Mass Media Final
Describe the four elements of the hacker ethic and how they apply to the contemporary Internet.
Understanding the hacker ethic is critical to understanding the development of the Internet because its values shaped so many of the new medium's developers. Levy lists four key principles of the hacker ethic:74 "Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total." Hackers want to obtain programs, data, and computers, and they do not respect rules that keep them from these tools. They believe that they should be able to directly control any computer system they can find; what's more, they believe that they can probably do a better job of running the system than the people who own it. "All information wants to be free." This translates into a disregard for copyright law. Hackers believe that all information should be available to anyone who wants to make use of it. This was at the heart of file-sharing pioneer Napster and user-video site YouTube. If you have music, photographs, artwork, writings, or programs on your hard drive, why shouldn't you be able to share them? And if those same things exist on other computers, why shouldn't you be able to access them? This idea of universally shared information is at the heart of Berners-Lee's design of the World Wide Web. The problem, as the Napster and YouTube cases show, remains how the creators of these works are going to be paid for the digital copies that users share. Ironically, Levy got a taste of the "information wants to be free" movement in 2001, when he found the entire text of his book Hackers posted on a Web site at Stanford University. "Mistrust authority—promote decentralization." The hacker culture distrusts centralized bureaucratic authority. Bureaucracies hide information and make rules controlling who can have access to it. So the best way to keep information free is to keep it out in the open. You should be judged by your skills and not by "bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position." On the Internet, traditional measures of individuals, such as age, education, sex, or income, matter less than they do under most other conditions because people are able to create identities for themselves that may or may not correspond with their actual identities. In essence, this is an extension of the multiple roles and identities people have always had. You can simultaneously be a teacher, a parent, a spouse, and a child. On the Internet, users can further extend their identities, changing their sex, race, and background. On a listserv or newsgroup, people can construct entirely new identities for themselves. When all anyone knows about you is your e-mail address, you are free to be whoever you want to be. The application of the values of the hacker ethic to the Internet in general provides an example of Secret 3—Everything from the margin moves to the center.
Describe how different recording formats have given rise to concerns about the purchasing of music.
A wide range of recording formats has been used over the years, including the 78-rpm disc, the 45-rpm single, the LP, the CD, and the MP3 computer file. Each has given rise to concerns about changes in the purchasing and use of music.
How are stores able to target advertising to consumers without the customer deliberately giving the store any information?
According to Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Target tracks every consumer who comes to its stores with a unique number tied to his or her credit or debit card. Using this number, Target knows what pattern of products every consumer buys. This information is then paired with data about the consumer that is purchased by the store, says Target statistician Andrew Pole. Before long, the store knows a lot of information about a customer, including preferred purchases, address, income, race, and even estimated earnings.
Describe the four major groups in the advertising business and the key characteristics of each.
Advertising is a multifaceted business that involves four major groups. First, there's the client, the person or company that has a product or an idea to promote. Then there's the advertising agency or department that researches the market, creates the advertising, and places it in the media. Next, there's the medium, be it television, the Internet, a newspaper, a magazine, or some other medium, that carries the advertisement. Finally, there's the audience, the people who see or hear the advertisement, whom the client hopes to influence.21 The first component of advertising is the client, the company with something to sell. The client may want to increase awareness of a new product, encourage people to use an existing product more often, build a positive image of a product, convince users of competitors' products to switch brands, promote a benefit of a product, or demonstrate some new use for a product. The 3M Company increased sales of its Scotch brand cellophane tape by suggesting other uses for the product beyond repairing torn paper. Arm & Hammer baking soda's original purpose was to make cakes rise, but the company also increased sales by promoting the product as a cleaner and deodorizer. One of Arm & Hammer's best ads tells consumers to buy a box of baking soda and pour it down the drain to clean and deodorize the sink. In essence, the company was suggesting that people buy its product to throw it away! Arm & Hammer's research showed that people used baking soda to freshen laundry and to brush their teeth, so the company introduced detergent and toothpaste enhanced with baking soda.22 Begun in 1993 on behalf of the California Milk Processor Board, the "Got Milk?" advertising campaign succeeded at boosting milk sales and has become one of America's longest-running and most celebrated ad series. The "Got Milk" ads ran both in California and nationally until 2014, when the national milk promotion board decided to focus on milk's protein content in its advertising. But the campaign does still live on in California more than twenty years after it started The advertising profession originated in the 1840s when agents started selling ad space to clients in the new advertising-supported newspapers. At first, the advertising agents worked directly for the newspapers, but before long, they became more like brokers dealing in advertising space for multiple publications. George Rowell, the leading advertising agent of the 1860s and 1870s, was the first agent to buy large amounts of newspaper advertising space wholesale and sell it to his customers as they needed it. Rowell was also the first to publish a directory of newspaper circulation numbers, thus providing clients with an independent source of this vital information. Before Rowell's innovation, newspapers could, and did, lie about the size of their circulation. Nevertheless, newspapers remain an advertising medium, carrying a majority of local advertising and a significant amount of national advertising. They allow advertisers to present detailed information (such as grocery prices) that would be confusing on radio or television, and they give audience members plenty of time to interpret the information. Newspaper ads make it easy to include coupons, Web addresses, and 800 numbers that readers can clip and save. They also allow advertisers to target not only specific cities, but also specific areas of the city (this is known as zoned coverage). Cities typically have only one or two newspapers, so advertisers can cover the entire market with a single purchase. Finally, newspapers allow advertisers to buy space at the last minute.
