Blog #8

One thing that could very well happen in the future is the elimination of commercial breaks. With so many channels now availiable for easy access from a remote, commercia;l breaks very often lose the viewer for possibly the entire show. I forsee commercials being abandoned and advertisements within the shows. Either by puting the comercial on half the screen while the show is still on on the left, or some sort of variation of this. The use of telling the viewer how long the commercial break is, has become a very regular thing on television. But it doesn't work for me. I hear that and I think, "Well I know when it is going to come back on, so I might as well find something else to watch in the meantime." But what will happen is that I will find something else and get hooked on that. I feel that the next step will be non-commercial break shows. I feel that the first network to do this could have a humoungouse boost in ratings, and then the entire network television concept would change. It could be revolutionary, and totally awesome. This would almost guarantee that the consumer would be exposed to the advertisements. Maybe they wo'n be fully concentrated on them, but they are not going to change the channel because then they would miss part of their show. This would be totally cool, and an awesome change to television.

Blog #7

The coolest concept that we have explored so far this year in our class is deffinately the argument of media affecting the culture, or culture affecting media. There are so many arguments for both ways that both have seemed to be true at different times. Media deffinately affects culture. We see the new things on commercials and we go out and buy them. The advertisers appeal to what we value in America and make us go one step further and buy their product. On the same note, media bases a lot of its advertisements off of our core values. We see many things involved in advertisements. Whether it be a a youthful star used to advertise sports, or a rich successful buisness man driving a car. There are so many ways that both media affects culture and culture affects media. At the begginning of the year I was almost convinced that media was only affected by culture. I simply didn't understand the knowledge that was behind the media. Almost everything is carefully planned out to get us, the consumer to buy our product. Sure we do have an impact on what is being shown in media, but also we are basically owned by media. We are told what to buy, we are told how to act, and some times we are even told what to think. This argument is very interesting, its answer is not set in stone, and that is what makes it an interesting topic.

Blog #6

I totally think that product plaecement is important. Just from withching that clip, I remember Snapple. I actually almost wan to go buy some. The idea of advertising is getting information about the product out there. They want the consumer to recognize that it exists, and that it is good. If we are constantly seeing a certain product in a movie or show that we watch, our attitude towards the show could be translated over to our attitude about the product. It is a great idea to use product placement in areas like this. This is especially affective to teenagers. Teenagers get really involved in certain shows. They grow to love the charachters. If they see these characters using a certain product, they may very possibly go out and buy this product for just that reason. Teenagers are stupid, these somewhat subliminal messages can affect them and coerse them into making decisions. Overall, the idea of this kind of product placement is a great idea, it may not always catch the viewer's attention, but it is deffinately worht a try.

Blog 5

I see many ads on a daily basis. Just the other day I saw a billboard for a Chicago women's soccer team. It had a professional athlete on the billboard and said the team's name. Then it gave a number to call for tickets. This ad was appealing to the American core value of success. It showed the succesful star and hoped that people would transfer that to buying tickets. The ad was very simple and I remember it so it did work. It showed the team to be very well known. I don't know if they were, but thats what I got from it. So this was a bandwagon technique. The ad was most likely adressed to girls from the age of 14-18, but it caught my attention.
I also heard a radio commercial for McDonald's filet-o-fish. It was the same as the commercial on TV, but it only had sound. It is cool, because I have seen the TV commercial so many times, the radio commercial was much more effective. I was able to visualize what was happening, they did not have to put a picture in my head through the radio, because it had already been done on TV. Repitition was used in this ad. Filet-o-fish is said a lot, the song gets it stuck in the potential consumer's head. This commercial was funny, and I enjoyed it. It really did make me want to go eat a filet-o-fish. It was most likely directed at males 30-40, because the men in the TV commercial look about that age, and the radio commercial is a part of the same campaign. This is a cool commercial.
Ads like this are very effective, but it would be hard to create. You don't have much time to catch the potential consumer's eye.On a billboard, the driver may only have 5 seconds to look. On a radio commercial, it has to catch the attention of the listener, or they will just change the channel. Contexual ads also have to be quick. They really have to fucus on getting the products name stuck in the person's head in a very short amount of time. I think that most of the examples that I have seen do a good job at doing this. The people who's job it is to catch my eye are good at what they do.

