Bill Ryan - Making Capital From Culture

de Gruyter Studies in Organization 35
Ryan: Making Capital from Culture

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Bill Ryan
Making Capital from Culture

The Corporate Form of Capitalist
Cultural Production
W
DE
G
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1992
Dr. Bill Ryan
Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy, and Sociology at Griffith University,
Brisbane, Australia
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines

of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ryan, Bill, 1946-

Making capital from culture : the corporate form of
capitalist cultural production / Bill Ryan. — (De Gruyter
studies in organization ; 35)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Mass media — Social aspects. 2. Mass media —
Economic aspects. 3. Popular culture. 4. Arts and
society. 5. Organizational sociology. I. Title. II. Series.
HM258.R93 1991
302.23-dc20 91-31582
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ryan, Bill:
Making capital from culture : the corporate form of
capitalist cultural production / Bill Ryan. — Berlin ; New
York : de Gruyter, 1991
(De Gruyter studies in organization ; 35 : International
management, organization and policy analysis)
ISBN 3-11-012548-X
NE: GT
© Copyright 1991 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30.

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any form — by photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without written
permission from the publisher.
Typesetting: Knipp Textverarbeitungen, Wetter. — Printing: Gerike GmbH, Berlin. —
Binding: D. Mikolai, Berlin. — Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin. —
Printed in Germany.
To my son Paul.
Acknowledgements
To the many individuals in the culture industry who contributed to my

research: Some of you demanded anonymity and confidentiality, ac-
cordingly, the privilege has been extended to all. Thank you for the many
hours you gave.
I owe a considerable debt to several colleagues in two of the Universi-
ties in Brisbane, Australia: the Department of Anthropology and Sociolo-
gy at the University of Queensland and more recently at the Division of
Commerce and Administration, Griffith University. Most of all, my thanks
go to Mike Emmison. John Western and Stewart Clegg deserve special
thanks, as do Constance Lever-Tracy, John Forster, Craig Littler, Kathy
Turner and Stephen Bell. My thanks also to Nicolaus Garnham of the
Polytechnic of Central London, and Graham Murdock of Leichester
University. All have helped with various aspects of this project - although
I am not certain how many of them would want to admit to it.
Table of Contents
1. Towards a Sociology of Culture: The Corporations of

Culture and the Production and Circulation of Cultural
Commodities 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Methodological Considerations 14
1.3 The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural Commodity
Production 27
2 The Contradictions of the Cultural Commodity 35

2.1 Introduction 35
2.2 Contradiction and the Culture Industry 35
2.3 The Social Constitution of Art and the Artist and
Residues in the Culture Industry 37
2.4 The Contradictions of the Artist-Capitalist Relation 41
2.5 The Contradictions of the Cultural Commodity 50
2.6 Conclusion 59
3 The Production and Circulation of Cultural Commodities:

A Sectoral Analysis of the Culture Industry 61
3.1 Introduction 61
3.2 Commodities, Realisation, Marketing and Publicity 62
3.3 Types of Cultural Commodities, Their Systems of
Circulation and Relations of Distribution 74
3.4 Conclusion 91
4 The Corporate Organisation of Cultural Production: The

Creative Stage and the Project Team 95
4.1 Introduction 95
4.2 Accumulation and the Capitalist Labour Process 96
4.3 The Organisation of Corporate Cultural Commodity
Production 105
4.4 Labour Organisation in the Creative Stage of Production. 123
4.5 Production Relations in the Creative Stage 134
4.6 Conclusion:. 141
X Table of Contents
5 Rationalising the Creative Stage of Production: The

Formatting of Creativity 144
5.1 Introduction 144
5.2 Bureaucratisation of the Workplace in the Corporate Era
of Capital 147
5.3 Corporate Control in the Creative Stage of Production... 149
5.4 Formatting the Creative Stage of Production 164
5.5 Formatting As a System of Creative Control 177
5.6 Conclusion 184
6 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Marketing of

Cultural Commodities and the Making of Stars and Styles 185
6.2 Marketing: Culture at the Service of Capital 186
6.3 Marketing Cultural Commodities: The Making of Stars
and Styles 196
6.4 The Determinant Effects in Production of Marketing
Cultural Commodities: Commercialism and Formatting .. 220
6.5 Conclusion 226
7 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Publicity

Complex and the Cycles of Fashion 229
7.2 Publicising Stars and Styles: The Circulation of Cultural
Commodities and the Publicity Complex 230
7.3 The Institutionalisation of the Publicist and Its
Consequences 251
7.4 Conclusion: 259
8 A Postscript 263
8.1 A Sociology of Culture 263
8.2 The Ideology Problematic and Textual Analysis 266
References 269
Index 283
List of Figures
1.1 Structure of Power in Organisations 19

2.1 Stages in the Product Life Cycle 55
2.2 Cultural Commodity Product Life Cycles: Best
and Steady Sellers 57
3.1 Division of Labour in the Culture Industry and
Flows of Value 91
3.2 Sectors in the Culture Industry 92
4.1 Division of Labour In Production 108
4.2 Creative Division of Labour 115
4.3 Project Team Positions and Conditions 133
4.4 Production Relations in the Project Team 135
6.1 Form/Style Relation 211
7.1 Channel One Programme Schedule 241
Chapter 1
Towards a Sociology of Culture: The
Corporations of Culture and the Production
and Circulation of Cultural Commodities
1.1 Introduction
Some of the ideas canvassed in this book are not, in themselves, new. They
can be found in the work of other media/cultural theory analysts, in works
which in some cases have been around for some time. Here, I stitch them
together, and in doing so, find that there is a structural coherence to the
culture industry. This may surprise some. To me, the surprise is that this
analysis has not been carried out earlier.
The motivations of this book are captured in two papers which have
been seminal influences in its development. Nicholas Garnham, in his call
for a political economy of culture, argues that:
the development of political economy in the cultural sphere is not a mere matter of
theoretical interest but of urgent practical and political priority. So long as Marxist
analysis concentrates on the ideological content of the mass media it will be
difficult to develop coherent political strategies for resisting the underlying dynam-
ics of development in the cultural sphere in general which rest firmly and increasingly
upon the logic of generalised commodity production (1979: 145 - emphasis added).
In much the same manner, after reviewing Marxist analysis of the mass
media and focusing especially on the post-Althusserian emphasis on
semiotic analysis, Murdock and Golding comment that:
Stuart Hall has forcefully argued that the growth of the modern mass media
coincides with and is decisively connected with everything that we now understand
as characterising 'monopoly capitalism' and that in their latest phase of develop-
ment the media have penetrated right into the heart of the modern labour and
productive process itself. Nevertheless, he argues 'these aspects of the growth and
expansion of the media historically have to be left to one side by the exclusive
attention given here to media as ideological apparatuses'. We would argue to the
contrary that the ways in which the mass media function as 'ideological appara-
tuses' can only be understood when they are systematically related to their position
2 Towards a Sociology of Culture
as large scale commercial enterprises in a capitalist economic system, and if these

relations are examined historically (1977: 204-205 - emphasis added).
Neither of these authors wish to replace the ideology problematic in the
sociology of culture, but argue for the urgent development of a complimen-
tary political economy of culture, which should eventually be connected to
text-based analyses and empirical studies of consumption (cf. also
Williams 1981, Wolff 1981). I hold a similar view. This book sets out to
make a contribution to the political economy of culture, although not to
fulfil all the requirements set by Garnham and Murdock. Rather, it is less
ambitious, dealing with a narrow but important niche within this ap-
proach; namely, the form of organisation under which cultural commodi-
ties are produced and circulated by the privately-owned corporations of
culture which dominate the present-day culture industry. In short, the
focus is the corporate form of capitalist cultural commodity production. It
examines some of the most important structural conditions confronting
these corporations, how production and circulation imperatives impel
managers and workers towards specific forms of work organisation. The
corporate form is an important object of analysis in itself, but additionally,
with knowledge of its constituent conditions, more valid examination of
the contents of the cultural commodities thereby produced is possible,
hence presumably, their possible range of ideological effects - although I
will not canvass these possibilities other than in a few brief remarks in the
concluding chapter.
In this book I investigate the corporate form of capitalist cultural
commodity production in a sociological way and within that, from a
historical, political-economic perspective1. Its theoretical and methodologi-
cal framework is more or less Marxist in that it shares its critical spirit and
takes the basic social structures Marx identified as 'capitalist' for granted.
Limitations within the theory, however, mean that I am not concerned to
canonise Marxist analysis but to develop and extend critical and theoreti-
1 This work is sociological first, and Marxist second. I regard the Marxist
paradigm as one of several within the broader discipline of sociology, but a
most valued one: a critical paradigm, capable of generating powerful hypothe-
ses concerning aspects of capitalist societies and centring sociology on key ques-
tions of structure and power (Bottomore 1978). While my approach to Marx-
ism is entirely non-dogmatic, in fact, even instrumental (which makes me sus-
pect that some Marxists will disapprove of aspects of this analysis), in contrast
to modern intellectual trends predicated on the impossibility of speaking of a
'real' social world, and the uselessness of Marxism, I retain a 'realist' position
(e.g. Keat and Urry 1975) regarding the value of social science and its relation
to reality, and a continued belief in the paradigm's scientific and political value.
Introduction 3
cal understandings of a particular social formation, by generating histori-

cally specific mid-level or institutional ideas and concepts in the hope that
it will lead to more detailed empirical investigation of the corporations of
culture, the culture industry, and the institutionalised sphere of culture
more generally.
1.1.1 Foundations of a Political Economy of Culture

Garnham's (1979) contribution establishes the foundations for a political
economy of culture. To begin, he conducts what is to my mind an
even-handed and pointed critique of various strands of Marxist thought,
including writers such as Miliband (1973), who accept an unproblematic
account of the base/superstructure model. Garnham recognises the semi-
nal influence on Marxist cultural studies of the Frankfurt School writers
especially Adorno and Horkheimer (1979), and the decisiveness of their
work on 'the culture industry', but who see the industrialisation of culture
as unproblematic and irresistible and ignore the significance of its eco-
nomic contradictions. Equally, though Garnham ignores these points,
their notion of ideology is undercut by a disabling elitism, and their work
lacks an appropriate theory of consumption. Notwithstanding, I retain a
considerable respect for their contribution. The more recent Althusserian
turn, as Garnham notes, rejected the economism which had overtaken
much Marxist analysis but made the opposite mistake of assuming the
relative autonomy of the superstructure including its ideological and
political levels. In the important contributions of Stuart Hall (e.g. 1977),
for example, media and other cultural institutions are treated solely as
ideological apparatuses, a form of analysis which Garnham argues must be
preceded with a political economy - precisely the point that Hall rejects.
The last strand Garnham discusses is the writings of Dallas Smythe (e.g.
1977) and his arguments concerning the media commodity as the audi-
ence, created to fulfil the needs of advertisers. Garnham's criticisms of his
economism and functionalism are, I believe, correct. What is more, as I
will point out in chapter 3, Smythe's analysis is simply wrong. In contrast
to these approaches, Garnham argues in relation to the media that we
need to:
distinguish between the media as processes of material production (whether
capitalist or not is precisely a question for analysis) on the one hand, and as sites of
ideological struggle on the other and the relationship between those two levels or
instances (1979:133 - emphasis added).
In other words, while accepting the importance of the ideology/reproduc-
tion problematic in the sociological study of cultural institutions, Garnham

asserts the prior necessity of a political economy of culture on two
grounds: first, on historical materialist premises, that the material condi-
tions of production have actual and hence analytical priority; and second,
that this applies especially in an era of the pervasive industrialisation of
culture.
He then identifies some of the most important issues around which a
political economy should gravitate, using terms and problematics drawn
from Marx' historical materialism. I doubt that many of the original terms
which Garnham preserves such as base/superstructure, material and
mental production, and so on, are actually worth keeping. Some reflect
19th century concerns, others historical conditions which have been
superseded, others are simply too abstract, undeveloped and unwieldy to
be useful. In the light of this, my inclination is to leave these societal
concepts behind, and develop a collection of institutional concepts.
Overall, Garnham argues for the importance of recognising the exten-
sive industrialisation of the sphere of culture and the historical and
sociological significance of the culture industry. In advanced capitalist
societies, superstructure and base have collapsed into one another.
Processes of 'mental' production have been transformed to a greater or
lesser degree into capitalist commodity production. He also correctly
emphasises that the extent of capitalisation needs empirical investigation:
as will be seen in chapter 3 and 4, this varies across different sectors of the
industry and there are significant differences between the creative and
reproduction stages of production. Under these conditions, what is
nominally cultural interaction has become simultaneously economic and
political; to illustrate the point, Garnham points out how the purchase and
consumption of a newspaper locates the consumer at once in relation to
the economy, politics and culture. Under these conditions, the logic of
capital enters into the production of cultural commodities as part of the
overdetermination which shapes their form and contents - although he
does not specify how.
Throughout the paper, Garnham raises a number of points which seem
worthwhile. He emphasises, for example, the importance of grasping the
contradictions underlying the culture industry, arguing that "the contradic-
tory nature of the process is in part intrinsic; i.e. the conflict between
capital and labour" (1979: 140). Some are extrinsic, relating to the
relationship between developing capitalist production and the non-
capitalist regions of the social formation, and that there are various
barriers to valorisation as a consequence. He argues, for example, that
cultural and informational goods have almost limitless use value which
makes them classic public goods, making it difficult to attach exchange
Introduction 5
value to them (1979: 140), thereby introducing problems of realisation.

The general point is undeniable but I disagree on the detail of Garnham's
argument. Since capital is never realised concretely in its pure form but
always in the form of particular industries, its contradictions take forms
specific to that industry and it is these which must be the centre of analysis.
While the notion of contradiction is fundamental to this book, it is not the
pure opposition of capitalist and wage labourer which needs to be
examined but the specific contradiction of capitalist and artist. On the
other side of the coin, the issue of use-value is indeed crucial to the
contradictions of the cultural commodity, but not in terms of its 'limitless'
use-value. The undermining of its use value as a cultural object by its
exchange value form is what underpins the contradictions of the cultural
commodity and many characteristic dynamics of the culture industry.
Other points Garnham raises in considering the industrialisation of
culture relate to the importance of analysing the dynamics of the culture
industry as functioning capital; how, for example, concentration and
centralisation within the culture industry itself generates new problems of
valorisation including a sharpening struggle over the labour process, and
heightened competition between capitalists in opening up and dominating
new consumer goods and equipment markets. Many of these points are
specifically investigated throughout this work.
In summary, Garnham's contribution to a political economy of culture
is immensely important. Given difficulties with many of the concepts
bequeathed to the Marxist tradition, however, I have doubts about
approaching the issue from a theoretical perspective. Their level of
abstraction provides a barrier to moving analytically from a societal to an
institutional level, in connecting macro structures and logics with empirical
agents and activities. This is where the gap seems to exist. The approach I
develop here takes Garnham's arguments for granted but attempts to
realise them in more institutional kinds of ways, at a lower level of
abstraction.
1.1.2 Foundations of an Institutional Analysis

At one point, Garnham (1979: 127) makes the comment that "the purpose
of a political economy of culture is to elucidate what Marx and Engels
meant by 'control of the means of mental production'". Graham Murdock
(e.g. 1978, 1982), sometimes with Peter Golding (e.g. Murdock and
Golding 1974, 1977, 1979), has also promoted the case for political
economy and in doing so has contributed much to institutional and
empirical understandings of the control exerted within the corporations of

culture.
Murdock's work compliments Garnham's - although is more specifi-
cally focused on a sociology of 'communication' (I comment briefly on this
under-theorised term in chapter 7) where the mass media are one amongst
many types of cultural institutions. Like Garnham, he accepts the ideology
problematic as an important part of the overall study of social cultural
reproduction which has traditionally occupied the heartland of sociologi-
cal analysis, and more specifically of stratification theory (Murdock and
Golding 1977: 12, 13-14). Hence, in his important late-1970s paper with
Peter Golding, he works outwards from The German Ideology (Marx and
Engels 1976) and its well-known arguments concerning the class with
control of the means of mental production, noting how this passage gives
rise to three propositions; that ownership of the systems for production
and distribution of social knowledge has been taken over by capitalists;
that this allows them to regulate the contents of the objects produced by
their firms; and third, that ideological domination plays a key role in
maintaining class inequalities.
Each of these propositions in turn raises a series of key questions for empirical
investigation: questions about the relations between communications en-
trepreneurs and the capitalist class, about the relations between ownership and
control within the communications industries, about the processes through which
the dominant ideology is translated into cultural commodities; and about the
dynamics of reception and the extent to which members of subordinate groups
adopt the dominant ideas as their own (1977: 15).
While not accepting all of this, for example, the notion of a 'dominant
ideology' (cf. Abercrombie et αϊ. 1980), Murdock's work indicates useful
directions forward, in particular, how "an adequate analysis of cultural
production needs to examine not only the class base of control, but also
the general economic context within which this control is exercised" (1977:
16). In 'Capitalism, Communication and Class Relations', Murdock and
Golding, like Garnham, critique various types of Marxist thinking on the
subject (Adorno and Horkheimer, Williams and Hall, and Smythe), and
emphasise the priority of examining the political-economic conditions of
cultural production. They argue that this should entail working out "the
complex connections between economics and intellectual production,
between base and superstructure" (1977: 19), not in a reductionist way,
but within the limits of economic determinism, showing the impact of
economic on cultural relations. The real value of their work lies in their
movement from the theoretical to the institutional level. In this paper, for
example, they sketch out the shift from concentration to conglomeration
Introduction 7
(1977: 23-28), looking at the present stage of the culture industry and the
dominance of transnational, vertically and horizontally integrated and
predominantly Anglo-American corporations. They turn to the issue of
ownership and control in this context, concluding that because of cross-
directorships, "control over the key processes of resource allocation is still
significantly tied to ownership, but that the owning group continues to
constitute an identifiable capitalist class with recognisable interests in
common" (1977: 33), a point which Murdock elaborates further in a later
paper (1982).
The question then becomes one of examining the mediation of cultural
production by these structures. They critique simplistic deterministic
accounts such as those of Miliband, and suggest that even Althusserian
versions, for all their theoretical sophistication, tend to fall into the same
trap by representing the mass media as ideological state apparatuses
whose function is to act as the ideological partners to the repressive
apparatuses of the state (1977: 33). They also reject approaches which
examine critically the output of the mass media and infer back to the
avowed intentions and deliberations of the producers. As they point out,
the weakness of this work lies in the fact that "it is quite divorced from any
investigation of the actual institutional imperatives, organisational routines
and working exigencies" (1977: 34 - emphasis added) in which texts are
created. The question, however, is what to investigate? They propose two
levels for analysis: one, normative, which links the content of a culture to
particular occupational practices; the second, a focus on the conditions
"linking work situation and market Situation"" (1977: 35 - emphasis
added); for example, how the need of the commercial media to maximise
audiences drives them towards "concentrating on the familiar and formula
which are as similar as possible to the tried and tested" (1977: 39). These
are useful suggestions. Murdock's contribution to the development of a
political economy of culture is a prescription for detailed empirical
investigation of the institutional context in which cultural commodity
production is carried out, for analysis which reflects its simultaneously
economic, political and cultural complexities. In a nutshell, that is the
focus of this book.
Accordingly, a sociology of culture must set out to reveal the mode of
cultural interaction, the structures and principles, the embedded relations
and mechanisms, through which situated agents produce and exchange
cultural objects2. This requires an institutional analysis of the culture
Despite Murdock and Golding's arguments, I am not at all certain that this
means beginning with class analysis, which seems to be their preferred ap-
proach. While I accept the importance of understanding cultural production in
industry; in Giddens' (1984: 375) terms, a form of social analysis "which

places in suspension the skills and awareness of actors, treating institutions
as chronically reproduced rules and resources". It should discard the
common Marxist tendency to presume determinant conditions at a high
level of abstraction, yet neither should it be 'empiricistic', based on
naturalistic methodologies. It should be empirical, certainly, but from
data, searching out the specific structures and mechanisms which generate
them; as Marx did in Capital (Sayer 1984, also Keat and Urry 1975). This
must entail an analytical focus on institutional form: elucidating the
distinctive characteristics of a particular form of organisation, its con-
stituent objects, and their logics, their rules of combination. The result will
be an account of the historical and structural conditions under which
situated agents can act, the possibilities which are available to them as
they construct their individual and collective projects (Giddens 1984, also
Wolff 1982). Such an analysis must be detailed and take complexity for
granted. It should painstakingly build models which link macro-historical
structures with particular practices in particular types of organisations
such as advertising, journalism, creative production, promotion, and so on.
This prescription corresponds to arguments presented by Williams:
A sociology of culture must concern itself with institutions and formations of
cultural production...But then a sociology of culture must also concern itself with
the social relations of its specific means of production... A sociology of culture must
further and most obviously concern itself with specific artistic forms...[and] the
processes of social and cultural 'reproduction'...Finally, a sociology of culture must
concern itself with general and specific problems of cultural organisation (1981:
30-31).
the context of class domination and reproduction especially through the opera-
tions of ideology, consistent with the present-day thrust in sociology towards
non-functionalist forms of analysis (e.g. Giddens 1979, 1984), class and ideol-
ogy have to be understood as effects; as structured consequences of the opera-
tions of institutions - for example, in the way that ideology is an effect of the
form of economic relations which constitute capitalism (cf. Mepham 1979, cf.
also Hall 1977). There are dangers in starting analysis with, for example, the
class positions of entrepreneurs and managers and/or cultural workers and ex-
amining how their ideas and values enter into the types and range of commodi-
ties produced and their contents - although doing so might certainly be inter-
esting at times such as election campaigns, during periods of intense industrial
activity or economic downturn. Instead, it seems more important to analyse the
practices in which agents are engaged, the embedded rules of the particular
form of social life, and the entire circuit of production and circulation and con-
sumption of cultural commodities, eventually interpreting their effects in terms
of class, of the relations of power.
Introduction 9
My argument is concerned with the first, second and last of the points
raised by Williams. The sociology of culture is still in its formative stages;
but for the prevalence of textual analysis in media/cultural studies, and
elsewhere, deductive and dogmatic Marxist analysis, it might be more
developed than it is. Because of this, in Culture, Williams attempts to
organise and classify theories, concepts and problematics across the
arena - but the openness and incompleteness of this book is both its
strength and its weakness. My analysis is more focused. It picks out one
region of analysis within the sociology of culture, that of corporate cultural
production, and identifies its constituent conditions. Even so, more
research is needed to see how different groups of actors use these
conditions to achieve their goals, how corporate conditions are intersected
by other conditions identified by Williams. To that extent, like Culture,
this work too, is theoretical housekeeping; but, so to speak, in one room of
the house.
1.1.3 The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural

Production
Throughout this book, I focus on the corporate conditions of capitalist
cultural commodity production - i.e. the form of cultural production
represented by the corporations of culture - and do so by focusing on the
institutions and practices through which they produce and circulate
cultural commodities, their form of labour organisation, and the kinds of
work carried out inside them.
Problems with two terms used throughout this work need to be
registered but without debating them substantively: these are the notions
of 'culture' and 'art'. Following Williams (cf. 1963: 13-19, 1976a: 32-35,
76-82, 1981: 206-233), in their modern usage, neither has any precise,
single meaning; as he comments, "The modern history of the concept of
culture is in fact a history of the search for such a concept" (1981: 206). A
sociology of culture must search for a meaning which understands the
term as "a realised signifying system" (1981: 207). Even this has two
possible senses: the first, too broad and inclusive, referencing the fact that
all human activity has signifying components; and the second, a more
sociological version, which recognises that as modern forms of human life
developed, manifestly and specifically signifying practices became sepa-
rated from others which were primarily economic and political. Over time,
their characteristic objects, relations, and mechanisms of realisation, took
the form of social institutions; mass communications systems are one
example (Williams 1981: 207-212). My use of terms such as 'culture' and

'cultural' throughout this work is based on this second set of meanings.
The term 'art', itself related to the notion of 'culture', has similar
problems. To put it too baldly, but in way which serves my practical
purposes, institutionalisation of specifically cultural practices went hand in
hand with their differentiation and specialisation. The sphere of 'art' as a
secular and extraordinary realm of human expression was differentiated
from religion, science, engineering, law and accounting, and schooling,
especially under the impetus of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and
later, the Romantic movement (Williams 1981: 212-214). In that sense,
'art' is an epochal form of 'cultural' practice. I make the term refer in this
analysis to institutions such as music, writing and theatre and the more
specialised forms derived from them, including film, recordings, the
media, as well as journalism, advertising and marketing. Each shares a
complex genesis through the constitution of art, even though some of the
most modern forms discussed here - journalism is a good example -
seem to exist at considerable distance from more centrally and obviously
artistic practices. I use the term 'the artist' in similar fashion, although the
closer this analysis comes to the present, its applicability in some fields
such as the media and advertising seems forced.
Following Garnham and Murdock, the primary assumption of this work
is that in modern capitalist societies, cultural production covers an
enormous array of social activities which are wholly or in part specifically
signifying in character. Many of these are now organised along capitalist
lines. Historically, and especially since the last decades of the 18th century,
and in new and expanded ways from the early 20th century, we have seen
the consolidation of what Adorno and Horkheimer called the culture
industry, where large and powerful systems of cultural commodity produc-
tion and circulation have been constructed and dominated by large
transnational corporations. These I will refer to as the 'corporations of
culture'.
Using the figure 'the corporations of culture' creates a problem of
boundaries in marking out the unit of analysis. As my argument unfolds, I
consider various conditions 'within' these corporations. In reality, they are
not definitively enclosed. There are many connections Outwards'. Some
are given by the general conditions of profitability which impact upon all
companies, cultural and otherwise; others operate through trading or
ownership linkages to major corporations in other spheres of industry;
other links reach out into the periphery of the culture industry, in direct
and short-term sub-contracting relations with independents and indivi-
duals in creative projects, and indirectly through licensing and distribution
agreements, and into the amateur sphere which provides an ongoing pool
Introduction 11
of talent. 'Corporations', therefore, is used in this analysis as an institu-

tional term which has empirical referents only as the complex of corporate
offices, subsidiaries and divisions articulated through various transactions,
sub-contracts and engagements to other sectors of the economy. Further-
more, the 'corporate' form of cultural practice instituted 'inside' the
corporations of culture, in some cases, flows over into non-corporate
spheres, variously and in different ways and with different effects.
Nonetheless, I make the simplifying assumption that it is possible to
bound the corporations of culture, to speak of work and organisation
within them, identify its characteristics, and build a model of the corpora-
tions of culture in an institutional as opposed to a naturalistic, organisa-
tional sense, and work out its logic.
The problem of boundaries occurs in another, more crucial sense. In
examining the corporate model of capitalist cultural commodity produc-
tion, this work assumes that the causes of its conditions lie within the
objects and relations which constitute the industry. Capitalist cultural
production is presumed to be a closed system. While this analysis
demonstrates that it is possible to talk meaningfully in these terms, there
are also important determinants flowing from outside the industry but
which play only minimal part in this analysis. By far the most important
are linkages to the broader economy of which the culture industry is itself
only a part; Garnham is correct to emphasise this. The conditions which
allowed the development, expansion and continuation of the corporations
of culture are also tied to macro-economic conditions and the dynamics of
modern capitalist economies. The liberal democratic state is another
important external influence, especially as a patron of many forms of
cultural production such as the provision of funds for cultural organisa-
tions such as opera and ballet companies, regional and national orchestras
and national broadcasting organisations, all of which influence not only
the cultural labour market but just as directly, the cultural forms upon
which corporate creative policies are built. As macro-economic manager
and regulator of industry generally, the state sets many of the conditions
which shape profitability and the conduct of business and the manufactur-
ing and marketing strategies adopted by the corporations of culture.
Technology and the capital goods industry are other major influences.
Changes in cultural practice can follow technical innovations; the inven-
tion of television itself is a good example, as are recent shifts towards
computerisation of creative and transcription equipment (some aspects of
which are dealt with in chapter 3). So are information technologies, which,
in the last decades of the 20th century, are set to transform the public
goods sector. Further, some of the most important transnational corpora-
tions such as RCA and Philips, are manufacturers of consumer goods and
have equipment divisions linked through ownership to manufacturing

firms in the capital goods sector generally. Audiences too can generate
effects. Taste changes are shaped by many factors and feed back to the
corporations through product sales. Part of this flows from the struggle
over meaning taking place through consumption, which many textual
analysts talk about but few investigate empirically. Other shifts are
triggered by changes in the larger society, such as reorganisation of
workplaces and consumer markets which fragment and realign groups in
new ways, laying the foundations for emergent taste communities. Even
more problematic, partly because it cuts into the culture industry (an
articulation which is inadequately dealt with in this work), is the issue of
aesthetics and its institutionalisation in the academy. Assessments of
cultural value by artists, the academy, and audiences, are shaped in part by
metaphysical elements of creativity and talent which are sometimes
beyond discourse let alone control by the corporations of culture. In this
sense, aesthetics represents an external social formation which is real in its
effects on corporate cultural production (Williams 1981, Wolff 1983).
Nonetheless, I intend proceeding on the assumption that it is possible to
delineate the corporations of culture and discuss their functioning without
reference to external conditions. Despite the apparent dangers of this
approach, it is possible to identify internal dynamics founded upon what I
refer to as 'the contradictions of art and capital'. I have deliberately
blinkered this analysis in order to retain a clear focus on these; in that
sense, it is most open to criticism for what it does not take into account.
1.1.4 The Organisation of Specifically Cultural Production

Throughout this work I adopt a Marxist-type approach to investigation of
the corporate organisation of cultural production. While the term 'produc-
tion' is often used within Marxism in the broad sense of production as
opposed to consumption, the process itself involves two circuits, one of
commodity production proper, the other, the circulation and exchange of
value forms. While analytically separable, in 20th century capitalism and
especially with the advent of marketing, they are fundamentally con-
nected, more so than some analysts in this tradition seem to credit. The
centrality of marketing is particularly important in understanding the
operations of the culture industry. In fact, this analysis suggests that their
interrelation partly shapes the corporate form of cultural organisation.
The organisation of corporate capitalist production is given by more
than juridical relations of ownership. These are certainly important, but
analysis needs to go deeper. There are many variants of capitalist relations
Introduction 13
in production and their specific relationships between ownership and

control, productivity and output, need to be investigated at the detailed
level of work and organisation, with the purpose of building abstract
models of a particular form of social organisation of labour (Clegg and
Dunkerley 1980: 469). Accordingly, I look at the different conditions of
cultural practice in both production and circulation, and do so from a
labour process perspective. This approach provides insights into the
historical structures of power which underlie corporate work and organisa-
tion, in contrast to the naturalistic empiricism marking some attempts at a
sociology of cultural production (e.g. Moran 1984, Tunstall 1971, cf. the
stronger sociological imagination evident in the work of Elliott 1972,1977,
and Gallagher 1982). Having said that, labour process theory, like
Marxism in general, is hampered by the heaviness and inflexibility of
many of its concepts. Accordingly, like other analysts of the capitalist
labour process such as Edwards (1979) and Littler (1982), whilst retaining
its basic conceptual framework, I have developed its vocabulary of
concepts outwards as necessary.
In this regard, Williams has done useful work in his book, Culture. This
much under-rated work, a collection of theoretical identifications and
classifications, has been a seminal influence on my own analysis and I
would like to see more research develop out of it, if only as an appropriate
epitaph to Williams' extraordinary contribution to the study of society and
culture. While presuming many points he raises in the final chapter (in
some ways, the least satisfactory) such as 'culture as a signifying system',
'the sociology of intellectuals', and 'historical changes', I build up a model
of the corporate form of production by developing points Williams raises
in earlier chapters, especially 'institutions', 'formations', and 'means of
production'. Particularly important is his discussion of the changing
production relations in which artists have been constituted, shifting from
their initial constitution within new social divisions of labour in tribal and
community forms of life, to patronage then market relations, as new kinds
of society emerged. His discussion of modern forms of labour such as
'artisanal', 'post-artisanal', 'market professional' and 'corporate profes-
sional' relations (1981: 44-55) is particularly important, but while I follow
the spirit of his analysis, I adopt a narrower focus and create a more
specific vocabulary to draw out the features of modern capitalist/artistic
relations. The same applies to his discussion of the means of production
and the systems of control which are made to envelop artists in modern
times (especially 1981: 90-97, 99-118).
In doing so, it seems fundamental to recognise the distinctiveness of the
culture industry. This is not simply capitalist production. It is cultural
production organised along capitalist lines. It combines the structures of
capital and art; i.e. the activities subsumed under corporate production are
derived in one form or another from art, a separate and specialised arena
of society's culture which developed through complex forms of societal
organisation, an historically specific institutional framework with con-
stituent structures of objects and their relations. The culture industry is
explicable not as purely capitalist but only in its combination with art.
1.2 Methodological Considerations
1.2.1 The Researcher as Insider

It is impossible to divorce this research project from my biography. Before
turning to an academic career, I had spent many years in the periphery
and core of the culture industry in New Zealand and Australia during a
period when major shifts in organisational conditions were occurring. It
included many years in both so-called serious and popular forms of music
as both singer and instrumentalist, and several years in live theatre. In the
second half of this period I joined the radio industry where, for 15 years, I
worked in both state and commercial radio, first in programming and
announcing and later in senior management, mostly in large media
corporations. There were periods of heavy involvement in marketing and
advertising, recording production and concert promotion, and more
occasional single-project forays into television production and newspaper
journalism. This career gave me an abiding concern with the conditions
under which cultural workers are employed, the pressures operating on
them, and the directions in which they were being pushed in their work.
These are some of the problematics around which this analysis is con-
structed.
More importantly, in analysing the culture industry, my work experi-
ence gave me the status of an 'insider', particularly since my earlier career
included periods as both worker and manager. Because I had left the
industry some years before taking on this project, I attempted to bracket
my own experiences during the course of field work and data analysis, but
was intrigued to find I had retained what Giddens refers to as a 'practical
consciousness' of industry conditions; as he describes it, "What actors
know (believe) about social conditions, including especially the conditions
of their own action, but cannot express discursively; no bar of repression,
however, protects practical consciousness as is the case with the uncon-
Methodological Considerations 15
scious" (1984: 375). As such, it became a useful research tool. It helped me

interpret the empirical materials I collected in the course of field work; it
positioned me as a long-term participant observer, able to draw upon
knowledges acquired while located within the community under study
(Burgess 1984, Lofland 1971, Madge 1953). On the one hand, my grasp of
the usual ways of doing things and the vocabularies and grammars of
'show business', seemed to give me a legitimacy which opened doors to
workplaces and encouraged interview subjects to talk freely. It sensitised
me to the practical and sometimes discursive knowledges held by subjects
of the rules of the corporate cultural game, as revealed in my observations
of their work, the informal discussions we held as they were doing it, and
the responses they gave to more formal interviews. Most important, it
provided me with a detailed background knowledge about the conditions
of present-day cultural production upon which I could draw in abstracting
its underlying structures.
1.2.2 Field Work and Data Sources

The primary empirical sources for this study were derived from a formal
programme of field work based on interviews and observations within
selected corporations of culture, and published materials collected from
various sources.
Field work was built around organisations based in the Australian
mainland capital cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Because a
range of published academic and industry material was available on the
recording, film and publishing industries, and partly because formal field
work was restricted to Australia where there are only a few major
companies in these arenas, interviews and observations were restricted to
the media and marketing/advertising sectors. These were conducted at 3
radio stations, 3 television channels, 2 newspapers companies, 2 advertis-
ing agencies, 1 news agency and 1 production house. Media outlets were
selected so as to represent each of the three major corporate grouping in
Australia (details of each are provided chapter by chapter with each
model constructed to demonstrate their operation). In each case, observa-
tions and formal and informal interviews were conducted with managers
and workers, with questions eliciting accounts of the usual expectations
operating on people working in the position. A small number of back-
ground interviews were conducted with personnel from publishing and
recording companies.
Primary sources also included clippings from industry journals and
periodicals and the daily consumer media including press, radio and
television. Any project of this type collects an enormous range of news

items, interviews and features from such sources, and this one has been no
exception. There is a methodological problem here in relation to the
culture industry. As later analysis will show, the media play a crucial
publicity role in relation to the objects of the culture industry. It has been
necessary, therefore, when using such sources, to read through these
purposes, wherever possible using only those media conventionally re-
garded as authoritative, and using only the 'facts' they offered. Also
available were several secondary sources, mainly books written by practi-
tioners and insiders (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977; Dessauer 1974).
These amass the collective knowledge of particular fields within the
culture industry in considerable detail and became a valuable resource in
supplementing the primary data gathered during fieldwork.
A number of points are worthy of mention. The culture industry,
especially the media, are notorious for being suspicious of academic
researchers. Despite gaining easy access to some of these organisations by
virtue of my insider status, many respondents, especially media managers,
were willing to talk only with written guarantees of confidentiality.
Accordingly, from an early stage of field work and to ease the process of
negotiating entry, I decided to offer a blanket promise of anonymity to all
respondents. As anticipated, this disadvantaged the study little. My
concerns from the outset were structural and institutional, such that my
analysis was oriented towards the construction of composite structural
models, hence not dependent upon naming particular companies or
individuals.
Actually, as the form of corporate production took clearer shape in the
course of drafting, much of the on-the-ground data disappeared - or
rather, was relegated to the role of an ever-present background chorus.
Secondary analysis became more important as it developed. A number of
data-rich studies of film, recording, publishing and media production were
available which provided a useful foundation for my institutional analysis.
Allowing these to carry much of the empirical load has the added
advantage that others have access to their data in order to evaluate my
critique. The fact that most of these studies were derived from empirical
fields in the United States, Britain and Western Europe, brought another
advantage: with largely Australasian data, this work could have been
criticised on the grounds that its findings were not applicable to forms of
cultural production on either side of the Atlantic. As it turned out, the
similarities were more notable than the differences. My focus from the
outset was on the cardinal conditions of corporate cultural commodity
production which, barring some regional and national contingencies
appearing at the surface, empirical level but not at the institutional level,
apply wherever there are corporations of culture. Most of what I argue

here is applicable to situations in the United States, Britain, Australia,
New Zealand and Canada, and probably - although I am less sure of this
because of a shortage of adequate comparative literature - West Ger-
many, Holland, France, Italy, and other nations where capitalist cultural
production dominates.
It could be argued that since this book is founded upon historical
understandings of changes in forms of cultural production, a history of the
culture industry should have comprised one of the chapters. In fact, that
was my original intention. An adequate history, however, rather than a
simplistic tale which simply indicated key turning points as stages in an
apparently linear progression towards increasing capitalisation, would be
detailed and complex, pointing up discontinuities as well as continuities,
tracing its hesitant beginnings, its variant rhythms, and criss-crossing
patterns of development. It would have to elaborate the conditions which
enabled, for example, the commercialisation of printing and its rapid
advancement with technological development throughout the 15th and
16th centuries; the initial commercialisation of non-guild theatrical and
music performances in the 16th and 17th centuries; the advent of specula-
tive partnerships and syndicates from the late 17th-early 18th century,
coupled with the rise of the artist-manager and the possibility of profes-
sional employment; by the 19th century, the regularisation of production
in music and theatre based upon repeated performances and tours/sea-
sons, more specifically in the United States than elsewhere; the concentra-
tion of venue ownership and the advent of industrialised transcription
technologies in the performing arts in the late-19th century, and so on.
Such an account would require more than a single chapter in this book.
Instead, I have included brief historical segments at those points where it
seems appropriate. The absence, however, has confirmed in my mind the
need for a specifically sociological history of the culture industry which
conveys something of the long (and complex) revolution it represents (cf.
Williams 1965) - and which compliments Hauser's magnificent social
history of art (e.g. 1962a, 1962b).
1.2.3 Analysis: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects

There are various conceptual and methodological issues associated with
the strategies employed in abstracting out the corporate form of cultural
production, which warrant discussion. The principles adopted here are an
amalgam of a simplified version of Marx' materialist/realist method (Sayer
1979, 1983)3, the work of Stewart Clegg in the sociology of organisation

and Anthony Giddens in the field of social theory.
As already indicated, this study identifies the organisational form
through which cultural production is carried out in the capitalist corpora-
tions of culture. To analyse organisational form in this context, in effect, is
to examine the issue of power and domination as it affects artists
employed in the corporate workplace, by identifying the embedded
practices which constitute corporate cultural relations in production and
through which artists, if they are to be successful, must work. In that
regard, this study is heavily influenced by the work of Stewart Clegg (1975;
Clegg and Dunkerley 1980). Clegg's general argument is that the study of
organisation and hence of domination has to move beyond naturalistic
accounts of the surface level of power and the diversity of objects and
issues experienced in the everyday workplace, to the structure of domina-
tion within which power is or can be exercised. Analysis should search out
the rules which link power and domination. In fact, he argues, the three
concepts of power, rule and domination provide the key to understanding
an organisation's mode of rationality and the structure of relations which
constitute it. The essential points of his arguments are summarised in
Figure 1.1. From Weberian premises, Clegg argues that individual social
actions are motivated by collectively recognised and publicly available
social rules which orient individual social actions in rationally structured
ways, where the rules themselves are profoundly influenced by the
underlying structures of domination. The exercise of power, therefore, is
constructed and acted out by individuals as ruled enactment. Individuals
or members of an organisational stratum as social beings should be
regarded as bearers of the particular rationality associated with an
organisation or type of organisation, within which an objective principle is
regarded as a concrete object which governs the domination. In particular,
economic power in business organisations is embedded, displayed and
3 It may also be that Marx' method is founded on a transcendental realism, a

label which might also apply to this work. Since it has a substantive and not
methodological focus, I do not wish to contribute to the debate over a realist
philosophy of science - even though I regard it as particularly interesting -
preferring instead to adopt a conventional materialist methodology and allow-
ing the results to stand for themselves. Sayer (e.g. 1979,1983) has made impor-
tant contributions on Marx' method (see also Mepham 1979, Nicolaus 1973).
Bhaskar's work on realism (e.g. 1978, 1979) is particularly important; see also
Keat and Urry (1975). Andrew Sayer (1984) takes a realist approach to
method in social science; Erik Olin Wright (e.g. 1985,1987) explicitly attempts
to resuscitate a scientific Marxism using realist assumptions but based on a
more positivist methodology than that used here.
Structure Concept Topic Example
Surface _ > Power -> Exchange - ·> Outcome of issues

structure
/S
t t
Deep
I 1 Power —> Exchange —> Outcomes
structure
> Rules -^ Rationality -
* t ΐ ΐ
Rules —> Rationality —> Issues
A A /\
Power —> Exchange —> Outcomes
Form of _ > Domination _. Economic _ ·>

ΐ ΐ ΐ
Rules —> Rationality —> Issues
life activity
r,
ΐ
· .·
ΐ ΐ
Domination —v> Economic
. . —.> Iconic. .
activity theorizing
Source: Clegg (1975: 78)
Figure 1.1 The Structure Of Power In Organisations
articulated through different types of rules which constitute the day-to-day

realities of the capitalist labour process and which mediate and enable the
range of strategies from which actors may select (Clegg and Dunkerley
1980: 444-456, for an extended discussion of the embeddedness of eco-
nomic action and social structure see also Granovetter 1985).
Organisations, accordingly, need to be conceptualised as political units
of structured selectivity rules organised around issues which are crucial or
significant for the modes of rationality through which the organisation
operates (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 480-481). Moreover, rule combina-
tions are shaped by the one or several hegemonic forms of life which
underpin an organisation. Each form of life represents deeply embedded,
specific, historical human practices, reproduced through the dominance of
unreflected, reified conventions. Combined, they make up a specific,
situated mode of production. The theorising power of a hegemonic form
of life (expressed through the organisation's Organic intellectuals', the
administrative and managerial strata), reflexively reconstitutes the mode
of production of its own practice independently of the conscious know-
ledge of particular agents located in production (Clegg and Dunkerley

1980: 499-500). For researchers of organisation:
This conception of visible, diverse structure being underlain by rules offers us a
form of reductionism which Clegg (1975) [has termed] a mode of rationality...Ac-
tion remains, as it is, on the surface. What one is doing is to construct a possible
abstract model (a mode, not a determinant logic) not of action but of the rationality
which can be demonstrated through deconstructing that action. The abstraction
'mode of rationality' is itself conceptualised within the abstraction of the mode of
production. The mode of rationality is the analytical formulation of sedimented
selection rules. These rules are the means by which owners and controllers of the
means of production orient their practice towards the hegemonic domination of
some objective principle, which, in the last instance, will tend to be conditioned
economically by the mode of production (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 502).
In other words, a mode of rationality and the organisational form through
which it is realised is analytically available through deconstruction of the
routine practices of everyday organisational life. The research task is to
sift through the empirical reality of a vast diversity of visible structures,
some residual, some mature and others emerging, and from these manifest
contents and patterns, work out the inherent conditions which would
make them possible. This can be achieved, in Sayer's terms, via critique;
beginning with empirical data taken from the phenomenal forms of social
life, retroductively formulating an abstract account of the underlying real
relations and the mechanisms of their realisation, their institutional orders
and their dynamics, and elucidating the underlying forms of life: "postulat-
ing mechanisms which should they exist would explain how the phenom-
ena under investigation come to assume the forms in which they are
experienced" (Sayer 1983: 40). From this perspective, the focus of enquiry
must be the sets of embedded selection rules which constitute a particular
form of organisation. This is its enacted environment, its mode of
rationality, the constituent elements of which can be identified and
modelled.
In this study, I take art and capital to be the forms of life which
underpin the corporations of culture, and the art/capital relation as the
foundation of the culture industry. I show progressively how its particular
forms of expression - for example, in the contradictions of the artist/capi-
talist relation - generate particular logics which incline development in
particular directions (this is the tendential sense in which the notion of
necessity is employed throughout this analysis). In their modern, complex,
capitalist form, the mechanisms for realising the fundamental relations of
artist and capitalist under present-day conditions of capital accumulation
appear as corporate conditions of production; in particular, they take the
form of the project team and its characteristic structure of relations,
formatting as a system of control, the necessity of publicity relations and

the associated orientations of professionalism and commercialism, and so
on. These provide structural explanations for the apparent multiplicity of
stars and styles which comprise the myriad surfaces of the cultural
marketplace and the tendency towards formula and cliche which marks so
much cultural production.
Not that this analytical approach entails simply making deductions from
the fundamental relations underpining the culture industry. Data and
concepts are brought together in the gradual delineation of the historical
forms through which the industry is constituted. Facts relating to organisa-
tions, activities and individuals are analysed by bringing macro-historical,
epochal categories to bear. These include those devised by Marx in his
critique of capital, and some from within the world of art (art, artist,
artistry, creativity, originality) which I use in the same abstract sense as
capitalist, wage-labour, use-value, exchange-value, and so on. Throughout
the analysis, as the interplay of data and concepts proceeds, I gradually
construct a set of historical categories including the project team, pro-
ducer, director, executants, stars, styles, creatives, formatting, commercial-
ism, professionalism, the publicity complex and so on. These specify the
principal characteristics of the corporate form of capitalist cultural com-
modity production. In doing so, my argument constantly shifts from the
empirical level to its structuring principles and back again. Other move-
ments also enter the analysis. On the one hand, it moves progressively
from the general, the abstract and the epochal (chapter 2 and 3) to the
particular, the historical, the concrete (chapter 4 to 8) - so to speak, from
far to near. Simultaneously, it moves laterally from production to circula-
tion (as one would expect from an historical materialist analysis) and back
again (which one might not), gradually broadening the field of vision to
show how the rules which constitute the creative stage of production are
mediated not only by the rules of value production but also by the
demands of market realisation. These movements give the analysis an
unfolding character. The early chapters construct a series of concepts
which are examined initially from a production perspective and later from
a circulation perspective. A good example is 'the star', discussed in
different contexts as 'the contracted artist', 'leading executant', 'an artist
of significant reputation', and 'an artist subject to commercialism'. None
of these are equivalent representations of the same object but more like
synonyms highlighting different dimensions of a multi-faceted object, each
taking the specificity of their meaning from the context in which each is
discussed. The shape of the corporate form is progressively delineated in
its full complexity: though not as a complete and comprehensive unity, for
social life is not that ordered (which is why I avoid offering a consolidated
model in the final chapter), but more like a symphony which develops
themes through different moods, tempos and instrumentation.
Before moving on, an associated device employed in the analysis should
be briefly noted. In constructing a model of the corporate form, I piece
together the fundamental structure of relations if which it is comprised, by
identifying its constituent positions (my structure of relations provides
some specific contents of Clegg's forms of life). As Marx developed his
analysis outwards from the core capitalist/wage labourer relation, this
analysis does much the same. The corporations of culture, however,
cannot be reduced to unmediated figures such as capitalist and worker.
Corporate capital is intersected by institutions such as management as
distinct from ownership, marketing as distinct from financial and general
management, as so on. Most importantly, the worker in the creative stage
of production is a particular form of labour: the artist. Rather than
focusing on the diverse and highly specialised technical division of labour
found in the corporations of culture, I deal with various organisational or
occupational strata as given by a common historical function, employment
and authority relations (see also Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 470-475,
Crompton and Gubbay 1977: 94), defining each as a specific position in the
corporate structure of relations. Hence, for example, within the creative
stage of production, the artist (epochal category), when understood as the
collective labourer, appears as the project team (historical category),
comprising a producer, director, leading and supporting executant, and so
on. The project team as an historically specific form of organisational life
in the culture industry becomes the leading edge of my ongoing analysis.
To return to conceptual and methodological issues raised by Clegg and
Dunkerley's approach to the study of organisation, they note that:
This model of organisation derives from an earlier analysis of language-in-use
which treated conversational materials collected in an organisation as the surface
manifestation of a deeper underlying mode of rationality (see Clegg 1975). In the
context being developed here, the organisation structures can be conceived in
terms of the selection rules which can be analytically constructed as an explanation
of its social and practice (its surface detail, what it does). These rules, collected
together, may be conceived of as a mode of rationality (1980: 504).
In his earlier study, Clegg had investigated the social structures operating
in a construction site by prising open the talk between members of
different organisational strata and the accounts they gave of their actions,
to reveal the conditions which made them possible. In doing so, he was
able to reveal the contextual, operative face of power, to demonstrate how
relations of power, rule and domination constituted the workplace and
relations within and between workers and managers. I have used this
approach in this study, although across a wider range of empirical

materials. Underlying structures can be inferred retroductively through
deconstruction of surface appearances which, if they exist in the form
postulated, would explain their form of appearance. Form can be ab-
stracted from empirical materials such as actors talk and actions, accounts
of their actions, spatial and cultural aspects of the setting, the iconisised
objects which regulate issues within the labour process, and so on.
This approach raises certain methodological issues concerning the
validity of using actors themselves to gain insight into the institutional
orders within which and through which they work, and the analytical
methods to be employed in prising open empirical materials such as
actors' accounts.
In the final chapter of Giddens' The Constitution of Society (1984), he
discusses 'Structuration Theory, Empirical Research and Social Critique'
by comparing the demands of Structuration theory with examples of
already-existing research. His focus is the two polarities of research: the
analysis of strategic conduct through hermeneutic elucidation of frames of
meaning, and the examination and specification of institutional orders,
where, among other points, he challenges the conventional view that the
former demands so-called qualitative methodologies and quantitative
methodologies for the latter. These claims derive from arguments sus-
tained throughout all his recent works on the nature of society and hence
sociology: in particular, his understanding of structure and its duality and
the relationship between structure and agency. At one point he quotes
from the transcript of a moment of interaction in a courtroom, where a
judge, a public defender (PD) and a district attorney (DA) are bargaining
over the sentence for a prisoner who has pleaded guilty to a second-degree
burglary charge:
PD: Your Honour, we request immediate sentencing and waive the probation
report.
Judge: What's his record?
PD: He has a prior drunk and a GTA [grand theft, auto]. Nothing serious. This is
just a shoplifting case. He did enter the K-Mart with intent to steal. But really all
we have here is petty theft.
Judge: What do the people have?
DA: Nothing either way.
Judge: Any objection to immediate sentencing?
DA: No.
Judge: How long has he been in?
PD: Eighty-three days.
Judge: I make this a misdemeanour by PC article 17 and sentence you to ninety
days in County Jail, with credit for time served (Giddens 1984: 330).
Giddens makes a series of observations on this exchange which provide a

concise account of the method of analysis employed in this study (Clegg
1975: 101-124, makes similar remarks). Because of their relevance here
they are worth quoting at length:
Such a situated strip of interaction, like any other, can readily be prised open to
indicate how what seems to be a trivial interchange is profoundly implicated in the
reproduction of social institutions. Each turn in the talk exchanged between
participants is grasped as meaningful by them (and by the reader) only in the tacit
invocation of institutional features of the system of criminal justice. These are
drawn upon by each speaker, who (rightly) assumes them to be mutual knowledge
also held by the others. Note that the content of such mutual knowledge presumes
vastly more than just awareness of the tactics of 'proper procedure' in such cases,
although that is also involved. Each participant knows a vast amount about what a
'legal system' is, about normative procedures of law, about what prisoners,
advocates, judges do, etc. In order to 'bring off the interaction, the participants
make use of their knowledge of the institutional order in which they are involved in
such a way as to render their interchange 'meaningful'. However, by invoking the
institutional order in this way - and there is no other way for participants in
interaction to render what they do intelligible and coherent to one another - they
thereby contribute to reproducing it. Moreover, it is essential to see that in
reproducing it they also reproduce its 'facticity' as a source of structural constraint
(upon themselves and upon others). They treat the system of justice as a 'real'
order of relationships within which their own interaction is situated and which it
expresses. And it is a 'real' (i.e. structurally stable) order of relationships precisely
because they and others like them in connected and similar contexts, accept it as
such - not necessarily in their discursive consciousness but in the practical
consciousness incorporated in what they do...The 'facticity' of structural properties
[is] is contained in the duality of structure. The point is a subtle and profound one,
linking the very possibility of the mutual intelligibility and coherence of situated
interaction to 'facticity' on a broadly based institutional level (1984: 330-331).
Of the points raised by Giddens, two have methodological implications

worth highlighting. The first is that notwithstanding the possibility that
there may be conditions of action of which they are unaware and
consequences of their actions they are unable to control, since actors are
bearers of detailed practical and discursive consciousness of the conditions
under which they act in their everyday lives, actors themselves - or
rather, the contents of their consciousness - are a valid and reliable
resource to researchers concerning the institutional orders under investiga-
tion. This is particularly so if the researcher has acquired an insider's
understanding of the terms through which those knowledges are sustained;
if the researcher is able to share, in other words, in the mutual knowledges
and collectively recognised and available social rules which link them and
through which they act. The second major point is that the objective
outcomes (discourse, objects) of relations between situated actors, contain

within them mediated traces of the rules which constitute the positions in
the first place. As Giddens has demonstrated, these surface phenomena
can be unpacked to reveal the facticity of their underlying structures and
the mechanisms through which they are realised; that is, the form and
content of the rules which instantiate the institutional orders - or in
Clegg's terms, the forms of life and modes of rationality - in which
situated actors are embedded and through which they must act. For these
reasons, the conventional practices and issues which arise in the corpora-
tions of culture became the empirical focus of this study, from which I
have abstracted their underlying groups of structural principles which are
crucial for the modes of rationality through which the organisation
operates.
The study had begun from the recognition that the corporations of
culture were capitalist organisations geared to profit via the production of
cultural commodities but that they were underpined by two distinct modes
of rationality - one art and the other capital - and that one contradicted
the other. This meant that fundamentally, the sets of selective rules
underlying organisations in the sphere of commercial culture would be
related to those associated with the capitalist labour process. Two funda-
mental issues for the culture industry became, from the outset, the
principle themes of the study. The first was that the production process
inside these major business units is separated into a creative stage and a
reproduction and distribution stage and that the former, as a workplace, is
organised along lines quite unlike the industrial processes which mark the
latter. I knew before the commencement of this project that creation of
the original is a highly structured process but not in commonplace ways,
because of the unusual characteristics of artistic or creative work and the
personality and talents of the individuals employed there: the artist, in
other words, represents a valorisation problem in the capitalist labour
process. Equally, I was aware that another of the main problems of the
culture industry is the truncated product life cycle of cultural commodities:
that the work of art represents an enormous problem in achieving the full
realisation of value for the corporations of culture. Before beginning the
fieldwork, therefore, and with the assistance of ethnographies and studies
conducted by writers such as Powdermaker (1950), Moran (e.g. 1982) and
Coser et al. (1982), I had already begun formulating the framework of the
ideas which are presented in chapter 2 and 3 (although, because the logic
of research differs from the logic of presentation, their elaboration had to
wait for the deeper understanding of the labour process that came with the
final stage of fieldwork).
The first stage of fieldwork began as an exploration intended to gain a
feel for the cultural workplace. Almost 40 days were spent in various
Brisbane newspapers, radio and television stations, advertising agencies
and recording studios, with operational managers and workers, observing
as they did their work and discussing the process with them. This stage
served to sensitise me to the fundamental issues and objects which
constituted their everyday routines and conventions, and the everyday
realities of their workplace (given my past, in effect, an opportunity to
refresh my insider knowledge of the setting). It was during this period that
I first started to develop the notion of the project team as the foundation
of the creative stage of production with its constituent strata or positions,
based on a specific structure of employment and authority relations and a
division of labour. Guided by Clegg's notion as to the salience of
organisational issues, I became more conscious of the significance, ubiq-
uity and origins of formatting (under an organisational logo such as a
masthead or call sign) as the principle mechanism of bureaucratic control
within the labour process, and the complex and contradictory character of
commercialism and professionalism as normative orientations binding the
members of the team across the demands of production and circulation.
These matters became the primary focus of the next, more systematic,
wide-ranging stage of the research program: detailed interviews conducted
in various types of cultural organisation in the major Australian State
capitals.
Since my concern was to track down the specific embedded rule sets
which constituted corporate cultural production and the mechanisms
through which they were realised, I spoke with actors as bearers of the
rationalities which underpined their organisations. These could be trapped
by getting individuals to speak of their work routines not as individual
artists, managers and impresarios, but of the conventions under which
they worked, to theorise about the logics of their occupations, the
institutional connections they would have to make and the things that they
would have to do if they wanted to be successful in the industry (many
questions were phrased along the lines of "What does a person in your
position usually have to do...?"). I asked each individual, sometimes
singly, sometimes in small groups, to speak of the characteristics of their
position or organisational stratum in the labour process, their functions
and tasks in commodity production, employment and authority relations,
and the responsibilities and expectations associated with it, especially in
relation to positions above and below them or prior to or following their
position in the labour process. Initially, I attempted to cover all depart-
ments and sections across the organisation, but as the parameters of the
project team and the limits of my study became clearer, interviews were
restricted to actors in key organisational positions in and around the
The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural Commodity Production 27
creative stage of production: the management stratum (owners and

executive management), the marketing stratum (marketing, promotional
and public relations personnel), operational creative management (produc-
ers and directors) and performers (leading and supporting executants).
The collective industry knowledge thus acquired also allowed me to
reinterprete the data provided in other academic accounts of parts of the
culture industry (e.g. the studies by Moran), journalistic reports in media
of various kinds (ranging from newspaper interviews to industry periodi-
cals), and to grasp the production logics behind the outcomes achieved in
the production and circulation of cultural commodities (e.g. the signs of
creativity in packaging).
These empirical objects were deconstructed in precisely the matter
proposed by both Clegg and Giddens. My concern was to penetrate
beyond their surface appearances to the underlying structures which made
them possible. As both had demonstrated, this was not as mysterious as it
sounded. The political-economic practices which underpin the corporate
cultural workplace are embedded in the conventions which make up its
day-to-day reality. To a remarkable degree, their outlines were clearly
visible in the manifest content of talk, objects, icons, and the surface
patterns of the workplace. Moreover, as is clear in the many interview
extracts used throughout the analysis, the actors themselves were fre-
quently capable of providing clear theoretical guides to grasping the
underlying realities of the form of domination to which they were subject.
Not that any one individual would necessarily provide a comprehensive
picture: fragments found here and there had to be pieced together to
complete the outline of the deep structure which I hoped to find. Most of
all, I had to be sensitive to recurrent themes and conceptions, to take them
as important signs of rules and their mechanisms of realisation, to
gradually fit them together into a structural framework and forms of life
which would have to apply for the outcomes to take the form of
appearance as experienced.
1.3 The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural

Commodity Production
As a contribution to the political economy of culture, this book examines

the organisational and workplace conditions under which the corporations
of culture produce and circulate cultural commodities. More specifically, it
is an institutional analysis of the structures under which cultural workers

engaged throughout the corporate core of the present-day culture indus-
try, create originals intended for reproduction and large-scale manufac-
ture. Each chapter progressively elaborates further dimensions of the
corporate form of cultural production. There are three themes running
through the analysis:
1. the contradictions of the art/capital relation and their consequences in
production and circulation;
2. rationalisation of the production and circulation of cultural commodi-
ties as an effect of attempts to confront these contradictions;
3. the corporate conditions of work for various types of artists engaged as
cultural workers by the corporations of culture.
Chapter 2 considers the foundations of the culture industry: its constituent
relation of art and capital. When combined, these two historically specific
structures give rise to sets of contradictions, its two primary manifestations
being the contradiction of the artist and capitalist and the contradictions of
the cultural commodity. Capitalist relations are partly defined by their
distinctive form of labour; the labourer is employed by the capitalist as an
anonymous production factor, as labour power. As historically consti-
tuted, however, the artist is a named individual with unboundable creativ-
ity and talent. As a social object, therefore, artists exist in opposition to
capital and present capitalists with major difficulties in incorporating them
in the production process as labour power. The cultural object, the original
artwork, as constituted through the structures of art, is valued for its
originality and uniqueness. Widespread consumption under conditions of
commoditisation brings familiarity with its contents, thereby undermining
the characteristics which made it attractive to potential consumers in the
first place. Successful exchange serves to devalue the market value of the
cultural commodity and attenuate its market life. These contradictions are
the epochal oppositions constituting the art/capital relation; they are
crucial to understanding the shape and dynamics of the culture industry
and the particularities of the corporate form of production.
Chapter 3 examines the division of labour which underlies the culture
industry. A sectoral framework is created, based on the different types of
cultural commodities, private and quasi-private goods (recordings, publica-
tions and films respectively), and quasi-public goods (the media), and the
manner in which the companies which produce them realise their profits.
The public goods sector is particularly interesting since problems in
realising the value of their commodities force these firms to generate
income via the advertising relation. This takes on considerable importance
in later analysis.
Chapters 4 and 5 consider the production of cultural commodities. They

examine the immediate consequences in production of the artist/capitalist
contradiction and the form around which this relation is realised in the
corporations of culture. Marx' model of capitalist production is the point
of departure of the analysis. The artist, however, cannot be incorporated
as wage-labour in degraded conditions of industrial production via tradi-
tional technical and bureaucratic forms of control. The corporate organisa-
tion of cultural production takes a specific and complex form.
Chapter 4 examines the organisational characteristics of the corporate
form of cultural production, beginning with its division of labour. It is built
around a division between the creative stage of production (production of
the original) and the reproduction stage (transcription of the original and
duplication in commodity form). Artistic work is carried out in the former
(from this point on, the creative stage becomes the focus of analysis and
reproduction plays no further role). A characteristic structure of positions
lies behind the technical division of labour found in the creative stage. In
the corporate form, the artist appears historically as the project team,
comprising the positions of producer and director (creative management)
and leading and supporting executants. Intersecting the project team are
the production relations under which members are engaged, the two
principal forms being contracted artists (a sub-contracting relation) and
professional creatives (an employment relation).
Since artists cannot be reduced to simple labour-power, the creative
stage of production in the corporations of culture is unlike industrialised,
Fordist production systems, but organised along lines similar to a capitalist
workshop. Within this structure, some of the traditional freedoms ac-
corded artists are preserved whereby executants can countermand the
organisational power of creative management. The character of creative
management too, is unusual. Reflecting their history, creative managers
are less authoritarian than other forms of industry management. They are
more inclined to negotiate with executants - although as the producer
position is incorporated into corporate executive structures and made
subject to professional managerialism, the lines and manner of authority
are hardening.
Chapter 5, however, suggests a more disciplined workplace than at first
seems to be the case. It deals with a specifically corporate form of creative
control: formatting. Creative management, as both experienced artists and
the agents of capital in production, have acquired the right to imagine.
They create a plan for an original based on conventional cultural forms
and present it to executants as a set of rules, although leading and
supporting executants differ in their degree of subjectivity to the format.
Formatting builds a degree of rationality into creation under the corporate
system. Other industry-wide forms of control cut across the project team
and provide its members with institutional motives for their subjection:
creative management, especially producers, are subject to professional
managerialism (including commercialism), leading executants (contracted
artists) are subject to commercialism, and supporting executants (profes-
sional creatives directed by the format) are subject to professionalism.
Even so, artists can mobilise these normative orientations to their own
advantage; by building reputations built on commercialism and profession-
alism, they can win back some of the freedoms and autonomies tradition-
ally associated with the status of the artist. Creation in a corporate context
represents a complex grid of systems of control and avenues of freedom.
The remainder of the book focuses upon the circulation of cultural
commodities and draws out the implications its constituent practices have
for the production process as a whole. The market behaviour of cultural
commodities is qualitatively different from that of other types of commodi-
ties. Because of the contradictions of the cultural commodity, they
evidence a truncated product life cycle, even those which become best
sellers. Manufacturers, therefore, have to put much work into marketing
their products. The institutionalisation of the marketer within the corpo-
rate structure of cultural relations signifies another aspect of its historical
and structural specificity.
The marketing effort is part of a corporate attempt to make the cultural
marketplace more predictable; in that sense it is an expression of the
rationality of modern capitalism but applied in the circuit of circulation.
This is the focus of chapter 6. The principal strategy is the making of stars
and styles, intended to generate a constant flow of best and steady sellers
to the market. To attract the attention of potential purchasers, some
products are packaged in the signs of creativity which signify the claim of
their creator to stardom. Similar processes construct styles by surrounding
them in signs of conventionality. If successful, stars and styles come to
function as brand names, maintaining a flow of sales and freezing audience
tastes into relatively stable categories, against which appropriate creative
policies can be constructed.
To create an impact upon release, cultural commodities have to be
publicised. In chapter 7 we come across one of the most interesting aspects
of the culture industry, the systematic publicity relations which underlie it.
Public goods producers, especially the media, use the products of the
manufacturing sector in making their own commodities. The effect of this
is to give free advertising to the stars/styles which manufacturers are
marketing. The publicist displays their features publicly, and promotes
them to a superior position in the hierarchy of value which stretches across
the cultural marketplace - an objective order which is a necessary
condition of exchange. Publicised stars and styles appear to consumers as

cultural objects of considerable significance, hence definitely worth pur-
chasing. This symbiosis between the manufacturing sector and the public-
ity complex in easing the difficulties of circulation is of the utmost
importance in understanding the culture industry. Historical advantage
has become structural necessity. It gives both sectors their present-day
shape and logics, especially the duality of the public goods sector/publicity
sector, and has institutionalised the publicist as a further position within
the structure of relations which constitute the corporate form of produc-
tion. However, predictability in the market is short-lived. The continued
operations of the public goods sector necessarily upsets the patterns
established in the market, creating cycles of fashion which undermine the
order of cultural things they have previously put in place and forcing
manufacturers to create new ones as their existing stars and styles go into
decline. In other words, the playing out of the manufacturer/publicist
relation reintroduces irrationalities into the system: where marketing and
publicity sought to overcome the contradictions of the cultural commod-
ity, they transform them into a more complex form.
Marketing and publicity have had determinant effects back in the
creative stage of production by creating demands for commercial originals.
The embedding of marketing and publicity as corporate strategies in
circulation and the integration of production and circulation systems for
cultural commodities, underpins the form of labour organisation in the
corporations of culture, its structure of work, authority relations and
systems of control - and its dynamics of change. It is a fundamental
condition of the corporate form of cultural commodity production. On the
one hand, it is driving creation towards deeper subsumption under the
capital relation, yet on the other, creates conditions - not unlike those
traditionally associated with artistic work - which major stars, directors,
and small independents are able to exploit to their own advantage. The
art/capital contradiction remains, but in new and specific forms.
Chapter 2
The Contradictions
of the Art-Capital Relation
2.1 Introduction
After her year-long foray into Hollywood, anthropologist Hortense

