‘Feminists for Media Rights’: A Case Study in Television Activism

Abstract

In 1977, Feminists for Media Rights, of central Pennsylvania, announced that it had achieved ‘victory’ by reaching an agreement with the largest television station in the area, WGAL. The agreement promised new programs for women, a women’s advisory committee and a women’s program director. This article offers a critical assessment of this ‘victory’. It takes a long view of a challenge to a station’s license, including negotiations, petitions, agreements and the implementation of agreements, not simply an isolated petition or agreement, to dispel notions of a singular victory or loss. On one hand, FMR was justifiably pleased with WGAL’s concessions: the station would produce a program about the Lancaster Women’s Center, which was founded by radical feminists in Lancaster and broadcast a new, weekly women’s public affairs show. On the other hand, while FMR had sought to create a feminist space on television, the station ultimately offered not feminist control, but new ‘women’s’ programming, which was often quite traditional. The negotiations between FMR and WGAL shows that the feminist FCC strategy, initiated by the National Organization for Women, was more radical than previous accounts allow: feminists used the ‘petition to deny’ as a legal tool for trying to establish a feminist space on television. The FCC strategy was not simply reformist.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 “Joy for a Feminist’s Heart,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, May–June 1977, Women’s Studies Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Martin Library, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania [hereafter WST].

2 “WGAL—TV,” Broadcasting, May, 27, 1974, 4.

3 “Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL,” July 1, 1975, 5, box 40, folder “WGAL 7-1-76,” FCC Station Licensing Files (RG 173), National Archives II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter cited as NAFCC).

4 Cherie Lewis, “Television License Renewal Challenges by Women's Groups,” (PhD dissertation. University of Minnesota, 1986), 169; “Statement of the Lancaster Women’s Center,” Press Release, April 20, 1977, box 7, folder 16, WST.

5 “Statement of the Lancaster Women’s Center.” Feminists referred to the “victory” in other reports as well. See for example, Joyce Reimherr Perry, “Feminists for Media Rights—Latest News” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, September 1977, and “Capsules of Strategy Meeting,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, January/February 1979, WST.

6 Allison Perlman, Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles over U. S. Television (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 9.

7 “Locally Produced Women’s Programming,” WIPB Newsletter, Winter 1973, folder 103, Donna Allen Papers, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri [hereafter DA].

8 Julie D’Acci, Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney and Lacey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Bonnie Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); Bonnie Dow, Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014); Lauren Rabinovitz, “Ms-Representation: The Politics of Feminist Sitcoms,” in Television, History and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, eds. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 144–67.

9 Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin, 2000); Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Random House, 2002); Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon and Astrid Henry, Feminism Unfinished: A Short Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2015).

10 “Report of the National FCC Task Force,” box 48, folder 4, 9–10, Records of the National Organization for Women, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts [hereafter RNOW].

11 “Report of the Task Force on the Image of Women,” [1973?] box 47, folder 5, RNOW.

12 Muriel Cantor “Feminism and the Media” Society (July/August 1988), 76–81. Nancy Stanley argued that it was the “most far reaching and most serious legal action” that feminists could take to transform television (“Federal Communications Law and Women’s Rights: Women in the Wasteland Fight Back,” Hastings Law Journal 23, 1 (1977): 19.

13 The Kerner Report: The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.

14 Todd Steven Burroughs, “Kerner’s Other Black Explosion: The Chapter 15 Mandate and the Birth of New York’s Black Public Affairs Programming, 1967-68,” Howard Journal of Communication (2018).

15 Devorah Heitner, Black Power TV (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 13.

16 Heitner, Black Power TV, 2.

17 Whitney Adams, “NOW Action to Create a Feminist Broadcast Media,” April 1974, box 46, folder 22, RNOW. See also, Perlman, Public Interests; and Steve Classen Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004).

18 Phyl Garland, “Blacks Challenge the Airwaves,” Ebony (November 1970): 35.

19 Garland, “Blacks Challenge the Airwaves,” 35.

20 “Tactics with the Media,” NOW Acts, September 1970, 8; “Media Target: Sexism in Broadcasting,” NOW Acts, December 1970, 4

21 Perlman, Public Interests, 66, 86.

22 Perlman, Public Interests, 51.

23 Whitney Adams to Chairman Dean Burch, 24 April 1972, box 46, folder 21, RNOW.

24 Stanley, “Federal Communications Law,” 49.

25 Stanley, “Federal Communications Law,” 55.

26 See Whitney Adams and Kathy Bonk, “Fairness for Feminism on the Broadcast Airways,” May 1974, box 210, folder 16, RNOW.

