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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER   MAY 2000 VOLUME 2, NUMBER 5

We Watch Channel Zero?
Corporate TV Channel to Sabotage Student-Run WCCR and SAME-TV
by Hank Williams

CTN Media Group, parent company of the College Television Network, bills itself as the “nation’s number one media gateway for reaching young adults,” and prides itself on its “significant revenue growth as a direct result of the Network’s expanding [advertising] client list.”

CTN is now negotiating to install televisions in prime areas in City College and deliver their brand of commercial-laced broadcasting to us. What’s worse is that to ensure maximum exposure for its broadcasts, CTN demands exclusive rights to prime areas—presumably the NAC lobby, cafeteria, student lounge, and game room in our case. Such a move would essentially kill off WCCR and SAME-TV, the student-run radio and TV stations that provide commercial-free programming to these areas.

CTN offers what seems like a good deal on the surface, offering to wire prime areas of the campus and install televisions free of charge. The catch is that it locks colleges into their programming, which, aside from the ads, is far from educational or informative. They offer a slurry of music videos, CNN news, and sports.
Worse is that they block competing broadcasting, which would effectively kill off the student run and produced programming that currently airs in NAC. WCCR radio has already had plans to increase its broadcast range blocked.

WCCR station manager Rashidah White points out that a grant from the Auxiliary Enterprises Corporation (AEC—the college’s allocating body for special projects) has already been approved for the approximately $13,000 cost of buying a new transmitter that would allow them to broadcast campus-wide. “Students would be able to pick up our signal on Walkmans,” she said.

WCCR currently broadcasts only in part of the first floor and the NAC lobby. WCCR has also applied for a grant for the approximately $13,000 additional cost of installing wiring and speakers in other portions of the first and second floors of NAC, but the emphasis now is to just get the transmitter, as they already have the money for it.
According to Ms. White, this could be done without the need for a license from the Federal Communications Commission. WHCR radio is also located in City College and has the license from the FCC necessary to broadcast beyond the reaches of the college. While two classes in the communications department offer students some access to WHCR facilities, it has its own station manager and is a separate entity. WCCR is student-run and offers programming produced by students.

WCCR’s grant for the transmitter runs out on June 30th of this year, so the foot-dragging of the college—intentional or not—might kill its plans to increase its broadcast range and service to students. Ms. White reports that she has had trouble meeting with representatives from the Office of Student Affairs to discuss the situation, but has been told that they will discuss a compromise with the proposed new service. Sayfullah Hafizah El of WCCR was even more emphatic, stating that “We’re not compromising.”

One has to wonder what type of compromise could be offered, as a CTN representative, while unwilling to discuss details of specific locations, reported that the usual deal is exclusive rights for CTN—at least in the most highly trafficked areas of a campus. Ironically, WCCR’s advisor is Dean Paul Bobb, who is part the Student Affairs office. Presumably Student Affairs would support student initiatives and an advisor would advocate in the best interests of a student organization over corporate interests, but that’s not the case here. Instead of supporting efforts that provide unique programming and give experience to students, the administration seems to be willing to sell off valuable space to corporate interests.

It turns out that we may be sold cheap at that. The catch with CTN is that they don’t pay for space, but sell air time to advertisers at a good profit: enough to take in $31.5 million in revenues in 1999 and pay CEO Jason Elkin over $400,000 per year.

So, cash-poor City College and its students get nothing in return for being sold to advertisers, except the loss of an opportunity to present our own views to fellow students.

Communications Professor Margaret Bates points out that “[CTN] emphasizes corporate interests to the detriment of student work.” Bates adds that “It doesn’t teach students to be media literate to have pseudo-news and commercials beamed into classrooms.” She also expressed concern at targeting students with more commercials. “We should be beefing up the student produced work, not eliminating it,” Bates continues. “I think it would be much better to have monitors in NAC with student work on them.”

Money should not be much of an issue in this case, as WCCR has been granted the money for the transmitter they need. The hold-up has just been the implementation of the plan, as it involves several offices within the college, including physical plant. Ironically, it was the bungling of the physical plant division that made it necessary for the transmitter’s replacement. White reports that during the renovation of several college buildings, workers found several black boxes and discarded them. “Those were our transmitters,” White explains. “They didn’t know what they were.”

Probably the worst thing is the consistent pattern of suppression of student activities by those who should be promoting them that is emerging. “What bothers me,” says White, “is that now you have people who are trying to re-mobilize the Media Board and make organizations more active, but our efforts are being frustrated.”

“Urban” commericials?

Programming to the youth market is big business; both CTN and their advertisers are hoping to cash in on a large captive audience. CTN Media trades on the NASDAQ exchange as UCTN and experienced revenue growth of 271% in 1999. The company posted losses last year, no doubt attributable to a buying and growth spree that included LINK magazine, ID8 Advertising, market Place Media (MPM), and the website Wetair.com.
The cash for this rapid expansion comes from the Chicago-based investment firm Willis Stein and Partners, which owns 83% of CTN. Willis Stein’s strategy is to maximize profits in companies before selling them at huge profits. In this case, any profit will come from advertising sales.

The potential windfall from CTN is huge, however. CTN tripled the number of locations reached by the Network, going from 432 to 1,225 and growing. CTN has integrated itself into virtually all aspects of the college advertising market. LINK magazine is distributed free to over 600 colleges nationwide while Market Place Media is the largest representative of college newspapers in the country. As a result of this close integration, CTN figures that it can currently reach 50% of the 18–24 age group. They are off to a good start: projections in their 1999 annual report estimate that by the end of this year CTN will be broadcasting in about 40% of the approximately 3,600 colleges and universities nationwide.

Subsidiaries of Market Place Media specialize in targeting both the military and minority markets for advertisements, which is probably what has them licking their chops at the prospect of signing up City.
CTN’s list of advertisers is the real key to its growth. The list is long and includes impressive names, including many you’d expect—AT&T, MCI, Nike, Chevrolet—and a few you might not: the Army and Marines are prominently featured. Exactly what type of programming will be offered is a good question also, as CTN’s annual report shows that they have a second channel of programming that they classify as “urban.” Does this mean that we will be bombarded with rap videos and sneaker commercials that their programmers assume our target audience will consume?

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