How did the coming of television change the nature of the movies? How has the rise of online media transformed this process?
When Long Tail author Chris Anderson tries to explain the central concepts of his book, he often points to the online DVD rental store Netflix as a prime example. In 2012, Netflix carried one hundred thousand different DVD and Blu-ray titles. It also had more than twelve thousand titles available for immediate viewing over either a computer or a streaming video box that connects the subscriber's television set to the Internet. Netflix has, of course, Sofia Coppola's 2006 version of Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst. But it also has the 1938 version of the film starring Norma Shearer in the title role, with John Barrymore as King Louis XV and Tyrone Power as Marie Antoinette's lover. For those who really want to delve deeply into the topic, Netflix also offers at least three documentaries on the ill-fated queen: Marie Antoinette; Marie Antoinette: The Scapegoat Queen; and Marie Antoinette: Queen of Versailles. Anderson found that audiences aren't just interested in a few big hits; they are interested in a deep pool of choices. The problem has always been distribution. Movie theaters are great for showing a limited number of movies to a lot of people. That's why theater owners love the summer blockbusters. But when you can draw from audiences nationwide, even movies with a limited appeal can be successful. As you can imagine, the tiny and dedicated cadre of Marie Antoinette fans is spread out all over the country. The popularity of Netflix has led to more competition in the streaming market, with Amazon Prime Video and Hulu being the digital natives, and Showtime and HBO jumping in to offering streaming services along with their cable products. (We'll talk more about these streaming services in Chapter 9 on television.) VCRs started becoming an important source of movies in the 1980s, and by 1994, over 85 percent of all U.S. homes had one. However, by about 2005, DVDs and high-definition Blu-ray discs had largely displaced the VCR. As of 2006, nearly 81 percent of all households had a DVD player, whereas 79 percent had VCRs. This was a big change from 1999, when 89 percent of households had VCRs, and fewer than 7 percent had DVD players.51 DVDs provide a higher-quality image and dramatically better sound than videocassettes, and they have popularized the letterbox (or wide-screen) format. Pixar's Incredibles brought in $261 million in theaters, making it one of the most successful films of 2004. When it was released on DVD, it made an additional $368 million.52 By 2012, more people were streaming movies over the Internet using services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon than were playing DVDs or other physical media. Of course, consumers were still paying much more for the movies on physical media than for streaming. A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP projects that revenue for downloads and streaming will pass that for physical discs by 2016, with the purchase and rental of DVDs bringing in $7.8 billion and streaming and downloads earning $9.5 billion.53 In addition to making more money for the studios, home video opened up a world of older movies and foreign movies to today's audiences. Previously, movie lovers could see a film only when it first came out or was rereleased, when it was shown in 16mm format on a college campus or in a revival house, or when it finally appeared on late-night television. With the wide range of home video options now available, people can watch movies again and again, whenever they want.
Explain the five components of the ROPES public relations process.
Although there are a number of different ways of looking at the PR process, we are going to look at it using a model known as ROPES: research, objectives, programming, evaluation, and stewardship.32 Research—Researching the opportunities, problems, or issues the organization is facing. Objectives—Setting specific and measurable objectives for the PR campaign. Programming—Planning and implementing the activities necessary to carry out the objectives. Evaluation—Testing the messages and techniques before using them, monitoring the programming while it's being delivered, and measuring the results of the programming. Stewardship—Maintaining the relationships created through the previous steps. Central to the ROPES process is the notion that public relations is concerned primarily with creating, developing, and nurturing relationships between an organization and its key publics.33 To see how this process is carried out, let's look at how Breathe Right used public relations both to build awareness of its nasal strips and to promote alternative uses of the product. Research. CNS, the original parent company of Breathe Right, was looking to broaden the market for its nasal strips, and through research it found that customers were using the product in new ways. Breathe Right strips were initially designed to hold people's nostrils open while they slept to help prevent snoring. But athletes, especially professional football players, soon began using the nasal strips to get more air into their lungs during competitions. At the 1995 Super Bowl, players wearing Breathe Right strips scored eight of the game's ten touchdowns.34 CNS wanted to capitalize on this positive publicity, so the company commissioned research to measure various publics' initial perceptions of its product. Such research can include the following elements: Public opinion research—Finding out how the public views the company or product, its actions, and its image. Content analysis—Analyzing what is being written or said about the company in the media. Focus groups—Bringing together members of a particular public to talk about how they perceive an organization, product, or issue.35 Through consumer research, Breathe Right's manufacturer found that the visibility of the strips during the 1995 Super Bowl had helped build public awareness of the product. According to marketing manager Kirk Hodgdon, "After the game, three out of every four adults had heard of Breathe Right, compared to one in four a year earlier."36 Objectives. A successful PR campaign depends on a clear definition of what the client wants to accomplish. This depends on having clearly measurable objectives for the campaign. In the case of Breathe Right, CNS wanted to build awareness of the product and identify it with athletic performance. Among the objectives CNS set was raising the percentage of the target public that was aware of the Breathe Right brand and raising the percentage of the audience that knew athletes used the strips to improve athletic performance. Programming. The company decided to build on its campaign of working with NFL trainers. In 1996, it advertised during the Super Bowl, gave strips to everyone attending the game, and publicized its advertising and promotion. CNS combined advertising, promotion, and media relations to build awareness of its product. The promotion involved building relationships directly with football fans by distributing the Breathe Right strips at the game. The company also advertised during the game to highlight the product so that fans would be likely to notice the players wearing the strips.37 The media relations campaign emphasized the players who wore the strips and publicized the company's status as one of the smallest Super Bowl advertisers. Image 222 Breathe Right nasal strips have long depended on unpaid endorsements from professional athletes to promote their product. But they got an unexpected boost from racehorse California Chrome when his owner refused to enter him in one of the Triple Crown races if he couldn't have the horse wear nasal strips to help him breathe. