News and advertising travel on each other's backs.
This is true. Advertising did not get popular until the distribution of news become a mainstream thing. I think this concept is often forgotten as well. Advertising is such a every day thing that people often forgot that without news, there would probably be no advertising.
TV news represents the world, in all three uses of the word.
Does it though? I feel like TV news ideally represents the world, but I don't think in modern day news that is true. Either they tend to focus on two, but all three? I haven't watched one that does.
we cannot access it raw
I think it is such an interesting way to describe reality. Never did I think raw would be used to describe reality, but it is so true. Reality is different for every single person due to having different experiences and personalities. There is never going to be a case of unbiased reality or one true reality.
Still, there is no deny-ing that reality entertainment has greatly expanded social representation on television
I feel like this is true, but to an extent. Reality entertainment tends to focus on the opposite ends of the class spectrum: either low low class or the high high class. As the majority of the population is of middle class, it is still a very skewed expansion of social representation.
“ridiculing the underclass” by constructing caricatures of unintelligent, over-sexualized, alcohol and cigarette-addicted “trailer trash” for laughs
This is a direct reflection of what a lot of people's perception of what the lower class looks like. For people who did not live in America and all they know about the 'American lower class' is from these kind of movies, it stays with them. This viewpoint is so detrimental to people of the lower class and their progress in society. There is nothing really funny about this.
my preferred term for these programs is "Reali-TV,"
I have never heard of the term "Reali-TV" before. Most of the time when they mention the shows that the article categorized as "Reali-TV' usually falls under other types of television. I still don't quite understand what separates"reali-tv" from other types of television.
CBS News turned away from foreign news so blindly that I could not even sell them on an interview with a then-little known Islamic activist named Osama bin Laden
The turn of events this was. It is interesting because Osama bin Laden was already on the rise in 1996. He was not yet an 'international' threat yet but he had caught the attention of people of national affairs.
We arc now living in a time of war, and the news media must bestir itself radically out of that decade's bad habits.
We live in a 'time of war' but it has gotten to the point that people are so immune to it all. When school shootings or wars or conflict happens, my peers around me and I are so dismissive of it. "Oh, another one happens" is our first response.
The average evening broadcast now includes fewer than nineteen minutes of news-and the figure keeps dropping as the broadcasts squeeze in more promotions and commer-cials.
This is so true. I feel like I always get more ads than news when watching the 5 o'clock news. I remember when I was younger, I could watch the whole news broadcast and only stop once or twice.
When I first went to work for CBS News in the Rome Bureau in 1970, nobody talked about news making a profit.
It is interesting how different times have changed from the 1970s. Profit seems to drive everything these days and, I feel like news should not be one of them. News is how people become informed of things. If profit is involved, would that be more of advertisement than actual news?
lo some degree, Americans have always lived as though dissociated from the world beyond.
When I think of this sentence, I automatically thought of Vietnam and how uninformed the country was about the war that was happening with American in it. It makes me wonder how much news these days that have been hidden from us. Obviously, social media allows more connection but nevertheless.
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When I watch shows with characters whose races are not my own, I have never thought of them as 'one of me'. I rather respectfully view them as not really one of me but still acknowledge the similarities and difference. It is a really foreign thought to me, but it is one that I realized that I should try to pursue more as I watch shows.
Many of us know that most television is fiction, yet we see television as a key source of information about the world we live in. It is simultaneously real and unreal.
I think this is an interesting thought. With television shows or any source of picture media, I think reliability is one of the things that drives us to like something. Whether that comes in the form of the desire of wanting to be something that the character is or connecting with the character and their circumstances or it has some truths of current day society, people look for ways to relate unconsciously. It is just interesting to me that we find ways of realness in something that we know it is not real.
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I think this is such a important influence and often forgotten influence of television. How children of color are able to view television and know that their lives are normal even though they may be different than other people.
What makes the show unusual is its popularity, its critical acclaim, and the fact that all its leading characters are black.
It is interesting that the set-up of this show sounds extremely similar to the one of Threes' Company. I wonder what is about a family sitcom is so attractive to viewers. Is it the reliability or the funnies?
Wewant it to be aboutnothing more complicated than cash money and human greed, whenat bottom, it’s about a reason to believe.
