I think that this is a really important point that we should still consider closely nowadays. I feel like as consumers of media, we need to be aware of what the actual voices of the channels, shows, or movies we watch are actually saying. Just because we are seeing a show or channel on TV that has a diverse cast or crew, it doesn't mean that it might not have the same "voice" as a show with less diversity. We need to keep judging the content on its own and separate it from its "portrait" because if not, networks will be able to keep giving us the same messages rooted in whiteness that push us to keep the status quo and be content with no change because "the cast was diverse" or "the director was a minority."

I think this is a really interesting thing that we are starting to see again nowadays. The first example that comes to mind is the current move from some politicians to strip away funding from PBS, which would put educational shows that do a public good, such as Sesame Street, in danger.

I think that as we have seen in recent years, it is important that children are able to access educational content apt for their age, and getting rid of PBS or cutting their funding would be something really bad for future generations. It's not just because PBS would go, but because probably other networks who make content with kids in mind might also follow suit and stop existing, which would push kids onto "kids friendly" content in other platforms like YouTube. And the "kids friendly" content in these other apps or options tends to be of really low quality in every way, especially in an educational aspect. These are mostly made to keep kids watching to earn more money, so they would jeopardize the development of kids, which should not happen.

I feel like this reminds me of how streaming works nowadays. It has less regulations than TV or radio because of how new the technology is, and at first, it seemed like that didn't matter at all because it seemed like the big companies were allowing consumers to take even more control into what we watch, how, and when. However, as time has gone on, it is clear that this deregulation has caused a lot of problems for consumers and even people working in the industry. Actors, directors, and production members are not getting residuals from their work despite it being watched by millions, companies are taking shows and movies off their services to save costs (even though their services were supposed to make watching content easier for consumers), and every company has their own service which makes paying to watch everything more expensive than having cable TV.

This is so interesting to read knowing the context of what FOX has become nowadays. I never knew that FOX in its inception seemed to cater to wider audiences than they do now, so learning that they left behind the people of color they originally had an interest in to cater to a white audience was eye-opening. I think that it would be good to study further why FOX thought of catering much more strongly to the young, white, and male audience and why it worked so well.

I find it really interesting how this change that benefitted consumers was one that put such a strain on the industry. To me, this shows that the TV industry was not built on a strong foundation. To me, it sounds crazy to think that TV executives believed that the three biggest stations would be able to hold the attention of 90% of viewers consistently into the future. So, they probably should have prepared in some way to deal with less viewership in the future.

This is one aspect of being able to record and re-watch shows and advertising with such ease was something I hadn't thought about because of how second-nature it is now to be able to stop a show while watching it or to record it and watch it later if you want to analyze something more in-depth. I think that this could probably be a big contributor to the rise of TV analysis in the late 90s and early 2000s, which produced some great work.

I think that these positions on TV are really interesting, and I believe that both are correct in their own way. I think that while if we look at the structure of news programs or TV shows, they often follow practically the exact same format and share the same content, which allows for culture and thought to be standardized. However, I think that since TV has grown so much since the 50s and 60s and we have so many more ways to watch and make TV, as well as more networks to produce it, TV will never truly standardize culture, fully dull critical awareness, or diminish the diversity of voices out there. I think that TV in its current state is still able to promote critical thinking and awareness, even if not all works are completely original and unique.

I think that this is a fair point given that in a forum, everyone would be able to chime in as much and as little as they wanted, and in this case, the Big Three would always be "saying" more than other smaller networks, especially back then when there was even less access to other networks. However, I do think that ignoring this just because of how important the Big Three was would be a disservice. Analyzing TV and its power to shape and influence different areas of life is really important, even if some have a greater influence than others, because it allows us to understand ourselves and our society better.

I think that it is interesting to hear that even back then something like the balance of TV being a source of consensus or provocation was something they considered important to address. I think that nowadays we have many examples of TV being used to cause provocation and we know its negative effects, so maybe if it had all been addressed back then properly, we wouldn't have the same problem nowadays.

I think this is a really interesting angle that scholars studied so early on since nowadays one can't think about TV without the importance of the programming of a channel every day or even the rhythm of a single TV show or news broadcast. This is really important in terms of getting the most amount of money possible by putting a specific show or event in a specific time slot. It might seem second nature now, but before it was a new idea that I'm sure was intriguing to look into further and further.