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images Evaluation. Evaluation of the campaign happened at every stage of the process. Campaign materials were tested during development, while they were being delivered, and at the conclusion of the campaign. This involved seeing how well the campaign met the objectives that had been set earlier in the campaign. Breathe Right's evaluation showed that CNS had gained a great deal from its 1996 Super Bowl campaign. Not only did it reap the advertising benefit of reaching the big game's massive audience, but it also generated a significant amount of good publicity for the company. Breathe Right received coverage on the front page of USA Today's money section, which mentioned it as one of the smallest companies to advertise during the Super Bowl.38 The product also received unpaid endorsements from athletes who said that the product improved their performance by giving them more oxygen, a claim the company itself did not make. Stewardship. Breathe Right's communication campaign based on working with professional football players and football fans has continued. In 2001, Breathe Right created limited edition colored nasal strips honoring Super Bowl competitors the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys.39 And, in 2010, Breathe Right had a partnership with the New York Giants. Breathe Right produced Giants-themed nasal strips and had an interactive Web page where fans could post their "game face" wearing the strip.40 (By this point, Breathe Right's parent company CNS had been acquired by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.) As a side note, in 2014, nasal strips for horses, produced by a former subsidiary of CNS, brought the perceived performance benefits of nasal strips back to national attention when a controversy emerged over whether star horse California Chrome would be allowed to wear the strips in the Belmont Stakes race in his attempt to be only the twelfth horse ever to win the Triple Crown in thoroughbred racing. And along with the news about California Chrome came the inevitable mention that many NFL athletes have found success using the Breathe Right strips.41
Discuss the problem of broadcast decency, using examples.
In 2004 justin timberlake exposed janet jacksons breast for 9 16th of a second. The FCC received over 500 complaints. FCC rules say that broadcast radio and tv cant air indecent material between 6am and 10pm when children are most likely to be awake
If you were asked to defend video games as a medium of mass communication, how would you do that?
In my own media literacy class, I used to raise the question as to whether video games and video game consoles count as mass communication and whether they are a new mass medium. I think the answer is a definite yes, for a number of reasons54: Video game consoles are media content delivery devices. The PlayStation 2 was a DVD player as well as a game console, and the PlayStation 3 was among the early Blu-ray players. Microsoft's Xbox One is now pitching itself as a general-purpose media entertainment hub that can be used to stream television programs and movies, play video games, and stream video game play back onto the Internet.55 Video games, like television shows or movies, have stars. They have mascots. The most prominent of these is Super Mario, who has been a force in the gaming world for Nintendo since 1981, but the list also includes characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega, Pokémon's Pikachu, and Halo's Master Chief for the Microsoft Xbox. Video games are a new venue for advertising. Just like newspapers, magazines, and Web sites are funded by ad revenue, many game publishers are turning to the advertising world to help manage costs. Companies such as IGA Worldwide are devoted entirely to securing deals for companies to advertise in games, which have a near-perfect saturation in the eighteen- to thirty-four age market. When Barack Obama was making his first run for the presidency back in 2008, he advertised in video games—the first presidential candidate ever to do so.56 Video games, now more than ever, are the site of entire communities. One needs only to look to online-specific games, such as World of Warcraft, or to online versions of console games, such as the Halo or Call of Duty series. The concept of online communities has become commonplace today. Now, instead of gathering around the water cooler to discuss the latest news or entertainment item, people are using Bluetooth headsets to talk to friends and family while playing capture the flag or fighting bosses to help their character rise to the next level.57 Video games can be more profitable than the movies. In the summer of 2008, the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released at about the same time as the hit movie Iron Man. In its first two weeks of release, Iron Man grossed approximately $200 million, whereas Grand Theft Auto IV grossed $500 million over the same amount of time.58 In 2015, the movie industry had a record year when it came to total box office dollars, hitting more than $11 billion for the North American market. This was a year with really big movies being released, including Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. But video game software sales were $16.5 billion for the U.S. market. And that's not including system sales—just the games themselves. Total video game revenue topped $23 billion. (As Fortune magazine notes, while sales of games systems are important, software sales are considered the best measure of success in the gaming industry.)59 Video games are protected by the First Amendment. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011 determined that states cannot pass laws that restrict the sale of video games to minors. (This does not, however, limit the right of the industry to set standards for who can buy which games.) The case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association struck down a California law that prohibited the sale of video games to minors that depict "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."60 The opinion from conservative justice Antonin Scalia states that while these games may be disgusting, "disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression."
