Buying the media
Now as you have no doubt noticed we are approaching the deadline for a general election to be held, and increasingly all political parties are setting out their stalls to try and tempt voters.
What you may also have noticed is the steady drip, drip of increasing government advertising over recent years. The annual budget of the Central Office of Information (COI) now stands at over £500M.
In 2001, the Conservatives accused the government of spending "more than £62m of taxpayers' money advertising itself" over 3 months (£248m/year) in the run-up to the general election that year (note how the advertising budget has more than doubled since then). The theory was that Labour was stimulating lots of advertising to make the government look better- "look at all these fantastic new services/benefits"- with the side effect of making Labour look better, them being the party in power.
If you look at government advertising today however, the tone is quite different to that conveyed back in 2001. The adverts are now usually intended to modify the population's behaviour somehow, much like wartime propaganda. This fact to me suggests that the massively increased advertising of late is not intended to apply any kind of 'electoral halo' to the incumbent party.
If that is the case, is there any electioneering purpose to the advertising, or should it be taken entirely at its paternalistic face value? I believe that something else is going on.
Since the start of the current economic problems in 2008, government advertising has grown to a massive proportion of the advertising market nationally, especially in radio, by virtue of the COI's much larger budget and importantly by the reduction of advertising demand from the private sector due to the recession. The COI is the biggest single advertiser in the country.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, have indicated that if they come to power they wish to slash "Programmes that represent poor value for money, excessive spending on things like advertising".
Now look at the situation from the point of view of a commercial broadcaster, whether an independent or one of the large media empires. One party is providing a huge revenue stream to your operation. The other promises to slash that revenue. It would certainly be tempting to 'nudge' the media output to favour 'the party of plenty', wouldn't it?
Presuming this assertion to be true, what could the Conservatives do to win the 'hearts and minds' and so the output of the commercial media? Like in any industry, money is the language of love, so any sweetener would need to increase their profitability. With budget increases ruled out, and tax cuts highly unlikely in the short to medium term due to a commitment to reduce government debt, there remain only the avenues of reduced competition and reduced regulation.
Funny how they propose cutting competition against the commercial media from the BBC, and reducing regulation to allow larger media groups (also reducing competition), isn't it? Any meshing with core ideology is just the icing on the cake.
January 19th, 2010 - 00:40
Whoever you vote for one thing is for sure: The government get in.