Who Owns Prime Time? Industrial and Instititional Conflict over Television Programming and Broadcast Rights

Abstract

Examines the struggle between TV program producers & the three major US TV networks over control of syndication rights to prime-time programming, drawing on a case study of the Federal Communication Commission's 1983 decision to repeal the Financial Interest & Syndication Rules (FISR) related to prime-time programming. It is concluded that a capitalist class, not public or government officials, shapes & controls the mass media. This class is shown to have employed the assistance of Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1983 & George Bush in the late 1980s in a way that reveals the interlocking nature of the US power elite. The networks ultimately won repeal of the FISR rules as part of a hegemonic project to combine an emergent accumulation strategy with a new international strategy. Political-economic media theory & neo-Marxist theories of the capitalist state explain the dynamics of these struggles & demonstrate the close relationship between the state & certain sectors of the capitalist class. D. Ryfe