Is radio still a distinct, separate medium, or is it just part of a larger world of audio programming? Why or why not?
No, radio is no longer a distinct, separate medium. Radio is now a part of the larger world of audio program. This is because radio is no longer has popular has it used to be. People no longer listen to the radio daily for their news or entertainment. Televisions, movies, and newspapers have replaced those aspects of radio usage. More importantly, most people listen to personal music devices rather than listening to the radio.
What had to happen socially in the 19th century in order for advertising to become an important part of our culture?
Satisfying Needs Through Shopping. Along with industrialization, the nineteenth century was characterized by modernization, the social process by which people go from being born with an identity and a role in life to being able to decide who they want to be, where they want to live, what they want to do, and how they want to present themselves to the world. As more products became widely available, thanks to industrialization, advertising was used to promote the products and what they stood for. People could now adopt a certain style and purchase the items necessary to portray that style to others—the clothes they wore, the food they served, the soap they washed with, and so forth. Each of these goods was associated with an image that was supposed to rub off on its user. How did people learn about these meanings? Through the advertising that gave meaning to the products.
Define what "advertising" are using examples of six different types of advertisements.
Business-to-business (trade) ads promote products directly to other businesses rather than to the consumer market. Business-to-business advertising is a critical part of the advertising industry. Consider the fact that General Electric earns 80 percent of its revenue from nonconsumer business.20 Business customers can be reached through trade magazines, such as Electronic Engineering Times; business-oriented cable news channels, such as CNBC; or local weekly business newspapers. Some of the most iconic advertising in the United States comes not from business, but from long series of public service ads created by the Advertising Council. The Ad Council got its start as the War Advertising Council back in 1942 with such memorable messages as the Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It" campaign, which was designed to promote women working in factories producing goods for the war effort. The best-known creation of the Ad Council is likely Smokey Bear, who has stayed on message for more than sixty-five years, telling members of the public that only they can prevent forest fires. He is the second-most-recognized image in the United States, falling just behind Santa Claus. What is more, generations of children have taken great joy in delivering his basic message of fire prevention to their parents and other adults. Other prominent Ad Council campaigns include the 1971 "Crying Indian" antipollution campaign, a 2011 campaign encouraging fathers to "Take time to be a dad today," and McGruff the Crime Dog taking "a bite out of crime Advocacy ads are intended to promote a particular point of view rather than a product. In 2014, for example, food and biotechnology companies spent more than $25 million on ads in successful efforts to defeat state laws in Colorado and Oregon that would require the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).17 U.S. unions and businesses have fought foreign competition with advocacy ads. Companies express their concerns directly to the public through advocacy ads, bypassing traditional news channels. Such advertising has a long history in the United States, dating back to 1908, when AT&T ran a campaign arguing that it was natural that the phone company should be a monopoly. National advertising is designed to build demand for a nationally available product or service, but it does not send consumers out to a particular store to buy a can of Pepsi, a DVD, or a bag of cat food. National advertising assumes that the consumer knows where to buy the product or service or can be told in a local ad where and how to do so. The national advertiser is also more patient and can wait for consumers to take action. Thus, an indirect-action message is designed to build the image of and demand for a product. Perhaps a consumer won't buy a new washing machine this week, but he will eventually, and that's when he should buy a Maytag. Local advertising attempts to induce people to go to a local store or business to buy a product or service, whether it be a new Toyota truck, a gallon of milk, or a travel agent's services. These ads announce the product or service and its price and tell consumers where they can buy it. The local ad is also looking for immediate, direct action. Thus, a direct-action message is designed to get consumers to purchase a product or engage in a behavior. For example: "Hurry down, these prices won't last, buy today!"
Describe the three major functions of public relations.
Edward Bernays described three major functions of public relations:28 Informing—Sending out information to a variety of publics, ranging from the people who work in a company's office to its customers on the other side of the world. An example of information would be a press release announcing a new product line to stores that sell the company's products. Persuading—Attempting to induce members of various publics to change their attitudes or actions toward an idea, product, or institution. An example of persuasion would be a lobbying campaign to persuade the government to remove a tax on the company's product. Integrating—Attempting to bring publics and institutions together with a shared set of goals, actions, and attitudes. An example of an integrative event would be a charity auction designed to raise funds for a park in the city where the company has its offices as the company works to become a vital part of the community.
Identify three key reasons why viewers watch television.
For entertainment, to gain information, and for social reasons
How are social media and mobile media connected to each other? How are social media changed when we use them with mobile devices?
If you've been paying attention here, you'll realize that Yik Yak is a great example of Secret 5—All media are social—and Secret 6—Online media are mobile media.
Can musicians still make a living in the music industry today? Why or why not? How has this changed over the last twenty years?