Powdermaker (1950) criticised what she referred to as the corruption of
the artists employed there, how the "human properties of the artist, his
(sic) sensitivity, his imagination, his ability to create" are destroyed by
subjection to the values of commerce, to the demands of the "front-office"
(1950: 286). Whilst generally appreciative of Powdermaker's study, Tudor
(1974: 46), however, makes the point that:
So much that is written about Hollywood shares this distaste for the commercial
strictures placed on the artistic spirit...this is a reflection of the traditional view that
art should be free of such constraints: the artist should create in solitary splendour.
The modern epoch has constituted 'art' and 'the artist'1 as social objects
with specific and unique characteristics - this is the traditional view of art
Tudor refers to and a set of values which Powdermaker has obviously
internalised2. As socially constituted, both art and capital are real forms of
In the following discussion the terms 'art' and the 'artist' are used merely in the
descriptive, transhistorical (Sayer 1984) - or rather, epochal - sense to desig-
nate institutionalised signifying practices wherein various types of symbolic
goods are created and disseminated within a technical division of labour.
Despite Wolff's (1982) injunction, I take an aesthetically neutral position
throughout this book, regarding aesthetics (broadly denned) and the art
academy as objects of sociological analysis. While recognising the reality and
hence effectivity of these definitions within the world of art, especially when
combined with the structures of capital, I am unhappy about importing an aes-
thetic or Leavisite critique into historical or sociological analysis. It tends to
reify judgements concerning particular artistic objects and accord them some-
thing of an eschatological status, resulting in a profound elitism which is oblivi-
ous to its own historical specificity, and derogates the output of the culture
industry and especially its audiences. Two of the more important writers of this
34 The Contradictions of the Art-Capital Relation
social existence which clash when combined; this I refer to as 'the

art-capital contradiction', an historically-determined opposition which is
the subject of this chapter. It is the source of the conflicts and tensions
which emerge when culture is transformed into capital, when capitalist
companies organise the production and circulation of cultural objects as
exchange-values. As such, this contradiction is the motive force which
underlies the development and accumulation of private capital invested in
the sphere of culture.
The arguments presented in this chapter are the nub of the analysis
which follows. These ideas are invoked and developed in different ways as
various institutional characteristics of the industry become the focus of
attention throughout following chapters. By identifying and analysing the
various dimensions of the art-capital contradiction, this chapter uncovers
the general conditions, the structural relations and their logics of realisa-
tion, underlying all forms of capitalist cultural production. By looking at
the form in which art and artists have been historically and structurally
constructed and by comparing them to the types of social objects pre-
sumed by the capital relation, we can begin to see why and how art is
incompatible with the imperatives of accumulation. We come to see that
generally - although not always directly, since contradictions are fre-
quently significantly mediated in their realisation by other more contin-
gent conditions - the contradiction of art and capital is played out in
various ways. On the one hand, we see it as the contradiction of artist and
capitalist in the production process, as conflict within capitalist relations of
cultural or signifying production. On the other, its appears as contradic-
tions which lie submerged within the cultural commodity itself and which
surface in its circulation. Hence we find that in the production process,
capitalists cannot manage artists like they can other categories of worker;
the social existence of artists as a form of labour makes them less
amenable than other forms to incorporation as abstract labour-power to
be employed in the process of valorisation. As far as cultural commodities
themselves are concerned, once manufactured and released onto the
type include Gombrich (1975) and Leavis (1979). It even enters into the other-
wise brilliant work of art historian Arnold Hauser (especially 1982). Within
Marxism, this applies also to the Frankfurt school writers such as Adorno
(1978a, 1978b), Adorno and Horkheimer (1979) and Marcuse (1972). Swinge-
wood (1977) offers a somewhat simplistic, even prejudiced counter to their
approach. Frith (1978), Hall (1981) and Tudor (1974) offer selected comments
in line with my own. Hadjinicolaou (1978) and Laing (1978) attempt substan-
tive critiques but both are ultimately inconclusive. Williams (1965, 1981) and
Eagleton (1976,1983) offer useful points albeit from differing positions. Wolff
(1982; 1983) probably remains the most important writer on this difficult issue.
Contradiction and the Culture Industry 35
market, their circulation pattern differs from that of most other commodi-
ties. Each production cycle creates a new product, each of which has a
relatively brief market career. These conditions mean that generally,
companies face difficulties realising the value of the capital invested in
production and that cultural commodities test their ingenuity in achieving
the goal of expansion.
2.2 Contradiction and the Culture Industry
This analysis relies heavily on Marx' notion of 'contradiction' as both a

principle which guides enquiry and as a framework for explanation. Like
many of his concepts, contradiction has had a difficult career, especially in
so far as it reflects something of the influence of Hegel which, depending
on one's point of view, either strengthens or weakens his analysis (e.g.
Althusser 1979, Colletti 1977, Nicolaus 1973). As far as this work is
concerned, these debates are of little interest in themselves. I simply want
to align myself with those who accept that Marx, the materialist, success-
fully inverted Hegel's otherwise idealist dialectic, that it is important to
grasp the reality of contradictions in social life, and the methodological
validity of identifying ruptures in the social fabric as an entry point for
analysis. To that end, rather than working from some of the more
important recent contributions from within Marxism such as Althusser's
essay 'Contradiction and Overdetermination' (1979: chapter 3) and Gode-
lier's (1972) 'Structure and Contradiction in Capital', I want to draw on
selected aspects of Giddens' account of the concept (1979: 131-164, 1981:
230-247). Whatever other difficulties there may be with his work, I agree
with his view that the term has been used too liberally, that his exegesis is
consistent with the general thrust of Marx' use, and that he achieves his
declared aim of clarification (cf. also Keat and Urry 1975: 96-118).
Giddens (1979: 134-135) argues that despite a certain diversity in Marx'
use of the notion of contradiction, it is possible to identify two main
contexts in which it appears. The first, typified by the often-quoted section
of the 'Preface' to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, is
in relation to the general portrayal of historical materialism as an
approach to the explanation of social change. The second context and the
more important in relation to this analysis, is one wherein Marx is
concerned to examine the specific character of the contradictions of
capitalist production. Here is found, according to Giddens (1979:135-136),
over and above the canonical formula of the contradiction of the forces
and relations of production which underlies all societies, those contradic-

tions specific to capitalist societies. From the most fundamental, the
contradiction between private appropriation and socialised production,
emerges also:
1. The relation of capital and wage-labour, as a class relation;

2. The connection between use-value and exchange-value...of commodities;
3. The circumstances involved in the generation of surplus-value, especially as
involving the tendency of the profit-rate to fall;
4. The nature of the labour-process, as expressed in the alienation of the worker set
by the side of the wealth created by capitalism (Giddens 1979: 136).
Giddens emphasises, correctly I think, that contradiction is not synony-

mous with conflict, and has to be understood as "the opposition or
disjunction of structural principles of systems where those principles
operate in terms of each other but at the same time contravene one
another" (1979: 141), a point he develops further in his critique of
historical materialism:
I mean by 'contradiction' the existence of two structural principles within a societal
system, whereby each depends upon the other but at the same time negates it...its
implication is that societal totalities are structured in contradiction, involving the
fusion and exclusion of opposites. In other words, the operation of one structural
principle in the reproduction of a societal system presumes that of another which
tends to undermine it (1981: 231-232).
Like Godelier and Althusser, Giddens also discriminates between what he

calls primary and secondary contradictions:
By primary contradictions I mean those which can be identified as fundamentally
and inextricably involved in the system reproduction of a society or a type of
society - not on a functional basis, but because they enter into the very structuring
of what that system is. By secondary contradictions I mean those which are brought
about through the existence of primary contradictions and which are in some sense
a result of them (1979:143).
In this manner, capitalism multiplies contradiction upon contradiction,

piling source of conflict upon source of conflict such that new institutional
forms constantly emerge and consolidate, forming layers of higher level
contradictions. This approach, as Giddens points out (1979: 137), allowed
Marx to see the determinate historical and structural connections between
private appropriation and socialised production as the fundamental
conditions giving rise to competition and co-ordination between different
masses and units of capital, the antagonism of private and class interests,
The Social Constitution of Art and the Artist 37
the centralisation of capital, and so on. Similarly, he was able to discern

how private exchange necessarily leads, for example, to extension of the
system of trade and eventual dependence on world trade, and how
fragmented acts of exchange make a system of banks and credit necessary
(cf. Marx 1973: 159).
These ideas and the methodology they imply, play a pivotal role in this
analysis. The primary contradictions of the art-capital relation have
generated a complex system for the production and circulation of value
within the culture industry, itself containing many secondary contradic-
tions, each of which sets limits to expansion of capital in the sphere of
culture and mediates the path of its development. Accordingly, the
contradictions of the art-capital relation are the fundamental conditions
constituting the culture industry and give it its internal logic3. They are the
source of antimonies between artists and capitalists in the production
process, complications confronting the realisation of cultural commodities,
the dynamism of the industry's growth, and the struggles engaged in by
different forms of capital operating within its systems of production and
circulation. Some of the secondary contradictions they give rise to are
identified and elaborated in later chapters.
2.3 The Social Constitution of Art and the Artist

and Residues in the Culture Industry
Art and the artist were constituted through a social and then technical
division of labour in the cultural sphere, becoming fundamental objects in
the new structures of signifying relations being erected within modernising
societies in Europe. In order to grasp the oppositions generated when art
and capital confront each other in their historical forms of existence, their
historically constituted characteristics need to be briefly outlined.
Whilst this work is not concerned with tracing the historical genesis of
As indicated in chapter 1, for pragmatic reasons associated with space and

manageability, this work concentrates on the art/capital contradictions, empha-
sising its cultural outcomes. A more comprehensive work would also need to
investigate the form in which other secondary contradictions appear in this
industry as a consequence of the operation of the law of value, such as the
tendency towards overproduction, the rising organic composition of capital
and the decline in the average rate of profit, and so on, as outlined by Marx.
modern artistic practice4, in simple terms it can be said that its formation
was one of the many causes and effects of the breakup of feudalism and
the construction of capitalism throughout what is now understood as the
Western world. As the city replaced the court as the site of cultural
production, regal and aristocratic patronage gave way first to private
patronage and then market relations organised by entrepreneurs, and as
the rising middle class became the cultured class, a differentiated and
specialised realm of 'art' emerged. It existed tangentially to the society to
which it referred and was instituted around relations between a group of
expert practitioners (artists) and non-expert, non-participants (audiences),
mediated by the exchange of objects (works of art). Equally, under the
influence of Renaissance humanism from the 15th century onwards and
most crucially that of Romanticism in the 18th and 19th centuries, the
cultural practices and institutions which developed positioned 'the artist'
at the centre of the world of art, inscribing these individuals as the source
of cultural value (e.g. Hauser 1982: 242-307, cf. also Garnham 1987).
Williams notes (1976a: 33) that by the 17th century, the artist was
socially recognised as the practitioner of a group of activities presided over
by the seven muses: history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing and
astronomy, which were progressively overlaid by the more specialised
sense of painting, drawing, engraving and sculpture. As the new social
structures and intellectual movements of Europe consolidated throughout
the 18th and 19th centuries, artists acquired a specified social status.
Differentiated from artisans, especially in the sense of skilled manual
workers, and scientists, with whom they shared intellect but put to
different purposes and using different methods5, they came to occupy a
Fragments of this can be found in several works. Arnold Mauser's four volume
The Social History of Art (1962) remains the most important; see also his The
Sociology of Art (1982). For the social history of music see Raynor's excellent
A Social History of Music (1972); for theatre, despite being short, Hartnoll
(1968) is valuable, especially if supplemented by Hartnoll (1967) and Freedley
and Reeves (1968); for literature, see Febvre and Martin (1976), Steinberg
(1955) and especially Laurenson and Swingewood (1971), particularly Diana
Laurenson's contributions (Pt II), and, of course, Williams (1981).
It could be argued that this analysis should define 'cultural' work sufficiently
broadly to include scientific workers such as chemists, physicists, and engi-
neers, perhaps even doctors, in the sense that these occupations emerged out
of specialisation in the signifying division of labour when intersected by the
structures of science (Hobsbawm 1962: 327-348; Rose and Rose 1963: 1-36).
The same argument can be applied to accountants, lawyers and educationalists.
For pragmatic reasons I have chosen a narrower focus. However, I am in-
trigued by how many of the points raised in this analysis concerning the corpo-
The Social Constitution of Art and the Artist 39
specialised position in the social division of labour, with a monopoly over

the expressive use of signifying skills (Williams 1976a: 34).
This technical differentiation was connected to a unique, instituted form
of practice. Troubled by the utilitarian, rationalist, industrial world
developing around them and to which, in varying degrees, they existed in
opposition, artists demanded the freedom to work according to what was
constituted as the unpredictable inspiration of the muse and outside of
discipline and expectation. Generally, their adoring 18th and 19th century
publics came to concede these conditions. In gaining this social space,
artists constructed around themselves a spectacular persona; the creative
personality came to be associated with the ideal of artistic genius with its
originality and subjectivism (Hauser 1962a: 49). Under the impact of
Romanticism, and in contrast to the earlier forms of intellectual activity in
earlier periods based on explicable and learnable rules of taste, creativity
appeared as:
a mysterious process derived from such unfathomable sources as divine inspiration,
blind intuition and incalculable moods...The genius...lives not merely free from
the fetters of reason, but in possession of mystic powers which enable him (sic) to
dispense with ordinary sense experience. 'The genius has presentiments, that is to
say, his feelings outrun his powers of observation. The genius does not observe. He
sees, he feels' - says Lavater...[The artist now appears as] the guardian of a
mysterious wisdom, the 'speaker of unspeakable things' and the law-giver of a
world of his own, with laws of his own (Hauser 1962a: 111).
The work of these extraordinary individuals was constituted as 'art'. More
than anything, it represented human expression, the product of genius,
and hence by definition, original and innovative. Surrounding each work
was a new kind of aura (cf. Benjamin 1973: 219-253), an aura of
uniqueness which gave art its cultural value, regarded in some sense as
significant by virtue of its originality, and authentic as distinct from a copy.
The internal properties of each proclaimed its difference and distinction
through its unprecedented form and/or content, making it appear as the
bearer of an exclusive expressive or aesthetic as opposed to practical truth,
from which its audience might derive insight and delight. These properties
were taken as signs of the talents of its creator, against whom the object
had to stand; a crucial element of its legitimacy stemmed from the imprint
it carried of an identifiable artist (Williams 1976a: 72-74,192-193).
The status of the artist as talented, creative genius, and the work of art
rate conditions of artistic practice are applicable in the present day to these
professions. It may be that this conceptual and methodological framework
might be usefully employed as a starting point in investigating their organisa-
tional and workplace conditions.
as unique and original expression, were the essential elements of artistic

practice as instituted in the early period of the modern epoch, notions
which, to a significant extent, remain embedded in modern cultural
practice. Hauser, for example, argues that the whole of modern art is the
result of this romantic fight for freedom. The aloneness, the solitary talent
of the genius, and the seminal character of artistic inspiration, remains the
vital principle of modern art. He declares that:
However enthusiastically the artist of our time acknowledges the authority of
schools, groups, movements, and professes faith in his (sic) companions in arms, as
soon as he begins to paint, to compose, or to write, he is and feels alone. Modern
art is the expression of the lonely human being, of the individual who feels himself
to be different...from his fellows. The Revolution and the romantic movement
mark the end of a cultural epoch in which the artist appealed to a 'society', to a
more or less homogeneous group, to a public whose authority he acknowledged in
principle absolutely. Art...becomes an activity of self-expression creating its own
standards...the medium through which single individuals speak to single indivi-
duals...and their work brings them into a constant state of tension and opposition
towards the public (1962a: 144).
This continues in the present, even in the most capitalised regions of the
culture industry. According to Becker, for example, in his symbolic
interactionist examination of 'art worlds':
Both participants in the creation of art works and members of society generally
believe that the making of art requires special talents, gifts or abilities, which few
have. Some have more than others, and a very few are gifted enough to merit the
honorific title of 'artist'...The myth [of the artist] suggests that in return society
receives work of unique character and invaluable quality. Such a belief does not
appear in all, or even most, societies: it may be unique to Western European
societies, and those influenced by them since the Renaissance (1982:14-15).
While these realities remain at the core of art, since the constitution of
social objects is an ongoing historical process, artistic practice has been
overlaid especially throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with new sets
of conditions. As the culture industry emerged and consolidated and
expanded within existing conventions of art, it adapted and modified
them. Like other forms of capitalist industry, it reconstructed the original
artistic division of labour around new technological forms and reconsti-
tuted the artist as an enormous variety of specialised occupations ranging
from novelists to cartoonists, from chamber musicians to rock groups,
from dancers to copywriters, from composers to graphic designers, from
actors to radio announcers, and so on, but retained residues of its origins
within each. To a greater or lesser extent, cultural workers employed in
The Contradictions of the Artist-Capitalist Relation 41
the creative phase of production6 are treated by employers, managers,

their co-workers and publics - and most of all by themselves - as artists,
as talented individuals with rare expressive skills and unconventional
personalities. In the course of my fieldwork I heard respondents at all
organisational levels and in all cultural forms, time and again, referring to
the work of producing originals as 'artistic' or 'creative'. This practical
consciousness is strongest in cultural forms based on the performing arts
such as theatre, music and dance, and in the general area of literature. In
industrialised forms of cultural practice, their artistic content has been
overlaid by layers of occupational conventions expressed through profes-
sional and technical discourses and peopled by individuals possessing
artistic personalities and talents albeit of less spectacular kinds. The most
significant index of this genesis is found in the special status of the artist in
the production process (to be detailed in chapter 4): the explicit separation
and preservation of the creative phase of production from the reproduc-
tion phase. This is fundamental to the organisation of cultural commodity
production whether in theatre or musical companies, film or recording
studios, media companies, advertising or news agencies.
These residues of the romantic constitution of art and artists are still
present in the modern era and underpin the art-capital contradiction. This
epochal antimony is realised in two primary historical forms, the contradic-
tions of the artist-capitalist relation and the contradictions of the cultural
commodity, both of which need to be examined separately.
2.4 The Contradictions of the Artist-Capitalist

Relation
Unlike many other types of workers, capital is unable to make the artist
completely subservient to its drive for accumulation. The reason is simple.
Since art is centred upon the expressive, individual artist, artistic objects
This refers to a distinction made in chapter 4 between the creative and repro-
duction stages of the production process. Cultural workers create the original
which is then reproduced by other workers; some transcribe it onto a master,
others make duplicates, the commodities proper. My argument here applies to
employees engaged in the creative stage but not to those in the reproduction
stage, although as will be seen later, some transcription workers are frequently
called upon to demonstrate a creative flair in their work (e.g. lighting and cam-
era operators).
must appear as the product of recognisable persons; the concrete and

named labour of the artist is always paramount and must be preserved. As
socially constituted, artists appear to capital as the antithesis of labour-
power, antagonistic to incorporation in the capitalist labour process as
abstract labour. A brief summary of Marx' discussion of the conditions of
wage-labour will help to indicate why.
2.4.1 The Capitalist Labour Process: Concrete

and Abstract Labour
At various points throughout Volume I of Capital (1954: Part III), Marx
deals at length with how the capital relation transforms free labourers into
a generalised capacity to work - what he refers to as 'labour-power' -
and how their employment in the labour process creates and conserves
value which is embedded in the commodities they produce in the course of
production. The unpaid portion of their labour, the surplus labour value
component of the commodity's total value, is realised when the commod-
ity is sold, and returned as the capitalist's profit.
In Marx' analysis, labour-power has two dimensions. When people
work, they do two things simultaneously: first, they work at a definite craft
or trade, as, say, a carpenter making chairs, a printer producing newspa-
pers, or a potter making dining utensils; and second, they are part of the
social labour force which supplies society with the goods it needs for its
accustomed standard of living. In other words, as carpenters and potters
and printers, workers perform concrete labour, a specific kind of work, in
the production of particular use-values. As part of the labour force as a
whole, their labour is also labour-in-general, socially necessary labour,
abstract labour, of which a certain quantity is embedded in each commod-
ity in its making (Marx 1954: 56-57).
The amount of abstract labour in a commodity is what establishes its
exchange-value. When placed on the market, goods are exchanged
according to ratios of their common attribute, the amount of labour
socially necessary for production (Marx 1954: 47). The exchange-value of
a particular commodity is larger or smaller depending on the magnitude of
abstract labour embedded in it; i.e. the total number of units of simple
labour-power (where skilled labour-power represents multiple units of
simple labour-power), by the time over which they were employed.
Abstract and not concrete labour is therefore capitalists' prime concern
(1954: 48-53). Competition demands they organise production so that the
minimum quantity of abstract labour appears in each individual commod-
ity. The smaller that quantity, the more competitive the commodity seems
when compared to others produced within that industry, yet the greater
the potential surplus it might realise, the greater the potential profits
flowing from sale (1954:173-204). Accordingly, the capitalist lengthens the
working day or intensifies the work process to achieve an absolute or
relative increase in the unpaid component of abstract value, surplus value,
in each commodity (Marx 1954: Parts III and IV).
Abstract and concrete labour are in contradiction. A greater abstract
content in a task presumes reducing its concrete content to average levels.
Historically, the usual capitalist strategy is to break up and fragment
workers' craft and trades skills, thereby reducing the necessary work to
that of a generalised type which can be performed by average workers of
few specific skills and in the shortest possible time. Under these circum-
stances, workers appear in the labour process as a generalised capacity to
work at any one of a number of unskilled tasks, as personifications of
abstract labour, as anonymous production factors, as labour power. Old
skills are incorporated into progressively more productive apparatuses of
various types and the labour process reconstituted around a reconstructed
technical division of labour. Each stage in the process is gradually
converted into simple, repetitive tasks which can be performed by an
operator with average levels of intelligence, education and dexterity (or
better still, lower than average levels, because labour costs will be less and
the potential surplus greater). What is embedded in the manufactured
commodities is units of average labour-value, which creates the possibility
of realising an ever-greater surplus at the moment of exchange, while
returning relatively less to workers in the form of wages. Expressed in its
simplest form, this has been the historical tendency of the capitalist labour
process organised according to the logic of accumulation7 (Marx 1954: Part
VII, see also Braverman 1974: 45-58, Littler 1982: 20-25). This movement
is based on the practical premise that technological substitution of labour
generalises the concrete labour content of tasks in the work process. This
has been the path of development of many industries especially during the
20th century. The history of the labour process in the culture industry,
however, has been quite different.
The summary provided here deals only with the essential tendencies of the
capitalist labour process. Empirically, the process is much more complex.
Amongst others, Littler's (1982) contribution to the post-Braverman debate
makes this point effectively.
2.4.2 The Artist in the Capitalist Labour Process
The key to understanding the artist-capitalist contradiction lies in grasping

the fact that as historically and ideologically constituted, the artist
represents a special case of concrete labour which is ultimately irreducible
to abstract value. This is because the structures of art make artists
incompatible with the structures of capital. The employment of artists in
whatever technical form necessitates recognising and preserving their
named, concrete labour. They cannot be employed as labour-power, as
anonymous production factors functioning under the sway of capital. Why
is this the case?
Objects which are defined as artistic objects do not, indeed could not,
appear as generalised art, as an undifferentiated collection of more-or-less
similar paintings, writings or music. As historically constituted, a work of
art must always appear as a unique and original object of a particular kind,
a particular poem or choreography, a painting, or piece of music or
writing, and imprinted with a mark identifying its human creator, so that
audiences can recognise it as such. Equally, as constituted, artists are said
to possess outstanding gifts for a particular type of art; an exceptional
capacity possessed by an individual to write in a particular form, perhaps
play a given musical instrument or paint a picture of a certain type.
Artistic workers, therefore, cannot be made to appear in the labour
process as generalised, undifferentiated artists. Invariably, theirs is a
specified kind of work which depends on them bringing distinct capacities
and high levels of innate and/or acquired skill to the task, whether as a
journalist, poet or author, orchestral, rock or jazz musician, or film, drama
or television comedy series actor. They must appear in the commodity
production process, in other words, as specialised and singular concrete
labour, as a particular type of worker.
More than that, artistic labour demands an even more identifiable
specificity. Attributes conventionally ascribed to artists, the innate talents
and acquired skills which are the necessary means of artistic production,
are defined as personal and idiomatic qualities, as characteristics belong-
ing on to particular human beings. Kiri Te Kanawa, Stanley Kubrick,
Mikail Barishnikov, Doris Lessing, John Cleese, Bob Dylan, Alfred
Brendel, Anthony Burgess, Laurence Olivier, Jackson Pollock to name a
few, as well as the multitude of first and second rank talents working in all
areas of cultural production, are regarded as artists precisely because of
the identifiable, expressive abilities attributable to and inseparable from
each and each alone. Each has a monopoly over the specific talents
ascribed by their name. These are inimitable capacities regarded as
fundamental means of production which cannot be alienated and instilled

in an apparatus or organised out of the creative labour process. Certainly
capital may attempt to reorganise the conditions of artistic work by
reconstituting some means of production in new technological forms,
hence circumscribing artists within a framework of industrial technique,
but the act of creation, as socially constituted, is crucially dependent on
the exercise of talents which are indivisible from the particular individuals
who personify them. This runs counter to the demands of accumulation,
the usual path of development of capitalist commodity production and the
real subsumption of labour under capital (Marx 1976, see also Campbell
1986, Mandel 1976). Every book must has an author, every score a
composer, every film a writer, director and cast of actors8, unlike cans of
peaches, lines of cars and shirts on a shop rack where the direct producers
of these commodities are entirely unknown to their purchasers. Artists
must be engaged as named, concrete labour. This is the core and conse-
quence of the artist-capitalist contradiction when artists are introduced as
variable capital into the capitalist cultural commodity production process.
2.4.3 The Immediate Consequences in Production of the

Artist-Capitalist Contradiction
The characteristics of the artist-capitalist relation leads immediately to
several conditions which, seen from the point of view of capitalist firms,
complicate the process of production considerably. The first of these is the
necessary structural independence accorded the artist within the valorisa-
8 As later chapters will show, some forms of cultural production have been exten-
sively capitalised. There, commodities appear under a generic name represent-
ing the company (e.g. a newspaper masthead or radio station call sign) which
stands for the collective artist. Teamed production (such as film production) is
signified by individual names, whether representing particular persons or ap-
pearing as a convenient fiction - auteur theory seems blind to present-day polit-
ical economic conditions (see also Becker 1982: 21, Frith 1978:201). Works
which appear unsigned or with false human accreditation have difficulty being
accepted as works of art. In this sense the debates over computer-composed
music, the validation of signatures on paintings, and the confirmation of author-
ship of plays and poems, are instructive (see, also the Australian case of the
anti-modernist Ern Malley hoax, discussed in McQueen 1979: 88-89).
tion9 process; what I will refer to as the relative autonomy of artists in the
capitalist labour process.
Whilst approaching cultural production from a different paradigm from
that employed here, Becker captures the relative autonomy enjoyed by
artists when he notes that conventionally:
We think it important to know who has the gift and who does not because we
accord people who have it special rights and privileges. At an extreme, the
romantic myth of the artist suggests that people with such gifts cannot be subjected
to the constraints imposed on other members of society; we must allow them to
violate rules of decorum, propriety, and common sense everyone else must follow
or risk being punished. The myth suggests that in return society receives work of
unique character and invaluable quality (1982: 14-15).
This immunity from social regulation has particular consequences in
production. Art, it is said, can only spring from a social context wherein
artists are accorded freedom from discipline and expectation, especially
relief from commercial pressures; it is generally considered that they need
social space to exercise their individual talents, to let their imaginations
run freely in the search for expressive truth. This represents a considerable
organisational difficulty for capitalists. As employers, they seek to control
the work process, directing artistic workers towards types and rates of
work which constantly expand their investment. Artists confront them as
an recalcitrant form of labour, a form doubly so, over and above the
indeterminacy usually associated with employed labour-power. As consti-
tuted, artists necessarily occupy a position of structural independence
within the capitalist commodity producing process which places them
beyond the organisational disciplines to which waged labour is normally
subjected: they are assigned creative licence in the very heart of produc-
tion itself. This imperative applies even to cultural practices which operate
The precise meaning of this term seems unclear. Mandel (1978b: 598) defines it
as "the process whereby capital increases its own value by the production of
surplus value", that aspect of the production process wherein "labour power
produces additional value over and above its own value". However, as Harvey
(1982: 84 fn 7) points out, "While this has the virtue of making a clear distinc-
tion between processes of realisation in production and processes of realisation
in the market...it has the disadvantage of diverting attention away from the
necessary continuity in the flow of capital through the different spheres of pro-
duction and exchange". He elects to use the term realisation to refer to the
perpetual motion and self-expansion of capital. Valorisation is used to refer to
realisation through the labour process. Since I too am concerned to emphasise
the essential unity between production and circulation in capital's expansion, I
will follow Harvey's lead.
at the industrial extremities of the signifying division of labour such as

radio announcing, as illustrated by a radio station manager who, when
interviewed, spoke of the relationship between the organisational rules of
creative production (the station format) and the necessary freedom given
what he called 'creative personalities'. He expressed the view that:
You can't employ an announcer who's a creative personality and then put a narrow
band of restrictions around them: 'You'll talk two minutes every twenty minutes'.
Put super-restrictions around them and that stops the flow of creative juices. What
you've got to do is say 'Here are the guidelines that we work within. Should we
walk outside of those guidelines then obviously we need to discuss it'. And by
feeding them creative ideas and by them expanding their creative thoughts, at
times right to the border of those guidelines, there's no denying that brings out the
best in them.
Of all cultural workers, stars enjoy the most open employment condi-
tions10; successful authors are a case in point. They are generally permitted
to prepare their manuscripts outside systematic control by the publishing
house. Within certain limits they are free to set the rate and intensity of
their work and create according to the demands of their imagination.
Generally, contact with the publisher is restricted to occasional consulta-
tive meetings (Lane 1980: 59-72, Laurenson and Swingewood 1971:
117-139)11. Even artists employed as full-time professionals in the more
industrialised forms of production in the corporations of culture enjoy
conditions quite unlike those usually associated with modern workplaces.
The organisational form tends to be more Organic', there are few direct
organisational controls, and there is an ethos that creative work should be
done independently (Elliott 1972: 128-129, Tunstall 1971: 24-42). These
conditions differ markedly from the 'mechanical' system of organisation
imposed upon the reproduction stage of the production process which is
more typical of work organised by capital; it is subject to a technical
division of labour, routinisation, and the strictures of management (Elliott
1972: 129-131). The status and character of creative occupations, the
capacities ascribed the individuals who people them, the organisational
space they are accorded, and the general conditions of their labour - in
short, the relative autonomy granted artistic labour in the labour pro-
cess - originates in the genesis of each form of work and bears residues of
their romantic constitution. To capital, the artist represents an organisa-
10 I am ignoring amateur and artisanal creative production here (e.g. amateur

singers and actors, potters and painters directly supplying a localised market)
since by definition they are not involved in capitalist forms of production.
11 For parallels in music see Frith (1978), and Powdermaker (1950) for the movie
industry.
tional problem of significant proportions; it is a form of labour structurally

incompatible with yet fundamental to the process which creates cultural
commodities.
The artist-capitalist contradiction also produces a set of specifically
economic consequences in production, which I want to refer to as the
economic irrationality of the creative process. It is conventionally held that
artists necessarily work long and hard in creating their works of art. The
aura of originality and uniqueness associated with a work of art is
generally held to flow in part from its lengthy and frequently painful
gestation (Throsby and Withers 1979:14-15). The laborious task of artistic
creativity, the dialectic of the aesthetic, demands that artists sharpen and
evaluate their perceptions and techniques, that they work and rework
their ideas in the struggle to realise the truth of their insights through the
medium they are working with, and be intensely preoccupied until the
object comes close to the ideal of perfection they seek (Hauser 1982:
397-404, also Sontag 1979: 115-149). To complicate the process further,
artists may be blocked for substantial periods of time and unable to find
the creative spark, until eventually, it is claimed, under the capricious
inspiration of the muse, they return to their work full of ideas and
possibilities, again able to create.
From the point of view of capital, this is a hopelessly irrational process.
On the one hand, the finished original which companies need for commodi-
tisation contains a considerable labour content as a result of the artist's
exertions. This makes profitable reproduction uncertain. On the other
hand, capitalist production is premised on regular cycles of ever-
expanding production relying on the scheduled and interlocking supply of
raw materials. The unreliability of the creative process is problematic for
capitalists if machinery and a labour force are left standing idle while
artists struggle to find the inspiration to perfect their works. The contradic-
tion of art and capital generates situations wherein capital is confronted
with the need to rationalise (Weber 1976)12 the process of creativity and
the supply of originals in order to expand and accumulate.
There is another dimension of economic irrationality in the high value
of the original which derives from the high value of artistic labour itself,
12 I use this term in sense in which Weber (1976) spoke of the rationality of mod-
ern capitalism; how its calculative, measuring thrust acts to impose goal-
oriented bureaucratic controls over forms of social life. Further, it is a special
type of rationalisation; one which can increase value production and which
operates in and through the everyday routines and rules of production within
organisations (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 499; on the rationality of organisa-
tions, see Clegg 1975).
itself a direct consequence of the necessity to preserve the named,

concrete labour of the artist in the capitalist labour process. Artists must
spend many years developing their talents and perceptions, learning the
codes and conventions of their art and honing their expressive techniques,
and maintaining them at a high pitch of performance (e.g. Stanislavski's
(1967) account of life as an actor, cf. also Becker 1982: 40-67). This raises
the reproduction costs of artistic labour, giving it a higher economic value
in production and a high value content to the originals they create.
Furthermore, the monopoly artists hold over their rare talents allows them
to invoke the laws of supply and demand when it comes time to negotiate
fees or sale of the works (e.g. the advertising agency managing director
who complained in the course of fieldwork interviews that "the high
salaries we pay copywriters are a function of demand"). These conditions
apply upwards pressures on both the value and cost of artistic labour13. For
capital, artists represent a significant and necessary investment in variable
capital at a level which constantly threatens to undermine profitability14.
13 Whether the actual monetary value of wages, fees and royalties rises is another
matter (cf. the transformation problem of the relation between value and
money in the labour theory of value; e.g. Harvey 1982: 61-68). Whilst payments
made to an artist for an individual work or period of employment whether in
the form of royalties, fees or wages, may represent adequate hourly or weekly
earnings according to the conventions of the time, they do not represent ade-
quate compensation for the many years of training and experience necessary in
order to be able to create that work (e.g. The Australia Council 1983).
14 The economics of publishing illustrates the point. Dessauer (1974: 190-196)
sets up a hypothetical model based on publication of a history title designed for
both the general and academic markets, and provides a profit and loss analysis
for three different marketing and retailing arrangements. By combining his
figures for author's payments and editorial costs it is possible to get a broad
indication of the costs associated with producing the original manuscript. In all
three cases royalties totalled between 12.5 and 16.4% of nett sales revenue,
and editorial salaries between 7.0 and 8.2%; in total, around one fifth to one
quarter of nett sales revenue. By way of comparison, the production and gen-
eral and administration salaries paid to presumably a much greater number of
employees totalled no more than 12% (see also Gedin 1977: 154-177). Sterling
and Haight (1979) provide voluminous statistics on a variety of media indus-
tries including (pp.111-218) operating figures for book publishing, newspapers,
film production companies, the recording industry and commercial radio and
television. Again, their figures are suggestive. To take a few examples: a 'typi-
cal' unidentified 250,000-circulation 7-day newspaper in the United States be-
tween 1950 and 1976, spent 15-16% of its direct production expenses on edito-
rial salaries (1979: 166, see also Brown (1986: 3) on newspaper first copy costs
and economies of scale). Recording companies too, face considerable costs
Consequently, capital in the culture industry has developed in such a way

as to rationalise the value of artistic labour engaged in the production of
originals.
Immediate consequences in production flowing from the artist/capitalist
contradiction include the relative autonomy of the artists and the organisa-
tional and economic irrationality of creativity. This is not to say that
capital is powerless when confronted by the artist. Grappling with these
conditions and finding ways of ameliorating the effects of their functioning
has occupied capitalists since they began organising forms of cultural
production since the early 15th century. How those strategies have been
realised in the 20th century in the corporate era of the culture industry,
and how they have rationalised the creative stage of production, will be
discussed in later chapters.
2.5 The Contradictions of the Cultural

Commodity
As artists were socially constituted as the expressive genius, so their works

must express their seminal insights. A work of art, according to its epochal
conventions, is defined by its aura of uniqueness: it must carry a signifi-
cance stemming from its originality. These qualities and properties give it
its utility as a cultural object; they constitute its use value. It must appear
to audiences as a novel object which promises to satisfy their needs for
knowledge, meaning and pleasure by virtue of the new meanings it bears
and which it alone possesses. The problem for capital is that commoditisa-
tion of cultural objects erodes the qualities and properties which constitute
them as cultural objects, as use-values, in the first place. This is the primary
contradiction of cultural commodities. To grasp how and why it operates
necessitates returning briefly to Marx' discussion of the commodity form.
obtaining an original which can be reproduced. 1976 figures for Warner Com-
munications production of long-playing records indicate that artist royalties
(the right to reproduce the original) cost the company from 5 to 15% of the
retail price (Sterling and Haight 1978: 192, also Chappie and Garofalo 1977:
173). The same authors note that the increasing proportion of wage costs in
total production expenditures in the film industry in the first half of the 20th
century (up to 60% by 1947) was due mainly to the rising salaries paid to top
stars (1979: 181, also Powdermaker 1950: 209-220).
The Contradictions of the Cultural Commodity 51
2.5.1 Use and Exchange-Value in the Commodity Form

In what is probably one of the most widely-read sections of Capital, Part I
of Volume 1 (1954), Marx launches into the results of his research with a
complex set of arguments about the apparently trivial thing, the commod-
ity, as produced within the capitalist mode of production.
Value in commodity form, as produced within capitalist relations of
production, is a combination of use-value and exchange-value; this is its
two-fold character, flowing from the dual aspects of the labour expended
in its manufacture (1954: 78). An object has use-value if it satisfies human
wants - remembering that wants are socially constructed in relations of
exchange, and it matters not, as Marx says, "whether...they spring from
the stomach or from fancy" (1954: 43). Use-value refers to the socially
constituted characteristics and capacities of an object. Since a useless
object is unlikely to attract buyers, use value is a necessary attribute of
every commodity15. Commodities are also goods produced by human
labour for the express purpose of exchange. In exchange, commodities
confront each other in quantitative not qualitative relations, as equiva-
lents, as relative measures of abstract labour, of the socially necessary
labour time which went into their making. This determines the ratios by
which commodities exchange. The value at which the commodity ex-
changes is its value as indicated by its price, the given amount of money,
the universal and abstract measure of exchange, which the consumer pays
at the time of purchase (Marx 1954: 43-75, see also Harvey 1982:1-38).
Use and exchange value are opposites, combined in the form assumed
by the commodity. As such, argues Marx, they are in contradiction.
Objects which are patently different when considered as objects designed
to meet human wants and needs are treated on the market as relative
equivalents. More than that, the ratios of their equivalence are expressed
in terms of a third commodity, money, which has become simultaneously
the store of value and the universal equivalent by which all commodities
exchange (Marx 1954: 54-75, see also 1973: 266-273). The motivations
associated with human desires and the formal equalities of modern
societies which declare that all individuals have equal rights to satisfaction
of their preferences, are negated by the cold, hard fact of economic
inequality in the marketplace. Without the appropriate quantity of money,
individuals cannot satisfy their needs and wants. The insertion of exchange
transforms a socially useful relation into an impersonal economic one, a
15 Few Marxists acknowledge this, but use-value should be expressed in the plu-
ral form since the same object may have different or multiple uses to different
consumers.
qualitative human relation into a quantitative relation apparently operat-

ing beyond the immediate control of the participants, in and through the
interplay of unequally distributed things (1954: 76-96, cf. also Harvey 1982:
16-20).
The act of exchange also transforms the form of labour which went into
the production of the commodities presented to the market. Since
products cannot be compared and contrasted on the basis of their
differences as created by the various forms of concrete labour, the logic of
exchange backgrounds these differences and foregrounds their similari-
ties. When buyers and sellers treat commodities as equivalents of each
other, in effect, they deal with them as relative containers of a common
denominator; in Marx' terms, as repositories of abstract labour, of
comparable quantities of socially necessary labour time (1954: 61-68). Like
use and exchange-value, concrete and abstract labour are in contradiction.
Particular labours expended in the manufacturing process clash with and
are subordinated to the logic of abstract labour, labour-in-general, in the
process of exchange. The result in production is the intensification of
alienation; workers are hired for their generalised capacity to labour
rather than for the particular forms of work they can undertake. As
exchange becomes the principal form of relation, value is institutionalised
as the primary mediator of social life. Society comes to regard all labours
as the equivalents of each other, without regard for the social usefulness or
otherwise of each type. In other words, the fetishism of commodities
measures the historical transformation of socially useful relations between
people, the ways in which they work together and the objects which they
produce, into a contradictory form of social existence, one which appears
in objective opposition to their praxis. In Marx' often-cited words:
the existence of things qua commodities, and the value-relation between the
products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations arising
therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men (sic), that assumes, in
their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things (1954: 77).
In that sense the contradiction between use and exchange-value in
commodities is a microcosm of capitalist relations generally, one of the
principal and specific expressions of the general contradiction between
labour and capital which underlies the character and development of the
capitalist mode of production.
2.5.2 Contradiction of Use and Exchange-Value in the

Cultural Commodity
The contradiction of use and exchange-value represents a substantial

problem for capital in the culture industry, perhaps more so than in other
industries. We have already noted that the use value of a work of art lies in
its originality, an effect of the particular significance ascribed to it by its
creator, the artist. Commoditisation of artistic objects, on the other hand,
undermines the utility upon which their circulation depends; in the words
of Walter Benjamin in an analysis which touches on issues raised here,
"that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of
the work of art" (1973: 223). In other words, the production of artistic
objects as exchange-value erodes their use-value. This is the essence of the
contradiction of the cultural commodity.
When manufactured as an exchange value, a cultural commodity is
designed to be compared and contrasted with other types of commercial
objects: a quantity of money, and indirectly, a quantity of carrots, or shirts,
or building materials, or cars, or anything else which can be bought on the
market. According to the conventions of its constitution, however, art is
supposed to transcend the earthly, utilitarian realm. Its expression in the
practical and economic language of the marketplace undermines its
socially constituted use-value as an aesthetic object. It offends the
supposedly finely-tuned sensibilities of artists, critics, collectors and
audiences to speak of their subject in the same breath as they speak of
money. Art which has 'sold out', gone 'commercial', is regarded as
inauthentic, as lightweight and insubstantial and by definition, not worth
serious consideration. Similar judgements are made of the artist or artists
who created it. Hauser, from a sophisticated neo-Leavisite position, for
example, sees popular art as ranging from the pleasant and agreeable to
non-committal sentimentality and crass sensation, but that:
The inadequacy of popular art does not merely stem from the fact that it is
entertaining, amusing, and lighthearted...The evil does not stem from the intention
of creating attractive, appealing, effortless works, but from the readiness of the
artist to make compromises unhesitatingly and to sink below his (sic) own level in
order to achieve success (1982: 580-581).
Equally, by appearing as equivalents of other commodities, cultural
commodities lose something of the uniqueness whereby they exist as
individual artistic objects. By virtue of this comparison, they appear to
audiences whose purchase is dependent on the promise of their originality,
as objects defined in relation to the everyday, the typical and conven-
tional, rather than as innovative and original, thereby losing something of

the lustre and mystique which otherwise might make them attractive. They
appear instead as objects of no particular uniqueness and of relatively
little artistic significance.
Benjamin (1973) applauds this development in that it reduces the social
distance between object and audience, making it more accessible, but
there are also other economic consequences which are important to the
corporations of culture. Under the capitalist form of cultural production
the commodity appears on the market as a 're-production' of the original
(cf. Collins et al. 1988: 9). Production in volume, and its later development,
mass industrial production, entails constructing a master from an original,
and manufacturing large numbers of copies taken from the master. The
logic of reproduction, of copying, of imitating, of transcribing, directly
contradicts the aura of originality and uniqueness within which the
cultural object conventionally exists. Moreover, with mass production
comes extensive publicity and mass sales. These erode the artistic value of
the cultural commodity. When a company makes commodities of a work
and successfully sells them, it exploits the market to the fullest while its
product is new and attracting attention. Retail outlets are kept fully
stocked and the commodity is extensively promoted. Success, however,
hastens the work's demise as a commodity. The more units are sold, the
more its audience becomes familiar with the work, so its novelty wears off.
The element of surprise and freshness it relies upon for sales is diminished.
Audiences begin to tire of the work, and regard it as out of date, old,
valueless, worn out, and no longer worth purchasing. Under the logic of
repetition underlying publicity and popularity, the special characteristics
the cultural object initially possessed are systematically undermined by its
very success in exchange.
These are the conditions which can be spoken of as the contradictions of
the cultural commodity. Its exchange value form undermines its use value.
Its uniqueness and originality are undone by reproduction, familiarity and
over-exposure. It is the primary expression in circulation of the general
contradictions of art and capital with underlie the culture industry.
Intro- Growth Maturity Decay
duction
Sales
Profitability
Time
(Adapted from Baker, 1986 : 206)
Figure 2.1 Stages in the Product Life Cycle
2.5.3 The Immediate Consequences in Production and

Circulation of the Contradictions of the Cultural
Commodity
The contradictions inherent to the cultural commodity give rise to
immediate consequences in both circulation and production which have
historically confronted the manufacturers of cultural commodities. The
erosion of use-value by exchange-value results in each cultural commodity
having only a brief life on the market; this can be referred to as the
truncated product cycle of cultural commodities.
Using the terminology of modern marketing, most commodities have a
'product life cycle' (Baker 1985a: 204-207) which approximates to an
inverted 'U' curve, as shown in Figure 2.1. The sales, marketing and
promotion efforts of manufacturers are oriented towards stretching out
the mature phase of the cycle, giving most successful products an effective
life of anything from two to fifteen or more years (Clifford 1981). Because
of the primary contradiction operating within cultural commodities,
elongation of profitable market life on this scale is rarely possible. As their
attractiveness to the audience as use-values diminishes, sales decline.
Their product life cycle is attenuated, lasting from only a few hours for a
newspaper edition to, in the case of records, books and films, a few days,
sometimes months, and very occasionally years. A typical scenario for
release of a cultural commodity has it moving into the growth phase
relatively quickly. The mature period, however, is comparatively brief. As
popularity cuts into the commodity's originality, sales taper off, whence it
moves into a phase of decline16. The production of books illustrates the
point. Dessauer (1974) provides a series of hypothetical studies of product
life cycles under different conditions of production and circulation, all
premised on an effective cycle of limited duration. Following advertising
and promotion, the growth and maturity phases of each title are assumed
to extend over about the first third of the cycle with sales tailing off over
the remaining months. In one case:
During the first eight months of the book's existence, 5,100 copies are sold, but
1000 are returned at the end of that period. In the succeeding ten months, 3000
more copies are sold but by that time the sale has slowed to a trickle (Dessauer
1974: 191).
However, the precise shape of the sales curve, the amplitude of the growth
and maturity phases of the product cycle, depend on the value of the work
as represented in its socially recognised qualities, its originality, and its
subsequent popularity. This can be expressed in terms of two polar types
of product life cycle, distinguished within the culture industry variously as
the differences between 'best-sellers' and 'steady-sellers', as typified in
Figure 2.2. According to Steinberg, best-sellers quickly reach a high peak
of sales and dominate the market for a period of time, after which their
sales rapidly decline. An example is:
a book which immediately on, or shortly after its first publication, far outruns the
demand of what at the time are considered good or even large sales; which
thereafter sometimes lapses into obscurity making people wonder why it ever came
16 There are, of course, exceptions in all categories. Some products, in the lan-
guage of the music industry, are 'sleepers', lying dormant on the market for
weeks, sometimes months before taking off. Some become 'cross-overs', achiev-
ing popularity progressively across a range of audience segments, hence achiev-
ing viable sales for a significant period. Like some major 'hits', they occasion-
ally metamorphose into steady sellers.
Best Sellers
Sales
Profitability
Rerelease
Time
Steady Sellers
Λ
Sales
Profitability
Time
Figure 2.2 Cultural Commodity Product Life Cycles
to the front but which sometimes graduates into the ranks of steady sellers (1955:
237)17.
Best-sellers, in other words, are works whose popularity grows quickly and
to enormous heights, but where their success rapidly undermines their
use-value. Steady-sellers have a less spectacular sales history. Their
17 Best-sellers are frequently redefined later as classics, as standards. When

placed on the company's backlist, medium or long-term sales may settle at a
level which provides small but assured profits and do so for months or even
years. At a certain point, however, sales decline below a level which justifies
continued production, whence it will be dropped. If demand continues to accu-
mulate, it may be later repackaged and re-released as a standard, as indicated
in Figure 2.2.
acceleration into the mature phase is not as rapid, nor do their sales reach
the same great heights. Their popularity is more diffuse and does not
impact on their value at the same rate. Consequently, as indicated in
Figure 2.2, their product cycle is of much longer duration with viable sales
extending over a longer period. They return smaller but assured profits
over a longer time-frame, contributing to company revenue month after
month, perhaps year after year, reducing only slowly18. Despite these
differences, the principle underlying their market life is the same. There is
a direct and inverse relationship between the qualitative value attributed
to a cultural object (its originality) and the popularity and familiarity it
achieves in the cultural marketplace. The latter undermines the former.
With the decline in sales of a company's present stock, they must be
immediately replaced by others, which themselves will have only a limited
market life and which must be replaced, and so on. Accordingly, compa-
nies must organise production to generate a constant flow of originals to
the reproduction process: they are locked into recurrent cycles of produc-
tion™. This means constant cycles of reinvestment in artistic labour, an
imperative which also interacts with the organisational irrationalities of
creativity. Companies must sign a stable of artists to maintain a flow of
originals and plan production to have originals constantly in development.
The contradictions of the cultural commodity, in other words, place capital
in the situation of dealing with ongoing high levels of risky investment in
order to maintain expansion (cf. Collins et al. 1988: 7-10).
Furthermore, new releases must be made to impact on the market
immediately upon release. Since familiarity undercuts the originality of a
new cultural commodity and familiarity itself is a function of time,
manufacturers must attempt to make the immediate rate of sales growth
accelerate as fast as possible following product launch. All other things
being equal, the faster the rate, the higher the peak before the inevitable
downturn. Accordingly, success of the release depends on urgent and
extensive marketing and promotion, itself an expensive exercise, which
subtracts from the potential profits attracted by the release.
Because of the uncertainty of the cultural marketplace, companies tend
to overcompensate by the overproduction of new releases. This appears as
18 See also Lane (1980: 35) who provides life cycle charts for best-sellers by little-
known and well-known authors, and typical backlist books.
19 Not all Originals' need be new. Cultural producers have learnt from their coun-
terparts in other industries how to repackage goods (e.g. Lilien and Kotler
1983: 608-613). Cross-marketing to other target audiences is one example; an-
other is the repackaging of standards and classics.
Conclusion 59
the 'throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks' or the 'buckshot'
philosophy of product release (Denisoff 1975: 98). The difficulty con-
fronting all cultural commodity producers is that popularity is difficult to
predict: cultural commodities are caught in the ebb and flow of fashion,
with market demand constantly shifting under the impact of competition
and the flood of new releases it generates. To stay ahead, companies are
forced to release a range of releases covering several genres and/or stars in
the hope that one will become a best seller. Few do: hence the volume of
unsold stock which is periodically dumped or remaindered. Thus, while
companies attempt to make careful judgements about the commercial
potential of each release, they confront difficulties in rationalising their
new release patterns.
In short, the contradictions of the cultural commodity generate a
number of production and circulation pressures which bear constantly on
producers. The truncated product cycles demonstrated by cultural com-
modities mean that historically, producers have been driven towards forms
of organisation which guarantee a constant flow of originals to the
reproduction stage of production, usually too many for effective demand,
which means that some of their investment is wasted. Furthermore, once
commoditised, their new releases demand expensive work in circulation to
realise their investment before time and familiarity undercut its value.
2.6 Conclusion
This chapter has identified the fundamental disjunctions created when the
structures of capital are combined with the structures of art. Out of these
we have been able to grasp the principal contradictions of the artist-capital-
ist relation and the contradictions of the cultural commodity. From these
conflicts and tensions, and given a general knowledge of typical capitalist
development, it has been possible to identify structural tendencies in
production and circulation which are major obstacles to the expansion of
capital invested in the sphere of culture. From these, several questions
emerge which warrant further investigation in order to grasp the specifici-
ties of the capitalist production and circulation of cultural commodities:
1. Given the socially constituted status of the artist hence the high cost of
artistic labour and the indeterminacy of the creative process, to what
extent has the capital relation rationalised the creative stage of produc-
tion?
2. Given the truncated product cycle of cultural commodities hence the

need for a regular supply of new artists and works which must be
transformed into commodities, to what extent has capital rationalised
the creative stage of production?
3. Given the truncated product cycle of cultural commodities hence the
difficulties of creating product lines, priming demand and maintaining
long-term accumulation, to what extent has capital rationalised the
process of circulation?
4. Given these conditions, what if any are the reciprocal determinations
operating between the production and circulation circuits of cultural
commodities ?
The following chapters of this work take each of these questions as a basis
for focusing on the specific institutional forms constructed around the
corporations of culture. Ultimately, these flow from the contradictions of
the art-capital relation, but not as direct realisations or instantiations.
Structural tendencies represent imperatives, the conditions impinging
upon capitalists and workers as they go about their work, the historical
conditions they inherit and under which they conduct their agency. What
can be achieved is given not only by their general content but also by the
mediations of the present, by the myriad other tendencies and contingen-
cies under which cultural life in modern societies is constructed and
reconstructed. What follows is an account of the historically and struc-
turally specific tendencies which characterise the production and circula-
tion of cultural commodities in the corporate era of the culture industry,
an institutional analysis of the corporate form of capitalist cultural
commodity production.
Chapter 3
The Production and Circulation of Cultural
Commodities: A Sectoral Analysis of the
Culture Industry
3.1 Introduction
The moment we begin to examine the culture industry in detail, it

becomes clear that much of the sorting and classifying work necessary for
a political economy of culture is yet to be done. Even the industry itself as
an industry is little understood. From a media/cultural studies perspective,
analysts are used to speaking of the specificities of the film, publishing and
recording industries and the press, radio and television, but it is easy to
forget that together these comprise a single industry producing a single
type of commodity: the cultural commodity. Looking behind the obvious-
ness of descriptive terms like 'films', 'newspapers', 'books' and so on, and
classifying these objects in terms of the types of cultural commodities each
represents, we can characterise the elements of this industry and its
constituent sectors. It is these that this chapter sets out to reveal.
By focusing on the production and circulation of cultural commodities
and by building outwards from Marx' analysis of capital, a specific set of
sectoral relations representing the political economic foundations of the
culture industry can be modelled. The major points of my argument are
that:
1. understood in political-economic terms, there are different types of
cultural commodities, each requiring specific systems of circulation;
2. the problems of realisation confronted by these different types have
generated a complex set of sectoral relations between cultural produc-
ers and the providers of circulation services.
We need to begin by recognising that the term 'cultural commodities' is an
abstraction which camouflages important differences. As entrepreneurs
began commoditising cultural objects in the search for profits, only some
have been transformable into fully private goods. As a result, the culture
62 The Production and Circulation of Cultural Commodities
industry produces and circulates various types of cultural commodities,

which I will refer to as private goods, quasi-private goods, and quasi-public
goods (sometimes abbreviated in the following discussion to private and
public goods). While their systems of production are similar, each requires
different approaches to circulation. Looking specifically at what must be
done in each case to realise the value created in a production cycle, we
find a particularly interesting and complex set of relations which emerged
first as a matter of historical advantage but are now embedded as
structural necessity. It centres around the producers of public goods (the
media) who, in producing their own commodity form, use goods manufac-
tured by the private goods (manufacturing) sector. In doing so, they assist
in the circulation of private goods by providing publicity. This duality of
the public goods sector/the publicity sector becomes particularly impor-
tant later in this book.
Unfortunately, the path towards a sectoral analysis of the culture
industry is not straightforward, because of gaps in Marxist theory when
considering the interrelation of the circuits wherein commodities are
produced and circulated. In particular, there is a significant gap in the
literature on the emergence and function of marketing, a practice which
has become immensely important to corporate accumulation strategies
and in which the public goods sector of the culture industry is intimately
involved in producing and circulating its own commodities. In order to
build a sectoral analysis of the culture industry and in later chapters, give
detailed consideration to the work of marketing in this industry, we must
first consider recent developments in the process of circulation.
3.2 Commodities, Realisation, Marketing

and Publicity
According to Marx (1954,1956,1959, see also Harvey 1982, Mandel 1968),

capitalism is a mode of production predicated on accumulation via the
production and circulation of commodities. Accumulation occurs through
recurring cycles of investment, wherein machinery, raw materials and
labour-power are purchased and combined in the capitalist's workshop or
factory, with labour-power set to work producing a particular type of
commodity, overseen by management. The result is a quantity of finished
commodities ready for sale, containing more value than that of the
workers' wages. When sold, this surplus-value is realised in money form
Commodities, Realisation, Marketing and Publicity 63
which is claimed by the capitalist as profit and reinvested in more or better

productive capacity in order to make even greater profits.
In traditional Marxist terms, competition demands that capitalists seize
every opportunity to expand profits; not doing so carries the risk that
competitors will gain a market advantage. Each strives to constantly
increase the rate of exploitation in production, organising the labour
process to increase the absolute and relative surplus labour value pro-
duced by workers, usually by extending the working day, reducing wages
(without a corresponding decrease in working hours), or by purchasing
more sophisticated machinery which increases labour productivity - in
short, by 'degrading' the conditions of production (Braverman 1974).
Despite these efforts to increase the rate of exploitation, the increase in
surplus-value will only be realised as profits if capitalists compete on the
market to ensure that the goods that they have produced and not those of
their competitors' are actually purchased. Accordingly, each employs a
sales team to sell their products into retail outlets ready for potential
customers, and engages in publicity and promotional strategies to induce
them to purchase. The point is that capitalist expansion presumes comple-
tion of both the production and circulation circuits; there is, therefore, an
indissoluble unity between the spheres of production and circulation in the
capital relation - in the language of the market, a fundamental and
necessary link between production and sales and marketing.
3.2.1 The Development of The Sales Effort'

Since the circulation of cultural commodities becomes a major focus later
in this chapter, and because few Marxists have paid much attention to the
operation of this sphere much less its enlargement in corporate capitalism,
a lengthy deviation is necessary to outline aspects of the operation of
marketing and advertising.
Marx' arguments offer a beginning point. In chapter V and VI in
Volume II of Capital (1956) and in Part IV of Volume III (1959, see also
Mandel 1968: 182-203), he suggests that as the capitalist mode of produc-
tion prospered and expanded, urban centres of commerce developed at
some distance from the manufacturers' factories. Trading was carried out
by merchants, the two principal forms being commercial and money-
dealing (finance) capitalists. Their work significantly improved the effi-
ciency of expansion as a whole. Commercial capital, wholesalers and
retailers, attended to the business of exchange by employing labour-power
to sell the factory output they had purchased at trade prices. Since this
work involves no more than a change in value form, it creates no further
value. Commercial profit flows from the difference between trade and
retail prices, where a share of the surplus created in the labour process is
conceded by manufacturers to wholesalers and retailers in return for their
commercial services. The manufacturer's rate of profit on the completed
production cycle is reduced, but because their original investment plus
nett profits are available for reinvestment sooner than would otherwise be
the case, they can reinvest quicker, hence (all other things being equal)
they will increase their rate of production and annual rate of profit. In
aggregate, while commercial capital participates in the share-out of
surplus-value without producing any part of it, its exchanges with the
manufacturing sector contribute indirectly to the expansion of capital, but
only indirectly.
Nonetheless, Marx concedes that some commercial activities are techni-
cally indispensable for the conservation of use-value of commodities and
are a pre-condition for realisation. Transportation of commodities from
factory to market is one example (1956: 152-155). Whilst a cost of
circulation to the manufacturer, the practical necessity of transport
conserves use-value, thus its value enters into the total value of the
consignment and a proportion is added to the value of each commodity.
As such, it becomes "a separate sphere of investment of productive
capital", its distinguishing feature being "that it appears as a continuation
of a process of production within the process of circulation and for the
process of circulation" (1956: 155). In other words, whilst it plays only a
minor role in his analysis, partly because this development was only
emerging while he was writing, Marx is ready to acknowledge the
historical transformation of unproductive services into productive capital.
Since the 19th century, the business of circulation has expanded
immensely. What Mandel (1978b) calls 'late capitalism' and Baran and
Sweezy (1966) 'monopoly capitalism' but I prefer to call 'corporate
capitalism', is characterised by concentrated, centralised and complex
masses of capital, appearing empirically as national and transnational
corporations of enormous size and value, built around complex and costly
production technologies which have dramatically raised labour output,
and the organisation of domestic and global markets for its immense
diversity of products. With these developments, the internal contradic-
tions of this economic system have driven the capitalist world economy
into periods of chronic stagnation. Attempts to mitigate these tendencies
have included an increase in state expenditure on public works and
armaments (Harvey 1982, Mandel 1978b), but most crucially for the
purposes of this study, what Baran and Sweezy (1966: 117-144) have
referred to as 'the sales effort' 1 . Difficulties confronting the expansion of

capital have led corporations to develop specialised marketing, merchan-
dising and publicity divisions, and enabled the emergence of independent
agencies providing specialised goods and services to these corporations.
Baran and Sweezy observe that:
Conceptually [the sales effort] is identical with Marx expenses of circulation. But in
the epoch of monopoly capitalism it has come to play a role both quantitatively and
qualitatively beyond anything Marx ever dreamed of (1966: 119).
Since, according to the Marxist model, corporate accumulation generates
a tendency towards overproduction relative to effective demand, corpora-
tions compete to ensure that their products capture the largest possible
market share of sales, thereby realising a disproportionately large share of
the total mass of surplus-value circulating in the market, and enabling
them to sustain long-term viability. The most important of these market-
ing techniques are product differentiation and market segmentation, the
targeting of specialised product lines to carefully delineated consumer
segments; and brand competition, the inclusion of a range of product lines
or models under the rubric of a brand which is then extensively promoted.
Not only do the massive financial and human resources of the major
corporations enable them to undertake these competitive strategies, but
they are indispensable tools for protecting oligopolistic position. If success-
ful, market share can be maintained, commodity prices raised in line with
production cost increases and profit margins preserved (Baran and
Sweezy 1966: 117-135)2.
Their otherwise useful analysis I think is weakened significantly because, as