I think when a lot of people think about criminals and 'outcast of society', they think the reason behind what they are doing is due to money or greed. It often is not. There is a lot of psychological reasoning and reasons that motivates someone to pursue and continue with crimes.
Carroll and Marimow see themselves as performinga public service that cannot reach for the larger ethnographic complexitieswhen they have a victim to champion or a wrong to expose
I was reading the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and, there was a quote about "Two Gun" Crowley talking about how he had a kind heart and did not want to do any harm. How Carroll and Marimow saw themselves them as public service reminded me of this quote. I wonder if most criminals think that they are doing good instead of bad.
Unlike most tradi-tional genres, in which cops are posited as either morally better (or singlebad apples) in relation to the robbers they police, both sites are equallycaught up in the procedures and codes of their work. The characters ofboth are complexly motivated. They are simply situated in different,though significantly adjacent, ethnographic sites.
I think this is an interesting way to set up a television show and makes the protagonist and antagonist line very blurry. These shows makes you empathize with both cops, but also robbers. An empathetic antagonist have always been the most interesting characters in shows for me.
The result is "male friendly" but feminine movies-movies that attract upscale working women without alienating either upscale homemakers or upscale men.
What would be an example of a modern day "male friendly bu feminine movie-movie"? Is it still a thing that exist in today's entertainment industry?
These newer talk shows have dispensed with professional therapists, allowing the audience this role as hosts arrange often melodramatic confrontations between would-be lovers, ex-lovers, adulterous spouses, birth mothers, lost siblings, absentee fathers, and so on.13
I have always wonder why shows like Dr. Phil are popular. Is it because we unconsciously compare ourselves to the people on television and. it make us feel better or we feel like we helped solve their problem by watching?
During radio's hegemony, then, broadcasting for women meant daytime serial dramas and talk shows. When evening fell, broadcasters assumed that the family, with father as its focus, gathered around the radio.
This is such an interesting trend that I don't ever think I thought about. All the shows such as Good Morning America always happen in the morning and other more serious television shows at night. I thought it was more due to the amount of people who are home after 5 that this order of shows exists and didn't know it was gender related.
"feminists" for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He later apologized to gays and lesbians, but not to the feminists, let alone the poor pagans.
Why did he blame feminist for the 9/11 attacks? Is there a particular reason why he decided to include them?
Enlightened sexism
It is a term that I have never heard before yet, it makes so much sense in today's society. I have heard people talk about enlightened racism before. Just because feminism is a huge topic these days doesn't mean that sexism isn't a thing. People are more aware of it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Then the media were behind the curve; now, ironically, they're ahead. Have girls and women made a lot of progress since the 1970s? You bet.
I do agree with parts of the statement and, don't with some parts. I agree with the "girls and women made a lot of progress" part. Women on television has increase so much since the 1970s. Is the media "ahead"? I don't quite think so. There is still a lot misrepresentation/inequality of women on television.
They demanded, in their colossal, intercontinen-tal hit "Wannabe," that boys treat them with respect or take a hike.
The definition of demand is an "insistent and peremptory request, made as if by right." Isn't respect from everyone a right? Why would they need to demand something that is a right?
The psychotherapist resembles the hypnotist, and the heroine resembles the cliche of the "split ego."
Is this a cliche "split ego" or is this just human personality? I feel like I can see myself in both. Sometimes I am a loving person and sometimes I am selfish in where I place my love.
In fact, a figure in the show who is )Jositivcly portrayed as a representative of religion says in a kind of ser-mon that one becomes "happy" when one ceases searching for happiness in oneself and for oneself .
Is this the message for all religions though? I feel like "happy" defined by the dictionary doesn't really match many of religion's messages of what it means to find the peace in one's religion.
. They learn that crime is normal.
Crime shows have become such a common theme throughout television shows. A lot of the most popular television shows and even movies are crime-related. I wonder from a psychological standpoint why people are so attracted to these shows.
The border between reality and the work becomes blurred for consciousness.
Wouldn't you able to argue this for movies are well? Blair Witch Project would be an example. A lot people initially thought the movie was real and, that was not a television show.
