QUALMS

The Laurence Johnson successes make clear one reason why blacklists quickly conquered television and radio. Products sold through supermarkets accounted for more than 60 per cent of broadcast revenues. Manufacturers of such products were especially vulnerable to pressures that threatened their place on supermarket shelves. The networks, which proved equally susceptible to Johnson's "offers" and polls, were vulnerable to pressures that threatened their most lucrative customers. That television programming decisions should hang on such pressures clearly held appalling implications. In 1959 it finally authorized a staff study of "television network program procurement," in which advertising agency executives and others were queried about program decision-making. The agency witnesses were followed by "non-industry" witnesses—teachers, clergymen, journalists, and others. Almost all blamed shortcomings of television on the dominance of the advertiser—often in scornful language. They spoke of "moral bankruptcy," of the invasion of the home by an "everlasting peddler," creating a culture "not worth living for and not worth dying for.".