Harvey (1982: 141-142) argues, they prematurely abandon the competitive
model of capital which is so fundamental to Marx' analysis. I would add to this
the importance of grasping the form of competition which underlies 'monopoly
capitalism' rather than presuming its elimination. Consequently, they mistake
the political-economic character and function of the sales effort. Arriaga
(1984) also criticises their assumptions but like many Marxists, presumes that
marketing and advertising is a priori unproductive.
The extent to which the expansion of marketing, merchandising and publicity
are a necessary consequence of the crisis tendencies of the advanced capitalist
mode of production, much less the reciprocal determinations they create in
mitigating a decline in the average rate of profit (Marx 1959, see also Harvey
1982, Mandel 1978b), are beyond the concerns of this work, but would make a
valuable and interesting area of research.
3.2.2 Marketing and Publicity: The Creation

and Allocation of the 'Publicity Surplus'
To ask a classic question within Marxist political economy, do marketing
and publicity in their modern forms represent the unproductive creation
of saleable appearances, or, as Marx noted in the case of transport, are
they constitutive investment in the production of use-values, adding to the
sum total of capital in the process of self-expansion? Or to put the same
question another way, is the investment tied up in marketing and public-
ity - in circulation -productive capital, capital proper?
The general tendency amongst Marxists is to assume that it is not; Baran
and Sweezy (1966) are a case in point (see also Arriaga 1984). Mandel
seems to believe differently when, in a passing comment, he argues that:
[creative] wage-labour employed in making advertisement films is productive,
whereas the cajoling of potential clients [by account executives] to purchase or
order such films is as unproductive as the labour of commercial representatives in
general (1978b: 45).
He dissects Marx' arguments on this contentious issue noting discrepan-
cies between Theories of Surplus-Value and the later version in Capital,
concluding eventually that the latter is the more considered position. He
argues therefore that:
The frontier between productive capital and circulation capital thus runs between
wage-labour which [creates,] increases, changes, or preserves a use-value, or is
indispensable for its realisation - and wage-labour which makes no difference to a
use-value (1978a: 405, see also 1978b: 45).
Use-value is the key category. If a labour process is productive in any of
the above senses, it adds to the total amount of abstract labour-value
embedded in that commodity. Unproductive labour, on the other hand, is
"wage-labour which is indifferent to the specific use-value of a commod-
ity" (1978b: 46). Mandel notes further (1978a: 406), I think correctly, that
at the very least, so-called 'service' capital in modern political economies,
usually said to include marketing and advertising firms, like merchant
capital, indirectly increases the sum total of value by accelerating the
turnover time of invested capital. Additionally, as a general rule, once
services are commercialised, corporate capitalism tends to convert them
into commodity-producing processes which directly increases aggregate
private and social capital. In other words, Mandel presumes a historical
dimension to the productive-unproductive boundary which depends on
the stage of development of the form of capital under examination. This
point is important.
Whether or not the business of marketing and advertising in the present

day has become productive of value can be examined via a case study; a
suitable example is the Australian launch of Agree Creme Rinse and
Conditioners by the U.S.-based manufacturer S.C. Johnson and Sons Pty.
Ltd. (the company marketing report is reprinted in Layton 1980: 108-136,
cf. also Baker 1985: 292-350)3.
When commissioned by a manufacturer to prepare publicity mater-
ials - in the Agree case, brand logos, label, packaging and sample layouts,
a print and television advertising campaign, and shelf-tray and free-
standing bins layouts - an advertising agency employs in-house or sub-
contracted labour-power in the form of copywriters, graphic artists,
performers and directors, and combines them with means of cultural
production such as concepts, advertising conventions, writing and graphic
techniques, typewriters, processors and film, photographic and audio
recording equipment, in the production of tape recordings, audio-visuals,
films, camera-ready artwork, and other cultural objects. Once finished and
approved, the originals, the 'masters', belong to the advertiser. The agency
negotiates with the selected medium in drawing up a campaign schedule
which determines where and when their messages are delivered to the
audience. Advertisements, posters, labelling and other publicity materials
are obviously produced as material objects; as films, tapes, artwork, and so
on. They have a sensual, physical, as well as cultural existence; but they
3 From evidence collected in the course of field work, it is more usual to find a
multiplicity of firms and commissions involved in marketing and launching a
product. Packaging and logos, for example, are sometimes designed by special-
ist agencies, sometimes by the corporation's marketing division, sometimes by
the agency contracted to handle the advertising campaign. Some major or spe-
cialist firms may set up an advertising section within their marketing division
but advertising is generally handled by independent specialist agencies. The
agency' in the above discussion represents a function rather than a firm; one or
several may be commissioned, whether substantial companies or small indepen-
dents. Depending on the state of competition, packaging design, advertisement
production and the booking of media campaigns may be handled by one or
several agencies who may themselves sub-contract aspects of their work. 'The
medium' too, refers to a function: multi-media campaigns are more usual than
single-medium campaigns. The following discussion focuses on the advertising
campaign, but the operation and social effects of package design, labelling and
point-of-sale advertising are identical. Baker (1985a) offers a useful and com-
prehensive overview of the operation of marketing and advertising. Other
works drawn on here include: Baker (1985b), Baker et al. (1983), Wilmhurst
(1984). For marketing case studies see Layton (1973,1980) and McCarthy et al.
(1987). For advertising see Fowles and Mills (1981), Rossiter and Percy (1987).
For the history of advertising see Fox (1984), Turner (1965).
are also commodities, objects produced for sale, although monetary

exchange transpires not with their cultural consumers, the intended
audiences, but with their economic consumer, the advertiser, to whom
they become assets, part of the company's capital stock. In other words,
publicity commodities are produced as intermediate goods and enter into
the advertiser's constant capital. To advertisers, they have a use-value as
signifying objects which publicise the characteristics of their own products,
and their exchange-value is underlaid by the value of the cultural labour
expended in their production. Hence, publicity commodities represent
value in the process of expansion and add to the sum total of value in
circulation.
Embedded in publicity commodities is the surplus-value extracted by
the employing agency from creative staff in the course of their production,
which is realised when paid for4. Does this labour value enter into the
exchange-value of the commodity being advertised? To the manufacturer,
advertisements and packaging represent circulation costs which are added
to overall production costs and becomes part of the unit cost of each
commodity. Is this simply a redistribution of costs on to the consumer or,
given Mandel's definition of productive labour, do they add to, increase or
conserve the advertised commodity's use-value? Deciding this economic
question necessitates examining the realisation of the cultural value of
publicity commodities.
Advertising and packaging are designed to "position a product or a
brand in relation to other brands" (Fowles and Mills 1981: 13), in other
words, to proposition customers on behalf of the commodity, to enunciate
its potential uses relative to consumer desires and preferences and assert
its worth in order to attract sales. Product differentiation and brand
competition are corporate marketing strategies which attempt to exploit
not only consumers' subsistence needs but also their desires for pleasure
and enjoyment, sociability, affiliation and their insecurities. Artists of
various types are employed to create the signifying objects which play on
the commodity's surfaces and project its claims into the public sphere.
Their rhetoric attempts to provide a material guarantee for the commod-
ity's promised use-value and upon which the potential customer, the
This discussion is focussed primarily on the cultural dimensions of marketing

and publicising, hence this remark emphasises the surplus-value generated by
cultural labour-power in creating the original. Labour-power in the form of
camera operators, sound recordists, make-up artists, editors and dubbing suite
operators and so on, is also employed in transcribing and copying the original.
They too create a surplus for their employer but I am ignoring these physical
aspects of this cultural labour process.
addressee, can imagine its worth as a private possession. Brand names,

logos and slogans draw and articulate a plausible collection of possible
satisfactions around a commodity and promise that these will be realised
in its consumption. The print advertisement for Agree ("Helps stop the
greasies"), for example, headlined a question from the young female
spokesperson fronting the campaign: "Dry, Normal or Oily hair, you need
a hair conditioner that doesn't make your hair greasy. Agree ?". The body
copy continued with extensive explanation of the product's consumer
benefits claiming that "Agree is 99.75% oil free", "Agree is pH balanced",
and includes a picture of the cosmetic pack designed to emphasise the
personal care orientation of the product (Layton 1980: 115-117). The
potential of advertising to make assertions appear as facts and the
commodity as both use and exchange value, flows from the constitutive
capacities of language5. Its signs bear a semiotic power which capital grasps
and uses to mobilise human desires to meet the demands of accumulation.
The work of positioning a brand or product pre-emptively attributes a
complex of uses6 to the objects represented, in a manner appropriate to
the targeted consumer segment and their assumed context of consump-
tion7.
The term 'constitute' here points to the determinate and situated relations be-
tween reality and the languages which agents create in its construction. Signifi-
cation is part of the making of what is real, "and a grasping of this reality
through language...And since this grasping is social and continuous...it occurs
within an active and changing society.... Signification...is a specific form of the
practical consciousness which is inseparable from all social material activity"
(Williams 1977: 37-38). For a useful discussion of these issues see Williams
(1977: 21-44). Seminal contributions to recent debates on the nature of lan-
guages which underlie the above discussion, in addition to Williams, include
Barthes (1967), Eco (1976), Hall (1977) and Volosinov (1973).
There is a misleading tendency amongst Marxists to treat use-value as a unitary
property possessed by the commodity and which pre-exists consumption. In
fact, it is constituted in relations of exchange and consumption. Marketing con-
stitutes possible uses to potential consumers and identical goods may have vari-
ous uses to different people - and I use the plural form deliberately. Uses are
realised in the course of consumption, in conditions under which consumption
must be understood as a mode of agency in the production of a life(style). I
would argue that Marxism badly needs a theory of consumption-as-agency,
and, as I comment at various points throughout the following chapters,
nowhere is this more necessary than in the sociology of culture.
In constituting use-value, of course, advertisements also construct the human
subject of consumption. A number of recent studies have examined the rela-
tionship between subjectivity and consumption of publicity texts and the mech-
anisms which produce such effects, from perspectives which combine structural-
There seem to be two processes in play here: publicity displays these

characteristics so as to signify an explicit, identifiable and unmistakable
brand or product image, and simultaneously promotes it against its
competitors. Projected uses are located implicitly or explicitly on a scale of
value, of relative worth to the consumer, measured as value for money.
The makers of Agree, for example, compared its performance against its
(unnamed) competitors. In the television advertisement the female
spokesperson (a typical consumer figure) asked: "Would somebody please
explain? No matter what kind of hair you have, dry, oily or normal, why
does it sometimes get greasy, stringy and sticky after using a conditioned"
(emphasis added). After the male expert (a hairdresser figure) explained
the properties of Agree and how it solves the problem of greasy hair, he
evaluated its claims and affirmed their veracity by commenting over a shot
of the product pack "No wonder it's America's No l Creme Rinse and
Conditioner" (Layton 1980: 118). Public display and promotion are the
two mechanisms of publicity; an advertisement objectifies the subject of its
discourse and differentiates it from its competitors in terms of the
satisfactions it promises, then locates it in a superior position within a
status hierarchy of utility. The question is, why should companies set out
to achieve this?
Display and promotion are a necessary condition of the price mecha-
nism in a competitive, impersonal market. Since price-tags signify relative
claims to exchange-value represented in money form, they must be
underpined by a guarantee of the good's relative utility. The commodity is
made to appear as the bearer of relative market value. If the good seems
as good as its promise - all other things being equal, and ignoring the fact
that some campaigns do not work - then it will be more likely to sell than
its competitors. It seems then that marketing and advertising do, in
Mandel's terms, add to, increase or conserve use-value, but in a much
stronger sense than even he seems to realise. We can say that it is the
signifying capacity of publicity commodities created by cultural workers has
the effect of constituting use-value prior to consumption, and as such
underlies a proportion of the increased exchange-value carried by the
marketed commodities.
What work underlies the rest of the increase? In short, that of the media
workers who make the distribution vehicle, the media content into which
the advertisement is inserted. As a signifying object, the advertisement is
of no use to the advertiser unless it is transmitted into the public arena, its
ist and psychoanalytic insights. Useful examples include Bonney and Wilson
(1983: chapter 6-8), Haug (1986: chapter 2-3), and Judith Williamson's seminal
Decoding Advertisements (1978: especially chapter 2).
message made public via the media. Advertising agency staff plan a
campaign on behalf of their client and buy the necessary time or space
depending whether they are using broadcast or print media, to achieve
reach and frequency; i.e. they schedule insertions of the advertisement so
that its message reaches audiences of preferred size, demographic and
socio-economic characteristics, and often enough for them to remember
its propositions. In the Agree case, a budget of $700,000 (1979 prices) was
allocated for a campaign using prime night-time television and national
women's magazines as the "optimum vehicles to reach the target group
identified as women aged 14-24 years". Six different publications were
used in order to "get coverage of 90% of Australian women who would be
exposed to the advertisements on average nine times throughout the year"
(Layton 1980: 117, 119). The selected medium and the agency draw up a
contract whereby the medium agrees to transmit or publish the advertise-
ments as specified in the schedule8.
Programmers, announcers, journalists, continuity writers, directors and
other cultural workers of various kinds employed by the medium, prepare
and present programmes or editions. Curiously, for reasons to be detailed
shortly, media either do not or cannot sell their products to consumers at
full value, if at all. Yet media production is organised as commodity
production; media produce a 'quasi-public good' (see later discussion),
and its free consumption by readers, listeners and viewers provides a
possible pool of addressees for advertisements. Their capacity to speak to
extensive and widespread audiences which flows from consumption of
their commodity form, is a useful effect which can be 'sold' by media
organisations to those seeking audiences for their messages.
As part of the advertising process, media firms commission research
agencies to produce circulation reports, ratings books, and so on (e.g.
Fowles and Mills 1981: S5-94)9, which provide detailed sociological and
For the operations of media planning and buying departments in agencies and
their relations with media sales departments see Baker (1985a), Fowles and
Mills (1981), Rossiter and Percy (1987) and Wilmshurst (1985). For case stud-
ies as part of the overall marketing process see, for example, Layton (1973,
1980).
Again, I am referring here to a function rather than a firm. Some media, espe-
cially media conglomerates, have their own research departments. Specialist
firms such as AGB-McNair, Morgan-Gallop Polls, and Australian National
Opinion Polls to name a few Australian examples, carry out the bulk of re-
search. For details on the commissioning of research, the types and value of
different forms of data analysis and presentation, the transformation of this
information by media into rate cards and packages and subsequent relations
psychological information on different groups within the aggregate audi-

ence, and their regular patterns of media use. In Australia, The Age
Lifestyle Study (Melbourne Age 1982), for example, used factor analysis to
identify 15 lifestyles (e.g. Average Successful Dad, Urbane Sophisticate,
Career Mother, Aussie Chauvinist, Doting Grandmother), the consump-
tion patterns of each across a variety of product categories (e.g. clothes,
beverages, holiday and travel, finance) and their media exposure (e.g.
press, radio and television preferences and use). McNair-Anderson radio
surveys, on the other hand, provide aggregate figures such as the numbers
of cumulative (unduplicated) and consecutive quarter-hour (duplicated)
listeners for each quarter-hour of transmission across all stations in a
market. Using this and other market information, each company produces
a rate card, a list of charges for carrying advertisements. Rate cards are set
at a level which offers advertisers the lowest possible cost per thousand
impacts; i.e. the unit charge made for delivering a message of given size or
duration to an audience of specified size and composition. The base
advertising rate is established by pricing the relative audience size and
type attracted by their product with the costs of its production, varied for
different pages or time zones according to their popularity (for examples,
see b&t yearbook 1984). In other words, advertising rates reflect the
distributive efficiency of the medium mediated by the cost of producing its
content, and media attract income by renting their capacity to deliver
advertisements to the specific audiences consuming their products (for a
contrasting view, see Smythe 197710).
With publication of the campaign, the use and exchange-value of the
brand or product are objectified in the public realm. This is the effect of
cultural work performed in marketing and advertising agencies and the
media. The value of these labours also enters into the commodity,
pre-emptively constituting its use and exchange value prior to consump-
with agencies in campaign planning and signing, see especially Baker (1985a,
1985b) and Fowles and Mills (1981).
10 This is the correct formulation of the political-economic operation of the me-
dia. In an influential paper, Dallas Smythe (1977) argued that audiences and
readerships are the commodity form produced by mass-produced, advertiser-
supported communications under monopoly capitalism (1977: 3), a conclusion
reproduced by Bonney and Wilson (1981) and McQueen (1977). But Smythe is
incorrect. Advertisers do not 'buy' audiences: they rent the access media offer
to their practical and discursive consciousness. Media have an effective
monopoly on the cultural and technical means (content, equipment) of deliver-
ing messages to the habituated audiences each attracts. To advertisers, this is
the use-value of media operations, and the useful effect they are willing to
employ.
tion. Brands and products which sell in quantity as a result of marketing

and publicity attract a substantial market share, those selling most
realising a larger-than-average slice of the sum total of value created in
manufacturing output, a share which considerably exceeds the quantity of
surplus-value carried by their own commodities. In other words, they
appropriate a share of the surplus-value created by the employees of
competing firms. Marketplace competition through marketing and public-
ity serves to distribute and allocate the value in circulation, while adding
to it itself. It enables powerful firms to realise what I want to call a
publicity surplus, or in its monetary expression, publicity profit, which is
the end result of the cultural labour which creates a relative increase in
marketability for the advertiser's goods.
The exchanges which underpin marketing and publicity bring significant
benefits to the manufacturing corporations which can afford it, while
simultaneously creating the conditions of expansion for publicity capital.
There are at least three identifiable flows of surplus-value:
l.that created in making publicity materials and vehicle, returned to the
agency and the medium;
2.that created in the manufacturing process, returned to the manufacturer;
3.that created by competing manufacturers and appropriated as publicity
surplus, shared between advertiser, agency and medium.
Of course, agency, medium and client struggle over apportionment of
these additional appropriated profits. Most is claimed by the advertiser,
the manufacturer of the advertised commodities. In the course of 'pitching
the account' and deciding the size of the agency fee relative to total
budget, and pre-campaign rate negotiations between agency and medium
over the rate to be charged11, both medium and agency publicise their own
products and set a price upon them which maximises their individual
shares. In other words, their capacity to negotiate, to battle over the terms
of apportionment, is determined by their market reputations, the signs of
the exchange-values of agency and medium in their own spheres of
competition.
11 Judging by interviewees' comments, media and agencies engage in much heavy

warfare over this. The distribution mechanism operates through agency com-
missions, a deduction from the campaign cost they pay to the medium which,
while set at an industry standard in most countries, can be surrounded by invisi-
bles (additional or preferred placements, promotional support, and so on).
Equally, the agency service fee paid by their client generally includes all pro-
duction charges and some creative costs, with shortfalls made up out of media
commission.
To sum up: by examining the advertising process and the interplay of its
cultural and economic aspects, we begin to see that publicity capital is a
historically new and complex capital generated by the difficulties con-
fronting the accumulation of corporate capital, representing the articula-
tion of forms of economic and cultural practice, and appearing as media,
marketing and advertising organisations. Publicity capital expands by
assisting in the circulation of commodities produced by manufacturers, by
producing and circulating additional specialised goods. The surplus-value
embedded in them is realised when sold to advertisers, and their circula-
tion enables publicists to share in the division of publicity surpluses
realised by advertisers. This system of realisation distinguishes publicity
capital from merchant capital out of which it grew in the late-19th to the
early-20th centuries, where publicity capital evolved as a form of produc-
tive capital operating in circulation by creating the publicity process as the
mode of realisation underlying its accumulation. Its expansion indicates
influential structural changes within capitalist economies built upon the
new relationship forged between the 'productive' sphere of production
and 'unproductive' circulation that began, as Marx observed, with trans-
port. What were once services have been capitalised. Cultural workers in
the publicity sector create an independent source of profits for their
employers by creating signifying objects which materialise the proposi-
tions of marketability borne by competing commodities. This costly
prerogative can only be mobilised with the massive resources of the major
corporations, thus consolidating their industrial dominance and long-term
profitability. It is clear that publicity profits are a significant site of conflict
between competing corporate capitals and that publicity is a circulation
strategy which is fundamental to the ongoing accumulation and concentra-
tion of capital in modern economies - a point which , as we will see
shortly, is particularly germane to understanding the operation of the
culture industry.
3.3 Types of Cultural Commodities, Their Systems

of Circulation and Relations of Distribution
With a clearer understanding of the functioning of the marketing process,

we can now return to an examination of the culture industry as an
industry.
Bonney and Wilson, amongst others (e.g. Garnham 1979, Hall 1977,
Types of Cultural Commodities 75
Murdock and Golding 1977, Wolff 1981), emphasise the political and
analytic importance of investigating modern commercial cultural institu-
tions:
as organisations operating within a certain kind of social, political and economic

structure, and engaged in a certain kind of business for profit. They are engaged,
like other businesses, in the production of commodities - production of output for
sale or exchange (1983: 23-24).
However, capitalisation progresses under specific technical and cultural

conditions and not all non-commoditised cultural forms are equally
amenable to transformation. For viable capitalist investment, a technical
form must be available for producing and exchanging the object as a
commodity, and a controllable system of realisation must be available.
From a sociological perspective, the distinction made by economists
between 'private' and 'public' goods (e.g. Bannock et al. 1984: 361) can be
usefully employed to develop this point. Private goods have a form which
excludes potential customers from access to their use-value prior to or
outside of exchange. Their sale can therefore be controlled. Because of
this, they can be designed for private, domestic consumption, produced as
discrete, mass-produced items manufactured, and sold at relatively low
unit costs. On the other hand, the use-value of public goods is readily and
freely accessible and consumption by one individual does not exclude that
of another. Private capital can profit little from investment in public goods
unless they can be transformed into private form: since there is no
moment of exchange, any surplus-value created in their production cannot
be realised.
3.3.1 Private Goods
Books, magazines, and musical recordings are all produced as private

goods and represent the culture industry's most mature commodity forms.
Periodicals and newspapers are an ambiguous case; they have the technical
form of private goods, but in so far as their contents such as political and
economic news are regarded in liberal democracies as information to
which citizens have a right, they represent public goods. In other words, in
contrast to their technical form, they have the cultural form of public
goods12. For the sake of simplicity, I treat newspapers and periodicals in

this analysis as public goods.
Private goods in the culture industry are manufactured and distributed
in a system which conforms with the basic model of capitalist commodity
production. Publishers and recording companies invest in labour-power
and means of cultural production. Two types of labour-power are em-
ployed; cultural workers to create an original work and manual workers
who reproduce it by transcribing the original on to a master and mass-pro-
ducing copies, the commodities proper. Both types of workers create
surplus-value which is realised when the resulting commodities are sold to
consumers. To realise these profits, manufacturers supply their products
to retailers such as book and record stores who merchandise them by
creating an appropriate layout in their shops and publicising their stock.
The manufacturer-retailer relation, therefore, is the fundamental institu-
tional relation realising the production and circulation of private goods.
As the scale of the culture industry expanded, as manufacturers grew, so
did retailers, drawing their income from the value produced in the
manufacturing sector.
As argued in the previous chapter, however, concealed within all
cultural commodities are the contradictions of the art-capital relation.
These generate immediate complications in production and circulation,
the most important of which, from the point of view of manufacturers, are
the truncated product cycle, the necessity for recurrent production, and
the tendency towards overproduction of originals. Consequently, each of
the new releases flooding onto the market needs extensive marketing and
publicity. Historically, this has given rise to a complex set of institutional
arrangements operating across the production and circulation of private
cultural goods.
Because of overproduction and the intensity of marketplace competi-
tion, a merchandising approach where commodities are simply placed on
display in retail outlets, is, from the manufacturer's point of view,
insufficient to guarantee sales. Accordingly, the firm's marketing division
packages the commodities to make them stand out from their competitors
12 This contradiction exerts downwards pressures on cover-prices and many news-

papers sell at a price well below their costs of production. Subsequent cost
pressures have led newspaper companies to carry advertising, which inevitably
locks them into a logic which intersects with that of their existence as private
goods. Their functioning as manufacturing capital frequently conflicts with
their functioning as publicity capital, a dualism which underlies the contradic-
tions of journalism and commerce which are part of the everyday world of
newspaper editorial staff.
in the retail setting. The firm's marketing division packages the commod-
ity; this involves providing covers for books and recordings, trade adver-
tisements, and merchandising aids such as posters, stickers and point-of-
sale materials, and publicity and promotional activities and tie-ins (Gran-
nis 1957:177-186, Frith 1978: 75-86)13. In an era of impersonal, self-service
retailing, most of the in-store selling work is done by the packaging; it is
designed to attract the attention of potential purchasers and project the
commodity's claims to use and exchange value (cf. Denisoff 1975:172-176,
Schmoller 1974: 317). We have already seen that packaging is produced as
intermediate cultural goods and that the value of the labour consumed in
their production is added to the value of the commodities being circulated,
realised in exchange and returned to the manufacturer, whence it is
distributed to each of the participating capitals. The production/circulation
system of private goods which developed historically within the culture
industry, therefore, inserts a marketer between the manufacturer and
retailer - usually a division or department within the corporation but
sometimes an independent company.
Packaging itself is generally insufficient to ensure realisation. The
urgency of publicity confronting all types of cultural commodity usually
requires additional signifying objects such as consumer advertisements,
video clips, biographical information and publicity leaflets. These are
prepared by the marketing division or subcontracted through specialist
agencies, freelancers and independents, and designed for use through the
publicity system (e.g. Grannis 1957: 144-147, 164-174, Frith 1978: 75-96,
Stockbridge 1985: 29-36). These objects too are produced as intermediate
publicity goods and their value enters into that of the finished commodity.
Accordingly, advertisements are circulated in the media to publicise the
commodity, its value and its availability. Here we come across a significant
institutional element of the culture industry which assumes considerable
importance in later chapters. Generally, private cultural goods are not
extensively advertised in the consumer media. This is obviated because of
an additional set of publicity relations between manufacturers, the media
13 Dessauer (1974: 102-124) also looks at promotion and sales promotion in the
book trade and also discusses alternative retailing systems such as book clubs,
mail-order selling, wholesalers and jobbers. Hirsch (1970: 43-48) does the same
for the popular music industry. For a discussion of the social and economic
conditions which have transformed 'shopkeeping' into 'merchandising', see Jef-
feries (1954: 281-291 for newspaper and book selling and pp.405-410 for radio
and electrical goods). Bluestone et al. (1981) look at recent developments in
department store retailing, noting in particular (pp.27-35) the struggle between
department and specialist stores, especially relevant to the book trade.
and their audiences, which is part of the institutionalised system whereby

private goods are circulated. Its origins lie in the increasing use of all types
of private goods in the preparation of media contents, especially since the
1950s (the genesis of this will be dealt with under 'quasi-public goods').
Some use is direct; for example, films are used in television programming,
commercial recordings in radio programmes and their associated video
clips in television music programmes. Indirect use includes press, radio
and television news and reviews dealing with newly released books and
recordings, publication of best-seller lists, interviews with artists, features
and backgrounders dealing with types of works or artists, biographies, and
so on. Manufacturers of private cultural goods permit the producers of
quasi-public goods to use their commodities as intermediate goods in their
own production for relatively small fees14. This seems contradictory. Given
that it permits free or cheap access by audiences to the commodity's
use-value which might adversely affect sales and hence the quantity of
value realised, why do manufacturers allow it?
The reason is the publicity effect of media use, the free advertising it
endows. Consumption by media in their own production has the effect of
drawing attention to the commodity, a publicity effect which, in effect,
provides unpaid assistance in the circulation of cultural commodities. It
flows from the normal operations of the media in their own production
and is vital to manufacturers in making their products competitive in the
market. Because of the realisation problems confronting cultural commodi-
14 There is considerable struggle between manufacturers and media over this is-
sue, although the outcomes have varied in different countries. In general, in so
far as producers are able to charge fees for use, they realise a proportion of the
labour-value embedded in the final commodity (if a charge is made for use of
an intermediate good, its value is realised directly, reducing the need to raise
the price of the final consumer good, which, when competition and cost pres-
sures are mounting, as in the case of the recording industry, is advantageous).
On the other hand, if fees are not charged, this represents a proportion of
surplus-value forgone by the manufacturer in favour of long-term publicity
profits flowing from the publicity effects of media use, as discussed shortly. In
other words, this is another point of struggle between different forms of capital
over the distribution of value. In Australia, for example, television channels
pay fees for the use of films. Arguments have recently broken out over
whether they should pay recording companies for the use of video clips (e.g.
Stockbridge 1985: 30-31). Radio stations have traditionally been supplied with
recordings free but have paid for ongoing rights of various kinds (e.g. mechani-
cal, transmission rights) to manufacturers and publishers. The battle has re-
cently hotted up with stations being forced to pay a wider range of fees and
recording companies looking for more (ABT 1986:119-122).
ties and the highly competitive nature of the cultural marketplace, media
use of a new release is permitted - indeed sought - at certain points in
the circulation phase, especially upon release (Chappie and Garofalo
1977: 69-122, Grannis 1957: 161-174)15. Manufacturers allocate consider-
able resources to gaining free publicity, for it is here that the battle of the
marketplace is generally won or lost (Music Board of the Australia
Council 1987: 207-213, Frith 1978: 89). Recording companies, for example,
try to obtain radio airplay of selected tracks from the recording, and
telecasts of the accompanying video clip. Equally, review copies are
supplied to specialist magazines and the daily press for review, and artists
make themselves available for interviews and appearances. The media
attention attracted by the commodity raises its market profile above that
of its competitors, legitimating its claims to use and exchange-value, hence
making it more likely to sell. This manufacturer-publicist relation which
has developed within the culture industry is no accident: it is a rudimen-
tary principle of survival for the makers of private goods in the context of
the modern culture industry.
The publicity effect on private cultural goods reveals the symbiosis
between manufacturer and publicist on which both rely not only for
short-term publicity profits but also long-term competitive advantage. For
manufacturers, it maintains the superiority of their artists and keeps their
back-catalogue alive which, with skilled marketing and merchandising, can
be converted into long-run market share and sustained sales. For the part
that they play, advertising agencies and the media also share in the glory.
Each makes a claim on the publicity profits secured by the manufacturer
as a result of their efforts. If a medium received no advertising income, a
radio station for example, may otherwise acquire a reputation for broad-
casting popular items, for 'making the hits', for being 'up with the play', a
significant station in the market. This increases its audience and enables it
to command higher advertising rates and hence demand a greater propor-
tion of the publicity surpluses realised by all its advertisers. In other words,
like its paid counterpart, the publicity effect of media consumption
instigates flows of value which ultimately profit both manufacturer and
15 See also Dessauer (1974: 136-140) for the book trade, who notes that "the
sheer volume of titles and authors and the limited available news, review and
airspace make for a fiercely competitive situation" (p. 137). Lane (1970) also
deals with promotion and publicity and deals in particular with the importance
of subsidiary rights for publishers' profitability. Frith also deals with promotion
in popular music (1978: 74-138); see also Denisoff (1975: 136-137). Hirsch
(1971) sees this process as part of a pre-selection system which filters new re-
leases.
publicist of private goods, and have underpined the growth of publicity

capital16.
These are structural relations whose roots lie in the internal contradic-
tions of cultural commodities, even their most mature form, private goods.
The secret to their successful circulation depends ultimately on the
reproduction of exchange relations between different forms of capital
operating in the culture industry, each serving a different purpose. If
manufacturers of private goods are to expand their capital, competitive
cooperation with retailers, marketers and the producers of quasi-public
goods (i.e. the media - and promoters as producers of quasi-private
goods) and marketers, is indispensable. Their reproduction creates the
conditions which these other forms of capital require to expand.
3.3.2 Quasi-Private Goods

Films, plays, concerts, festivals, tours and live performances of various
kinds all fit into this category, but since private capital has concentrated
around film-making, I will focus on this. 'Quasi-private goods'17 are
produced as consumer goods, but in addition to the problems associated
with cultural commodities generally, because of their technical form, they
16 Manufacturers also cooperate with the artist's personal management and pro-
moters in organising 'gigs', concerts and tours. Again, the reason is publicity
(e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 123-154). While recording companies com-
monly underwrite the cost of a tour, since promoters carry the costs of putting
on the show, as exhibitor capitalists (to be dealt with the in the next section),
nett profits after paying the performers flow principally to them. There are also
sizeable long-term benefits to manufacturers; successful live performances
maintain an artist's popularity which in turn creates the conditions for immedi-
ate and future publicity surpluses in the record market. Hence artists are pres-
sured by their employers to make live appearances, especially while their work
is newly released.
17 The label 'quasi-private' is used here since these goods are consumed in a the-
atre with a finite number of seats. One person's purchase of an admission
ticket in effect excludes another from attending the same showing (cf. public
goods). Also important is the fact that opera, concerts, plays and movie-going
is a collective not communal activity engaged in simultaneously by an aggre-
gate of individuals. Each sits in a darkened theatre acting as if it is their own
private showing; others in the audience are treated as strangers and not permit-
ted to intrude on their private space (cf. Goffman 1971). The same applies to
galleries, concert halls, etc. This pattern of behaviour contrasts with the social-
ity of the public concert during the 16th to 19th centuries: for example, at
opera and orchestral concerts (e.g. Raynor 1972: 155-179).
face particular difficulties in the circuit of circulation. Herein lies the seeds
of their complex history (e.g. Cowie 1971, Kindern 1982a, for an Aus-
tralian perspective see Dermody and Jacka 1987, Tulloch 1982).
Where quasi-private goods production is carried out in the performing
arts, there are considerable problems in expanding the value of the
original investment. The only method of reproducing the commodity is by
repeating the performance, a costly, labour-intensive form of reproduction
which attracts little capitalist investment. The conditions of quasi-private
production changed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries with the
invention of technologies capable of recording performances and creating
reproductions which could be made widely available to attract large
audiences. New cinematic technologies, for example, enabled transcrip-
tion of theatrical performances, which encouraged a flow of investment
from theatre into these new and profitable forms. Cinema capital too has
faced hurdles in realising the value of the commodity. Despite its techno-
logical composition and the division of labour introduced via the studio
system (Staiger 1982), films contain a high labour value which makes them
too costly for individual purchase. Equally, replay technologies are costly,
imperfect, complex and liable to damage, consequently movies are techni-
cally unsuitable for private, domestic modes of consumption. This necessi-
tates consecutive showings or exhibitions in many different semi-private
venues to which individuals are charged admission and which gradually
return profits over time. The system of realisation for quasi-private goods,
therefore, is predicated on producer-exhibitor relations and progressive
realisation of the commodity's value.
The exhibitor, therefore, developed as the owner of the means of
exhibition, theatres and replay equipment and employer of the staff to
operate them. Copies of the film are hired from the producer and shown
over a season. Door takings realise some or all of the surplus-value
created in making the commodity, some of which is retained by the
exhibitor to cover the cost of showing the film. The rest is returned to the
producer. In other words, the exhibitor of quasi-private goods is essen-
tially a form of merchant capital akin to the retailer of private cultural
commodities, and functions as a technically necessary element in the
circulation of quasi-private cultural commodities.
If the producer-exhibitor relation is the kernel of the circulation system,
supplementary positions developed and became institutionalised as the
quasi-private goods sector expanded. To realise the maximum proportion
of the value produced in making the film, the production company needs
to maintain tight control of copying and distribution at the regional level.
Distributors became a significant part of the business, usually as part of
the same corporate group as the production company or as independent
agents. In passing, it is worth noting that there is a business logic in

combining not only production and distribution but also production and
exhibition; to maximise annual returns, integration provides guaranteed
access to theatres, control over the length of a season and the turnover of
films - hence the sweeping vertical integration which has characterised
the operation of the movie industry virtually from its inception18, and the
growth of the massive Anglo-American combines which came to dominate
the national and international flow of film throughout the modernising
world (Cassady 1982, Cowie 1971, Gomery 1982a)19. The important
political economic point is that distribution work involves simultaneously
organising the hire and supply of copies to exhibitors and acting as a
marketing agent in publicising the film's showing. This relation became an
important part of the accumulation strategies adopted by cinema capital
and remains in place today - giving rise, in fact, to a further position in
the circulation system.
Since film production involves high labour costs which cannot easily be
reduced, and because like all cultural commodities the film needs an
immediate impact on the market to attract cinema-goers, producers
concentrate instead on securing box-office success in a competitive market
by mounting marketing and publicity campaigns. If superior marketing
helps turn their film into the most popular of the season thereby excluding
competing films from access to exhibition outlets, producers realise
publicity profits, a disproportionate share of the total mass of surplus-
value in circulation produced by industry workers in all competing firms.
18 Despite the extent of concentration and centralisation throughout the movie

sector (figures on motion picture industry ownership concentration in the U.S. -
are summarised in Sterling and Haight 1978: 87-89, see also Guback 1982), and
the frequent interlocks between producers, distributors and exhibitors, each is
dealt with in this analysis as a separate function within circulation. It is worth
noting that in countries such as Australia where there is considerable indirect
foreign control of film distribution, while distributor-exhibitors such as Hoyts
Theatres and Village-Roadshow are formally independent companies, their
links with the majors turn their independent distributor function effectively
into an arm of the producer-distributor (e.g. Dermody and Jacka 1987:
108-134).
19 In addition, Boyd-Barrett (1977) and Tunstall (1977) locate the growth of the
cinema within capitalist imperialism. Guback (1982) looks at the monopolising
effects of American trans-nationals on the international film business. Der-
mody and Jacka (1987) and Tulloch (1982) examine the effects of this within
the Australian context, with particular reference to the difficulties faced by the
indigenous industry in getting a foothold. On this see also Pendakur (1982) for
the Canadian case.
There are several keys to making marketing work. The first is the star
system, borrowed from the theatre, where the reputations of well-known
performers are exploited to boost the film's marketability and attract
consumers (Kindern 1982b). Success depends on the efforts of the
enormous marketing and publicity divisions set up by major film compa-
nies which organise posters, billboards, signs and stills around and inside
theatres, advertising campaigns, promotional visits, personal appearances,
interviews and reviews, stunts, first-night launches, and so on (Gomery
1982b, Tulloch 1982). The film marketer, however, is fundamentally
dependent on the cooperation of the media, the quasi-public goods sector,
which, in producing their own commodity, including news and reviews of
the film and its stars, serves to publicise both. In other words,a quartet of
producer-distributor-exhibitor-publicist relations is necessary in the circu-
lation of quasi-private goods, with all activities geared towards making the
film a long-run blockbuster which takes publicity profits out of the market.
What are the value flows under this system? How does each type of
capital profit and hence expand? Production is financed by the producer
(which may include an advance from the distributor). Exhibition costs
including gross film rentals are deducted from gross takings and divided
between exhibitor and distributor with the lion's share going to the latter.
From the distributor's share, costs of prints and advertising organised are
deducted, the remainder split between distributor and producer (Der-
mody and Jacka 1987: 161-166). Under this arrangement, the exhibitor
operates as merchant capital sharing commercial profits with the distribu-
tor. The distributor also takes a share of commercial profits, but as the
regional publicity agent for the producer, also makes a claim with the
publicist on some of the publicity profits taken by the film. These flows
were the foundations of their accumulation and expansion of each unit in
the chain.
It is interesting to note that for a time, the simple exhibition model was,
for a time, replaced by a second, more complex one. From merely showing
a film, exhibitors began to assemble a show - the film combined with live
performances - which was presented in palatial palaces and based on a
revue/vaudeville formula. Exhibition capital, in other words, began to take
the form of capital producing a further quasi-private good. Thus, from the
1920s, exhibition capital involved ownership of the means of exhibition,
exhibition labour-power (e.g. attendants, projectionists) and artistic
labour-power (e.g. incidental musicians, performers, actors). The show
possessed a use-value over and above that of the film, although was partly
constituted by it and to which it added, by exploiting the consumption-
based leisure patterns being adopted by the urban working and especially
middle classes; habits associated with 'going out' as a semi-private mode of
consumption of capitalised 'entertainments' (Tulloch 1982: 19-22)20. From

the middle decades of the century, however, the conditions of accumula-
tion changed. Suburbanisation encouraged domestic modes of consump-
tion. The cost and formality of going out seemed increasingly less
attractive when compared to the convenience, comfort and cheapness of
new forms of entertainment. Radio and record consumption had grown in
the decades before, and television was dramatically restructuring the
cultural marketplace (on television's challenge to film, see Stuart 1982).
One of the most important changes, however, especially in the U.S.,
flowed from political action taken against the motion picture monopolies,
which brought about significant although not complete divorce of produc-
ers from exhibitors (Whitney 1982, Gomery 1982a). In principle, ex-
hibitors regained their independence, but producers still controlled supply
and had the market power to impose conditions such as block-booking.
The tightening cost-structures of exhibition demanded rationalisation.
Interest in showmanship declined, and exhibition returned to the simple
model of circulation required by quasi-private goods.
Two last points are worth noting. From a situation in the 1950s and 60s
where film companies feared television, they have since discovered that
surplus profits can be squeezed out of old movies by renting them to
television stations for use in their own quasi-public forms of production; in
fact, it is not uncommon now for television rights to have been pre-sold
before film production is completed or for production to be partly
financed by a station or network. Equally, film studios now additionally
engage in television production, realising the surplus value produced in
sales of rights to many stations for specified periods. While these are direct
economic benefits, if shrewdly cast, marketed and merchandised, a
television production can exploit the publicity effect this usage brings by
maintaining the reputation of current movie stars, making their next film
more likely to achieve blockbuster status. Another important recent
development is the use of the film distribution system as an advertising
medium. Exhibitors are increasingly renting their penetration into the
movie-going audience on the same basis as the media. They calculate their
venue's distributive efficiency, create a rate card, and circulate advertisers'
20 Cunningham (1980) and Walvin (1978) offer useful overviews of the emer-
gence of 'leisure' from the Industrial Revolution to the present. See Wild
(1979) for a complimentary localised study of the period 1900-1940. Du-
mazedier (1974) remains a seminal contribution, as does Paul Thompson
(1975). Erenberg (1981) offers an interesting account which picks out how
'steppin' out' into the developing nightlife of a major city was increasingly de-
nned as a significant if risky pleasure.
messages for a charge; in other words, exhibitors in recent times have

begun to act as publicity capital.
The last point to note is that the advent of cable and satellite delivery
and the video-cassette loom large as a major threat to future profitability
of exhibitors. When dubbed onto videotape and released on video-
cassette, filmed commodities are transformed into private goods, which
eliminates the need for public exhibition and converts them into items
suitable for domestic consumption21. It also gives producers the ability to
realise profits for themselves, and makes it possible to diversify into
cheaper but highly marketable productions such as musical concerts,
sports events and so on. With this development, it is not difficult to
imagine the eventual decline of exhibition capital as it has operated
throughout most of the 20th century.
3.3.3 Quasi-Public Goods

These are the programmes transmitted by radio and television stations,
and the items (intermediate cultural goods) produced for their use, such as
serials, series, variety shows, musical features and concerts, documen-
taries, quizzes and game shows, news feeds and sporting broadcasts and so
on. As noted earlier, newspapers and some periodicals have an ambiguous
relation to these categories: they are partly private, partly quasi-public
goods. Although the following discussion focuses on broadcasting, much
of what is said also applies to print media.
Like all types of cultural commodities, radio and television stations
employ labour power of various kinds, combining workers with means of
cultural production to produce a specific type of commodity: a programme
or edition. Quasi-public goods are unusual in two important respects in
their production processes. First, much of the work performed in their
creative stage of production uses both intermediate quasi-public goods
(such as those created by radio and television production houses, and
news agencies and syndicators), and existing private goods produced by
the manufacturing sector (their commodities and the stars who created
them) which they use under arrangement (fees, licenses). Second, in the
21 Australian motion-picture exhibitors at their 1988 conference were told of re-

cent research which found that only 9% of the population were regular movie-
goers, that most people found ticket prices (around $9 in the cities) too expen-
sive, and that of the 58% of Australian homes with video recorders, most had
switched to hiring movies as their major entertainment source with an average
hire of 1.8 videos weekly (The Courier Mail 18 August 1988: 20).
case of broadcasting, there is not the extensive reproduction stage of

production (transcription, duplication) found in all other forms of cultural
production - the flow of pre-recorded/live programme items assembled in
the final stage of creation is simultaneously transformed into an electro-
magnetic signal and transmitted live (note that quasi-public goods produc-
ers also control the system of circulation for their products). The reasons
are linked to technical form of the good and their recent history.
Quasi-public goods are confronted by massive problems of realisation22.
While produced in the form of commodities, for historical reasons, they
have no moment of exchange. While their technical and economic form is
that of public goods, as a cultural form, they are more akin to private
goods: evidence their design for individual consumption in domestic
settings such as home and car, and their mode of address within which the
audience appears as the singular 'you' (Higgins and Moss 1981: 31-70)23.
Hence my use of the category quasi-public goods (cf. 'impure' public
goods). Companies producing quasi-public goods, therefore, are unable to
directly realise the value of their products in sales to those for whom the
commodity is intended: the audience. Instead, indirect realisation via
publicity rents is the primary accumulation strategy of this type of cultural
production.
Their mode of realisation is what underlies the duality of quasi-public
22 Brown (1986: 60-62) usefully discusses a number of economic aspects of broad-

casting products as public goods, noting that few goods are either purely pri-
vate or public in character, and concluding that because the cost of producing
broadcasting programmes is independent of the numbers in its audience, they
come very close to being pure public goods. As a sociologist, I feel compelled
to emphasise the contradiction between the programme as an economic as op-
posed to cultural entity - hence the label 'quasi-public' goods.
Collins, Garnham and Locksley (1988: 7-9) do likewise, and further, connect
the specific characteristics of this commodity form to the structure and opera-
tion of the television industry in the U.K. I note, however, that there are many
points where their economic analysis of television seem to intersect with my
sociological analysis of corporate cultural production. To that extent, it would
seem useful at some stage to elaborate any connections between these two
different types of investigation.
23 Media programmes position the aggregate (economic) subject of their content
as its individual (cultural) consumer; this is the contradiction of media at the
level of consumption. Bonney and Wilson (1983) and Williamson (1978) are
excellent studies revealing the possible individual subjectivities constructed in
and through media texts. Note that the personal mode of address affected by
media is determined by their publicity function. Since advertisements are ad-
dressed to individuals as private consumers, the media product, an ostensible
public good, must be culturally consumed as a private good.
goods - already touched upon in the discussion of private goods. Quasi-

public goods production is a complex form: it involves producing a good
whose consumption creates a useful effect and operates simultaneously
within its own sphere of production and the circulation circuits of other
commodities. Like all cultural commodities, quasi-public goods are in-
tended to be consumed by audiences but in this case, an audience to whom
the good cannot be sold. Through consumption, audience members
become familiar with the different items and objects which comprise the
media content; for example, television audiences come to know local
drama series and their stars, the directors and stars of films used in movie
slots and review programmes, visiting authors and their books through
arts and entertainment news and magazine programmes, the current
recordings available through music video shows, and so on. This is the
publicity effect created for other cultural commodities, generated by the
internal production processes of quasi-public goods production. Conse-
quently, publicity is an inevitable by-product of the consumption of this
type of cultural commodity, and is why the quasi-public goods sector is
simultaneously the publicity sector. The realisation problems created by
the technical form of these goods are resolved by producer companies
turning this effect to commercial purposes. Manufacturers wishing to
publicise their commodities can employ it, in an exchange which indirectly
realises the value of the labour employed in making the media programme
or edition in the first place; they rent the distributive capacities of the
medium for the time or space it takes to speak their message. It is worth
noting in passing that since distributive efficiency is dependent on the size
of the audience (and the marginal costs of reaching increased audiences
can be low), accumulation strategies have also pushed media corporations
towards their characteristic horizontal integration and cross-media owner-
ship.
The fundamental relation underlying capitalised quasi-public cultural
commodity production and circulation, therefore, is a complex relation
built upon intermediate goods producer-quasi-public goods producer/pub-
licity medium-advertiser relations, with the duality of the producer/publi-
cist at its centre. As seen in the earlier section on marketing, quasi-public
goods producers accumulate by setting advertising rates which reflect their
own competitive position, the costs of producing the programme or
edition (some of which is returned to the intermediate goods producer in
the form of fees), and a share of the publicity profits (and/or reputation)
they generate for their advertisers and/or the private goods manufacturers
for whom they act as publicists. In this way, quasi-public goods producers/-
the publicity complex have become a central element of productive capital
within the culture industry, even though apparently located in the sphere
of commodity circulation.
Interestingly, there was no historical necessity to this. The economic
form of quasi-public goods is not inherent to their technical form but
followed from the political conditions of their introduction. From the
outset, it has been technically possible to transmit electromagnetic signals
to exclude access by consumers. There are two possibilities: the first is the
so-called 'sealed set' option where receivers are manufactured such that
they receive only a single frequency and their owners pay a subscription or
licence fee at regular intervals to the station; the second is to scramble or
encode transmissions so that individual listeners must buy or hire a
decoder from the station to hear or see the programme. Many govern-
ments throughout the Western world canvassed these options in the 1920s
and 1930s in relation to the introduction of radio (Barnard 1983: 99,
MacDonald 1979: 24). The struggles between different social groups,
different fractions of capital, and the state, over the form of the radio
system and for a controlling stake, was more or less duplicated with the
introduction of television in the middle of the century (Mundy 1982, see
also Barnouw 1966-1970, Briggs 1961-1971).
Furthermore, the producer/publicist-advertiser relation presently at the
centre of quasi-public goods production, has historically, not been the only
model. Differentiating them necessitates distinguishing between the pro-
duction of items to be transmitted, and their programming, where the two
models differ in terms of the extent of control the station exerts over
production. When first introduced, commercial radio stations served to
distribute cultural objects prepared independently, whether talks, variety
shows, plays, musical recitals, gramophone records, or whatever. Stations
programmed but did not generally create items, an approach which
dominated both radio and television until about the 1940s (e.g. MacDon-
ald 1979:1-90). The essence of this first model was the sponsorship system;
where commercial sponsors (a modern form of patronage) or their agents
(in fact, advertising agencies tended to be the active entrepreneur in this
arrangement) contracted cultural producers such as individual artists or
established musical or theatrical companies to produce items. The sponsor
then rented a quantity of airtime to broadcast both item and the advertise-
ments contained within it. In paying for production costs, sponsors had
effective ownership and control over the master and its content, and
exclusive naming and advertising rights. The station did little more than
organise various pre-recorded items into a programme and present it to
air24 - as the mere medium, the station could make little claim on the
profits being made by agency or sponsor.
Complex and multifarious conditions during the 1940s and into the
1950s led eventually to a modification of the model, which became the
foundation first of television and later radio practice. Media companies
were beginning to recognise the potential profits in being master of both
programming and production, selling not exclusive but multiple advertise-
ment around items; further, as they began to grasp the commercial
potential of coupling tightly controlled demographic programming with
audience research, they learnt to sell the idea of saturation campaigns to
advertisers wanting market impact for their products, rather than single
spots (e.g. Hall 1976: 48-61)25. As manufacturers scrambled to exploit the
post-war fervour for families, suburban homes and new types of domestic
commodities, they enlarged their marketing departments and increased
24 MacDonald (1979) provides a useful overview of radio, and Fox (1984:

173-217) a less-academic account of television's adoption of this first model
during its first decades. Hall (1976), Kent (1983) and Walker (1973) are histo-
ries of Australian television or radio written for popular consumption but con-
tain many details of the sponsors, agencies, artists and media involved.
Williams (1981: 42-43) also discusses sponsorship but without much detail. My
model represents the simplest form of media production in its early stage and
necessarily ignores many variations and complexities. Some are worth noting.
The artists and/or companies used in the earliest period were combined into a
temporary production unit, usually identified by the sponsor's name, but these
units later metamorphosed into independent production companies specialis-
ing in radio and television production. The medium usually provided the tran-
scription facilities and staff for the unit (which would have marginally effected
the value flows), ultimately deciding whether to broadcast the item and at what
time. Stations did organise some production themselves, some, especially net-
work head-offices, forming highly successful production units of their own.
Most remarkable is the fact of advertising agency control, or rather, the lack of
station power to control production. MacDonald (1979: 32) cites figures for
one radio network in 1929 indicating that 33% of its programmes were pro-
duced by agencies, 28% by the network for its sponsors (which would have
been mediated by agencies), 20% by the sponsors themselves and 19% by inde-
pendent producers.
25 Hall (1976) deals with television in Australia, MacDonald (1979) and Walker
(1973) examine radio in the U.S. and Australia respectively. Gitlin (1978) re-
mains a highly suggestive account of the connections between the development
of social science departments in American universities, the institutionalisation
of particular types of commercially-funded media research, and the inhibiting
effects of this combination on social scientific analysis of systems of mass com-
munication.
advertising budgets, but as advertising rates increased, they demanded

greater cost-effectiveness, encouraged by the increasingly influential
market research agencies who were offering a more disciplined approach
to advertising (e.g. Fox 1984:172-217)26. This encouraged stations to adopt
even tighter approaches to programming, an approach I refer to in later
chapters as 'formatting'. In other words, a second model of quasi-public
goods production was being erected during these decades: out of the basic
sponsor-medium structure emerged the producer/publicist-advertiser
model which exists today. For the media, this represents a more advanced
and more profitable development of the first, although still retaining the
basic system of indirect realisation inherent to the economic form of
quasi-public goods.
There were other consequences. Because these goods are made by
assembling pre-recorded or intermediate goods into a continuous flow, the
growth of the media provided opportunities for further independent
producers. Companies specialising in the production of items for incorpor-
ation within programmes and editions have become a specialised albeit
dependent form of capital operating within the culture industry, as
intermediate quasi-public goods producers who realise the value of their
production by sale or lease to broadcasting capital (e.g. Boyd-Barrett
1980, Moran 1982; 1984). Quasi-public goods production also generates
exchanges between broadcasting media and the manufacturers of private
consumer goods, especially television stations with film companies and
radio stations with record companies. These are immensely important
aspects of the culture industry: in that sense, quasi-public goods produc-
tion is fundamentally implicated in the circulation of private cultural
goods and derives its profits from this position.
A last point should be made. In a situation which echoes the conditions
of their initial introduction, the late 20th century is seeing the introduction
of 'pay' television and radio. The delivery of media programmes via an
encoded or cabled system whether originated locally or distributed via
satellite, enables the insertion of a moment of exchange (Barr 1985, cf.
also Collins et al. 1988: 4-5). This suggests the real reason why broadcast-
ing capital is interested in participating in their development: they
transform quasi-public into private goods, which offers broadcasting
companies possibilities for expansion free of the dependence on publicity
26 Fox (1984) deals with the American case. Stephen (1981) provides an excellent
account of the impact of these methods in Australia in the context of the expan-
sion of suburbanisation and consumerism. Ewen (1976) examines some of the
social and psychological aspects of this transformation of advertising practice.
Conclusion 91
rents. In that sense, they foreshadow, perhaps, a different future for

capital invested in radio and television.
3.4 Conclusion
We have seen throughout this chapter that cultural commodity producers
of various types must cooperate with other capitals in order to realise and
expand their value. The imperatives of their accumulation thus provide
the conditions for particular exchanges between specialised capitals where
these relations have, over time, hardened into an industry division of
labour. The linkages which constitute the sectors of the culture industry
are represented diagrammatically as in Figure 3.1:
Realisation and Distribution of value
Publicity
Sector
/\
Manufacturing Commercial
Sector Sector
Expansion of value
Producers of private, Advertising Retailers

quasi-private and agencies Exhibitors
intermediate goods Media
Figure 3.1 Division of Labour in the Culture Industry and Flows of Value
From this industry division of labour we can identify the three principal
sectors in the culture industry: a manufacturing sector, a publicity sector
Sector Product Production and Realisation Source of Profits
Circulation
Relations
manufacturing private producer - retailer direct & immediate labour surplus

sector goods (marketer, publicist) via retail sales publicity surplus
quasi-private producer - exhibitor direct & labour surplus

goods (marketer/distributor, progressive publicity surplus
publicist) through box office
publicity quasi-public producer/publicist - direct through publicity rent

sector goods advertiser (intermediate advertising labour surplus
goods supplier)
commercial commercial retailer - supplier comercial surplus

sector service
Figure 3.2 Sectors In the Culture Industry
and a merchant or commercial sector, each of which achieves profits in

characteristic ways, as indicated in Figure 3.2:
1. Manufacturing sector: these units of capital produce private and quasi-
private goods. Surplus-value produced in the production process is an
important source of profits, but because of the overproduction of
originals and difficulties in realisation, these units of capital have
employed publicity in an attempt to capture a greater than average
share of the total mass of surplus-value in circulation. These publicity
profits are essential to expansion.
2. Publicity sector: these units of capital profit by producing quasi-public
goods. Since there are considerable difficulties in realisation, the
surplus-value created in production cannot be a major source of profit.
Instead, their constituent labour processes are organised so that the
product can be rented as a publicity vehicle, which entitles them to
claim a share of the publicity profits appropriated by their clients.
3. Commercial sector: capital invested in this sector, like commercial
capital in other industries, profits by taking a share of the surplus-value
created in the production processes of the manufacturers whose goods
they exchange. This applies both to both exhibitors and retailers.
Conclusion 93
Perhaps one of the most notable features of the culture industry suggested
by the preceding analysis is the importance of the publicity sector within
the culture industry. Not only does its operation act to increase the
relative value of an advertiser's output and thus increase the likelihood of
realisation, but the production and circulation of quasi-public goods also
creates the conditions for expansion of the culture industry generally, then
allocates particular capitals to beneficial positions. As the publicity sector
plays a more and more significant and necessary role in expansion for the
corporations of culture, so the accumulation strategies of this sector flow
back into core areas of production. Private goods are increasingly pro-
duced in a form which makes them easily assimilated for transmission
through the publicity system.
From knowledge of the structural underpinnings of each sector, its
industry function and hence its primary source of profits, we can begin in
following chapters to consider the forces operating in the labour processes
which make up each sector and the diverse surface appearances of each.
We can begin to identify why each labour process takes the form it does
and which forces are pushing development in which directions. It begins to
suggest, for example, why manufacturers search out artists and works
which have potential for publicity, who possess mannerisms and styles
which are a combination of conventional and consciously idiosyncratic
features, an appearance, which can be marketed and publicised. Equally,
we can see why production of intermediate publicity goods is organised
around the display and promotion of another commodity, a task whose
referent is not itself but the selling of another object. Why it is that to the
workers employed to carry out this task, the purpose and referent of their
work is given, as are the conventional languages and techniques to be
used, as well as the audience their work is intended to attract - and why
their art is to speak rhetorically of another. In the case of media
production, the making of quasi-public goods, where the primary source of
profits is publicity rent, we can see why media workers are organised to
programme and present an object which is not only to be enjoyed in itself
by the largest possible share of the targeted consumer segment, but which
is designed to organise these individuals into preferred patterns and habits
of use in their consumption of the programme. In this way, the results of
their work are expected to increase the distributive efficiency of the
station or publication on which they are employed.
By the same token, knowing the primary sources of profit of each
sector, suggests the extent to which degradation of the conditions of
labour is an issue. In the manufacturing sector, for example, we might
expect to find that reducing the value of some forms of labour is
important, but that ultimately, the work done in circulating commodities
allows the continued employment of selected highly-paid stars. On the

other hand, since the quasi-public goods sector has considerable difficulty
realising surplus-value, we might expect to find that the value of the
labour employed in these labour processes has been significantly reduced.
Thus we will see in later chapters that the media have extensively
'formatted' production such that their programmes are presented by
labour-power of relatively average characteristics.
Chapter 4
The Corporate Organisation of Cultural
Production: The Creative Stage and the
Project Team
4.1 Introduction
If, in abstract, epochal terms, the artist is an historically constituted form

of labour which is incompatible with the capital relation, it raises empirical
issues concerning the organisational conditions of artistic work in the
culture industry. How has the capitalist production of cultural commodi-
ties been organised in the present era and especially in the corporations of
culture?
There seem to be a variety of views on the matter. Theodor Adorno,
writing in 1941 suggests that:
the production of popular music can be called 'industrial' only in its promotion and
distribution, whereas the act of producing a song-hit still remains in a handicraft
stage. The production of popular music is highly centralised in its economic
organisation, but still 'individualistic' in its social mode of production. The division
of labor among the composer, harmoniser, and arranger is not industrial but rather
pretends industrialisation (1978a: 205).
In similar vein, Garnham (1979: 139) and Miege (1979: 301) have made
more recent references to artisan forms of labour organisation within the
culture industry. On the other hand, Bonney and Wilson have argued that
throughout the Western world, media workers are employed as wage-
labourers in an industrial, capitalist commodity production process (1983:
30-60). In a broader, more ambitious argument, Raymond Williams (1981)
lists a selection of concepts he considers necessary for a sociology of
culture, including various types of institutions (artists and patrons, artists
and markets, post-market institutions), means of production (inherent
resources, non-human, reproduction systems, and so on), and production
relations (e.g. artisanal, post-artisanal, market professional, corporate
professional).
From within non-Marxist paradigms, a small number of ethnographies
96 The Corporate Organisation of Cultural Production
have examined particular occupations and their organisation. Most popu-

lar have been studies of journalism (e.g. Gans 1979, Glasgow University
Media Group 1976, 1980, Tuchman 1978, Tunstall 1971, Schlesinger 1978),
film and television production (e.g. Elliott 1972, 1977, Moran 1982, 1984,
Powdermaker 1950) and music recording (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo
1977, Denisoff 1975, Frith 1978). Most of these, however, are restricted to
a single form of cultural practice, are based on naturalistic methodologies,
and have little explanatory power. Their number and focus reflect the fact
that as Wolff points out, there has been a remarkable lack of interest in
the institutional context in which cultural production occurs (1981: 31).
More specifically, none of these examines cultural production as a labour
process organised around the capital-labour relation or the embedded
specifics of its constituent relations (cf. Garnham 1979, Miege 1979, also
Wolff 1981: 48). This is the focus of this chapter.
4.2 Accumulation and the Capitalist Labour

Process
4.2.1 Marx and the Labour Process

Marx' analysis of the labour process was central to his account of the
history and structure of the capitalist mode of production (see especially
1954: Parts III, IV and V, also 1976, see also Braverman 1974, Elger 1982,
Harvey 1982, Littler 1982), which developed historically out of the
practical and juridical dispossession of direct producers from their means
of production and their subsequent employment by the emerging bour-
geois class. Capitalist production is primarily exchange-value production
undertaken to expand capital. This means that work expended in produc-
ing the capitalist commodity creates a surplus component of labour value
which, when converted into money, becomes the profit returned to the
capitalist after exchange. Profits enable expansion: the greater the overall
surplus, the greater the rate of accumulation. Under pressures of competi-
tion, the immediate concern of capitalists is how to increase the rate of
surplus-value production in the labour process itself, how to cheapen and
reduce the value of the labour consumed in production relative to the total
value of the output. Particular valorisation strategies available to capital-
ists depend on the conditions in which they are operating, but historically,
the primary mechanisms have involved reconstructing the division of
Accumulation and the Capitalist Labour Process 97
labour around technological innovations and the progressive separation of

conception and execution, embodying the former in a management
stratum. Under these conditions, workers are reduced to possessors only
of their labour-power, a generalised capacity to labour.
Marx identified three 'stages of development' of the labour process
within the capitalist mode of production1; simple cooperation, manufac-
ture and modern industry (machinofacture), each based on a particular
form of labour organisation. Since aspects of these models will be
important later in this analysis, their central features need to be sum-
marised.
Simple cooperation (Marx 1954: 305-317) is the most basic model, a
form of capitalist production wherein in its earliest stages, "The workshop
of the medieval master craftsman is simply enlarged" (1954: 305). Here,
the labour process is inherited from a previous mode of production: the
types of workers employed, the equipment, techniques and human skills
set to work, are drawn from the handicraft system of production found in
the guild workshop with its craft divisions of labour and hierarchical
structure of masters, journeymen and apprentices. As the cooperation
model develops, there are qualitative shifts in its constituent relations of
production. Capitalists come to acquire ownership of the workshop, the
materials and the equipment used, and employ otherwise independent
craft workers as wage labour to perform the work of production. Reten-
tion of the craft division of labour mediates the capitalist authority
relations in production; since workers retain control of the working
methods and the knowledges these require, they are able to maintain a
degree of control over the form and content of the labour process within
the workshop.
1 Littler (1982: 21) raises the issue of whether Marx intended these as analytical
or historical models, and if the former, the subsequent problem of periodisa-
tion. There is a tendency, partly due to Marx, to regard them as invariable and
unilinear stages of capitalist development whose chronology can be identified
(e.g. Braverman 1974). The work of Littler (1982), Edwards (1979), Stark
(1980) and others suggests that there are several variant models of capitalist
production, and that because of different conditions and rhythms - and rever-
sals - of development in different industries, any number may coexist through-
out production generally. Diversity amongst capitalist production systems de-
rives from the specific forms of capital and labour which constitute them and
their historical relations, especially through the mediation of the state (cf. also
Edwards 1979: 21): in that sense, Littler (1982: 34-35) is justified in demanding
more historical and industry-based studies. Marx' models, therefore, are best
treated primarily as analytical types, with the question of their historicality
being decided via empirical research - the strategy I follow in this work.
Nonetheless, capitalist proprietorship has transformed the general

conditions of production. By concentrating workers and means of produc-
tion within a single workshop, cooperation turns individual labours into a
social, more productive form. As the directing authority, capitalists are
able to extend the working day, accelerate the tempo of work, and make it
more continuous and orderly. While this arrangement does not affect the
mode of working or the task content, it does increase the rate of
surplus-value production: productivity - ultimately, the ratio of surplus to
necessary labour value in the commodity - is raised, hence the rate of
profit after exchange. In other words, in the simple cooperation model,
appropriation of strategic control in the interests of accumulation limits
workers to operational control, but the labour process is still only formally
subsumed under the capital relation2.
As competition intensifies and capitalists are driven to further increase
the rate of exploitation, they introduce changes into the labour process
which shift its mode of organisation from simple cooperation to the
manufacture model. This proceeds by wresting control of the labour
process from craft workers and sub-dividing the craft division of labour to
forge a detail division of labour. Marx offers two illustrations of this
development (1954: 318-347) both entailing a shift from a workshop to a
factory (although not yet a mechanised factory) setting. The production of
complex objects such as carriages (heterogeneous production), requires
the coordinated combination of several types of workers such as tailors,
locksmiths, painters, wheelwrights, upholsterers and carpenters. From
working on one carriage at a time, production is expanded and permanent
employees work on several simultaneously under the authority of the
capitalist. Craft skills are reshaped and narrowed, turned into a form
2 Some have expressed doubts concerning the value of Marx' notion of the 'for-
mal' and 'real' subsumption of labour under capital (e.g. Littler and Salaman
1982: 253-255). Whilst I partly accept this assessment, if only because of Marx'
sketchy and ambiguous account, I would argue that real subsumption is best
understood not as referring to fixed, irreversible outcomes, but as an abstract
polarity on a continuum. It is therefore an historical position which capitalists
have to achieve - and maintain against reversals. In other words, the ongoing
struggle between capital and labour may shift the degree of subsumption back-
wards and forwards between the two polarities, depending on the balance of
class forces at any conjuncture. Equally, the passage proceeds in stages. Differ-
ent elements - labour, raw materials, task structure and content, objects pro-
duced - and relations between them, can be worked upon separately. At any
time, some of these may be formally subsumed, others thoroughly capitalised.
Historically-grounded studies are needed to restore any value Marx' di-
chotomy might have.
applicable only to carriage-making, and made the exclusive function of

workers functioning as detail labour. In the second case, Marx examines
the employment of identical craft workers employed to do the same kind
of work (homogeneous production) such as the making of paper, type or
needles. From workshop organisation where each works in a handicraft
way and makes a complete object in a succession of stages, the capitalist
disconnects each stage of the object's manufacture, takes over the
planning function and redistributes each partial, manual operation to
detail workers. Each needle or piece of paper or type is now the product of
detail workers working in combination.
By reconstructing the division of labour and in effect, reducing the value
of the labour-power employed ('deskilling', in recent terminology), the
capitalist increases the rate of surplus value production applying in the
workplace. Moreover, manufacturing capitalists exercise firmer control
over production than under the simple cooperation model; they have
reconstructed the setting and tempo of work and are beginning to
determine its type. Manufacturing, detail work in a factory setting and
directed by a capitalist manager, represents a decisive shift from formal
subsumption towards (although not yet attaining) a stage of real subsump-
tion of the labour process under capital.
Before turning to Marx' arguments concerning the development of the
mechanised factory, the modern industry model of capitalist production, a
brief but important comment is necessary on the two already discussed.
He seems to treat the simple cooperation model as a transitional phase
which quickly gives way to manufacturing. Historically, that may or may
not be the case, depending on conditions applying in a particular type of
production. For reasons which will become evident when examining the
particular characteristics of the culture industry, I want to suggest that
Marx glosses over this model too quickly, because it is possible to speak of
an 'early' and 'mature' form of simple cooperation where the latter takes
the form of a capitalist workshop (cf. craft workshop). In this situation, the
owner has legal possession of the technical means of production (hence
cutting off the possibility of independent artisan production), functions as
directing authority within production, and employs the labour force under
wage-labour relations. Because technological innovation of the means of
production has progressed only a short distance, the division of labour is
still identifiably craft-based, though subject to relatively minor technical
reconstruction depending on the type of commodity being produced. In
short, compared to medieval and early capitalist forms, the mature
capitalist workshop reflects a transformation of the relations of and in
production, but evidences identifiable connections to craft forms of work
and their division of labour, although still falling short of the technically
reconstructed detail form associated with the mature manufacturing

model or the industry division of labour of the mechanised factory. My use
of the term 'capitalist workshop' in later discussion should be understood
to refer to the mature form of simple cooperation.
Consolidation and development of manufacturing increases the flow of
products onto the market and creates diversity in the types of commodities
available. This goes hand in hand with the generalisation of commodity
exchange throughout society and increasing numbers of capitalists each
attempting to expand their capital. Heightened competition is again the
agent of change, feeding pressures back into production. In order to gain
advantage over their competitors, some capitalists initiate a new cycle of
development by building large-scale factories and equipping them with
newly-invented machinery. These machines have been designed to absorb
workers' tools and skills, bringing a dramatic increase in labour productiv-
ity. Mechanisation of the labour process in the factory setting marks the
transition from manufacturing to modern industry. It obliterates the final
remnants of the craft division of labour, thereby undermining existing
structures of worker resistance and ushering in the real subsumption of the
labour process. Production is organised now not with reference to
traditional skills and crafts but around relations between machine and
labourer, based on an industrial division of labour defined in terms of the
machines it is built around. Differences between types of work are
minimised. Most are operative in character, transforming the labour force
into a mass of deskilled labourers. Mechanisation also heralds new and
more comprehensive structures of labour control. Capitalist organisation
is objectified in continuous-flow production and automatic machinery
which confronts workers as an impersonal imperative to labour, severely
diminishing their power to influence what is produced and how (Marx
1954: Part IV, 1976: 1021-1023).
4.2.2 Braverman and the 'Monopoly Capital' Model

of Capitalist Production
Using this general framework, Braverman (1974) examines the organisa-
tion of the labour process under conditions of 'monopoly capitalism' and
details aspects of what he refers to as 'the degradation of work in the
twentieth century'.
In contrast to Marx, Braverman suggests that only with monopoly
capitalism does the logic of capitalist development come to fruition (Stark
1980: 26), and proposes that this most recent stage of capitalist develop-
ment has a characteristic form of labour process (Littler 1982: 26). This I
will refer to as the 'corporate' model (which I am taking to be a mature

form of Marx' modern industry model). At the end of the 19th century, he
argues, there were still significant areas of production in which craft work
was pivotal to its organisation. Since workers conserved skills through
unions and trade associations, they retained effective if residual control
within the workplace despite the industrialisation around them, and only
scientific management, the principles of management as espoused by
Taylor and its implementation by capitalists in the early decades of the
20th century, completed the transition to real subordination. Taylorism
was founded upon several principles. They included, first, the dissociation
of the labour process from the skills of the worker via the collection of
workplace knowledges and their classification and standardisation into
rules of practice; second, the separation of conception and execution; and
third, the use of this monopoly over knowledge to control the labour
process and its mode of execution (Braverman 1974: 85-123). Throughout
production generally, technology is highly sophisticated and largely auto-
mated, and the previous industrial division of labour has been thoroughly
fragmented into partial, machine-minding tasks requiring only unskilled or
at best semi-skilled labour - what I will refer to as the 'corporate' division
of labour - and organised under these modern forms of control.
There have been important critiques of Braverman's analysis (e.g. Elger
1982: 32-33, Littler 1982: 25-3S)3, most of which challenge his use of the
craft worker as the measure of skilled labour, the unilinear deskilling
effect of capitalist development, the timing and acceptance of scientific
management, and the absence of a working class politics in his account of
the making of 20th century conditions of work. Whatever is specifically
problematic in Labor and Monopoly Capital, this work does, in my view,
capture something of the immanent tendencies of corporate capital in
relation to the labour process; that is, the point towards which corporate
capital is propelled in attempting to realise the law of value; or obversely,
the objective pressures against which labour employed in corporate
sectors of the economy has to struggle. In this sense, Braverman's is a
useful model, since it enables analysis of recent developments in the
workplace from a Marxist perspective (cf. also Littler 1982: 27-30).
In the light of these criticisms, Littler (1982: 30-35) indicates a number
of directions for further theoretical and empirical analysis of the labour
The post-Braverman literature is too extensive to indicate in full. Important

examples which have contributed to this work include Boreham, Clegg and
Dow (1986), Burawoy (1978, 1979), Clegg and Dunkerley (1980), Edwards
(1979), Elger (1982), Littler (1982), Littler and Salaman (1982) and Stark
(1980).
process in general and in particular instances, all of which are important to

this study. The labour process, he argues, has a relative autonomy in
relation to the mode of production; that is, "though the labour process
takes place within an economic and historical context, the context
nevertheless rarely provides a precise determination of work organisa-
tion" (1982: 30). I take Littler to mean here that since Marx built his
model of the capitalist mode of production by elaborating its internal laws
of motion, it is important to insist on a tendentially determinant relation
between context and labour process. Detailed research is needed, how-
ever, to examine the historical forms of capital and labour which enabled
the establishment of particular industries, the history of their relations and
the forms through which they presently exist, and perhaps just as impor-
tant, the conditions external to production which impinge upon and
mediate the structure and content of work organisation. Research which
identifies variant labour processes emerging under specific social condi-
tions can begin to offer explanations for these deviations from the
Marx-Braverman models.
Furthermore, there is a "central indeterminacy of labour potential
which must be resolved in other ways" (Littler 1982: 31). The capacity to
work can be purchased on the market but must still be realised in the
labour process itself, and to remain profitable and competitive, capitalists
have to face the ongoing problem of extracting the preferred type and
productivity of labour. Labour, in other words, remains an active agent in
the capital relation and an unwilling presence within mechanisms of
accumulation (see also Elger 1982: 24). Braverman's one-sided structure
of control is simultaneously a system which stimulates, motivates and
harnesses labour's creative and productive powers; and under changing
conditions on the factory floor and in the wider society (especially in
relation to the state), its foundations are constantly shifting (Boreham,
Clegg and Dow 1986, Burawoy 1979, Edwards 1979). In an era of
widespread unionism and state-sanctioned industrial rights, corporations
cannot simply exercise despotic control over labour but must bargain and
compromise with workers and adapt to changing competitive and labour
market conditions; in short, they are forced to grapple with the tensions
and conflicts which beset their arena of operation.
The third issue Littler raises relates to the "structural dynamics of
capitalism" (1982: 33-34). Beyond their production concerns, corporations
have various financial strategies for increasing income and expanding their
capital base, including currency speculation, cumulative acquisition, asset
stripping, taxation minimisation, and credit manipulations. More funda-
mentally, accumulation requires that surplus value has not only to be
produced but also realised; Littler reiterates Marx' argument that produc-
tion and circulation are the two necessary cycles of capitalist accumula-
tion. A branch of industry producing similar product lines produces a mass
of surplus-value which circulates in the market under given conditions of
effective demand, and surplus-value is returned only if and when goods
are exchanged. Accordingly, companies compete via marketing and
merchandising strategies to realise the largest possible share of the total
mass of surplus in circulation; not only the full value of the surplus-value
created in their own production but some of that produced by their
competitors - that is, surplus-profits (as in the case of publicity profits
discussed in chapter 3). Consequently, it is entirely feasible that given the
state of competition and the marketing and merchandising resources at its
command, an industry or sector can produce commodities at an adequate
rate of surplus-value in production to ensure a satisfactory rate of profit.
There is no immediate pressure in these circumstances to degrade
production conditions further - indeed doing so may cause industrial
conflict - even though not doing so may mean, for example, conceding
significant control to particular sections of the labour force, or paying
wages above the social average. In this situation it is more profitable for
capital to concentrate on creating efficiencies in circulation through the
sales effort. This point becomes important later in examining the relation
between production and circulation in cultural commodity production.
In short, while flawed, Braverman's work is a seminal contribution to an
understanding of modern work organisation. Future analysis, however,
should:
emphasis first, the complex character of the development of the real subsumption
of the labour process to capital, as the development of a large-scale collective
organisation of production which dominates any specific form of labour; second,
the importance of analysing the development of the complex organisation of
collective labour in relation to specific strategies of valorisation and accumulation
and their characteristic contradictions and forms of class struggle....[In other
words] A more adequate account of the transformation of the labour process
would involve a more complex and sustained analysis of the historical development
of capital accumulation, the contradictions to which accumulation gives rise and
the manner in which such contradictions develop and are resolved in class struggle
within and beyond production (Elger 1982: 32-33, cf. also Edwards 1976:124).
While this chapter focuses not on the capitalist labour process generally
but the organisation of work in one industry, and draws on the general
thrust of Braverman's ideas to do so, it accepts the spirit of this injunction.
4.2.3 The Specific Conditions of Capitalist Cultural