YES, I make a living going out and playing shows."4 So why does Lovett still record and sell albums? "Records are very powerful promotional tools to go out and be able to play on the road." (Note from your author—if you get the chance to see Lovett in concert, do so. He puts on a great show!)
How did Janet Jackson's 2004 Super Bowl appearance transform our standards for decency on broadcast television?
decency rules became stricter after what 2004 event
Discuss the development of television from its invention to HDTV today.
There are two distinct digital formats. High-definition television (HDTV) is in a wide-screen format (like a theater movie) and features an ultra-clear high-resolution picture with superior sound. The other digital format is standard digital television, which makes it possible to broadcast up to six channels on the same frequency space that now carries one channel.
How does having access to a wide range of both popular and obscure movies change our movie-viewing habits? Is this level of choice a good thing or a bad thing? Why?
A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP projects that revenue for downloads and streaming will pass that for physical discs by 2016, with the purchase and rental of DVDs bringing in $7.8 billion and streaming and downloads earning $9.5 billion.53 In addition to making more money for the studios, home video opened up a world of older movies and foreign movies to today's audiences. Previously, movie lovers could see a film only when it first came out or was rereleased, when it was shown in 16mm format on a college campus or in a revival house, or when it finally appeared on late-night television. With the wide range of home video options now available, people can watch movies again and again, whenever they want.
What is the role of a producer in music like rock, R&B, and hip-hop?
As popular music increasingly became a studio creation, the albums' producers became as important as the artists themselves. The main job of a producer is to put together the right songs, songwriters, technicians, and performers in the creation of an album. Rock historian Charlie Gillett argues that the producer is the person who is responsible for making hit records.
Explain how advertisers use demographics and psychographics to target their audience.
As with other types of media, such as radio and television, audience members for advertising are often defined by the "graphics": demographics, geographics, and psychographics. As you may recall from Chapter 2, demographics are the measurable characteristics of the audience, such as age, income, sex, and marital status, whereas geographics involve measurements of where people live. Psychographics combine demographics with measurements of psychological characteristics, such as attitudes, opinions, and interests. In advertising, it's not enough to know the demographics of the client's target audience (age, income, sex, etc.). Advertisers also want to know what the target audience dreams about, aspires to, and feels. These are the topics covered by psychographic research. The term psychographics was first used in the 1960s to refer to a measure of consumer psychology. Depending on the project, researchers may look at a person's lifestyle, relationship to the product, and personality traits.61 Emanuel Demby, one of the first users of the term, defines psychographics as psychological, sociological, and anthropological data that are used to segment a market into relevant groupings. The way the income variable is conceived is more sophisticated than just grouping markets by income levels. Demby argues that it is just as important to know whether someone's income is increasing, decreasing, or remaining stable as it is to know the person's actual income. Why? Because how things are going in people's lives will say something about how they see themselves. If advertisers understand how members of the target audience see themselves, they can craft ads that will more readily appeal to the target.62
How is the studio system similar to the emergence of radio networks? How does the system differ from other types of networks?
At about the same time, the movie studios figured out that the most effective way to produce movies was with a factory-like process known as the studio system, in which all of the talent worked directly for the movie studios. Paramount Pictures, MGM, Warner Bros., and other major studios controlled every aspect of the production process, from writing to editing. They employed a number of writers, directors, and actors ("stars") who were under contract to work for a weekly salary. The movies were put together in assembly-line fashion. The studios also had almost absolute control of the distribution system. They dont distribute the wealth? Radio and Studio Systems work in that way
How does interacting online differ when you do it through an app rather than through the World Wide Web?
Broadband service, such as a cable modem from a cable television provider or a digital subscriber line (DSL) from a phone company, offers connections that are many times faster than dial-up service. But broadband offers more than just increased connection speed. With a broadband connection, subscribers are connected to the Net whenever their computer is turned on. This means that they don't have to download their e-mail; it's always there. It means that things such as online radio, instant messaging, and streaming video are easily accessible. By 2016, 84 percent of American adults were using the Internet in one way or another. But it's that "another" that is transformative. More than two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) go online with mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Beyond that, one-third of all cell phone owners say their mobile device is their primary way of going online. And in its own way, the move to mobile connectivity is just as revolutionary as the move from dial-up to broadband. For while broadband gave us "always on" connections, mobile Internet gives us "anytime-anywhere" access to information.
Discuss the issue of racial and ethnic diversity on television.
Broadcast television has long been criticized for lacking racial and ethnic diversity. But the prison drama Orange Is the New Black has a diverse range of characters including a transgender African American woman. Laverne Cox, who plays a transgender prisoner, says that the show is a breakout because of the range of faces in the cast. "We don't see enough multidimensional portrayals of trans women and women in jail who are different races, ages, body types. . . . We don't see enough multidimensional portrayals of women in general, that show the diversity of womanhood."72 Even with its high level of diversity (which some complain gets talked about too much), the core of the series is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, a "privileged white woman serving a prison sentence." But, as critic Roxane Gay points out, "Unfortunately, we will never see a similar show about a woman of color as a stranger in a strange land, bewildered by incarceration."73
How was our first nationwide interactive computing network built?