27 Whitney Adams, “Report on the FCC Task Force,” October 5, 1972, box 46, folder 22, RNOW.

28 Barbara Holsopple, “NOW, TV Stations Seem to Disagree on Agreements,” Pittsburgh Press, July 25, 1972, 44.

29 Whitney Adams, “Report on the FCC Task Force,” October 5 1972, 4, box 46, folder 22, RNOW.

30 Whitney Adams, “NOW Action to Create a Feminist Media,” 3, box 46, folder 22, RNOW.

31 In 1975 (February) the FCC also ruled against a NOW coalition’s petition to deny WSYR—TV in Syracuse (Irene McCabe, Margot Zimmick and Anne Lange, “Liberating the Media: A View from the West,” PA NOW, October 1975, 3, WST).

32 United States Commission on Civil Rights, Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television (Washington, DC: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, 65).

33 Erwin Krasnow, The Politics of Regulation (New York: St. Martin’s, 1982), 57.

34 McCabe, Zimmick and Lange, “Liberating the Media: A View from the West,” PA NOW, October 1975, 3, WST.

35 Carol Swaim to Kathy Bonk, July 2, 1975, box 7, folder 4, WST.

36 Carol Swaim to Kathy Bonk, July 2, 1975, box 7, folder 4, WST.

37 The first two phrases are from: Bernadette Barker-Plummer, “News as a Feminist Resource? A Case Study of the Media Strategies and Media Representations of the National Organization for Women, 1966-1980,” in Gender, Politics and Communications, eds., Annabelle Sreberny and Lisbet van Zoonen (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000), 135. The third quotation is from Patricia Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975 (Jackson, MS; University of Mississippi Press, 2003), 194. Other scholars affirm the difference between radical and liberal feminist approaches to the media. See Dow, Watching Women’s Liberation, 8–10.

38 Barker-Plummer, “News as a Feminist Resource?” 135. See also Bernadette Barker-Plummer, “News as a Political Resource: Media Strategies and Political Identity in the U. S. Women’s Movement, 1966-1975,” Critical Studies in Mass Communications 12 (1995): 306–324.

39 Barker-Plummer, “News as a Political Resource.”

40 “Assault on the Media,” NOW Acts, July 1970, 8, RNOW.

41 “Tactics with the Media: Shows of Our Own,” NOW Acts, September 1970, 8. Scholars have documented the overlap of radical and liberal branches of the women’s movement in particular cities, where, for example, a NOW chapter was “the only place to go” and for some particular causes, such as rape prevention and the establishment of Women’s Studies curriculum. See Stephanie Gilmore, Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America (New York: Routledge, 2012); Nancy Whittier, Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women’s Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); and Maria Bevaqua, “Reconsidering Violence Against Women: Coalition Politics in the Anti-Rape Movement.” In Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 163–77.

42 Elisabeth Smoot interview with Andrea McLin, June 15, 2000, box 6, folder “Elisabeth Smoot,” WST.

43 Angela Jeannet, Telephone interview with the author, December 12, 2018.

44 “Lancaster Women Enjoy Life as Is,” Lancaster Intelligencer, August 27, 1970, 54, 9.

45 Angela Jeannet, “Voices from the Grassroots: How the Women’s Movement Flourished in the Heart of America” (unpublished manuscript, 2012), chapter 1.1, 1. Special Collections, Marting Library, Franklin and Marshall College.

46 Jeannet, “Voices from the Grassroots,” chapter 1.3, 8.

47 Winifred Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970s (Boston: Twayne, 1988), 56. See also Anne Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, DC (Urbana and Chicago University of Illinois Press, 2008) and Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989). Lancaster Women’s Liberation presented a critique of NOW in “Harrisburg NOW,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, March 1975, WST.

48 “Lancaster Women’s Liberation Articles of Organization,” box 8, folder 1, WST.

49 “NOW and Abortion Action,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, May 1975, WST.

50 “NOW or Never?” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, September 1974; “NOW and Abortion Action,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, May 1975, WST.

51 “NOW or Never,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, September 1974, WST.

52 Kathie Sarachild, “Consciousness Raising: A Radical Weapon,” Feminist Revolution: Redstockings (New York: Random House, 1975), 147.

53 Jeannet, “Voices from the Grassroots,” chapter 2.1, 2.

54 Stanley, “Federal Communications Law,” 16.

55 Stanley, “Federal Communications Law,” 17–18.

56 “A New Year: LWL Reorganizes,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, September 1973, WST.