Blog 4

How do the media images & stereotpyes of men & women impact how we view each other professionally (at school, at work, in politics, etc.)?

Media messages are a hugr contribution towards how men and women view eachother. The media displays men as tough strong guys. The media encourages men to put on a "tough guise." This is a front that makes men act like they feel that they should act. Because of this, women look at guys differently. They are shown that tough strong guys get girls, and are successful. The media shows them the kind of man that they should be looking for, and sometimes the guys that are actually being themselves are left out.
The same goes for media's stereotyping of women. The media shows women to be sex objects. The media favors skinnier, pretty girls. It doesn't care about personality. Looks sell products, and the media takes advantage of this. However, this stereotype of women can have a negative influence in life. Men may only think that these skinny pretty girls are the only ones worth any value. It also may provoke violence towards women. In many movies, it shows men abusing women. This may be carried over to the real world. Men may look at women as objects of beauty instead of real people. Only the girls that dress pretty will get the looks from guys because that is what the media encourages.
Overall, the media impacts many parts of our lives. This is just another example of media worping our lives.

Blog 3

A show I like to watch is Sports Center. I watch it every night and that is basically the only show that I have time to watch. Sports Center represents American core values. The one it most represents is achievement and success. It shows highlights of professional atheletes. These atheletes have become successful in their sports. All the athelets show that activity and work has paid off. By keeping busy and focusing on their sports, they have gotten to where they are. Sports Center aslo shows efficiency. It is a one hour show, that talks about all the sports in that day. It allows people to get what they need in a short amount of time. It shows that people can improve themselves and maybe become like these atheletes. They can have progress. It sometimes talks about the salaries that the atheletes are making. This demonstrates material comfort. The atheletes are deffinately living, "The good life." It doesn't really show much individualism. But sometimes it will have a story about an athelete doing something out of the box. There also isn't much about freedom. Sometimes it talks about open trade clauses and sometimes that an athelete will retire. But it is mostly a show to cover sports. Sports Center represents conformity. Many of the people in the sports world are very alike. They are all working hard to win championships. If a single person isn't performing at a high enough level, they will be released. There isn't much humanitarianism. Everyone cares about their team. They are just trying to beat the snot out of the other team. Youthfulness is another very important part of the sports world. Almost all atheletes are young, and the anchors on Sports Center love talking about how young some of the atheletes are. Overall Sports Center is telling the viewers that they should value almost all of the core values. It shows people who have become successful, and tells the viewer why they have become successful. Many of the core values are what leads to becoming successful in America. So it only makes sence that a show that talks about successful people, would include many of the core values in their show.

Blog #2

The video addressed the issue of children being exposed to media. The media realizes that if they influence the youth, they will be affected for the rest of their lives. Children also influence what their parents buy. The media targets boys and girls differently. Boys like to be tough, and girls like to be pretty. It talks about how our country doesn't limit the types of media we put out. At the end of the video, the problems of this kind of advertising is talked about. Our media is training kids to become "little consumers." The media is guiding kids to make unhealthy decisions, and this is affecting their life expectancy.
The media is at no fault in this. They are just trying to make money. The entire concept is wrong, but media will not just stop because of this. They know that their advertising is causing problems. In order to fix this, a restriction would need to be put on the types of ads that are being made. This will probably never happen, but thats the only way to make it stop. If the media benefits from targeting youth, they will continue to do it so they can make more money.

Notecards (Blog #1)

In the notecard interviews I conducted, the different peoples answers varied. The differences were do to knowledge of what media is, and overall use of media. My mom seemed to know a lot about media. She admitted to using it often as a news source. My dad didn't know a lot about media. After I told him what the deffinition was, he told me that he enjoyed the entertainment of TV news. He liked media that was enjoyable rather than boring things. My younger sister was not as reliable on media as my parents. She enjoyed movies and music, but said that if she didn't have media it wouldn't matter. My grandpa was very informed about media, and seemed to rely on it heavily. His favorite media is the newspaper, because he can pick out the stories he wants to learn about. Overall the age groups and different knowledge levels really contributed to the impact that media had on these poeples lives. It was interesting to hear about how media can affect different people in different ways.