Eventually the U.S. military built the first nationwide packet-switching network. However, the network that was built was intended to serve the needs of academic researchers, not to survive nuclear war. The network was built by a farsighted division of the Pentagon called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).10 In 1968, the contract to build the network was given to a Boston-based consulting firm on the condition that it be built in under one year. By the fall of 1969, ARPAnet connected four different institutions, and the first component of the Internet was running. As the hand-drawn map of ARPAnet in Figure 10.2 shows, the initial nodes were University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford Research Institute, University of California-Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. ARPAnet came online at about the same time as the first moon landing. Whereas Neil Armstrong's "one small step" was noted throughout the world as one of the great achievements of humanity, no one outside of ARPA was aware that a new, world-changing medium had just been born.11
Name four common misconceptions about the advertising industry.
Critics argue that advertising places a burden on society by raising the cost of merchandise and inducing people to buy things they don't need. The American Association of Advertising Agencies has defended the ad business, claiming that there are four common misconceptions about the industry80: Advertising makes you buy things you don't want—The industry responds by saying that no one can make you buy things you don't want. People are free to do as they please. Advertising makes things cost more—Advertisers claim that advertising builds demand for products, which can then be manufactured in larger quantities, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. (This defense ignores the idea of the prestige brand, however. Advertising does not make a bar of Clinique soap cost more to produce, but the premium image attached to the soap allows the company to charge more for it. Consumers apparently want to be able to buy better, more expensive products.) Advertising helps sell bad products—The industry responds that a good ad may lead people to buy a product once, but it won't sustain demand for a product they don't like. In fact, the industry argues that good advertising for a bad product will kill the product faster than if it hadn't had a good campaign behind it. M. Night Shyamalan, director of the movies The Sixth Sense and Signs, says that with enough advertising studios can buy a good opening weekend for a movie, but only good word-of-mouth reports by fans will make the movie a long-term success.81 Advertising is a waste of money—The ad industry counters that advertising strengthens the economy by helping to move products through the marketplace and supporting the mass media.
Discuss the controversies surrounding advertising directed at children.
Food Ads Directed at Children. In recent years, the biggest criticism of advertising directed at children has moved from cigarettes to junk food. The U.S. federally chartered Institute of Medicine says that there is "strong evidence that exposure to television advertising" is connected with obesity, which can lead to numerous illnesses, including diabetes.100 The institute goes on to say that ads for junk food targeted at children under age eight can help establish a lifetime of poor eating patterns.101 Of course, what constitutes healthy food is subject to some debate. Would a high-fiber granola bar with significant levels of sugar qualify as health food or junk? Richard Martin, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said at an FTC hearing that the association does not believe there are bad foods: "Any food can be responsibly consumed by everyone, including kids."102 The advertising industry has been critical of the report's recommendations to regulate food ads targeted at children. Daniel L. Jaffe, an executive with the Association of National Advertisers, told the Washington Post that the government stepping in and saying what should be in messages on TV is a very radical proposal. . . . If you do it for food, there's no reason it can't be done for other controversial product categories. People are already trying to restrict the advertising for prescription drugs.103
Explain how radio transformed from a channel for interpersonal communication to one for mass communication.
In 1901, physicist Reginald Fessenden started sending voice signals over a radio in his laboratory. On Christmas Eve in 1905, he broadcast poetry and Christmas carols. Since his continuously modulated voice signals could be received by the same equipment that received Morse code, wireless operators up and down the Atlantic coast heard Fessenden's amazing broadcast. Though it would be years before regularly scheduled commercial broadcasts would begin, Fessenden had set the stage for broadcasting something more than just Morse code. Up until 1905, it was the scientists who were driving the radio business with their new technologies, but a young American Marconi employee saw that radio could be much more than just a way to send messages from one person to another. David Sarnoff, born in 1891, was a good student, but the need to help support his Russian-immigrant family led him to leave school after the eighth grade to work full-time. In a story that seems almost too good to be true, the fifteen-year-old Sarnoff went to the New York Herald to try to get a job as a journalist. As luck would have it, the first person he met at the Herald building worked for a telegraph company. Sarnoff went to work for the Commercial Cable Company, and from that point on, he never left electronic media.
Explain how blockbuster movies become more than just movies for the companies releasing them. What products are developed to go with them?
In some cases, the ride has cost more to produce than the movie itself. The most recent example is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction at the Universal Orlando theme park in Florida, which opened in the spring of 2010 and cost an estimated $265 million to construct. As of this writing, Universal Studios Hollywood is completing the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride that will include entertainment while guests stand in line waiting, including "oil paintings that spring to life, an indoor snowstorm, and other magical moments."38 (Interestingly enough, there's a huge amount of cross-corporate partnerships going on here. The rights to the books are owned by Scholastic; the rights to just about everything else are owned by Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner. But the theme park was constructed by Universal, a unit of NBCUniversal, which has cable giant Comcast as its owner. Got that?39) The Jaws campaign was designed to get people to the movie and talk about it. If the talk had been negative, all the advertising in the world couldn't have saved the movie. But with everyone talking up the movie, Jaws took off.34 The success of Jaws started a tradition of larger-than-life summer movies that continued with the Star Wars trilogies, the Indiana Jones series, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Some observers have gone so far as to describe the summer blockbuster movie as "a wide-screen, color, stereophonic ride."35 The description is apt, because by the 1990s, many of the studios had followed Disney's lead and produced theme parks with rides based on movies. Frozen is Disney's most successful animated film to date, so there must be theme park attractions to go with it. Disney is replacing the Norwegian mythology-based Maelstrom ride at Epcot with a new Frozen-themed water ride. At Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida, there is a Frozen-themed parade, skating rink, sing-along show, and fireworks show.36 Kathy Mangum, the lead Imagineer (or attraction designer), told the Los Angeles Times, "What we try to do is take you back to the movie without retelling that story." There is also a Frozen-themed land planned to open at Tokyo DisneySea in 2017 or 2018.37
Name and explain two ways to mess up responding to a crisis affecting your organization.