I find the live audience aspect of this filming process very interesting when put into the context of film history. Although "I Love Lucy" did not introduce live-audience filming, it seems like it was one of the first popular shows to use this filming style. It makes me wonder how the filming style of "I Love Lucy" influenced live-audience talk shows like "The Late Show". It looks to me as if there was a wave of live-audience structured talk shows after the success of "I Love Lucy", pointing to its influence on the hybrid model of live comedy and televised entertainment.

I find it so interesting how the first line of the treatment talks about Ricky Ricardo first and in a relatively "pompous" way, versus Lucy who is just mentioned as a wife despite being the main character of the show. I feel like these two sentences are an encapsulation of how women were treated in that era. Obviously, "I Love Lucy" was still a step forward for women in media since Lucy was such a big part of the show, but it shows how even the people running the show despite all this were not as progressive as one maybe would've liked to know.

I think this is something that probably should be revised by their union now that streaming has come into the mix and regular TV usage is slowly dwindling down. Writers need to be able to still have some reassurance that their job is being properly compensated for all the amount of work that went in to it and how many times it's being watched by an audience and, therefore, making profit for the company.

This is a really interesting story. I do think that the union raised a good point in the sense that it might have been needed to bring up some protections or safeguards to make sure that producers-writers didn't take advantage of their position as both management and employee. Just because Oppenheimer didn't take advantage of this or because most wouldn't either doesn't necessarily mean that it posed a unique situation that could've affected negatively a lot of people.

I think that part of why that unfamiliarity with TV production from many of the makers worked so well is because they weren't as influenced during the filming process by some of the conventions of TV at the time. Of course, they didn't reinvent TV with "I Love Lucy", but they pushed boundaries that people with long careers in TV might not have simply because they were not trained or used to doing things a specific way.

I think another example of this is Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane." He had no experience doing film before filming this movie, but some of the techniques he and his team used, such as its editing and cinematography, were revolutionary for the time. So much so that watching this film, one doesn't necessarily think that it is doing anything special because these techniques are now common or even the standard for modern filmmaking, thanks in big part to this film.

This ended up being so true because even though radio is slowly being less used by people thanks to different factors like people preferring to listen to podcasts or to music in streaming services instead of the radio, radio still has a massive reach and has immense usefulness that the internet nor TV can match, which has kept it from being obsolete. On top of that, radio has sort of evolved and not really disappeared if we think about it. Radio can now be heard through apps that stream the show rather than through radio frequencies, podcasts are practically an extension of radio, and even Spotify is trying to create a similar experience to that of listening to the radio through their AI DJ which talks to you and controls the music you hear.

This is really interesting. This makes it sound as if the beginnings of radio were similar to that of newspapers or magazines (except that a kid wouldn't throw a radio at your doorstep from a bike): you had to buy a receiving set for a specific local station at a store to be able to get the information, instead of just buying any receiving set to listen to any information.

I think that this is an interesting dilemma. Obviously, we still have this issue of standards and taste in a way with how it seems like everyone nowadays has a podcast, and unfortunately, many of these are just not a good product since the people producing them aren't really saying anything of substance.

However, it is important that standards and taste don't become an excuse to stop the communication of those who might not be as well-versed on radio or other means of communication as journalists are, for example, but that have important stories and things to share (e.g. underrepresented communities).

It is interesting that Hoover predicted this for radio and that nowadays it didn't turn out that way. He did predict the route TV would eventually take though.

Nowadays, it seems like radio is more dominated on a local level, even if maybe the different corporations that own the biggest radio stations are only a selected few. Meanwhile, TV is full of channels that broadcast the exact same thing nationally with some small differences in the program for local markets.

At first, this seemed like a crazy thing to think about. A radio station dedicated to a retailer only seemed so out of the norm, but after some thought, there's not much difference between a retailer promoting themselves and their products through a radio show than how they do it nowadays through social media accounts and posts. The technology is different, but the idea is the same.

I just wanted to add that even in other countries, it sometimes is hard to consume media, mainly films, besides the ones exported by the U.S. That's how strong the hold that the U.S. has on media is.

