There was something interesting about the announcement Nickelodeon made a couple of weeks ago. The kid network is launching a new campaign of public service addresses entitled “Talking with Kids about Tough Issues.”
     The most interesting thing is not so much the subject of the PSAs - as noble and conscientious as it may be - but the fact that Nickelodeon has gotten into the public-service habit without getting browbeaten into it.
     Time was when networks ran PSAs because they had to.
    Or, at least, had to sort of, to make sure they looked good when it came time to get their licenses renewed. 
   But that kind of obligation went the way of all sorts of other buttinsky regulations in the Reagan years and isn’t likely to make a comeback any time soon.
     So what’s the deal with Nickelodeon? 
    Are they just trying to make the rest of us look like a bunch of mercenary louts? What’s the incentive for public service in the deregulated, what’s-in-it-for-me era? 
    And is it really important to keep up this civic-minded tradition in broadcasting?
     Just a bit of background on how we’ve gotten to where we are today: Back in the old days before TV, the Federal Radio Commission expected radio broadcasters to serve “public interest, convenience and necessity.” 
   The commission could get away with insisting on this because broadcasters didn’t own their frequencies. They had them on loan from the government.
      When commercial TV came along, a government pamphlet called “The Blue Book” reiterated these public responsibilities for the video medium. So broadcasters had to run some PSAs - usually as few as they could get away with - until 1983 when public service requirements disappeared entirely.
    And what’s been the trend since then?
    “In the end,” says Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television, “the irony is that the marketplace can fix the situation. There are definitely some indications that the unregulated marketplace will work, as much as it pains me to admit it.”
     Case in point: the Ad Council started producing and marketing PSAs in radio days, back when broadcasters were expected to do that sort of thing. The council became famous for such campaigns as Smokey the Bear and the Crash Dummies. Now they continue to get PSAs on the air, when networks have the option of doing nothing.
     Ad agencies donate pro bono services, and, according to council spokesperson Susan Jacobsen, the organization has “received $1.3 billion worth of time and space from the media in the year 2000.”
     Kind of sounds like a handful of those thousands points of light that George the First once told us about. Apologies to the Democratic Party, but it sure seems that way.
     As for Nickelodeon, its current campaign is a follow-up to previous public-service initiatives such as its Big Help series of spots. 
    Going beyond PSAs, the network also provides serious-minded informational programming, another throwback to old public-responsibility days.
     For a long time, news shows were considered to be a civic service and were put on the air no matter what their ratings were. Now, of course, news programming is a profit center and often little more than a platform for promoting other shows on the network or local station.
     Nickelodeon’s news shows with Linda Ellerbee set out to deal with issues important to kids, in a nonsensational, non-MTV manner, and they don’t rank as one of the network’s ratings winners.
     “For Nickelodeon, because we command such a wide-ranging reach with kids, we’re grounded in the philosophy that we have a responsibility beyond quality entertainment,” says Marva Smalls, Nickelodeon’s executive vice president of public affairs. “We look for things that we can lead with, that pertain to kids’ lives when they’re not watching our programming.”
     If this kind of ethical purity makes you nervous - as any kind of do-goodism is likely to do to most of us - keep in mind that there is some self-interest here too. Enlightened self-interest, but still.
     “What’s good for the kids is also good for business,” says Smalls.
     “Yes, this sort of stance helps them,” Thompson says. “It helps them to draw young viewers away from PBS and Cartoon Network and other competitors. For this kind of audience, you’ve got parents still determining to a great extent what they watch, and if you get across the impression that you’re providing a kid-friendly environment, that’s really going to make a difference.”
     But how much can we expect commercial networks and stations to pursue public-minded, non-profit ventures? And is there any real social value to PSAs?
     “I think there is some validity to the idea that granting a broadcast license means you are giving someone a valuable property that to some extent should serve the public interest,” says Thompson. “But, of course, the day it was decided that broadcasting was going to be a commercial system in this country, then that made it almost impossible to enforce the public responsibility concept.”
     Whether they’re nurtured by the marketplace or instituted by government mandate, PSAs can serve a useful purpose, Thompson maintains. He points to the famous anti-litter campaign featuring Iron Eyes Cody, the Indian who cries over the trashing of the American landscape. “I think that probably did an unbelievable job of getting people to stop littering in this country.”
     One side issue for PSAs and an argument for getting them on TV: the elimination of public service requirements nearly coincided with the birth of infomercials. Previously, an argument against infomercials was that they would take air-time away from PSAs. Now, if you look at those parts of the schedule that were once set aside for public service announcements - namely early in the morning and late at night - you see an epidemic of “programming” featuring faded TV stars hawking skin-care products and abdominal-exercising gear.
     If a new influx of PSAs can push this stuff off the schedule, then, please, flood the airwaves with them.

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