PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Public service announcements (PSAs) are messages sponsored
by nonprofit organizations and run at no cost to the sponsors. The
brief messages in PSAs (see Figure 21.2) are catchy and persuasive. They
are often created by public relations professionals.
PSAs focus on social, health, and safety issues. Smoky Bear, with his
message about fire prevention, and the Crash Dummies, who promote
the use of safety belts, are famous PSA characters.
PSAs provide free publicity, because the media run them as a com-
munity service. Because of limited space or airtime, however, not all
the PSAs distributed to the media will reach the public. Those that do
will be used as the station or publication has time or space available.
Local cable television stations that need to fill time between shows and
on the community calendar are also a market for PSAs.
Print PSAs are sized like standard ads to fit newspaper and magazine
pages. Usually several versions in different shapes and sizes are sent in
one package so that the publication can choose the most convenient
size. They’re often accompanied by a news release or letter from the
sponsor.
PSAs for radio and television run 10 to 60 seconds. Thirty seconds is
the most common length. PSAs are distributed on tape ready for the sta-
tion to air or as written scripts ready to read by the local announcer.
PUBLIC RELATIONS 497
public service
announcement (PSA)
an announcement promoting
a public or nonprofit activity;
run by media at no cost to the
sponsorYour Beat
- Ask a local editor or station manager to save some
of the most and least usable news releases he or
she received this week and give them to your class.
Examine the format of each news release. Decide
which heading format you like best, or combine sev-
eral to create one of your own from the examples.
Using the heading you create, do Items 2 and 4
below. - Read sample media alerts. What kind of leads do
they have? What organizational patterns do they
use? If they use quotations, who are the sources,
and where are the quotations placed in the story?
Using the model you think is best, write a media alert
about an upcoming event at your school.
3. Read a news release that was written after an event.
What information is in the lead? How is the story
organized? If there are quotations, who are the
sources? Would you include more or fewer quota-
tions? What other sources would you quote?
4. Write a news release about an event that happened
recently at your school.
5. Make a list of the media that should receive the
school news release you wrote in Item 4. Compare
your list with your classmates’ lists, and compile a
master list. Would the list be different for different
stories? Why or why not?