57 Joyce Reimherr, Interview with the author, Tacoma Park, Maryland, December 6, 2018.

58 “The Cleveland Amory Show,” Philadelphia Daily News, November 13, 1967, 45.

59 “Media,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, October 1974, WST.

60 “Media Task Force,” box 6, folder “LWL Misc,” WST.

61 “Women and the Media,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, October 1974, WST.

62 “Lancaster Women’s Center and Lebanon NOW Take First Steps Toward Liberating the Media,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, January 1975, WST; Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL, 74, box 40, folder “WGAL-7-1-76,” FCC Station Licensing Files (RG 173), NAFCC.

63 “Feminists vs. WGAL,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, August 1975, WST.

64 “N. O. W. Media Project: An Action Plan to Create a Feminist Media,” May 1974, 11, box 6, folder 4, WST.

65 Affadavit from Jean Ware, June 23, 1975, Exhibit J, Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL, box 40, folder “WGAL-7-1-76,” FCC Station Licensing Files (RG 173), NAFCC. Ware concluded, “Our experience demonstrates that WGAL is trying to get by with the bare minimum or otherwise,” explained the FMR, “[and] is very poorly managed and very disorganized.” Affadavit from Jean Ware, June 23, 1975, Exhibit J, Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL, box 40, folder “WGAL-7-1-76,” NAFCC.

66 “Media,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, June 1975, WST.

67 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, April 9, 1975, box 7, folder 17, WST.

68 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, June 24, 1975, box 7, folder 17, WST.

69 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, June 24, 1975, box 7, folder 17, WST.

70 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, June 24, 1975, box 7, folder 17, WST.

71 “Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL,” July 1, 1975, 5, box 40, folder “WGAL 7-1-76,” 65, NAFCC. This petition to deny WGAL’s license resembles San Diego NOW’s challenge of KCST-TV in 1973 because it identified an FCC violation unrelated to feminism—trafficking in FCC licenses.

72 “Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL,” 43, 23, box 40, folder “WGAL period 7/1/76,” NAFCC.

73 “Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL,” 5, box 40, folder “WGAL 7-1-76,” NAFCC.

74 In 1975 women were 26% of the 114 full time employees at WGAL, while women made up 56% of the total Lancaster population and 37% of the local workforce (“Petition to Deny Renewal of License for WGAL,” 65, 67, box 40, folder “WGAL 7-1-76,” NAFCC).

75 William Canby, “Programming in Response to the Community: The Broadcast Consumer and the First Amendment,” Texas Law Review 55 (1976): 75.

76 Ronald Garay, “Access: Evolution of the Citizen Agreement,” Journal of Broadcasting 22 (1978), 98.

77 “Model Agreement between NOW chapter and KPIG-TV,” n.d., box 7, folder 4, WST.

78 “Statement of the Lancaster Women’s Center,” Press Release, April 20, 1977, box 6, folder 16, WST.

79 “Agreement,” 4-5, box 7, folder 13, WST.

80 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, June 24, 1975, box 7, folder 17, WST.

81 Nelson Sears, March 10, 1975, box 6, folder 17, WST.

82 Elisabeth Smoot to Nelson Sears, April 9, 1975, box 6, folder 17, WST.

83 Marjorie Spruill, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 9.

84 Spruill, Divided We Stand, 2017, 174; Wandersee, On the Move, 185–90.

85 Joint Press Release, April 19, 1977, 2, box 6, folder 16, WST.

86 Draft letter Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Shaub and Sears, n.d. [1977], box 7, folder 13, WST.

87 Adams, “NOW Action to Create a Feminist Broadcast Media,” April 1974, 3, box 46, folder 22, RNOW.

88 Minutes, WAC, March 16, 1978, box 7, folder 6, WST.

89 Minutes, WAC, July 13, 1978, box 7, folder 6, WST.

90 “Agreement,” 5, box 7, folder 17, WST.

91 Linda Martin, interview with the author, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, July 9, 2019.

92 For examples the topics of Herr’s presentations to women’s groups, see: “Adamstown Woman’s Club Plans Story Hour for Youngsters,” Lancaster Intelligencer, October 17, 1967, 17; “Winners Named in Annual Hempfield Sewing Contest,” Lancaster Intelligencer, February 21, 1968, 9.

93 “Anne Herr’s Journey from Announcer to TV Administrator,” Sunday News [Lancaster], March 19, 1978, 101.