To recap the arguments presented in chapter 2, the historical constitution

of art and the artist has given rise to a form of practice with constituent
objects, relations and rules of combination, the totality of which contra-
dicts the capital relation. Art is work conventionally regarded as requiring
the imagination and talent of gifted and named individuals who require
space to work, free from expectation especially of commercial kinds.
Under these conditions, guided by profound if capricious inspiration,
artists can create works of genius. It is, therefore, a fundamentally
irrational process which conflicts with the calculating, accumulative logic
of modern capitalism. The industrialisation of cultural practices which
gathered pace from the early 19th century, expanded and diversified the
recognised range of cultural forms and in doing so, reconstituted the artist
as an enormous variety of specialised but still craft-based occupations; the
writer, for example, was sub-divided into a range of types including
biographers and novelists, playwrights and screenplay writers, copywrit-
ers, journalists, and so on. Nonetheless, to a greater or lesser extent,
cultural workers such as these are treated by their employers, co-workers
and publics and most of all by themselves, as artists, as possessors of rare,
expressive and individual gifts and unconventional personalities, and are
accorded the organisational status and conditions of labour these at-
tributes are said to deserve. This gives rise to immediate tendencies in
production. Depending on the extent to which a particular activity has
been technically or bureaucratically redefined, employers must preserve
artistic conditions of work and the costs and conditions associated with the
search for originality. Artistic labour personifies a demand for personal
autonomy in the workplace and the high value of creativity and originality,
which provides a material basis for resistance by artistic workers to
subordination and control, and against which capital has to struggle. The
historical problem facing capitalists engaged in the production and circula-
tion of cultural commodities has been how to devise a system of employ-
ment which enables artists to create genuine original and marketable
works of art which are stamped with the signs of genius (cf. Miege 1979:
305), but which also disciplines the creative process and brings it under the
control of the firm, such that management may set the standards, rate and
timing of creation and keep labour costs to a minimum.
Rather than the history, what will be examined here is the form of
organisation which characterises the corporate era of cultural production,
explaining its peculiarities in terms of the contradictions of its art-capital
The Organisation of Corporate Cultural Commodity Production 105
relation. This will entail going inside the corporate labour process to look
at the structure and content of the practices which comprise it; to note that
it reveals some of the general characteristics of all developed capitalist
labour processes as well as the specific contradictions and strategies of
accumulation and resistance which reflect the particular form of practice.
Its corporate form, in other words, represents the historical compromises
achieved by artists and capitalists in their ongoing struggle and shows how
capital and art have been reshaped in the course of this encounter.
4.3 The Organisation of Corporate Cultural

As indicated in chapter 1, and following the work of Garnham and

Murdock and others (e.g. Garnham 1979, Murdock 1982)4, the primary
empirical assumption of my argument relates to the market dominance of
the corporations of culture across the culture industry especially in the
decades since World War II, and the distinctiveness of the form of cultural
production which operates inside them. My search for the corporate form,
however, is not based on naturalistic, empiricist assumptions: this is a
critique of its institutional conditions.
Accordingly, investigation demands more than identifying the major
corporate groups at the international and national levels and examining
their internal organisational characteristics. Quite apart from anything
else, production for transnational corporations such as Thorn-EMI, 20th
Century Fox, Philips, Sony, News International and RCA, while based
mainly in Britain, the United States, Western Europe and increasingly
Japan - and curiously, in the case of media corporations, Australia - is
carried out at the regional and local subsidiary or divisional level, and it is
these firms which must be the primary empirical site for any analysis.
Moreover, it is not easy to empirically bound the corporations of culture;
they reveal many connections through ownership and exchange into other
economic spheres, to each other, into the periphery of the culture
industry, and into state forms of cultural production. As indicated in
For general discussions of concentration and conglomeration within the cul-

ture industry see, e.g. Garnham (1979), Mattelart (1979), Murdock (1982), Mur-
dock and Golding (1977), and Schiller (1969). For more specific studies within
particular forms, see, e.g. Coser et al. (1982) for publishing, and Frith (1978) for
the recording industry.
chapter 1, I am treating the figure 'the corporations of culture' as an

institutional term realised empirically as a complex of corporate offices,
subsidiaries and divisions articulated through various transactions, sub-
contracts and engagements to other sectors of the industry5 and economy;
and within that, I am treating 'the corporate form of cultural production'
as the characteristic and dominant institutional form through which
production is organised in this context. Having said that, it is worth noting
that the corporate form may also be found in some of the smaller firms
operating in the semi-periphery of the industry. Through its outwards
connections, the corporate form of organisation has 'imperialised'6 other
sectors to a greater or lesser extent. The market power of these oligopolies
tends to refashion production systems throughout the industry as a whole,
generalising the corporate version of capitalist cultural commodity produc-
tion even throughout the extensive independent sector (cf. Miege 1979:
309).
A significant volume of production is carried out by independents ranging

from owner-operators (e.g. freelance writers and directors) to medium-sized
firms (e.g. publishers, creative shops, recording companies, film and recording
processing and post-production companies). Most perform specialised capital
or labour intensive functions in a manner which spreads financial risk through-
out the industry. Much of the creative experimentation takes place in the inde-
pendent periphery, partly because their production system tends to be closer to
a form of artisan or craft-workshop production.
This imperialism occurs, as Boyd-Barrett (1977: 119-120) points out, as much
by dissemination, where clients either adopt or absorb changes as a result of
contact, flowing through the shape of the communication vehicle exported, the
set of industrial arrangements which goes with it, and the body of values con-
cerning ideal practice, as well as specific media contents - to which might be
added the impact of corporations on the cultural marketplace as in the forma-
tion of particular taste communities, modes of consumption, and a range of
labour market conditions.
4.3.1 The Organisational Division of Labour in Corporate

Production
Figure 4.17 represents the essence of the organisational division of labour
in corporate production systems8. The first and most important point to
note is that it is divided into two distinct stages; creation and reproduction.
Artistic, creative work entails both conception and execution, the end
result of which is an Original'. This must be commoditised, which involves
're-producing' it in quantity. The reproduction stage has two phases;
transcription, in which the original is converted into a master, from which
in the duplication phase, copies - the commodities proper - are struck.
These are then packaged and distributed to retail outlets.
I want to examine the creative stage of production first, overviewing its
technology/labour nexus and technical division of labour, and the struc-
tures of management. By looking first at creation then reproduction,
points of comparison will become evident which in turn become key issues
in subsequent, more detailed analysis of the creative stage of production.
The creative stage is the beginning point of the cultural labour process,
wherein musicians, writers, dancers and actors of various types, using only
their ideas and techniques, voices, props and costumes and instruments (in
some cases, small-scale and specialised technologies such as studio con-
soles, word processors and synthesisers) to create an original. Whereas
This model has been constructed from field observations as indicated in chap-
ter 1. Published studies which have also contributed include Elliott (1972),
Frith (1978), Macdonald (1979), Moran (1984), Powdermaker (1950), Tebbel
(1981) and Tunstall (1971). See also insider accounts such as Baker (1980a,
1980b), Dessauer (1974), Fowles and Mills (1981), MacGowen (1965) and Rav-
age (1978). Staiger (1982) is a useful case study which indicates but does not
develop some of the ideas canvassed here.
This model is most applicable to the manufacture of private cultural commodi-
ties; e.g. published goods and recordings. Note that the precise nature of the
labour process varies according to the form of the final commodity. In the case
of movies, for example, as quasi-private goods, since only a few copies are
taken for distribution to theatres, there is no need for an extensive duplication
phase. Public goods (broadcasting media) are presented live. The final stage of
creation is an assembly of selected pre-recorded items linked by commentary.
Microphones, replay units, studio consoles and so on transcribe the original
programme into electromagnetic signals which are then transmitted; if net-
worked, various technologies are used to duplicate the original signal. In this
case, the assembly, transcription, duplication and distribution phases all occur
more or less simultaneously and automatically. The four phases remain, albeit
in a truncated form.
Stage Phase Object Publishing Recording Filming
preparation Idea Composition Writing

of original (draft) (score) (screen play)
Creation: (plan)
Creative production
of original
Performance Redrafting & Rehearsal & Rehearsal &
of original editing performance performance
(performance) (type script) (performance) (performance)
Transcription Type setting Recording Film studio

of original (proofs) studio set
(transcript) (recording) (filming)
Transcription:
production
of master
Editing & Plate making Post-production Post-production
mastering (plate) editing etc editing etc
of transcript (master) (master)
(master)
Reproduction
Copying from Printing Pressing Printing

master (pages) (disc, tape) (copy)
(copies)
Duplication:
production
of copies
Packaging Binding & Packaging Packaging as
of copies covering labeling film print or
(commodities) (book) (recordings) video cassette
Figure 4.1 Division Of Labour In Production
capitalist development usually proceeds by introducing more complex,

inclusive and productive technologies which dissolve the existing craft
division of labour, creation seems to have been impervious to this
transformation. Because art is conventionally held to be a product of the
imagination and talents of identifiable individuals and an expression of
human experience, artistic work cannot be mechanised: that would be a
contradiction in terms, since, according to its conventions, art flows only
from the inherently human talents. Although there are some technically-
specific permutations of cultural practice such as screenplay writing and
film acting as opposed to writing plays and theatrical acting, radio
announcing as opposed to compering, electric as opposed to acoustic
(especially classical) musicianship, they retain close connections to the
original crafts - writing, acting, singing, dancing, and so on. They repre-
sent, according to earlier discussion of Marx' models, a workshop division
of labour within the labour process. In fact, the relative absence of
technology and the craft-based division of labour is one of the most
obvious and noteworthy features of the organisation of creation in the
corporate context (cf. the remarks of Adorno, Garnham and Miege cited
earlier)9, and is a centre-piece of the following analysis.
Nonetheless, it is not a simple division of labour - and here we see the
first signs of the complexity and ambiguity which will become part of the
picture of corporate creation drawn in this and following chapters. Like all
forms of work, creation has two phases, preparation and performance (cf.
Staiger 1982: 97-100), and as art developed as an autonomous practice, so
While it is generally true that creative activity cannot be absorbed into a ma-
chine, technologies are having incremental effects on artistic practice which are
worth briefly noting. Some detail aspects of performance work such as rewrit-
ing, redrafting, drawing and colouring, involve repetition. These can be mecha-
nised and even automated, and computer-based technologies are increasingly
substituting for labour either by eliminating tasks or by reducing labour-time
and hence raising productivity; as in journalism and other writing (e.g. Mar-
shall 1983, The National Times 3-9 May 1985: 40-42), in announcer-operated
radio stations, and in the graphic arts ranging from advertising layouts to ani-
mation (e.g. The Australian 21 May 1985: 30). Even where new technologies
enhance rather than replace labour, there are ambiguous long-term effects.
Some cultural forms are being reconstituted in terms of the capabilities of
equipment manufactured and marketed by the capital and consumer good sec-
tor; as in the case of the keyboard synthesiser (e.g. Towers 1976, The Aus-
tralian 15 May 1984: 20-21) and the impact of special effects generators on
filmic and televisual techniques (e.g. The National Times 28 December-3 Jan-
uary 1985: 36-37). Additionally, accepted average standards of performance
are constantly rising, partly because of the type and quality of instruments and
capital equipment available; as in the case of audio recording equipment which
permits creation of impossibly perfect recordings. Because artists themselves
often utilise technical improvements to their artistic and material benefit, does
not alter the consequences. Modified cultural forms develop around innova-
tions. On the one hand, this offers opportunities for emergent artists but on the
other, further fragments the artistic division of labour; production - and con-
sumption - becomes dependent on increasingly complex technology. Each
new round of innovation chips away at existing forms and progressively deval-
ues artistic labour by raising the average ratio of constant to variable capital
employed in the creative stage. While to the present, creation remains labour
intensive, these developments threaten to turn the artist into the human
shadow lurking behind the machine, like 'the robot drummer' (Towers 1976:
84-95).
it underwent functional specialisation. During the 17th and 18th and into
the 19th century, playwrights, composers, choreographers, writers and
other designers - i.e. those who do the initial work of imagining an idea
and materialising it in a plan such as a score or script - progressively
divorced themselves from performers such as singers, actors, dancers,
musicians (e.g. Hartnoll 1967: 277-278, 336-337, Raynor 1972: 67, 97-98).
These stages are easily distinguishable in music, theatre and dance, but
barely so in many forms of writing. Thus, for example, when a song is
being prepared for live or recorded performance, a melody must be
composed, lyrics written and an arrangement scored before singers and
instrumentalists can perform it. Under corporate conditions of production,
the division of labour is based on this functional rather than technical
distinction. Preparation and performance represent two different regions
of specialised skill. Usually it is the case that preparers are not the same
individuals as performers, and even where some contemporary composers
perform their own compositions, the function remains distinguishable.
Specialisation has also developed along another axis, that of 'cultural
form' (cf. Williams 1981:148-180). In acting, for example, some are known
for their comedy skills, others in westerns, dramas, adventures or ro-
mances, and so on; similarly in music, composers, singers and instrumental-
ists are normally associated with a particular field such as opera, rock 'n'
roll, jazz, chamber music and country and western. This modifies but is
still connected to the craft division of labour within which artists train and
work, a situation quite unlike the industrial or corporate division of labour
anticipated by the corporate model of capitalist production which is found
in most present-day workplaces.
Returning to the general features of the creative stage and the issue of
its management, according to Braverman's argument, capitalist control of
the labour process proceeds partly through alienation of worker skills and
knowledges and their formalisation in sets of procedures. Their applica-
tion on the shopfloor is supervised by layers of managers and supervisors
acting as the agents of owners. Although the cultural forms which artists
use have conventional elements of structure and content, generally
speaking, the arbitrariness of creation defies reduction to precise, univer-
sal, operational rules. Originality presumes innovation and experiment,
with artists playing around with possible elements and their customary
combinations. Reorganising the creative process around the principles
represented by scientific management is barely possible. A 'creative
management' stratum, however, is present; editors and others in publish-
ing firms, producers and directors in film, radio, television and audio
production, and so on. This aspect will be dealt with in detail shortly, but it
is worth noting at this point that creative management is remarkably
benign; cultural workers such as studio announcers, composers, screenplay

writers and journalists, are initially briefed by creative management but
then complete their work with minimal supervision. Elsewhere, when
actors and musicians rehearse, for example, management intervenes more
actively, but in neither case is artistic direction a matter of giving orders
and applying inflexible rules. It revolves instead around collaborative
relations and is characterised by discussion, negotiation and compromise,
with much of the input coming from workers themselves - although
management represents the final, responsible authority.
The picture already beginning to emerge is that the creative stage of
production in the corporations of culture has a general configuration
unlike those forms discussed by Braverman. Given the existence of a
craft-based division of labour, relatively low-level technological composi-
tion and mildness of management, all of which reflect aspects of handicraft
production (Marglin 1974: 63-82), it would seem that the creative stage of
corporate production approximates to the capitalist workshop model of
capitalist production10 - although it should be signalled immediately, that
subsequent and more detailed analysis in this and following chapters will
lead me to modify this conclusion. The truth is that the corporate form of
cultural production is complex and ambiguous and its shape can only be
progressively discerned from different angles, and then only in outline.
Turning to the non-artistic reproduction stage, the conditions here are
more typically industrial. This work originated with the industrialisationof
cultural production first in publishing and then from the late 19th century
in the performing arts, of a labour process which was already organised as
capitalist commodity production albeit in a relatively undeveloped form. It
was a decisive intervention. It converted quasi-public goods into partly or
fully private goods; for example, books and later periodicals and newspa-
pers progressively became objects of private domestic consumption
(Williams 1965: 177-236); similarly, filming and recording technologies
introduced between the 19th and 20th centuries reproduced and trans-
10 Miege (1979) and Garnham (1979) are strictly incorrect to argue that this is
artisan production. Thompson (1968: 279), for example, suggests that artisans
even as late as the 19th century ranged from master-craftsmen employing
many journeymen to sweated labourers: but that all were defined by their pos-
session of the entire skill of their craft. Conversely, at the point where capital-
ists have acquired ownership and control of the general conditions of produc-
tion, and especially where they have installed a management stratum, the arti-
san as defined by Thompson, ceases to exist, having been replaced by detail and
later industrial labourers in various types of employment relations. As this and
the following chapter demonstrate, to a large extent, this is the situation in the
present-day culture industry.
formed musical, theatrical and dance performances which had been staged
in various types of venues ranging from theatres, ball-rooms and gardens,
into new, more mature cultural and commodity forms (cf. Cowie 1971:
184-187, Raynor 1976: 188-192). Commodities produced in developed
private form are suitable for large-volume manufacturing methods, in the
reproduction stage at least. Industrialisation divided transcription from
duplication as the printing press had previously differentiated the skills of
compositors from those of press operators. Press work was easily mecha-
nised and by the beginning of the 19th century, mechanical presses had
reinforced this division (Marshall 1983:10-24).
The duplication stage therefore quickly became capital intensive and
from its inception has been the one phase of the cultural labour process
which has shifted towards the forms of production discussed by Braver-
man, as found, for example, in press rooms and recording manufacturing
plants (e.g. Marshall 1983: 28-40, 72-89, Schicke 1974: 173-189, 222-227).
Historically, technical innovation here has been oriented towards labour
substitution and deskilling, resulting in complex, large-scale and auto-
mated machinery incorporating various tasks. Workers carry out or-
dained, repetitious, industrial tasks; setting up equipment, preparing
materials for the production run, fixing process problems as they occur
and shifting output to the next stage of production. Work is manual, semi-
or unskilled and closely supervised.
Transcription work is more varied, ranging from traditional composition
previously carried out by printers, to the operation of cameras, lights,
sound equipment, set management, console and control-room operations,
as well as the editing, mixing and effects post-production work which is
part of film and television production (Macgowen 1965: 409-422, Marshall
1983: 21-42, Schicke 1974: 219-220). The industrialisation of transcription
developed alongside that of duplication, although taking a less capital-
intensive path until recently. Where technological innovation in the
duplication phase has been directed towards labour reduction or replace-
ment, the tendency in the transcription phase throughout most of the 20th
century has been to enhance and multiply forms of labour by improving,
extending and decentralising each functional unit; the development of film
and video production and post-production systems is a good example (e.g.,
Cowie 1971: 245-248). Transcription equipment is composed of small-scale
specialised and complex units each operated by a detail form of labour but
integrated into a larger system.
Much of the work involved in transcription11 is little more than
11 Transcription-support workers such as technicians, engineers and computer

programmers have high level industrial craft-like skills which require extensive
routinised and supervised equipment operation - although in some

instances (e.g. operating 32-track recording studio mixers with a full range
of effects equipment) calls for considerable dexterity and a broad know-
ledge of operational possibilities. Some aspects of this work, however,
involve a limited degree of discretion in a manner which partially blurs the
distinction between creation and reproduction. Photographers (still and
moving), film and television and text editors, effects creators, graphic
reproducers, audio production operators, etc., like compositors of the
pre-electronic type-setting era, whilst principally operatives, are called
upon occasionally to bring a degree of creative flair to their work. They
are encouraged by creative management to suggest, for example, camera
angles, sound mix, lighting, layout, effects, editing cuts and so on (e.g.
Firth 1978: 85, Tulloch and Moran 1986: 119-129, 146-170), contributions
which add to the aesthetic value of the transcribed original.
Thus, if duplication work seems like any other form of modern factory
production, transcription appears less so. While machine-based, routinised
and positioned within an industrial division of labour, there are occasional
moments of reprieve. The situation, however, is changing. Since the
post-war years and especially since the 1970s, costs within the transcrip-
tion phase, especially wages, have risen sharply. Companies have begun
reconstructing transcription by computerising the operation of cameras,
editing machines, vision mixers, switches and so on (e.g. The Australian 6
June 1984: 30-34). Time-consuming manual-mechanical operations (espe-
cially in post-production activities) are being replaced by computer-
assisted and largely automatic processes which bring productivity and
sometimes quality gains for the company. In cases where jobs are not
eliminated - recording-studio operators are an example - employees are
enskilled and acquire wider skill repertoires (cf. Penn and Scattergood
1985). Elsewhere, deskilling and massive job losses are the rule: printers
are the paradigm case (Marshall 1983: 65-110). Compositors of previous
eras have been replaced (in Australia) by deskilled graphic reproducers
who cut and paste electronically type-set transcripts of the stories input by
journalists. As pagination technologies are improved, these last vestiges of
the printing craft seem likely to be eliminated (Bonney and Wilson 1983:
120-123). While conditions in transcription seem less industrialised than
those in duplication, competition and cost pressures are diminishing their
differences and driving it further towards the corporate model of capitalist
production.
Clearly, from this overview of the creation and reproduction stages, the
training. Since their work does not enter directly into the labour process, it is
not discussed here.
corporate cultural labour process has a complex form, neither homoge-

neous nor uniform throughout its various phases. What is more, it
combines two different models of capitalist production. Reproduction
workers as a whole are positioned within a corporate division of labour,
their work organised as a series of routinised, industrial and fragmented
tasks built around transcription and duplication technologies, and subject
to close management. In contrast, the creative stage has withstood
technological reconstruction; a craft-based division of labour remains, and
relations between workers and creative management resemble those of
the capitalist workshop more than the industrial or corporate factory.
This difference reveals the principal valorisation strategy adopted by
capitalists in the culture industry. Their preoccupation has been reconstitu-
tion of the labour process in an attempt to raise the rate of surplus-value
production, but standing as a barrier to this goal has been the special
status and character of art and the artist. Like other workers in the
capitalist labour process, artists are employed to create surplus-value, but
given the intensity, duration and quality of labour the creation of art is
supposed to require, the ratio of surplus to socially necessary labour value
embedded in the original is comparatively low. Any attempt by employers
to reduce the necessary component by demanding less time and devotion
by the artist, runs the risk of a shoddy or mediocre and hence unsaleable
artwork. Valorisation, however, is still feasible. Obversely, reproduction
work is not surrounded by the mystique of art. With the exception of some
aspects of transcription, it is repetitive work which can be routinised,
mechanised and automated (cf. also Williams 1980: 58-59). This, in fact,
has been its history. Capitalists have succeeded in increasing surplus-value
production throughout cultural commodity production system as a whole,
with the brunt of increased exploitation borne by reproduction workers. It
is they who have carried the cost of preserving artistic conditions in the
creative stage of production.
4.3.2 Creative Management: Producers and Directors

and the Negotiation of Creation
If the creative stage of production seems to take the form of the capitalist
workshop, more specific questions about its internal aspects arise. If
capitalists have had only limited success in subsuming artists under capital
as suggested by the perseverance of this relatively simple form, does the
continued existence of a craft-based division of labour imply related
problems in managing this work? If a management stratum has been
Function Position In Project Occupations
design producer managers, producers

(outline) editors etc.
Conception
realisation realiser writers, composers, arrangers
(plan) designers etc
interpretation director directors, chiefs-of-staff,

(directions) sub-editors, studio directors,
floor managers etc
Execution
execution performer actors, musicians, presenters,
(performance) dancers, journalists; illustrators
photographers etc
Figure 4,2 Creative Division Of Labour
successfully installed, how and to what extent does it achieve control? And
what are the form's dynamics and its present directions of change?
To begin, a brief note is necessary on functional differentiation within
the creative process itself. The workshop division of labour separates
those who design an original and those who perform it, but further
sub-division is possible, as indicated in Figure 4.2. Outlining an idea is
divisible from the task of realising it in a plan, and while design and
realisation are both technically part of conception, each can be allocated to
different types of workers and one made subject to the other. Equally,
performance based on a plan must be preceded by its interpretation.
Designers, realisers, interpreters and performers appear as divergent
forms of labour; in theatre, film and television production, for example, as
producers/designers, writers, directors and actors.
In the corporations of culture, this workshop division of labour is
bisected by the authority relations associated with juridical aspects of the
firm. Since profitable commoditisation requires product policies consistent
with market trends, and since design and interpretation are crucial in
determining the output of creation, capitalists appropriated these func-
tions and backed them with the legal authority attached to proprietorship,
transforming them into positions of hierarchical control over the creative
stage of the labour process. This consolidated a creative management

stratum as the agents of capital in creation, fulfilling the functions of design
and interpretation, and appearing as producers and directors respectively^2
(cf. Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 470-475, cf. Miege 1979). Obversely, the
effect of this development has been to relegate realisers and performers to
the position of directed executant. This is well illustrated by the transfor-
mation of radio programming and presentation (the following applies
mainly to the U.S. and Australia; cf. also MacDonald 1979, Walker 1973).
From its inception till the 1950s, recorded music programmes were
generally prepared and presented by announcers; they selected and
ordered recordings according to the principles of variety and compered
their presentation (cf. vaudeville, music hall). Under the impact of
competition from television, the development of format radio was initi-
ated with 'Top 40' programming where a programme head took responsi-
bility for overall programme planning. Increasingly since then, and
especially from the 1960s, all-music stations have a music policy set by a
(Australian terminology) programme manager who also prepares playlists
with a music director. Announcers are employed merely as format
presenters with their work overseen by a studio director - this is the
situation in Station FM-RADIO, a model of radio station operation
presented in the following chapter.
For the capitalist, there are a number of pretexts for installing a creative
management stratum. Profitability in a competitive context demands
reduction in the value of unit and aggregate labour, regularising the
duration and rate of work, and ensuring the production of marketable
commodities (price, type, quality). Artists, as we have seen, represent
high-value personalised labour, but wresting away design and interpreta-
tion reduces some of that value. Equally, artistic work is essentially erratic
12 These terms are used as to denote functional positions in a structure of relations

and as such do not necessarily correspond with industry usage. In fact, as ab-
stractions they incorporate and aggregate a variety of occupations ranging
from executive film and television producers to floor managers, talent scouts,
editors, studio arrangers, artist and repertoire managers, programme and stu-
dio managers, etc. Creative management supervises the creative stage of pro-
duction and is to be distinguished from general management of financial and
administrative kinds, and production management which oversees the repro-
duction stage. Of particular recent importance has been the extra-organisa-
tional extension of this function into external firms such as talent, booking and
personal management agencies who take partial responsibility for preparing
and rehearsing artists. Note also Garnham's comments on his translation of
Miege's term 'editeur' as 'producer' (Miege 1979: 303), which corresponds to
my 'creative management'.
and the output arbitrary. By conceptualising and directing the process of

creation, producers and directors can bind working artists to the organisa-
tion's mode of rationality; originals of a preferred type and quality are
more likely, with less labour-power consumed in their production than
might otherwise have been the case. The historical significance of this
development is considerable. Unable to exercise technical control over
artists through reconstruction of the division of labour, the installation of
creative management indexes the specific approach to bureaucratic con-
trol taken by capitalists in degrading the creative stage of production as
they embedded the social and organisational structure of the firm (cf.
Edwards 1979: 111-162). The full extent of its bureaucratic character is
seen when the conjunction of creative management and formatting are
discussed in the following chapter.
The daily production of editions carried out in metropolitan newspaper
newsrooms as examined in the course of fieldwork and represented by a
model which I will call The Daily Courier™, illustrates the structure and
operation of creative management. The stratum involves a layer of
managers and supervisors of various forms. An editor (Australian termi-
nology) and an (executive) editorial manager fulfil the producer functions
of overall planning and coordination. The director function, those tasks
associated with operationalising the plan (editorial policy) and supervising
13 This model is based on amalgamated observations and interviews conducted of

several newspaper companies, but primarily on a large multi-media corpora-
tion which was at the time also the publisher of two daily and one Sunday
newspapers, and the parent of several suburban newspaper companies. It also
had substantial cross-media holdings in metropolitan and regional radio and
television. Additionally, it was itself a subsidiary of one of Australia's (then)
four major media groups, but also a major interlocked shareholder in its par-
ent. Data was collected in a series of interviews and observations in the work-
place and with the general manager, deputy general manager (also the finan-
cial director), editor-in-chief, and editors and staff of each paper. The model
assumes the production of a single masthead. The Daily Courier is essentially
characteristic of all major Australian newspapers (cf. also Mayer 1964) and
broadcast newsrooms (e.g. Baker 1980b). In fact, newsroom organisation is
similar throughout most of the Western world; compare this account with, for
example, Tunstall (1971) and Gans (1979). Observations in radio and televi-
sion stations, advertising agencies and recording companies indicate definite
parallels in the structure and operation of the creative stage. For the record
industry also see Frith (1978), television production Moran (1984), and film
companies Macgowen (1965). In book publishing, creative management may
not be so intrusive - but frequently are: editors and authors discuss their work-
place relations in The National Times (8-14 March 1985: 36-38) and The Week-
end Australian (12-13 March 1988: Magazine 6-7). See also Dessauer (1974).
workers in their tasks, extends across several organisational positions;

namely, the chief-of-staff, section editors (business and finance, politics,
real estate, foreign, women, arts and entertainment and sport) and the
chief sub-editor. Executants comprise general and specialist reporters,
sub-editors and staff photographers. According to the editor, he and the
editorial manager in consultation with general management, set editorial
policy for the paper. Content (story selection and placement) for each
edition is determined at daily editorial conferences involving the entire
creative management stratum; these conferences are marked by consider-
able discussion with input from all, but final decisions lie with the editor.
In the period leading up to copy deadline, directors supervise the
collection and processing of stories; the chief-of-staff and section editors
select from the large number of leads available from various sources,
allocate them to journalists and coordinate their completion. The chief
sub-editor supervises the backbench (sub-editors) in checking journalists'
copy and compiles an edition according to the sketch roughed out at
editorial conference.
A formal hierarchy coincides with the division of labour: producer,
director and worker fulfil the tasks of design, interpretation and execution.
While there is some task overlap within creative management (policy
formulation and editorial conference), there is little between creative
management and workers. What is more interesting is what we might refer
to as the 'softness' of these authority relations especially at the interface of
management and workers. To illustrate: when asking a journalist to follow
up a lead, the chief-of-staff supplies available information (e.g. back-
ground, event, contacts) and suggests an angle from which the story might
be approached. The presumption seems to be, by both director and
executant, that these propositions are not definitive and are offered more
as guidelines. In the course of the (sometimes very brief) discussion,
reporters sometimes accept the suggestions without comment, sometimes
offer their own ideas, and even argue outright. On other occasions,
journalists may initiate the lead and angle, a suggestion taken up and
developed by the chief-of-staff. The eventual brief represents an amalgam
of input from both parties - although the ultimate right of managers to
advocate and decide is generally acknowledged. Journalists are then left to
get on with the job, relatively free to work up whatever possibilities
emerge. They may later seek further advice or discuss progress with the
editor or chief-of-staff, but generally, on-the-job supervision is relatively
sporadic and unstructured; in the case of feature writers, columnists and
commentators and sometimes senior rounds reporters, direction seems
even less explicit. Observations suggest, in fact, that this kind of informal,
collaborative management style is replicated to varying degrees in all
forms of corporate cultural production; with actors in films, writers of

books, musicians in the recording studio, copywriters in advertising
agencies, announcers on radio stations, etc. Despite operating in an
organisational context which seeks to discipline the labour process in the
interests of accumulation and appearing in it partly as agents of capital,
creative management seem unwilling or unable at the decisive moment to
exercise their legitimate organisational powers against the labour-power
they are supposed to be managing14. While directors direct at the opera-
tional level, much tactical autonomy is ceded to workers themselves.
Creative management seems unlike the inflexible, top-down supervision
found next door in the graphic reproduction and printing sections; instead,
its tenor resembles negotiation, built around apparently reciprocal ex-
changes which belie the subordinate position of the worker. In that sense,
while the presence and structure of the management stratum gives
creation a corporate flavour, the style of management seems more
appropriate to a simpler model of capitalist production, even in substan-
tially bureaucratised practices such as journalism (cf. also Dreier 1976,
Tunstall 1971) and in other media (cf. also Elliott 1977). The question is,
why?
While I do not want to trace a history of creative management15, it can
be said that part of the explanation lies in the form in which it evolved.
Capitalisation of cultural practices developed slowly. After an initial
period of merchant production, from the late-18th century onwards, as
socially dispersed and differentiated audiences began acquiring a taste for
regular public performance and the habit of reading, the role of impre-
sario was taken up increasingly by leading artists of the period. Here,
artistic leadership operated through example, not guidance. Only with the
14 The general argument stands even though some creative managers are authori-
tarian in their manner. Considered from an ethnomethodological perspective,
executants' complaints concerning overbearing intrusion indicate the strength
of the conventions discussed here (e.g. The Weekend Australian 2-3 April 1988:
Magazine 11-12, 25-26 July 1987: Magazine 4). During entrepreneurial periods
where economic and artistic management are combined - as in the case of the
early stages of the cinema and rock 'n' roll, a more forceful form of face-to-face
'simple control' (Edwards 1979: 25-27) is common.
15 A history of creative management as such has not been written, but its outline
is discernible. For the emergence of the newspaper editor see Smith (1978:
165-166) and management of book publishing, Steinberg (1955). For actor-
managers and later the producer and director, see Hartnoll (1967: 766, 1968:
244). A comprehensive account of the court-based composer-musical director
and then, from the turn into the 19th century, the orchestral conductor, is pro-
vided by Raynor (1976: 25-28, 35-45,100-124).
expansion of production during the late-19th and early-20th centuries did

explicitly capitalist financiers and entrepreneurs assume dominant posi-
tions in publishing, theatrical and musical companies, and later in film and
recording companies. From this point, the contracted or partnership
relations which owners and speculators had previously established with
performer-managers16 were transformed into employee relations, therein
subordinating creative management to general and financial management.
Creative managers were now expected to explicitly guide and develop the
work of others. Nonetheless, they were still regarded as artistic in
orientation, something like a master-craftsmen concerned primarily with
excellence and originality and the state of their art; hence, they were
absolved from responsibility for business management and granted a
relative independence in the production process17. As competition intensi-
fied and the business became more complex, this now-consolidated
stratum was sub-divided into the specialised functions of producing and
directing (as previously defined) and the former obligated to organisa-
tional goals. Their history, however, located them irrevocably as
comrades-in-arms with the artists under their control and the tradition of
guidance, collaboration and artistic leadership remains the essence of
creative direction, even to the present.
16 Without developing the point, it is interesting to note that these 'performer-

managers' (e.g. actor-managers, conductor-managers) beginning around the
eras of Garrick, Goethe, Racine, Händel and Haydn, were crucial to the devel-
opment of new cultural institutions. They frequently took up partnerships or
associations (e.g. Händel with Heidegger and others in England - see Raynor
1972: 265-289) in which they were the direct employer of artists. This seems to
have been an internal sub-contracting system not unlike that of the gang boss
applying in other industries, and which remained important until the turn into
the 20th century.
17 This point is of particular interest in news production, where media proprietors
such as Rupert Murdoch still occasionally intervene in editorial policy making
in order to promote their own views (Bowman 1988, McQueen 1977). I would
generally suggest that accounts of present-day media barons overemphasise
their argument to the point where it becomes almost conspiratorial. In fact,
usually, with the decline of entrepreneurially-led companies, direct face-to-
face and self-interested control is replaced by bureaucratic management con-
trol realised through creative management (Edwards 1979, cf. also Murdock
and Golding 1978). To that end, Frank Devine (presently editor of The Aus-
tralian, previously the Sun-Times and The New York Post) provides a provok-
ing although ingenuous account of his dealings with Murdoch, suggesting that
as editor, he is much more independent of his employer than accounts such as
Bowman's suggest (The Independent Monthly August 1989: 3). Bowman
replies sceptically in Australian Society (September 1989: 10-11).
The muted and accommodating style of creative management also flows

in part from the inherent character of the creative process itself, as given
by its Romantic constitution. Creation requires the labour of artists, the
work of individuals with unalienable and irreplaceable talents and skills,
who conjure up exciting and novel works. By definition, it cannot easily be
reduced to systems of rules, or the personalised labour of particular artists
substituted by abstract labour-power. This necessarily endows artists with
powers to demand a voice in production and, if they need, to resist
direction. Further, with their appropriation of the conception function,
creative management is confronted by an additional problem; not only
must executant labour-power be engaged, it must also be motivated. No
matter how brilliant an idea, how original a score or script, its promise
remains dependent on the capacities, willingness and aspirations of those
employed to perform it. In achieving that goal, producers and directors,
especially those dealing with actors, musicians, dancers and writers, are
forced to contend with the identity and psychology ascribed to artists.
Their personalities and expectations are said to require supportive and
careful handling; that they perform to their best when workplace struc-
tures are relatively loose and their individuality given free rein; when
worker-management relations are based on mutual respect and coopera-
tion; and that artists at work seek inspiration not administration - i.e.
criticism, advice and assistance from a constructive and trusted leader who
will help them evaluate and perfect their efforts (e.g. Ravage 1978).
Management only consents to this, however, in so far as artists work in
commercial or professional ways; that is, they reproduce the rationality of
the corporate culture industry. By providing such conditions, producers
and directors hope to unlock the potential productivity of talent, to create
those moments of chemistry when the give-and-take of artist and director,
of talent and leadership, produce an outstanding original with which they
can all be pleased18.
In other words, creative management at the operational or tactical level
can only procure what they seek through what is literally a process of
negotiation (Gallagher 1982). Depending on the cultural form, negotiation
occurs in a variety of formal and informal settings; the rehearsals through
which creative management take theatrical, film and television casts, and
18 Many artists are also considered by creative management to be psychologically

difficult to handle, ego-driven and self-interested (e.g. Ravage 1978: 19-20).
This may or may not be true, but it also reflects the increasing outmodedness
of romantic conceptions of the artist in the corporate entertainment industry.
It is also typical of the derogation of workers by managers generally, as an
expression of their opposing class interests.
musical groups and soloists, are the most obvious examples (e.g. Tulloch
and Moran 1986: 46-63,104-117). Equally, from observations, the briefings
given to journalists, radio and television presenters, advertising copywrit-
ers and graphic artists, the editorial conferences publishers arrange with
writers and so on, are all sites of rehearsal where both parties negotiate
the direction of the outcome. Whatever the setting, the remarkable fact is
that artistic direction runs the full gamut from tension, conflict and
compromise, to rapport, concordance and agreement - but in all cases,
manager and worker confront each other less as commander and com-
manded than as collaborating peers, and the outcome of their relation is
preceded by a significant element of uncertainty. While the creative stage
of production has the general form of capitalist workshop production, and
the presence of an authoritative management stratum differentiated from
owners reflects an industrial or corporate context, the ubiquity and
necessity of negotiation represents a paradox. Installation of creative
management represents an attempt by capitalists to impose hierarchic
control based on formal (legal) authority, on an otherwise irrational
labour process - to increase the degree of subsumption via the medium of
management. The organisational purpose of artistic and creative direction
is to ensure achievement of prescribed outcomes and goals, but that
process necessarily demands negotiation and compromise with the very
workers management are supposed to govern. This is what gives the
creative stage of production its indeterminacy.
Despite these potential difficulties, from the capitalist's point of view, it
is evident from the growth of the industry that the 20th century consolida-
tion of a creative management stratum, combined with appropriate
employment policies and control of the circulation system, has disciplined
labour in creation to a level sufficient for organisational purposes. In
taking over planning activities and allocating them to their agents, the
corporations of culture have acquired effective control of the key moment
in creation, which enables regulation of the type and quality of work
reproduced in response to shifts in market demand. In a competitive
market, this is crucial. In terms of valorisation, their function as coordina-
tors governing the direction and integration of work within the labour
process reduces the total time during which otherwise high-value and
unreliable artistic labour is employed at creating an original. Thus, all
other things being equal, corporations can minimise the proportion of
investment in labour in the production cycle thereby raising their rate of
surplus-value production to a level which permits satisfactory rates of
accumulation.
In that context, it is important to note the tightening of control which is
presently in progress throughout the corporations of culture, as indexed
Labour Organisation in the Creative Stage of Production 123
by the repositioning and redefinition of creative management. The fact

that producers and directors traditionally addressed artistic concerns in
their work even at the cost of financial over-runs, brought them into
conflict with general management. As economic and competitive condi-
tions have threatened profitability, especially over the second half of the
20th century - for example, in film and radio in the 1950s (e.g. Cowie
1971: 241-244, Walker 1973: 91- 97,159-184) and even earlier in publishing
(e.g. Gedin 1977: 53) - creative managers have been forced to profession-
alise (cf. also Ravage 1978:1-11). Now they are expected to temper artistic
sensibilities with business acumen and organising skills. One effect of this
movement has been to further separate producers and directors (the
mechanisms will be discussed shortly). The former is increasingly located
within the executive hierarchy and primarily involved with administrative
work. Directors have less organisational power and are still regarded as
part of the artistic team. This is associated with a more general movement
towards controlling creation through rationalisation; bureaucratising the
process by crystalising canons of practice and their supervised application
as formats. This development has dramatically reduced the level of
negotiation possible within creation, turned it into rule-bounded work,
and moved it decisively towards a situation which resembles the corporate
model of capitalist production. This development is of considerable
significance in so far as it modifies our picture of the corporate form of
cultural production, and will be dealt with in detail in the following
chapter.
4.4 Labour Organisation in the Creative Stage

of Production
I want to now leave behind the crude models of capitalist production used
so far and begin fashioning a more precise historical model of the
corporate model of capitalist cultural production. The remainder of this
chapter is concerned with its basic structure, allowing subsequent chapters
to progressively fill out its various dimensions. Elliott's (1972) study of the
making of a television documentary series captures the essence of what
will be called here the 'project team' form of labour organisation, which is
the corporate form's single most important characteristic.
He speaks of how after initial planning by executive producers, a
production team comprising producer, director and researcher was set up.
Once the producer had designed the general programme framework and
finalised budgetary and scheduling matters, the team selected a presenter
then set about substantive pre-production concerns; preparing subject
areas and interviews (researcher), writing scripts (producer), collecting
and preparing film inserts (director). They were later joined by the
presenter, a well-known and highly-regarded performer, who reworked
the scripts and some of the content to suit his style and interests. The
producer and director coordinated the final assembly and editing of
components (1972: 22-107). Elliott outlines some organisational features
of the production team19, noting how they were brought together to work
specifically on the particular project and which became their exclusive
occupation. Centred around the producer, the team comprised a number
of different formal roles and an accepted division of labour and responsibil-
ity, but considerable overlap in task allocation at certain times during
production. He also notes what he calls 'status' factors, the origins of
which lay partly outside the organisation - presumably, what I will later
call 'artistic authority' - which entered into relationships between mem-
bers and modified the formal hierarchy (1972: 128-129).
4.4.1 The Project Team

While Elliott is dealing with a single cultural form, his empirical account
reveals something of the essential configuration of labour organisation
within creative stage of production, as found in corporate newsrooms
(press, broadcasting and news agencies, also magazine and journal produc-
tion), film studios, advertising agencies, music recording, the production of
daily radio and television programmes, the writing and publication of
books especially those designed for the popular market20. It centres upon
19 Note that he uses Burns and Stalker's (1961) distinction between organic and
mechanistic organisation to compare the production team and the studio crew
respectively. While I am using a different conceptual approach, their descrip-
tion of organic forms of organisation parallels the features I am attributing to
the capitalist workshop form of capitalist organisation.
20 This claim is primarily based on field-work observations but other published
work seems to support it. For other television production see Tulloch and
Moran (1986); newsrooms Tunstall (1971), Glasgow University Media Group
(1976) and Baker (1980b); film production Macgowen (1965), publishing
Tebbel (1981) and music recording Frith (1978). The successful, serious novel-
ist, poet or classical musician who seems to work almost autonomously, repre-
sents a limit case, but it is important to remember that even for freelancers (see
later discussion), pre-transcription work also involves creative management
the project team21, the corporate form of collective cultural labour22 which
represents the artist in historically specific form in the corporations of
culture (cf. Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 470-475, cf. Miege 1979: 304); i.e.
the specific form of cooperation which characterises cultural production in
this setting, as constituted around various task and authority relations, and
similar to the gang-labour necessary for unstandardised production (Ed-
wards 1976: 113)23.
Where production under the classical corporate model is based on an
assembly line (as found in the reproduction stage of production), the
creative stage of production has the organisational logic of a project. This
is unit or small-batch production, necessarily so, because by definition,
originals have neither consistent nor standard form, and it is difficult to
(e.g. editors, arrangers, producers) who offer advice on content, sometimes

suggesting final revisions, arrangements, interpretations, and so on, even if
only retrospectively (e.g. the comments of Australian author Thomas Keneally
reported in The Sunday Mail 1 November 1987: 15).
21 The project team is a structure of positions in the creative stage of production.
As such it is not necessarily coterminous with the creative department of an
organisation, nor is it restricted to its staff. Being corporate production, cre-
ation may spread across several firms. The task of creation sometimes involves
general management in so far as they contribute to conception as artistic lead-
ers. It always includes creative management for the same reason. At the other
end, in ambiguous fashion, it includes the work of creative-operatives in tran-
scription who work under the director in transcribing the originals and which
contributes to its cultural value. In that sense, the project team represents the
collective (artistic) labourer in production, a complex structure of roles defined
in functional terms (cf. Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 479).
22 I am iterating here a particular version of Wolff's argument that despite ideolo-
gies of individual creation, art is a social product and fundamentally collective
in origin (1981: 27, also Williams 1981:112).
23 It is worth noting that the model of corporate cultural production built up in
this and following chapters has similarities to the post-Fordist flexible manufac-
turing systems associated with niche-based marketing of specialised products
and small-batch production (e.g. Bramble 1988, for an overview, see Murray
1988). Much corporate cultural production is divisional production of spe-
cialised products governed by a specific format. Rather than being post-Fordist
production, however, for the reasons outlined here, the creative stage has
never taken the form of fully industrialised production. It is also worth noting
that in the same issue of Labour and Industry, Lever-Tracy (1988) examines
the importance of part-time workers in installing flexible systems. Again, the
culture industry seems to have anticipated this: from its institutionalisation
around the beginning of the 19th century, part-time and casual creative work-
ers have frequently been employed to fill minor parts in the project team.
splinter the labour process into discrete, repeatable tasks which can be
routinised and rationalised. The production cycle in the creative stage of
production begins with the planning of a specific object and has an explicit
moment of completion, the result appearing as an exceptional, unique and
original object - a work of art. This applies to the creation of a single
work such as a novel, a song, film or television play as much as it does a
series of related works such as a television series composed of episodes, or
editions, as in the case of the editions of a daily newspaper or the daily
programmes of radio and television stations.
It is not only the inherent features of the original as an artistic object
which underlies the logic of the project. The corporation has organisa-
tional concerns which also contribute. The original must appear in a
technical form which can be efficiently transcribed, and be produced at a
rate which has it reaching the transcription phase as scheduled in order
that unproductive down-time in the reproduction stage is minimised. It
must be potentially marketable; as an instance of a cultural form, it must
have features and qualities which meet the demands of potential audience
and industry consumers, and to whom it can be effectively marketed as an
object of cultural value. As a project then, creation is conducted through a
matrix of organisational and artistic imperatives which impinge upon and
constitute the work which must be done, and the corporation sets up a
team to achieve those objectives.
The first point to note is that the team is partly constituted around a
division of labour. As previously noted, the primary distinction is between
conception and execution; in Elliott's study, preparation was handled by
the producer, director and researcher, and performance by the director
and interviewer-presenter (depending on the cultural form, each of these
two positions may be sub-divided into any number of specialist detail
occupations). The producer and director have an additional task. All
developed forms of cooperation require a coordinator who dovetails the
efforts of all employees into a production unit by having them work
concurrently, in the same direction, and to common standards. Equally,
the unit must be integrated with other components of the production
system; originals must be supplied in appropriate form and according to
schedule.
As the culture industry matured as a mass of capital, coordination was
combined with conception, then appropriated and allocated to a manage-
ment stratum. Accordingly, these types of work are no longer carried out
for purely artistic purposes but are overlaid by the logic of capital.
Management actively intervenes in the labour process so that minimum
time is spent creating the original, that it is of a marketable type and
quality, and that its completion interlocks with the transcription schedule.
These aspects of creative management reflect the demands of commoditi-

sation and accumulation. What is compelling about this relates to task
allocation within the project team. As a form of labour organisation, the
project team is partly constituted by the presence of creative management
employed simultaneously as workers and agents of capital24. This is the
point of Miege's argument that:
The producer [read: creative management] in fact is not only an intermediary
between cultural labour...and industrial capital...In fact his (sic) intervention is
decisive in that operation which consists in making out of unique and contingent
cultural use-values, products which can be exchanged on the market. To do that he
not only concerns himself with marketing problems...but he also intervenes in the
very conception of the product (1979: 304 - emphasis in original).
The interests of capital are not something external to an otherwise
independent labour process. The rules of valorisation and realisation enter
into its very constitution, as personified by creative management and
realised through their decisions and directions. The creative stage of
production in the corporate workplace, therefore, whilst ostensibly a
purely artistic process, is significantly mediated by its articulation to
organisational - i.e. corporate capitalist - goals. The imperatives of
accumulation are built into functional relations between the different
types of workers which comprise the team itself. This diminishes any
separation of art and the market, and incorporates creation within the
capitalist goal of expansion of value25.
24 They therefore occupy a contradictory position in the labour process (Wright

1979), appearing in part as creative management, that is, as the agents of capi-
tal fulfilling the functions of global capital; and in part as workers, that is, as
functionaries within the collective worker stratum. The structure and dynamics
of the project team within the corporate form of cultural production, particu-
larly in so far as they are intersected by organisational, workplace and market
imperatives, make an interesting case study of classing effects within produc-
tion - although I do not intend pursuing this here. For a useful discussion of
the character of the new middle class and working class under corporate condi-
tions, see Clegg et al. (1986: chapter 6 and 7).
25 Because of persistence of idealist notions concerning the autonomy of signify-
ing practices (cf. Hall 1977, Murdock and Golding 1977), it is necessary to
labour this point. Not only do some academics seem unwilling to accept deter-
minate connections, the same applies to many practitioners; the Glasgow Uni-
versity Media Group (1976: 60) noted, for example, "Participants themselves
were unaware of the many factors...that govern and shape their output". The
above account, however, only indicates one of the mechanisms - perhaps the
most decisive - whereby organisational imperatives enter into cultural produc-
4.4.2 Authority Relations in the Project Team

Given this, and returning to the issue of artistic autonomy, the character of
the project team emphasises the importance of recognising how the
corporate era has articulated the structures of art and business within the
labour process. Not only are the rules of accumulation embedded deep in
the routines of production but they are daily realised through the capitalist
authority relations which stratify the team. This indicates a more extensive
incorporation of the process under capital than its external resemblance to
the capitalist workshop might suggest. Nonetheless, it must still be
recognised that for reasons previously discussed, despite the penetration
of capitalist control via the person of creative managers, as artists, cultural
workers have a relative independence within the creative labour process.
Creative management cannot simply rule on the basis of ownership rights
alone. This is not appropriate in the milieu of art. There must be material
bases for winning worker consent (and maintaining the relative indepen-
dence of creative from general management). Producers and directors
have to negotiate and compromise with workers in order to achieve their
goals. They do so by demonstrating possession of artistic leadership and
administration skills26 - in other words, control within the project team is
achieved via a combination of charismatic and bureaucratic, organisa-
tional authority (cf. Weber 1970: 196-244, 245-252, cf. also Edwards 1979:
130-162).
The legitimacy of creative management depends partly on their ability
to exercise artistic leadership, a form of talent possessed by some as an
element of their charismatic personality. It entails a substantive contribu-
tion to the search for originality through any of a number of means; it may
involve creating designs and interpretations which are themselves original
and exciting, perhaps being able to recognise talent in others, or being able
to inspire performers to great heights of achievement. It may be the ability
to direct transcription in novel and imaginative ways. For some it may
mean sensing changing taste communities and producing originals which
consistently bring popular and/or critical acclaim with various audiences.
tion. It says nothing about specifically cultural determinants of content, al-

though some aspects will be indicated in the following chapter.
26 See also, for example, reported comments by performers on various types of
creative managers in The National Times 8-14 March 1985: 34-35 (screenplay
editors and film producers), The Weekend Australian 12-13 March 1988: Maga-
zine 8 (book editors), 19-21 March 1988: Magazine 13 and 2-3 April 1988: Mag-
azine 1 (conductors), 25-26 July 1988: Magazine 4 (film directors), and Frith
1978: 79-80 (A & R managers and record producers).
Whatever the path, providing recognised artistic leadership accords

creative management the legitimacy to assert their organisational author-
ity. On the other hand, administration skills are also important - perhaps
more so in the eyes of general management than performers. Experienced
creative managers can efficiently and effectively coordinate operational
aspects of creation; the movements and application of equipment, labour
and raw materials across the project so that it proceeds without delays,
achieving completion on schedule and within budget and interlocks with
other phases of production, marketing and merchandising. Because they
have a stable, rational setting in which they can work, artists consent to
their bureaucratic control over the creative stage of production: it gives
them a tension-free environment to exercise their talents.
While these skills must be distributed throughout the management
stratum as a whole, the recent tendency has been for companies, through
their employment policies, to allocate those with administration skills to
producer positions leaving directors to specialise in artistic leadership
(herein lie the origins of the recent auteur movement in film and music;
e.g. Frith 1978: 201), which partly explains the tendency towards freelance
rather than permanent employment amongst directors especially in film
and record production. Moreover, producers are being increasingly lo-
cated within the executive stratum as executive producers, which tends to
concentrate and strengthen organisational control over the operations of
the project team.
So it would seem that despite connotations of equality between mem-
bers, the project team is stratified in complex and interacting ways, but
that not all authority is centred upon creative management. There is a
further division which accords influence to workers based on artistic
authority21, the specific form of power wielded by cultural workers which
flows from recognition of their capacities as various forms of artist. This is
a central axis of management-worker relations in creation operating
alongside and articulated to the organisation's bureaucratic power struc-
tures.
Executants in the project team are sub-divided into leading roles (lead
actors, senior journalists or announcers, top places in a list of authors,
27 There seem to be parallels in this discussion with Bourdieu's (1977) notion of

'cultural capital'. He argues, for example, for the convertibility between eco-
nomic and cultural capital in both directions (Garnham and Williams 1980:
216). This is similar to my argument concerning reputation as a means for im-
proving workers positions in relations of distribution or even buying workplace
independence. It is beyond my concerns, however, to pursue possible connec-
tions between Bourdieu's arguments and my own.
soloists, principal players, and so on), supporting roles and extras. Leading
positions (this also applies in some instances to freelance directors) are
normally allocated only to those with established and distinguished
reputations, as indexed by the familiarity of their names. Film companies
look for stars for leading roles, music publishers for a name singer for a
new song, radio stations offer prime-time shifts to recognised personali-
ties, record and book publishing companies give top production and
marketing priority to manuscripts or recordings from the top names in
their catalogues, and newspapers put highly-reputed journalists onto
headline or front-page stories. The reasons for this are two-fold. Reputa-
tion in the culture industry indicates socially recognised possession
(mediated through the market) of the talents and skills of the artist, which
promises corporations an exciting and profitable original. By attracting
audiences, the name of the star adds to the potential commerciality of the
commodity (cf. Staiger 1982: 101). To workers, having a name in an
industry founded upon reputation is an index of the value of their labour,
and the greater its value, the more artistic authority they can claim in the
labour process. In that sense, personal reputation as signified by a name
represents artistic authority and is the basis of an alternative power
structure within the project team. It endows a capacity to counter the
organisational power of creative management. It legitimates and enhances
the artist's right to be heard - in other words, it is the ground on which
management consent to treat the artist as a collaborator in production (cf.
also Elliott 1977, Gallagher 1982).
In fact, there seem to be two intersecting foundations for reputation,
commercialism and professionalism28, which, while reflecting corporate
rationalities imposed historically on workers through the market - in that
sense, they function as vehicles of control - workers can also use them to
make their names known and improve their position in the project team.
These normative orientations correspond approximately to the production
relations differentiating stars and professionals (cf. Frith 1978: 162-3). A
commercial reputation indicates that a cultural worker has a history of or
28 Elliott (1977), Tulloch and Moran (1986: 46-64) and Gallagher (1982) all pro-
vide useful discussions of professionalism. Elliott (1977: 144, 147, 149-51) pro-
vides a useful account of how the logic of professionalism in journalism leads
to certain values and attitudes, and bargaining power inside and outside the
organisation, and how high-level professionalism affords opportunities to de-
velop a public persona, to become a personality or star. Despite this last point,
he does not seem to fully understand that even in journalism, professionalism
and commercialism are intertwined: workers are able to turn both logics to
their advantage. Thus, to sustain long-term careers, stars must also be profes-
sional, and top-flight professionals need something of the star in them.
potential for success in the marketplace, that they have a talent which
appeals to audiences, and deserve the appellation 'star'. Stardom is
predicated on market ascription of claim and title to the talent and
persona of the artist29. Professionalism has a different logic. These names
are known throughout the industry but not necessarily by audiences;
professional reputations flow from recognition by peers and employers of
all-purpose, high-level craft skills of more general applicability than the
idiosyncrasy of talent, that they are reliable and experienced and able to
apply those skills quickly, effectively and consistently in performance (cf.
also Elliott 1977: 148-150).
To the corporations of culture operating in a competitive marketplace, a
commercial reputation has more value that a reputation for competent but
not inspired work. While the latter is a cheaper, more predictable and
adaptable form of labour-power, the mere presence of a star gives the
original a potential for marketability. Creative management choose from
the available pool of labour, those who they think are right for their
project as envisaged, and offer them the high-visibility leading roles,
encouraging them to work in their style, to provide their particular brand
of originality as a marketable sign of their participation. Accordingly, they
must be given considerable freedom to exercise their talents, to reproduce
the act which is the basis of their reputation. Hence during rehearsals,
creative managers collaborate with starring performers to work up the
29 The claim is often made that 'genuine' talent and market success are mutually
exclusive, or more specifically, that a commercial logic in cultural production
subordinates, diminishes or excludes 'real' artists. Frith (1978: 162), for exam-
ple, argues that in rock music, "anonymous players are bought, their personali-
ties and all, to meet a perceived demand" and that there are musicians who
"sell [themselves] to a manager or producer who uses [their] talents to realise a
predetermined image or sound or music". While there are valid elements to his
critique, the situation is actually more complex than he makes out. The preva-
lence of 'hyping' (extensive publicity and promotion) obscures the fact that on
the whole, creative management recognise that long-term market success de-
mands 'genuine' talent. In the corporate era, originality and talent are judged
relatively by various types of consumer groups via sales, not by those of an
accredited artistic sensibility and according to the internal rules of art: i.e. the
community of artists. Market ascription offends idealist and absolutist notions
of art. In fact, commerciality demands a combination-in-balance of artistry and
market appeal, but since artistry may be dressed up as appeal, or appeal
dressed up as artistry, my discussion of stars necessarily includes both the major
recognised talents of an era and its great pretenders. Further to these points, the
relation between formatting, cultural forms and cultural use-value, and the op-
erations of the publicity machine are fully discussed in the following chapters.
original. For example, the interviewer-presenter in Elliott's study (1977:

86-107), chosen for his popularity and experience, was allowed - in
consultation with the producer - to adapt scripts and interview schedules,
to reflect his perceptions of his image, capabilities, and that of the
programmes - and in one programme, even succeeded in convincing a
dubious producer to change the topic, approach, and guests to be
interviewed.
If stars are usually allocated leading roles, professionals are valuable to
companies in supporting roles. Their work is not as important in market-
ing the original, but is in maintaining a high level of background perfor-
mance. Production budgets demand lowest possible labour costs by
minimising production time. Professionals capable of efficient, high-
standard work are required to provide an underlay of competence over
which the star adds the touches of originality which attract market
attention. Thus, for example, radio stations hire back-up announcers for
secondary shifts, recording companies employ session musicians to accom-
pany a star's recordings, and so on. Their task is to perform as directed; to
choose appropriate skills and techniques from the diverse range they have
acquired in the course of their experience, so that their part adds to the
type and quality of the original.
The result within the executant component of the project team is a
structure of artistic authority built around a combination of reputation and
position and which can be mobilised by workers to counter organisational
authority (see Figure 4.3). Stars in leading positions appear as person-
alised labour accruing considerable power to shape their own performance
and to some degree the work as a whole. Professional labour-power is
highly-skilled but more widely-available, more abstract in kind, and
without the market-based reputation possessed by stars. While allowed a
performer's discretion in their own less visible tasks, they are necessarily
more subject to creative management and have less artistic autonomy.
Below them are extras; minor positions filled by those attempting to
develop their talents and skills and hoping to acquire a name. They are
expected to learn from the talents and professionals surrounding them and
perform exactly as required. In other words, both organisational and
artistic authority are concentrated at one end of the project team in
creative management and starring positions, although a weaker power to
mobilise and/or resist is diffused throughout the whole structure.
The starting point of this discussion has been the resemblance of the
modern creative stage of production to the workshop model of capitalist
production, but as details have been developed, it has become increasingly
obvious that the similarity is only superficial. It is certainly true that a
craft-based division of labour survives - and is likely to, since technologi-
Position Production Relation Basis Of Authority Form Of Control
producer manager bureaucratic managerialism

(executive) commercialism
charismatic
(artistic leadership)
director contracted artist bureaucratic managerialism
*FORMATTING
(organisational) commercialism
charismatic
(artistic leadership)
leading contracted artist artistic collaboration

executant (commercial commercialism
reputation)
supporting professional artistic direction

executant creative (professional professionalism
reputation)
*Formatting as a system of control to be dealt with in chapter Five.
Figure 4.3 Project Team Positions & Conditions
cal substitution of the artist is very difficult, but its stratification has
different foundations to the skill hierarchies of craft workshops. Leading
positions in the project team are usually filled by those with talents of
more ephemeral kinds, which are linked to the sphere of appearance, of
publicity and promotion. Further, there is a powerful management stra-
tum who, as artistic leaders - like masters and journeymen of the earlier
era - are still part of the collective labourer, but with the additional
function of directing creation towards commoditisation and accumulation.
Unlike the relatively straightforward structure of the craft workshop, the
structure and dynamics of the project team is aligned around a complex
grid of authority relations and patterns of consent which are derived from
the nexus of economic, political and artistic imperatives underlying this
stage of the cultural labour process.
It would seem then that the project team is a form of labour organisa-
tion which reflects the imperatives driving both capitalists and workers in
the corporate era of the culture industry; an historic compromise between
artist and capitalist in the heart of production. In some respects the
directed project team has evolved out of the corporate need to discipline
the creative process politically and economically and to take advantage of
the productivity gains flowing from a workshop division of labour, with

work coordinated by their agents. The specificities of its structure and
operation, however, are also a consequence of worker resistance. By
working either through the market or the rehearsal room to build personal
reputations which signify their artistry, executants have consolidated an
alternative power structure based on the traditional values of their work.
Under it, they have managed to preserve something of the freedoms and
autonomies normally accorded to those who possess the extraordinary and
specialised abilities which ascribe them the status of artists, and a
countervailing power to the managerial and bureaucratic intrusions of
capital into the process of creation.
Of course it is the stars, those with commercial reputations, who have
benefited the most. They are the more powerful form of labour, which
shows up in their collaborative relations with management - unlike
professionals who are restricted and subject to direction. The question is
why? To examine this further, we need to look in detail at the types of
production relations under which stars and professionals work.
4.5 Production Relations in the Creative Stage
The two main forms of capital-labour relation underlining the creative

stage of production in the corporations of culture are contracted artists and
professional creatives, built upon sub-contracting, and waged and salaried
employment respectively. Both need to be examined separately in terms
of their differences across three criteria; ownership of particular means of
production, control over phases of the creative process, and ownership of
the original, as summarised in Figure 4.4:
4.5.1 Contracted Artists

To fill the leading positions in the project team, companies sign contracts
with stars and freelancers. In fact, this relationship is more accurately
described as sub-contracting, since the general conditions in which the
artists work are owned and/or controlled by the company (and the term
differentiates this production relation from contracted production carried
out by an independent firm as a commercial transaction).
Freelancers are 'independent' artists, usually conception workers such
as composers, screenwriters, researchers, directors and designers, (because
Production Relations in the Creative Stage 135
Dimension Contracted Artist Professional Creative
Form of relation intermediate producer wage - labour
Conditions sub-contract employment

Payment fees, royalties wages, rates
Duration seasonal, single continous, permanent

project casual
Means talent, originality versatility, skills
Negotiation collaboration direction
Artistic commercial professional

Authority reputation reputation
Figure 4.4 Production Relations In The Project Team
of the solitary character of writing, a large proportion of authors work as

freelancers), usually hired for one project at a time by consecutive
employers. They are frequently well-known inside the industry although
not necessarily outside. Stars are the high-profile, public names of the
culture industry, the subjects of media publicity, the well-known and
highly-reputed performers of the time. They too are usually contracted for
the duration of a single project, but where an individual has a proven sales
record, she or he may be signed to a long-term contract. Their terms of
engagement enable some to achieve considerable wealth and prestige.
The contract is a legal agreement between artist and company which
effectively acknowledges the artist's ownership of the original but assigns
reproduction rights to the company. It may refer to a single work or cover
a period of time; in the latter case it will usually specify the type and
volume of work to be produced by the artist over a period of time. Clauses
also cover the type and level of fees, rights and royalties to be paid by the
company as applicable (Frith 1978: 77-78, Hill 1983: 137-147).
Contracts express juridical recognition of the personalised labour which
has gone into the original's creation and its inseparability from the artist's
persona and oeuvre; it gives them strong residual ownership rights and
beneficial interests in its ongoing success as a reproduction (Hartnoll 1967:
814-815, Scholes 1955: 249-250). The differences between sub-contracting
and employment relations are the key to understanding the kind and
extent of the power and freedoms accorded contracted artists30 - whether
in leading executant or management positions - and just as important,
their economic interests. To elaborate: under the terms of the contract, the
company leases the artist's individual talents and the right to reproduce
their work. The price set in the contract is not a rate for the purchase of
labour-power but a measure of relative market value of their talents and
reputations, and is a rent paid for their relative creative and market
appeal31. They are contracted to provide their personal labour and/or
performance and/or an all-but-finished original, as an object to be worked
up by creative management and whose potential value cannot be realised
until reproduced as a commodity. Contracted artists are therefore posi-
tioned in the labour process not as labour personified or even personified
labour, but as personalised labour engaged as suppliers of intermediate
artistic goods, of originals which wholly or partly contain their singular
labour. In other words, these are not wage-labour relations but relations
between an intermediate goods supplier and commodity manufacturer.
Contracted artists, therefore, appear in the labour process not as labour-
power but as petty capitalists, as an independent unit of capital, hence able
to stand against the pressures of corporate production.
There are, however, a number of qualifications to their powers. Perhaps
the most important flows from the fact that the company owns both the
master transcribed from their original and the means of its reproduction.
Work which does not meet corporate creative policy will neither be
reproduced nor released. This places stars and freelancers is a dependent
position in relation to the corporation sub-contracting them. Further,
contracted artists have no rights beyond transcription, no capacity to stop
the company modifying the master in post-production, or over the
marketing and merchandising of the resulting commodities32. As suppliers
30 This discussion of the contracted artist, although similar in certain respects, is

preferable to Williams' discussion of post-artisanal and market professional
relations (1981: 45-48). Its conjunction with the following discussion of waged
and salaried professional creatives (cf. also Williams (1981: 51-2) on corporate
professionals) enables examination of the relations between these two forms of
employment under corporate conditions of production.
31 For example, record royalties vary widely according to individual performers.
In Australian rock music, an unknown band gets about 8% of the retail price
and a top name about 15% (The National Times 21-27 June 1985: 9-10, 25).
32 This is partly why contracted artists in some cases establish themselves as inde-
pendent companies: to gain control not only in production but also a measure
of control over circulation and the higher share of profits which ensue. For
of intermediate products, stars and freelancers have no alternative base

for economic or artistic accumulation; their powers are constrained and
circumscribed by the ownership relations governing other phases of the
commodity producing process.
Other conditions reinforce their independence. The corporations of
culture rely on their stars, especially those with commercial reputations, to
create the major works which go on to become best sellers and set new
stylistic trends. If talent is to provide what corporations seek, as decreed
by the ideologies of art, they need freedom of expression and the right to
negotiate creation in the search for originality. If restricted, they are
unlikely to perform to their utmost: worse than that, they might take their
talent elsewhere and sign with a competitor who does not. This confirms
their practical independence in the workplace, allowing them a degree of
creative autonomy, time to work on their art, and perform in other
contexts. For that reason, winning contracts has been and continues to be
the most consequential arena of struggle against capitalists for reputed
artists of every type33. Its terms underwrite the collaborative negotiation
which name artists can sustain with creative management and provide a
counter to the bureaucratic structures within which they are increasingly
forced to work.
That same contract aligns their economic interests with those of the
contracting company. Since it positions them in direct market relations
with their audiences and makes their income dependent on sales, con-
tracted artists must take some responsibility for the artistic quality and/or
marketability of the original. This creates pressures to compromise with
producers, directors and personal management to create an original which
their audience is likely to find appealing (e.g. Macgowen 1965: 321-323).
The logic of commercialism, therefore, limits their desire to experiment
and control and is the common ground on which contracted artists and
creative management meet. Further, the powers of contracted artists in
the workplace are contingent on artists replenishing their reputations.
Their economic prospects and artistic authority are reciprocally deter-
mined by the market power of their names; the logic of commercialism
examples in the recording industry see Time (12 February 1973: 40-43) also
Frith (1978).
33 For historical details of the struggle over rights see Laurenson (1971: 131-132)
and Rickword (1979: 21-29) for authors; Raynor (1972: 237, 345-349, 1976:
31-33,186-190) for composers and musicians; Hartnoll (1967: 201, 814-815) for
playwrights and actors. Hollywood screenwriters and directors were recently
engaged in strike action over residuals (The Weekend Australian 4-5 July 1987:
24).
demands that they keep its value spiralling upwards. Accordingly, they
must publicise their name. In entrepreneurial fashion, aspirant and
established names alike engage in a constant round of promotion and
publicity activities contrived by creative management and personal
agents - although conversely, for some, the enigma of invisibility or
distanced, artistic integrity produces the same effect.
What does a knowledge of contracted artist conditions add to our
knowledge of the corporate form of cultural production? From the point
of view of the corporations of culture, these production relations return a
significant degree of control to the artist within the creative process,
reintroducing the indeterminacies of the art/capital relation the project
team is supposed to reduce. Nonetheless, because of the terms of the
contract, corporate management can be confident that pursuit of individ-
ual interest will coincide with theirs and will temper their artistic ambition
with the hard edge of business calculation. Most importantly, it transforms
stars and freelancers into small units of capital who must live by the laws
of the marketplace or fail - a marketplace dominated by the companies
which engage them. In that sense, while the creative stage of production
appears generally to be only formally subsumed under capital, this
particular element of the collective artist has been transformed into
capital: not variable capital, but capital itself - a living personification of
value in motion - and made subject to the demands of the corporate form
of production.
4.5.2 Professional Creatives