Levick said that companies need to do several things to prepare for online crisis communication: Identify your crisis team—This includes PR professionals, lawyers, and digital communication specialists. Imagine your nightmare scenarios—Make sure that you have the online resources so that when a crisis hits and people start searching for information, they come to your Web site first. Track the blogosphere and other social media—Make sure you know what people are saying about you, and be responsive to the people who are talking about your company. Don't wait—You have a very limited time to respond.86
How would the movie industry be different if the people running the industry looked more like the people in the audience?
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis says that given the nature of the academy, these results are not terribly surprising. "The primary reason the Oscars are so white this year and most years is that the movie industry is overwhelmingly white."93 That would seem to be supported by a study done in 2012 by the Los Angeles Times that attempted to find out the racial, age, and gender composition of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voting members. Although the names of the members are secret, the LA Times managed to establish who most of them were and found that the Oscar voters have a median age of sixty-two and are: Nearly 94 percent white Approximately 2 percent black Less than 2 percent Latino 77 percent male
How does interacting with your publics through social media differ from going through legacy media?
One of the great challenges that online media bring to the public relations business is that they are a continually moving target. Just when PR professionals think they have blogs and the Web figured out, along comes the rise of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Social media expert Pamela Seiple has written that PR professionals need to realize that social media are an opportunity for interactions with various publics, not just a channel to send out information. She notes that, through social media, stories about your company's brand can spread and mutate at a much faster rate than in the past: "If your company is not participating in social media today, it's missing an opportunity to spread its message and missing valuable—and even damaging—conversations that could be taking place about your brand." One of the most important uses for social media, according to Seiple, is building ongoing relationships with publics, including customers, vendors, opinion makers, and the press.77 Following the posting of the video, the two employees were identified by bloggers, arrested, and charged with distributing prohibited foods. Although the Domino's Pizza chain has largely recovered from the crisis created by the video, the North Carolina store where the video was shot has not. After closing briefly for cleaning following the posting of the video, the store closed for good five months later.87 Note that while this story was covered by legacy media, it really moved through social media, thus illustrating Secret 5—All media are social. The Domino's story is also an illustration of Secret 6—Online media are mobile media. Kraft's promotion of the Cheesepocalypse is at the core of how social media can be effectively used in public relations. Social media are not just new ways to push marketing information; they are a great tool for interacting with and getting to know the people who love a product best. In the case of Velveeta, Kraft got to know the product's super-consumers better and helped them share recipes and new ways to use the soft cheese product. (Kraft's effective use of social media to interact with its consumers and turn what could have been a problem into a big plus for the brand is a great example of Secret 2—There are no mainstream media. In this case, interactive social media were far more important to Kraft than legacy media were, which also illustrates Secret 5—All media are social.)
How does integrated marketing communication differ from traditional advertising?
One response to the rapidly changing marketing environment advertisers are facing is integrated marketing communication, or IMC. The idea is that there should be an overall communication strategy for reaching key audiences and that this strategy can be carried out using advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and interactive media. Dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, IMC is a long-term approach to building the value of a brand or an organization.108 We can see how IMC gets used to build a brand by looking at how Denny's worked to "re-introduce" the restaurant to America and to bring "light and lapsed" Denny's customers back into the fold in the winter of 2009.109 At the center of the IMC campaign was a creative ad that ran during the Super Bowl featuring a group of "wise guy" gangsters planning a hit while a waitress delivers clown-faced pancakes. The message? Serious people deserve a serious breakfast. The ad then closed out with the announcement that the chain was giving away a free breakfast to everyone who came to Denny's on the following Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Explain how cable/satellite television, recorders such as VCRs and DVRs, and the adoption of digital television have transformed the television industry.
Satellite programming providers have been competing with cable since the 1980s, but their success was limited initially because of the rapid growth of cable, the large dish antennas required, and the limited number of channels consumers could receive. All this changed in the 1990s with the advent of the low-earth-orbit direct-broadcast satellite (DBS). Several DBSs were launched to deliver programming through a new kind of antenna about the size of a pizza. As of 2015, approximately thirty-three million U.S. households had satellite television, down 1.5 percent from the year before. Satellite service in the United States grew rapidly from the mid-1990s until about 2007, when adoption of the new delivery system stabilized. With the rise of online-based video sources, the use of both cable and satellite programming is expected to drop.30 In Europe, which has less of a tradition of cable television than the United States, DBS services are very popular. 21st Century Fox's Sky Italia has almost five million subscribers in Italy, offering approximately 190 channels of programming through satellite and mobile delivery.31 DBS is now competing head-to-head with cable. A problem the satellite services face in this competition is that their subscribers still have to put up an old-fashioned antenna to get local broadcast stations. To address this drawback, in major markets DBS companies provide local stations via satellite as well.32
How have technological changes transformed how we think of "watching television"?
