Advocacy group characteristics have varied widely. Some have operated nationally, with or without local chapters, and some have operated only locally. Some have remained active for many years, whereas the life- span of others has been brief. Some advocacy groups have been well financed, often receiving substantial foundation funding, while others have operated with little financial support. Practically all advocacy groups have relied on newsletter subscriptions, video purchases, and lectures as means of raising money. Finally, some advocacy groups have devoted exclusive attention to the broadcast industry, whereas other groups with a more varied menu of concerns have developed subsidiary units to deal with broadcast-related issues.

The total number of advocacy groups, past or present, is difficult to determine, given their ephemeral nature. What is more, many such groups are smaller components of larger organizations with a mixture of agendas. Some of the more prominent advocacy groups through the years have included the National Association for Better Broadcasting, the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, Action for Children’s Television, Accuracy in Media, the National Black Media Coalition, and the Coalition for Better Television. Besides these, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ has been a particularly effective advocacy group, as have the Media Task Force of the National Organization for Women and the National Parent Teachers Association (PTA). Assisting these groups through the years in legal, regulatory, and legislative matters have been pro bono public interest law firms such as the Citizens Communication Center.

Early advocacy groups, such as the Radio Council on Children’s Programming and the Women’s National Radio Committee, both formed in the 1930s, were concerned with program content. Group members monitored radio programs, reported their opinions on acceptable and unacceptable content in newsletters, and gave awards to radio stations and networks airing exceptional programs. That practice and mode of consumer/broadcaster interaction continued until the 1960s, when the broadcast industry became caught up in a sweeping consumers’ movement. During the latter part of the 1960s, advocacy groups, led most effectively by the United Church of Christ, began challenging television station license renewals through a legal instrument called a “petition to deny.” Such petitions were aimed at denying license renewal for television stations whose programming or employment practices were considered discriminatory. Advocacy groups also were successful in forcing broadcasters to accede to programming and minority- employment demands contained in “citizen agreements.” When such unprecedented public access into the regulatory and station decision-making process won approval of both the federal courts and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), advocacy groups blossomed.

The most common targets of advocacy groups during the 1970s continued to be minority programming and employment practices. However, violent program content, children’s programming, and general public access to the airwaves also took on significance. Advocacy group tactics during this period included the petitions to deny and citizens agreements noted previously as well as participation in FCC rule-making and congressional hearings, actual or threatened program sponsor boycotts, and publicity. Advocacy group achievements during the 1970s usually came in small doses, but major successes included the improvement in broadcast station employment opportunities for women and minorities, greater public participation in the broadcast regulatory process, improvement in children’s programming, and the banishment of cigarette advertising from the airwaves.

The nature of advocacy groups began to change during the 1980s. A more conservative political agenda derailed the consumers’ movement that had bolstered the more liberal-minded advocacy groups of the 1970s. Moreover, public interest law firms and foundations that had funded many of the more prominent advocacy groups during the 1970s began either disappearing or turning their attention elsewhere. Changes in the broadcast industry itself—deregulation, the rise of cable television, and changing station/network ownership patterns—also reversed many of the early advocacy group achievements and left the leadership as well as membership of many of the groups in disarray.

However, advocacy groups did not disappear; rather, their issue emphasis took a decidedly conservative turn. Groups such as Accuracy in Media and the Coalition for Better Television gained momentum in the 1980s with a large constituency, substantial funding, and a focus on ridding the airwaves of programs that either were biased in news reporting or contained an excess of sex and violence. Extensive mailing lists also helped these groups to quickly galvanize public support for their causes.

In the 1990s there also began to appear liberal advocacy groups that set their sights on molding public opinion on a more tightly focused set of special interests than in the past. These interests included gun control, AIDS awareness and prevention, abortion rights, world hunger, and the environment. Led by Amnesty International, the Environmental Media Association, and the Center for Population Options, these advocacy groups succeeded to some extent by convincing a number of television network producers to insert messages in prime-time entertainment programs that addressed the advocacy groups’ concerns.

As television entered the 21st century, the role of advocacy groups had diminished somewhat. Many of the issues on which these groups focused so much of their attention had not disappeared, but interest among members of the public in addressing the issues had waned. A plethora of new program channel outlets via cable television and direct broadcast satellite also meant that advocacy groups had opportunities never before available to them to deliver messages of their own design and choosing to television viewers nationwide.

This is not to say that advocacy groups ceased functioning. To the contrary, such groups continued their efforts. The National PTA proceeded with its annual “Take Charge of Your TV Week” campaign. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Hispanic Media Coalition both threatened boycotts against the broad- cast television networks during the late 1990s because of the networks’ failure to include more African Americans and Hispanics in prime-time television program- ming. And such organizations as the Parents Television Council, the Center for Media Education, the Media Research Center, and the American Family Association continued to push for improvement in television programming, especially in programming directed to- ward children and young adults.

Such groups as these appeared less vocal and less visible than in the past, but a closer examination suggests that they simply employed more sophisticated means of spreading their messages. The World Wide Web had become a particularly valuable information tool that, by 2001, many advocacy groups had incorporated into their public educational tool chest. Websites also were an efficient means of providing programming “action alerts,” viewers’ guides, in formation clearinghouses, and instant calls for letter-writing campaigns and/or boycotts.

The role of advocacy groups through the years has engendered a mixture of praise and criticism. While the objectives, methods, and zealotry of some groups have met with scorn, the efforts of others have been viewed as beneficial for, at the very least, making the broadcast industry sensitive to public needs and concerns.