32. Public Service Announcements ``IF THERE IS NO STRUGGLE THERE IS NO PROGRESS.'' Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, letter to Gerrit Smith, March 30, 1849. Public service announcements are free advertising, run by the media as a public service. They most commonly appear on radio, sometimes on television, and once in a while in print media. Because radio and television broadcast licenses are allocated by the Federal Communication Commission ``in the public interest'' (theoretically), stations like to broadcast public service announcements to show how public-minded they are. PSAs also help fill up unsold advertising slots. Radio Let's start with radio. Every radio station will have someone in charge of PSAs. Call your local stations, learn who the PSA person is, and find out what the station's PSA guidelines are. All future communications with the station should be aimed at the PSA person. The PSA for the radio station will be a neatly-typed script that a station DJ/announcer can read on the air. The script should be about 20 seconds (40-50 words) long, unless station guidelines specify a different length. Read the PSA out loud to yourself many times, so that you can revise it and make it as close to perfect as you can get. The PSA should conclude with a tag line indicating who produced the PSA, such as ``This announcement brought to you by the North Eastwick Rifle Club.'' Also on the PSA sheet (but not in the on-the-air script) should be a contact person and a telephone number, so that the station can contact you if there are questions. Public service announcements have to relate to some type of public service. Political and/or legislative material is not allowed. Nor should any person or organization be criticized. The PSA should involve something to do with community programs or education, rather than with anything partisan or for-profit. Examples of PSAs could include: announcing an upcoming safety class at a local gun club; informing the public about an upcoming speech or debate; urging people who have firearms to store them safely; or telling children that if they find a gun, they should not touch it, should leave the area immediately, and should tell an adult. Once you've got a good PSA written, send copies to all radio stations in your area that do PSAs. The NRA can also help you with PSAs, especially for the group's Eddie Eagle child safety program. Television The same general guidelines used for radio apply to television. While most radio PSAs will be broadcast late at night (when it's harder for the station to sell advertising slots), virtually every television PSA will be late-nighter. (That means 2 a.m., not during the Tonight Show.) While a radio PSA can simply be a written script, you'll have to give the television station a ready-to-use videotape. That's not as hard as it might sound. If you live in an area with cable TV, there will be at least one ``public access'' channel. The purpose of the public access channel is to help ordinary folks produce and air TV shows. So if you make an appointment for studio time at the public access station, the staff will be glad to help you produce a short commercial for use as a PSA. (Of course you'll have to think up all the content; the staff can only help with production.) If you absolutely can't create a videotape, at least supply the station with a few high-quality slides. Print Media Broadcast media was invented at about the same time as the federal government's explosive growth in the 1920s and 1930s. Print media, in contrast, is older than America. As a result, print media grew to maturity long before government could get ahold of it, and print media is subject to much less regulation than broadcast media. Newspapers, unlike radio and television stations, don't need government licenses, and don't have government officials reviewing their content (usually). The greater independence of print media is good in general, but bad for PSAs, since the print media don't have to convince any FCC official that the media are acting ``in the public interest.'' And while radio and television stations can't stop broadcasting simply because they have empty advertising slots, a newspaper or magazine that doesn't sell enough advertising simply prints fewer pages. As a result, the print media has much less incentive than the broadcast media to run PSAs. Nevertheless, PSAs do find their way into print media. First of all, press releases which get printed sometimes function as a kind of PSA. Secondly, some print media (particularly the smaller, newer ones) will run free advertising for public interest groups that the publisher likes. For example, the advertising space you see for the ``Partnership for a Drug-Free America'' is donated by the host newspaper or magazine. (Much of the Partnership advertising is, unfortunately, just as hysterical and factually incorrect as advertising from the anti-gun lobby.) If you have a friendship with a local publisher, ask her if she would be interested in running some pro-rights advertising as a public service. The Second Amendment Foundation, CCRKBA, and the NRA all have camera-ready copy (meaning that the advertisement needs no layout or other further production work) which they can send to any interested newspaper or magazine.