Channel Nine and Four Models of Communication

Essay for a 'Communication Studies' class. Not serious.

Channel Nine and Four Models of Mass Communication

The technological facilitation of communication has become commonplace in the everyday lives of individuals of Western society. Devices for mass communication have found places in the houses and daily routines of many. It has, for example, become unusual for average homes to be without Internet and television provisions, and even less common for individuals to be completely without access to these media. Flew and Gilmour write that:

“Television is the most widely used mass media form in Australia and in the world. About 99 per cent of Australians own at least one television and, on average, they spend over 20 hours a week – or 36 per cent of their leisure time – watching television programs.”
(Productivity Commission 2000, cited in Flew and Gilmour, 2006:175)

While there is no doubt television has a role in Australian Society and culture, that role is not necessarily easy to define. McQuail (1994: 49-55) identifies four models by which we may attempt to describe mass communication media. These include the transmission model, a view which accounts for mass communication as mainly unidirectional and prescriptive, where messages are ‘loaded’ into media material and ‘fed’ to the masses; the ritual model, by which mass communication is the routine maintenance of public unity by reinforcing a collective cultural identity; a publicity model where the mass media’s main role is to attract and hold the attention of audiences; and a reception model, which locates the actual power over the effects of mass media in the hands of audiences themselves. While it is possible to identify fundamental properties of each of these models in specific examples of mass media, we will here explore whether it is possible to account for each idea simultaneously, using Channel Nine as an example of Australian free-to-air commercial television programming.

The Nine Network is one of Australia’s major free-to-air commercial television broadcasters, and is a prime example of mass media due to its scope and accessibility, with headquarters in Sydney, Darwin, Brisbane and Melbourne (Free TV Australia, ‘TV Stati…’, 2008). The television medium lends itself to earlier transmission views of mass communication with what could be seen as a predominantly unidirectional flow of information: from a central point (creators of content like Channel Nine) to multiple possible peripheral receivers (audiences like the Australian public). McQuail locates the transmission model at the core of common conceptualisations of mass communication (what he refers to as the “dominant paradigm” (p.41-45)), and describes it as the transmission of a fixed amount of information, or a ‘message’, that is determined by the sender and received by a broad audience (p. 49-50).
When we look at Channel Nine, it is not difficult to identify this process. If we were to ask Laswell’s question of ‘Who says what to whom, through what channel and with what effect?’ (McQuail p.50) we might, to use an example, answer: ‘Channel Nine gives gardening advice to the Australian public on their program Domestic Blitz, which is broadcast and received by Australians on televisions, and Australians become better gardeners’. But here we can already see an emerging flaw in the fundamental ideas of the transmission model; the supposition that reception of these fixed messages necessarily results in the fulfilled desires of the sender. We will later return to this idea when we discuss the reception model.
Westley and MacLean (1957, cited in McQuail) built on this early transmission view, suggesting that the sender determines what they send based on an assessment of what their audience wants. This incorporates a feedback idea, which more appropriately situates mass communicators as actual media (a medium between “events and ‘voices’ in society” and “receivers”) rather than as the source of messages (McQuail, p. 50). This feedback role reshapes this model from linear to more circular, but further implies that media has no further purpose than to reply to these ‘voices in society’ and satisfy audience needs.
While pleasing audiences is surely a key intention, suggesting it’s television’s only intention paints the image of a public-spirited mass industry without interests outside of the service of others. When factors like ownership and politics, advertising content and competition between broadcasters are considered, this appears to be an unlikely, oversimplified representation. A publicity model, which we will also discuss later, implies that these interests belong to those who use mass media for their own devices (advertisers, network owners, etc.), and not the mass media themselves, but it could be seen that these are one and the same, as surely it is these peripheral interests that determine the longevity of the medium. There are also many other possible motives for mass communication.