He doesn't even have to rouse himself to go to the cinema anymore, and in America whatever costs no money and requires no effort loses all the more value in his eyes
This is definitely a very pessimistic view on the change of medium viewing. For a lot of people, the no money and effort has actually allowed people to watch more than what is in the cinema. I think it has added more value in a right way. People are able to watch more and of more diversity.
Contrary to the funnies*, however~ which do not intend any realism, the discrepancy in television between the more or less naturally rendered voices and the miniaturized figures cannot be ignored.
I feel like this is the case for a lot of Asian television shows. Often times their voices are actually voiced by someone else and the unconscious perception is even more with them. Often times, normal people go on dating shows to "propose" to the contestants. They have the perceptions of them knowing the contestants, even though normal people don't.
The little men and women who are delivered into one's home become playthings for unconscious perception. There is much in this that may give the viewer pleasure: they arc, as it were, property, at his disposal, and he feels superior to them.
The phrase of "unconscious perception" is an interesting phrase to use when it comes to dating shows and reality television. In a lot of ways, it is true. We have an unconscious perception that we understand the people and know the people. In reality, we don't at all.
stereotypical husband relaxing with his shoes off and a beer in his hand, smiling idiotically while seated before a television set.
Something that was originally made for women to be stereotyped upon eventually become something that men was stereotyped upon. It makes me curious what other stereotypes that are present for women or men may be switched in the future.
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It has been almost 70 years since this claim was made. The progress that we have made especially when it comes to stereotypes, sexualization and unrepresentation has not been much.
In Jssuming the role of "consumer educator." the networks went beyondjust teaching housewives how to buy Jdvert isers' products. Much more crucially in this early period,
A lot of how infomercials become such a huge thing can be traced backed to these teaching of ow to buy/consume the television. I always think it is so interesting to see how a product has evolved as society evolved.
It's a good thing electric dishwashers and washing ma-chines were invented. The housewives will need them.
Those two inventions were invented by women as well! I think it is crazy to think that something that was a symbol of the housewives and the different roles of women and men become just a symbol of the kitchen over time.
Rather, its invention should remind us of the concrete sociaL economic and ideological conditions that made this contraption possible.
I wonder what inventions of this time will be viewed through lens. All the inventions that exists in this time periods makes sense to all of us since all these three puzzle pieces fit in. Will the curved television be viewed as strange?
This leads to greater sen-' • 0 • sory (as oppos~d to ra~on~) participation_.
I feel like this would also apply for the radio as well. Since people would be forced to listen to the create a visual image in their head, wouldn't they also have a high sensory participation?
Such purity is not likely to be seen again.
What purity are they referring to? Are they referring to the purity of the development of broadcasting? What would be pure abut that?
By contrast, not a single printing press was put under lock and key, inlc being explicitly protected by a Constitutional Amend-ment-and the very first one at that.
This phrases reminded me a lot of the movie 'The Post'. During that period of time, there were a lot of government scandals and through the television, all the news was controlled by the government. On the other hand, the newspaper was not.Looking back into history, it seems like that pattern often happens. I wonder why there is the difference between the control of these two sources of communication.
General interest" broadcasting, much like universal suffrage, retains inherently democratic potentials, even though the process is often manipu-lated toward anti-democratic ends.
I have always been curious why a lot of channels who broadcast the political race are often anti-democratic. I feel like it would be easier to defend the democratic ends versus the anti-democratic end.
Disney's willingness to display the process of filmmaking suggests that reflexivity in itself is not a radical impulse. More a disciple of Barnum than Brecht, Disney had no intention of distancing his audience from the illu-sion in his movies.
I think this is the most interesting part of Disney's methods of filmmaking/film exposure. I feel like disney is one of the first producers that actually show how movie animations in general are made. Most of the time, that kind of exposure would destroy the whole magical like feel. Instead, I feel like it feeds the curiosity, adding more viewers to the animation viewership scene.
Disney faced bur-densome corporate debts that weighed even more heavily once banks shut off credit to the. studio in 1940. Disney raised funds reluctantly by offering stock to the public, but only government contracts to produce educational cartoons kept the studio active during the war.