94 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Nelson Sears, January 24, 1975, box 6, folder 17, WST.

95 Herr’s obituary does not identify any affinity with the women’s movement. An index of articles about her at the local newspaper also does not list any articles connecting Herr to feminism (“Anne Herr,” Lancaster Intelligencer, November 14, 2002).

96 Mike Kalina, “Marie Torre: The Way it Was” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, October 18, 1976 26.

97 Station executives announced to feminists that they already were doing several feminist shows, including Marie Torre’s Contact, on a Westinghouse station in Pittsburgh. Feminists countered that this was not “feminist oriented,” and the Westinghouse representative deferred to feminists: “[You] are better judges of that than me” (Mary Jean Tully to Wilma Heide, December 8, 1971, box 27, folder 27, RNOW).

98 C. W. Skipper, “Just Like a Woman on 2 no near ms.,” The Houston Post, April 22, 1975, folder 80, DA.

99 Minutes, WAC, July 12, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

100 A list of “women’s concerns,” which seems to have been generated during the negotiations between FMR and WGAL, referred to discrimination, such as “discrimination in housing and the financial realm,” and also the “need to change laws” in relation to violence against women (“Women’s Concerns,” box 7, folder 17, WST).

101 Minutes, WAC, January 26, 1978, box 7, folder 6, WST.

102 Minutes, WAC, April 6, 1978, box 7, folder 6, WST.

103 “Look and Act Like a Lady” (9/16/73) and “Sex Role Stereotyping Begins Early” (9/23/73), folder 1: “Shows 1-30,” Papers of Eunice West, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

104 Minutes, WAC, April 6, 1978, box 7, folder 6, WST; the note about Herr’s management program is on the back of “Manpower Information,” box 7, folder 13, WST.

105 Affadavit from Betty Barnes Concerning a Meeting with Jack Harris,” n.d., box 3, folder 3, Houston Area NOW and Other Feminist Activities Collection, 1970–1996, University of Houston Libraries, Houston, Texas.

106 WIPB Newsletter, Winter 1973, folder 400, DA.

107 In feminists’ agreement with Pittsburgh television stations they won eight half hours of programming “produced by a woman or women” (“On Monitoring Television,” Fall 1972, box 46, folder 22, RNOW).

108 Minutes, WAC, July 12, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

109 Minutes, WAC, July 12, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

110 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot to Sears, January 24, 1975, box 6, folder 17, WST.

111 Terry Pimsleur, “Womantime and Co.,” folder 400, DA. See also Deborah Rhode, “Media Images, Feminist Issues,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20.3 (1995), 703.

112 “Women’s Center to Be Featured on Channel 8’s Noonday on Eight,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, July 1974, 15.

113 “WGAL Spotlights Women’s Center Activities,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, May 1976, WST.

114 Minutes, WAC, July 12, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

115 Minutes, WAC, Oct 11, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

116 “Students to Be on WGAL-TV,” The Gettysburg Times, March 6, 1980, 18.

117 Minutes WAC, December 4, 1979, box 7, folder 7, WST.

118 In an interview in the Lancaster Women’s Liberation Newsletter, Bitts said, “Feminism is just the natural state of being for women; it’s what is…left when we take away all the cultural imposed views and attitudes” (“Carole Bitts, WGAL, and Women,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, September 1980, WST). Minutes, WAC, July 10, 1980, box 7, folder 8, WST.

119 Linda Martin, interview with the author, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, July 9, 2019. Martin recalled that another episode on girls’ sports “took the girls’ point of view.”

120 Perlman, Public Interests; Julian Zelizer, “How Washington Helped Create the Contemporary Media: Ending the Fairness Doctrine in 1987,” in Media Nation: The Political History of New in Modern America, eds. Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 176–91.

121 David R. Dodds to Nancy Ettaro, September 26, 1984, box 7, folder 5, WST.

122 “WGAL-TV Agrees to Find New Ownership,” Lancaster Intelligencer, April 21, 1977, 11.

123 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot, Interview with the author, Lancaster, Pa., July 8, 2018; Jeannet, Telephone interview with the author, December 12, 2018.

124 Elisabeth Gurland-Smoot, Interview with the author, Lancaster, Pa., July 8, 2018.

125 Arlene Johnson, “The Nature of the Empire,” Lancaster Women’s Liberation, June 1977, WST.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. Alison Kibler

M. Alison Kibler is a professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. She is the author of Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles Over Race and Representation, 1890-1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Her current research project is feminist television activism in the 1970s.