PSAs - Free but Not Easy:
A short course in broadcast public service advertising

Broadcast advertising is the single most effective means of reaching and influencing Americans. Certainly that is the conclusion you would have to draw from the behavior of big-budget marketers of everything from toothpaste to presidents: the largest part of their resources usually goes into television commercials.

Public service advertising gives organizations the opportunity to use the same channels of communication on relatively small budgets. It is not unusual for a television public service campaign produced and distributed on a budget of $25,000 to $50,000, or a radio campaign done for $13,000 - $20,000, to get airtime that would have cost $1 million to $5 million as paid advertising. In fact, public service advertising probably is the greatest "value" an organization can get. Paying for time allows an advertiser to choose stations and airtimes (if available), but is still going to pay for reaching many people not in its target audience. While when and where PSAs are played is up to public service directors,the fact that PSAs typically cost less than 1% of the time value they garner makes it difficult for a paid campaign to equal a public service campaign in cost-efficiency.

Analysis of a typical TV public service campaign shows:
- 70% of plays between 7:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. - from the start of the morning news shows to the end of the late night talk shows, in most parts of the country. 40% of those plays between 6:00 p.m., when the local evening news starts, and 12:30 a.m., when Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno are ending - 44% of plays in the 50 largest markets - In the first 26 weeks of the campaign, the PSAs play 300 times per week; in the second 26 weeks 100-300 times per week... and then wind down to about 30 plays in the campaign's 78th week.

Opportunities for PSAs abound.
While it is not true that television and radio stations carry public service announcements because the government requires them to, regulatory pressures probably were the initial reason. But broadcasters soon found PSAs almost indispensable to fill unsold commercial time. A similar imperative can be seen in newer outlets that were never regulated and licensed like stations: as soon as cable networks began airing commercials and cable systems began inserting commercials in those networks at the local level, these outlets started using PSAs. Other outlets that air PSAs are national and regional cable television and radio networks. In all, the television and radio media each have more than 10,000 outlets that could be considered for a public service campaign.

The presence of so many outlets presents not only opportunities, but challenges to PSA sponsors. The right outlets must receive the right materials, and they must be given a good case for using them.