The supporting artists in the project team are employed on wages or
salaries in permanent or casual positions. These are the un-named
professional creatives who carry out most of the behind-the-scenes
work - the studio musicians and arrangers, staff writers and designers,
advertising copywriters and graphic artists, dancers, journalists, actors and
screenplay writers, radio announcers, photographers, graphic artists, and
so on - and who make up the bulk of cultural workers in the corporations
of culture.
In contrast to contracted artists, professional creative work is substan-
tially rationalised, and subject to creative management. Those who take
up professional creative employment exchange artistic freedom and an
ethos of experimentation for financial security and bureaucratic working
conditions. By embedding the employment relation in the organisation of
the labour process, the corporations of culture have transformed the
nature of artistic labour; it turns artists into a generalised capacity to
perform creative work - it positions them in the labour process as creative

labour-power.
Professional creatives are possessors less of the innate and extraordi-
nary talents of the artist than acquired, generalised craft-like skills of a
cultural worker. By virtue of their experience or the formal training
(increasingly the latter)34, professionals are expert and versatile practition-
ers of a range of artistic skills and techniques. What makes them valuable
to their employers is their ability to perform across a range of cultural
forms, on cue, and to a high standard. Since creatives are defined in terms
of ownership only of their labour-power, they are paid not market-based
rights or royalties, but hourly rates, wages and salaries based on average
not individual labour value, which are set as minimum standards in union
awards and industry agreements35. Compared to stars and freelancers,
they appear in the labour process not as an inspirational, recognisable
34 The reconstitution of cultural practices as generalised skills - and hence the

possibility of transforming artistic labour into creative labour-power - has
been made possible partly through developments taking place outside of pro-
duction itself. Particularly important has been the role of the modern demo-
cratic state in providing educational institutions which introduce students to
aspects and institutions of cultural practice, hence directly or indirectly training
them as a potential labour force (cf. also Miege 1979: 305). Equally, the state
itself in its function as patron, has led the way in providing secure employment
for many forms of artist in national opera, dance and theatre companies, na-
tional and regional orchestras and national broadcasting systems. Note the con-
tradiction confronting the state in its dual function as patron of the arts and
supplier and regulator of the creative labour market; its educational and perfor-
mance bodies are infused with the traditional ideologies of art, yet these bodies
are expected to operate in a context which is dominated by commercial forms
and production systems.
35 Despite the formation of various unions, guilds and associations since the late
19th century, membership amongst artists is generally low, although highest in
those sectors (e.g., media) where employment predominates (e.g. Australia
Council 1983: 62-65). This indifference reflects prevailing ideologies of creative
individualism which flow from the constitution of art, where worker strategies
have been geared towards individual negotiation with employers on the basis
of personalised labour-power, or by setting up as a freelancer or independent
company. However, as the proportion of artists employed as professional cre-
atives increases and there is wider recognition of changes in the cultural work-
place as discussed here, there may be wider reliance on the value of collec-
tivism. To that extent, the recent experiences of journalists (media concentra-
tion, impact of technology) and their changes of attitude (e.g. Bonney and Wil-
son 1983: 110-123, Windschuttle and Windschuttle 1981: 236-241, 301-309),
may be a sign of things to come.
talent but as an un-named but trained capacity to consistently labour in a

supporting role. In so far as professional creatives reveal the extent of
degradation of artistic labour, they approximate the detail worker of
Marx' manufacturing model of production - labour personified rather
than personal labour, variable capital to be put to work across continuous
cycles of production36.
Creatives are expected to work under direction. Creative managers
personify organisational demands for a type and quality of original created
at a price, and the task of cultural workers is to dedicate their skills
efficiently and competently in the manner required. Casuals employed in
part-time work or as extras, such as weekend announcers, stringers, chorus
singers and dancers, are the most explicit case - their obedience moti-
vated by long lines of unemployed hopefuls looking for 'their big break'.
Permanent professionals such as staff writers, designers, and musicians,
ensemble actors and musicians, general reporters and continuity announc-
ers and so on, possess the craft-based skills and competences needed by
companies to support the stars, which accords them a restricted opera-
tional right to negotiate creation within their own contribution. The terms
of their negotiation, however, are of a different order. This is less
collaboration than direction; guidance and teaching as opposed to coopera-
tion between equals. To creative managers, professional creatives repre-
sent a different subject to contracted artists, a versatile and capable
instrument at their disposal.
Ideologies of professionalism provide grounds for their consent to
subjection. Employment is more secure than the market-mediated situa-
tion of contracted artists, less subject to the whims of fashion. Professional
job performance can bring long-term employment in an industry which is
notoriously fickle, and there is pride to be gained from a difficult job
competently done. Moreover, they can win returns beyond their station;
top-rank professionals with significant reputations - names within the
industry - can appropriate a measure of the rights due to stars, at the very
least, the right to contribute to the strategic planning process. Under some
circumstances, they can demand and get naming rights to their contribu-
tion, as in the case of reporters writing by-lined features, television
presenters identified in the programme title, or the key workers listed in
36 As befits their historical constitution, some express a worker consciousness

which is antagonistic to their subsumption, but since commercialism is the spe-
cific focus of attack, an artistic idealism is projected as a counterfactual. Hence,
for example, session musicians search out opportunities to play 'real' music
(e.g. Frith 1978: 162-163) and journalists harbour aspirations to write plays,
novels, poetry and so on (e.g. Glasgow University Media Group 1976: 71-72).
Conclusion 141
film or recording credits. These high-status creatives work not as anony-

mous creatives like most of those employed in the project team, but as
personified labour - although naming makes them appear like person-
alised labour. While bringing no entitlements to royalties, this indexes the
significance of their reputations and entitles them to air their views at the
planning level. Furthermore, if their names appear regularly on successful
products or they win industry awards, individual creatives can build the
sorts of reputations which attract promotion or job offers from competing
firms, enabling them to convert their artistic into organisational authority
and/or higher salaries - perhaps even to break free of salaried employ-
ment and establish themselves as freelancers or stars (cf. also Elliott 1978).
Accordingly, professional creatives have material foundations for cooper-
ating with creative management in creating originals of a high standard
while simultaneously asserting the value of their own contribution. Since it
indexes accretion of reputation, the struggle to be identified, to be publicly
recognised as a name of note in an industry which thrives on reputation, is
an important goal for professional creatives. It modifies the dynamics of
authority within the project team, by providing a foundation for the
authority to claim a more gainful position within the relations of distribu-
tion, a path towards relative freedom from workplace control and in some
cases, escape from the wage-labour relation itself.
4.6 Conclusion
Using the essential relations posited by labour process theory, this chapter
has examined the organisational conditions under which cultural commodi-
ties are produced in the corporations of culture. Because of the artist/capi-
talist contradiction, the creative stage of production is organised along
apparently simpler lines than the corporate form of the reproduction
stage. The degradation of creative work has proceeded only a short
distance because of the historical constitution of the artist; artistic workers
have a structured capacity to resist the inroads of capital, especially the
typical path of technological reconstitution of the division of labour. As a
result, it takes a form somewhat like the workshop model of capitalist
production.
The essential feature of the corporate form of capitalist cultural
commodity production is that the position of the artist in the production
process appears historically as the project team, constituted by its struc-
ture of relations based on a producer and director as creative managers,
and leading and supporting executants who are engaged or employed to

perform the originals they design. Again, because of the form of labour,
relations between creative management and workers is characterised by a
style of management based on negotiation rather than direct command.
Intersecting the organisational structure of authority relations are the
orientations of commercialism and professionalism, representing alterna-
tive power bases which impact variously upon each of the positions in the
team and which, while representing a form of external control over the
collective artist, are also a resource which members can mobilise against
the powers of capital. They are also aligned with the two fundamental
production relations cutting across the project team, whose members are
either engaged as contracted artists, generally directors and leading
executants (a sub-contracting relation with the artist as an intermediate
goods producer), or employed as professional creatives, usually support-
ing executants (wage labour relations). Producers are generally employed
but are increasingly appearing as executive managers.
Despite having the general form of a workshop form of organisation, as
we begin to look closer, the project team in some of its dimensions seems
to represent significant degradation of artistic conditions of work. On the
one hand, the consolidation of creative management within the project
team represents appropriation by the corporations of culture of the
conception function within creation, thereby relegating the rest of the
team to the position of executant and making them subject to its authority
structures - even though stars and freelancers, by virtue of their reputa-
tions, are allowed to participate in planning of the original. But the
clearest indication of inroads by the capital relation is seen in the
conditions of professional creative work. Once having transformed the
traditional artistic leader into creative management and reserved for them
the right to imagine, and preserved the traditional freedoms of the artist
for the contracted artist - in return for a market-oriented approach to
creativity - the way was clear for capitalists to reorganise the conditions
of supporting artists - whose indifference to unionisation meant few
barriers were erected. These workers, especially since the 1950s, have had
many of the traditional artistic autonomies and controls stripped from
them. They have been asked to exchange the status of labour-power,
direction by creative management, and work in the shadow of stars, for
secure employment and regular paypackets - although top-flight profes-
sionals with significant reputations seem able to win conditions close to
those of the stars. Nonetheless, it should be remembered that artists'
conditions have been substantially preserved because capitalists have
increased the rate of surplus-value production primarily in the reproduc-
Conclusion 143
tion stage of production, transforming duplication and transcription into

unskilled and semi-skilled forms of work.
The project team, therefore, still represents considerable indeterminacy
in the labour process for the corporations of culture. However, its controls
have been tightened considerably since the 1950s - the period marking
the maturation of the corporate form of production - through the
bureaucratisation of creative management and its planning techniques, the
effect of which has been to significantly rationalise the process of
creativity. 'Formatting', as I call this development, is the focus of the
following chapter.
Chapter 5
Rationalising the Creative Stage of
Production: The Formatting of Creativity
5.1 Introduction
Even within the project team around which the corporate form of cultural
production revolves, an indeterminacy persists in the relations between
artist and management. Although its organisation restricts and reshapes
the rights bestowed upon artists by their history, strong residues of their
constitution remain embedded in its structures, allowing artists a relative
autonomy in their work.
In principle, this openness should enable the creation of a wide and
variant range of originals. We find, however, a multitude of artists, critics
and audiences complaining of the tendency within corporate cultural
production towards formulaic production. Observing the increasing con-
centration of ownership in publishing, one writer has commented:
Concentration will mean...a more homogeneous product, which will mean more
gardening books, more Fonda workout books, more diet books and more Wilbur
Smith books (Times on Sunday 31 January 1988: 13).
Similarly, Simon Frith has argued that domination by a few major
corporations has turned present-day popular music towards "production
to formulas which limit individual creativity...market choice rather than
artistic judgement...an obsession with fashion...and flattery of medi-
ocrity" (1978: 192), creating "a culture of predictable market tastes and
indulgent superstars, of slick radio shows and standardised sounds...in
short, music business as usual" (1978: 209). Early and sustained arguments
of this kind permeate the work of the Frankfurt School writers, of which
Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment - especially the
essay 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' (chapter
4 in 1979) - is a classic example (see also Adorno 1978a, 1978b, Marcuse
1972). Their bitter and pessimistic attack on the "mass culture of ad-
vanced, monopoly capitalism" is sprinkled with their concerns: "Films,
radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in
146 Rationalising the Creative Stage of Production
every part"; "Under monopoly all mass culture is identical..."; "...the

achievement of standardisation and mass production..."; "The ruthless
unity in the culture industry..." (1979: 120-122), and so on. At one point
they assert that:
Not only are the hit songs, stars and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly
invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from
them and only appears to change (1979: 125).
Adorno's celebrated attack on "the fundamental characteristic of popular
music: standardisation" (1978a: 199) makes similar points.
While many of these accounts evidence an unacceptable elitism, there is
a certain empirical truth to their observations. The need, therefore, is to
explain the contradiction between the structural indeterminacy inherent
to the creative stage of production and the systematic predictability of its
products. Without developing their argument, Adorno and Horkheimer
suggest that the sameness which characterises modern cultural production
stems from:
The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method
of turning out its products (factory-like not only in the studio but, more or less, in
the compilation of cheap biographies, pseudodocumentary novels and hit songs)
(1979:163).
The arguments presented in the previous chapter concerning the work-
shop-like conditions of creative production, however, suggest that this
formulation is incorrect - although Adorno (1978a: 205) himself seems
closer to the mark when he observes elsewhere that "The production of
popular music is highly centralised in its economic organisation, but still
'individualistic' in its social mode of production".
This chapter will show that the explanation for this contradiction does
indeed lie in the organisation of creation in the corporations of culture:
that despite the relative autonomy of the collective artist in the project
team, there is a tendency towards formula and cliche in creation and that
it flows from the formatting of the creative stage of production. Corporate
creation is underlaid by a structuring principle1 which articulates economic
1 The term is used in the sense of ruled constraint and enablement and is derived
from the work of Giddens (e.g. 1984: 16-28). The rules of a practice I under-
stand in his dual sense of rules and resources, recursively implicated in the
reproduction of social systems. The structuring principles - the formats - I
discuss are, like Giddens' structures, rule-resource sets, implicated in the insti-
tutional articulation of social systems (1984: 377). They are systematic clusters
of rules which both express and constitute the articulation of economic, organi-
sational and cultural practices in a social field and which in combination, gener-
Bureaucratisation of the Workplace 147
and organisational imperatives to specifically cultural imperatives in a

context of expanded production, realising their combination through
company-advocated rules of creative work. As these conditions devel-
oped, thereby constituting the corporate form of cultural production, their
effect was to substantially rationalise the creativity engaged in production.
5.2 Bureaucratisation of the Workplace in the

Corporate Era of Capital
An important dimension of recent literature dealing with the reorganisa-

tion of work in capitalist firms since the late-19th century has been
investigation of the specific forms of labour control they developed;
Braverman (1974), Edwards (1979) and Littler (1982) are only some of the
more important contributors. Putting aside their differences, the empirical
thread linking these works is that during the early and middle decades of
the 20th century, a variety of direct and indirect methods were installed to
manage the workplace in the interests of profitability. In this sense, the
period appears as a distinct phase of capitalist development in which
labour rationalisation (Littler 1982: 188) was an important organisational
concern.
5.2.1 Edwards: The Embedding of Bureaucratic Control

In distinguishing bureaucratic from technical control, Edwards argues that
above all else it made workers' behaviour more predictable, and pre-
dictability brought with it greater control for the corporation. It:
institutionalised the exercise of capitalist power, making power appear to emanate
from the formal organisation itself. Hierarchical relations were transformed from
relations between (unequally powerful) people to relations between jobholders or
relations between jobs themselves, abstracted from the specific people or the
concrete work tasks involved. 'Rule of Law' - the firm's law - replaced rule by
supervisor command (1979: 145).
ate a specific logic of action. For a specific application of a similar approach in

the sociology of organisations, see Clegg (1975: 119-124) and Clegg and
Dunkerley (1980: 501-502), especially their notion of the modes of rationality
underlying organisations and through which they are constituted.
According to Edwards, bureaucratic control was a corporate response to

the fact that technical control had become the seedbed for new forms of
shopfloor conflict and spreading unionisation. In essence, it involved the
explicit analysis, systematisation, and standardisation of the conditions of
labour, resulting in sets of approved descriptions, rules and directions.
Specifications were drawn up identifying job entry requirements, starting
pay, location, the tasks to be performed, the objects to be used and the
pace and quality of work required, promotion procedures and definitions
of responsibilities and so on. These were tied to systems for supervising
and evaluating workers' performance, distributing rewards and imposing
punishments (1979:136-142).
This approach habituates and sediments day-to-day operations. Once in
place, the work of management can proceed without the need of the
conscious intervention or the personal power of foremen, supervisors, or
capitalists and in ways which reinforce elements of hierarchical and
technical control (1979: 131). Its advent marked a shift from the personal
and arbitrary preferences of the owner or manager to methodical formula-
tion and application of impersonal rules of practice. Through it, employers
extended their control over the work performed throughout the organisa-
tion, making worker behaviour more predictable. Despite its coercive
power, bureaucratic control did not eliminate struggle between employers
and employees but established the terrain of contest as the rules them-
selves, rather than the form of domination represented by the structure of
the labour process itself (1979: 130-132, cf. also Clegg and Dunkerley 1980:
433-482).
This argument demonstrates the bureaucratisation taking place in major
companies in the middle decades of the 20th century; how a system of
constraint founded upon a combination of hierarchical power and sedi-
mented rules was erected alongside technical forms of control within
which work was organised. It completed construction of what was defined
in the previous chapter as the corporate model of capitalist production.
Edwards also notes in passing that bureaucratic control establishes the
impersonal force of company rules or company policy as the basis of
control (1979:131), a point which becomes important later in this analysis.
The rules inserted into production have a content and an object, created
out of principles underlying the operation of the corporation, the most
fundamental of which is profitability, yet flowing from the type of
commodity being manufactured. Each activity within the labour process,
each phase and stage of production, is activated through a matrix of rules
which appear in the form of a 'policy' comprising strategic dimensions
(planning) and operational dimensions (activities) (cf. also Clegg and
Dunkerley 1980: 444-450, 501-503). Some aspects of policy are written
Corporate Control in the Creative Stage of Production 149
down - albeit in fragments - in job and task specifications, memos,

reports and manuals, while others exist discursively in the culture of the
organisation - the everyday understandings and values of workers and
management. These refer to the particular types of raw materials, tech-
nologies and forms of labour invested in by the organisation, the purpose
of the organisation and the character of its output. In the daily organisa-
tion of work, as Clegg (1975: 77) points out, these policies are invoked
'iconically', as an idea(l), a standard measure of activity. Their constituent
rules become not only a vehicle of control but also a resource within the
work process itself (cf. Giddens 1979: 16-28), coordinating the activities of
those who people positions in the structure of relations which underlie the
production process.
5.3 Corporate Control in the Creative Stage

of Production
As seen in chapter 4, technical control has had a major impact in the

reproduction stage of production but not in the creative stage. Since the
1950s, however, creation in the corporate context has been overtaken by a
kind of bureaucratic control as a consequence of moves to make creativity
more predictable in the face of changing market conditions and tightening
conditions of profitability. A classic example of the outcome is provided
by Coser et al. in their study of the culture and commerce of publishing.
They illustrate their discussion of 'fiction factories' with a case study of
Book Creations, Inc. headed by Lyle Kenyon Engel. Over fifteen years,
this company had turned out five thousand paperback titles 'authored' by
some eighty professional writers by filling out story outlines provided by
their employer:
Engel usually dreams up ideas for an overall series and for individual books in the
series...When an idea has jelled, he contacts a paperback publisher and hawks the
idea. No writer's name is mentioned. Only after the book has been sold will Engel
approach a suitable writer from his large stable. Once the book is written, Engel's
seven editors see that the formula has been successfully followed. Engel spends a
considerable part of his advances on publicity...Engel, like a steamroller, ho-
mogenises the products of diverse writers so that they turn out identical products to
be packaged and sold in huge numbers (1982: 263-265).
This single instance captures much of what will be discussed in this
chapter. Under the corporate form of cultural production, administration
has been inserted into the sphere of art. Creative work is performed to a
management plan. Specific, fixed cultural rules are formulated as company
policy by its creative managers and applied to members of the project
team. These are key conditions in the process I refer to as formatting.
Why has formatting emerged? Why is it coming to dominate main-
stream cultural production? To understand these changes, we need to
examine the organisational consequences of the contradictions of the
cultural commodity as discussed in chapter 2, using publishing firms to
illustrate the argument.
5.3.1 The Consequences of Expanded Production

on Creative Work
One of the chief characteristics of cultural commodities as commodities is
their sales pattern (see Figure 2.2). Even highly successful works demon-
strate, to use a marketing term, a truncated 'product life cycle' (also
Escarpit 1966: 119; Dessauer 1974: 30). Because the originality and
distinctiveness which attracts people to newly-released works in the first
place are undermined by their increasing popularity, as more and more
copies are sold and people become familiar with a work, its capacity to
excite, inform and amuse diminishes and the urgency of audience interest
dies (cf. Escarpit 1966:128). The initial rush of sales peaks, then declines.
As previously noted, this has a range of organisational consequences for
manufacturers. They are locked into recurrent cycles of production (also
Curwen 1981: 17) and must organise a procession of new artistic projects
through their creative departments3 (cf. Coser et al. 1982: 128), but
The term is borrowed from the broadcasting media where it is used to refer
only to the manifestation of this mode of rationality. My use refers to the combi-
nation of structuring principles underlying the creative stage of production and
its manifestations. The term 'format' is also occasionally used to refer to techni-
cal aspects of the commodity; in publishing, for example, in relation to page
size and paper type, fonts and font size, binding, and so on. These are essen-
tially aspects of the transcription phase; as such, I am presuming these to be
part of formatting, but am ignoring them here to focus on the creative stage of
production.
To simplify matters, the following discussion presumes that new originals are
created in each production cycle. It largely ignores fact that the next original
may be a new edition of previously released work (e.g. paperback version of
hardback), reissue, translation, novelisation, reprint, collection, even repackag-
ing of work from the backlist. This is work almost entirely carried out by cre-
ative management with the help perhaps of some realisation (design) workers
because of the arbitrary character of the creative process, companies need

to increase the productivity of their artistic labour force and coordinate its
work around a production schedule.
To do so, the early speculative entrepreneurs of the culture industry
relied on numbers, by establishing commercial relations with many
independent artists. Creation was organised along the lines described in
chapter 4 as the 'simple cooperation' model of capitalist production.
Based on merchant-artisan relations, it appeared variously as simple
exchanges between artist and intermediary, a putting out system, or in
some cases, a craft workshop. Economic authority flowed from ownership
and/or control of the means of reproduction, although artistic control was
limited to the cash nexus (labour, finished original). Relations of artistic
(cf. economic) production governed the process of creation. Ownership of
the talents, knowledges and skills necessary to create, lay with artists, both
individually and collectively. There was no social foundation or organisa-
tional mechanism for the entrepreneur as owner or controller of the
reproduction system, to appropriate the right to imagine or direct the
making of the original - to take, in other words, the role of the master.
This arrangement seems to have prevailed throughout the expanding
culture industry from its beginnings till around the 19th century (and
continues in some areas of present-day non-corporate production such as
art galleries and craft markets). It supported the large publishing enter-
prises of the 15-17th centuries owned by the Kobergers, Plantin, Elzivier
and others (cf. Febvre and Martin 1976: 109-166) and the 'slop shops of
literature' of 18-19th century English and Western European publishers
(Laurenson 1971: 130-136, Steinberg 1955: 142-171). Even early examples
of mass employment under artist-entrepreneurs such as Lully at the
Academic Royal de Musique (Raynor 1976: 156-157) and Scribe's 19th
century 'play factories' (Freedley and Reeves 1968: 341) seem to have
been built upon this configuration.
Once the size of the company and the scale of production reaches a
certain point, as was increasingly the case from about the 19th century to
the first half of 20th century, and depending on the costs and/or time
involved in producing the original (cf. film, opera), it becomes necessary
for owners to engage artists as permanent or seasonal artistic teams
(e.g. Escarpit 1966: 132-133, Gedin 1977: 23-24). This is actually an important
aspect of creative management work especially in the private goods sector,
entailing working through the back-catalogue and stocks of older masters, as-
sessing their potential for re-release in the light of changing market trends.
Companies find re-release particularly attractive because of the rate of profit
attainable from its low marginal production costs.
working under the independent control of a master; this is the craft

workshop model noted in chapter 3. In the performing arts, for example,
the 'long run' and touring companies inaugurated by 19th century theatri-
cal entrepreneurs such as Daly, Boucicault and Pastor (Freedley and
Reeves 1968: 311-321, Hartnoll 1968: 194-202), and the concert orchestras
of Strauss in Vienna and Offenbach in Paris (Weber 1975: 50-53,110-112),
seem to be examples. It even survived, but not for long, into the earliest
days of film-making, recording and radio (although it continues to play an
prominent role in modern-day small and medium-scale independent
production). In the craft workshop approach, the entrepreneur establishes
a partnership with an independent artist to head the team, the core of
which comprises experienced artists employed seasonally or casually by
the artist-manager - though leading positions are sub-contracted to
popular artists4. Apart from the introduction of wage-labour into the
creative phase, its other distinctive feature is the centrality and power of
the artistic leader (in some cases also the owner), engaged because of their
history of commercial success. While the work of the team is made to
revolve around their talents and guidance, their artistic control is separate
from and provides a barrier against, economic control.
This craft workshop system with its commercially oriented master-
manager, introduces indirect artistic control for the entrepreneur. In
organisational terms, it is more rational than the cooperation model;
This indicates the economic importance of the sphere of 'independent' cultural

production (for a discussion in publishing, see Coser et al. 1982: 36-69). At little
risk to the corporations, these writers, musicians, actors, dancers and so on get
on with the business of innovation in small-time venues. Much of the initial
work of creative management is carried out by independent personal managers
and agents (e.g. Coser et al. 1982: 285-307) and the corporations are becoming
increasingly reliant on them for these services (e.g. literary agents, authors and
publishers discuss their roles in The Weekend Australian 21-22 December 1985:
Literary Magazine 6). When practiced, and having already primed the market,
they are contracted by the majors for volume release. The corporations can
pick and choose from those clamouring at their doors as market conditions
shift, without having to bear the financial and industrial costs of a permanent
workforce.
Equally, of course, where intermediate goods and services are routinely re-
quired by corporations at the core, favourable business opportunities exist for
independents within the semi-periphery. Thus, progressively, throughout the
20th century, agencies of various kinds, including casting and talent agencies
(see Macgowen 1965), news agencies (Boyd-Barrett 1980) and advertising agen-
cies (Fox 1984) have flourished, becoming a significant component of the cul-
ture industry.
artistic authority is invested in an individual manager who works over a

division of labour. It is still arbitrary in its specifically artistic aspects,
operating through charisma; the right of artist-masters to direct other
artists flows from their personal talents and reputation and not their
organisational position. The originals produced display their personal
touch, reflecting their style of work, and are likely to demonstrate the
same commercial potential. This makes their artistic persona crucial to the
commercial goals of the owner, but still there is no foundation for direct
company control, much less via impersonal rule.
Within publishing, the growth and consolidation of newspaper compa-
nies illustrates the transition from craft workshop to the capitalist work-
shop. As emerging reading publics in the 18th and 19th centuries provided
opportunities for expansion, weekly, bi- or tri-weekly and later daily
publication permitted permanent employment of writers with new types of
skills (journalists), coordinated by a leading artist, the editor (e.g. Harris
1978, Asquith 1978, Lee 1978; for examples, see Souther 1981). This form
did not evolve further until companies reorganised from the late 19th
century under the dual impact of new competitive conditions and a push
from journalists towards professionalisation. From then, newspaper pro-
duction was increasingly organised around a more specialised division of
labour; journalistic work was sub-divided into sub-editors, specialist and
general reporters, rules and conventions were developed governing
employer-employee relations, job specifications, gradings, salary levels,
and codes of practice, and the position of editor was ascribed a legal-
rational form of authority. In combination, these conditions gave compa-
nies their present-day, corporate, bureaucratic form with creation organ-
ised around a project team (cf. also Lee 1978, Murdock and Golding 1978,
Tunstall 1971. For parallels in book publishing, see Coser et al. 1982:
97-199, Tebbel 1981, and for the recording industry see Perrow 1979, and
film, see Kindern 1982a).
Bureaucratisation within the creative stage of production is therefore
partly explained as an organisational response to the economics and
dynamics of competitive expansion. The irrationality of creativity was
mediated by a division of labour on the one hand, and direction by
creative managers employed as agents of capital on the other. This is like
Edwards' (1979) model of technical control. However, there is no neces-
sary imperative within the capitalist workshop model to further tighten
control over creativity. This is partly precluded by the conventions of art.
More specifically, since it is difficult to raise the rate of surplus value
production in the creative stage (which had been profitably raised in
reproduction), there is more to be gained, as Littler has argued (see
chapter 2), by improving the efficiency of circulation. The fact is that
formatting represents a tendency towards rationalisation of cultural work

as cultural work, as a development of the workshop model. The question is
why?
5.3.2 Consequences of Corporate Commercialism

on Creative Work
By focusing attention of the corporate desire to produce immediately
saleable commodities in an unpredictable market, we see one of the most
influential imperatives underlying the development of formatting. Its
purpose is hinted at by Coser et al. in their remark that:
Not only is it hard to predict in advance which will be successful books...it is
difficult to plan exactly when a successful author will deliver his or her next
manuscript. The vagaries of public taste are not always ascertainable in advance,
and the productivity of creative individuals can be equally unpredictable (1982:
182).
Two of the basic problems confronting companies needing regular supply
of saleable commodities, are first, that art presumes the free flight of
imagination unbounded by non-artistic considerations; and second, that
while tastes are reasonably stable, audience response to particular works is
quite unpredictable, especially those which are highly original. Histori-
cally, the first problem has been confronted by dealing with the second. In
essence, corporations orient their production towards commercialism5,
In those forms of divisional, subsidiary or independent production where the

conventions of art or any of its sub-divisions - e.g. scholarship - remain impor-
tant and the bottom line does not reign supreme (Coser et al. 1982: 15), some
releases do not appear particular commercial; i.e. no matter how economical
their production, because of their strictly limited appeal, the company is likely
to make an overall loss (but which can be offset against more successful titles).
The publication of poetry and some forms of classical music are frequently
cited examples. Thus companies can claim to have met their social responsibili-
ties as 'cultural gatekeepers' (Coser 1976) and provide some artistic satisfac-
tions for the staff concerned - that their "asceticism in this world is the precon-
dition for salvation in the next" (Bourdieu 1981: 284). Coser et al. (1982),
Dessauer (1974) and Escarpit (1966) all provide examples of innovative pub-
lishing which effectively ignores short-term profitability, and emphasise that
even within large corporations, an artistic ethos occasionally dominates com-
merciality.
Bourdieu offers a more telling observation. In many cases, given the dynam-
ics of the art market, apparently art-based decisions are made, in fact, in the
hope of future profitability. It might seem to a company that while an innova-
where audience taste preferences as indexed by existing patterns of

commodity sales, dictate the direction of creation. This creates a logic of
repetition which surfaces as formatting, as a management control applied
to the project team and which has the effect of rationalising the creative
stage of production.
When sales of their current frontlist titles begin to decline, like other
cultural commodity manufacturers, publishers have to replace them. As
there are no certain means for predicting audience responses, many of
their choices - in fact, the large majority - are abject failures, failing to
recover the costs of their production (Dessauer 1974: 36). A work created
by a star, however, is a reasonably safe bet for the next release. A small
number of artists are defined as the major artists of the times and
audiences purchase their works in enormous quantities, turning them into
the best sellers which return to companies the massive profits that enable
expansion6 (cf. Escarpit 1966: 117-118, Steinberg 1955: 22S-247)7.
As discussed in chapter 2, and taking books as an example, best sellers
typically exhibit a sales pattern which rises sharply to a peak within a
matter of months after publication and then go into steady decline
(Curwen 1981:18). Their relative rarity, the speed at which they peak, the
magnitude of profits they generate and the rate at which these are
returned to the company (cf. Escarpit 1966:119), are their most important
live work might not sell immediately, the long-term prospects of this and other
works in the artist's repertoire, when finally recognised by the artistic commu-
nity, are much rosier. Bourdieu cites the case of Editions de Minuit who took
the gamble on Becket's Waiting For Godot, initially at some loss (1981:
282-283).
While obviously applicable to private and quasi-private cultural goods, despite
initial appearances, this argument also applies to public cultural goods; i.e. the
media and their contents - including broadcasting, although the connection
here is analogical rather than literal. Newspapers have best selling days when
important, topical news stories break (or they run a popular promotion); so do
magazines and periodicals when they lead with articles on topical or relevant
public issues. Radio and television stations have days of particularly popular
programming, where other days draw only average audiences. Of course, in the
broadcasting case, we are not dealing with sales, but popularity does reflect
consumption, and their product cycle is measured in hours not weeks or
months.
Escarpit (1966: 115-134) distinguishes usefully between what he calls 'fast-
sellers', 'steady-sellers' and 'best-sellers', in a manner which resembles Bour-
dieu's (1981) brief but excellent analysis. Since my purposes are slightly differ-
ent (and there may be more connection between fast and best sellers than he
credits), I have collapsed the first and last of these into a single category of
'best seller'.
features, and explain the quest for the golden seller which preoccupies
many corporations of culture, publishers included (Coser et al. 1982: 18).
Compared to many other mass-produced commodity lines such as clothes,
packaged foods or cars, their product life cycle is relatively short; a limit
case offered by Escarpit (1966: 117) covers less than 18 months -
although most actual instances are much shorter. At the point of decline,
rather than withdrawing the title, the publisher has several options.
Remaining stocks can be kept on the backlist till all copies are finally sold,
or if rated amongst the 2 or 3% of books which become the sales successes
of the year, it can be reprinted in paperback form and later repackaged as
a 'standard' or 'classic', perhaps even transformed into a television series
or film - the sale of tie-ins and subsidiary rights are a significant source of
additional profits especially for trade houses (Coser et al. 1982: 212,
Dessauer 1974: 31). Re-release usually brings another spurt in sales
although not of the same intensity, but significantly extends the effective
market life of the original work. Since the marginal costs of re-release are
relatively low, this maintains a healthy flow of profits back to the
corporation (Dessauer 1974: 30; Escarpit 1966: 119, see especially the
'anatomy of a best seller', Curwen 1981: 36-37).
Accordingly, the extraordinary, even excessive emphasis placed on best
sellers (Dessauer 1974: 46) leads companies inevitably to compete furi-
ously for the work of established and emerging stars as part of the cult of
the celebrity (Coser et al. 1982: 221). This formula has a long history in the
culture industry: for example, like present-day corporations, music publish-
ers from the 18th century sought out the new works of popular composers,
late-19th century vaudeville and variety impresarios signed up the major
singers, actors and performers of the period (e.g. Raynor 1978: 147-154),
and early film moguls offered rich contracts to the major stars their earlier
movies had created (Kindern 1982b. See also the case of the author James
Clavell, The Weekend Australian 5-6 March 1988: Magazine 3, or radio
industry battles over 'its million dollar megastars', The Bulletin 5 February
1985: 76-78).
Having signed a star, the company sets out to exploit their name by
releasing as much of their work as possible, but like the life cycle of the
commodity, a star too, is subject to the ebb and flow of popularity. Too
many releases, too quickly, leads to overexposure. Audience familiarity
breeds a commercial contempt and their reputation begins to wane.
Signing stars in order to secure continuous sales of their total output,
therefore, is a strategy with limitations: if long-term success is the goal,
exploitation must be tempered and release patterns carefully managed.
If unsuccessful in signing established stars, companies have other
options. For example, publishers can search out developing but unknown
artists by reading Over the transom' (unsolicited) manuscripts, those

referred by agents or patrons, and 'talent scouting', i.e. doing the rounds of
minor publishers, clubs, conferences and workshops to identify those with
artistic and commercial potential8 (cf. Coser et al. 1982: 129). A one-off
alternative is encouraging luminaries from other spheres such as journal-
ists, ex-presidents, stockbrokers or movie stars to put pen to paper (cf.
Coser et al. 1982: 60). With appropriate marketing and publicity, a best
seller can be created from these beginnings (cf. Coser et al. 1982: 200-223).
Best seller strategies are predicated on company expectations for
continuity; that stars will produce works similar in type and style to those
which made them famous (Escarpit 1966: 151-152). Commercial thinking
presumes that the strongest predictor of success is to repeat the formula.
When, for example, editorial managers assess drafts as manuscripts near
completion, they pressure authors to be consistent and adhere to the rules
of form - as Dessauer ingenuously comments: "to achieve the best
organisation, the most appropriate emphasis, the right tone, the optimal
length, the proper slant for his (sic) work" (1974: 38). The logic of
commercialism also appeals to the star. Since their contract ties their
income to sales, they too adopt a market orientation to their art,
motivating them to create more of the same. Name-based approaches to
creation, therefore, represent a commercial strategy to rationalise the
indeterminacies of the cultural marketplace. Offering audiences more of
what they have previously purchased reveals the logic of repetition and
continuity that underlies commercialism in culture industry. It demon-
strates in weak form the principles guiding corporations towards format-
ting the creative stage of production9.
8 Ultimately, the decision to reproduce a work depends on the company's assess-

ment of its commercial potential; a belief not only in terms of its artistic worth
(the bottom line cannot afford to be the sole concern of creative management),
but also its market value, its capacity to meet existing demand and hence at-
tract a profitable level of sales. In some cases it might seem to the company like
a 'sure-fire hit'; in others, editorial and marketing staff might recognise an in-
come-producing potential for promotional tie-ins and sale of subsidiary rights;
or they might accept that an author's cultural/market potential may not be
realised until the second or third book, and will carry the loss on initial publica-
tion till his or her talent is recognised and reputation established, whence the
backlist titles will acquire a new and increased value (Coser et al. 1982:118-174,
Dessauer 1974: 29-49).
9 Even so, signing stars does not guarantee success. Not every work of a recog-
nised artist is a masterpiece, and some which are, do not catch the mood of the
audience. Working on the premise that given enough choices, audiences will
like something, companies have adopted the 'shotgun' or 'buckshot' approach
In fact, name-based creative strategies aimed at producing best sellers

provide only a partial foundation for the expansion of business. Because
by definition, great artists/works are rare, best sellers are few and far
between. Furthermore, they create stop-start production and sales pat-
terns. To utilise full production capacity and maintain a steady flow of
profits, companies also developed a complimentary strategy which filled
the gaps in their production schedules: they oriented some of their
production towards type-based creative policies10.
Publishers, for example, knew from long experience that audiences also
had continuing needs for particular types of books. Some of these were
functional works to meet continuing needs (Escarpit 1966: 118), including
what Coser et αϊ. (1982: 201) refer to as 'staples' such as bibles, dictionar-
ies, texts and instruction manuals. Others fulfilled entertainment needs
(Steinberg 1955: 223-258). These were relatively undemanding works
based on conventional forms (Wellek and Warren 1963: 235), consumed as
recreation - the types of books frequently abused by mass society critics
and aesthetes (e.g. Swingewood 1977, cf. Williams 1963). Demand for
goods of these types had expanded regularly throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries with the consolidation and development of bourgeois society.
The growth of new class strata and new reading publics went hand-in-hand
with the emergence of different schools of writing. As publishing technolo-
gies improved, publishers expanded by exploiting these new markets with
various types of books, frequently released in cheap editions alongside
reprints of standards and classics and which sold in substantial quantities
(Laurenson 1971:117-139, Watt 1972: 38-65, Williams 1965: 177-194).
Books of a type have a tendency to be steady sellers (see Figure 2.2).
The shape of the sales curve in these cases is less spectacular than that of
best sellers: sales build up at a slower rate, peaking at a lower level but
to product release. This, according to Dessauer (1974: 36-37), is "the lighting-

will-strike theory...take a flyer on as much material as seems to hold promise
and you can afford - lightning may strike some of it". Accordingly, several
stars are signed, each contracted to create a flow of new work - hence the
tendency towards overproduction of titles which plagues every sector of the
culture industry, publishing including (Escarpit 1966: 132).
10 It needs to be stressed that type-based creative strategies are the other side of
name-based strategies. My distinction does not represent a dichotomy but a
polarity. Every artwork represents a combination of artist and form, of perfor-
mance and style. Stars usually rise to fame on a particular style, and popular
styles are usually build around or related to the work of stars. Both exist in
dialectical relations. Hence, as creative strategies, type and star approaches are
two dimensions of commercialism, two polar positions on a spectrum which
operates throughout all sectors of the culture industry.
sustaining sales longer. Escarpit (1966: 117) offers a case study where
profitable sales of a title continued more than two years after initial
release. Steady sellers recoup the costs of investment later in their careers
when compared to best sellers but offer the advantage that their sales
patterns sustain useful and orderly cash flows. Their impact is to stabilise
annual operations, which suits the corporate search for security. They
provide conditions whereby the company can calculate and predict
financial performance and plan a production schedule. For this reason,
type-based creative policies have come to occupy an increasingly impor-
tant role - perhaps, now, a dominant one - in corporate production
strategies.
In type-based production, once companies know what types of cultural
commodities audiences seem to want, they supply more of the same. As in
the case of Book Creations, Inc. cited earlier, management draws up a
plan for a series of similar works and searches out artists experienced in
working in that form, or searches the periphery for emerging artists with
the right sort of potential11. They are then put to work under the guidance
of creative management and directed to create an original which meets the
dictates of the plan. This, in its simplest and most interventionist form, is
how type-based creation is organised. As a method of managing the
creative stage of production, it represents an organisational attempt to
shape the process of creativity. Instead of starting with an artist and their
inspiration, it begins with a market demand to which an artist must tailor
their talent. Type-based creative policies have a kernel which, in recent
years, has become generalised throughout the corporate core of the
culture industry, as formatted production. In that sense, their increasing
adoption by the corporations of culture as a compliment to name-based
production, has had a decisive influence on the workings of the culture
industry.
5.3.3 The History and Structure of Formatting

Historically, formatting developed out of the formation of the project
team and institutionalisation of its structure of relations. Craft workshop
production in the creative stage had survived even into the vertically-
11 This explains why hopefuls working in the periphery need to demonstrate not
only commercial promise but also either versatility or representativeness. Com-
panies are interested mainly in those who match their present creative policies;
in their own words, those who 'suit their list' or meet its established traditions
or overall 'house policy' (Coser et al. 1982: 132,144,192).
integrated combines of early 20th century, but conditions were developing

around them which led to the reorganisation of creation around the
organisationally more efficient project team. They included contextual
factors such as dramatic fluctuations in the economic fortunes of advanced
capitalist societies, especially the post-war boom and subsequent changes
in the patterns of urban living, the emergence of new lifestyles, and hence
patterns of cultural commodity usage. Equally, there were changes
internal to the culture industry, including new technologies which raised
production efficiencies and provided opportunities for independents,
especially the new forms of cultural production (films, records, radio and
later television); rising labour costs; the increasing range and volume of
cultural commodities which began outstripping potential demand, and so
on. Shakeout and rationalisation followed, especially from the 1950s. The
upshot, which filtered through different sectors at different rates, was a
shift away from centralised production for the mass market to decen-
tralised divisional production based on product differentiation and market
segmentation - i.e. an increasing focus on type-based creative strategies.
Within the new semi-autonomous divisions and subsidiaries, creative
managers, especially producers, had claimed a professional position,
power and responsibilities, and adopted a new manner of working.
Professional creative management took its power primarily from its
organisational position. As a form of creative management - note: no
longer 'leadership' but now 'administration' - it reflected the impact of
commercialism and the calculated use of method and rule. Like bureau-
cratic control generally, as Edwards has argued, it flowed out of the
existing organisational hierarchy. These developments simultaneously
reshaped working conditions for other members of the project team.
Under their rule, executants were increasingly employed to follow the
plans their managers devised. Rehearsal gave way to learning what
management want. In return, they were offered security of employment,
with reasonably comfortable material rewards. In short, institutionalisa-
tion of the structure of the project team, professionalisation of creative
management, and the generalisation of type-based creative policies, were
fundamental conditions which completed the construction of the corpo-
rate form of cultural production.
Formatting can be characterised as a form of creative control based on
corporate attempts to confront the uncertainties of the cultural market-
place in a context of expanded production (cf. also Escarpit 1966:120-135,
on 'programmed publication'). Presuming that audience preferences can
be known in advance by measuring what already exists, a manufacturer
begins not with an author or idea but by using market research to identify
potential areas of demand and the size and propensities of the target
audience. Since the index of consumer preference is patterns of commod-

ity purchases, companies scan various types of market information ranging
from sales reports, to observations of competitors, to newsletters and
trade publications, identifying those types which seem to be popular.
Sociological and psychological studies are mounted to investigate purchas-
ing patterns, motivations and attitudes; profiles are drawn up of audience
segments, which management relate to tastes or preferences for particular
types of works. 'Strategic product planning' - the marketing language
captures the shift in cultural practice - is based on specifically targeted
'creative policies' which are imposed upon the project team as the
in-house rules of creativity.
Under this system, creative managers have the task of operationalising
creative policy by preparing plans for the required types of works and
ensuring staff adhere to them. Preparing the plan is a crucial stage in this
process. While intended to generate an original, it is based on rules of its
type, the conventional frameworks of knowledges and techniques which
make up the craft and its object; i.e. what literary theorists refer to as
'genres' - or more generally 'cultural forms' (Wellek and Warren 1963:
226-237, Williams 1977: 180-185, 188-191; 1981: 148-18012). These repre-
12 Both Williams and Wellek and Warren speak of the formal classification of
works according to kind by differentiating between (in Williams' words) Outer
form' (specific metre or plot structure, characters and setting) and 'inner form'
(attitude, tone, purpose), to derive historical categories such as tragedy and
comedy, within ultimate categories such as poetry, fiction and drama, from
whence further sub-divisions or second-order groups can be identified.
The problem with such typifications is that the stockpile of known instances
includes a surplus of features not included in the model, and the reality of
artistic practice (as opposed to formal, academic classifications) is that forms
are constantly undergoing change. Thus a cultural form has to be understood
as the totality of first-order conventions (ultimate or core categories, such as
poetry, fiction, drama, etc), second-order conventions (enduring historical cate-
gories such as romantic comedy and comedy of manners, jazz and rock 'n' roll,
the symphony and concerto, spythriller and biography and so on). In an age of
marketing there is also a third-order of features which are further sub-divisions
of second-order forms; i.e. the variant forms which are presently being con-
structed in the sphere of art (and which, of course, may not last). Some of the
schools of late-1960s-early 1970s literature such as superfiction, the fabulists,
moral fiction and minimalism (e.g. The Weekend Australian 6-7 February 1988:
Magazine 3) probably illustrate this last category. Perhaps most important of
all, these three layers are linked in dialectically determinant relations.
In fact, in a context of ubiquitous product differentiation and marketing
strategies, third-order forms have multiplied unbelievably. Some of these may
be transitory, stylistic variations of a second or third order form, derived from
sent the structured conventions which characterise different types of

artistic work and which link audiences and artists in a common universe of
meaning. Creative managers design an original by working around the
rules and objects presupposed by the form, but adapting them in the light
of commercial trends. The plan they produce is the operational manifesta-
tion of the underlying structuring principles, the organisation's format,
containing the rules for creating the types of books wanted by the
company. Backed by the power of creative management, it is presented to
executants as a set of instructions, who are employed as its subjects and
bound to do its bidding. This is formatting in its fullest expression: a
system wherein commercialism determines creative policy which directs
the project team towards predictable, marketable outcomes. Guesswork,
intuition or arbitrary inspiration is minimised. Form has been transformed
into format. Art is made subject to administration. Conventions drawn
from the past are imposed in the present as a rule which dictates endless
repetitions of itself and the conditions of its making. Under formatting,
everything is fixed around experience and commercial calculation, alienat-
ing and reifying relations within the project team, and between the project
team, the collective artist, and audience.
Before looking at the organisational dynamics of formatting, several
points need to be made. To be socially recognised, a cultural object must
be identifiably original, otherwise it will not appeal. Since formatting is
oriented towards echoing the past, companies must ensure that originals
they reproduce display a new and unique array of stylistic markers13. This
an individual's style but masquerading as significant breakthroughs. Others,

more substantive and relevant to the times, may be in the process of embed-
ding themselves in the fabric of art, recognised first as styles and becoming
themselves enduring historical categories. Much of the discussion here will be
concerned with formatting at the second and third levels (the most empirical)
but what complicates this even further is that stylistic variations are frequently
linked to the major artists of the time which contributes considerable fluidity to
the situation (see the following footnote). Given its importance in the present-
day marketplace, marketing attempts to reify what are after all transient stylis-
tic variations and make them appear as definite styles, as sub-forms in the mak-
ing, in order to maximise their cultural and economic value; this will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter.
13 Style, or rather stylistic devices or markers, like the term cultural form (to
which it is connected in practice), plays in important role in later discussion.
Since a style identifies the work of an individual or group (taken together, their
idiom), the creation of stylistic markers (which are reinforced in marketing) is
important in signifying originality to a competitive market. These may range
from the signs of an individual's expert and distinctive talent (their brilliance
gives them an idiomatic cast as versions of familiar cultural objects; they

have, literally, an appearance as stylistic variations on known themes.
To the company, one of the benefits of formatting is that it generates
successive production of similar items, all with known market appeal.
Since tastes for these types are reasonably stable at least over the short
term, editorial management can organise a continuous series of books
with a common overall theme (Coser et al. 1982: 261; in the film world the
"Carry On..." films are a classic example, see Jordan 1983) which promise
high aggregate sales across several successive releases. If a series enjoys
long-term demand, production may be concentrated in a strategic produc-
tion unit (division, subsidiary, department or team). Doubleday, for
instance, is a leading hardcover trade publisher, but through divisions such
as Anchor Press, Dell Publishing, Delta Books and Dial Press, is also
involved in general publishing, special interest publishing, religious books
and paperback publishing (Coser et al. 1982: 49). Each organisational unit
is characterised by a single format identified under a rubric; for example,
the 'New Accents' series from Methuen (see 'The General Editor's
Preface', Hebdige 1979: vii), or Jove's (a subsidiary of the Canadian-based
publisher Harlequin) 'Second Chance At Love' series of light romances.
A brief comment: Escarpit and Coser et al. seem to think that format-
ting is restricted to 'popular' but not 'serious' publishing - if this distinc-
tion makes any sociological sense, other than displaying the aesthetic
values of the writer (Hall 1981, Williams 1976a: 198-199). A simple
dichotomy of this (elitist?) sort misunderstands the commerce/art duality
which flows through corporate decision-making, a point which Bourdieu,
on the other hand, seems to recognise when he comments: "A firm that is
much closer to the 'commercial' pole (and conversely, that much further
from the 'cultural' pole), the more directly and completely the products it
offers correspond to a pre-existent demand, i.e. to pre-existent interests,
as, say, an actor, singer or writer), to contrivances of dress, mannerism, speech,

etc., which speak of novelty but not creativity, and difference without sub-
stance (as in the case of a singer affecting a style of dress or manner). One of
the difficulties here (and this becomes more obvious in the next chapter) is that
in an era of market segmentation and product (type) specialisation, and hence
the proliferation of second and third order cultural forms referred to in the
previous footnote, the external appearances of popular forms are often mixed
up with the stylistic characteristics of popular stars and are difficult to distin-
guish (for both analysts and the corporations), such that individuals can come
to personify a form (e.g. the 'magic realism' of authors such as Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and Salman Rushdie). In this way, the stylistic attributes enter into
conceptions of forms via the artists who popularised them; the relationship, in
other words, is dialectical.
and in pre-established forms" (1981: 280). For the reasons indicated here,
commercialism and formatting cut across all forms of cultural production,
whether 'serious' or 'popular' (cf. also Steinberg 1955: 223-258). Commer-
cialism is only more explicit in the latter.
5.4 Formatting the Creative Stage of Production
The operation of formatting is realised in corporate relations in produc-

tion. The format has both strategic aspects (general premises) and
operational aspects (particular rules) as manifested in the cultural work of
management. Each of its aspects is associated with a division of labour
within management (see chapter 4, especially Figure 4.2). Taking the
terms Owner', 'manager', 'producer', director' and 'marketer' in the
following discussion to refer to positions in the form of relations compris-
ing the corporate organisational structure14, general managers attend to
the strategic business of making creative policy (the corporate version of
'designing the concept'), which is operationalised by creative manage-
ment, with producers 'realising the plan' and directors 'supervising its
execution'.
14 This point is stressed again here since the power to decide is only rarely tied to
individuals or occupations - the latter reflecting no more than the contingen-
cies of a technical or even company division of labour. While hierarchically-
ordered, occupations have their independencies, organisational power is ex-
erted collectively within the loosely-defined territory these individuals occupy
(cf. Clegg and Dunkerley 1980: 470-475). Consequently, there is overlap. For
example, a General Manager or Chief Executive with recognised experience in
artistic leadership may also legitimately participate in the work of creative man-
agement. Increasingly, individual divisional and departmental managers also
hold seats on local or corporate boards whether as individual shareholders,
shareholder nominees or executive directors. With the professionalisation of
creative management, the producer component increasingly functions as part
of general management. This point is relevant to debates in media studies con-
cerning intervention by general management and/or owners in editorial work
(e.g. Bowman 1988).
Formatting the Creative Stage of Production 165
5.4.1 Developing Creative Policy: 'General Management'

Strategic policy making can be illustrated by returning to the model of
newspaper operation introduced in the previous chapter, called The Daily
Courier^5. The general management stratum - in structural terms, a
combination of the manager, the marketer and the producer - does the
work of designing the concept. Like Doubleday's 'enclave of cardinals'
(Coser et al. 1982:139), strategic creative planning in the case of The Daily
Courier involves the general manager and his deputy, the marketing
manager, the editor-in-chief and the editor (although not the chief-of-staff
who works exclusively as the creative director). It is their prerogative to
decide what type of cultural object will be produced.
There is some debate in the media/cultural studies literature concerning
the relative input of the owner and manager into creative policy, especially
in the media (cf. Bowman 1988, McQueen 1977), but like most corpora-
tions (cf. Dahrendorf 1959, Blackburn 1972), although precise demarca-
tions between board and management are frequently blurred, the owner
and manager positions in The Daily Courier have formally differentiated
although partly overlapping functions. Board members preoccupy them-
selves primarily with the financial operations of the company and are only
marginally concerned with content. As a matter of routine, throughout the
corporate sector of the culture industry, general management is the centre
of decision-making on creative policy. This is the case at The Daily
Courier. As the general manager commented:
I don't think our board members are very strong policy makers. Most of the policy
initiatives come from below rather than above and they're accepted by the board16.
15 This model reflects the situation generally in the press and television (e.g. Gans
1979, Schlesinger 1978), and is parallelled with minor variations in the produc-
tion of books (e.g. Coser et al. 1982, Dessauer 1974), popular recordings (e.g.
Denisoff 1975, Frith 1978), television programmes (e.g. Moran 1984), and films
(e.g. Powdermaker 1950) - and, as later models will show, advertising agencies
and radio and television stations.
16 The general manager's comments here may be ingenuous. Since company man-
agement had considerable board representation there is considerable overlap;
the general manager and his deputy sit on both the subsidiary and corporate
boards (they are also small shareholders, "5% and "1% respectively) and the
editor-in-chief is an executive director of the subsidiary board (although the
editor is closeted to avoid charges of influence). Notwithstanding, on the basis
of field work evidence and despite some confident arguments to the contrary
(e.g. Bowman 1988, McQueen 1977) and allowing for variability between
firms, as a matter of routine, relations of possession effectively distinguish -
In explanation, one of the company directors argued:

What would I know about newspapers, apart from what I've picked up over the
years doesn't amount to much. You don't look for top editors and managers and
tell them what to do. That's what they're good at, putting together good newspa-
pers. You let them get on with it.
Creative policy is not formulated purely or even primarily on artistic
criteria. Of the options entertained by the producer stratum, general
management make the final decision within the constraints of the operat-
ing budget approved and monitored by the board. Although not forcing
particular choices, this structures out expensive experiments. Commercial-
ism is a more important influence on decision-making since it effects
long-term profitability; in the words of the editor-in-chief, "Whatever else,
the bottom line is the paper has to sell". The Daily Courier management
circle rely on marketers to bring a wide range of up-to-date market
information to their collective deliberations: daily, weekly and monthly
sales figures form the circulation department, market research conducted
by specialist agencies, advertising revenue figures, information and opin-
ions gleaned from trade press, observations of competitors' activities, and
feedback from readers. These are examined to discern which types of
papers and contents are being bought by whom. In this way, considera-
tions of profitability enter directly and deeply into the formulation of
creative policy at the strategic level and are constructed as a framework
for the operational directions built over it.
Since The Daily Courier is a long-established paper, creative policy is
thoroughly etched in newsroom conventions, the library of past editions
and memories of its history, and is only amended and reiterated as
required. Where modification are proposed, they are channelled around
this stratum, discussed, argued over (there is considerable conflict be-
tween marketing and editorial managers although the marketing manager
ruefully acknowledged, "Editorial is an untouchable god around here, but
perhaps that's the way it should be"), until a more-or-less coherent
consensus emerges.
Strategic dimensions of the format are characterised by their generality.
Expressed as a broad injunction concerning the type of originals to be
created, it represents the understandings of company (that is: divisional or
subsidiary) production goals sustained within the general management
although not divide - the relative contribution of owner and manager in the
making of creative policy. Coser et al. (1982) reach a similar conclusion for the
book publishing sector. For a case of board intervention during financial diffi-
culties in the press sector, see Souther (1981: 553-555).
stratum. While its economic premises are hidden behind the overlay of
cultural parameters to which they are articulated, it provides an umbrella
under which a series of projects - in the case of The Daily Courier a daily
flow of editions - are initiated. In the words of the general manager and
editor, it proposes:
A serious newspaper, a quality daily...for the average reader who lives in this city
and state, but who is also aware of national and international affairs...A paper
which serves the interests of these citizens....A family newspaper...which serves
the personal and public needs of different members and interests, by providing
different segments for them to read; for example, local, national and foreign news,
real estate, finance, the women's' section, sport and racing, the arts and entertain-
ment.
Once agreed, the task of creative management is to turn this strategy into
operational reality. Since its breadth leaves spaces for journalists to write
discordant stories, editorial managers devise a plan to guide reporters in
the types of leads to follow and the writing style they should use. In their
dual strategic-operational role of creative management, we see one of the
principal mechanisms whereby corporations have tightened control over
the creative stage. As noted earlier, professionalisation of creative manage-
ment has separated the producer and director, locating the former (in the
case of The Daily Courier, the editor-in-chief and the editor) within the
executive stratum and incorporating them in the strategic planning
process. As cultural managers, they have a vested interest in devising a
plan which meets the dictates they have helped to draw up and approve as
part of general management. Their potential power as artistic leaders
within the project team to counter the inroads of capital is dulled by their
structural incorporation in the strategic aspects of formatting, binding
their efforts to the corporate commercial goals of viability and marketabil-
ity.
The capacity of the format to direct creativity operates partly through
its personification in the producers and directors, and also through the
(brand) name designed to cover the series of originals produced under its
jurisdiction. Earlier, I noted Clegg's arguments that organisational policy
operates iconically when projected as an idea(l) to orient the activities of
its subjects; policy is formulated by appropriating a cultural form for
organisational use and reifying its conventions17. Designing a variation on
17 We should also note Williams' (1977: 187-188) observation that cultural forms
are common property of both artists and audiences - to which we might also
add the mediators who control production and circulation. Appropriation,
therefore, can never be more than borrowing: it remains joint property with
cultural actors beyond the organisation such as audiences, critics and review-
a theme to shape the type of creation carried out under its auspices - for
example, a uniquely styled daily broadsheet - and giving it a legally-
registered brand name - The Daily Courier, for example - which is
heavily publicised internally and publicly, iconisises the symbol and the
combination of qualities it connotes, and naturalises its hegemony in
creation. This enables the company to not only direct its labour force
towards the ideal it desires but also to create the impression of monopoly
possession over the form. Mastheads, labels, imprints, logos and so on
become literally part of the company's assets. As a kind of constant
capital, the format appears to the project team as an objective apparatus,
its rubric constituting the identity of their purpose, and enables the
management stratum to press its will on the process of creativity.
Creative policy, therefore, expresses company strategy, a general,
authoritative proposal embedding a cluster of organisational imperatives,
the general framework upon which the format's operational dictates are
constructed. Forged by general management, confirmed by owners, and
designed to guide producers and directors in managing the project team by
incorporating the impersonal laws of the marketplace as necessity into its
constitution, it limits the play of artistic imagination to predictable arenas.
Both the impersonality and force of its rules and the locale of its making,
reveal something of the historical specificity of formatting. The right to
imagine, once the preserve of the artist, is structurally relocated and
authorised as the (cultural) task of general management (including the
producer), and transformed into the bureaucratic power to determine
what will be reproduced.
5.4.2 Operationalising Policy as a Format: 'Producing'

According to the editor of The Daily Courier, once having been presented
with the general policy, he selects sets of news values which serve as a
mould for the paper. This motivates the types of stories to be chosen, their
relative concentration, significance and placement within particular edi-
tions. As in other newsrooms (cf. Baker 1980a, 1980b, Schlesinger 1978),
these news values are clarified, developed and affirmed in daily editorial
conferences, in memos and discussions, until sedimented as the house
rules which identify the particular paper.
ers, and other workers within the sector and who retain some control over its
terms. The danger for the company is that audiences may reject their definition
of the form or its manifestation, or that company staff may draw upon external
influences in the course of their work and challenge the dictates of policy.
This is the artistic work of the collective producer in the corporate

context: to operationalise strategic creative policy handed down from
general management (but which they also played a part in making) by
making a plan based on sets of performance rules intended to guide the
work of the project team towards production of predictable originals. How
this is done is illustrated by a case of script development within a
television production house (The Grundy Organisation) for a drama series
(later called Bellamy) created for the Australian TEN network (Moran,
1982, see also 1984).
The Grundy Organisation has a reputation for producing "reassuringly
recognisable formats, characters and plots that keep coming round like the
washing on a rotary line" (The Weekend Australian 23-24 January 1987:
Magazine 12). After requests from the Ten Network for a drama series to
fill a vacant weeknight slot, Grundys proposed another police action
series. Despite some concerns about their falling popularity, advice from a
market research agency - not an indigenous organisation but the
London-based TAPE (Television Audience Potential Evaluation)
group - suggested that a series similar to Australian programmes Homi-
cide and Division Four or the American Streets of San Fransisco or the
British Z Cars, still had the potential to hold up in the ratings. An
executive explained to Moran that:
a police action show of the genre and style has been very successful in television...
[because] the market seemed very appropriate to have a good, straight-down-the-
middle police show. We set out to develop one (1982: 33).
The production executive in charge of the project (here functioning as the
producer) contracted an established writer with a reputation for this kind
of work to jointly develop a blueprint and pilot scripts, and decide on tone,
style, content and approach for the series. The early format18 visualised the
general framework around which each episode was to be constructed and
stipulated the performance rules to be used in their making. A short
extract serves to illustrate its character:
Series Style: The series is intended to be one-hour, once-a-week episodes in the
lives of the personnel of the Special Crimes Squad. Each week shall contain one
self-contained story, under which other investigations are simultaneously in
progress, one of which might well become the main story three episodes later. Also
there will be an on-going development of human relationships within the series...of
18 Moran uses this term only in its operational sense, referring to the plan. My
use, as indicated earlier, refers to the combination of the structuring principles
underlying the creative stage of production as well as its most evident phenome-
nal form, the plan.
say, the relationship between Stevie (Bellamy's girlfriend) and Bellamy, plus the
satisfaction from the viewer standpoint of being able to see a complete story in one
episode.
We intend breaking new ground in a number of areas:
1. It will not be necessary to follow the formula of seeing a crime committed then
plodding along until it is neatly resolved...
2. Maybe three investigations are in progress at the same time, at various stages of
development, and one of them results in the police getting their man, while
others are plants for future stories.
3. In keeping with real life, the police may not get their man (1982: 47-48).
This set of instructions are similar in form to those reported by Coser et al.
(1982: 264, 272) for a series of romances ("...The hero and heroine make
love even when unmarried, and with plenty of sensuous detail...the
fadeout will occur before actual intercourse...") and a 'managed [geology]
text' ("...The reading level appropriate to the student in this market is
grade nine or ten. This means short sentences and words...They will not
follow long explanations...They just want to know the 'rule' and how to
apply it..."). They appear as operational rules to eliminate artistic
'irrationality' and maintain continuity and style.
As development of the Bellamy concept proceeded, details were
clarified. Pre-production work in all cultural forms can be a labourious,
conflict-ridden and frustrating process19. A later draft of the 'Format and
Writer's Notes' indicated that it was to be very much a 'partners' series,
focusing on the action adventures of the two main characters, Bellamy and
Mitchell. Because strong characters with whom Australian audiences
could identify were crucial to the success of the series, considerable effort
was put into characterisation. Of the two, Mitchell was to be slightly more
'up-market', but ten years younger and the supporting partner, whereas
Bellamy:
likes a good meat pie, and fish and chips, but wouldn't be out of place in a decent
restaurant. He's a beer drinker for preference...If we ever considered his politics,
he would be a rightist Labor supporter, or a leftist Liberal. He believes in a fair go,
not an open slather...But when it comes to contact with crimes which are
committed without regard for human life...Bellamy is implacable. He is very much
for the little bloke, and sees himself, not as being able to stamp out crime
single-handed, but as making sure that society is menaced (1982: 51).
19 The film Tootsie, for example, took 7 years and 10 people working on the script
to bring it to the screen (The Weekend Australian 26-27 March 1988: Magazine
8). For examples of frequent conflict between editors and authors, see The
Weekend Australian 21-22 December 1985: Literary Magazine 6.
Plot lines too were prescribed. A typical Bellamy script was to have the
central characters hunting for the villain with Bellamy turning it into a
personal quest. As they worked their way through a collection of murders,
kidnaps, hostages, bombings, and so on, a pattern was built into the rules
where he would seek to help others but in doing so would fall into
situations of extreme personal danger (1982: 51-52).
In other words, the collective producer work of realising creative policy
and developing a plan - in this case, comprising an executive producer,
producer and writer (but which may in other cases include various types of
freelance or staff designers, arrangers, directors and independent
agents) - culminates in a set of specifications for the project team even
before a single original is created. Speaking of television programming
more generally, the network programme manager of Channel One (a
model of television organisation to be introduced shortly) compared the
process to making a patchwork:
You have an encompassing vision of where you want to go...the grand plan of how
you could be the marketleader. If you did this and this, you would be unbeatable.
And having decided the vision, you then start applying all the bits and pieces to it.
Whether written up in a document as in the case of Bellamy and of 'books
without authors' (Coser et al. 1982: 260-282), or conveyed in a verbal
briefing as is more common in say, advertising agencies, newsrooms and
recording studios, the operational plan appears as a collage of cultural
fragments stitched together into a coherent if not always comprehensive
framework. Its single purpose is to ensure continuity across all episodes so
that the series as a whole is artistically unified around a pre-determined
goal. Its proposals are intended to govern realisation workers in the
project team, in the Bellamy case, the writers who prepared the scripts for
each episode, so that each script materialises the background strategic and
operational assumptions of the format.
Artistically, what is going on here? In general, the process can be
described as one wherein the producer appropriates the conventions of an
existing cultural form but then pastes various stylistic devices over them to
mark out its singular identity and confirms their combination as a set of
rules.
To elaborate: like any individual artist planning a work, as a matter of
practical consciousness (Giddens 1979: 24-25), producers invoke the
cultural conventions which underlie the general form of their work. In the
case of Bellamy, the producer worked up a television adaption (police
action series) of an epochal theatrical form (drama) overlaid by at least
one variant (second or third-order) of the cultural form (partners adven-
ture). Its inner core of stock characters and their relations, settings, plots
and narrative form are preserved; for example, the city cop and his partner
as the main protagonists, a selection of dangerous villains, urban crimes
and defenceless victims (nieces, prostitutes, Bellamy's girlfriend, house-
wifes - note they are mainly female), and routine resolution in favour of
the legitimate forces of law and order. Generality and detail are shuffled
into a combination which makes the series appear relatively original. For
example, in contrast to the impersonality and violence associated with
urban crime and metropolitan police forces (and perhaps 1980s filmic and
televisual codes based on the tough cop), the main character is drawn as 'a
good Australian bloke'; a man who cares about others and has deep
emotions which sometimes break through his strong, no-nonsense, action-
oriented personality (characterisation here is strongly inflected through
idealisations of Australian maleness based on mateship and egalitarian-
ism). Moreover, he represents a 'good, trustworthy cop' (wish-fulfilment
in an era of widespread police corruption?) with his sense of fair play and
personal commitment to justice. Note the particular rule that in contrast to
the conventions of television crime dramas, moral goodness and the
protective state do not always triumph.
Further, the producer's ambition is to create a fresh approach to an old
idea by creating a unique idiom for the series; by attaching to its
framework of conventional rules a singular stylistic vocabulary intended to
stamp it with the uniqueness it needs to maintain an artistic identity - all
of which is reflected in and carried by the name. According to the history
of art, of course, these are necessary in order that an object be recognised
as such to compete in the cultural marketplace. It must display originality,
relative or otherwise. One which is too typical would appear unexciting
and unlikely to create audience interest.
Formatting transforms the usual rules of a form into necessity in the
workplace. While this is work which follows the rules of making art, it is
also structured by economic considerations which work behind the scenes.
For production and circulation reasons, its purpose is to provide continu-
ity across a series of otherwise separate originals produced by the
company (in a way which approximates the branding of several product
types) so that audiences keep returning and purchasing (or watching, in
the case of a television programme). Grundys were creating an intermedi-
ate good for sale to a medium which needs to meet advertisers' require-
ments for reach and frequency across target segments. To attract and
maintain weekly audiences over the duration of the series, Bellamy had to
be a recognisable and popular programme type yet feature sufficient
continuous signs of originality to maintain interest. As it happened,
Bellamy was only moderately successful on both counts (Moran 1982:
148-154).
This highlights an important dimension of professional creative manage-

ment. The demands of art are embedded deep in the rules of creative
management, but so are those of commercialism. As the naturalised
commonsense of professional producing, this combination of antagonistic
practices represents a set of unobtrusive controls operating through the
embeddedness of the rules of the house, reflecting how the vast propor-
tion of activity in large, established organisations goes on without personal
directive and supervision - and even without written rules (Perrow 1979:
146-153). Grundys executive management permitted the collective pro-
ducer a more or less free hand in creating Bellamy, knowing they would
keep to the rules. These are conveyed via the plan to the performers hired
for the project team.
The Bellamy case illustrates how formatting is the corporate lynchpin in
bounding creativity within the project team and guiding its energies
towards company-advocated goals. Its propositions are authoritatively
crystalised in texts of various forms; in memos, notes, proposals, manuals
and rule books, presentation logs and mockups, in the habitual procedures
and knowledges routinely sustained by management and staff20. Each of
these objects contains, in more or less complete form, a collection of
cultural rules which operate at the level of form and stylistic variation,
derived from the past and applied in the present as a template for
creativity by a management hierarchy. While the format proposes a
desired outcome and prescribes the performance rules to achieve it - in
the way that a script, for example, contains dialogue, set directions and so
on (e.g. Moran 1982: 46) - it does not - nor cannot - tell the performer
how to perform. The plan, therefore, also represents the limits of ratio-
nalised control over cultural workers. Corporations remain dependent on
performers within the project team to bring the project to life, to possess
and select the appropriate level of technique to transform the plan into
inspired performance. While the format is borne to the workplace by the
director, rehearsing - or rather, learning - the format, still involves
spaces within which cultural workers stand beyond direction. This be-
comes evident when we move to the next stage of creation.
20 In the words of a news editor: "In those days we were developing the conven-
tions. Now we merely apply them" (Gallagher 1982: 166, cf. also Tuchman
1978). The Daily Courier style book given to each journalist begins with the
words "We have arrived at a series of ground rules, mainly through confer-
ences between editors and senior journalists. The result is not a manual of
literary style...[but] a few points of guidance, as a general approach to writing
for our newspapers".
5.4.3 Applying the Format: 'Directing'

