Captive-audience media is any type of media that doesn’t allow the audience to choose whether or not to consume it, leaving those who don’t want to consume it with only a negative choice: either try to tune it out (which many people are unable to do) or leave, a response that comes with high opportunity costs.
Thus, TV and audio on public buses, trains, or subways are captive-audience media because the content is pushed out to riders regardless of what they want. Riders are using these transit systems as a tool to get to where they want to go, not to consume media, so by being force-fed media, riders are made to pay what amounts to a rider tax on these publicly subsidized systems; the requirement that you consume this media becomes part of the cost of using the transit services.
By way of differentiation, print media, including ads on trains and buses, are not captive-audience media because theirs is “pull” rather than “push” content. That is to say, the content is not pushed out to its audience; rather, it’s passive and must pull in its audience before it can be consumed.
In the relationship between print media and readers, it’s the readers who are in control because they choose whether or not to consume the content. In captive-audience media, the relationship between audience and content is flipped on its head. The media is in control because the content washes down on its audience without regard to what the audience wants.
Thus, TV and audio in private settings like office and hotel lobbies, elevators, taxis, stores, restaurants, gyms, and coin laundries are also captive-audience media. The fact that the media are in private rather than public settings doesn’t change their captive-audience character, although it does serve as a limiting factor in what critics can do about it.
Private businesses can shape their environments in any way they want within the limitations of the law. If they choose to make audience captivity part of the defining character of their consumer interface, that’s their right. Critics of captivity really only have one option and that’s not to patronize the business. Critics have more options when it comes to audience captivity on trains, buses, and subways, because as public assets, these systems should be content-neutral, and critics have a legitimate claim that audience captivity doesn’t serve the public interest and is privileging one class of people (those who don’t mind being made captive to the media) over another (those who do).
Stepping back a bit, it’s worth observing that the private sector does itself no favor by alienating a portion of its consumer base by making them captives to unwanted media. Because of its intrusive nature, TV and audio media, when it’s not wanted, can trigger intense negative feelings in people. It’s not uncommon for people who’ve been made captive to unwanted media to react angrily, a response that leaves them feeling alienated and motivated to reach out to others with the suggestion that they not patronize the business.
Stepping back even more, it’s worth considering at what point private businesses must be treated as a public utility and thus held to the same standard as the public sector. If a community can’t function without cars, then all the gas stations within that community in the aggregate have the character of a public utility, even though the gas stations themselves are individually owned private businesses. If the gas pumps at all of the gas stations have TVs, then the right of people to choose to pump their gas in a station without TVs is taken away from them. At this point, people are compelled to consume the media because the opportunity cost to choose otherwise becomes intolerably high; their only choice is not to drive, an unrealistic option in a community in which its functioning depends on cars.
The idea that one would stop driving rather than be forced to consume TV at gas pumps is absurd, but as TV becomes ubiquitous throughout the community, the opportunity for people to choose their media disappears. And then the idea that someone would act in extreme ways becomes less absurd.
When you think about it, it doesn’t take much to blanket our world with unwanted “push” media. Although the world is large, the sphere in which we live out much of our lives is small. It only takes the introduction of captive-audience media in a few places—the street corner we pass every day, the train in which we ride to work, the grocery store in which we shop for food, the gas station at which we fill up our car, the bank at which we do our business, the elevator we take to get to our office, and the restaturants at which we like to eat—for us to become captive in much of our world.
Indeed, marketers are well aware of this and it’s for this reason the idea of what some call “life-pattern marketing” has caught the attention of those who are involved in captive-audience media. In life-pattern marketing, audience captivity is deployed to make marketing messages ubiquitous in the places at which people spend their day.
In a sense, we already live in a world of life-pattern marketing; ads are already ubiquitous throughout the environment in which we live out our lives. But this historically has involved print media, which, because it’s “pull” media, is unobtrusive. We can choose not to consume it. What’s changing is that the dominant media going forward is TV and audio media, which are “push” media that take that choice away from us.
The U.S. Supreme Court has more or less weighed in on the issue of captive-audience media and its conclusion has been—inconclusive.
A case in 1952 involving captive-audience media on a commuter train system was decided in favor of the captors rather than the captives, although it came with a key abstention and an even more key dissent. In a nutshell, the court said most riders don’t object to being made captive, so that makes it okay.
A few years before that, though, the court took the opposite position in a case involving an audio truck. The driver was driving around town broadcasting audio from a loudspeaker on his truck and this was unreasonable, the court concluded. People out and about shouldn’t be made captive to “loud and raucous” noise from this truck.
What’s important with the commuter-train case is the environment in which the idea of audience captivity was considered. In the world of 1952, few people would imagine the world we face in 2009. In 1952 there were no TVs on street corners, at bus stops, on subways, trains, and buses, in taxis, on elevators, on billboards, and in lobbies, stores, hospitals, restaurants, gyms, and coin laundries. To assess the nature of audience captivity in 1952 is to assess the nature of second-hand smoke in 1752, an absurd idea.
And yet today we face a future in which much of the environment in which we conduct the business of our lives will be characterized by captive-audience media. Why? Because of a decision made 57 years ago, before TV had even started showing up in most people’s livingrooms.
It’s worth considering if people polled in 1952 about the acceptability of audience captivity would say it was okay if the question was framed to ask whether they wanted to live in a world where audience captivity is the rule rather than the exception. It’s reasonable to think many people would say no.
In any case, there was at least one person in 1952 who saw what the future holds. Shortly after the case was decided, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story called “The Murderer” about a man who was driven to the edge of sanity by ubiquitious “push” media in his world. Music playing from loudspeakers, personal music (think iPods without the earbuds) playing without restraint, and TV everywhere drove the man to distraction. His response was to destroy the devices whenever he came upon them. That was a crime, so he was arrested and confined to an institution—a place he was glad to spend his days, because it was one of the few places remaining that were free of intrusive media.
— R. Freedman
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