Feminists In The Wasteland

Abstract

This article investigates the television reform activism of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the early 1970s in the United States. In particular, it focuses on NOW's petitions-to-deny license renewal of television stations. Like other social justice groups of the period, NOW drew on a recent court case, Office of Communication of United Church of Christ v. Federal Communications Commission (1966), which enabled the broadcasting public to participate in the license renewal process. NOW used its petitions to pressure broadcasters to improve representations of women, to hire more women, and to recognize women as part of the broadcasting public. For NOW, the symbolic and material spheres were deeply intertwined, and television in particular played a crucial role in perpetuating the very problems that the organization sought to solve. In this vein, NOW was in line with other activist groups that believed that to realize social change in a mass-mediated world required a focus on media reform. In addition, this article argues that NOW's purpose was not only to reform the practices and programming of television stations, but also to claim women's membership in the civic body, here predicated on their position as members of the broadcasting public.

Keywords:

• television
• media reform
• license renewal
• social movements
• National Organization for Women

Notes

1. The Prime Time Access Rule limited the amount of network programming that could air during prime time. It stated that, of the four hours of prime time each evening, only three hours of network shows could be broadcast. The hope was that the fourth hour of prime time would be used for local programming. Instead, most stations turned to syndicated game shows to fill this time. The Financial Interest and Syndication Rule stated that networks could have no financial interest in any of their programming except for news programming and denied them domestic syndication rights to shows on their networks. Both rules were repealed in the 1990s.

2. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed in 1909 as an interracial civil rights organization. It became the foremost civil rights organization to fight for legal, social, and economic rights for African Americans. The phrase an “NAACP for women” has been used repeatedly with regards to the origins of NOW. See for example Cohen (1974, p. 104); Barasko (2004, pp. 21–22).

3. A year before the United Church of Christ case, in a case regarding a public interest group and another federal agency, the court had granted standing to a conservationist group who had protested the licensing of a power company who had planned to build a plant next to the Hudson River. In its decision, the court stated that private individuals should be given the right to assert and defend interests of the public that a regulatory agency may be neglecting. This decision, anticipating the United Church of Christ case, reinvented standing to include groups or individuals who do not suffer legal or economic harm, but who effectively represent a compelling public interest. See “Standing of Television Viewers” (1966, pp. 1516–1517).

4. Stanley was General Counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC had formed after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce the provisions of the new law. Importantly, one of the impetuses for NOW's formation was the EEOC's reluctance to pursue cases of gender discrimination in employment. Its first major action was to pressure President Lyndon Johnson to end gender discrimination for federal employees.

5. The inclusion of “sex” in the FCC's EEO rules marked an early media reform victory for NOW. When the FCC had announced its equal employment rules in 1969, it did not include sex as a class protected from discrimination. NOW petitioned the FCC in 1970 to reconsider, and in 1971 the commission included “sex” as part of its EEO rules (Window Dressing on the Set 1977, pp. 74–75).

6. For example, in a letter to the editor of the New York Times, Emery (NOW, New York chapter) writes of disgust with the image of women on television commercials. Emery writes, “No sponsor would dare to characterize black people today as being as stupid as the newlywed wife presently depicted in an Alka-Seltzer commercial” (1970, p. 97).

7. The Joint Council on Educational Television testified in front of the FCC to persuade the commission to set aside broadcasting licenses for educational stations. It included in its testimony evidence from a monitoring study of the programming of commercial stations. See, W. Wayne Alford (1966, p. 30). Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media (founded in 1969) and Brent Bozell's Media Research Center (founded in 1987) both have monitored television newscasts for alleged liberal bias. Much of the evidence that the petitioners in the WLBT case drew from was based on monitoring studies.

8. For a discussion of radio councils, which functioned in an advisory capacity to radio stations, see Guimary (1975, pp. 19–32).

9. Listed in Appendix A to the Statement of Kathleen Bonk, Congressional Testimony, June 1974, pp. 482–483.