Present day all-music radio stations represent one of the most tightly
formatted forms of cultural production, and again, I will illustrate my
discussion by constructing a model which I will call FM-RADIO21.
Stations of this type usually set out to crystalise their format within a
logo - their call-sign plus descriptive slogan - in this case FM-RADIO
Stereo Rock - which serves as a management icon within creation, but also
functions as a marketing vehicle (I am reserving discussion of circulation
aspects for the following chapters). It unifies programming and announc-
ing work on the station in the daily production of originals; i.e. activities
carried out by (Australian terminology) the programme manager, music
director, programme clerks, studio director, production studio operator
and announcers - the members of the project team.
The plan is prepared by the programme manager and music director.
Their task is to create a specific station 'sound', known from ratings
surveys and attitudinal and call-out research (telephone testing of play-
listed selections) conducted by the station to attract specified audience
segments (cf. also Hirsch 1970. For rare published accounts of the
marketing of a format, see Nicholson Broadcasting Services 1975/76, 3AK
Melbourne Broadcasters 1973). Having chosen a target audience, they
select a small number of tracks from the existing station library and new
releases being promoted by record companies, and classify them according
to their perceived stage of popularity into a collection of short, rotating
playlists. Some, for example, will be identified as the hits of the moment
(Playlist A), recent hits or 'recurrents' (B), new releases (C) and standards
or 'golden oldies' (D). Programme logs are prepared for announcers
which indicate the sequence in which playlisted recordings are to be
played. A half-hour sweep, for example, might require a track from
playlist A, then B, A, C, D, A.
Worth noting in passing is how the format is shaped by the mode
through which a sector derives its profits, how economic imperatives
21 The following is based on observations and interviews at two leading Aus-

tralian metropolitan radio stations (one an 'adult rock' station, the other 'mid-
dle of the road' - referred to as 'beautiful music'). Both were subsidiaries of
large, multi-media conglomerates, but while group directors held some posi-
tions on subsidiary boards, the local board exercised significant autonomy
(partly because of regulatory aspects related to local interests). Interviews
were conducted with general and creative management, programme and an-
nouncing staff and observations were conducted of the complete chain of pro-
gram preparation and presentation.
penetrate into the organisation of the workplace and are embedded deep
in its daily routines (Granovetter 1985). In the same way that 'books
without authors' (Coser et al. 1982) and television series (Moran 1982)
have formats geared towards generating successive consumption of individ-
ual titles within the series, FM-RADIO's format is designed as a system
for creating quasi-public goods (as discussed in chapter 3). By repeating
popular records at regular intervals throughout daily and weekly pro-
grammes, individual listeners can anticipate that if they keep listening on a
daily and hourly basis, they will hear something they like. Audiences are
thereby pulled across successive quarter hours and days of the work in a
manner which makes them continually available to hear advertisers'
repeated messages, an effect which improves the station's distributive
efficiency which is rented to advertisers.
The programme log listing the items in order of air-play and which is
supplied to announcers in the on-air studio, is a primary expression of the
format. Other dimensions are materialised in studio manuals or memos on
a noticeboard, or more frequently, in the shared culture of the FM-
RADIO workplace. The rules of announcing required by this format,
including, for example, such minutiae as the presentation of time, front
and back announcements, station call-signs and slogans, are proposed in
advance by creative management. As the programme manager - speaking
here as the director - explained in relation to announcers:
they are regulated tightly because what's said is important and the way its said. For
example, locating your call-sign closer to your music than your commercials, little
perceptual things like that. For example, coming out of a record, you might say:
"Call-sign with Go West We Close Our Eyes, it's 12 minutes past 4, and coming up
in a moment, the Beatles", and then commercials. Now if I come out of the record
and said "Go West, We Close Our Eyes, it's 12 minutes to 1, coming up next, the
Beatles on call-sign", I give our call-sign, the commercials play, and that juxtaposi-
tion of our call sign next to commercials instead of music - maybe 99% of our
listeners are not going to hear it. But one of them might think "God, this station,
commercials, I'm sick of commercials". So just for that person who might perceive
it that way, we just structure it out.
This indicates how far organisational design is driven into performance
activities through creative direction, how, in the name of commercialism
and professionalism, procedural aspects of the format are intended to
transform creativity in programme presentation into work routines to be
carried out in the on-air studio, positioning announcers more as creative
operators than artistic personalities.
Nonetheless, surface appearances can be deceiving. This is an artistic
workplace, and the contradictions of the art/capital relation lie just under
the surface. The format cannot be imposed as a regime but only as a set of
propositions. Creative management still depends on the artistic and

professional capabilities of the employed talent. "Otherwise", commented
the programme manager:
they don't get hired here. I have to know that they have a brain, can speak on the
radio, have an interesting sound about them, a certain flair. If they have the
personal ability to put together the pieces the way I want them put together, or the
way the radio station wants them...[To do so] in a professional manner, as a
communicator for a contemporary rock music station speaking to a segmented
portion of the demographic groups that exist in our society.
Even under the tightest version of formatting, there is still significant

fluidity in the creative process at the moment of performance. How much,
is suggested by the manner in which the programme manager - speaking
here as director - conducts training and monitoring sessions with individ-
ual announcers. In his words: "I'll say, O.K., here's the general picture. I'll
listen to you and say, That's great, that's not so great. I don't like that,
what do you think of that, here's why I think this." There is a considerable
degree of give-and-take in the relation between artists and management,
remarkably like the indeterminacy of rehearsals which take place prior to
film or music performance or the briefing of journalists and advertising
agency copywriters. Formats cannot predetermine every moment of
operation. While strategically rigid, their operational aspects are relatively
open; elements of programme presentation, for example, require nuances
of inflection, segueing of recordings, timing, and a flow of cheerful
personality, all of which demand creative flair from the announcer.
Operationally, they exist more like multiple, fragmentary and negotiable
parameters which performers can exploit to meet personal strategic goals.
This interplay of possibility and practical necessity in the corporate
context is captured by the station's top-rating morning announcer who
declared that formatted radio turns announcers into "button-pushers. All
we do is load, play and unload the cartridges [onto which playlist tracks
are dubbed], chat for the required 15 seconds, push another button", but
then laughed off its operational constraints with this remark:
Yes, the format does restrict us. Its a struggle for announcers to maintain that spark
of creativity. Its a challenge to insert your personality within a tight framework. But
the trick is to twist it around so that you can. And if you try, you can get away with
a lot.
This is why I have doubts about the claims from Coser et al. that the
anonymous authors hired to write for fiction factories and the like, are
wholly subject to the demands and constraints of others (1982: 261). Even
the most regulated of creative professionals cannot be entirely dominated
Formatting as a System of Creative Control 177
by formula; even writers of the most formulaic books report that there is
negotiation between themselves and their editors (e.g. the interviews with
Mills and Boon writers in The Australian 31 June 1985: 6, The Sunday Mail
29 February 1988: 4). Residues of the constitution of art lies hidden in the
structures of the corporate cultural workplace and can be mobilised in
every moment of creation.
The duality of formatted production is also evident from the point of
view of management. Producers and directors are reliant on cultural
workers learning the format in the process of rehearsal and using it as a
framework within which they think and act. As the FM-RADIO station
manager acknowledged: "You can't impose the format too tightly on your
personalities. It restricts their creative juices". Because management are
anxious to secure originals consistent with creative policy, they create
highly detailed formats and use them to regulate the work of the project
team to a considerable degree, but because of the constant demand for
originality which underlies their industry, they simultaneously hope that
the performers they have engaged, especially the stars and top profession-
als allocated to leading executant positions in the project team, will use the
format imaginatively, extending its limits through their own unique
contribution. The problem for performers, however, is that the format
sanctions the historical limits the corporations of culture place upon their
artistic idealism, and the terrain of their contest with managers is confined
by its fiat to the operational level of technique and interpretation of its
rules.
5.5 Formatting as a System of Creative Control
5.5.1 The Format

The development and character of formatting as an essay in labour control
applied to the project team, is one of the characteristic features of
corporate cultural production. Fundamentally tied on the one hand to the
emergence of large private companies manufacturing cultural commodi-
ties and geared towards regular patterns of release for differentiated
markets, formatting is also associated with the professionalisation of
creative management. Given recent changes in the conditions of produc-
tion and circulation, it represents a corporate response to the organisa-
tional indeterminacies characterising the form of labour organisation
within the creative stage of production, after limited attempts at technical

control and reorganisation of their creative departments around the
principle of a project team. As a system of control, it exhibits many
features and effects of the process of workplace bureaucratisation which
major capitalist enterprises in the Western world developed throughout
the 20th century, and has impacted specifically on the cultural aspects of
artistic creation which had previously been beyond direct company
control. By transforming the production of originality into a process
governed by company-advocated rules, formatting serves to rationalise the
otherwise arbitrary and idiosyncratic play of imaginative creativity and
routinely steers artists towards repetition of the particular cultural forms
in which companies have invested. To the degree that corporations have
been successful in this production strategy, it drives the creative stage of
production further towards its structural subordination to the imperatives
of accumulation.
As we have seen, the corporate task of creative management entails
generating and installing formats designed to guide the work of the project
team in pre-conceived directions, and to temper the chaos of the market.
In this sense, the fusion of management and rule in the present-day
corporate core of the culture industry represents an historically specific
circumstance in relations between artists and artistic leaders. In one sense,
there are reminders here of much older forms of artistic leadership which
prospered after cultural production emerged from court and into the
public realm: like performer-masters of the 18th and 19th centuries who
were primarily concerned with the aesthetic and artistic excellence of the
work being created, today's creative managers still take responsibility for
the initial moment of inspiration and oversee its gestation, although in a
weaker and more mediated manner. Now, as creative management, and
having lost much of the latitude and motives they once enjoyed, the
professional mode of their administration has realigned their interests
with those of their employers, turning their ideas towards the dictates of
market demand.
To deal with vagaries of market conditions, the format realised by the
producer and installed by the director is founded upon the conventions
underlying existing cultural forms, but which are given a unique and
identifiable form of appearance. Customary grammars are invoked
through unexpected vocabularies to generate singular, stylistically-
identifiable works of art, but the products of a format are not the absolute
originals the traditions of art anticipate from artists. Instead, they appear
as variations on a theme, which the manufacturer can be reasonably
assured have market potential with particular audience segments. At best,
as works of art, they represent a cultural reorientation - associated with
the fundamental and complex differentiations of the public sphere of

culture in modern, capitalist societies, and the institution of 'entertain-
ment' as opposed to 'art' - around preferences for familiarity and
amusement rather than the challenge of originality22 (cf. Williams 1963:
13-19, 1965: 70-88, cf. also Corrigan 1983). While this bureaucratic system
of production might suit corporate proclivities for predictability, format-
ting produces - at worst - artworks which lack the effervescence and
restlessness which are the very ethos of artistic creativity, precisely
because the element of uncertainty and the excitement of discovery have
been done away with in the interests of financial security (Coser et al.
1982: 281, Escarpit 1966: 122).
The format appears as little more than a collage of loosely-connected
parameters stitched together and unified under a rubric, but is invoked in
the workplace as an ideal, an icon, and assumes or at least shares the
mantle of authorship with creative management to orchestrate the efforts
of members of the project team. Where does its power come from?
The obvious answer is that its rules are backed by the organisational
power of creative management, but there is more to it than this. Cultural
forms are conventional in character. They stretch across and connect an
artistic community; not only the corporations of culture but the culture
industry itself and beyond to regions of independent and amateur produc-
tion, academies and journals of art, and less explicitly into audiences
themselves. Their conventions are lodged in the practical and discursive
consciousness of community members. Cultural workers engaged in a
particular type of work inevitably draw upon the customary structures and
contents which characterise it. Even the greatest artists of an age, as
Wellek and Warren (1963: 235) note in relation to authors:
are rarely inventors of genres: Shakespeare and Racine, Moliere and Jonson,
Dickens and Dostoyevsky enter into other men's labours...and modern gen-
res...start with a specific highly influential book or author.
Behind the innovations of present day artists lies the accumulated record
of the past, embedded in the commonplace cultural forms out of which
their work flows, and the practicalities of communication ascribe them a
sense of necessity; in that sense they represent institutional imperatives
which are coercive in their effects. The same applies in the corporate
workplace. If a format is recognisably underlaid by the conventions and
22 There may be connections in audience preferences for familiar entertainment

to Giddens' (1984: 50, 375) notion of the personal search for Ontological secu-
rity' as a feature of contemporary everyday life, but I do not intend pursuing
this here.
standards of its type, its propositions will be accepted as the commonsense

of cultural work. The difference here, however, is that where cultural
forms are freely malleable to independent artists depending upon their
biases and ambitions, company policies are presented to corporate cultural
workers as impersonal rules, personified by the managers, producers and
directors with organisational authority over the terms of their employ-
ment. This gives the format its apparent objectivity. The organisational
fetish which attaches to its terms, confronts executants as an apparatus,
demanding that rehearsal and performance become a matter of learning
and reproducing its approved procedures.
Despite corporate efforts to influence creativity, formats are not and
cannot ever be monolithic. They can never be more than loosely-con-
nected parameters pointing to preferred outcomes - if the company is to
compete in the cultural marketplace. Because the objects they manufac-
ture are still artistic objects, companies rely on their project team playing
around with its rules and their combinations to impart a minimum
quantity of originality to each original. The coercive power of formats,
therefore, seems to partially dissolve in its application - but more so
when confronted by the persona of stars than creatives: its organisational
determinacy varies across the project team, a fact which warrants further
consideration.
5.5.2 Formats and the Project Team:

Creative Management
Perhaps the most important organisational effects associated with corpo-
rate rationalisation of creativity have been felt by creative management.
Since producers have historically reserved the conception function, their
relocation within the executive hierarchy was a crucial move for corpora-
tions needing more control over their project teams. In this way their
artistic inclinations were made more subject to the logic of business,
resulting in their enforced professionalisation. In the case of editors, for
example, we find that:
In place of the personal and idiosyncratic style found in houses run by a single
individual, publishing houses, particularly in the textbook market are adopting
professional management principles and techniques that allow houses to grow in
complexity, while at the same time they are attempting to maintain coordination
and control (Coser et al. 1982:199).
An important element in the construction of the corporate form of
cultural production has been the shifting 'upstairs' of the centre of creative
control. The rise of executive-status producers has been crucial in consoli-

dating and legitimating the format as a vehicle of routinised company
control. In this way, company management have ensured that the unstable
market conditions they needed to respond to were accounted for in
creative project planning - even if it meant diffusing management con-
trol. It served to establish effective company control at the strategic level
of creative planning by connecting producer work to administration
(involving matters such as budgets, revenue, staffing and equipment), and
rationalising their creativity.
In one sense, formatting has impacted most on the structural position of
the director. Previously involved with the producer in both the planning
phase and the rehearsal room, professional directors in the corporations of
culture are being reduced to the nominal function of supervisor. This is
especially the case in television, press and radio production, where
permanent employees direct many types of in-house continuity or series
television programmes (directors) (e.g. Ravage 1978), or coordinate the
gathering and processing of daily news (chiefs-of-staff, or news directors)
as in the case of The Daily Courier, or direct announcers and programmes
in the on-air studio (studio directors). They are little more than the hired
hands of the producer who designed the format. In these cases, the
organisation of formatted production has had the effect of limiting
directors to operational aspects of the execution phase, binding them like
other executant-employees to company concerns by restricting the play of
their imaginations to the prescribed terrain of the format.
The situation, however, is complicated. In film and musical recording,
professionalisation of the executive producer has encouraged some direc-
tors to claim new territories of skill within the creative stage. Some have
made themselves invaluable by becoming specialist leader-executants,
interpreting formats in exciting ways and eliciting performances from
others which transcend its creative restrictions. Others, in their function as
coordinators of the performance-transcription and post-production pro-
cesses, experiment with the expanded technical capacities of equipment
such as cameras, recording consoles, effects generators and electronic
type-setting equipment, in ways which contribute to the overall aesthetic
and commercial qualities of the original (in this sense they are redevelop-
ing in new directions, the artistic contribution once made by now deskilled
transcription workers, but from an authoritative position of management).
More recently, oligopolistic domination of production within segmented
taste markets has created many opportunities for freelance operators,
both individuals and teams, allowing them to recapture lost ground. Some
producer-directors have reputations which define them as superstars in
their own right - but as creative managers, not performers (e.g. interviews
with Mike Nichols and Stanley Kubrick in Gelmis 1970: 265-327). Their
artistic authority enables them either to take full responsibility for their
projects seeking only distribution agreements and/or perhaps some invest-
ment funding from the majors (the advantage of this for the majors, of
course, is that it shifts much of the risk on to the independent), or to be
sub-contracted by the majors to create special projects (which by defini-
tion are not tightly formatted). In either case, beyond a necessary concern
for commercialism, they have complete artistic control in a manner much
like the entrepreneur/artist-manager partnership of the 19th century (the
craft workshop model). This development has been of immense impor-
tance in film (e.g. Gelmis 1970) and popular music (e.g. Frith 1978), as well
as in advertising, and in some instances, has countered the corporate
tendency towards formulaic creativity.
5.5.3 Formats and the Project Team: Executants

In considering the impact of formatting on the executant component of
the project team, we need to distinguish between the stars who are sought
out for leading and supporting roles and the professional creatives who
back them. Formatting has separated superstars from minor stars. Corpo-
rations also need originals which break new artistic ground and which
become best sellers. While expecting continuity in an artist's work, they
still need them occasionally to strike out boldly, whether by developing
their talents in new directions or putting their trademark on an otherwise
tired and faded work or form. Accordingly, major stars have a powerful
structural potential to transcend any format. Theirs' is a space where
talent is allowed to fly freely, if they have the conviction, idealism and
talent to challenge its limits. They can force their way into strategic project
planning, whether invited by creative management to participate, or in
spite of creative management, during arguments over interpretation of the
form or plan.
If formatting cannot be imposed on stars it may still be present in its
effects. Economic relations also mediate the star/format relation. Stars are
engaged as a contracted artists: if they wish to maximise their earnings and
preserve their commercial reputations, they must take some responsibility
for its market appeal. Since the format is also predicated on commercial-
ism, economic self-interest encourages them to collaborate with creative
management in their plans and keep their inspiration within conventional
bounds. Theirs' is a joint venture in formatting, and their cooperation
legitimates its reign.
The danger for major artists in adhering too closely to commercial
formulae and accepting company attempts to format their creativity is that

they are locked into endless cycles of marketplace fashion which, without
warning or good reason, can redefine them as worn-out talents and
replace them with the latest issue of the publicity machine. This can
substantially shorten what might have potentially been a life-long career
based on the gradual maturation of their talent. Equally, since formats are
derived partly from their previous works, it mimics their talents. With a
popular format, corporations can substitute major talents with lesser and
cheaper names who can be guided in the right directions and dressed up in
the marketing process to appear as the latest fashion. This may bring
temporary success for minor stars, but they lack either the artistic or
organisational authority to challenge the limits the format places upon
their talent and employment. In having their talents defined through its
terms, it becomes a set of chains, typecasting them throughout the course
of their careers (cf. Escarpit 1966: 151-152).
What of professional creatives? Their structural location presupposes
artistic anonymity, subjectivity to creative management, and an exclu-
sively executant role. Plainly, there are historical connections between the
development of formatting and the consolidation of creative professional
conditions. Associated with the regularisation of production and the
attempt to stabilise the cultural marketplace - especially in the media,
where by far the majority are employed under these conditions - it can be
defined as work based on 'following the format'. If this requires resigning
the customary freedoms usually associated with artistic work, the struc-
tural consent of creatives is bought by the professional working conditions
they enjoy; the security, regular wages and the possibility of promotion -
all of which are significant material benefits in an industry notorious for its
instability and insecurity - and the craft-like pleasures of performance at
high levels of professionalism. Nor do these bureaucratic conditions
necessarily bleed their work of all its artistic freedoms. As we saw earlier,
even in the most heavily formatted forms such as the media, the system
creates its own contradictions. While the format brings common identity
to a collection of projects, each is a complex apparatus calling for
high-level skills with each project requiring its own touches of originality.
Creative management are reliant on professional creatives not only to
exercise skills of the highest order (and in many arenas throughout the
culture industry, professional skills have reached extraordinarily high
standards), but also to exhibit their personal flair. Those who build
substantial reputations for professionalism are able to claim a qualified
version of the same strategic freedoms and financial returns granted to
major talents. If their employer markets their work, they soon acquire a
name and attract some of the prestige and recognition usually reserved for
stars. For professional creatives, therefore, formatting is a double-edged

sword. For most, it brings the security of regular work and a weekly salary,
but at the cost of relinquishing the idealism that is constituted as part of
the artist's makeup and forces them to accept the frustrations of being an
artist in a bureaucratic and capitalist context.
5.6 Conclusion
If formatting was introduced as the corporate answer to problems of

labour control in the creative stage in an historical context of regularised
production and the carving out of market share, then measured by levels
of consumption of the goods they produce, it has been substantially
successful. While stars can escape their regimes, formats have played a
crucial role in consolidating the conditions of creative (as opposed to
artistic) work and sedimenting professional cultural practice. Despite the
fact that they are unable to exert total control over cultural workers, since
formatting operates as a superstructure over existing structures of creative
management and a specialised division of labour, corporations can admin-
ister the creative stage in a manner which systematically supplies them
with the originals they need to expand in an unpredictable and competi-
tive market.
From the perspective of the corporations of culture, however, this
limited victory in production has been won at the cost of introducing
significant problems of realisation in the sphere of circulation. Cultural
goods produced under the formatting system reveal a marked tendency
towards typicality and repetition. The problem with this is that, in the
publishing sector, for example, it can generate objects which are "bland
and uniform, if not outright uninteresting. As a result, some have sold very
poorly" (Coser et al. 1982: 278). Consequently, corporations are forced to
spend considerable sums of money in marketing their otherwise homoge-
neous releases in order to make them distinguishable and attractive in the
marketplace. This is not only expensive, it also reconstitutes the contradic-
tions of the art/capital relation at a higher level of complexity. These are
the matters to be covered in the following chapter.
Chapter 6
Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace:
The Marketing of Cultural Commodities
and the Making of Stars and Styles
6.1 Introduction
The contradictions of the cultural commodity constantly confront the

corporations: they are unable to predict either the market behaviour or
financial yield from the goods they invest so much in producing. Their
search for security has driven them towards formatting the creative stage
of production; this chapter deals with another important strategy, the
adoption of marketing techniques to discipline the cultural marketplace.
To organise a regular supply of commercial originals to the reproduc-
tion stage of production, manufacturers have adopted name-based and
form-based creative policies and have formatted the work of the project
team. The commodities they manufacture, however, still have to be sold.
Not only is the cultural marketplace overstocked and highly competitive,
but because the qualities of cultural commodities as artistic objects
deteriorate quickly, companies need to create an immediate, conspicuous
and persuasive impact for them immediately upon release. Marketing,
therefore, has come to play an important role in the circulation of cultural
commodities1 - but in a specific form, centring upon 'the making of stars
and styles'. This is the outcome of 'positioning' cultural commodities, of
constructing their 'identity' and 'promoting' them to a position of 'signifi-
cance'. Under these conditions, stars and styles come to function in the
market like 'brands', serving to order demand and stabilise sales patterns,
allowing the corporations of culture to engage in a degree of planning. The
importance of marketing is such that the position of 'the marketer' has
1 Given their existence as the suppliers and distributors of marketing goods and
services, sections of the culture industry were crucial to the growth of corpo-
rate marketing. It may even be that currents in the culture industry played a
constitutive role in the practice of marketing, hence making conglomerations
of capital possible, although I shall not specifically investigate this question.
186 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Marketing
become institutionalised within the structure of relations which constitutes

the corporate form of production and is the vehicle whereby the demands
of marketing are made to reach back into the creative stage of production
and play a determinant role in the shaping of creative policy.
6.2 Marketing: Culture at the Service of Capital
The emergence and consolidation of marketing is associated with the rise

of the corporate phase of capitalist development. Many industries are
dominated by giant conglomerations of capital, usually transnational in
scope and which represent enormous productive capacity. These corpora-
tions need to stimulate demand so that production can be maintained and
output sold. In order to "reduce the autonomous character of demand for
its products and to increase its induced character" (Braverman 1974: 265),
corporations expanded their 'sales effort', built around "the advertising,
research, development of new product varieties, services, etc., which are
the usual means for fighting for market shares" (Baran and Sweezy 1966:
117-144, cf. also Braverman 1974: 257-270, Galbraith 1970: 124-164, also
Ewen 1976). Understood historically, therefore, modern corporations
developed partly through the construction of specific technical means, the
techniques of marketing as an extension of sales activities, to order and
expand their markets. In that sense it represents an extension of the
rationalism which underlies modern capitalism (Weber 1976) but applied
in the sphere of circulation.
A socio-cultural critique of marketing is needed to derive appropriate
concepts that will allow us to examine its specific form in the culture
industry. As a complex practice, marketing involves several related
activities including research, product planning and design, packaging,
publicity and promotion, pricing policy, and sales and distribution, and is
closely tied to merchandising and retailing (e.g. Baker 1985a, 1985b).
Because I am interested in the cultural mechanisms of marketing, I will
deal only with the first four of these.
6.2.1 Segments, Science, Brands, and the Business of

'Product Positioning'
By the middle decades of this century, modern corporations were charac-
terised by a marketing rather than production orientation (Baker 1985a:
Marketing: Culture at the Service of Capital 187
17-19, Galbraith 1970: 143) wherein marketing strategies began to play an

important role in shaping design and manufacture (Baran and Sweezy
1966: 134, Braverman 1974: 266). Now, product differentiation and market
segmentation have displaced prices as the primary form of competition. In
the search for long-term market share and hence long-term profit maximi-
sation, companies manufacture a range of specialised goods and services,
each targeted to a specific consumer group (Baker 1985a: 139-141, Baran
and Sweezy 1966: 73). This provided conditions for the expansion of
advertising and marketing agencies and the commercial media, especially
radio and television, which also established transnational linkages to
service their clients' needs (e.g Fox 1984, Smythe 1977).
In its research aspect, marketing represents in part the application of
science to the service of capital. Basic, internal analysis of sales trends is
now combined with systematic research into consumers and consumption.
Some is sociological, wherein socio-economic and demographic factors are
clustered to identify various consumer segments which are correlated with
purchasing patterns, and more recently, lifestyles. Some research is
psychological, examining consumer motivations, attitudes, and desires
(Baker 1985a: 141-165, Packard 1957). These data are fed back into
product planning and design, whence a range of differentiated products
are created for different market niches, then packaged and advertised to
attract consumers according to their needs or wants (Galbraith 1970:
148-149).
Brands are particularly important in the competition to establish market
share, and because they become important in later discussion, warrant
brief examination. Each incorporates a range or family of goods and is
extensively marketed so that something of its reputation rubs off onto
every commodity which bears its mark. To the potential consumer, brands
are made to appear as if a guarantee of worth (Baran and Sweezy 1966:
123), signifying that the commodity bearing its name possesses known
attributes and properties, and is superior to or at least the equal of its
competitors, and represents value for money (Baker 1979: 59). If success-
ful, it generates brand loyalty, where branded product lines attract repeat
sales which, if sustained, build market share and sustain annual turnover
and profits. Companies also seek to maintain year-to-year sales within
each brand line. This partly involves creation of new models supposed to
meet changing, emerging or potential wants amongst different consumer
segments. Equally, fashion has been made a crucial part of marketing
(Braverman 1974: 266); this is the business of 'aesthetic innovation' (Haug
1986: 42) wherein the design, style and/or packaging of the commodity are
regularly updated, and the 'new' model is advertised around fantasies of
upward mobility which their purchase is supposed to bring (Galbraith

1970: 140-152, Haug 1986: 39-44).
In many ways, the key to the marketing process lies in packaging and
advertising. Here we see how marketing brings science and culture
together in the service of capital to regulate the process of circulation.
Their purpose is to stimulate demand, "to wage a relentless war against
savings and in favour of consumption" (Baran and Sweezy 1966: 132).
Specialised cultural workers are engaged to produce signifying objects
designed "to position products in order to create a new market or segment
an existing competitive market" (Bonney and Wilson 1983: 159) and
engage in the "competitive manipulation of consumer desire" to attract
sales, to "create desires, to bring into being wants that previously did not
exist" (Galbraith 1970: 150). If successful, a company's products become
the leaders in their respective market niches.
With this general framework in mind, I want to examine the workings of
marketing as a form of socio-cultural activity. The following draws on
recent cultural studies analysis (e.g. Barthes 1967, 1977, Eco 1976,
Williamson 1978)2, but it differs in an important respect. Unlike most
cultural analysts, I am not concerned with the ideological functioning of
signifying objects, of the semiological relations between their contents and
the subjectivities they propose3. Instead, my concern is to examine the
sociological determinants of marketing practice; i.e. how the specific
corporate political-economic objectives underpining marketing are re-
alised in packaging and advertising.
6.2.2 Product Packaging: The Textualising of 'Identity'

If we take the term 'positioning' to refer to the goal of design, packaging
and advertising, it has two constituent phases; 'packaging: the construction
of identity', and 'promotion: the allocation of significance' - which
It draws especially on works which link the semiotics of particular types of

texts to their social, institutional and organisational contexts; e.g. Bonney and
Wilson (1983), Dyer (1982), Glasgow University Media Group (1976, 1980)
and Hartley (1982). For a prescriptive and programmatic 'application' of semi-
otics in marketing, see Umiker-Sebeok (1987). Myers (1983) is a useful contri-
bution of similar intent to mine.
I would argue that the conclusions of semiotic analysts in this regard are impor-
tant, but that they represent hypotheses awaiting empirical examination. Fur-
ther, I would suggest that my analysis identifies important determinants in cul-
tural production which may be relevant to examining outcomes in consump-
tion, although I do not attempt to draw these out here.
correspond approximately to signifying the commodity's use and exchange

value respectively. In socio-cultural terms, the first seems straightforward,
the second more complex. By examining both in detail, I will demonstrate
later how marketing techniques affect the production and circulation of
cultural commodities and the reverberations these have in the creative
If potential consumers are to be attracted to a commodity, then its
purpose and properties must be specified. Some rationale must be
provided as to why it should be purchased. This will refer primarily to its
potential 'uses' - understanding this term broadly, whether in a technical
and/or social and/or psychological sense (it will likely be a combination of
all three)4. The commodity must promise to satisfy potential purchasers by
fulfilling their specific wants and needs; what marketers speak of as its
'consumer benefits'. Accordingly, an 'identity' - or in the anthropomor-
phic talk of marketers, a 'personality' - is constituted for the product
through various languages, in exchanges between seller and buyer. In
itself, this is not new. Previously, shopkeepers explained the possibilities
of their unpackaged, unbranded stock to customers and persuaded them
in their choices. In that situation, the medium was the personal interaction
between individuals. The difference in the modern era of depersonalised
merchandising and self-service retailing, is that the commodity is designed
to sell itself, to make a spectacle of itself in order to attract the attention
and interest of shoppers (e.g. Davis 1966). Hence the necessity for
'commodity aesthetics' (Haug 1986: 8); the construction of a desirable
appearance around the commodity, intended to stimulate the desire to
possess and the impulse to buy.
Under oligopolistic conditions, this is an increasingly problematic task,
as reflected in industry complaints, voiced regularly, for example, in the
leading Australian periodical, b&t advertising, marketing and media
weekly. For example:
Products and brands are becoming more increasingly (sic) homogeneous and it is
Bourdieu (1984: Part III) shows clearly how positioned commodities are pur-
chased and consumed to mark out distinction as part of a individual's life(style)
project (cf. also Featherstone 1987). I disagree with Baudrillard (e.g. 1975) who
argues that packaging and advertising obliterate use-value. First, a functional
notion of utility is still important to most purchasers; clothes, cars, durables,
etc. must still work properly. Second, the utility that lies behind consumption is
broader than mere technical purpose. Purchase to maintain class or stratum
differentiation, positioned consumption, is use, a constituent, transformative
moment of agency (i.e. purchase/consumption as a mode of appropriation; cf.
Featherstone 1987, Hebdige 1979) - however socially undesireable it might be.
becoming more difficult to find a product or service benefit which enables

marketers to create a meaningful identity for their brand in consumers' minds (3
February 1983: 22).
Making the product stand out in a niche full of otherwise indistinguishable

products is dependent, according to Baker (1979: 221), on its packaging.
"Many competing products are incapable of differentiation on the basis of
objective criteria", he argues, "and in these instances packaging and
promotion often constitute the sole distinguishing features upon which the
product's success or failure depends". Product design and packaging
(which I will refer to generally as 'packaging') serve to identify the
particular purposes which the commodity is uniquely designed to serve, to
posit its marginal differentiation in a manner meaningful to a particular
consumer segment. In the language of cultural studies, packaging is part of
the process of signifying the commodity's difference (Bonney and Wilson
1983: 125-196).
The marketer dresses up the commodity so that carries signs upon itself
which proclaim its form of existence. Symbols are made to surround its
physical form, playing upon and becoming, in effect, its external surfaces.
Product and packaging are absorbed into each other and operate as a
'text', inviting potential purchasers to 'read' the commodity's value. A
good Australian example is the sleek, wind-wedge shape and darkly
iridescent colours of General Motors-Holden's new range of Commodore
motor cars which attest to its combined claims of modernistic, high-techno-
logy manufacture, the efficiency of its operation, and its suitability as
either business or middle class family transport. Another is the recently
repackaged Penguin Classics paperback range (for Penguin's marketing
approach see The National Times 4-10 October 1985: 30-31, The Weekend
Australian 25-26 May 1985: Magazine 17). The status and seriousness of
these books are signified by reproducing paintings on their covers which
symbolise the period and setting of the plot and/or characters and/or
writer; Anna Kerenin, for example features Yaroshenko's 'Portrait of an
unknown woman'. Backcover notes elaborate the novel's literary claims:
"With Anna Kerenin, Tolstoy's most perfect work, the psychological novel
of the nineteenth century reached its peak", and so on. These signs speak
eloquently and confidently of the commodity of which they are part; in
textualising it, they enable the potential consumer to understand its value
as a commodity.
Creating the packaging is the task of various cultural workers employed
in the creative stage of the marketing process, ranging from designers to
artists in marketing and advertising departments to the agencies sub-con-
tracted by the manufacturer. They select signs from various discourses and
collect them and their conventional meanings around the object5. As a

text, the packaging becomes a polysemic but powerful voice apparently
emanating from the commodity itself. It signifies the specific terms of its
identity, offering propositions as to its use-value, and asserting its unique-
ness within an otherwise homogeneous range of commodities, serving to
constitute "its real countenance, which the potential buyer is shown first
instead of the body of the commodity" (Haug 1986: 50). In this sense,
packaging is a necessary sales gambit in complex, oligopolistic markets,
intended to position the product horizontally along a plane of use-value,
as an identifiable and singular promissory within a range of otherwise
similar products.
'Post-modern' cultural practice is often said to be characterised by borrowings,

echoings, and repetitions, and the stitching together of otherwise disconnected
signs - as pastiche (e.g. Jameson 1984). Given the manner in which cultural
workers 'do' packaging and publicity, it is tempting to speculate that this 'cul-
tural dominant' is associated with this form of cultural work (I make further
comments in the next chapter about the historical and structural ontology of
'communication', connecting it to 'marketing' as a form of cultural practice).
Its spread into other forms would reflect the generalisation of marketing tech-
niques into other spheres of social-cultural life. In so far as marketing is a form
of cultural practice associated with corporate capitalism, Jameson might be
right to connect post-modernism with the logic of late capitalism.
6.2.3 Product Promotion:

The Creation and Allocation of 'Significance'
Product positioning continues in the process of advertising6. An advertise-
ment signifies a consumption setting for the commodity and creates a
fantasy around its use. It offers an idealised display of its promises in
action by showing representations of its intended consumer using the
product in possible sites of consumption and being wonderfully satisfied;
its referent, in other words, is the significance-of-the-commodity-in-its-
context-of-use. This serves to confirm the product identity proclaimed in
its packaging by positioning the product, consumer and context of
consumption within specific and recognisable social practices7. But in an
important sense, this is still horizontal positioning. Identity is insufficient
to ensure sales in a competitive market. Because the product is a
commodity and sale is subject to the price mechanism, it must also be
positioned along a 'vertical' axis of market value; i.e. ranked within a
It needs to be remembered that "the positioning of products is inseparable

from the positioning of audiences addressed" (Bonney and Wilson 1983:
163) - to which one might also add, according to the same logic, the constitu-
tion of audience segments. The complex web of social and psychological fan-
tasies operating within the advertisement not only project the product's iden-
tity and value, but simultaneously seek to locate potential consumers individu-
ally and collectively within a grid of individual desires and social desirability.
The value of the commodity is represented as its capacity to realise those
dreams; the advertisement's pledge is that consumption materialises them. Ac-
cording to recent analyses which connect semiotics and psychoanalysis, an ef-
fect of this is the structuring of consciousness (e.g. Bonney and Wilson 1983,
Williamson 1978). I am ignoring the subjectivity-consumption phase of the ad-
vertising process to focus on the economic conditions which necessitate it (cf.
also Myers 1983). I have no real argument with the types of claims made by the
best of this work (e.g. Williamson), other than to insist that their propositions
require some form of empirical investigation based on a notion of consump-
tion-as-agency (for extended discussion of the notion of 'agency' see Giddens
1979, 1984). It may be, however, that political-economic determinants which
are articulated to the cultural work of making advertisements as indicated in
this discussion, have significant effects in both production and consumption of
texts and the possibility of analytical readings, which need to be investigated
further.
In doing so, it also constitutes and naturalises the social significance of the
consumer group for whom product is intended. This suggests that advertising
and marketing might generate a specific and powerful form of classing effect
operating through the sphere of culture.
hierarchy of exchangability. Since money represents exchange ratios,

relative cultural values ('significances') between commodities are necessar-
ily stratified. To the potential purchaser, a product must appear not only
unique but also value for the price8. It must exhibit its superiority
compared to its competitors; it must proclaim its significance, its position
of value in 'the economy of significance'.
This needs explanation. The battle for market leadership in the market
takes place partly in the cultural realm, in the cultural dimension of the
economy; i.e. an economy of significance, which operates in parallel with
the money economy (cf. Bourdieu 1984, Featherstone 1987: 57, cf.
especially Baudrillard 19759). Product positioning entails not only postulat-
ing identity but ascribing the product a 'reputation'; in effect, signifying
not only its utility but also its market value. Exchange value was defined
by Marx as the monetary expression of the abstract labour value con-
sumed in its making - understood in the sense of its manufacture. The
advent of marketing has added to this. Reputation is a measure of the
commodity's recognisable significance, its cultural value - the importance
it is deemed to possess in relations between buyers and sellers. In this
sense, analogous to the relationship between value and money in Marx'
framework, reputation is the currency of significance, its abstract expres-
Although advertisers employ master symbols in an attempt to claim universal-

ity for their product, in an era of market segmentation, the complex of function-
ality, desirability and worth that constitutes 'value' varies across different con-
sumer groups (cf. Bourdieu 1984, Morley 1980, Myers 1983). In the following
discussion of cultural value ('significance') and its currency, its form of appear-
ance ('reputation'), I presume but do not always spell out these relativities.
Baudrillard goes too far in asserting the social disconnection of sign and refer-
ent, and that "the code no longer refers back to any subjective or objective
'reality' but to its own logic" (1975: 127). Although there are certain connec-
tions in my analysis to his 'political economy of the sign', I obviously have
different views (cf. also Featherstone 1987; Lash and Urry 1985: chapter 9), nor
can I accept his provocative anti-sociologism. Rather than critique his work, I
would simply rather assert that while advertisers might attempt to achieve the
effects he deals with - reification of the image, privileging ostensible realities
around commodities, etc. - these strategies should not be treated as achieved
effects. Marketing, like language generally, involves an unequal struggle over
meaning; it is a contested terrain of signification (cf. Hall 1977, Volosinov
1973), and one of the most disabling shortcomings of media/cultural studies
remains inadequate theorisation of consumption as agency and modes of con-
sumption (cf. Bourdieu 1984, Hebdige 1979, Morley 1980, cf. also Willis 1983 -
see also footnote 24 below). Instead, an unacceptable derogation of the lay
actor and the possibility of privileged academic readings, remain primary as-
sumptions of so much of this type of work.
sion (underpined by the cultural work which went into its marketing), and
contributes to the exchange value of the commodity10. To compete, the
commodity is advertised so that it attracts more reputation to itself than
that of its competitors. The larger the sum of significance a given
commodity accumulates, the greater its reputation, the higher its market
value - as measured by its reputation plus price of production. Its total
market value is an economic and cultural aggregate. The price asked or
which is possible to ask for the commodity is a monetary expression in
part, of its market value in toto as a manufactured, packaged and
advertised item of exchange.
Returning to the process of product positioning, the higher the relative
reputation of a product, the more likely it is to seem competitive in the
marketplace. The purpose of advertising is to maximise the product's
reputation, to promote it to a position of recognised superiority relative to
its competitors, so that it appears as the most significant commodity within
that product range and the only one worth the price being asked. This is
the vertical dimension of positioning, and reveals the logic underlying
promotion.
To represent the significance-of-the-commodity-in-its-context-of-use,
advertisements are built around a rhetoric of comparison utilising visual
and linguistic devices such as hyperbole and superlatives (cf. Barthes
1977). Slogans illustrate this: for example, "That's why Hoover is ahead of
the rest", Simply the best - from Sharp", and "Toshiba - Guaranteed to
be better". As cultural analysts have shown, a deeper and more powerful
rhetoric is spoken through the advertisement's semiotic structures. A
representation of the product is located alongside signs drawn from
discourses whose significance is already recognisable. The product-
signifier is ascribed its relative cultural value via its juxtapositioning
against them. Part of their value flows over to the product located in their
midst11; they allocate it part of their accumulated significance. Bonney and
10 Significance is also an expression of labour value, that of the cultural workers

engaged in the marketing process who signify the commodity's value, and
which is added to the cost of the commodity's production. If the cultural dimen-
sion of the economy is a parallel system of production and circulation of signifi-
cance, its infrastructure is the publicity apparatus of the culture industry - espe-
cially marketing, public relations and advertising agencies and the media.
11 The significance accumulated by the product being advertised, flows from a
number of sources and parallels the flows of economic value. The most impor-
tant is the value of the cultural labour consumed in the making of packaging
and the advertisement, and in the media contents which distribute the message
to the target audience. As will be seen in the following chapter, some also flows
from the labour which went into making the goods used by the medium in
Wilson's (1983: 172-174) analysis of an advertisement for Benson and

Hedges silver-packeted Sterling Mild cigarettes, is a good example (al-
though their notion of 'significance' is the simpler and narrower notion of
'meaning' common to cultural analysis than the one I am using here). In it,
a photograph of the packet is centrally positioned alongside other signs of
a leisured and wealthy lifestyle such as an expensive yacht, champagne,
elegant male/female hands; and a socially-valued consumption setting, a
tropical island holiday, languid enjoyment of the pleasures of love, and so
on. These objects of social distinction become the product's point of
reference, the grid of social value within which it is positioned. Sterling
Mild acquires its putative reputation from the structure of signs within
which its sign is located.
In summary, the purpose of design, packaging and advertising as part of
the marketing process, is to position the commodity in a specialised and
segmented market niche, to confer upon it a singular identity and promote
it to the highest rank of market value - to constitute its social status as a
useful and significant object12. As an effect of the cultural work put into its
circulation, its market profile is completed and the commodity readied for
merchandising. Thus culture is combined with science in the marketing
process and put to the service of capital, aiding the process of accumula-
tion by rationalising the circulation of commodities.
making its own commodity. In other words, the form of appearance of promo-
tion, the pre-emptive allocation of reputation flowing to the product being
packaged and advertised, derives from the reputation of the signs used in its
packaging, of the signs it is located with in the advertisement, the reputation of
the medium, and the items of media content alongside which the advertise-
ment is placed. Hence, for example, marketers use signs of high-status objects
in packaging and advertisements, from materials to exotica to star-presenters
(see the following discussion of Sterling Mild), the most popular media, and
look for placement against the items likely to be most popular with their target
audience.
12 A question raised with me by colleagues concerns the truncated product cycle
of cultural commodities and whether or not the product cycles of niche prod-
ucts are also relatively short; in other words, whether cultural commodities are
as different as this analysis makes out. Given the cultural character of market-
ing and the impact of marketing on all types of commodities in recent years, it
is tempting to suggest that if they are correct, all marketed commodities begin
to behave more like cultural commodities - that they take on some of their
market characteristics. While an interesting hypothesis, I do not intend pursu-
ing this here.
6.3 Marketing Cultural Commodities:

The Making of Stars and Styles
Discussing the popular music business in the early 1970s, American critic
Jon Landau complained that:
As spontaneity and creativity have become more stylised and analysed and
structured, it has become easier for businessmen and behind-the-scenes manipula-
tors to structure their approach to merchandising music. The process of creating
stars has become a routine and a formula as dry as an equation (in Frith 1978:191).
Marketing in the culture industry is the focus of the remainder of this
chapter. By investigating the form it takes, I will suggest that the character
of marketing in this industry is systematically connected to the contradic-
tions of the art/capital relation. As might be expected, marketing is most
developed in the sector where cultural commodities are manufactured in
the form of private goods13 (see chapter 3); accordingly I will illustrate my
analysis with examples from the recording business.
Marketing has been a lynchpin in the development and operation of
corporate capital within the culture industry. Predictability and control -
in so far as these are possible - are effects of various techniques employed
by the corporations of culture to establish and maintain market share.
Processes similar to product differentiation and market segmentation,
coupled with promotion and publicity, are crucial to these goals. By
talking about the process of creating stars, Landau puts his finger on one
of the pivotal techniques. Others to be discussed shortly, and their
linkages back to production, are hinted at by Tucker in his historical
overview of the music business from the mid-1970s:
It's significant that at the start of the decade, the cant term for music within the
industry is product: The music had become merchandise to be packaged and sold.
Following good capitalist theory, the music industry began to approach its product
13 While this analysis is illustrated primarily with reference to the recording indus-
try, occasional references are made to other sectors which produce private
goods, to indicate parallel developments there. Contrary to first appearances,
the marketing of media products takes similar although less developed form.
The following discussion of name-based marketing, is equally applicable in
cases where, for example, radio stations promote their product by concentrat-
ing on the talents and appeal of individual announcers. Form-based marketing,
however, is much more common, parallelling their more marked shift towards
formatting; as seen, for example, where a station promotes itself as a rock or
beautiful music station.
Marketing Cultural Commodities 197
as a series of alternatives, of choices for the consumer. This was the neatest way to
package the growing sprawl of 1970s popular music, and thus the profusion of
products lining the record store shelves arranged by neat labels; singer-songwriters,
heavy metal, soft rock, art rock, country rock, disco, reggae, and punk.
Radio, too, was discovering what television had already learned: demo-
graphics... The notion of formatting, of programming a certain kind of
music for a certain segment of the audience to sell a certain kind of
product, became the prevailing practice...Radio stations offered listeners
a strict diet of [a type of music]. The idea was to attract the ideal
demographic group for advertisers (1986: 468-469).
The embeddedness of marketing in corporate cultural production and
its consequences, is illustrated effectively by the case of Britain's Stock,
Aitken, Waterman, the firm behind the PWL label which was responsible
throughout the 1980s for an extraordinary string of 60-70 Top 30 singles
with aggregate sales in excess of 37 millions copies. Based on extensive
ongoing market research, production is geared towards "High Street
pop - bright, bland and easy to dance to", fronted by "Kylie Minogue and
other squeaky-clean boy/girl-next-door pinups such as Jason Donovan,
Rick Astley and Bananarama". Theirs' is music designed for marketing.
PWL runs its Hit Factory according to a formula. "This is production-line
pop in overdrive, devoted to cranking out the hits", taking full control of
the creative stage and "treating its artists like puppets" (The Sydney
Morning Herald 19 August 1989: 73). As a market-oriented company,
PWL is organised around the principles of what the previous chapter
characterised as formatted production. Marketing imperatives reach back
into creation and link the production and circulation of their commodities.
How this occurs and its consequences will be examined in detail later.
Marketing in the culture industry involves a stratum of employees,
agents and sub-contractors14. In the recording sector, this ranges from
company marketing and sales, publicity and promotion and art depart-
ments, to the individuals and agents they sub-contract, and the agents who
14 For the sake of simplicity, I deal with marketing here as something occurring
within and controlled by the corporations of culture. In fact, some of this work
is done outside by agents within the publicity sector (e.g. cultural mediators
within the media and other cultural institutions, independent publicists and
promoters) in elaborating, publicising and promoting the identities of artists
and works. Important contributions are also made by personal managers, who
in this regard function as an extra-organisational extension of creative manage-
ment. They assist their clients in developing their act and repertoire, usually in
line with commercial dictates, and promoting them to companies and audi-
ences (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 123-179).
help artists develop their act. They create objects such as covers, publicity
handouts, posters, advertisements and campaigns, and video clips
(Denisoff 1975:144-146) and work on the technique, appearance, act, and
repertoire of the artist to develop the image that will best sell them (Frith
1978: 81). In that sense, like the positions which constitute the project
team, we can refer to 'the (collective) marketer' as a separate functional
position within the corporate structure of cultural relations, and one of
recently institutionalised power and consequence (cf. Frith 1978: 86-89).
Moreover, the marketing process itself is organised along the lines of the
project team15.
In marketing a release, the corporations of culture can follow either of
two strategies; as 'the work of a star' or as 'representing a style16' -
although many releases seems to combine both. These are the respective
counterparts in circulation of the name-based and form-based production
policies as discussed in the previous chapter.
6.3.1 Marketing Name-Based Cultural Commodities:

The Making of Stars
A time-honoured company strategy for beating the unpredictability of the
cultural marketplace is to focus on the 'name' behind the release, and
market it as the work of a 'star'. Manufacturers of cultural commodities
look for outstanding, original artworks - a particular song, book, televi-
sion programme, or film and so on - to reproduce in commodity form.
Under conditions of expanded production, however, a single work has
only limited economic value, even if a best seller. From a peak of
popularity, sales decline to nothing. The corporation, however, requires
continuous patterns of sales: hence, in part, the early development of the
star system. The institution of the 'star' is not new. From the beginnings of
15 Reflecting the fact that marketing is substantially cultural work, labour organi-
sation within the marketing stratum has the form of the creative project team,
with the power to plan concentrated around marketing management (a market-
ing manager and sales manager), and execution carried out by employed pro-
fessionals (e.g. photographers, graphic artists, copywriters and animators). Fur-
thermore, creation is formatted.
16 I am treating stars and styles here as two polarities on a continuum of forms of
appearance, as the essential duality of cultural commodities in circulation. Ev-
ery artwork is related to a style and flows from the energies of an artist. They
are never entirely separate and in the middle of the continuum, they dissolve
into each other - partly because, as will be argued later, styles generally de-
velop out of the work of stars.
the culture industry, entrepreneurs exploited the popularity of audience

favourites to make profits, as, for example, in opera and oratorio, and later
in orchestral and instrumental concerts (for examples see Raynor 1978; for
equivalents in theatre see Freedley and Reeves 1968). But the making of
stars in the modern era represents a fundamentally new intervention in the
cultural relations between artists and audiences. It is the corporations of
culture rather than audiences who take the initiative in defining and
confirming artistic greatness: furthermore, these stars and, as will be seen
later, styles, are transformed into brands. This constitutes an historically
specific type of relationship between artists of significant reputation and
the process of capital accumulation, and one which is characteristic of the
corporate era of the culture industry.
In the case of name-based cultural commodities, marketing focuses on
the artist17. By making them into stars then using them in numerous
productions, a repertoire of releases is produced, many of which are likely
to become best sellers. To the potential consumer, a commodity bearing
the name of a star has immediate appeal. To the corporations of culture,
stars and their works are desirable commercial properties which promise
to attract long-term sales and bring some financial stability to their
operations. Accordingly, companies sign up audience favourites or those
with mainstream commercial potential presently working in the periphery
or the amateur sphere (Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 130).
Once the original is created, the corporation has to position the release
within a highly competitive marketplace. If the artist is relatively new to
the mainstream market18, audiences do not yet know of their talents
and/or appeal, hence their work must be packaged by dressing them up in
signs of artistry. This necessitates working out the basis of their uniqueness
and appeal, consolidating them into an image and attaching it to their
name. It is work carried out on many sites and through many objects, the
17 As in previous discussions, use of the term 'the artist' refers to a position in a

structure of relations. Empirically, the artist might appear as an individual or
combination ranging from a group to an orchestra to theatrical company.
Equally, it might be a project team, where named individuals (the producer,
director, leading performers) stand for the collective effort.
18 Note I am making the conventional assumption here that experimentation oc-
curs in the independent sector, where artist 'pay their dues' and prove their
commercial potential, before the majors move in and sign them (e.g. Denisoff
1975:45-49). Whilst this often occurs, as later arguments will suggest, the corpo-
rations of culture are not as averse to experimentation as is sometimes sug-
gested. They have a structural reliance on their stars occasionally creating new
styles, and conditions in production for first-level stars are such that this can
and does occur.
most important of which is wrought on the body and persona of the artist
in developing their on and off-stage appearance and personality, their
dress, speech, movement, manner, repertoire, style and stage act. Artists
themselves do some of this, sometimes under the guidance of personal
managers or company management including the marketer. Additionally,
in the case of recording artists, for example, covers, sleeve and liner notes,
posters and display materials, video clips and publicity materials for media
and retailers are prepared by the marketer (cf. Frith 1978: 87-88; the
publicity sector also contributes to this work but I will save discussion of
the manufacturer/publicist relation till the following chapter).
What are signs of artistry? In essence, the unique array of signs which
constitute the image as that of an artist. These are individuals defined as
possessors of extraordinary, expressive talents, as human sources of
significant creativity, their abilities evidenced by individual indicators
which flow through their works and persona. These are taken to be the
signs of their artistry, the foundations of their distinctive personal style,
their unique vocabulary of stylistic markers - their idiolect - which
becomes the primary focus of star-based marketing strategies.
The potential audience has to be told and sold on the value of this
putative star. Their idiolect is identified; that is, the obvious artistic and
extra-artistic signs of their talent are differentiated and defined and their
claims to uniqueness highlighted. In a process similar to bricollage, the
marketing stratum stitches together a rhetorical discourse out of frag-
ments of their work and persona, a discourse which is given coherence by
the naturalness of the signs employed. In the case of recording artists, for
example, this might include highlights of their act, their songwriting and
singing abilities, their instrumental technique, training and experience,
musical influences, their biography and how it influences their talent, 'real
life' personality and physical appearance, living circumstances and per-
sonal life, and so on.
The packaging of Australian television-soap-actress-turned-pop-singer
Kylie Minogue is a good example19 (the following points from Marxism
19 There is a complex relationship between stars and styles (see later discussion)
which creates problems for researchers. All artists draw to some extent on
existing styles. This is reflected in marketing, even star-based. Only rarely are
artists signed and marketed outside of familiar styles: some, because they repre-
sent them - yet their work is marketed as if they are stars. In these cases, if
successful, they thereby become a star. Minogue seems to be a good example,
but the following discussion of Springsteen seems clearer. Most of the exam-
ples in the following discussion seem to be polar examples of star and style-
based marketing. Empirically, however, many examples are ambiguous and
difficult to disentangle, appearing to feature aspects of both approaches. In the
Today October 1988: 64, The Australian Magazine 8-9 July 1989: 20-30,
The Sunday Mail 13 March 1988: 7, The Sydney Morning Herald 19
August 1989: 7320). The creative manager for Mushroom Records
(Minogue's original Australian label) claims that the essence of her image
is as a "teen idol symbol. She's a perfect image - clean, healthy, young,
and Australian". It has been constructed partly from her acting, partly
from her singing but mostly from her personality. Her work as the
coquettish Charlene in the television programme Neighbours and in her
first film The Delinquents, caused her manager to comment that "She's a
considerable actress, capable of a much greater emotional range than
anyone you normally see in the soapies". A product of a hi-energy-pop-
disco formula, first at the hands of Mushroom Records and since 1987,
with London's Stock, Aitken, Waterman and their PWL label, she is little
more than a 'voice', a production factor slotted into her producer's plan -
but its cheerful, accessible, child-woman, fun-love-and-money efferves-
cence and immense commercial success, is taken to stand for itself. Far
more important in her packaging has been the 'real-life' person, from her
"fluffy, suicide blond curls" to her "overwhelmingly pleasant niceness".
According to Lucy O'Brien writing in Marxism Today:
Kylie Minogue's persona is utterly marketable; frothy emotions and down-to-earth

pap. She succeeds where a U.S. soap star would have failed. A Dynasty kitten
would be too knowing, too sophisticated, too sexy. Only Kylie's cardboard 'Aussie'
unpretentiousness could seem so accessible...
20 It is significant that data sources here include media items. The following chap-
ter deals at length with the symbiosis between manufacturer and publicist in
the culture industry. For the sake of simplicity I am dealing with packaging as
something done inside the corporations of culture by the marketer: in fact,
there is frequent overlap between the work of the marketer and the publicist,
with the latter operating outside the corporation. This example is a case and
point. Media coverage here, unwittingly or otherwise, is contributing to packag-
ing and publicising this star, to constituting the Minogue image as well as pro-
moting it to a position of superiority in an order of cultural things. As Frank
Robson, in his 'Kylie: A Serious Story' (The Australian Magazine 8-9 July
1989: 22) observes wryly: "Occasionally there are attacks on the 'Kylie public-
ity machine' for making something so small seem so big. Only a few media
people seem to realise they are the publicity machine".
The Kylie story is homespun and sweet. A shy mousse girl brought up in a
Melbourne suburb, she was a loner at school. Her mother...encouraged her to take
up a life of entertainment...a dad who's a chartered accountant. She feels guilty if
she spends too much money on clothes, is never seem apart from her mother...She
looks average, sings in tune, and feels happiest in jeans...
[She is] the girl who would have a 'Love Is...' poster on her wall. Kylie is the girl
with the frilly curtains and a giggle...She's everything every young girl wants to be.
These are the signs, the fragments of meaning, the signs of uniqueness
which have been stitched together in the packaging: they constitute the
appearance known as 'Kylie Minogue', as created in her recordings, her
films, the publicity handouts, the album covers, the press interviews and
photosessions, and so on, in an endless repetition of the same theme.
The packaging of Bruce Springsteen is another and perhaps clearer
example - its elements identified by Frith (1988: 94-101) in a perceptively
observed piece, as The Real Thing'. His image is founded on 'authentic-
ity', how he has been made to stand for 'the core values of rock and roll' in
a manner which "most convincingly creates (and depends on) a sense of
community". Frith links the singer and his songs with the notion of 'the
street', a populist ethos which permeates rock and which Springsteen is
seen to personify. It is the centre of every representation of the artist,
every appearance, live, recorded or photographed. What 'Springsteen'
means, his identity and value, is constantly reaffirmed in the same terms.
A central signifier, according to Frith, is that he is "a millionaire who
dresses like a worker", always seen in worn jeans, singlets, and a head
band:
these are working clothes and it is an important part of Springsteen's appeal that
we do see him, as an entertainer, working for his living. His popularity is based on
his live shows and more particularly, on their spectacular energy...He makes music
physically, as a manual worker.
But there is even more to these clothes than this. Springsteen wears work clothes
even when he is not working. His off-stage image, his LP sleeves and interview
poses, even the candid Off-duty' paparazzi shots, involve the same down-to-earth
practicality...Springsteen doesn't wear clothes appropriate to his [wealthy] eco-
nomic status... he's never seen flashily attired... For him there is no division
between work and play, between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Because the
constructed 'Springsteen', the star, is presented plain, there can never be a
suggestion that this is just an act (as Elvis was an act, as Madonna is). There are no
other Springsteens, whether more real or more artificial, to be seen (1988: 96).
Other dimensions of the image include his 'brotherly' on and off-stage

relations with the members of the Ε-Street Band - a contradictory
signifier, as Frith points out, since the singer is actually their employer
(and reportedly, not a generous one, according to his road crew - The
Sunday Mail 1 November 1985: 7). He is always represented as friendly, a
'superstar-as-friend', evidenced by his manner as 'a 37-year old teenager'.
Signifiers of the 'shy exhibitionist' are particularly important: he is
considered, as Frith acknowledges, "one of the sexiest performers rock
and roll has ever had - that there's a good part of the audience...can't
take their eyes off his body". Each of these signs functions to constitute
the 'Springsteen' image, an absorbing and totalising text stretching over
time and across many sites, giving coherence and significance to its
referent through its naturalness.
Image-making is crystalised in several different objects made to accom-
pany product release. In the recording industry, with the proliferation of
product, eye-catching covers have become a salient site for elaborating the
position being constituted for the artist within various social and cultural
institutions (Denisoff 1975: 179; for similar comments on the function of
covers in book publishing, see Coser et al. 1982: 219-220). Springsteen's
album Born In the USA, for example, features photographs of the singer
clothed in jeans, t-shirts and denim or leather jackets ('the street',
'working clothes'), in poses which openly but not crudely emphasise his
sexual attractiveness ('the shy exhibitionist'). Other photographs feature
members of his backing band, some as individuals ('the isolated artist'),
and some together ('fun', 'brotherliness', 'collective project'). In cases of
other artists, if a company sees them as an important 'serious musician',
packaging and presentation will reflect this. Lyrics may be printed on the
recording cover, accompanied by comments from the artist on their
subject matter, personal motivations, their musical project and influences;
an example is Paul Simon's Graceland album where a dark-toned,
serious-face shot of the singer-songwriter on the front cover is supported
with extensive backcover notes explaining the genesis of the album,
especially its African influences. If the artist is a leader in 'progressive'
rock or jazz, the cover design might be built around a futuristic or
metaphysical fantasy, as in those for recordings by Yes, Weather Report
and Miles Davis. A recording by a major middle-of-the-road star, on the
other hand, will likely have them represented in glittering stage perfor-
mance, or posing with a member of the opposite sex in a mood setting such
as a rainforest, candle-lit dinner or rocky coastline; many covers for
recordings by singers such as Julio Iglesias, Shirley Bassey and Johnny
Mathis are good illustrations21.
21 We see in these examples how the image constructed of an artist refers to the
intended site of consumption and the lifestyle the target consumer segment is
The name used by the artist can itself be a telling element in signifying
an image; evidence Boom Crash Opera, The Dubliners, New Riders of the
Purple Sage, Sting, and The Beach Boys; if the artist's real life name is
inadequate for this purpose, it can be changed to a stage name, as
Reginald Dwight changed his to Elton John when he went solo (e.g.
Tucker 1986: 505-508). To assist the association between name and image,
it should have a potentially iconic relationship with the image being
constructed; as punk groups, for example signified their confrontational
image with names such as The Sex Pistols (with Sid Vicious), Sioxsie and
the Banshees, and The Clash. Middle-of-the-road singers are more likely
to have exotic-sounding names (bearing in mind the language community
they are being marketed to) which conjure up romantic or 'show-biz'
images; for example, Engelbert Humperdinck, Whitney Houston, Sammy
Davis Jnr., Cher, etc. Pop/rock artists go for the cheerfully outlandish,
signifying the loudness, exhibitionism and frivolity associated with the
form, with names such as The Beatles, Twisted Sister, Prince, Abba,
AC/DC (whose first album was titled 'High Voltage'), Bananarama and
Canned Heat - precisely the connotations that serious or conventional
artists avoid by using their quieter, more commonplace, real names - Paul
Simon, Roberta Flack, Phil Collins Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Paul
McCartney, Billy Joel, and so on.
Their name is centrally located in every expression of the image,
structured into the field of meanings constructed around it and functioning
as its focus - in other words, as its signifier. Now artist and image are
forged into an objective, polysemic and unique identity. The convention-
alised relation between name and image, signifier and signified, turns
them into a Saussurian sign22 and the whole package of object and image
into a text, operating in and through the grammars and vocabularies of
marketing. Thus, the name and image of the artist is ready for promotion
presumed to desire. Artist and commodity are inserted into this as a possible
object of agency-in-consumption. The referent of these marketing languages,
therefore, is the-significance-of-the-commodity-in-its-context-of-consumption
and not purely aesthetic dimensions of the recording. This is its material refer-
ent, however idealised. It might seem that I am labouring the obvious, but this
seems to entirely escape Baudrillard (e.g. 1975) and undermines his claim that
the political economy of the sign abolishes the connection of sign and referent.
22 In his influential Course in General Linguistics (1974), Saussure distinguished
between the referent and its sign. The sign is made up of two elements, the
signifier and signified. The first is, in speech, the sound-image, the second, the
concept or meaning. Their relationship is arbitrary and their association must
be conventionalised.
within the existing hierarchy of talent, to be presented to the audience as a

star.
It is worth noting in passing that the signs of artistry attached to an artist
must appeal to the target audience (Denisoff 1975: 169). Like Spring-
steen's 'common man' signifiers, they must be significant, meaningful, or
capable of being made so in their imagined context-of-use, in the context
of a consumer's life project23. The packaging offers a complex of cultural,
social and psychological resources to members of the target audience by
drawing from or anticipating aspects of the emerging, dominant or desired
art and/or life forms they are taking up24. The punk rock groups, for
example, which emerged out of alternative musical and class cultures in
the late-1970s, adopted clothing, behaviours and language which con-
fronted and opposed middle-class culture and the big business methods of
major recording companies. In much the same way as the flower children
of an earlier generation similarly shared signs with the artists of the
counter culture (Stokes 1986: 372-378), these were picked up by audience
members and used as stylistic markers to differentiate their collective
identity (Laing 1985, cf. Hebdige 1979). Marketers work hard to instigate
such exchanges.
In considering the promotional phase of corporate marketing especially
advertising, we strike another of the peculiarities of the culture industry.
Unlike the manufacturers of consumer goods generally, a smaller propor-
tion of the cultural commodity manufacturer's promotional activity is
23 Contra textual analysts, the meaning of any cultural object is not simply 'in' the
text but is the product of an interaction between artist, manufacturer and audi-
ence, a symbolic relation mediated by the commodity form (cf. also Frith 1978:
172-3).
24 Again, the sociological point must be made - in contrast to the dominant ten-
dency in cultural studies to reify and isolate the aesthetic (e.g. Baudrillard
1975) - the reasons audiences choose particular cultural objects stem not only
from specifically aesthetic but also social and psychological foundations. Cul-
tural commodities, in fact, commodities generally, must be understood as ob-
jects for appropriation in the social construction of an individual's everyday
life(style), and consumption-in-general as a moment of agency performed
through a specific mode of appropriation (cf. Featherstone 1987). Media/cul-
tural studies urgently requires an adequate sociological theorisation of con-
sumption along these lines, as seems to underpin analyses by Bourdieu (1984),
Hebdige (1979) and Morley (1980). Interestingly, if some academic analysts
seem blind to this, practitioners are not; recognition of active choices made by
consumers - whether rational or irrational - and the difficulties marketers con-
front in persuading them away from their existing preferences, is very much
part of the practical consciousness of the culture industry.
directed at the final, individual consumer. Most of the advertisements,

posters, and display and promotional materials produced are designed to
convince the publicity and retail sectors. The reason for this lies in the
systematic publicity relation forged between manufacturers and the
publicity complex, mainly the media. As we will see in the next chapter,
these cultural mediators do much of the display and promotional work
needed by manufacturers to make their commodities sell.
But whoever the target audience, the purpose of corporate publicity
objects, in the case of name-based marketing, is to promote the artist to a
superior position within a hierarchy of cultural value by maximising their
significance. The object is to make their artistic greatness obvious but
before the moment of consumption; to make a pre-emptive transformation
of its object - to make the artist appear as if already a star. To achieve this
goal, the promotional campaign displays and elaborates the artist's
idiolect. Its brilliance is presumed to be self-evident from the contents of
their work which targeted audiences are given an opportunity to sample.
The most revealing fragments are used in making the promotional objects
and presented rhetorically to make claims of obvious excellence25. In case
of a new artist whose idiolect bears traces of earlier stars who influenced
them, promotion may reference these through remarks such as 'in the
style of..', 'following in the footsteps of..', thus drawing from their
reputation. By locating the artist's name inside a structure of signs whose
significance is already socially recognised, the artist's reputation grows by
association. In case of established artists, new work may be linked to their
previous successes; signifiers such as 'from the author of...', 'the latest
from...' locate the new work within an a successful repertoire which
automatically accords it an already-existing value, thereby indicating that
the artist/work is among the most important cultural commodities cur-
rently available in that market niche.
Promoting the name of artist and/or work to the highest rung of artistic
significance, makes it appear as a horizontally and vertically positioned
signifier of stardom, a leader amongst a multitude of competitors. The
company attempts to have them recognised as a luminary of the culture
industry - not only talented but outstandingly so, not only an artist but a
star, the creator not just of artworks but of masterpieces. This is part of the
corporate attempt to shape the market in line with its preferred creative
policies; to beat the market indeterminacy of what Denisoff (1975: 94)
25 They also draw on rhetorical dimensions of transcription practices; e.g. in tele-

vision or radio advertisements, editing and effects, layout, limiting and com-
pressing voice-overs, and reverberation.
refers to as 'the vinyl crap game' - although whether this is always a

successful strategy is an entirely different matter26.
We can now see a point raised earlier more clearly. The fact that
audiences have had their favourites and that entrepreneurs have exploited
their popularity is not new. What is, is the manner in which stars are made
and the mode of company intervention into the cultural marketplace it
represents. Rather than ascription of reputation as a result of audience
judgements, corporations employ powerful marketing techniques to im-
pute significance prior to the act of consumption. Like all marketing
strategies, the making of stars is a pre-emptive strategy. Companies make
what is really a claim a reputation but which is made to appear to potential
consumers as a given. The market power of the star's name flows from the
naturalness of the image constructed, which trades off the obvious signs of
the artist, their talents and creativity. Its signifier is used to make the
product appear as a positioned value before exchange and consumption. If
successful, the result is sustained and high-volume sales.
6.3.2 Marketing Form-Based Cultural Commodities:

