76-08-B2
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Televisions and Profits[edit]
Transcript[edit]A couple of months ago, I ran across a news item in a Boston paper, telling that two of the major TV networks turned down a special series of spot ads produced by the Advertising Council and the Department of Commerce. The ads were designed to explain how the American free enterprise system works. The networks, it seems, had learned they would be challenged for equal time by Jeremy Rifkind, founder of the so-called "Peoples' Bicentennial Commission." I don't know what Rifkind's group will call itself now that the Bicentennial year is past, but it's main purpose was not exactly to celebrate the bicentennial. It was an anti-business organization which wanted us to believe our founding fathers were blood brothers to Lenin, Castro and Che Guevera. Jeremy Rifkind is a one-time student rebel of the 60's. If his group could get equal time to dispute ads explaining the workings of our accepted economic system, there is something wrong with the Federal Communications Commission. Well, the news item brought to my mind how little we hear on the TV news and talk shows of anything favorable to business. An increase in profits for any corporation is announced as if there were something obscene. Never can I recall an explanation that corporate profits average not more (and usually less) than five cents on the dollar. It seems also that guests on the talk shows very often turn out to be anti-business, grinding an axe for some cause or other in which business is the villain. Can you recall any of these shows on which a top business executive -- employer of thousands of people -- is invited to talk about this problems; or the part our economic system plays in making possible our standard of living? Now, maybe I just haven't been seeing all the shows and, if so, I'll stand corrected. But the only dramatic shows on the tube dealing with the business world certainly aren't designed to make heroes out of business people. May I suggest there is something a little hypocritical about the anti-profit and antibusiness tone of television? In the first place, advertising by business pays the freight for every minute that TV is on the air. And, in the second place, it does so to the generous extent that television is one of the most prosperous of industries in America, by far. In 1974, when the oil industry was being lampooned for the boom it was enjoying, network profits were 68% higher than oil profits. They were 80% higher than the average of all industry. During the last three years, network profits before taxes have averaged more than twice as much as the average of all other industry; more than three times as high as food producers and almost 15 times as high as food retailers. This is something to remember the next time we hear the somber voices of the commentators telling us food prices are going up. And, by the way, the average profit rate for individual stations is higher than that of the networks. I wish they'd reconsider those ads explaining free enterprise. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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