Uh-oh. Pay-for-Play in Seattle

It was too good to be true.  One of the local TV stations in Seattle, KING 5 started a local arts show.  But it turns out, this is not really a news/feature program, but rather an infomercial paid for by the 5th Avenue Theater to promote its own shows.  When the theater doesn’t need the airtime, it “rents” the airtime out to other arts groups.  And of course, it’s expensive so the only groups that can afford it are the largest ones.  The disclaimer about this being paid advertising is virtually hidden, and the content is treated like feature reporting.

This is called pay-for-play.  Here’s an article about it in The Stranger. 

I don’t know if Seattle is like your town, but it’s getting harder and harder for the arts groups to get any kind of arts reporting by our local media.  The Seattle Times generally has one article about classical music twice a week if we’re lucky, and calendar listings once a week.  It’s prohibitively expensive to buy ad space in the newspaper.  The TV stations have cut back on what little arts reporting they do (partially because of the new show), and until recently the classical radio station heavily favored the groups that could pay or the two groups (Symphony and Opera) that “own” the station (it’s a complicated ownership structure). 

Classical radio station KING-FM has recently made a quantum leap in arts reporting by upping its local arts coverage in the evenings on Northwest Focus, hosted by Sean MacLean.  Still, over the past year, the 42 live concert broadcasts that were mentioned in a newsletter sent out today from KING, were all (I believe) of groups that have paid the station for advertising.   

I’m not casting aspersions on the station.  Pay-for-play is an important issue that we have to discuss.  Some people think it’s a legitimate business model that will save journalism; others think it’s an ethical quaqmire. 

No one wants the stations or the newspapers to go broke, but if you’re an arts organization that can’t get media support, you have to wonder why your worthy productions don’t merit coverage, while the big bucks organizations dominate the media.  The fine line between reporting and promoting might remind you of politicians who vote for the interests of the lobbyists who give them the most money. 

Part of the answer is that these media outlets are commercial companies.  Once KING-FM goes public in July 2011, pay-for-play is going to have to go away or at least be transparent. 

In Los Angeles, Mayor Villaraigosa wants to take away money from arts organizations that received it fairly in a competitive process and give it to a handful of his favorite organizations.  These include a cable television station.  Again, pay-for-play.  This time it would be the administration paying the media to further its political agenda.  Talk about a conflict of public interest!  Danielle Brazell from an LA advocacy organization says the Villaraigosa regime has lost its sense of the public benefit generated by the arts.

more than 7,000 people wrote to elected officials to save guaranteed hotel tax funding for the arts, and a similar push is planned on the more recent budget issues, including Villaraigosa’s bid to repurpose already approved arts grants to four groups he thinks would reach a bigger public. The mayor’s picks: $250,000 for city-owned cable television station Channel 36, $75,000 for El Grito, a community celebration of Mexico’s independence, and $45,000 each to the Pan African Film Festival and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.

Brazell said the issue isn’t whether those groups are worthy, but whether the city wants to set “a very bad precedent for [funding] pet projects” rather than sticking to grants made through the application and judging process that has been in effect since 1988.

“It’s arbitrary …. It’s divisive,” she said of the mayor’s proposed departure. “It puts arts organizations in competition with each other, not based on excellence, but what kind of political relationship you can have with the decision-maker.” 

Political clout is just another form of pay-for-play.  If this is where journalism is going, it will sink of its own weight. Some of us in the field think journalism should maintain its editorial integrity.  

If you’re a radio station, the only honest way to broadcast is to make it clear when your content is paid for by the organization you’re promoting.  And if you’re a good radio station you will promote fairly and evenly for all arts orgs, and you will have your announcers out in the community attending concerts, so that your reporting is based on  accuracy and knowledge.