The Making of Styles
As suggested in the previous chapter, name-based creative policies are
widely recognised by commentators and analysts, but form-based ap-
proaches are not. The same applies to their circulation counterparts. Stars
are frequently discussed, but few writers have grasped the importance or
functioning of styles as a constituent element of the present-day culture
industry.
Particularly from about the 1960s (Denisoff 1975: 124) and under the
influence of marketing, the cultural marketplace has been fragmented into
numerous taste segments, many of which the corporations themselves
have partly created27. Manufacturers have a wide range of possibilities
26 Not only do audiences sometimes see through and reject artificiality, they not
infrequently disagree with the definitions offered by the industry. The case of
singer-songwriter Randy Newman is instructive. Thought by many in the indus-
try to be immensely talented, if somewhat idiosyncratic in his art, Warners
Bros tried hard to turn him into a star through heavy promotion of his albums.
He never, however, rose above cult status, despite one moderately successful
single hit, 'Yellow Man' (e.g. Tucker 1986: 511-513).
27 It is not possible to trace here a history of product differentiation and market
segmentation in the culture industry. The market has been a complex field of
economic, political and cultural forces and possibilities. Within the music busi-
ness, for example, the advent of corporate production has obviously been im-
they can try to exploit. Their strategies are guided by the information they
glean from the market28 on audience segments and the types of artworks
they purchase. Because of its peculiarities and its connections to form-
based production/style-based marketing, 'market research' in the culture
industry is worth briefly commenting on.
In industry generally, systematic and scientific market research is now
portant and was itself made possible, amongst other factors, by the post-war
economic boom and probably the baby boom, which provided market condi-
tions for development of rock and roll and its subsequent subdivision (e.g.
Denisoff 1975: 16-30). Other forces flowed from artists and artistic institutions
themselves (not only musicians), especially those outside the mainstream, gen-
erating a proliferation of new movements (e.g. funk, punk, reggae, disco; see
Tucker 1986). Denisoff (1975) and Chappie and Garofalo (1977) both weave
discussion of the proliferation of styles and audiences into their analysis; see
especially chapter 9 in Denisoff for a discussion of bubblegummers, teenybop-
pers, collegiates and academics. Another contributing factor has been fragmen-
tation within the citizenry as a result of wider social forces which created the
foundations for new audiences; e.g. political shifts and the growth in urban
social movements, fragmentation in the workplace, and market segmentation
in the wider marketplace. Pichaske (1979) is interesting in this regard. From
the position of a sub-cultural insider, one of the 1960s generation living in the
U.S., he provides an account of the responses and fragmentation of various
rock and roll audiences to artists and their development, in a context of inter-
secting literary movements and their articulation to wider political movements,
actors and events (e.g. Nixon, Vietnam, the black movement, the anti-nuclear
movement, and so on).
28 Critics frequently argue to the effect that product and audience differentiation
is entirely corporation or production (cf. demand) driven; i.e. that products
reflect management thinking (e.g. in their aesthetic or ideological contents).
As argued shortly, 'research' (broadly: market information, whether formally
or informally derived) is much more central to company thinking than is com-
monly credited; there is, as Frith notes (1988:101) a market populism in indus-
try thinking. On the other hand, the consumer sovereignty which companies
protest, operates only in narrow ways. The research serves to legitimate what
Galbraith refers to more generally as "the elaborate myth...of the theory of
consumer demand" (1970: 141). As the following discussion suggests, it is ei-
ther empiricist and/or built around economic categories, or highly selective.
The logic of commercial creative strategies could be characterised as 'what can
we be sure will be popular' rather than 'what might audiences possibly be inter-
ested in'. Nonetheless, whilst heavily mediated, there is still considerable room
for 'consumer demand' in corporate thinking; i.e. a significant degree of reci-
procity between manufacturer and audience, between creative policies and ex-
isting tastes. This is a complex and problematic issue, much more so than is
commonly allowed, and warrants more research.
widely used, although whether as much as marketers themselves make out

may be questionable (cf. Baker et al. 1983). This is much less so in the
culture industry, because of the conditions under which it operates.
Research tends to be a lengthy process, most valuable as a tool for
long-term planning and long-run product lines, stabilities which do not
apply to the culture industry. Because of apparent rapid and unpredictable
taste changes, corporations must be attuned to staying ahead of audiences
and changes in fashion. Equally, scepticism regarding the value of research
flows from the belief that success flows from a "combination of luck,
timing, hard work and the great man theory" (Denisoff 1975: 180). The
tradition of the patron and the impresario with a gift for recognising and
developing potential talent and who lives within the artistic milieu, is
embedded within the expectations which corporations have of their
creative managers29. Management tend to eschew formal research in
29 Although industry members do not understand their activities in these terms,

their informal research activities parallel qualitative research approaches em-
ployed in the social sciences. There are two dimensions to this. One is an or-
ganic involvement of creative managers with artists and audiences as an insider
(cf. participant observer). They are presumed to share their lifestyle and ex-
pected to be actively involved in the field by going to concerts, talking with
audience members, watching and assessing artists in performance, and dis-
cussing their work with them (there are residues here of the master-craftsman
out of which modern creative management practice developed). It is regarded
as particularly important to keep in touch with developments in the periphery
out of which many new stars and styles emerge. Because they believe they
share lifestyle, preferences and enjoyments with the audience, creative man-
agers are confident they know and understand what audiences want and can
use their perceptions to make creative and marketing judgements and deci-
sions. Involvement in 'the street' is regarded as particularly important for those
in the publicity sector such as columnists, reviewers, and presenters (although
whether this generates valid understandings of audience preferences seems
questionable; their production positions within the culture industry probably
influence their perceptions thinking, as would their socio-economic position;
cf. also Frith 1978: 191-202). The second dimension is more inward looking.
The reference point is industry peers and their collective perceptions. Man-
agers search out trade news, industry gossip, talk 'shop' with other artists and
critics, and make observations of competitors (also Denisoff, 1975: 180). The
publicity sector plays a particularly important role. It is treated as a reservoir of
knowledge and as a determinant of tastes; especially in naming, discussing and
assessing significance of emerging types ('what's happening on the street'),
which manufacturers pick up and incorporate into their creative and marketing
policies. What is created is a closed system of professional reference, built on
preference for what they speak of as 'gut feeling' and 'intuition', with
many judgements made by referring to industry peers (Ryan 1981). There
is a shift, however, towards a positivist, commercial model of market
research - the form of research promoted by marketing management,
research, marketing and advertising agencies30 - which reflects the out-
comes of power struggles between marketing and creative management
within the corporations of culture (cf. Coser et al. 1982: 208).
The result is a management language of 'styles'; empirical classifications
of cultural types which are correlated with particular audience segments.
In meta-stylistic terms, for example, rock and roll is believed to popular
mainly with youth and young adult audiences, soul and rhythm and blues
with urban blacks, country and western with rural audiences, and middle-
of-the-road music with older adults and mums and dads, but there are also
finer stylistic demarcations. Rock and roll, for example, is divided into pop
and rock, where the former is said to appeal more to children and younger
teenagers, adults and musically-conservative audiences, and the latter to
older audiences and the 'music freaks' (Frith 1978: 150) - and within
those, for example, disco for young urban upwardly mobile singles, heavy
metal for young blue-collar males, soft rock for the post-war baby-
boomers now adults and parents, and so on31. Conscious use of strategic
research to plan a range and volume of releases is not widespread. More
commonly, manufacturers adopt a reactive approach to the market and try
to exploit whatever style is currently 'hot' (Denisoff 1975: 138-139).
Styles, however, do not pre-exist the marketing process, and the
marketing business of 'making styles' as a compliment to 'making stars', is
a vital part of the corporate approach to cultural production.
First, we need to distinguish the notion of style from that of cultural
form (cf. also Shepherd 1987) - as represented in Figure 6.1. As defined
in chapter 5, I take the idea of cultural form to refer to a discursive
internal judgements, assessments and assumptions of aesthetic and commercial

kinds, and which excludes direct audience input.
30 These include the use of sales figures, occasional surveys, attitudinal research
and focus panels (e.g. Coser et al. 1982: 201-205); taste preference polls
(Denisoff 1975: 180); and product testing (e.g. Tucker 1986: 527). Because of
the technical demands of advertisers there is extensive use of ratings and circu-
lation figures in the media.
31 To maximise financial returns and identify major artists/works, companies look
for those which have the power to transcend conventional barriers and 'cross-
over' into various audiences. Cross-overs are a market mechanism for defining
major talents. The industry recognises that artists whose imagination and abili-
ties break the conventional bonds of taste and habit transcend specialised audi-
ences and have broad appeal.
Conceptual Social
Forms of appearance Styles outcomes outer world of exchange

performances practical, empirical identifications
works of outcomes, objects
A
types of works (marketing work)
Generative mechanism Creation artist institutional transformations

appropiates
form
A (project team)
Underlying Structures Form grammars inner world of art

and aesthetic and formal
vocabularies identifications of rules
(artistic work)
Figure 6.1 The Form/Style Relation
account of the underlying structures and mechanisms, the grammars and

vocabularies, which generate various types of artwork. Industry talk of
'styles'32, however, seems to refer the objects these structuring principles
create. It is a practical language, concerned less with how these objects are
made than the obvious facts of their appearance. Saussure's (1974)
distinction seems to make sense of this: we can say that cultural form is to
style, what langue is to parole (cf. also Marx on real (essential) relations
and phenomenal forms - Sayer 1983: 113-115). The underlying rules of
form generate several styles of objects through the transformative, cre-
ative work of many artists. From the range of works created, market
researchers identity the observable features of each, classify them accord-
32 There is also an unresolved ambiguity in the way in which this word is used in
discussions of cultural production. One usage refers to the idea of a 'personal
style' (idiolect) which identifies a particular artist; the second, the idea of a
'style' in the sense of an objective type of artwork. By far the most common
usage I met in field work reflected the second of these. Presuming that this
usage is of recent currency, and given the validity of the following discussion
(especially my account of the relation between stars and styles), it seems likely
that the objectification of styles is fundamentally connected to the develop-
ment of the corporate era of the culture industry.
ing to various criteria, and name the resulting types as the styles which
make up their cultural field. This represents an attempt to order the
cultural objects for which there is demand. On the one hand, therefore,
forms refer to underlying structures, and styles to the forms of their
appearance. On the other, in a social rather than formal sense, form also
reflects the aesthetic interests of artists, the members of the project team,
and their orientation towards the 'inner' world of art. Styles, on the other
hand, reflect interests in the Outer' world of exchange, more like those of
the marketer.
The tendency throughout the industry to talk in the language of styles,
needs to be seen as an indicator of the impact marketing has had on
corporate cultural production. Marketers are not particularly interested in
cultural commodities as aesthetic or artistic objects; they focus on their
appearance of market value, their practical concerns are oriented towards
making commodities look saleable. Market research, therefore, tends
towards the empirical features of cultural objects, treating them as stylistic
signs. When marketing new commodities, these are repeated and high-
lighted. This is the first step in 'making styles'. Something of this can be
seen in the emergence of disco music:
Early disco music owed very little to rock and roll in its direct antecedents, country
music and rural blues. Instead, disco found its paradigms in the suave, polished
[soft soul] music of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International
Records production style; in the most elaborate ballads of Stevie Wonder,
post-Temptations Eddie Kendricks, and Marvin Gaye; in the lush and often campy
orchestrations of Barry White; in the cool makeout music of Jerry 'The Ice Man'
Butler and Issac 'Hot Buttered Soul' Hayes (Tucker 1986: 524-525).
Elements of these idiolects were imitated extended in recordings by artists
such as the Hues Corporation, George McRae, KC and the Sunshine Band
(Tucker 1986: 524-525). From these, a driving dance beat, prominent
percussion and extensive use of the synthesiser became some of its
principal trademarks. A crucial stage in the marketer's work of making
styles - of collecting together otherwise arbitrary characteristics, conven-
tionalising their association and giving them unity and coherence - is
giving it a name: in this case, it developed as a contraction of discotheque,
the upmarket dancing venues where live disc jockeys would play long,
loud sequences of these recordings (Tucker 1986: 524). Once named, a
style attains a new level of objectivity, it begins to exist as a cultural fact
and can be materialised in packaging and publicity.
We are now in a position to grasp the function and dynamics of
style-based marketing. To fulfil annual production quotas, corporations
set out to release works which fit into or can be made to fit into currently
fashionable styles. Their attention is attracted by artists whose work is

consistent with and competent within them; as, for example, companies
signed 'folkies' during the folk-protest period of the late 1950s and early
1960s, and outlandishly dressed bands with spectacular stage acts during
the 'glam rock' craze of the 1970s (Tucker 1986: 487-496). Artists whose
work is typical of a style and have some small sign of originality (such as a
repertoire of originals in a popular style, or a suitable voice for a popular
type of song), are signed to short-term contracts. While the original
thereby created has commercial potential, it still has to be realised via
marketing. In terms of their cultural workings, style-based and star-based
marketing are similar; thus many of the points discussed in the previous
section need not be repeated. An image must be assembled for the work
and/or artist; it should bear some recognisable relation to the natural
meaning and importance of the commodity; the signs which constitute it
must be significant to the targeted audience; and it should offer a fantasy
of satisfaction. The difference in style-based marketing is that the focus is
on signs of conventionality.
This needs explanation. The appeal of form-based works lies in their
typicality, and their continuing sales on the habit of buying according to
taste. Style-based marketing can be successful as long as the packaging
evidences signs drawn from the cultural, social and affective languages
conventionally associated by targeted audiences with that type. The
product is positioned by surrounding it with the conventional signifiers of
the style it purports to represent33.
This strategy is clear in the most explicit examples of style-based
marketing as occurs with, for example, compilation recordings. Packaging
is built around a title which signifies its referent's conventionality; for
example, Australian Country Jamboree, Great Moments in Opera, Let's
Dance - Disco Time!, The Worlds Greatest Tenors, and No. 1 Hit Love
Songs. Their covers, sleeve and publicity material feature the familiar
icons of each style and/or the mood and/or consumers conventionally
associated with their consumption. The cover of Australian Country
Jamboree, for example, features photographs of horseriders in jeans, boots
and bushshirts and mustering stock, and various country icons such as
saddles, akubra hats, and country and western guitars. The World's
Greatest Classics-type compilations might have more serious and high-
quality but equally iconic packaging based on photographs or paintings of
33 All cultural goods are a mixture of convention (form) and the innovation (cre-
ativity, idiolect), and marketing operates within this nexus. Analytically, the
issue is one of emphasis. Style-based marketing focuses on the former, star-
based on the latter.
orchestral concerts or operatic performances, or symbolic representations

of the uplift or inner peace some listeners are thought to seek from this
type of music.
If these are explicit cases of style-based marketing, what is not so
obvious is that it also enters into a large proportion of releases which seem
at first glance to be star-based. It seems to be most common in arenas
where the type is a big seller such as in rock music, where there is
overproduction by competing companies and large numbers of lesser or
second-level stars. Many releases are dominated by their signs of conven-
tionality. Again, disco offer good illustrations, as in the case of the group
Chic. Musical and extra-musical codes were invoked in all aspects of the
packaging from the name to their physical appearance to album covers. In
line with the fashionable dress codes associated with the style, Chic came
on like the snappiest dressers around (note also the connotations of the
French chic). Tucker's description captures the iconography of their
identity, a total package in which every detail signified the style and its
context of consumption:
'Dance, Dance, Dance' was a solid hit, but a derivative one - it was just an
exceptionally well played version of Philadelphia International-style disco. It was
Chic's next hit, 'Le Freak" (1978), that expressed Edwards and Rodgers [bassist
and guitarist respectively, the group songwriters, and producers of their own
recording] originality. A cool, stark guitar-plus-bass riff, coupled with the female
voices' frosty declamation of the chorus 'Le freak, c'est chic' exerted a fascinating,
erotic allure to listeners.
The members of Chic, attired on their album covers in tuxedos and evening
gowns, represented disco's most idealised dreams of upward mobility. Chic's image
was minimalist elegance; their music was high-tech pop - glistening, calm and
functional. Critic Stephen Holden described Edwards and Rodgers as "minimalistic
aural interior decorators"...If, as its detractors said, disco was wallpaper for the
ears, Chic manufactured the most refined and minutely detailed wallpaper of all
(1986: 529).
A similarly comprehensive marketing and merchandising logic is evident

in the creation and marketing of the group the Village People, a pop
concept invented by producer Jacques Morali. Six beefy male singers were
presented as cartoon homosexual pinups; as a cowboy, a construction
worker, a 'leather' man, an American Indian, a military man and a
policeman. Their music and appearance utilised nothing but conventional
disco signs; sharply dressed singer-dancers and sleekly-polished, intricate-
ly-arranged songs. Every publicity shot, every film and video clip, every
recording cover, presented the same image. Their stage performances
were built upon the same codes: "As a live act, the Village People were
even more outrageously artificial - they lip-synched their songs to

prerecorded music, changed costumes onstage and wiggling to please like
male strippers" (Tucker 1986: 5S2-533)34.
34 Style-based marketing occurs not only in the explicitly commercial arenas of

the culture industry (cf. arguments about 'serious' and 'popular' art in previous
chapter). The packaging of classical recordings also seems to illustrate the
point. For example, the cover of I Musici's recording of Vivaldi's The Four
Seasons is built around a photograph of Jean van Blarenberghe's (otherwise
inconsequential?) elaborately framed, four-panelled painting of the seasons;
Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances (a 20th century orchestration of 16-17th
century lute pieces) recorded by Neville Mariner conducting the Los Angeles
Chamber Orchestra, features an (unidentified) late-mediaeval painting of
three courtesans in a gentle dance; the Concertegebouw Orchestra's recording
of Shostakovitch's 5th Symphony conducted by Bernard Haitink, features an
angry, abstract-expressionist painting (standing for the ambiguity of life under
totalitarian, bureaucratic states) commissioned from Aubrey Williams, titled
Shostakovitch's Symphony No 5. Compare these with star-based packaging,
focused on the artist; e.g. albums by Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo, orches-
tras conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Behind the literal and iconic connec-
tions between packaging and contents in these examples, the use of paintings
signals that the objects are to be understood within the broader conventions of
'high culture'. It declares that this is serious music, music to be contemplated,
substantial and high-minded music, for cultured and refined listeners; i.e. classi-
cal music (cf. country, rock, ethnic - or even light classical). This effect is ampli-
fied by the liner notes, usually a lengthy and detailed musicological and contex-
tual discussion (often in several languages) of the work and/or composer, an-
d/or performer.
Jazz releases seem to show similar types of patterns. The traditional ap-
proach to covers (perhaps also associated with traditional styles of jazz) is
based on photographs or drawings of artist plus instrument in performance or a
performance setting such as a club or studio; e.g. various recordings by Stan
Getz, Maynard Fergusson, Parker, Hodges, and Ella Fitzgerald. Settings (club,
studio, cabaret) instruments (saxophone, brass, f-holed guitars, grand piano),
clothes (relatively conservative, casual) and behaviour (natural, casual, cheer-
ful, engrossed in performance, sometimes sweating heavily with the intensity)
and extensive liner notes, reflect conventional images of jazz; less serious and
formal than classical, but more substantive, less frivolous than rock/pop. Pro-
gressive styles, jazz-rock fusion, and so on, such as works by Billy Cobham,
Chick Corea, like earlier work of Brubeck, Coltrane etc., differentiate these
recordings from more traditional approaches with more consciously composed
and artistic covers which are built around abstract or symbolic themes to sig-
nify their seriousness, their intellectual dimensions, their innovation.
Rock/pop releases seem more diverse and hence harder to classify without
systematic content analysis. But certainly, a conventional approach to covers
Style-based marketing proclaims the identity of the commodity to

potential purchasers in easily recognisable terms. These are founded upon
sets of aesthetic, social and psychological languages which link artist, work
and audience through the commodity in a framework of common under-
standings, where the meaning of the commodity is an effect of their
mediated relations (cf. Frith 1978:195). While the dominant impression of
style-based marketing is representativeness, it must also present the
commodity as a variation on that theme, as "one of a kind with marginally
different credentials" (Stokes 1986: 426). For the reasons outlined in
previous chapters, to have value as a cultural commodity, it must signify its
relative originality. Accordingly, pasted over its fundamental conventional-
ity are a few tell-tale signs of variance to make it seem interesting and
thereby warrant purchase. In the case of form-based musical recordings,
an individual title is sufficient to identify a particular performance and a
unique commodity35, to establish and confirm its status as an artistic
object.
Turning to the promotion phase of style-based marketing, we find that it
differs significantly from the star-based approach - not in its functioning
but in its organisation. Only limited efforts are put in by the manufacturer,
not out of neglect, but related to its anticipated sales pattern and the role
of the publicity complex. As will be seen in the next chapter, manufactur-
ers are reliant on publicists to display and promote the styles of work
currently available and are more inclined to release the material and wait
and see. The work of many competent and interesting second-level artists
is released on this passive 'buckshot' principle: since the style of work is
known to be popular (and because there are limits to the numbers of
releases which can be publicised at any time), it might strike a chord and
for more-or-less conventional, second-level artists (Australian examples might

include Hoodoo Gurus, Mental As Anything, Australian Crawl, regarded as
competent pub and concert performers) features a realistic or post-modernist
layout, representations of the artist, where the telling signs of typicality flow
from settings (concerts, performances, street scenes, posed shots to display
signs), clothing (street gear, jeans, t-shirts, fashion), posture, facial expressions
and gestures (jiving, 'cool'), hairstyle (long, close-cropped, depending on the
style), facial expression, and instruments (electric guitars, drum kits), and a
general sense of youthful fun and good times which are presumed to pervade
the entire rock 'n roll sub-culture.
35 Empirically, the positioning and prominence of the title on the cover seems to
be a tell-tale sign of style-based marketing. In star-based marketing, the title or
name is made the centre of attention. In style-based marketing, the artist's
name is subordinated to the title and/or its signs of conventionality, as in the
case of titles dreamed up for compilation albums.
take off, at which point the company will get behind it with a substantial
promotional budget (this approach explains the sparse publicity received
by some artists, which they complain about vociferously; e.g. Denisoff
1975: 97-99). The low level of marketing effort is also connected to
anticipated sales patterns. Because form-based works tend to be steady
sellers where sales build up slowly and sustain longer, there is not the same
compulsion to achieve immediate impact upon release - although since
form-based works often experience seasonal peaks and troughs associated
with holidays and special occasions, manufacturers may allocate a promo-
tional budget just prior to these periods.
Style-based marketing is part of the corporate attempt to control the
cultural marketplace, what Frith speaks of as:
a continued effort to freeze the rock audience into a series of market tastes. Record
companies themselves, radio programmers, music papers, DJs, critics, all attempt
to control musical demands and so ease the process of meeting them. If audiences
can be persuaded that a precise style, genre, artist or image meets their needs,
expresses the solution to their particular leisure problem, then...their commercial
exploitation [is] made easier (1978: 208).
While generally correct, what he does not seem to sufficiently grasp is the
increasing importance of making styles as a vital part of corporate
strategies to build and maintain a predictable market environment. In that
sense it is a central and characteristic feature of the corporate form.
6.3.3 The Rationalisation of Circulation:

Stars and Styles as Brands
We are now in a position to see more clearly the rationalisation effect
generated in circulation by the application of marketing techniques in the
culture industry. From the point of view of the corporations of culture, the
stars and styles they make come to function as approximations to brands36.
In star-based marketing, the name becomes the signifier which an-
nounces the value of the commodity. It becomes the brand which
guarantees the artist's repertoire and represents the commodities which
carry it as objects of recognisable utility and worth. Because of the name's
36 Since cultural commodities are purchased for the work of the artist, there is
little point in manufacturers developing company-based brands - although, for
example, Deutsche Grammophon and Blue Note recording labels indicate in-
stances where this has been successfully achieved. Note the position of the logo
on covers released under these labels - but these play a subordinate role in
marketing.
accumulated market reputation, it becomes a valuable asset to the

manufacturer. Making stars through the marketing process, the pre-
emptive dressing up of artists with the signs of stardom and promoting
their names, promises to make success of their works more predictable. In
that sense it introduces a degree of order into the circulation of their
cultural commodities.
Styles function similarly and serve the same purpose. Popular styles
become the framework through which particular commodities are pre-
sented to the market. As signified through the packaging, the recognisabil-
ity of commodity becomes both the measure and guarantee of its value. As
the circulation counterpart of form-based production, it compliments
name-based production/star-based marketing and is equally important in
understanding the operations of the corporations of culture: it is a crucial
tactic in building market share - in fact, since styles are generally more
enduring than stars who tend to come and go, they may be more important
over the longer term.
There is actually a systematic relationship between stars and styles
which is the real secret to the continuum between star and style-based
marketing. This is hinted at by music critic Robert Christgan in defining
the 'rock' as opposed to 'rock and roll' developing in the 1960s and 1970s,
as "something like 'all music deriving primarily from the energy and
influence of the Beatles - and maybe Bob Dylan'" (in Stokes 1986: 244).
Chappie and Garofalo (1977) provide a chart of 'Marketing Trends and
Stylistic Patterns in the Development of Pop/Rock Music' (see also
Gillette 1971) which traces seminal influences in the development of
various styles: how rock and roll itself flowed out of white versions of
various black forms, recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets and Elvis
Presley; rhythm and blues out of Fats Domino, Little Richard, Sam Cooke
and Chuck Berry; and how later, for example, country rock grew out of
late-1960s work of Bob Dylan and the Band; soft rock from Simon and
Garfunkle, the Mamas and the Papas and Buffalo Springfield; and so on37.
The stars-into-styles transformation proceeds in a series of steps. In
packaging and publicising their artists, companies constitute their idiolect,
thereby making it available to others as a vocabulary of signs which can be
appropriated in part or in whole - as indicated by the genesis of disco,
where "the genre was breeding...like flies" (Tucker 1986: 528). As artists
are influenced by their predecessors, whether voluntarily or as directed by
37 Wellek and Warren (1963: 235) make the same point in relation to writing:
"For the definition of modern genres one probably does best to start with a
specific highly influential book or author and look for the reverberations: the
literary effect of Eliot and Auden, Proust and Kafka".
companies, it is not long before the personal style of a star, through

imitation, is transformed into a public style (much of this work is
dependent on the publicity complex, but discussion of this is being saved
for the following chapter). As this occurs, its appearances are convention-
alised as a style, and its underlying structures and mechanisms, its
grammars and vocabularies, are represented as a identifiable form,
available for artists and companies to adopt in the search for popularity.
The corporations of culture benefit both ways. Their stars function like
brands and in the most successful cases, give rise to styles which function
the same way. This lesson has not been lost on culture companies over the
course of the 20th century. Competition through the making of stars and
styles as the foundations of product specialisation and market segmenta-
tion, and with it, the search for relative originality as style-based market-
ing has come to play a more and more important role in sustaining
corporate dominance, has led to a proliferation of artistic types. Here we
see the structural reasons behind the diversity of the cultural marketplace
to which so many authors refer. Yet we should not be mislead by the
surface plurality. More often than not, it is stylistic innovation which,
through the efforts of marketers, is drawn to our attention. Stylistic
innovation is no less real than path-breaking creativity, but it is marginal
innovation over institutionalised form, driven by corporate marketers in
their efforts to position their releases as leaders within different market
niches and make them the fashions of the moment.
Note that for this to work, corporations must allow their stars the
independence to create relatively freely: this is why, as Frith (1978: 189)
notes, record companies "are happy to accept the concept of rock
'progress'". While it reintroduces problematic indeterminacies into cre-
ation, they can take advantage of the results by riding the waves of fashion
their stars create for them. It is still a gamble for a business concerned with
control and prediction (Frith 1978: 189): the star might introduce innova-
tions which the audience is totally unprepared for and their work be a
total market failure, but since they are engaged on contract, to survive
financially, they operate within the dictates of commercialism, working
around rather than outside the perimeters of existing styles. With commer-
cially successful innovation by stars, new, popular and fashionable styles
can be created, which makes sales of form-based work not only more
predictable but more likely. There is security for the corporations in this
system.
6.4 The Determinant Effects in Production of

Marketing Cultural Commodities:
Commercialism and Formatting
The fact that stars and styles have been made to function like brands has
determinant effects back in the creative stage of production. For market-
ing to work, the constituent signs of stardom and stylishness must be used
again and again in new originals. Given the importance of marketing to
corporate operation, this makes the management-backed rule of repeti-
tion a condition of commercial success and a powerful force working on
the project team. It represents an important historical development in the
culture industry and a further dimension of the corporate form of cultural
production; the location of the marketer within its constituent structure of
relations, as a sign of the institutionalised penetration of the market into
production. As such, making stars and styles as a condition of circulation is
a decisive influence underpining the shift towards formatting the creative
To elaborate: Marketers need predictable commodities to work their
magic on. To create successful marketing campaigns through packaging
and publicity, they believe that the objects they work on must already bear
conventional signs which have proved their worth so that the value of the
commodity can be recognised by potential purchasers38. Marketing impera-
tives thereby enter directly into the design process as a demand for works
with these signs - and as we saw in the previous chapter, commercialism
has been assimilated as part of professional creative management (cf.
Frith 1978: 79). The plan created by producers is expected to possess
familiar signs of stardom and/or stylishness. Combine this with the
pressures of deadlines and we can see some of the conditions encouraging
the repetition in creation of previously successful approaches; more than
that, of turning signs and texts into formulas and directing executants in
their reproduction. To create formats which generate appealing works,
38 To that extent, marketing operates with a conception of audiences which takes

human enjoyment of familiarity to an extreme: as their only motivation for
cultural consumption. It is not clear to why this is so, other than acknowledging
their difficulties in changing consumer habits. Generally speaking, audiences
show considerable loyalty to favoured stars and styles. Why, makes an interest-
ing sociological question, which may be associated with the modern search for
Ontological security' (cf. Giddens 1984: 375).
Commercialism and Formatting 221
they borrow stylistic markers from the present crop of fashionable stars39.
In the corporate model, in other words, there are structural necessities
connecting marketing and creative management, such that the star/style-
format nexus is part of the corporate form of labour organisation. We can
return to the development of disco music to illustrate the point. Tucker,
for example, notes that:
Most disco artists were anonymous acts, puppets of the producer - the true disco
auteur - who usually had one big hit and then disappeared as quickly as they had
surfaced (1986: 529).
For example, Gamble and Huff, the creative managers at Philadelphia
International Records, and the creators of many of the early disco hits,
were the creative managers of corporate project teams - in fact, they were
named artist-managers, simultaneously its managers and stars40, whose
production style (orchestration, arrangements, transcription techniques)
contributed enormously to its development. As disco became a recognis-
able style, creative managers such as independent producer Giorgio
Moroder collaborated with Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records in Los
Angeles, to exploit it. They initiated and directed each original through to
completion, the performers they hired were unknowns and employed as
professional creatives. A known, marketable outcome was anticipated,
and executants were subject to a matrix of directions personified by
creative management. Moroder's most notable success was with singer,
Donna Summer. He incorporated the basic stylistic elements of disco into
an 8-minute recording ("insistent beat...soaring synthesiser line" etc.;
39 PWL records, referred to earlier, are known to engage in 'sampling'; i.e. lifting
ideas, sounds or chord progressions from other people's material and remixing
them as its own (The Sydney Morning Herald 19 August 1989: 73). This seems
to represent a kind of post-modernist practice in its tendency towards echoing
and repetition. See also the earlier footnote.
40 This and the following case study, likewise PWL, make excellent illustrations
of arguments presented in chapter 4 of the structure and operation of the cor-
porate project team. It also demonstrates the importance of seeing the produc-
tion system as a structure of relations which underlies the technical or organisa-
tional division of labour, hence seeing positions filled by strata of workers. In
the case of both Philadelphia International and Motown, the individual people
do not empirically coincide exactly with my account of its structure, especially
in creative management where some individuals incorporate several or parts of
several positions (although the artists employed almost exactly fit the execu-
tant positions I described, especially in the Motown case). Despite this varia-
tion, the collective activities in which these strata engage, fit exactly with the
account provided.
Tucker 1986: 525) and over the "churning, urgent instrumentation" guided
Summer in providing a "searching, sexy vocal" composed mainly of the
title repeated over and over linked by orgasmic moaning (Tucker 1986:
527). The result, 'Love To Love You Baby', was an enormous interna-
tional hit. Although, according to Tucker, Summer later demonstrated
that she was artistically much more than her producer's 'puppet'41, her
initial recordings were designed and directed to the same formula:
"Summer followed up 'Love To Love You Baby' with the predictable
rip-off sequels, an album of variations bearing the same name as the
single, as well as 'Love Trilogy', a seemingly endless bit of vocal moaning
and synthesiser noodling" (Tucker 1986: 528). The companies and artists
attempting to ride the disco wave organised production around the same
rules. The style had been transformed into a format through the corporate
form of organisation wherein each original was created, all of which
flowed from logics of marketing and merchandising.
An even more explicit illustration is provided by the international
conglomerate Motown Industries (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 88,
258-261, Stokes 1986: 294-300), set up as a record label in the early 1960s
by middle-class record salesman Berry Gordy (and interestingly, the
organisational model around which PWL records discussed earlier in this
chapter was explicitly organised; see The Sydney Morning Herald 19
August 1989: 73). Gordy realised that urban black audiences preferred
rhythm and blues-styled music but that large-scale financial success
demanded marketing the company's products also to white audiences. He
himself retained control of marketing and turned his marketing strategies
into a creative production policy. He built what became known as 'the
Motown sound'42; its most obvious features being a foundation in rhythm
41 It is worth noting how Summer's subsequent career confirms other aspects of

the arguments presented in chapter 4. Initially employed as an unknown singer
to complete Moroder's design, as her work won enormous popularity, she ac-
quired sufficient personal reputation to demand greater creative freedom from
her producer-director. Thus, her later recordings moved away from disco to-
wards more sophisticated ballads and cabaret songs which, according to
Tucker, "broadened her audience beyond the disco crowd and established her
as a pop artist of some distinction" (1986: 529). In my terms, employed initially
as a creative professional, as a pure executant subject to the direction of cre-
ative management (in this case, producer and director personified in the one
individual), Summer's name accumulated considerable reputation which she
was able to transform into organisational and economic terms and reposition
herself as a star, a contracted artist.
42 This is a classic case of a corporation making a form its own (see chapter 5) and
and blues, with "rich gospel harmonies over lavish studio work...clearly
black but not threatening, and very danceable"; each "designed and
mastered for three-minute radio exposure" (Chappie and Garofalo 1977:
259, 288). Each recording was built around a heavy backbeat (second and
fourth beat), with horns and strings added in the final mix, and "vocal
sweetening to fatten the tracks" - the method included a specific record-
ing sequence with extensive overdubbing (Stokes 1986: 297). Production
was tightly policed and organised, in Gordy's words, as "a factory-type
operation" (in Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 88). Everything had to fit.
Planning was highly detailed. Writer-producers Brian Holland, Lamont
Dozier and Eddie Holland were employed to train the singers Gordy
contracted, to write songs and to produce the label's recordings. Earl van
Dyke's studio band was contracted exclusively to provide the backing, and
Cholly Atkins to choreograph each stage act. Artists such as the Supre-
mes, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Martha Reeves and
the Vandellas, like executants in every corporate project team, were
moulded to the requirements of the label's format, which many, Martha
Reeves, for example, bitterly resented. All the Motown products, the
recordings, live performances and appearances, the artists themselves,
were made similar in style, conforming to a 'corporate black' identity, but
with the natural features of each as stylistic markers (e.g. the wispy
sentimentalism and sexiness of Diana Ross's voice, highlighted by scoring
the music too low for her register). With this tight artistic control, Motown
had a remarkably successful string of hits throughout the 1960s and 1970s;
"The artists, producers, promotion and training added up to the Motown
system, a system that might occasionally have held back performers who
didn't fit in smoothly but finally made the company the era's most
dependable hit factory" (Stokes 1986: 299). Motown is a classic case of
corporate cultural production; how the star/style is to marketing strategies
what the format is to creative policies, and how through their articulation,
the corporate form of cultural organisation has been forged.
Not only do marketing imperatives shape the moment of creation, but
also the pre-production development of new artists, especially for those
wanting to become mainstream stars - in this we see the pressures placed
upon stars by the corporate form of production from another angle and in
more detail. According to the conventions of art, developing artists should
learn ways of expressing their own voice, of developing their idiolect, of
'doing their own thing'. However, the more they do so, the more
idiosyncratic their creativity, the less likely they are to be signed by the
transforming it into a private asset, by devising a distinctive stylistic variation -

'the Motown sound'.
majors. To be successfully marketed, it is not enough to be talented. The

conservative bias in marketing is based on repetition of what is already
recognisable. It pressures artists to temper the type and degree of their
originality, to create upon themselves and in their work, signs drawn from
the languages of style already spoken in the market; i.e. to develop a
commercial idiolect. This pressure might come from creative management
in the person of a personal manager, casting agency, or a talent scout for a
major company, but equally, those aspiring to stardom know that if they
are to be noticed, since commercialism demands they treat themselves as
objects to be marketed, their signs of talent must be drawn from fashion-
able codes. Because the rules of the game dictate it, they cooperate in the
commercialism of their career. In the words of English composer/producer
Tony Hatch:
Whether you're a performer or writer, you're the designer, manufacturer and
salesman of your own product. Just like a company producing a new line in
household goods, you must put time and effort into the initial development.
Furthermore, you will have to invest money in the promotion and presentation of
your product (in Frith 1978: 76).
Once an artist's image is established, as either a star or type, the rules of
the game demand them that their idiolect be endlessly repeated. The
commercialism presumed by contracted artist production relations leads
stars to live up to and preserve the identity that has been built up around
them whether by their own or others' efforts. They are condemned to a
life of repeating the same live show, the same songs, presenting themselves
the same way. Their market identity becomes a cage which restricts their
artistic development. John Lennon, for example, recalled that in relation
to his songwriting for the Beatles:
I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing pop songs; we would
turn out a certain style of song for a single and we would do a certain style of thing
for this and the other thing. I was already a stylised songwriter on the first album
(in Frith 1978:166).
The consequences can be significant, both artistically and emotionally.
Some artists refuse the categorisation and take the risk of regularly
breaking the mould they are being cast into, but most do not. Pichaske
claims, for example, that:
The Stones fought absorption with self-parody. The Beatles fought it with
dissolution, but only after the myth itself became hollow, only after the dream had
turned into a nightmare. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix fought it by
living themselves to death. But Bob Dylan was willing to walk away at the moment
of triumph to remain his own man (1979:177).
The impact of marketing also has consequences for those aiming or forced
to aim by lack of talent or opportunity, at a professional career43. Their
task is demonstrate their typicality, their representativeness, by acquiring
company-preferred skills and demonstrating their increasing professional-
ism in small-time jobs. Motown musicians such as the Four Tops were a
case in point. Gordy insisted they constantly attend the studios, to sing
back-up for others and do demonstration tapes; in other words, to learn
the Motown format till they were ready for their first solo effort (Stokes
1986: 297-8). Prospective professional creatives have to pattern their work
after a successful prototype or style (Denisoff 1975: 58), by cooperating in
their 'absorption' (Pichaske 1979: 153-177), by dressing themselves in the
conventional signs of the format adopted by the company. As their
professional reputation grows, their competence-within-a-style - and in
an age of product specialisation this is likely to be an increasingly narrow
style - they are stuck with reproducing the same type of work over the
length of their career. For some, the life of a professional creative is a safe
option. For others, versatility, proficiency across many styles, is one
avenue of escape to a freelance working life, but like stars, they too must
contend with the pressures of commercialism.
Marketing imperatives, therefore, have had a decisive impact on the
conditions of creation. They influence the organisation of work; what can
be created - or rather, what will be reproduced - the forms of labour to
be engaged, and to a lesser extent, which tastes will be fulfilled and which
left dormant. The overall effect has been a tendency towards commercial
cliche, formula and creative stagnation. Thus, in the rock and roll
business, by the mid-1970s:
As the big bucks were rolling in, much of the Big-Time establishment rock was
proving efficient, ingratiating and dull...faceless rock - crisply recorded, eminently
catchy, anonymous hits by bands such as Styx, REO Speedwagon and Journey
(Tucker 1986: 521).
Despite the complaints of artists and critics, this tendency is not absolute.
Rather, this analysis suggests there is a countervailing tendency. For
reasons to be demonstrated in the following chapter, styles too come and
go. Despite a cautious desire for their stars to immediately repeat their
previous best seller, the corporations of culture have a contradictory
43 This further illustrates the point made in chapter 5 that rationalisation of the
cultural marketplace is a determinant condition in the development of format-
ting, and in concert, providing the scale of corporate operation and financial
stability which enabled the construction of professional creative working condi-
tions.
longer-term reliance on them to create innovative works which initiate the

new styles they can exploit through form-based production. The tradi-
tional autonomies associated with the artist remain fundamental to the
structural position held by the highest level stars, albeit mediated by
commercialism. CBS, for example, allowed Bob Dylan a remarkable
degree of autonomy (Stokes 1986: 311-313) for precisely that reason.
Thus, even with the strictures of marketing and formatting, top-level stars
can still be innovative, although second level stars and professional
creatives have few such opportunities - unless they are lucky. Rather than
a simple model of corporate cultural production driving everything
towards cliche and formula, or the cultural marketplace as a site of
infinite diversity and little order, the truth is much more complex44. The
social region wherein cultural commodities are manufactured and circu-
lated by the corporations of culture may seem like a maze, but is, in fact,
systematically structured and underpined by contradictions. There are
powerful forces pushing towards rationalisation and control, but unequally
powerful although possibly fading forces pushing in the opposite direction.
Within their articulation, there are many cracks and fissures wherein
agents can exercise their agency both inside and outside the corporations,
whether to free up or consolidate these structures and their logics,
depending on their interests and motivations.
6.5 Conclusion
It seems then that like their counterparts in other industries, the corpora-
tions of culture have developed in part by learning to market their output
in an attempt to organise the cultural marketplace and give it a degree of
predictability. The particular form this has taken is the making of stars and
styles. These are created through the systematic packaging and publicity
activities undertaken by companies and artists, the effect of which is to
make them function as something like short-run brands. When cultural
commodities are presented to the market bearing the conventionalised
signs of stardom and/or stylishness, they appear as repositories of value;
44 This argument also challenges the often-made claim noted earlier that experi-
mentation can only take place in the periphery. While independents and ama-
teurs do not face the same commercial pressures and can afford to experiment,
major artists engaged by the corporations of culture - because they require
periodic stylistic innovation - also have opportunities which they can exploit.
Conclusion 227
they seem to offer promises of outstanding satisfaction, hence possess a

competitive capacity to attract potential purchasers in an overstocked
market niche. As such, they provide a foundation for longer-term patterns
of sales than offered by single releases, and a corresponding capacity in
circulation to match the expanded production capacity of the majors
which dominate the present-day culture industry. What is more, these
attempts to regulate the market seem, in effect, to be part of the structural
and historical conditions which enabled the formatting of the creative
stage of production. To that extent, the making of stars and styles, as an
historically specific mode of strategic intervention in the mechanisms of
the market, have become part of the general conditions for rationalisation
of cultural production and circulation which characterises the corporate
form of cultural production.
One of the greatest problems confronting the corporations is an
important feature of the present-day culture industry and one which has so
far been ignored in this analysis: the cycles of fashion which periodically
flow through the market. Companies set up their production and market-
ing systems, and the next moment the popular stars and styles they have
planned their production around, change. This suggests, that despite the
tendencies discussed in this chapter, the market is not as rational or
organised as the corporations would like it to be. This constant turnover in
popular styles is systematically linked to the marketing work done by the
publicity complex which manufacturers make considerable use of. Para-
doxically, cycles of fashion are an effect of these systematic relations. The
rationalisation effect of marketing is undone by the operations of the
publicist who manufacturers need to promote their products. This is a
major contradiction within the culture industry and will be the focus of the
following chapter.
Chapter 7
Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace:
The Publicity Complex
and the Cycles of Fashion
7.1 Introduction
Throughout the 20th century, the corporations of culture have adopted

marketing techniques in an attempt to regulate the cultural marketplace.
Yet corporate managers and marketers complain of the continuing
intractability of their markets: according to a former business manager of
CBS, for example: "Our industry is a classic example of crap shooting.
When you win you win big. But you have to take a 70% stiff ratio" (in
Denisoff 1975: 36). Analysts such as Denisoff (e.g. 1975: 36-37) argue from
evidence such as this that the manufacturers of cultural commodities lack
the market power of their corporate counterparts in industry generally.
This suggests that despite the considerable marketing efforts put in,
attempts at control have been none too successful. Is this the case, and if
so, why? These questions are the focus of this chapter.
In outline, my argument runs thus. Because of the contradictions which
constitute the cultural commodity, they have a particular need for rapid
and intensive 'publicity' upon release. They need to make an 'impact' in
the crowded and competitive marketplace. Hence, the culture industry has
developed in part around a series of mechanisms intended to play upon
audience tastes and create the conditions for exchange. These go beyond
the 'paid advertising' discussed in both this and the previous chapters. A
systematic relation has been forged between two of the sectors described
in chapter 3; the producers of private goods (the manufacturing sector)
and the producers of public goods (the publicity sector, mainly the media).
The publicity sector is first and foremost a centre of cultural commodity
production, yet it simultaneously creates extensive 'free advertising' for
the products of the culture industry. This duality is a central concern of the
discussion. When public goods producers create their own commodities,
they make extensive use of those released by the manufacturing sector.
230 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Publicity Complex
The consumption of the public goods they create has the effect of
generating publicity for the items and objects used in their making. In this
sense, the public goods sector also functions as 'the publicity complex', as
a dual producer/publicist. Manufacturers benefit from the publicity effect
in that it helps create the stars and styles they individually and collectively
need to maintain market share, a process which proceeds through their
'display and promotion', and the construction of various Orders of cultural
things'.
However, as quickly as one order of stars and styles is put in place to
stabilise patterns of demand, the ongoing activities of the publicity
complex undermine it. Their work determines which objects are fashion-
able, yet just as quickly they devalue their popularity and replace them
with something else. The result is 'cycles of fashion'. The systemic
character of the manufacturer and producer/publicist relation has, by its
effects, replaced the 'truncated product cycle' with a 'truncated star/style
cycle' and maintained the instabilities of the cultural marketplace. Overall,
we see that corporate attempts to create the long-term market trends
needed to expand production are undercut by the normal operations of
the publicity sector which is crucial to the circulation of its products.
7.2 Publicising Stars and Styles:

The Circulation of Cultural Commodities
and the Publicity Complex
As previously argued, under conditions of expanded production, the

contradictions of the cultural commodity require the corporations of
culture to organise creation around constant production cycles. Further,
the inexplicability of the market encourages the overproduction of titles
relative to effective demand. Consequently, the cultural marketplace is
typically cluttered and competitive. Equally, the use-value of cultural
commodities declines rapidly upon release. These factors combined mean
that cultural commodities need to make an immediate impact upon the
market in order to attract sales. The appearance of each new release has to
be managed so that its promises of cultural utility and commercial worth
are made to appear factual and significant. Accordingly, they are exten-
sively 'publicised'; displayed in public and promoted to a position of
reputation in a hierarchy of cultural value.
Publicising Stars and Styles 231
7.2.1 Paid Publicity: The Costly Case of Advertising

One mechanism for achieving publicity is advertising. In the simplest case,
this involves the cultural commodity manufacturer 1 commissioning an
advertising agency to create one or several advertisements for the com-
modity and organising a campaign using appropriate media. An agency is
chosen on their reputation for creating and placing fresh and innovative
campaigns which are effective at conveying the message to the targeted
audience; their expertise lies in the business of 'communication'2. The
1 It is occasionally the retailer who organises the advertising campaign. Only
rarely do manufacturers of cultural commodities have their own advertising
department. For a number of reasons, advertising agencies have managed to
monopolise this form of work; these include the fact that the fixed and human
costs of maintaining advertising departments (especially those associated with
creative staff) are too high for manufacturers to maintain; that the economic
and creative demands of advertising encourage a system based on sub-
contracting of independents who have the time, space and motivation to gener-
ate new ideas, hence agencies commonly sub-contract work to independent
creatives and production (transcription) crews or houses; agencies are better
placed by virtue of their on-going relations with the media to purchase time
and/or space at negotiated rather than more expensive rate-card rates, a bene-
fit which flows back to the advertiser; and agencies have been successful in
convincing the market that 'communication' is a specialist area of expertise
and that they are the primary repository of such skills.
2 Of the many terms in the media/cultural studies area with ambiguous status,
'communication' most of all requires substantial sociological theorising. I can-
not do so here, but the direction it should take is suggested by these and later
points; note too my later discussion of 'the publicist'. The beginning point must
be, using Sayer's (1983) terminology, that understood sociologically, 'communi-
cation' is not a transhistorical but an historical category: it represents an histori-
cally specific mode of cultural interaction and not an abstract, ahistorical, much
less prescriptive label for any kind of cultural relation (cf. for example, the
'Editor's Introduction' from Davis and Walton in their Language, Image, Me-
dia (1983), and my review in Australia and New Zealand Journal of Sociology
Vol 21 No 3: 498-501). Paradoxically, the ontology of communication was unre-
flexively captured years ago in the classical models with their source-medium-
message-receiver sequence (for summaries of several versions, see e.g. Fiske
1982: 6-41). Its immanent relations of power and the specificity of its con-
stituent positions, however, is usually ignored. Positions in the communication
relation are institutionally separated and unequally powerful, and the message
pre-defined and privileged (cf. Bonney and Wilson 1983, McQuail 1983). The
advertising relation constituted upon display and promotion is one form of its
appearance (historically, it may even represent its essential form, although I
cannot consider this here). An expert, authoritative source constructs a mes-
agency is briefed by the marketer on sales targets and the identity of the
commodity as understood by the manufacturer, and a campaign is
designed with these goals in mind.
The organisation of work in making the advertisement is corporate in
form, as illustrated by a model of advertising agency operation which can
be called 'The Advertising Agency'3. The advertisement is produced in a
number of stages, conception and execution, then transcription and
duplication, each carried out by different types of workers and sometimes
by different firms, crews or individuals4, but all overseen and directed by
the agency through the creative director. Creatives are organised in a
project team, headed by creative management (executive status creative
director, production director) who direct executants (writers, graphic
artists, musicians, announcers, and so on) to perform to their plan.
Creation is formatted; i.e. the conventions underpining different types of
advertisements are appropriated and inflected through the agency 'house
sage designed to privilege a desired, pre-emptive set of meanings, which are

objectified and naturalised by the medium. The receiver is a distanced, priva-
tised individual, lacking the power to contradict its propositions; consumption-
as-appropriation certainly offers the possibility of adapting its value to private
purposes, but in itself, this has no social consequences. In this sense, the prac-
tice of communication represents the changing structures of cultural life: it is
predicated on the practice and structure of monologue not dialogue, is closer
to selling than sharing, and is probably associated with the corporate era of
cultural production (see also footnote 24 below). As the culture industry pene-
trates into so many arenas of cultural life, this mode of cultural interaction is
being generalised. This is particularly noticeable in modern political practice,
where the packaging and selling of governments, politicians and policies is be-
coming a widely-accepted cultural fact (e.g. Mills 1986, also the article entitled
'Turning politicians into packaged goods', Marketing May 1989: 56-59).
This model is based on two Australian agencies, one a subsidiary of a transna-
tional agency and part of its large international network (with a minority local
shareholding); the other, a majority Australian-owned agency with sub-
sidiaries/partners in all Australian states. Observations and interviews were
conducted with corporate, sales and creative management, account executives,
media buyers and creatives.
I am treating this as work performed in the agency. In fact, frequently, much of
it, for example, recording, transcription and duplication, is carried out outside
the agency itself by independents such as production houses, freelance film
crews, freelance directors, actors, writers, musicians. In all cases this is depen-
dent, sub-contracted or casual production (see chapter 4); i.e. while there is
formal independence between the parties, the agency has firm creative control
through the person of the creative director. In other words, in spite of the
juridical relation, they are directed 'as if they were agency employees.
style', and presented to executants as a set of creative rules. Yet the

project team has to find that 'spark of creativity' which makes the
advertisement stand out as unique and worth taking notice of.
The purpose of the advertisement is to display and promote its referent,
the cultural commodity - or more precisely, the significance-of-the-
commodity-in-its-context-of-use. Based upon the identity and reputation
of the commodity as posited in its packaging, cultural workers stitch
together a text by appropriating signs from the forms of life in which the
commodity is being positioned. If the commodity is represented as the
work of a named artist, the advertisement focuses on the artist's idiolect
and creativity as revealed in that particular work; this is the key element of
its message. If the marketing strategy is style-based, the advertisement
highlights its signs of typicality. Because the price mechanism for realising
market value is stratified, the commodity is credited with a certain type
and quantity of significance; it is allocated to a position of leadership in a
specific hierarchy of value through signifiers such as 'the latest from...';
'the best of...'; The greatest operatic tenor since...', 'Introducing an
outstanding new author...'; 'If you enjoyed...wait till you see...', and so
on. These signify and differentiate its superior specificity as use and
exchange value compared to competing products.
Of course, the advertisement cannot do its signifying work until it is
circulated through a medium to its intended consumer. More than that,
from the advertiser's point of view, the medium must offer cost-effective
access to the targeted audiences. Much work goes into the scheduling of
the campaign in order to achieve the desired level of impact. As the
advertisement is being created, research data supplied by the medium or
research agencies, such as ratings, circulation breakdowns and attitudinal
data, are used by the agency media department to book a campaign
schedule on the target audience's favourite media. Copies of the advertise-
ment are then supplied to each medium participating in the campaign,
whose staff combine it with other items to make an edition (press) or
programme (broadcasting) according to the agreed schedule.
As in the case of advertising generally, the putative value ascribed to the
commodity flows from several sources and functions through the semiotics
of the advertising process as a whole. Most important is the recognisable
significance of the signs used in the advertisement's making; the greater
their reputation, the greater the value accorded the object on whose
behalf they speak. Some flows from the creativity of the advertisement
itself, from its significance as a cultural commodity. Some derives from the
campaign's intensity and placement; saturation campaigns imply an impor-
tant commodity, and placement on a popular media outlet means that it
lends its reputation to the commodity, especially if the advertisement is
placed alongside significant items, such as popular programmes, special

events and premiers, top stories, 'big game' telecasts and so on. The result
of this publicity, the planned effect of the advertising campaign, is a circle
of significance surrounding the commodity.
For its semiotics to work, the publicity campaign must also meet certain
technical conditions. Given product specialisation, an effective campaign
must be directed at the specific target audience, not just an undifferenti-
ated mass audience. It must also be scheduled to reach a high proportion
of individuals within the target audience, and with sufficient frequency for
them to become familiar with its message (Fowles and Mills 1982: 63-78).
Like all publicity, advertising is part of the circulation of cultural
commodities, but as paid publicity for a cultural commodity, it entails the
work of a cultural commodity producer (the agency plus sub-contractors),
and a medium for its distribution - collectively, 'the publicist'. It is a
complex combination of activities involving the production and circulation
of a further cultural commodity which has its own circuits of value
production and circulation, understood in both the economic (money) and
cultural (reputation) senses. As argued in chapter 3, in economic terms,
the manufacturer/marketer pays for the production of the advertisement
and rents the distributive capacities of the medium. While the advertise-
ment as a public good is supplied free to its intended cultural consumer -
the targeted audience - a proportion of the costs of paid publicity are
added to the overall cost of the commodity. Parallelling these money
flows, the agency and the medium create the cultural value of the
advertisement and the campaign, most of which is transferred to the
advertisement's referent. With these various companies to pay, advertising
is an expensive business for the manufacturer. Production costs can be
considerable, especially for a spectacular concept; similarly for placement
costs, particularly if the corporation wants impact with a saturation
campaign on a popular medium. Historically, this encouraged manufactur-
ers of cultural commodities to look for an alternative to paid advertising -
hence the development of institutional arrangements within the culture
industry I will refer to as 'the publicity complex'.
7.2.2 The General Tendency Towards 'Free Advertising':

The Publicity Complex
The culture industry reveals a tendency towards publicity in a manner
which goes beyond the paid relations of advertising. It has developed an
immanent structural connection between its production and circulation
systems which generates the same effects of display and promotion. In the
corporate era of capital generally, all types of commodities are marketed

and merchandised, but the level of publicity given cultural commodities
far outweighs that given any other kind. They receive an enormous
amount of 'free advertising' (Smythe 1977, also McQueen 19775), an effect
generated through the work of 'the publicity complex'. In using this term I
am referring to the collective efforts of various kinds of advertising
agencies and the freelancers and independents they sub-contract to,
promotion and publicity agents, personal management agents and tour
promoters6, and the media, consumer, trade and specialist newspapers,
magazines and newsletters and radio and television stations, which carry
the messages they place (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 123-170, Coser
et al. 1982: 285-361)
To illustrate the general outline of the role of publicity complex and its
effects, we can look briefly at examples of product launches. To cash in on
the late-1960s revival of 1950s-styled rock and roll in the United States,
Buddah Records signed a satirical group called Sha Na Na. Company
manager Neil Bogart's description demonstrates the recording company's
reliance on the publicity complex in introducing the group to the market:
Both these authors seem to have picked up elements of the duality of parts of
the publicity sector. The critical spirit motivating both these accounts is impor-
tant, although both, in my view, are too polemical and in some cases wildly
incorrect in their assertions (see also chapter 3). Smythe (1977: 5) talks about
the "free lunch" offered by mass media as the "materials which whet the
prospective audience member's appetites" to attract and ready them for adver-
tising messages. This is simplistic: there is no understanding here of the com-
plex interplay of the dualities and specificities of public goods production, or of
consumption-as-agency. McQueen (1977: 33) comments, "The values of adver-
tising are those of capitalism and every time there is an advertisement for a
particular product, capitalism gets a free plug as well". As is clear from the
detailed, step-by-step approach I have taken in this work, while the general
outline of McQueen's arguments seems similar to mine, I think the intermedi-
ate steps have to be worked through and the mechanisms revealed before
highly generalised statements such as this can be accepted.
Tour promoters are an important part of the publicity system in the performing
arts; in the music business, for example, their role is crucial in building an
artist's career (e.g. Frith 1978: 93-94). Throughout this discussion, however, I
concentrate on the role of general consumer, trade and specialist press (includ-
ing 'fanzines'), radio and television, since they are at the core of the publicity
sector. The agents and promoters who make up the secondary layers of 'the
expanded industry' (Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 123-170) tend to play a sec-
ondary role.
With slogans, stickers, buttons, industry and consumer contests, and even black
leather jackets for our promotion staff, we brought back the fifties...We trans-
ported the group from coast-to-coast, making sure they were seen by their
audience and their potential record-buying public. We flew in radio men, promo-
tion men, and distributors into New York and San Fransisco to see the group.
In all, our promotion went on for five months before the group's first album was
released. Before that first record hit the stores, the entire country was aware of Sha
Na Na...Before the album they had appeared on the Merv Griffin Show and had
been the subject of a feature in Rolling Stone, all of which led to their being invited
to appear at Woodstock.
After initial development of the act by getting them seen and talked about, we
began to concentrate on packaging the album...With the LP ready, we prepared
radio promotion stickers, information on the group and the music they were
singing, as well as a press kit that contained everything from Sen-Sen to a black
plastic comb.
Today an artist isn't developed overnight. With Sha Na Na we spent five months
paving the way for their arrival. Some artists take even longer (in Chappie and
Garofalo 1977: 180).
Another recent example (the following from The Weekend Australian 6-7
July 1985: Magazine 4-5, 22-23 November 1986: 19, National Times on
Sunday 1 December 1986: 19, The Sunday Mail 8 May 1988: 3-4) was
masterminded by Australian entrepreneur and promoter John Cornell,
the long-time business partner of comedian Paul Hogan and "the money
man and promotional brains" behind the immensely successful Australian
film Crocodile Dundee. While the film was in pre-production develop-
ment, Hogan offered his services to the Australian Tourist Corporation to
front an intensive U.S. television campaign promoting the country as a
tourist destination. The idea, according to Cornell was to "familiarise
American audiences with Hoge's [Hogan's comic character] particular
charm". This, by all accounts, was highly successful. The actor became a
household name, with "the cute blond guy with the shrimps on the barbie"
becoming a favourite with American females. The film itself, in which
Hogan plays the main character, was "aimed fair and square at the
lucrative U.S. market" and designed to capitalise on his popularity. With
release approaching, he undertook a whistlestop all-states tour, appearing
on as many radio and television shows as would accept him, including a
segment in the television public affairs programme, Sixty Minutes. Cou-
pled with Paramount's $9 million launch budget, this intensive publicity
helped turn the first Crocodile Dundee into a box-office smash, notching
up $141.5 million in its first 66 days. Such was the impact of both film and
character that a sequel, Crocodile Dundee II, was quickly prepared. This
time, however, the publicity strategy was restricted to substantial profiles
in high circulation media, including Playboy magazine, Time and Life, and
Ladies Home Journal - although undoubtedly helped by interest in the
daily media in his relationship with co-star Linda Kazlowski whom he later
married. What we see in these two cases is careful exploitation of the
publicity complex, one style, the other one star-based. The media were
invited to use the commodity and the artist behind it in interviews, news,
gossip columns, advertisements, chat shows, magazine segments, film and
album review columns and programmes, and the like - in the items which
comprise the commodity they themselves are producing - the effect of
which was to publicise both product and artist.
Unlike advertising, this publicity was provided 'freely' by the media.
Most writers on the culture industry recognise the importance of the
media in providing publicity in this manner (e.g. Coser et al. 1982, Frith
1978), but few deal with its systematic underpinings or the mechanisms
whereby it is realised. My argument is that publicity is an effect generated
by the normal operations of the makers of public goods. By using private
goods produced by the manufacturing sector in making their own com-
modities, the public goods sector serves to publicise them. This reveals the
complex duality of the public goods sector: it is simultaneously the
industry's publicity complex - a duality I will refer to as the public goods
producer/publicist sector. Further, this free advertising is no hit-or-miss
affair. It is commercially both efficient and effective in achieving an impact
for the commodities it publicises.
In general terms, the duality of public goods producer/publicist sector is
not difficult to demonstrate7. For example, television stations use the
products made by film and television production companies in their
programmes; advertising agencies use popular stars and styles in advertise-
ments; radio stations not only use recordings manufactured for the
consumer market to make up their programmes, they also build their
music formats around popular styles of music and highlight the work of
stars; newspapers and magazines review books, films, theatrical perfor-
mances, recordings, and the like, to provide copy for their arts and
entertainment pages; specialist magazines cover the music business, others
As indicated in chapter 3, the press have an ambiguous position in this discus-

sion. In principle, they are private goods in physical or technical form, yet are
public goods in cultural form. Because of difficulties of realisation in recent
years associated with rising production costs (newsprint, labour) and down-
wards pressures on cover prices, they have increasingly organised their produc-
tion around the principles of public goods production. They are now heavily
reliant on advertising for income. To simplify this analysis, I treat them here
simply as public goods.
film, and others, the entertainment industry generally; and all media
interview and profile authors, film and television and radio stars, singers,
groups, and artists of all kinds in their news and arts/entertainment
coverage. A new dimension of this, and an important one in an era of
global marketing, is the 'tie-in', where one cultural commodity is derived
from or associated with another, as in cases of the soundtrack recording of
a film, a film or video release of a rock group concert or tour, and
novelisations of a film, or films adapted from successful novels (Coser et
al. 1982: 200-223, especially their discussion of the 'Hollywood-TV-
Publishing Complex'8). Each commodity, in effect, publicises the other,
and the work done around them by the publicity sector, expands the
reputations of both.
The detail of this duality, however, is more complex. Take, for example,
the ways that television channels use films and film stars in their normal
programming - as in the case of 'Channel One - Still No Γ, a model I
have constructed to demonstrate their organisation9 (cf. also Williams
1976b). To show the realisation of the publicity effect, I need to outline
how Channel One's programme production is organised. The commodity
is produced through a corporate organisational framework; the project
team comprises a creative management stratum of producer and director
(network and station programme managers, and various specialist produc-
ers/directors respectively) and executants (leading performers including
named presenters, and supporting performers including 'backroom' pro-
gramme/studio employees). Creation is geared towards the daily produc-
tion of a continuous flow of items, which in their combination appear as a
This is a useful formulation. My interests are wider than just publishing, hence
my preference for the more general term 'the publicity complex'. Nor do Coser
et al. include relations between publishers and "key outsiders in the book
trade" (1982: 285-361 - emphasis added) including middlemen and book re-
viewers, within their Hollywood-TV-Publishing Complex. My point is precisely
that the publicist, understood as a structural position incorporating these forms
of cultural work, is now part of and integral to the corporate form of cultural
commodity production.
This model of is based on the operations of three Australian capital city sta-
tions studied in the course of field work, one from each of the three largest
Australian markets, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Each represented one
of the three major networks. All were subsidiaries of major multi-media corpo-
rations and each held major shareholding in at least one other metropolitan
channel and several regional channels (and in one case, several radio stations).
Data collection was based on observations and interviews, primarily with gen-
eral, creative and marketing management. This case study amalgamates data
from these various sources.
programme, Because of the character of public goods production, only a

proportion of items are objects created on-station; Channel One does
some local and network production such as a long-running, nationally
distributed children's programme, news, special events and sports tele-
casts10. In these cases, specific purpose, short-term project teams are set
up, but these function as cells within the larger project team. Most items,
however, are purchased or leased from manufacturers. The most impor-
tant creative work done at Channel One, the work of programming, can be
characterised as collection and scheduling", both of which are oriented
towards the dualities of public good/publicist production.
Collection is the task of creative management. In the case of Channel
One, the network and station programme managers (the collective
producer) select items from the range of goods available from various
corporate and independent, local, national and international film and
television production companies and their agents and distributors12. To
10 By way of comparison, newspapers such as The Daily Courier and magazines

do proportionally much more in-house production; there is therefore a substan-
tial staff of journalists, writers and sub-editors. Music-based radio stations like
FM-RADIO, except for specials and news, do almost none.
11 These terms also stand metaphorically for journalistic work. Much reporting is
little more than collection of information from agencies such as governments,
cabinet ministers, departments, and from corporate bodies such as employer
groups, unions, and interest groups, to say nothing of newsfeeds from news
agencies, other outlets in the corporate group, and syndication services.
Scheduling as discussed here, corresponds to the work of sub-editing and lay-
out.
12 Based on the comments of Channel One creative management, the selection
process seems to be based on at least three important cultural criteria (I am
ignoring important economic considerations in selection decisions such as the
possibility of selling subsidiary or network or regional rights to other stations).
Selections are made on the basis of the existing hierarchy of cultural value, on
the reputation or potential reputation of existing stars and styles. An evalua-
tion is made of their relative appeal. If they are likely to be popular with the
medium's audience and achieve strong penetration into target audiences, they
are strongly sought after; blockbuster films such as the Star Wars films with
their human and not-so-human stars are obvious examples. Second, selection is
made on the basis of the format, whether or not the available objects are consis-
tent with the types of items the station wants to combine into a programme.
For example, Channel One is big on sport and searches for major events to
cover and shorter magazine items to include in its Saturday afternoon sports
programme. Third, selection is made on the basis of stylistic innovation; that is,
the creative quality needed to add cultural significance to the medium's own
maximise the appeal of their own commodity, management look particu-

larly for objects with superior reputations, the works of popular stars and
styles. Once items have been selected and consolidated as a library,
creative management draw up a programme schedule. Items are pro-
grammed at appropriate times for the audiences they are intended to
attract; the most popular at peak times with others allocated elsewhere,
and those of least significance away in 'the graveyard' (late evening or
mid-dawn). As the time of telecast approaches, programme staff prepare
the items (e.g. editing for commercial breaks) for assembly into a flow.
Presenters assemble them in the studio as they are being recorded or
transmitted. The schedule drawn up reflects the channel's format. Accord-
ing to the general and programme managers, Channel One's is:
aimed at attracting families. Families of all ages...For some reason we do best with
white collar more than blue collar suburbs. We didn't design it that way, it's just
what happens. It's because we've been around a long time, and we've stuck to our
guns by offering quality entertainment...We rate well in the older demographics.
With the population ageing, and product manufacturers eyeing off the older
demographics more, that doesn't do us any harm. But we have a problem in the
15-24 male and female groups. We're thinking about a nightly rock feature to deal
with that...Television is about entertainment. We try to offer a mix of programmes,
not too serious, we leave that to the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corpora-
tion]... We're strong on films, Australian series and sports; they're the ones we do
best with.
As can be seen in Figure 7.1, Channel One runs a more-or-less standard-
ised schedule across the week13. The basic pattern is maintained Monday
product. If innovative items cannot be found they can be scheduled in an inno-

vative manner, which has the same effect.
13 It is worth noting that a degree of 'massness' still enters into television pro-
gramming, not unlike the creative policies developed by daily newspapers.
Each attempts to combine several target audiences and attract all to a single
day's programme or edition by providing a collection of discrete content types
(see Figure 7.1). By way of comparison, The Daily Courier, depending on the
day of the week, divides each edition into separate sections; including local and
national news, international news, editorial-comment-features, real estate, fi-
nancial and business, sport, women's pages, arts and entertainment, motoring,
and so on. Reflecting the fact that radio stations have adopted 24-hour and
highly specialised formats aimed at specific audiences, station FM-RADIO has
a combination top 40-album-oldie format aimed at a primary target audience
of 15-24 years and a secondary target of 18-35 years which comes into play
especially in the breakfast and morning zones; that is, programming is 'day-
parted' to account for work and domestic cycles of activity and the potential
Zone Target Type
6.00 am Breakfast Family New & current affairs

magazine programs
9.00 Morning Children Childrens programs

Housewives Serials, soaps
12.00 Afternoon Housewives Chat shows, studio programs

films, soaps
4.00 Late Afternoon Children Cartoons, childrens programs

Teenagers game shows
6.00 Early Evening Family News, public affairs

comedy
Australian series
8.30 Evening Adults Mini series,

News updates
Quality Australian series &
drama series
12.00 Mid-Dawn Adults Films, serials,

magazine programs
Saturday - Sunday
1 2 midday Males Sports programs
Figure 7.1 Channel One Program Schedule Monday - Friday
to Friday but modified on Saturday and Sunday to include sports coverage

in order to build up weekly male audiences. Note the shifting focus on
different target audiences throughout the day: the family as a whole
during breakfast, then pre-school children and housewives throughout the
morning and early afternoon, returning to a family orientation later in the
available audiences. The purpose of these schedules is the same as that of Chan-
nel One.
day. According to the programme manager, this is intended to match "the

cycles that a family goes through in its daily routines. We try and catch
them as they come and go". Management pays particular attention to its
programming following the 6.00pm news/current affairs items, in the belief
that "if you've got them for the news, and follow it with a ball-tearer, then
you've got them for the night". Most importantly, given the media's dual
producer/publicist activities, in addition to running regular advertising on
local radio stations, in the local press, and in specialist television maga-
zines, part of Channel One's publicity department creates on-air cam-
paigns in an attempt to attract target audiences to other programmes.
There are nightly 'promos', for example, previewing the following week's
episode of popular programmes and other programmes coming up later in
the week, especially new mini series, new films, Saturday's 'big game' and
so on; 'trailers' aimed at housewives for items scheduled in the morning
and afternoon zones are run in the breakfast programme; and there is
extensive promotion in prime time (roughly, S.OOpm-lO.OOpm, especially
6.00pm-8.30pm) of feature items in other zones. As given by the duality of
the public goods producer/publicist, their purpose is to maximise penetra-
tion into various commercially-desirable audiences, and by patterning the
channel's programming, moulding the habit of extended viewing. The
channel thereby attracts a collection of sizeable, precisely-defined audi-
ences, and carries them across different zones and days of the week to
boost its total share of viewing. This viewing profile, its share of viewing
together with the reach and frequency it offers, is the foundation of the
distributive efficiency the station needs to attract advertisers. These same
efficiencies become part of the benefit offered to the recipients of the free
advertising effect; it accrues automatically to the manufacturers whose
products are used in the programme.
We are now in a position to grasp both the complexity and economic
efficiency of the relationship between public goods production and their
publicity effects. This can be illustrated with a special feature Channel
One decided to run. It had won the Australian rights to telecast the second
of George Lucas's immensely popular Star Wars series of films, The
Empire Strikes Back. The channel already had the first of these in its
library, as well as a documentary called The Making of Star Wars dealing
with the innovative animation techniques developed for them. The
recognisable significance of these films made them outstanding pro-
gramme items in the eyes of creative management. The initial intention
had been to use Empire later in the year to coincide with school holidays.
At the time, however, local newspapers and other media were full of the
impending cinema theatre release of the third in the Lucas trilogy, Return
of the Jedi. Because of the obvious tie-ins, and the fact that these films,
according to the programme manager, were, at the time, "occupying a

significant slice of the audience mind...the opportunity was too good to
miss". He decided to schedule the three items, documentary first, followed
in order by the first and second of the films, at a special Friday evening
family-viewing time of 7.30pm, even though it meant temporarily displac-
ing a popular American comedy series. The topicality and popularity of
these films guaranteed the channel sizeable audiences across a number of
audience segments; young families, adults, children and teenagers across
several socio-economic groups. From the point of view of the manufac-
turer, distributor and exhibitor of the films, especially Return of the Jedi,
and the makers, licensees and retailers of the toys, dolls, books and other
promotional paraphernalia associated with them, they received what was,
in effect, a total of something like 6 hours prime-time publicity for their
products - free. Furthermore, it was highly efficient publicity, aimed
precisely at the target audience for the film and associated products and
transmitted in a manner which served to maximise the significance of all.
By any measure, this is saturation publicity of enormous impact, and
demonstrates something of the quantity and quality of the publicity effect
generated by the production and circulation of public goods14.
7.2.3 Publicity: The Objectification of Stars/Styles