It always amazes me how dominate Disney is in the entertainment industry and how a lot of people don't know it. Pixar and Walt Disney Studios dominate the animation movie/television world. Disney Theme Park are one of the most well-known amusement parks in the world. Marvel is also part of Disney. It nearly ended in the 1940s. I can't even imagine how the entertainment industry would be if Disney shut down.
Disney now planned to create an all-encompassmg con-sumer environment that he described as "total merchandisirig~"
Most times when we think of advertising we think of commercials or signs or ads. It didn't connect for me that a lot of the amusement park are huge "total merchandising". There are coffee shops dedicated to just advertise a certain coffee branch such as Starbucks or even Northern Coffee Works. It made me realize how exposed we are to advertisement on a daily basis.
1\vo Kinds of Broadcasting: US Commercialism vs. European Public Service
Even comparing the two countries, a lot of difference between the two broadcasting can be found. It has made me wonder why this difference exists. For example, even Asian broadcasting flow is different than American or how they structure their television like reality or dating type shows.
the showing of cameras, cables and microphones has quite the opposite effect: it underlines the 'reality' of what goes ori, saying 'this is exactly how it hap-pens/happened: we have not added or removed anything'.
The first I saw this occur was in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I have always wondered why television producers would add this kind of 'breaking the fourth wall' effect into a show. We know it is not reality. It is pretty amusing when it happens, but for what purpose?
'television' metaphor,
I am a bit confused on what they mean by television metaphor. A metaphor as they mentioned below is a figure of speech that compares things. What exactly would you comparing in a television metaphor? Is it referring to metaphors that exists in television shows?
As late as the introduction of colour, "colourful" programmes were being devised to persuade people to buy colour sets.
I am a bit confused on why they used the word devised. Was the introduction of color to television really just for commercial gain? Were colorful programmes made for commercial reasons?
This can be interpreted as response to a political need and a political crisis, and it was certainly this.
Vietnam War would be an example of this. The government first communicated to the public about the war through the television and, that is why the public first cheered on the effort. It was also through the television that the public turned away from the effort due to negative news reports.
One economic response was licensing
Licensing has become a huge issue of argument among the Asian television shows. In Korea, there is a show called Produce 101. China used a similar idea for two shows called Idol Producer and All in One. Heated debate ensued due to copyrights and licensing. The biggest question is of the debate surrounding the debate is can you license an idea. They are all survival reality shows about a certain topic, but both sides argue opposite viewpoints of the subject.
In the first-(i) Lo (v)-the technology is in effect accidental
I think it is interesting to think about how no invention that now has changed the world was first started with the thought that it would change the world. I am guessing that the first man who thought of the television would have never thought it would revolutionize how people lived. It makes me wonder what kind of future inventions would have the same or similar effect of television. Would there be even an invention that would match the effect of the tv?
fter two or three minutes, this is succeeded by commercials.
Is this effective method of selling the products in the commercial though? Often times the commercials on a channel are usually the same one cycled in different orders. If someone were to watch the news in America, which is an hour, they would often seen the same commercials one or two times. For a person who watches the news everyday, it would mean they would watch the same commercials once every day. Would that make them more reluctant to buy the product or more curious about it?
If comparisons are made only between the British channels or between the American channels, the distinction between Public Service Television (Type A) and Commercial Television (Type B) is especially clear.
I always knew that American television was always associated with their reality shows and television shows and British television with BBC news. Seeing the statistic though, the stereotypes related to the television doesn't seem to be incorrect. I realized that it correlates to the typical stereotypes of British and American people. British people are perceived as educated and proper, people who watch the news. American people are perceived to be like the people in the reality television shows, wild and free spirited.
Features and Documentaries:
I think it is interesting that documentaries and education are in different subset. I think most of the public thinks that documentaries are all educational. For a long time, I thought all documentaries were educational. Looking at that definition, the 'direct presentation' could be biased or take on a point of view that is not the norm.
In a crucial sense, the whole show becomes a sort of continuous advertisement as each new object and product within these games is described in detail by brand name.
I didn't think about game shows in this way before. I guess this extends to competition shows in general. Even in shows like Shark Tank, it is a competition show, but also an advertisement at the same time, for a product and for the person selling the product as well.
_bllt · in how they structure their appeal to potential consumers.
