator or toilet to coincide with the advertisement appearing)? The
answer is simple. Advertisers believe that they get paid audience in the same way as insurance
companies get by insuring your life. You might die after issuing a policy, or you might pay a premium for
50 years. Insurance companies "gamble" on the possibility of your life in a certain number of years.
Probability, working in large numbers, eliminates risk from betting. As with advertising, the certainty lies
in the law of large numbers and experience with the probability of an audience which results in a
prediction on which the price of listener power is based. So it's important if some members of the
audience get their attention; which is expected and calculated beforehand by advertisers. [2]

4. What institutions produce commodities that advertisers buy with their advertising expenses?

There appear to be two levels to answer this question. The First, the direct level is the media company
and family which is the relationship of the audience. Media companies include companies that operate
commercial television and radio stations (and such a network of stations), newspapers, magazines and
which produce high-end and third-class advertisements. Second, a deeper level is the service delivery
factor for the media. Feeding these media companies with what might be considered producer goods
supporting commercial media "sides" of the production process are all advertising agencies, talent
agents, package program producers, specialist companies in producing commercial announcements, film
producers, wire services (AP, UPI, Reuters, Canadian Press, etc.), "syndicators" in the news column,
writing agents, book publishers, film producers and distributors. [3]

5. How is the price for audience power determined?

Monopoly and oligopoly character - provides the supply of audiences produced by the newspaper
industry. Ownership of a single newspaper practically applies in urban areas of America and Canada, and
the only effective tariff for the price of the audience requested by the newspaper publisher is the
opportunity cost for advertisers to use alternative media (direct mail, billboards, radio and television).
Cross-ownership of radio and television stations by newspaper publishers is very common because it
impedes competition between the media in the sale of audience power. Moreover, oligopolistic pricing
arrangements are supported by old trade associations for each media. Prices differ according to type of
request for audience power. The basis for newspaper prices is the separation of "national" advertisers
from "retail", with previously charged much higher than the last. A separate pricing schedule regulates
sales to "classified" advertisers. Within the retail category, different prices are usually charged for
various advertiser classes, for example on the "business page" - the main financial page, dividend
notifications, company meetings, etc. - or a list of restaurants, entertainment, books, resorts, etc.
Quantity reduction is usually given for larger spaces; frequency discounts, for multiple exposures from
time to time. The rates are determined based on ability to pay (Simon, 1970, pp. 146-7). Magazine prices
for audiences are classified as "national" for magazines that produce national audiences, and "local," for
magazines with more limited geographical coverage. [4]

6. Who pays how much for audience power production?

On the surface it looks like if the exchange of audience power for commercial media content is the same
or maybe even it is tilted for the sake of the audience. You audience members donate your unpaid work
time and in exchange you receive explicit program and advertising material. What better way to spend
"free time"? Especially if, as expected by the audience, the behavior of television viewers since the mid-
1960s increasingly tends to treat television as a visual-aural wallpaper: the set is left and the audience is
present or hovering between the television room and next to the (or far) room, "glimpsing" the
television passing by and monitoring the auditor at all times. [5]

7. What is the nature of the contents of commercial mass media under monopoly capitalism?

In chapter 1 [Smythe, 1981], we considered many ways in which there was a unity between apparently
advertising and apparently nonadvertising content from commercial mass media. Both types have the
same features. But it would be a serious mistake to ignore the importance of formal differences
between "advertising" and "program" or "editorial" content. The fiction that advertising supports or
allows news, entertainment, or "education" content has become a mainstay of commercial mass media
public relations. Professional esprit de corps journalists depend on it. And textbooks, instruction
courses, teachers, and researchers in the mass media accept this fiction as introducing the limits of their
concerns. Either they deal with editorial content (in the case of newspapers and magazines) or program
content, or they have become textbooks, research, etc., about advertising. The only usual connection
made between advertising and nonadvertising media content is to raise and eliminate the suspicion that
advertisers generally tell the paper-news editorial departments and magazines or producers of
television and radio programs what not to say in the nonadvertising section. (Of course, they rarely do
this, it's not neces-sary, because media editorial policies choose people for jobs and predetermines the
limits of what is "accepted" noneditorial content.) [6]

8. What is the nature of the service performed for advertisers by audience members purchased?

In economic terms, the audience commodity is a durable good producer who is bought and used in the
marketing of advertiser products. The work that the audience performs for advertisers to whom they
have been sold is learning to buy goods and spend their income accordingly. Several times, it is to buy
one class of goods (for example, aircraft manufacturers selling air transportation in general, or the dairy
industry, all milk brands) but most often it is a certain "brand" of consumer goods. In short, they work to
create demand for advertised goods which is the goal of monopoly-capitalist advertisers. The audience
may reject, but the advertiser's expectations are manifested that the results perpetuate the demand
management system. [7]

9. How will the power of the audience "work" when it takes place in "free" or "vacation" time?

What is the theory of work value if the audience works? Is it not true that what people do when they are
not working at a job (where they are paid money for their work) is their free time or leisure by
definition? Is it not true that "you can do as you like" in "free" time? Hasn't "modern" household
appliances relieved women of household work? [8]

Refence

[1] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 233.

 [2] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 234.

[3] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 235.

[4] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 236.

[5] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 238.

[6] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 241-242.

[7] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies, (Australia:

Blackwell Publishing, 2006), hlm. 243-244.

[8] Gigi Durham and Douglass Kellner, M