The Reformist Scenario

The reformist scenario is situated almost midpoint between the classical and modernist extremes, essentially advocating limited regulation of television rather than its abolition. Like its classical counterpart, the reformist heralds certain governmental actions as essential to the preservation of core first­amendment norms. Without affirmative government involvement, the reformist predicts that corporate commercial interests will select programs based on advertising objectives alone, and that the unchecked laissez­faire market will produce a concentration of media ownership. Although the reformists are concerned with the enlightenment and communal values of the first amendment, they are more concerned with the amendment's potential to redistribute political and economic power in the media context.

The reformist scenario contains a subtle understanding of commercial television and the Huxleyan dilemma, but reformists are loath to admit to the disquieting implications of that knowledge. Like their modernist counterparts, the reformists tolerate a realm of virtually deregulated commercial broadcasting, presumably to avoid charges of Orwellian government rule. Ultimately, this agenda places a guarded faith in the media's ability to save itself, in democracy's ability to patrol its self­indulgent behavior, in the public's ability to understand its best interest, and in the nation's ability to transform an altogether mass media into a more local one. What this faith also presupposes is the active and knowing participation of the citizenry in a reformist enterprise.

The reformist, nevertheless, rails against a powerful commercial broadcast industry that "continues to push for fewer obligations to the general public, while focusing programming efforts toward attracting an audience that maximizes its advertising revenue."' ¹²⁶ Reformists regard the right of public access to the airwaves as a necessity, "not simply from a need to improve the 'vast wasteland' of television programming,"' ¹²⁷ but also "to foster the development of a vast array of programming options from the maximum number of different sources. . . . The public­­not government or corporate broadcasters or networks­­should be given the opportunity to choose programs directly and to define what is in its own interest."' ¹²⁸