This does certainly ring somewhat true, with more news either focusing on events abroad in relation to the country or on local news. National events end being covered almost like global news, as another state away could basically be another country.

There's a certain irony to this in that fast food chains around the world actually vary their menus in order to serve the local populace more effectively. For instance, Pizza Hut is popular in India, but they serve a wide variety of vegetarian options, as much of the country is vegetarian.

But how do you give everyone a fair chance of participating in dialog in a global public sphere? I think such a system would end up more a tyranny of the majority, which may or may not be better than plutocratic corporate control of discourse.

With populations being what they are in countries, is it even possible to have a true "public sphere" including all voices? It would seem to me more that every sphere has its own members, and we choose or find voices in other spheres that best represent us and support them, be they community leaders, politicians, brands, or anything else that might be engaged in cultural discourse.

This example clip presents a number of cases where the reporter clearly frames the actors and situation with a certain character, from the mountain being a "hell hole" and a "can-do" spirit as special forces arrive. The report conveys that there is a bad, but that our people (the U.S forces) are coming to "fix the problem," even if ultimately the objective of special forces is to eliminate targets, i.e. take lives.

I think this passage is saying that large corporations, which are largely divorced from cultural context, use abstract art because without context to the work, the representative meaning it carries is lost. Hence, the work becomes just "art", to be admired briefly and then forgotten.

I think the difficulty in this though is how a weaker culture can actually exert control over the cultural conversation. What means are there to level the field when faced with such a situation, and how does a culture manage negotiation without conflict?

This perspective seems to become more true when you only ever see one PoC in shows like this, or one of a particular ethnicity. You'll rarely see two PoC of the same ethnicity, particularly a less represented ethnicity like Asian or Hispanic.

I wonder how much of the success of programs that capitalize on the humiliation of minor celebrities is rooted in a desire to see people who were well-off suffer, in a sort of twisted "justice". Nowadays, some people seem to take glee in watching the formerly successful fail.

Pushing divides in different workers is a classic means of breaking unions. The unfortunate truth of a lot of labor markets is that even unions struggle to handle inequality, which is easily exploited by businesses.

What's ironic with these shows (and many reality-TV shows) is that they promise a look into how "real people" would act, but actual people aren't nearly dramatic enough for television. The show makers have to find ways to incentivize drama.

The irony of this is that the U.S. has a long history of interfering in conflicts for its own betterment under the narrative of fighting for ideals. Conflicts during the Cold War like Vietnam, American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the omnipresence of U.S. military bases throughout the world help create the image that the U.S. seeks to serve as the World Police. Of course, it doesn't need to tell its citizens that, unless it benefits them.

There's an old news article about bin Laden, actually, which hails him as a hero for resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 80's. It's interesting to see how the context can change so drastically between the "war" and the "peace" time.

It's ironic seeing this line considering Donald Trump's current position and the tone about which his previous "girlfriends."

War seems great when it's far away from your home, but when the American audience can see it on their televisions, the horrors and brutality become more real. It's no wonder that the military doesn't want the consequences of its actions released to the public.

There's media now that capitalizes on pursuing the enemy of bad journalism and "fake news," though it uses the idea to help push their own agenda most of the time.

The complacency stems from the narrative of peace pushed in the 90s. People often complain about "negativity in the news," and I'm sure journalists at the time wanted to capitalize on any feel-good stories they could push. This was before the internet, of course, when news that makes people righteously angry for clicks has become the norm.

This kind of ethnography is the kind of analysis and commentary you would expect to be done on another culture by hearing about it, rather than the culture you would expect outside your doorstep. I think there's a lot of value in similar analysis of other cities.

I've heard people refer to The Wire as like being "the Shakespeare of American television." It's certainly high praise, and I see it echoed here. It seems to be that element of interconnected behaviors combined with archetypes that are understandable yet entertaining.

It's really telling that people basically responded that they saw the depiction of the Huxtables as black as acceptable as long as they "acted white." In particular, habits and behaviors that are signs of socioeconomic success are coded as "white". Would there be as many positive white reactions if the characters acted more "black"? Likely not, which is the point of this whole reading.

I think this is just people's natural inclination to seek explanations for inexplicable phenomena. If someone sees a contradiction or lacking element in a narrative, they usually start to propose potential solutions. The alliterative is letting a "plot hole" persist in a story.

At the same time, there is a value in depicting idealistic or aspirational images for people, even if to give them an image of them being successful in a society that may not make that easy to accomplish.

This is reminiscent of Jordan Peele's comments on making Us and how he wanted to make a horror film starring a black family that wasn't necessarily a commentary on race. He too is trying to make movies where black people aren't some particular allegory, but people with thoughts, fears, and ambitions.

As an aside comment, it's interesting to see a comedy TV series named after its star not use that name for its characters, in contrast to shows like Seinfeld, Roseanne, or Everybody Loves Raymond.

This is ironic in the context of Joss Whedon's allegations of abuse from his ex-wife. The past few years have shown a shocking number of men who are willing to champion women's rights publicly while committing cruelty and abuse privately. If anything, it's consistent with the thesis of this work that a lot of modern media basically "pretends" to be feminist without actually working on empowerment.

The danger of pleasure and escapism is that those who try to remind you of reality or show you alternate views become antagonistic in your eyes. I'm sure plenty of people have had negative experiences with someone telling them "Actually, the thing you like is bad." There's a conversation to be had about how to critique in a manner that doesn't antagonize.