One of these possible motives is the preservation of culture. Unlike a transmission view, the purpose of mass communication from a ritual perspective places emphasis on maintaining a society, and less on ‘controlling’ it. The ritual communication model describes mass communication as celebratory in nature, with the power to help societies develop a rich cultural identity, a power commonly associated with art, religion and festivals (McQuail p.51). The repetitive nature of television programming (serials, regular news updates etc.), and the incorporation of television into everyday life (eg. morning cartoons, Saturday night movie, Friday night football) have ritualistic values not necessarily unlike those of religious practice (Carey, 2002:39). Like a religious ceremony would celebrate certain cultural values, Channel Nine dramas like McLeod’s Daughters and lifestyle programs like Domestic Blitz and Getaway could be seen to be celebratory of capitalist values and a perceived Australian culture of home-owning, land-loving, family-valuing and world-traveling.
It is important to note, however, that while not viewed as directly influential, ritual communication is not without consequence. There is a soft-power factor involved in the promotion of certain cultural values: it incidentally involves discouraging conflicting values, and so such communication can be seen to be ideologically loaded and, by its subtlety, seen to be a more sinister influence than a direct message. For example Getaway, a program where several charismatic presenters travel the world to sample many different forms of foreign culture (albeit often quite ‘packaged’ forms of culture), could be seen as ritual communication, designed for the pleasure of the communicator and audience; celebratory of the senses, with images like sweeping desserts and mountain ranges; and the sense of traveling vicariously through the program. However Getaway, as well as acting as a sort of exclusive extended video catalogue for destinations and services (like Hilton Sydney and Virgin Blue)(Getaway, 2008), it encourages a sort of consumerism by equating purchased experience with self-improvement and spirituality, and presenting the increasingly unattainable ideas of world travel and worry-free luxury to average Australians. While the value-setting nature of ritual communication is fundamental to the maintenance of culture, the selective role of the communicator, as highlighted by the transmission view, means that relatively small amount of mass communicators potentially have a very great amount of influence over society and culture.

Lifestyle programming was a key to the success of Channel Nine throughout the nineties and still plays an important role. Flew and Gilmour write that “lifestyle programming was most strongly associated with the commercial networks, particularly as it allowed close tie-ins between programs, program sponsors, associated magazines and the broadcaster’s website”(p. 183). In the last decade ‘reality’ television has risen to the front, Channel Nine’s current top five most popular shows including The Farmer Wants A Wife, Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show and Aussie Ladette to Lady (Channel Nine, 2009). Flew and Gilmour would identify reality television, despite the fact that most incorporate imported formats, as “culturally specific local content” (p.191). This particular genre fits well with a third model of mass communication: a publicity model.
The publicity model outlined in McQuail posits communication as an attention-seeking display, aiming simply to “catch and hold visual or aural attention” or generate “audience revenue” (p.52). It could be, in fact, that reality television is an audience revenue machine, having not only the content and production values (eg. theme songs, bright logos, exciting camera angles) necessary to attract and maintain large audiences, but the feedback mechanisms in place to actually measure their audience revenue; their viewer telephone voting systems, online content and live audience specials and finales. One prime example of this adaptable hybrid genre was Channel Nine’s successful renovation program The Block, which aired in 2003 and 2004. Flew and Gilmour write that The Block:

“…combined lifestyle and reality TV staples such as home improvement, competition among contestants, public auctions, viewer voting, dramatic tension among the participants and a quite breathtaking amount of product placement. It tapped into the national obsession with realizing capital gains through home improvement in the early 2000s…”
(Flew and Gilmour, 2006: 184)

However the audience revenue of The Block and programs like it is of little import without peripheral concerns like advertising. Audience revenue not only attracts the attention of advertisers for advertising in breaks, but during the program as well (sponsor logos are often visible and supplier lists available at the end of shows and online). While advertising agendas are evident, this model would suggest that these agendas belong to those who use mass media, while the purpose of the media themselves goes no further than creating and maintaining a potentially transient ‘spectatorship’, which is competitive because it ensures the media outlet continues to exist in its role of cultural maintenance. But, though peripheral, advertising and competition agendas also provide compelling motives for attention seeking.
There also remains the question of whether the idea of audiences as mere inactive spectators is in fact reasonable. While audience roles are acknowledged in the three models illustrated above, and obviously essential to the idea of mass communication, it is possible that their role has not yet been sufficiently accounted for. A transmission model, as we have seen, would hint at a malleable mass audience who yield easily to comply with media messages, while above we explored possibly negative implications to audiences from a ritual perspective. A publicity model situates audiences as idle onlookers, but these models have not yet acknowledged any potential agency of individuals in perceiving media messages.

