Television and Arts Promotion

The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city’s council on the arts:

“In a recent citywide poll, 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city’s art museums has increased by a similar percentage. Since the corporate funding that supports public television, where most of the visual arts programs appear, is now being threatened with severe cuts, we can expect that attendance at our city’s art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the city’s funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television.”

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

In the first part of the argument the writer tries to correlate the increase in the number of people visiting the city's art museums to increase in number of people watching television. This can be, at best, partially true. The writer assumes that the museums get all publicity only from television. It is very much possible that they are promoted by not only television but also by newspapers, radio, Internet, art magazines, tourist offices and travel guides. Besides the programs supporting visual arts is not run on all channels. The writer clearly mentions that only the public television runs most of the visual arts programs. In this era when people have hundreds of channels to choose from it is very naive to assume that all the people view the channel promoting visual arts. Unless and until only public television is available to majority this cannot have a major impact on people coming to see museums.

If we assume that it was indeed only television that caused this growth, it is very hard to see how. One possible explanation can be that 5 years ago a very large number of people watched television while the number of people visiting museums was very small. So a 15 percent increase in television viewership may have actually diverted a small chunk to museums. However that small chunk may have been enough to raise museum visits up by 15 percent! Besides such a far-fetched scenario I do not see any other way of logically correlating the two.

The writer further reckons that fall in TV viewership would lead to fall in people going to museum so some funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television. It is not clear at this stage if such promotions are run on public television free of cost or at some cost to museums but in either case it does not make sense to do such a thing.

If it is at a cost, it makes sense to switch to another channel with comparative cost and coverage that is not doing as bad. Alternative promotional vehicles can be explored by putting in place a concrete marketing plan employing a mix of all media and resources. Even if they are run free of cost on public television, it makes more sense to spend the funding money under a well thought marketing plan as the impact of television cannot be over emphasized. It is good to have but not indispensable. So, either way simply reallocating funds seems to be like a knee-jerk reaction to a non-existent problem. The public television, by all means, is not the museum's problem. Their problem is to increase visitors which can be done in many ways without reallocating funds.