Oregon Media Insiders

This past Tuesday, August 12, 2008, I happened to catch the 6:30-7:00 PM block of the Channel 9 News out of Eugene. The new anchors seemed in the vein of the old anchors. The weatherman appeared a bit subdued. Given the whirlwind pace of muggings that have occurred in the newsroom recently, his state of mind should seemed apropos. Everything was in its place until the Sports Report. The sports segment opened cold out of a station break. There was no Sports announcer on-set. No anchor-to-anchor bonhomie. But then, it’s only sports.

The squinky thing was, the entire sports block consisted of a single V/O-SOT exhorting the surge of golfing popularity in Bandon. The macro focus dealt with the alleged similarity between Bandon courses and those found in Scotland. The piece included more than one radiant comparison to St. Andrews, the Vatican City of Golf. Throughout the story, the Sports Reporter read his script as though he was, or had been, on location at the course. The reporter was never seen on camera and could have been anywhere.

The v/o consisted largely of extravagant adjectives, swirling superlatives and jazzy adverbs woven together in a bright, shining testimonial for the course. To lend additional credibility to the piece, the producer and editor (perhaps one in the same) dropped in a music track under the entire story. Not just any music, but a symphonic surge of swollen violins and luminous French horns. For a moment, it seemed I was at a Beethoven philharmonic, a concerto for the sports zealot.

Not content to be the sole source of adulation, the v/o was sporadically interrupted by sound bites. We hear from the course manager, the course greens-keeper, the clubhouse bartender and occasionally, a random person who might actually have played the course. Course employees predictably touted the benefits of their establishment. Even the barkeep, whose job is to inebriate the paying customers, lavished approbation on the facility. The “MOS, “real golfers,” rattled on about how terrific, how wonderful, how marvelous, how tremendous the whole Bandon golf scene had become. By one account, Bandon was a perfect blend of Augusta National and Pebble Beach. I suspect these folks were Chamber of Commerce types, although the lower-third supers identifying them were on screen for milliseconds – too quick to know with certainty.

The v/o regaled the viewer with breath-taking, hole-by-hole descriptions. The reporter diagnosed every dogleg, reminisced on each rough, glorified every green. No aspect of the course was sub-par. Each fairway a pristine avenue. Each sand trap an exquisite challenge. A golfer’s Mecca.

At the end of the piece, the Sports Anchor, donning a sonorous v/o, signed-off. The music swelled to a crescendo, causing my putter to tremble. The Newscast Director, obviously in sync with the mood of the piece, dissolved out to the news set in a slow, dramatic fashion. I could almost swear that the AnchorWoman (her name escapes me) was trying unsuccessfully to hold back a tear. As the music trailed softly under, the Anchor Man, who was clearly moved said, in his deep Ted Baxter tone, “We’ll be back after the break.”

Tonight, on Channel 9, we will witness the Sports Department’s infomercial for yet another golf course in Bandon. One can barely wait.

Simultaneous to viewing the candy-coated coverage on Channel 9, I stumbled across a couple of references to a recent article from Advertising Age magazine, the bible for marketers, public relations experts and creative pimps everywhere. The article quoted liberally from an interview with Mark Hass, the President of Manning, Selvage and Lee, “one of the largest U.S. public relations companies.” The premise of the article dealt with the practice of PR firms, ad agencies and advertising clients to use their financial clout as a way of applying pressure and influencing content for newspapers, television and other mass media outlets.

From the article, excerpted from: http://www.detroitmakeithere.com/article/20080807/DM02/239980613/-1

“A survey conducted in May 2008 on behalf of Manning, Selvage &Lee, and the trade publication PR Week found that nearly one in five senior marketers "say their organizations have bought advertising in return for a news story." The survey queried 252 U.S. chief marketing officers. "The survey also found that 10 percent of senior marketers said their organizations have had an implicit / non-verbal agreement with a reporter or editor that anticipated favorable coverage of their company or products in exchange for advertising," according to an MS&L press release.

The article goes on to say, “The sixth-annual MS&L Marketing Management Survey, done in conjunction with PRWeek, found that 19 percent of the 252 chief marketing officers and marketing directors surveyed said their organizations had bought advertising in return for a news story. That represents one in five senior marketers and is up from 17 percent last year.

"I'm not saying it's a huge problem," Hass said. "But 19 percent of senior marketers saying they do it constitutes a problem."

That's particularly true in this age of transparency. "One type of coverage you buy and the other you achieve through persuasive argument, making it a credible source of information and not something that has to be taken with a grain of salt," Hass said. "There needs to be credible, independent media, and the marketing industry should not be doing anything to undermine credible editorial quality."

This year's study also found that 8 percent of respondents, up from 5 percent in 2007, said their organizations paid or provided a gift of value to an editor or producer to place a news story about the company or one of its products. And 10 percent said their organizations have at one time or another had an "implicit/non-verbal agreement with a reporter or editor that you expect to see favorable coverage of your product or company in exchange for advertising."

Bearing in mind the findings above, in no way do I make any accusations against Channel 9. It is a fine organization, run by admirable people who are doing the best that they can during these trying times. What can be said is that the tone of the Sports Report on the Bandon area golf revival might, under certain circumstances, be thought of as…well, you get the drift.

Of course, we will never know for certain. We have no way of discovering if the voice-over Sports Anchor even exists. We can never know what machinations went on behind the scenes that caused News management to send a crew to Bandon. It is unlikely we will ever be able to read station policy guiding the separation of News and Sales. In the end, we’ll just never know…and neither will the viewing audience. Oh well, it is just sports!