A reception model instills significance in the encoding and decoding process present in mass communication. While, congruent with a transmission model, senders may be able to ‘encode’ meaning into media content, a reception perspective suggests that:

“…receivers (‘decoders’) are not obliged to accept messages as sent but can and do resist ideological influence by applying variant or oppositional readings, according to their own experience and outlook.”
(McQuail, p.53)

A model with its focus on reception would imply that an ideologically loaded lifestyle program could have little to no effect on a viewer whose knowledge and environment has predisposed them to be able to recognise unrealistic ideologies and separate them from their perception of reality. While this sunny situation for individual audience members is not always the case, the fact that it is possible must be considered. McQuail writes that:

“…the most significant point is that decoding can take a different course than intended. Receivers can read between the lines and even reverse the intended direction of the message.”
(McQuail p.54)

This approach is consistent with Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus; that human thought and behaviour is relative to their practical knowledge of the world. Here a possible complication emerges: if perception depends on habitus, and habitus consists of “tradition, practice, and other forms of tacit knowledge” that form and exist within a cultural context (St. Clair et al, [nd], p.149-150), and mass media perpetuates culture, then a cycle becomes apparent where individuals may not have access to the knowledge that allows them such perceptions. But still yet there are those who do, just as mass media sustains a mass culture, alternative communication channels provide arenas for discourse and alternative views.
A reception perspective compliments and expands on other views of mass communication. It elaborates on the ‘feedback’ and ‘voices in society’ ideas suggested above in a transmission model. It acknowledges audiences’ possible awareness of the values sustained by ritualistic mass communication, and highlights the available option of opting out of participation. While a reception approach clashes with the idea of an inactive spectatorship, it adds a new dimension to the publicity model that increases cause for competitive production values: the possibility of a critical spectatorship.

The fact that it is possible to identify fundamental aspects of each of these models in a particular example of mass communication suggests that these models are not mutually exclusive; they do not conflict in ways significant enough to render them unable to co-exist. While some ideas are incompatible, like the transmission model’s underestimation of the audience role in shaping meaning as illustrated in the reception model, for the most part each of these ideas overlap. McQuail too suggests that these four models for mass communication are “not necessarily inconsistent” with each other (p. 49), suggesting that any single model would be insufficient to describe the mass media role. A more complete picture might incorporate ritualistic fulfillment of the transmission model’s feedback, communicator, message and audience roles, but without the implications that the message remains clear throughout the process (as it can often play second fiddle to attention-seeking devices as outlined in the publicity model) or that the receiver determines the message and acts as ‘intended’ (for, as illustrated by McQuail’s description of a reception model, the social contexts and personal choices of individual audience members can shape their interpretation of media material).
While here our discussion concludes with the idea that these models are not mutually exclusive, a more thorough study would, of course, more completely cover the topic. Shortcomings of this discussion include the extent to which Channel Nine broadcasting content could be deconstructed, and the fact that it provides merely a thumbnail sketch of the key ideas of these four different models of mass communication.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carey, J. 2002. ‘A Cultural Approach to Communication’ in Dennis McQuail, McQuail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, Sage, London.

Channel Nine, 2009. ‘Home’ [Internet] Available from: http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/ [Accessed 9 April 2009)

Flew, T and Gilmour, C. 2006. ‘Television and Pay TV’, Chp. 10 in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (Eds.), The Media & Communications in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.

Free TV Australia, 2008. ‘TV Station Members’ [Internet] Free TV Australia Website. Available from: http://www.freetv.com.au/Content_Common/pg-TV-Station-Members.seo#Nine%20Network [Accessed 8 April 2009]

Getaway, 2009. ‘Getaway Fact Sheets’ [Internet] Ninemsn Website. Available from: http://getaway.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=799813[Accessed 9 April 2009]

McQuail, D. 1994. Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed., Sage, London.

St. Clair, R., Rodriguez, W. and Nelson, C. [nd]. ‘Habitus and Communication Theory’, Intercultural Communication Studies XIII. [Accessed online Feb 2006, Published in 2006 CMNS1110 Introduction to Communication Studies Course Reader]