Probing the Blindspot: The Audience Commodity

In addressing the exchange originated by Dallas Smythe, Bill Livant, & Graham Murdock concerning the political economy of communications (see SA 27:4/79K2383, 27:5/79K3996, 28:5/80L1394, & "Rejoinder to Graham Murdock," Smythe, Dallas, Canadian Journal of Political & Social Theory, 1978, 2, 2, 120-129), focus is on three key issues of the "blindspot" debate. (1) In attempting to substantiate Smythe's claim that the audience-as-a-commodity is the chief product of advertising-based mass media, five aspects of the Marxian definition of commodity (use-value, exchange-value, objective existence, value-adding labor, & ownership) are discussed. Smythe's position is seen as defensible only by further theoretical elaboration of the key terms. (2) Smythe's claim that audiences labor for advertisers in self-marketing products & reproducing labor power is shown to be in contradiction to the Marxian usage of the concept of labor & the assertion is rejected. (3) Livant's argument that the audience is the commodity form through which the mass media are internally articulated is rejected because it does not conform to an analysis that places the study of commodity relations at its center. It is argued instead that it is through the audience that the commodity form of mass media is articulated. In Working at Watching: A Reply to Sut Jhally, Bill Livant (Concordia U, Montreal, Quebec) notes that people spend an immense amount of time watching TV, & that this time is a measure of the human activity of watching, & has both a use value for advertisers & an exchange value. There is a basic division in audience watching time, between necessary time, in which the interest & power of an audience to watch is reproduced; & extra, or surplus watching time, which can be sold by the media to advertisers. In watching, the audience in fact works: part of the time for itself, part of the time for capital. Several examples of time fractionation & compression are discussed to support the view that the struggle to increase surplus time & decrease necessary time animates the commercial mass media. AA.