I want to look more closely at the socio-cultural mechanisms which create
the publicity effect. In outline, publicity work is crucial in making the stars
and styles corporations depend on for their long-term profitability. When
public goods producers use cultural objects in their own production
processes, they serve to give them a public existence. By displaying the
object's characteristics and associating these with a name, they give it
objectivity, thereby making it appear as a cultural fact. As a recognisable
object, it can be promoted, given a horizontal position as a definite
cultural object and a vertical position in a hierarchy of value. Promoting
the many objects in a cultural arena serves to create an objective order of
significance, a naturalised, taken-for-granted order of cultural things,
stratified according to value, whose influence spreads across the market
14 The power and value of this publicity is also demonstrated by the case of Kylie
Minogue (see also chapter 6), who starred in the popular Australian soap
Neighbours, which Channel One, like other stations in the network, had sched-
uled in prime time. At the time of fieldwork, she and her recording company
were exploiting the intensive publicity gained through this television exposure
as a springboard to an internationally successful career as a pop singer.
and acts as a point of reference for manufacturers, marketers and

publicists (and retailers and audiences, but I will not deal with these here).
The publicity work done on stars differs slightly from that done on styles
and is worth discussing separately. When publicising works created by
artists, the focus is their idiolect. There is a continuing debate about its
specificities; the nature of their individual talents, their techniques, the
particular ways they handle a form of work, their influences, personality,
and its relation to their work, and so on. The outcome is a convention-
alised picture of the artist and work, expressed as a socially recognisable
combination of name and image. The persona, talents and repertoire are
turned into a definite and unique object positioned within a specific
cultural arena. Examples can be found everywhere, most explicitly in the
reviews and profiles published in newspapers, consumer, specialist and
trade magazines and newsletters; an instance is an article on actress Meryl
Streep from American film writer Jenny Cullen published in the arts
section of The Weekend Australian (2-3 April 1988: Magazine 3-4) prior to
the release of her film, Ironweed. The profile was headed '"Now t-h-a-t's
an actress..."', a title based on a remark made by the film's director Oscar
Babenco. Note how Cullen makes various aspects of acting - versatility
and professionalism, the ability to bring characters to life, sensitivity to the
character, and the chameleon-like capacity to submerge real-life personal-
ity beneath the character's, and so on - cohere around the individual's
name, to create a sign of unique talent:
Ironweed is a film in which Meryl Streep once again proves why she is called the
undisputed film actress of the century. It is a performance without equal, culled
from the depth and range of this extraordinary woman who, chameleon-like, takes
on other characters and becomes them. Streep says, "I have no Method. I've never
read Stanislavsky."...Streep says that a flash of intuition taught her about Helen. "I
heard a melody in Helen's life and instantly transformed it into a symbol, a treble
clef. It expressed for me her passion for music, her inner grace, and it gave me the
sad, dropping line of her body. I built up Helen pore by pore".
When Meryl Streep, the 37-year old character actress plays a character it is not
enough to slip on the outer layers for a performance. She instead becomes that
character for the duration of the film, seldom slipping out of character, soaking up
her role until to her it is real. She takes over not only the outer layers and the
costumes but the inner life of the character, including secrets and dreams that even
director Babenco is unaware of and William Kennedy, who created Helen, has not
imagined...
Streep, however, is an Academy favourite and of all today's actresses continues
to prove time after time her versatility, range and depth that to date is unequalled
in Oscar history. Whether Ironweed becomes a box office success remains to be
seen. Despite the huge big-name pulling power of Streep and [co-star Jack]
Nicholson, some audiences have already voted it too down-beat and depressing.
They argue that Streep is too real. Her portrayal of Helen leaves the audience
feeling sympathy for the kind of person that on the streets they would avoid. It is
the kind of criticism Streep would probably be pleased to get. It means she has
succeeded in shedding Streep as she did in playing Lindy Chamberlain with
Australian-New Zealand accent in dark wig and print dresses in Fred Schepisi's
Evil Angels, or with a Polish accent playing the tortured Sophie of William Styron's
Sophie's Choice or playing the aristocratic Danish-born Isak Dinsen in Out Of
Africa - she is always totally believable and compelling...
Each role challenges her and excites her and that is what she finds fulfilling. It is
the chance to be a chameleon, not just in her looks and voice, but in her attitude,
her perceptions.
There is little doubt left here as to Streep's objective status as an artist

(and as a star, but I will turn to the allocation of significance shortly).
Publicity plays an even more central role in constituting styles and
giving them a social existence. Nowhere is the interdependency between
manufacturer/marketer and publicist clearer. A star can be created
through a single work - although the comments of Buddah Records
management cited earlier suggest that even gaining public recognition of
stars can be a lengthy process. A style, however, is stitched together,
named, and given public form, over a longer time-span. Rarely does it
crystalise instantly. More single events, items, and people, are involved,
and is more like a gradual 'making', until a moment of precipitation when
it suddenly takes shape as a definite object, a cultural fact, its characteris-
tics and genesis appearing natural and coercive to those involved in its
constitution.
It is difficult to provide a single concise illustration of this process.
There are multitudes of inputs, fragments spoken here and there, spread
over time and across many sites. In film, for example, publicity involves
critics and reviewers in a range of consumer and industry media. A style is
discussed in their news and review columns and occasional feature articles.
In Australia, for example, this might include film reviewers in local daily
newspapers and especially critics in the more substantive national or
regional dailies, such as Evan Williams in The Australian, and Sandra Hall
in weekly newsmagazines such as the Bulletin; John Hinde, Margaret
Pomeranz and David Stratton in their news and review programmes on
ABC and SBS television and radio; in specialist trade and consumer
periodicals such as Cinema Papers and TV Week; and academic journals
such as Meanjin and the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies. With the
resurgence of the Australian film industry in the 1970s, for example, these
outlets were directly and indirectly involved in a debate over the character
of 'Australian' film-making, whether it was derivative, or represented a

categorical and original cinematic style15. By the early 1980s, consolidation
had occurred to such a degree that Time magazine (28 September 1981:
36-44) felt it possible to run a cover story discussing the arrival of "the
Australian genre both artistically and intellectually", based on "the latest
of the 'new wave' movies that have been coming out of Australia since the
mid-'70s, movies such as Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, Picnic At Hanging
Rock, My Brilliant Career", and the work of directors and producers such
as Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi, Bruce Beresford and Gillian Armstrong -
the stars upon whose work the style was taken to be based. These
elements were projected as the foundations of the style, a specifically
Australian style, identifiable:
not by technical innovation...but a classical elegance of image, plot and character,
of stories well told against the spectacular backdrop of a continent that even
Australians hardly know...Many of the films - Picnic, Morant, Gallipoli - are
about looking to the past, about finding and understanding Australia's historical
roots.
These reviews and features were produced as items within public goods
such as newspapers, magazines and journals, and radio and television
programmes, but their publicity effect contributes to the constitution of
the now-evident object they claimed to discover.
As noted elsewhere, a crucial part of objectifying a style is conventional-
ising a name with the collection of fragments thought to constitute it: note,
for example, how the Time article unifies the films of Armstrong, Weir
and Schepisi under the label of an Australian style, which is explicated
through the characteristics of their works. Their idiolects are collectively
transformed into a style, which in turn, is made to appear as a cultural fact.
Another example appears in a review of the film Blue Velvet published in
Cinema Papers (March 1987: 51) which begins:
Let us assume there is a group of directors we can call 'post-modernists'. They
would be characterised by their self-conscious eclectic aestheticism and the
distance they are able to place between the spectators and the universe represented
on the screen. David Lynch would be a charter member of the group and
Eraserhead one of the touchstones of the style...his films have been collections of
15 Note how cultural form and style are mixed here with the search for a national
identity, a stage that white Anglo-Saxon Australia has been going through espe-
cially since post-war period; see, for example, Dermody and Jacka (1987) and
Tulloch (1982).
memorable noises and images, errily still, bordered in black and silence. Tottering
in and about these moments there are often some shreds of story (big lumps of it in
The Elephant Man), bemused and out-of-place...We are pleased to report that not
all of Blue Velvet's plot riddles are solved by the end, as befits a post-modernist
pastiche.
The identity of 'post-modern' cultural commodities, according to this
account, is not yet clear, other than as objects marked by a taste for
quotation and repetition (cf. also Jameson, 1984, Featherstone 1988). In
this extract we see an object-in-the-making, as it stitches together and
associates particular characteristics with the name, slowly constructing the
conventional framework which identifies the style. The outcome is illus-
trated by Tucker's (1986: 399) account of the emergence of 'heavy metal'
rock music in the mid-1970s. The American band Blue Cheer were
enjoying some success, "but there was still no name for what Blue Cheer
did - unless you count playing-repetitive-chords-as-loud-as-you-can-on-
acid-which-makes-almost-anything-sound-interesting". Steppenwolf then
recorded 'Born to Be Wild', which included the phrase 'heavy metal
thunder'. The media seized upon it and applied it as a descriptive label to
the work of similar-sounding artists such as Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, Iron
Butterfly, even retrospectively to 'hard rock' groups like Deep Purple and
the Who.
So in the first phase of the publicity process, stars-and-styles-in-the-
making emerge in the debate which appears as an effect of public goods
producers/publicists doing their work. They come to acquire a facticity, as
a socially recognisable objects with conventional, naturalised meanings16,
16 Whilst I have avoided issues relating to ideology in this work, there are obvious
connections in my arguments here with those presented by Hall. He argues
(1977: 340-342) that there are three basic functions of the media; first, the selec-
tive construction of social knowledge; second, to reflect on the plurality of
forms of social life and to provide a constant lexicon of its objects; and third, to
organise, orchestrate and bring together that which has been selectively repre-
sented and selectively classified, whence "what has been made visible and clas-
sified begins to shake into an acknowledged order". Clearly, while approaching
the activities of the media from a quite different perspective, my conclusions
parallel Hall's. It is notable, however, that he goes on to ask "what are the
actual mechanisms which enable the media to perform this 'ideological
work'?" (1977: 342), and continues in abstract semiological vein to offer an
answer, which builds upon his earlier work on encoding/decoding. While I have
no real argument with him in terms of the functioning of language, I believe
that my analysis offers more concrete understandings of some of the structured
political-economic contexts of these mechanisms and would probably inform a
more specific grasp of the "field of meanings...which are universalised and
available to artists, manufacturers and marketers as a point of cultural

reference, to appropriate in the course of making their originals, packag-
ing and advertisements.
7.2.4 Publicity: The Ordering of Cultural Things

Once objectified, stars/styles can become subjects of promotion. This is
the second phase of publicity. Through the explicit and implicit assess-
ments made of each object used in public goods production, the value of
each star and style is assessed and a relative measure of significance
allocated to each. As a result, these objects are positioned in a hierarchy of
cultural value, and the result of positioning many objects is an order of
cultural things.
This notion of a 'hierarchy of cultural value' needs explanation. Each
separate arena or field in the sphere of culture is comprised of a collection
of cultural objects (forms, techniques, stars, styles, works) and relative
evaluations of each. Each object exists within a recognisable order of
significance. No hierarchy is entirely coherent or unified, but is a frame-
work which publicists are always constructing, as objects collected around
some principle. Since publicity is a complex practice with many competing
players, it is a site of debate and conflict and no hierarchy is ever settled.
Nor is significance created and allocated only in aesthetic terms. The
market is also an important influence. Commercial criteria of sales or
potential sales are taken as a fundamental measure of reputation and
contribute to considerations of value17. The promotion effect creates a
hierarchy of (commercial plus cultural) value for each arena, giving it a
structured facticity as a stratified order of cultural things. This order
becomes a coercive principle operating across the field and perhaps across
the whole industry, as a measure of value, a point of reference for
manufacturers, marketers, creative management, and artists in the main-
naturalised" (1977: 343) which could be usefully investigated further by cul-

tural studies analysts. This could be a particularly important point when we
remember that the media are the core of the publicity complex, and that be-
yond the restricted area of cultural commodities, publicity is accorded to many
aspects of social life, especially economic and political. The effects on these
objects are the same.
17 It should be remembered that in discussing publicity, we are dealing with the
imputation of value prior to exchange and consumption. The claims made for a
cultural object, and the putative order of cultural things, awaits the final juris-
diction of exchange.
stream and periphery involved in the production and circulation of

cultural commodities.
This process is explicit in the profile of Meryl Streep cited earlier.
Statements such as 'the undisputed film actress of the century', and 'she
continues to prove time after time her versatility, range and depth that to
date is unequalled in Oscar history', proclaim her significance compared
to others, based on the apparent obviousness of her talent. Virtually every
review of a cultural object, for example, does similar work. For example,
in reviewing Steven Spielberg's film Empire of the Sun for The Weekend
Australian Magazine (19-20 March 1988: 12), critic Evan Williams pro-
claims Spielberg to be "an incomparable weaver of spells, one of the great
cinematic magicians". Empire of the Sun does not, however, according to
this essay, measure up to its maker's talents.
Something strange has been happening to Steven Spielberg. Not content with being
the world's most popular film-maker, tired of his reputation as the most successful
producer of box-office triumphs in the history of the cinema, he wants to make
serious films...one genuine masterpiece to secure his place in history...Empire of
the Sun is inflated, pretentious, beautiful and essentially rather dull. I wish
Spielberg would settle down, forget about Academy Awards, and return to his
familiar world of fantasy. He was good at it.
Explicitly, Spielberg himself is located as a meritorious object at the top of
a hierarchy of cinematic value. So are his earlier fantasy movies such as
E.T. and Poltergeist, whereas Empire of the Sun is positioned well down18.
A (meta)hierarchy of value both underlies and is a product of encyclope-
dias, guides and handbooks which survey a particular field. They position
the objects in the field by naming, differentiating and evaluating each. The
New Musical Express Book of Rock (Logan and Woffinden 1973), for
example, provides an alphabetical listing of artists and styles, promoting
some above others. The entry for the Rolling Stones, for example, covers
the biographies and careers of the group and its members, their collective
and individual styles, musical influences, and the group's music and image.
There is also a comprehensive discography, acknowledgement of the
position each single and album attained on the British and U.S. charts,
with an aesthetic and commercial evaluation of each woven into the
narrative; for example, how Exile On Main Street, "the most casually-dis-
18 The Saturday edition of The Daily Courier with its extended arts/entertain-
ment section explicitly materialises a section of the cinematic order. Its review-
ers give each film on release at local theatres a rating out of five stars, and it
publishes a weekly consolidated column titled "Movie Review Guide: how the
films showing in the city and suburbs have been rated by our critics" with each
listed under their rating; five stars, four-and-a-half stars, and so on.
missed of all the Stones albums, is one of the finest". The entry closes with
the proposition that:
Though recent albums have disappointed by previous standards, the Stones retain
power to be, on their night, the finest rock group in the world. Their imitators are
legion; their legend marginally tarnished but they are still the most charismatic
(alongside Dylan) in rock (1973: 427).
Their recordings and concerts, according to this view, remain an objective
and superior measure against which all other rock recordings must be
compared. They remain at the pinnacle of the order of rock and roll
things.
The examples offered so far demonstrate explicit examples of the
publicity effect created by public goods production. Other semiotic
allocations of significance are made implicitly through the internal struc-
tures of their commodities. For example, the fact that a particular film or
series or item is scheduled by a television channel in prime time signals its
obvious worth19. A recording gains in significance if a radio station
nominates it as 'No 1', or as 'the album of the week', or puts it on its 'hit'
playlist; the same for a star if selected as the headline guest in a television
chat show or if profiled in the features pages of a newspaper or magazine;
or when a book or film is given the lead position in the review pages of a
newspaper. In each of these cases, the prominent positioning of the item in
the structure of the text attributes reputation, making it appear like an
important object in the field - regardless of what else is said about it
(perhaps we see here the truth of the adage that 'all publicity is good
publicity'). Further, when public goods producers present their commodi-
ties to the market, they too package and publicise them. Part of the
putative reputation they thereby acquire, flows over to the goods used in
their making20, but this promotion flows in two directions and in an
19 The same effect is produced for political events and persons in the operation of
news, when items are prioritised in a bulletin or edition.
20 It is also worth noting that the semiotic work of publicity is also done by the
retail sector in the merchandising work done immediately prior to exchange.
The cultural hierarchy established through publicity is reproduced in modern
merchandising techniques. The appearance and layout of shops selling private
goods for individual consumption (e.g. books, records, videos) is built out of
the existing cultural hierarchy and based upon its terms. Goods are laid out
according to stars and styles in a layout which expresses and signifies their
recognisable value. They are laid out according to conventional star/style cate-
gories: e.g. science fiction, gardening, popular classics; rock, jazz and classical,
and marked as stratified variations within each style; e.g. a separate rack for
'this week's top 10 records', 'feminist fiction', 'new releases from Penguin'.
The Institutionalisation of the Publicist 251
ever-expanding motion. The medium selects significant items to make up

its product thus it gains in significance itself. Some of its own significance
after creation and marketing flows back the items used, expanding their
value, and so on, and so on - as in the case of Channel One and the Star
Wars films. The publicity effect is not merely a circle of significance but
more akin to an upwards-moving spiral of significance, item to content
and back again.
In the second phase of the publicity process, the work of the producer/-
publicist has the dual effect of creating public goods for consumption. As a
consequence, it serves to construct a naturalised order of cultural things
and ascribe privileged status to the stars and styles at its pinnacle. This
objective hierarchy confronts potential purchasers as if a known value
before consumption; this is the taste-mediator effect of the publicity
complex. It is part of the industry-wide work performed by the publicity
complex for the manufacturing sector as part of their marketing effort,
exactly the same effect as that of advertising, but carried out free.
7.3 The Institutionalisation of the Publicist

and Its Consequences
7.3.1 The Manufacturer/Publicist Connection

as a Structural Feature of the Culture Industry
The institutionalisation of the publicist has changed the structure of the
culture industry since about the last quarter of the 19th century and has
proved to be an important element in constituting its corporate form.
From beginnings as the provider of a sales service, the publicist in the
culture industry has progressively become a fraction of partly productive
capital. It is now a position within the corporate structure of cultural
relations but operating outside their organisational form, although articu-
lated to it through the corporation's marketing department.
The publicist is a complex unit of capital, operating partly as a
commodity producer, partly as a circulator of manufacturers' products.
Thus, as the publicist produces cultural and economic value, it simultane-
They are surrounded by point of sale material (e.g. posters, signs, display bins,
window displays) which support the marketing work already done in the pro-
duction of the commodity's appearance.
ously distributes it. As discussed in chapter 3, its economic and cultural

functioning stems ultimately from its constituent commodity form, the
quasi-public good. Because of difficulties selling their products at prices
which recover production costs (e.g. rising cover prices for press, political
and technical barriers for broadcasting)21, publicists have found it more
profitable to rent their distributive capacity to advertisers22 and take a
share of publicity profits as their primary base for accumulation. They
survive on their effectiveness in attracting desired target audiences with
their products, manoeuvring individuals into consuming it habitually and
for long periods. The large aggregate audience share-of-consumption
profile achieved by public goods producers makes them effective and
efficient communicators, able to offer advertisers significant efficiencies in
the process of publicity. Furthermore, as the media moved away from
their own production towards exploitation of consumer goods in making
their own products, manufacturers cooperated because of the high-quality
publicity such use brings. In short, despite their dependent or secondary
position as producers, through their symbiosis with manufacturers, publi-
cists such as the media have been able to force themselves into the core of
the culture industry - so to speak, onto its centre-stage.
Their relationship with manufacturers brings benefits to the publicity
sector in their role as commodity producers. By using consumer goods as
intermediate goods, public goods producers are able to significantly
reduce their production costs, especially in the area of labour. Collection
and assembly is cheaper and less skilled than creation. The creative staff of
commercial radio station FM-RADIO, for example, is comprised almost
solely of continuity announcers and programmers, skilled only in program-
ming and presenting playlisted recordings according to the format. The
situation is analogous on Channel One23. Furthermore, since using the
21 It needs to be emphasised again that the press have an ambiguous position in

this discussion. As previously pointed out, newspapers, for example, have the
technical form of private goods but the cultural form of public goods. I am
treating them in this discussion as public goods.
22 Recall the shift to the second model of radio discussed in chapter 3. Note also
that with the downturn in box-office receipts, cinema owners have recently
moved in the same direction.
23 By way of comparison, state-funded television and radio stations, such as those
of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, engage in much more local and
national production. Their creative staffs include significant numbers of writ-
ers, researchers and specialist presenters on permanent full-time staff. Their
work is organised around principles more like those of a craft workshop (see
chapter 4). The conceptual framework and methodology I have used in this
work of significant artists increases the reputation of their own product,

publicists profit from easy access to popular stars and styles (which they
have helped to create), resulting in long-running battles with manufactur-
ers over use of consumer goods. Over the years they have been forced to
pay rights and royalties of various kinds such as mechanical rights,
broadcasting rights, copyright fees, licensing and appearance fees, for
specific and limited use of manufacturers' cultural commodities. This
conflict is currently being re-run in the 'pay for play' debate between
television stations and the makers of musical video clips, especially those
from recording companies (Stockbridge 1988).
The institutionalisation of the publicist has also changed the shape of
the mechanisms whereby reputation is allocated within the culture indus-
try. With the aestheticisation of symbolic interaction, the critic took up
this role. With the commercialisation of cultural production, the audience
as purchasers and consumers were also accorded the function of assessing
value, a judgement which operated through monetary exchange. This
function has been pre-empted and changed by the publicist, by virtue of
their expertise in communication and their control over the means of
public communication24. When publicity allocates significance, it does in
both aesthetic and commercial terms. Success in the market is risky if the
commodity is subject to damaging comments, hence, by virtue of their
relationship with manufacturers, 'criticism' in the publicity complex
became 'reviewing', where commercial and aesthetic criteria are combined
in evaluating the worth of an object.
7.3.2 The Battle Over Publicity:

Conflicts of Interest in the Allocation of Significance
Competition in the cultural marketplace is fierce, with many competing
stars and styles and individual commodities. Accordingly, manufacturers
employ large numbers of staff and devote considerable time and expense
to capturing the publicity complex. Buddah Record's attempts noted
earlier to sell the rock and roll revival in general and Sha Na Na in
particular is an excellent illustration. Their rationale reflected the conven-
work might be usefully employed in examining state forms of cultural produc-

tion.
24 Further to footnote 2 above, note how the ontology of communication as an
historical category seems to be fundamentally founded on the idea of publicity.
In this regard it is interesting to note the preoccupation with persuasion and
effects research which is part of the classical models of communication.
tional wisdom in the music business that sales success cannot be achieved
without airplay; from the record companies' perspective, "the function of
radio is to sell records" (Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 169, also Frith 1978:
89). For the same publicity reasons, recording companies also encourage
television stations to telecast the music video clip (Stockbridge 1988), and
have their second-level and rising stars booked as support groups for
national tours with major artists (e.g. Chappie and Garofalo 1977:
137-154). Similar battles take place in other spheres. At the time when the
film Crocodile Dundee II was released on Labor Day weekend 1988 in the
U.S., film writer Jenny reported that two other potential blockbusters,
Rambo HI (Sylvester Stallone) and George Lucas's Willow, were holding
off their promotional launches for fear that "Dundee II will clean up at the
box office and knock their big gun and far more expensive movies right
out of the running". Both held off their release dates (The Sunday Mail, 8
May 1988: 3-4). Publishers too, attempt to attract attention prior to
publication of a title, including the vast publicity and 'hoopla' that
accompanies book-club selection, paperback-rights sales, movie or televi-
sion sales, and excerpts of the book in magazines and newspapers (Coser
et al. 1982: 316). This not only publicises the particular work or artist.
Ongoing publicity also has spinoffs in sales of their earlier works: in
particular, it makes possible the success of compilation products such as
'greatest hits' and 'collected works', and the re-release of 'standards'
which are important elements of form-based production. The publicity
complex, therefore, helps build up immediate and continuing sales and
preserve the manufacturer's total invested capital, but the corporations of
culture have to work hard to gain its support.
In so far as the media and other publicists are Opinion-makers' (cf.
'gatekeepers', Hirsch 1970), manufacturers try to influence their judge-
ments, but the publicist's formal independence presents them with certain
problems. Personal contacts are one way of overcoming this, by control-
ling the process of definition through personal influence. Marketing
personnel form friendships with publicity agents, invite them to launches,
make person-to-person visits with new product, offer 'perks' and gifts of
whatever takes the recipient's fancy, in exchange for favoured treatment
(Coser et al. 1982: 310-312, cf. the media as 'secondary definers', Hall et al.
1979: 57-60) - hence the 'payola' scandals which are occasionally uncov-
ered (Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 66-68). Despite this, individuals within
the publicity complex not infrequently create their own counter-defini-
tions of artists and works, and in cases of the 'wait and see' attitude to
promotion by manufacturers often accompanying releases from second-
level stars and in style-based marketing, the media are left to make their
own decisions. The corporations of culture, therefore, can be left chasing
the tail of the publicity complex as it forges cultural orders which suits
theirs or other interests and not those of the manufacturing sector.
Because of the structural position of the publicity complex and the
production relations in which they are caught up with manufacturers, stars
are forced to work the publicity circuit upon release of their latest work.
The logic of their situation makes this necessary. Frith (1978: 111) argues
that "The music business...turns musicians into commodities, as stars",
although strictly speaking, this is an imprecise formulation. Coser et al.
(1982: 214-215) are more correct when they say that authors "must be
salesmen or saleswomen of their own wares...authors sell books by selling
themselves". Artists engaged as contracted artists are positioned in
production as (in)dependent intermediate goods producers. To be en-
gaged by manufacturers, they must demonstrate and maintain their
commerciality as indexed by their reputation. As independents, they must
bear the financial and emotional costs of inflating the market value of
their name and talent25, each becoming their own marketer by presenting
themselves in public as an icon of their image via appearances on talk
shows, doing interviews, media and in-store appearances, and so on;
author Judith Kranz commented to Coser et al. (1982: 214-218), "I never
realised how much hustling was involved". From the star's perspective,
this has a dual purpose. It convinces manufacturers to release their work
and familiarises audiences with their name, thereby giving their works
commercial potential. Since the media are part of 'show-biz' and tend to
select guests with celebrity appearance and entertainment value, artists of
quiet demeanour or whose work is outside the public agenda are ignored
by the publicity complex. This encourages manufacturers to be partly
guided in their creative and employment policies by the publicity potential
of an artist. Equally, it encourages artists to put on the popular signs of
stardom, to adopt spectacular codes of dress, behaviour and speech in
order to make a display of themselves and attract market attention.
The work of the publicity complex has a number of consequences back
in production. In chapter 4, I discussed the project team and how both
contracted artists and professional creatives can alter their relations with
creative management, as can creative management with general manage-
ment, if they can acquire artistic authority. Significance, in its surface form
25 Coser et al. (1982: 216) make the tart comment that "Ambition, so it would
seem, is a most powerful stimulant". This implies a voluntaristic notion of 'sell-
ing out' and is consistent with the whiff of romantic anti-commercialism/elitism
which permeates their book. They do not seem to grasp the fact that if con-
tracted artists want to survive in mind and body, they have little option but to
engage in this publicity work.
as reputation, is allocated by the publicist. Cultural workers collectively

and individually can play the publicity game to valorise their name and
increase their power in the workplace. Successful contracted artists, for
example, can demand a higher rate of royalties from the manufacturer; for
example, by 1969, and under the very sharp management of Alan Klein,
the Beatles were able to negotiate a rise from 10% to 25% (Frith 1978:
111). Later in his career, by threatening owner Berry Gordy that he would
take his talent elsewhere, Stevie Wonder was allowed to move beyond the
musical confines of 'the Motown sound' - although he did have to invest
his own money in the (1972) album Talking Book to make his point
(Tucker 1986: 498-499). While initially employed as a professional cre-
ative, after major successes, singer Donna Summer was able to force her
recording company to give her the artistic and financial conditions of the
contracted artist (Tucker 1986: 528-529). In short, publicity can change the
balance of power between artists and management and destabilise the
order companies impose in the creative stage of production. Moreover,
because the publicist is an independent fraction of capital, the corpora-
tions can do little about it.
There are other more serious problems for manufacturers. As commod-
ity producers, publicists seek success for their own products, hence they
put their own interests first. Radio and television stations, for example,
tend towards collecting and scheduling stars and styles which are currently
popular with their target audiences. To the manufacturer, this is wasted
effort. It is mature product which either tends to sell itself or has ceased
selling. They want publicity for their new and rising releases, for the new
stars and styles they are trying to market. From the media's angle, new,
untested material is culturally and commercially risky. They remain with
the tried and tested. Consequently, manufacturers frequently complain of
the difficulty in gaining publicity for new works and new acts, complaining
bitterly about what they see as the conservatism of the media26 (e.g.
Chappie and Garofalo 1977: 181-183). The cooperation which charac-
terises the manufacturer/publicist relation has to be constantly reforged,
and along the way, there are many battles.
26 This is more of a problem for the smaller independents. Media prefer to asso-
ciate with the majors because they have the 'hot' properties, the 'big time' acts.
Independents usually operate in the semiperiphery and have difficulty getting
media to publicise their product.
7.3.3 Stars/Styles, Restructuring the Order of Cultural

Things and the Cycles of Fashion
Beginning with the contradictions of the cultural commodity, this analysis

has shown how systems have developed to mitigate their effects, including
the services rendered by the publicity complex. The contradictions,
however, are not resolved but reappear in another form. Marketing
strategies adopted by the corporations of culture and supported by the
publicity complex, coalesce around stars and styles and an accepted order
of cultural things. Paradoxically, while a cultural order promises to
stabilise a market, once established, its leadership is challenged - because
of the continued activities of the publicity complex which constructed it in
the first place. There is a constant turnaround of stars and styles; those
which are allocated to the position of No 1 this week are dislodged by next
week's new releases. This turnover in stars/styles, these cycles of fashion, is
one of the most important contradictions of the modern culture industry,
and needs to be discussed.
To explain: Once stars/styles are made popular and fashionable, other
companies exploit them by reproducing their characteristics in formatted
production. In the same way as overproduction of the works by an
individual artist undermines their popularity, the same thing occurs with
stars and styles. Overexposure soon leads to a decline in popularity. As
the objects at the top decline, they are replaced by one or another of their
competitors. The cyclical collapse and reconstruction of the order of
cultural things governing each field of culture flows in part from the
market success enjoyed by the market leaders. In its mature form, the
culture industry has developed another layer of contradictions over the
top of those associated with the cultural commodity and its truncated
product cycle. Now there is also a truncated star/style cycle; evidence
industry puzzlement over the shortening market life span of stars and
styles (e.g. Coser et al. 1982: 363).
Reordering is also an effect of product differentiation and its promo-
tion. Each corporation publicises its up-and-coming stars and styles by
highlighting their stylistic innovation and proclaiming them as the latest
fashion. In effect, they are attempting to dislodge those presently in a
position of superiority in the cultural order. Competition to the existing
order comes not only from the majors. Product specialisation and market
segmentation means that with increasingly defined and differentiated
tastes, the scale of production needed for local success is sufficiently small
to make specialised, boutique production viable. Independents therefore
have the opportunity to make inroads into the market. They too can
disrupt the order of things: first at a local level, then if the success of their
products spreads, perhaps at a regional or national level - if it gets more
popular, the majors are likely to step in and take them over or crowd them
out of the market.
Perhaps the most decisive impulse behind the constant movement in the
hierarchies of value which order corporate cultural production and
circulation, flows from the publicity complex itself. The very sector which
serves to construct these orders in the first place, plays an powerful role in
their undermining and restructuring. Because publicists of all kinds are
independent firms outside the direct control of the majors, they determine
to a large degree which stars and styles will be publicised. Despite the
attempts of manufacturers to influence creative management, the makers
of public goods may decide to go their own way; in fact, to compete
successfully in their own markets, they must. Since they are reliant on
advertising, they seek to maximise the extent and habit of audience
consumption by using objects with established reputations; but against
this, as cultural commodity producers, they too are bound to create
commodities which show signs of creativity. In previewing the products of
the manufacturing sector they also look for items with relative originality,
featuring them in their creation and marketing. These up-and-coming stars
and styles, by virtue of the publicity they receive, are turned into powerful
competitors for the stars and styles at the top of the cultural hierarchy
governing the field of which they are part. Inevitably, each is undermined.
It is a systemic necessity that once having played a role in establishing an
order of cultural things, the publicist reorders it, and uses the products
intended to stabilise the market to do so.
The result is cycles of fashion. Competition in the cultural marketplace
leads to its perpetual reordering. With competing publicists seeking to
assert new assessments of value, cycles of fashion as a condition of
circulation is an institutionalised outcome of the constituent relations
between manufacturer and publicist, between the systems of production
and circulation which characterises the corporate era of the culture
industry. Unpredictability is reintroduced. The conditions in circulation
reproduce in more developed form the fundamental contradictions of the
art/capital relation.
This has immediate implications for manufacturers. With the constant
rise and fall of stars and styles, they have to be replaced. Each company
must maintain a catalogue selection of fashionable stars and styles and
supplement it with a selection of newcomers. Hence they must constantly
scout the periphery for emerging artists and movements27. The major
27 In fact, it is usually regional offices who do this work, by attending small-time

Conclusion 259
corporations must invest significantly in an infrastructure for alerting itself

to new developments for fear that fashion will take a new direction and
leave them unprepared, yet they have no guarantees that the economic or
cultural value of this investment will ever be realised. Their business
remains a constant game of guesswork which marketing and publicity was
supposed to overcome.
7.4 Conclusion
As seen in this and the previous chapter, the corporations have developed
marketing techniques in an attempt to control the cultural marketplace.
They create stars and styles and make them work like brands in an
attempt to fix taste communities, whence predictable patterns of sales
become more of a possibility. To that extent, the corporate form of
cultural production generates tendencies which act to rationalise the
conditions of circulation of cultural commodities.
The marketing system, however, cannot work without the public goods
producer/publicist. This position in the structure of relations which
constitutes the corporate era of the culture industry, plays a crucial role in
integrating the circuits of production and circulation, especially in creating
cultural orders of things as a pre-requisite of exchange. The publicist-
manufacturer relation, however, introduces further tensions into the
system. Since publicists are an independent unit of capital and have their
own interests, these relations are built upon cooperation and conflict, a
product of secondary or higher-level contradictions (see chapter 2) which
have developed with the industry. The publicist sets up the objective
hierarchy of value which underpins sales across the marketplace, then by
the effects of its actions, proceeds to bring it undone. No sooner do
manufacturers get their current crop of stars and styles in place than the
structure of significance changes underneath them. The normal operations
of the publicity machine undoes the potential rationalities to which its
systemic relations with manufacturers contributes, and because of which,
manufacturers have to cope with a truncated star/style cycle. This endless
succession of stars and styles which characterises the industry, represents
periodic innovation designed to counteract the contradictions of the
cultural commodity. Short term, they might, but over the long term, they
venues, reading and listening to unsolicited typescripts or tapes, or poaching

stars and styles from their competitors.
exacerbate the industry's instability. These tendencies are more complex

expressions in circulation and production of the fundamental art/capital
contradiction which underlies the culture industry. The culture industry is
caught in a web of its own making.
The paradox of fashion constantly puts corporate investments (artists,
back-catalogue) and creative policies (formats) at risk. They must con-
stantly invest in potential talent without any guarantee of return - their
caution in signing new artists is a response to these conditions. They lose
the benefits of longer-term market control which stars and styles might
potentially bring. Instead, consumers are exposed to a series of short-run,
intensive overexposures of different stars who disappear as quickly as they
surfaced. Instead of reigning for long periods, developing their talents and
creating lifetime of work, they are pushed on and off-stage by collection of
forces beyond their control, their careers governed not by the depth and
development of their talents but by the fashions which flow through the
market. Styles remain fashionable for longer - which is partly why the
corporations have pushed towards form-based production - but not by
much.
This situation provides opportunities for freelancers and independents,
both individual artists and companies. Because the market has been
heavily segmented, it takes only stylistic innovation or relative originality
to seem to be different. Even minor talents with one interesting idea can
make it: they too can attract the attention of the majors and see
themselves on the way to stardom. However, once their new-found
reputation is tarnished by over-exploitation, the publicity machine will just
as quickly eliminate them.
The situation also creates opportunities for artists in the project team,
especially leading players and creative management. Where stylistic
innovation over established form rather than originality is the name of the
game, once their name becomes known they can break away from regular
employment to become freelancers or independents where they can, if
they wish, preserve the creative freedoms of the artist - although financial
risk drives some towards an unrelenting commercialism. There is a danger
too that they might become the current fad of the publicity complex and
just as quickly discarded. The appeal of freelance and independent
production creates problems for the corporations who have problems
holding their project teams together. Nonetheless, the corporations can
live with the system, since it provides a constant flow of innovation and
novelty which is the necessary foundation of any cultural commodity,
without paying for the cost of gestation.
Do these conditions rationalise the cultural marketplace? The truth is
that because it is founded on a contradictory mix of capitalist enterprise
Conclusion 261
and art, the culture industry cannot be made entirely predictable. Imma-
nent tensions play back upon themselves; as quickly as their effects are
minimised in one direction, new expressions develop elsewhere. There are
limits to rationalisation of the culture industry, limits to the extent to
which the systems of production and circulation can be shaped into
efficient vehicles of capital accumulation. The structural consequences of
the operations of the publicity machine are just one more case and point.
Chapter 8
A Postscript
I want to finish by turning briefly to issues outside the concerns of this

book but which were touched upon in the first chapter. In so far as it
represents a contribution to the political economy of culture, the findings
of this study seem to suggest certain immediate directions for a sociology
of culture generally, and for those forms of analysis within media/cultural
studies centred upon the reading of texts and/or the ideology problematic.
8.1 A Sociology of Culture
In identifying and filling out the corporate form of cultural production,

this work offers a substantive contribution to the political economy of
culture in two particular areas. As indicated earlier, it says something
about:
l.the conditions of cultural work in the corporate capitalist context;
2.the mediation of cultural production when it is also capitalist commodity
production.
The analytical approach I have taken here would seem to be adaptable to
other forms of cultural production in so far as it takes an institutional
approach to the objective conditions of production and circulation under
which cultural workers are engaged, and focuses upon the specific form of
the structure of relations and its constituent positions in which they are
caught up.
On that basis, other methodologically-similar investigations could be
conducted, for example, of 'pre-corporate' and 'state' forms of cultural
production. In state forms, for example, such as government-funded
ballet, theatre and opera companies, national and regional orchestras, and
national broadcasting systems, the fundamental relation would not be that
of capitalist and artist, but of state and artist - where, depending on its
precise form, the state might resolve into two core historical positions such
264 A Postscript
as patron/sponsor and manager. Because, when compared to the private

sector, institutional goals differ - for example, cost efficiencies and profits
have been much less important (although in Australia, New Zealand and
Britain this maybe changing), and public interest and aesthetic considera-
tions much more so - and although the organisational form is just as
bureaucratised, the relations between managers and the collective artist
are likely to be different from those in the corporate model, especially in
so far as creative management might have more artistic autonomy. I
suspect that the notion of the project team might also be useful in this
context to characterise the form of labour organisation, but probably in
modified form. There may be less institutionalised separation, for exam-
ple, between creative management and executants, especially in 'serious'
forms of production such as classical music and dance, where executants
too may be credited with more artistic authority and hence accorded the
right to participate in the planning process. Equally, I suspect that
formatting is less likely to be evident and in some cases explicitly rejected.
For these reasons, I suspect the state form might sit somewhere between
what I have characterised as craft workshop and the craft-based but
capitalist workshop, but would be further intersected by specifically
bureaucratic dimensions which reshape aspects of its form.
Pre-corporate forms, especially independent commercial production by
small-scale firms such as independent publishers and recording companies,
might also be investigated using the same approach. Here, the core
relation between capitalist and artist is probably much more diffuse and
difficult to classify. In some situations, for example, the owner and
creative management (producer and director) might be unified in the one
position. In others, an artistically passive owner might engage a powerful
producer-director-leading artist to take complete control of production
from creation through to transcription. Generally, I suspect that the
notion of the project team might not be as useful in these cases - or
perhaps it could be qualified as a type, such as a petty capitalist project
team (cf. craft workshop?), depending on what the evidence suggests.
Returning to production within the corporations of culture, it would be
interesting to use my general framework to compare how different
aesthetic formations (Williams 1981: 57-86) intersect with the corporate
form. I have ignored differences between types of cultural production to
build a picture of the general characteristics across all. It is likely, for
example, that cultural forms requiring several types of workers (e.g.
film-making) fit closely with the model I have proposed. Those where the
executant position is filled by a single individual, especially if a star (e.g. a
successful novelist), are less likely to do so. In these circumstances,
positions in the project team would probably be less defined and would
A Sociology of Culture 265
overlap and even perhaps be unified. Another axis which might generate
variations may revolve around 'serious' as opposed to 'popular' forms of
production. In so far as members of a particular milieu mobilise this
aesthetic distinction, those engaged in serious forms such as ballet, opera,
classical music, progressive forms of jazz and rock, and so on, are likely to
give credence to the idea of the artist as historically constituted, more so,
perhaps than those in popular forms. Hence, notions concerning artistic
authority and the right of the artist to contribute to the planning process
are likely to be much stronger: in other words, one might expect to find
differences of degree in the authority relations criss-crossing the project
team, which modify its dynamics in production.
The corporate model constructed here is derived from institutional
analysis which brackets the issue of agency on the part of the artists
involved. In that sense, it represents a cross-sectioning of the specific
historical and structural conditions confronting cultural workers when
they are brought to the creative stage of production. There seems to be a
strong case for using it as a structural basis for conducting historical
studies examining how specific artists confront these conditions, the
external social, psychological and aesthetic conditions of their agency, and
the outcomes generated. Such an approach could be coupled with one
which also focuses on formations; it might be interesting, for example, to
examine how progressive jazz musicians, or journalists on a quality
newspaper or newsmagazine, or novelists belonging to an emerging school
of writing, handle their conditions of work - compared to, say, advertising
copywriters and layout artists in a mainstream agency, or pop/rock session
musicians of no great artistic ambition, or radio announcers on Top 40
radio stations. In other words, my corporate model of the objective
conditions under which they can engage their agency would be usefully
complimented by specific studies which examined how their artistic
agency is realised, and its consequences.
In short, the corporate model provides both a beginning point and a
point of comparison for a greater research emphasis in the sociology of
culture aimed at examining the conditions of cultural production and the
mediation of creativity by the structures in which artists are ensconced.
266 A Postscript
8.2 The Ideology Problematic

and Textual Analysis
This political economy suggests that commodities produced under corpo-

rate conditions necessarily have certain elements of content; signs of
stardom/stylishness are obvious examples. Not that I am suggesting that
these imperatives account for all or even most of the signs deployed
around an object, but they are certainly elements which must be present,
and textual analysis needs to put these on its list of things to look for in
contents - they are fundamental elements of the meanings each object is
intended to construct. They will, of course, vary in historical and situa-
tional ways. Significant signs which might be appropriated in the creation
and marketing processes differ across different markets, and even fairly
established markets are crosscut by emerging significances. These rela-
tions too, might be usefully examined through this approach.
A more important implication is that it raises concerns about what
textual analysts take to be their unit of analysis: it seems to me that there is
a certain incompleteness about reading single texts. Corporate creation
and marketing is geared to creating a whole appearance. The signs made
to surround stars/styles, to function around a gamut of objects ranging
from contents of the object itself to outside aspects such as the body, live
appearances, packaging and publicity objects, and its setting in the
publicity arena. To gain an adequate and comprehensive understanding of
the meanings being constructed, this range of texts needs to be read and
not just a single object, although meanings may certainly be crystalised at
certain key points, such as the covers of recordings.
I am more reluctant to comment more generally on the issue of
ideology, partly because I have grave doubts about the ontology associ-
ated with the term and the functionalist form of theorising it seems to
presume, and partly because of the magnitude of the issue it represents.
There are, however, two points worth making. One of its aspects relates to
the question of ideological effects in production - in that sense, it is part
of the class control problematic discussed by Murdock and Golding. This
analysis looks at the imperatives flowing from capitalist relations operat-
ing in the production of texts, but there is nothing in my analysis which
necessitates the production of particular contents. To some extent this is
where specific analyses focusing on formations could be important.
However, the structure of relations through which these objects are
produced, articulates the structures of art with those of capital and makes
them the primary forms of lived experience in the cultural workplace. To
The Ideology Problematic and Textual Analysis 267
artists, professionalism and commercialism are made to seem like neces-

sary ways of creative working. This is an ideological effect of the corporate
form as it operates in the creative stage of production.
Second, the issue of ideological effects in consumption is complex and
needs much more work. The semiotic turn has produced valuable out-
comes, especially of a methodological kind. Unlike Garnham, I find their
psychoanalytic versions interesting, but would argue that they represent
sets of conditional theorisations awaiting an appropriate form of empirical
investigation. Consumption practices must be investigated empirically,
and not just the consumption of individual works, to see their ideological
effects. Corporate production is geared towards the production of a whole
appearance which ranges across various objects including the contents of
the commodity and engages a particular mode of cultural interaction. Any
ideological effects they generate or conditions they generate in the
formation of consciousness - and in the absence of appropriate empirical
studies these must be taken as conditional - are an effect of all. This
connects to the comments I have made at various points throughout this
work that the sociology of culture needs an adequate theory of consump-
tion, one based on the idea of consumption as agency, as individual and/or
collective appropriation of signs through a particular form of practice in
the construction of a life(style). Theoretical and empirical explication of
the conditions of consumption, along with further work in the political
economy of culture are, to my mind, two of the most urgent tasks
confronting a sociology of culture - becoming increasingly so, as more
and more, cultural relations in modern society are turned into conditions
of capitalist accumulation.
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Index
Abstract labour, 42-43 autonomy, 30, 34, 41, 46-48, 104,

Adorno T., 95 121,128,136,138,144,176
Adorno T. and Horkheimer, M., 3, indeterminacy, 48-50,117
10,144 power (authority), 129
Advertisements, 67 reproduction costs of artistic
as publicity commodities (inter- labour, 49
mediate goods), 68 special case of concrete labour,
Advertising, 71-72 44,116,135
Agree Rinse and Conditioner Artist/capitalist relation
(case study), 67-70 contradictions, 20, 28, 34, 41-50,
making and functioning, 68-74, 59,121
230-234 consequences, 45-50,104
'Advertising Agency, The' (case Australian films (case study), 246
study), 232-234
Advertising rates, 72 Baran P. and Sweezy P., 64, 66
distributive efficiency of Becker H., 40,46
medium, 72, 84 Bellamy (case study), 169-173
Althusser L., 35-36 Benjamin W, 54
'Art', 10, 53,104 Best sellers, 30, 56-58,155-159
and creativity, 39, 48 and stars, 156-157
as originality, 39, 44, 50 Bonney B. and Wilson H., 74, 95,
as work of artists, 108 194
historical constitution, 37-41 Book Creations, Inc. (case study),
residues in culture industry, 149,159
40-41,108,121 Braverman, 100-103,110, 111, 159
Art/capital relation, 34 Bureaucratisation, 147-149
contradictions, 34, 37, 41-45, 104, of creative stage of production,
175,196 153-154,160
foundations of culture industry, of workplace, 147-149
20,28
'Artist', 10, 28,104 Capitalism, 96-103,147
artistic division of labour, 40 indeterminacy of labour, 102
as genius, 32,39-40,44 production and circulation as
historical constitution, 37-41 cycles, 103
Artist in capitalist labour process, production and circulation of
44-45 commodities, 62-63
antithesis of labour power, 42, structural dynamics, 102
114 Capitalist contradictions, 4-5
284 Index
Capitalist workshop, 99-100, circulation, 55-59, 154-159,

132-133,152,153 185-186
Channel One (case study), 171, overproduction of new releases,
238-243, 252 59,76
Circulation of commodities recurrent cycles of production,
rationalisation, 30, 217-219 58
Circulation of cultural commodi- use and exchange value, 53-54
ties, 27-28, 30-31, 229-251 Consumption of commodities, 188,
and publicity complex, 229-234 189
rationalisation of, 185-227, Corporate control
228-267 of creative stage of production,
Clegg S., 18-20,149,167 149-154
Clegg S., and Dunkerley D., 22 Corporate form of capitalist cul-
Commercial capital tural production, 2, 9-12, 27-31,
and marketing, 65 105,123
as productive capital, 64 as embedded rule sets, 26
Commercial sector, 92 creative stage, 109-111,114-141
Commercialism, 21, 30,130,137 division of labour, 107-114
and logic of repetition, 157 imperialisation of cultural pro-
as effect of marketing, 220-226 duction, 106
organisation, 105-106
impact on creative work, 154-159
positions in the structure of rela-
Commodity form, 51-52 tions, 164
contradictions, 52 reproduction stage, 111-114
use and exchange value, 51-52 'Corporations of culture', 10-12, 20,
'Communication', 6, 230 25,106
Concrete labour, 42-43 market dominance, 105
artist as named, 42, 45 Coser L. et al, 25,149,154,163,170,
Contracts, 135-136,137 176
Contracted artists, 29,134-138 Creation, creativity, 40
and logic of commercialism, economic irrationality, 48-50
137-138 rationalisation, 104,123,144-184
as intermediate goods supplier, Creative management, 29,160
136,138 and cultural form, 162
Contradiction, 4, 34, 35-37 and formats, 178-182
primary and secondary, 36 artistic leadership, 128-129
Contradictions of the cultural com- control through format, 173
modity, 30, 50-59, 76, 150-151, division of management labour,
154,185 118
commoditisation erodes use hierarchy within, 118
value, 50 history, 119-120,153,160
consequences in production and in project team, 127
Index 285
in The Daily Courier, 117-118 rationalisation of production and

negotiation of creation, 118-122, circulation, 28,
176 systems of circulation, 61
producers and directors, 114-123 Cultural commodity
professionalisation, 123,181-182 best-sellers and steady sellers,
relations with artists, 120,128 56-58
'soft' form of management, 29, contradictions, 28, 34, 50-59
111,119,121-122 form-based, 207-217
Creative policy, 164 life cycle, 55-58
as corporate strategy, 168 name-based, 198-207
developed by general manage- truncated life cycle, 25,30,35,56,
ment, 165-168 76
operationalisation as format, types of (private, quasi-private,
168-172 quasi-public), 28, 61-62
Creative stage of production, 29, use and exchange value, 51-52,
107-111,114-141 189-191
as capitalist workshop, 111, 152 Cultural form, 29,161-162
bureaucratisation, 117,153-154 and format, 161-162, 167,
corporate control, 149-154 171-172,179-180
creative division of labour, 115 and styles, 210-211
creative management, 110-111, Cultural object
114-123
valued for originality, 28, 53
different from reproduction
stage, 25,107 Cultural marketplace, 207
division of labour (preparation, rationalisation, 185-227, 228-267
performance), 108-110 'Culture', 9
effects in, of marketing, 220-226 Culture
effects in, of publicity complex, institutional analysis, 5-9
255-256 political economy, 2, 3-5, 61, 96
history, 151-153 sociology, 7-9, 95, 262-264
labour organisation, 123-134 Culture industry, 4, 6-7,10,11, 61
production relations, 134-141 as an industry, 61
project team, 29, 123-134, as combination of art and capital,
141-143 13-14
rationalisation, 144-184 division of labour, 28
resistance to technical reconstruc- flows of value, 91-92
tion, 108-109, 111 history, 17,151-154
Cultural commodities, 50, 59, importance of publicity sector,
144-184 93, 251-253
circulation problems, 78-79 institutional analysis, 8
economic irrationality, 48-49 organisation of artistic work,
production and circulation, 27-28 95-96
286 Index
primary valorisation strategy, and cultural form, 161-162,

114 171-172,178-180
sectors, 61 and executants, 182-184
and project team, 180-184
Daily Courier, The (case study), and type-based production, 159
117-118,165-167,168,181 application, 174-175
Denisoff S., 228 as control of creation, 173,
Dessauer J., 56 179-180
'Directing', 174 as icon, 167,179
as application of format, 174-177 as framework of rules for
Directors, 114-123,175,181 creation, 150,176-177
Disco (case study), 212, 214-218 as loosely-connected parameters,
179-180
Edwards R., 13,147-149,153 generating thematic variations,
Elliot P., 123-124,132 163,168-169
Escarpit R., 159,163 limits of power, 176-177
Exchange value, 42, 51-52,193 operationalisation of policy,
constituted through publicity 168-172
commodities, 70, 72 strategic dimensions, 166
Executants, 129-130 Formatting, 21, 29,154,157
and commercialism and profes- as effect of marketing, 220-226
sionalism, 130-131 as system of creative control,
and formats, 182-184 160-161,177-180
in leading and supporting posi- creative stage of production,
tions, 129-130 164-177
stars and professionals, 130-134 structure and history, 159-164
Exhibition capital, 83-84 Forms of life, 19
as advertising medium, 84 art and capital as, 20
Exhibitor (of quasi-private goods), Freelancers, 134,137
81 Frith S., 144, 202, 217, 255
Fashion Gamble and Huff (case study),

cycles, 30, 257-259 221-222
Field work, 15-17 Garnham N., 1-2, 3-5,10, 95,105
FM-RADIO (case study), 116, General management, 165
174-177, 252 and development of creative
Form-based cultural commodities policy, 165-168
and making of styles, 207-217 Giddens A., 14, 23-25, 35-36
Format, 177-180,184 Godelier M., 35-36
and creative management, 173, Grundy Organisation (case study),
180-182 169
Index 287
Hall S., 3 brands (stars, styles), 217-219

Hauser A., 40 culture at service of capital, 186
Historical categories, 21-22 of cultural commodities, 196-219
Historical materialism, 17, 35 packaging and 'identity', 188-191
Hogan, Paul (case study), 236-237 packaging, 77
positioning, 68-69
'Identity', 186-188 promotion and 'significance',
Ideology, 2, 265-267 192-195
Independents
segments, brands and position-
and cycles of fashion, 31, 260-261
ing, 186-188
Labour process, 42-43, 96-100 stratum, 197-198
artist in, 44-45 Marx K., 8, 21, 29, 35, 36, 42, 51-52,
Braverman and monopoly capi- 62-65, 66, 96-100,193
tal, 100-103 Marxist theory, 2, 4, 9, 12-13, 21,
capitalist workshop, 99 42-43
concrete and abstract labour, capitalist accumulation, 62-63
42-43 circulation of commodities, 63-65
manufacture, 98-100 commodities, use and exchange
modern industry, 100 value, 51-52
simple cooperation, 97-98, concrete and abstract labour in
99-100 the labour process, 42-44
Landau J., 196 contradiction, 35-36
Littler C, 13,101-102,147,153 growth of commercial capital,
Lynch, David (case study), 246-247 63-64
labour process, 96-103
Mandel E., 64, 66 production and circulation, 12,
Manufacturer, 77 63
and exhibitor and distributor, productive-unproductive bound-
81-82 ary, 66-67
and publicist, 78-80, 83
Miege B., 95,127
Manufacturing sector, 92
and cycles of fashion, 228, Miliband R., 3,7
258-259 Minogue, Kylie (case study),
and publicity complex, 228, 200-202
251-259 Mode of rationality, 20, 22
Market research, 208-210 and organisational structure,
Marketer 19-20
collective, 197-198 Moran A., 25
institutionalisation in corporate Motown Industries (case study),
structure of relations, 30, 220 222-223
Marketing, 66-74,186-195 Murdock, 1-2, 5-7,10,105
288 Index
Name-based creative policy, Producers, 114-123, 128-129, 169,

157-158 181
Name-based cultural commodities 'Producing'
as best sellers, 157-158 operationalising policy as format,
marketing, 198-207 168-172
name and image, 204 Product life cycle, 55-58
Negotiation of creation, 118-122, Production of cultural commodi-
176 ties, 27-28, 29
indeterminancy, 46
Organisations rationalisation, 28
analysis, 18-27 Professional creatives, 131-132,
as structured selectivity rules, 19 138-141
deconstruction of routine prac- and creative management, 140
tices, 20, 22-23 and formats, 180,183-184
embeddedness of economic and professionalism, 140
rules, 19 as employees, 138
forms of life, 19 Professionalism, 21, 29,130
power and domination, 18,149
Project team, 124-127,153
rules and social action, 24-25
rules and structures of domina- and corporate cultural produc-
tion, 133-134
tion, 18
and formats, 180-184
Packaging, 188-191 and imperatives of capitalist accu-
construction of 'identity' (use mulation, 127
value), 188 authority relations, 128-134
Pay television and radio, 90 division of labour, 126-127
Pichaske D., 224 executants, 129-130
Policy positions and structure of rela-
as matrix of rules, 148,150 tions (producer, director, lead-
power from bureaucratisation, ing and suppporting execu-
148 tant), 20, 21, 29
under an icon, 149 Promotion
Powdermaker H., 25, 32 'allocation of significance', 188
Private goods, 61, 75-80,196 Publicist, 30, 79
and manufacturer/publicist rela- institutionalisation and conse-
tion, 79-80 quences, 251-259
and manufacturer/retailer rela- Publicity, 30, 66-74
tion, 76 and truncated star/style cycle,
circulation, 76-80 229
flows of value, 77 and use value, 70
merchandising, 76-77 as objectification of stars and
publicity, 77-78 styles, 243-248
Index 289
as ordering of cultural things, Quasi-public goods (media), 71,

248-251 85-91
as paid advertising, 230-234 as publicity sector, 237, 242-243
battle over, 253-256 duality of (quasi-public goods/
display and promotion, 70 publicity), 28, 62, 86-87
effect of consumption of quasi- economic and technical form, 88
public goods, 87 history, 88-89
of stars and styles, 229-251 problems of realisation, 86-87
process, 232-234 production, 85-86
publicity effects, 78-79 publicity rents, 86
Publicity capital, 74, 85
as productive capital, 67-68, 74 Reproduction stage of production,
Publicity commodities, 68 111-114
cultural functioning, 68-72 division of labour (duplication,
display and promotion, 70 transcription), 108,112-113
positioning and language, 69 industrialisation, 111-112
surplus value in, 68 Reputation, 130-134
Publicity complex, 87, 229-251 Researcher as 'insider', 14-15
and cycles of fashion, 31, 257-259 Rolling Stones (case study),
and 'free advertising', 78-79, 249-250
234-243 Rules in organisations, 18-20
construction of hierarchy of hermeneutic elucidation, 23, 26
value (significance), 30 rules and power, 19-20
duality as public goods sector,
237, 242-243 'Sales Effort, The', 63-65
publicity effects, 242-243 Saussure F. de, 211
symbiosis with manufacturing Sayer D., 20
sector, 31, 251-259 Sha-Na-Na (case study), 235-236
Publicity sector, 62, 87, 92 'Significance' (exchange value),
as productive capital, 87 192-195
importance in culture industry, and reputation, 194
21,93 battle over allocation (publicity),
Publicity surplus, 73 253-256
flows of value, 73 economy of significance, 193-194
marketing of star, 206-207
Quasi-private goods, 80-85 Significance, hierarchy of, 206
circulation, 81 construction via publicity, 194,
distributors, 81-82 229, 248-251
exhibition capital, 83-84 reordering, 257-259
exhibitors, 81 Signs of authority, 200, 226
flows of value, 83 and target audience, 205
publicist, 83 Signs of conventionality, 213
290 Index
of stardom, 218, 220 and form-based cultural com-

of stylishness, 220, 226 modities, 207-217
Smythe D., 3 as brands, 217-219
Spielberg, Steven (case study), 249 form/style relation, 210-211
Springsteen, Bruce (case study), making, 196-198
202-203 objectification through publicity,
Star-based marketing, 198-207 243-248
Stars, 21, 30, 47,131-132,137 publicising, 229-251
and best-sellers, 137,156-157 relation to stars, 218-219
and cycles of fashion, 257-259 Stylistic markers, 162
and formats, 180,182-183 and variations on a theme, 163,
and name-based cultural com- 216
modities, 198-207 Sub-contracting, 134
as brands, 30, 217-219 Subsumption of labour under capi-
as small capitalists, 138 tal, 45, 98,114
independence in the creative Summer, Donna (case study),
stage, 137, 219 221-222
making, 196-207
marketing and reputation, Technical division of labour, 43
224-226 Textual analysis, 9, 265-267
marketing and appearance, 206 Type-based creative policy, 158-159
objectification through publicity, as steady sellers, 159
243-248 Tucker K., 196
publicising, 229-251 Tudor A., 32
Star Wars (case study), 242-243, 251
Steady sellers, 30, 56-58,158-159 Use value, 51-52, 66, 75
Stock, Aitken, Waterman (case constitution through publicity
study), 197 commodities, 70-72
Streep, Meryl (case study), 244-245
Style-based marketing, 207-217 Video cassettes, 85
Styles, 21, 30, 210-212
and cycles of fashion, 257-259 Williams R., 8, 9,13, 38, 95
Wolff J., 96

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de Gruyter Studies in Organization 35

Ryan: Making Capital from Culture

A new international and interdisciplinary book series from de Gruyter presenting

Making Capital from Culture

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ryan, Bill, 1946-

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data

© Copyright 1991 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30.

To the many individuals in the culture industry who contributed to my

1. Towards a Sociology of Culture: The Corporations of

2 The Contradictions of the Cultural Commodity 35

3 The Production and Circulation of Cultural Commodities:

4 The Corporate Organisation of Cultural Production: The

5 Rationalising the Creative Stage of Production: The

6 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Marketing of

7 Rationalising the Cultural Marketplace: The Publicity

1.1 Structure of Power in Organisations 19

as large scale commercial enterprises in a capitalist economic system, and if these

cal understandings of a particular social formation, by generating histori-

1.1.1 Foundations of a Political Economy of Culture

tion problematic in the sociological study of cultural institutions, Garnham

value to them (1979: 140), thereby introducing problems of realisation.

1.1.2 Foundations of an Institutional Analysis

empirical understandings of the control exerted within the corporations of

industry; in Giddens' (1984: 375) terms, a form of social analysis "which

1.1.3 The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural

example (Williams 1981: 207-212). My use of terms such as 'culture' and

of talent. 'Corporations', therefore, is used in this analysis as an institu-

have equipment divisions linked through ownership to manufacturing

1.1.4 The Organisation of Specifically Cultural Production

in production and their specific relationships between ownership and

1.2 Methodological Considerations

1.2.1 The Researcher as Insider

scious" (1984: 375). As such, it became a useful research tool. It helped me

1.2.2 Field Work and Data Sources

television. Any project of this type collects an enormous range of news

apply wherever there are corporations of culture. Most of what I argue

1.2.3 Analysis: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects

1979, 1983)3, the work of Stewart Clegg in the sociology of organisation

3 It may also be that Marx' method is founded on a transcendental realism, a

Structure Concept Topic Example

Surface _ > Power -> Exchange - ·> Outcome of issues

Power —> Exchange —> Outcomes

Form of _ > Domination _. Economic _ ·>

Source: Clegg (1975: 78)

Figure 1.1 The Structure Of Power In Organisations

articulated through different types of rules which constitute the day-to-day

ledge of particular agents located in production (Clegg and Dunkerley

formatting as a system of control, the necessity of publicity relations and

approach in this study, although across a wider range of empirical

Giddens makes a series of observations on this exchange which provide a

Of the points raised by Giddens, two have methodological implications

outcomes (discourse, objects) of relations between situated actors, contain

creative stage of production: the management stratum (owners and

1.3 The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural

As a contribution to the political economy of culture, this book examines

is an institutional analysis of the structures under which cultural workers

Chapters 4 and 5 consider the production of cultural commodities. They