Ratings are King: Why Television Pays for Image, Not Academia

Why TV pays for image, not curriculum vitae

Consider the owner of a pub looking for a waitress. No one will write 'young, beautiful, and with good presence' in the advertisement, but the filter works the same way. In television, the mechanism is identical, with one difference: here it is measured in ratings. The issue that has crept into economic discussions lately is not aesthetic; it is market-driven. How much of a newsroom is judged by academic record and how much by audience reach.

Ratings as a Selection Criterion

The television sells eyes. To advertisers or to budgets, but eyes. That product is not chosen by a style committee: it is chosen by management when they review the previous night's data. If moving the camera a few centimeters shifts tenths, it is increased. And if casting moves by the same amount, the casting is adjusted.

From this comes an apparent paradox that is not one. The same group that lectures against objectification in the news bulletin plants legs during prime time. They are two different audiences: the one that consumes the story, and the one that pays for the advertisement. Neither signs off on the style guide.

The True Cost of That Image

The flip side is labor. The industry that rewards image pays starting salaries of 900 euros to those on screen, while much of the decision-making is cooked up and sustained in the offices. One current of analysis reduces it to selection by demand: you hire what the viewer rewards. The opposing response points to precariousness disguised as merit and an aesthetic criterion that is never applied equally to men.

The same reasoning extends beyond the sector. If the physical filter also dominates in hospitality, commerce, and customer service, the question stops being televisual and becomes one of the labor market. The answer lies in the balance sheet, not in the faculty.

The statistical doubt that opens this matter—that 95% which does not fit the general population—has no answer in any code of ethics. It has it in the ratings.