I'm from Mexico, and it is often really hard to watch Mexican films in commercial cinemas because they will often be saturated with American movies. As a very recent example, the movie that Mexico sent as a nominee to represent the country in the Best International Film category, "Sujo," was not advertised at all nor was it offered in the big cinema chains. So, this really good film was limited to more "artsy" cinemas that aren't as accessible to the regular Mexican person.

I think that this is a really important point to bring up when discussing if the sitcoms were accurate representations of the times because, while nowadays it might be more common for sitcoms and more family oriented shows to tackle some of the struggles of our times, back in the 50s it didn't happen.

And although these issues were erased from TV, their absence, in combination with the historical facts that we know from other sources, can tell us a lot about why they were omitted. For example, the U.S. was not only trying to portray those perfect families to its own country but also to other countries to try to win the ideological war over the Soviet Union by making other countries fall in love with the "American Dream." So, showing those issues, even a little bit, would have gone against the bigger goals of the country and the show.

This is a really interesting question to pose because based on the data from what was popular on TV, as well as the demographical data of the people in the 50s, one could argue that our perception of the times are definitely warped by the sitcoms from the times.

I think that sitcoms probably also influenced the perception of people in the 50s of themselves, which meant that when they told stories of their times, they were reinforcing the idea of the sitcoms, which didn't paint an accurate picture. This is because, although the families on TV were not an accurate representation of what families looked like in real life, people might have still thought of their families as being the exact same as the ones in the sitcoms from the times. This often happens because people want to feel accepted and being part of a larger group, so they become "blind" to the differences they actually have with the group they want to belong to.

This phrase also brings generative AI to mind because although it can be used for good sometimes, it also is abused sometimes by people, often students. So, even though it is good that they know how to use AI since it seems like it'll be here to stay, that skill might be really counterproductive since these people are losing the skills to do research on their own, fact check, come up with ideas, and even write.

This part of the sentence makes me think of generative AI and how with the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, it seemed like it was going to be the next big improvement that launches humanity forward. However, as time has gone on and people have used the technology more and more, it looks like it might lead us more towards ruin than the progress that was promised.

For example, regulations have really lagged behind the different generative AI models that pop up every day, especially in terms of AI that generates images, audio, or video. These three types of gen AI have great capabilities to cause harm in the wrong hands because soon we might not be able to tell at all the difference between real and fake videos, audios, or photos. And even if one can tell that they are fake, it still can cause harm, just like in the cases where high school kids have been creating fake nude photos of their female classmates, which is why regulations need to catch up.

On top of that, generative AI is also taking a big toll on the environment due to all the electricity and water use and the electronic waste it creates. So, it can also bring ruin environmentally, which is something that hadn't been considered much back in 2022 when it first got very popular.

I think this is something that we can take away from this class since by learning the history of electronic media, we will be able to better understand our jobs and careers, which might help us know how to adapt to new changes that might come with advancements in technology or with the way that people engage with media.

I think a skill a student of history should develop that isn't mentioned here, but relates to this topic, is the ability to recognize and overcome one's biases regarding a situation. We all have biases, but I think that it is specially important for historians to be able to recognize theirs to avoid their biases seep into their retelling of history since it can negatively influence how a community or event is seen by a population.

I think this is very relevant nowadays since a lot of the societal changes in recent years after the COVID pandemic have mimicked a lot those that occurred after the most recent big pandemic (1918-1920 flu pandemic), more specifically the rise and acceptance of more far-right extremist politics around the world. So, by studying the past and that last big pandemic, we can make efforts to avoid some of the mistakes in those times that led to fascist governments that then led to WWI.

I think this part is really important, especially the aspect. of problems and values that a country might have. For example, many countries in the global south have a lot of problems that can be explained when looking at history (being colonies for decades/centuries, destabilizing wars in the region thanks to other countries, etc.). And in regards to values, the same analysis can be done by looking at history. For example, Americans are often known for their individualistic nature, which can be traced back to the early settlers in America who unconsciously created this culture by creating a relation between freedom and not having to rely on others since these settlers went where they had more opportunities, which meant they had a better chance at not needing others to sustain themselves.

I think this relates a lot to how history can help us understand change and how society was shaped to be this way. I think that a lot of people usually are first introduced to big historical topics through the history of their family rather than through school. So, besides this being the most obvious use of history, it is also sometimes one of the first ones that people experience, which is why it is so important.