If anything this rationalization feels more like it's from a male audience to attempt to justify the objectification of women in the work. It's a spin, though it calls lazily back to second-wave feminism's conflict between antipornography and sex positivism.

This seems ironic considering some of the modern feminist perspectives on Thatcher's policy. Or, as Eric Andre put it, "Do you think she [Margaret Thatcher] effectively utilized girl power by funneling money to illegal paramilitary death squads in northern Ireland?"

It's funny that due to the scheduling of soaps, young children being cared for at home by the homebound mother end up watching soap operas, with explicit and complex plots that they likely don't even understand. I wonder what the effects soap operas have on the developing minds of young children.

I wonder if the fascination with crime and murder is due to wanting a sense of dread, and therefore excitement, in life. To the domestic households of early television audiences, the sense that " a murderer is lurking on every corner" makes life seem more thrilling or dangerous, and therefore worth engaging in.

This is interesting in contrast to stage performance, where the performance itself is often considered more authentic or true to form than just a reading of the script. In that case, I suppose plays are intended to be consciously viewed rather than passively watched like television.

So what I'm getting from this is that because television requires no direct engagement or interpretation from its audience, all it serves is to imprint the messages it states on its viewers. I'm not sure if I agree with this in that many (more modern) television shows tend to ask questions of ethics or society rather than state their moral directly. Maybe the idea of asking those questions would be seen as "the will of the controllers", according to Adorno.

I wonder where this myth came from? Maybe it was from people watching television late at night and feeling the ache in their eyes from fatigue.

It's interesting looking at the effects of automation in home labor, versus in the more "traditional" labor. Stronach's comment is to speculate that more automation will lead to more leisure time rather than more work achieved. Honestly, it could be a speculation based on a sexist implication that women would rather watch television than work more with the time they get back from electric appliances.

The perspective of critics, according to Folbre, is particularly ironic in the context of the opening paragraph, which details how to optimize leisure time or engagement in the housewife's work of baking.

I feel like the connection to video games as a "cool" medium is a little disingenuous, seeing as games are more participatory than television. A game will not play itself, so the audience (the player) has to actively consider what actions to take constantly. If anything, it's a more "hot" medium, even more so than radio.

This still rings true with some television and cable networks still delivering weekly thrilling content to keep people coming back, in the face of streaming allowing for instant access to entire shows. Considering that print journalism is fading but still present and radio has become mostly for talk shows and music, it makes me wonder what a future would look like were one of these mediums to finally pass out of use.

This is sort of reminiscent of the discussion of how memories are formed in early childhood. I know I've experienced issues with trying to remember experiences before I knew how to speak. Not having the means to communicate your ideas makes them harder to hold on to, which can be seen here.

I never really thought of "behind the scenes" features being themselves a carefully planned experience with their own narrative, but it makes sense to make a show out of making a show. It's not really documentary at that point, more of a fiction of its own.

This fits well with the previously stated model of marketing to young housewives with children, as Disney's other work is so traditionally family-oriented.

The success of the live action Treasure Island pushing more live action features adds a level of irony to the commercial failure of Disney's animated Treasure Planet adaptation released in 2002, more than 50 years later, which led to a similar decline in animated features.

The idea of "photographed reality" may have existed, but did the people of the time consider how looking at the world through photographs would shape the way people understand the world? Television raised similar questions in how even a live broadcast can only capture so much of a scene at a time. There are always some details left out.

I think this analysis of people's preference for TV over cinema fails to recognize the power of convenience, and savings as a result. Getting to stay home to watch television means not having to transport yourself to the theater and pay for a ticket. Once you own the television and pay for service, the usage is free and right at your fingertips.

I've noticed a recurring trend that developments in technology tend to end up enabling more freedom and mobility. Being able to carry an image of your family or being able to talk to them on the phone means you don't have to be as close.

Williams makes an interesting comment on how technologies also influence the development of other, almost unrelated, technologies. It makes me wonder what innovations in short range wireless signal transmitting resulted from the desire to make television remote controls work well.

This model states that technology comes from research, but doesn't address where research comes from. It's almost like research just is, and that innovation just pushes culture forward through technology like some sort of variation on Aristotle's prime mover.

(I can't highlight all the text here, so I selected what I could.) I know there's a term, "TV pickup", for when there is a large draw on utility resources due to how programming is structured, i.e. people in the UK turning on electric kettles during a commercial break in a program. It's interesting that this interruption is not only regular, but it's predictable to the point that it can be observed in immediate resource consumption.

It's interesting to see in particular the emphasis on education programming for the BBC channels and the public broadcasting channel, compared to the others. It calls back to the idea of public broadcasting being for "the public good."

The kind of criticism referenced here is reminiscent of similar critiques and condemnations of other media, such as rock music, video games, and violent films. It's often less academic criticism and more an attempt to demonize something that is seen as "beneath them", which is usually something popular among the working class.

This is an interesting point with public broadcasting, that despite ostensibly being "public", the programming is still guided by large institutions. It's ironically not dissimilar to the public theater viewing used by Nazi Germany, mentioned previously in this essay. Both cases demonstrate a capacity for leadership to broadcast information (or propaganda) as truth.

You can see this thinking reflected in science fiction of the mid-20th century, which would show technologically advanced civilizations communicating via live video phones that resembled televisions. It's ironic then that so much of modern communication takes the form of email and messaging; now, it is neither live nor visual.