I think the commercial world especially related to medicine has caused a lot of misconceptions to happen among the general public due to their consumerism type promotion rather than public health kind. Going through nursing school, I realized a lot of people don't know that Tylenol and acetaminophen are actually the same thing. It has gotten to a point that some people think one thing is better than the other just purely based on Tylenol having commercials and the generic kind not having them. A lot this kind of judgement is due to exposure to commercials. I wonder what kinds of effects this may have on people's health or how people make choices.
Other words could be invented, such as raim or sain, that use the same alphabet and are pronounceable, but because these "words" do not enter into relationships with other signs in the system in a meaningful way, they remain at the level of nonsense.
This is not a concept that I have ever thought of before. Thinking about it deeper, it makes sense. Whenever we are presented with a foreign word that we have never seen before, our first instinct is to automatically think it is made-up. I didn't realize that it was because we didn't associate the words with other signs.
Television production texts insist that students must always use the fade to black at the end of every program
I think this is a interesting 'must' in the television production world. I recently watched a video on the comparison of fading to black versus fading to white. The video mentioned that fade to black presents more of a feeling of finality and closure. For a television production, I think it is odd to have a fade to black since most know there is more to come and, there would be no need for that feeling of finality.
The referent of Aquino's image will vary greatly depending on the cultural context-for example from the United States to Japan. The proper name could refer to another interpretant, such as "president of the Philippines?' E
This makes me wonder how people in different countries or of different cultures view movies/television shows with historical/ cultural backgrounds. I thought of Forrest Gump. For example, the fact that he befriends an African American man in a time that racism toward African American was still a major issue characterized Forrest as a person who did not care what race or color a person was and treated all with kindness. For people weren't taught the history of African American Racism to the extent that we (American School system) learned about it, they may not have thought of that personality trait. It makes me curious on how people with cultural and historical differences would characterized people like Forrest Gump or how their image of him would be different than ours. Also how those differences would affect how people felt about certain movies/shows.
Semiotics does not concern itself with the referent of the sign rain, that is, actual water falling from the sky on a particular day at a particular place. The concept of rain is independent of any given occur-rence of the actual event.
When I started to read this article, I was confused on why this specific article was assigned. Rather than television analysis, learning about semiotics felt more like linguistic to me. Reading more into it, I realized that the phrase 'a picture is worth a thousand words' combined with semiotics pertains true with television/film as well. Although words may not be on the screen, the symbols and the objects in a single shot can be have iconic, symbolic and indexical meaning, even it isn't explicit. It also may have metaphorical implication as well. Not quite a observation or question, it is more like an ah-ha moment.
"The TV series repeats a problematic. It there-fore provides no resolution of the problematic at the end of the run of the series. . . . Fundamentally, the series implies the form of the dilemma rather than that of resolution and closure. This perhaps is the central contribution that broadcast TV has made to the long history of narrative forms and narrativised perception of the world?
I do agree with this quote. I think a lot of successful television series shows fall in between the plot being good but it didn't earn much or the plot was stretched way too long but profit for this series was good. For example, Pretty Little Liars started with great plot-line and good character development. As the show stretched to its 7th season, the amount of money earned was a lot, but it costed the plot. I wonder if anyone can think of a show that they think has mastered the balance between profitability and story/storytelling. Personally, I honestly can't name one.
one can practically guaran-tee that each week on the original Star Trek the USS Enterprise
One of the things I have always wondered was how a show that always has a consistent story plot for every episode was able to keep viewership and popularity. As humans, we are more inclined to the new and surprising, yet shows like Star Trek keep running for a long time with a predictable formula.
Although several people have made outstanding contributions, the field does not rest on the work or the authority of any founding figure(s)
The internet and many famous inventions with impacts similar to the one television had all have famous figures that we can name such as Thomas Edison or Robert Kahn. I wonder why television doesn't have that feature to it.
Television is the principal storyteller in contemporary American society
In the context of when this article was published (1992), it is definitely a true statement. Television was the primary avenue that we received media. Despite of this fact, I think it is very interesting she started out with this claim. Doing a bit of research, most people (aka the internet) claim that the internet as 'primary storyteller' of contemporary American society.