ABSTRACT

Koh, Yong Jin(Department of Communication Graduate School Seoul National University)

The purpose of this study is to examine the growth of advertising in Korean newspaper industry and the impact of this advertising on the change of newspaper make-up, on the assumption that the press policy for maximizing advertising revenue has a large effect on the change of content and form of newspaper.

The major findings of this study are summarized as follows;

First, in 1960s the Korean press suddenly began to cast its traditional character as a political agency and the result was that the Korean press from this period began to pursue commercialism and attaining the greatest profit became the primary obfect of the press. In the process of this shift, the growth of advertising in newspaper was remarkable, so the dvertising revenue of Korean daily newspaper showed a rapid increase. The frowth of the advertising receipts was so rapid that in the early 1980s it became to pccupy 70% of the gross receipts. Thus it can be said that now the advertising held an important position in the daily newspaper business management.

Second, in the course of the development of newspaper as a advertising vehicle, each paper had to compete with the same kind of papers and the other media for acquiring advetisement. Especially, rapid growth of TV during the 1970s dealt a heavy blow on the acquisition of advertisement of the press.

Moreover, in 1981 the addition to newprint carried by every daily newspaper and the beginning of color TV broadcasting made such competition keen. In addition, since Korean adverisers have chosen newspaper as a advertising vehicle on the basis of circulation, each paper could not help competing with other papers with a view to enlarging audience market. Togeher with such sometition, each paper had to develop special advertisement preferred by advertisers.

Third, according to emprical analysis, the increase of competition for acquiring advertisement has had a large impact on enlargement of the size of head-line and cut, which reveals that sensationalism in newspaper make-up has been augmented since 1960s. On the other side, there has been an enlargement of special advertisement since 1960s. Test shows that such an enlargement of special advertisement has much relation with the imcrease of competition. The enlargement of this kind of advertisement resulted in decreasing the editorial space.

This shift in newpaper make-up reveals how much effort the Korean press has made for the purpose of maximizing circulation and attaining advertisement.