Television is changing rapidly, with audience members getting many new options to control how and when they receive programming. With VCRs, DVRs, interactive television, and broadband video, viewers can choose what they watch and when they watch it. They are also able to interact with the programming through online and mobile resources.
Identify the three levels of communication on the Internet.
The Internet is unique among the mass media in allowing interpersonal communication through e-mail and instant messaging and group communication through e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, the World Wide Web, search, mobile apps, blogs, podcasts, and streaming media.
Describe three defining components of the World Wide Web.
The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee while he was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. His goal was to produce a decentralized system for creating and sharing documents anywhere in the world. The Web has three major components: the uniform resource locator (URL), the hypertext transfer protocol (http), and the hypertext markup language (HTML). Berners-Lee published the code for the World Wide Web on the Internet in 1991 for anyone in the world to use at no cost.
Discuss conflicts over content, intellectual property, and privacy on the Web.
The advocacy group Public Knowledge has provided suggestions for a more balanced approach that protects the rights of both consumers and producers. These ideas can be reviewed at Wonkblog, the policy blog of the Washington Post's Brad Plumer84: Ways to punish companies that demand material be taken off the Web without any justification need to exist. As the law stands now, any request made that demands that material be taken down for copyright violation must be complied with. The person who posted the offending material can appeal, but in the interim, the content is down. Copyright terms need to be shortened. (You can read more about the development of modern copyright law in Chapter 13.) "Fair use" law needs to be simplified and have penalties limited to actual damages suffered by the copyright holder. Companies need to be stopped from making overreaching copyright claims. Public Knowledge uses as an example the disclaimer that runs before NFL games. It prohibits "any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent." Consumers should be allowed to bypass electronic copy protection for legal uses of the media. As an example, most DVDs and Blu-ray discs have software in place that keeps consumers from making copies of the discs they have purchased. According to copyright law, consumers are allowed to make backup copies of media they own. At the same time, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to break the copy protection that keeps you from making a legal copy of the media.
Name and explain at least one internal and one external public the University of Missouri had to deal with during the protests on campus in the fall of 2015.
The fall of 2015 did not bring the kind of media attention the University of Missouri wanted. African American students were unhappy about how racism on campus was being handled, or not being handled, by the school. Problems dated back to at least August 2014 when students and others marched in protest over the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed eighteen-year-old black man in nearby Ferguson, Missouri. They continued on with concerns over a swastika drawn on a dorm stairwell wall, the student body president being called the n-word, a black student play rehearsal being interrupted by racial slurs, and human feces being used to draw a second swastika on the wall of a dorm bathroom.1
Discuss how public relations developed from press agentry to a profession.
The field of public relations (also called PR) has had an uneven image in the United States. (The term public relations is discussed more extensively later in this chapter.) In his book on corporate public relations, Marvin Olasky noted that practitioners have been called "high-paid errand boys and buffers for management."10 Other names have been less flattering. Despite such criticisms, public relations is critical to industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. These organizations need to deal with the people who work for them, invest in them, are served by them, contribute to them, regulate them, or buy from them. They need to interact with the world. Ultimately, that's what public relations is all about—relating with a wide range of publics. A public is a group of people who share a common set of interests. An internal public is made up of people within the organization. An external public is made up of people outside the organization.
What was block booking, and what were its benefits and drawbacks?
The first way was block bookings, in which theater owners were required to book a whole series of movies in order to get a few desirable films. The studio package might offer four headliner movies with big-name stars, ten mid-range pictures, ten more low-level films, and twelve no-star, bottom-of-the-line pictures. Sometimes salespeople insisted that theaters take the studio's entire package of fifty-two films, one for each week of the year. The second, and even more effective, way for studios to guarantee that their movies would be shown was to buy up theaters By 1938, the U.S. Department of Justice was starting to view the movie studio system as a monopoly that needed to be brought under control. It decided to make a test case of Paramount Pictures. Paramount and the other major studios were charged with conspiring to set the terms for theaters renting their films—requiring them to charge certain minimum prices and to accept block booking—and discriminating in favor of certain theaters. The studios also worked to keep independent films out of theaters they owned.
What are the consequences of having a movie industry that is mostly controlled by white men?
The problem isn't just with Hollywood not creating parts for nonwhite performers; it extends to casting white actors in parts intended for people of color—a process known as whitewashing. A prime example of whitewashing was the movie Aloha, set in Hawaii and starring the "green-eyed, blond-haired" Emma Stone as a part-Chinese, part-Native Hawaiian fighter pilot. In the Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange, a character who was a Tibetan monk in the comic was remade into a Celtic mystic played by Tilda Swinton. While Marvel points out that there are a variety of race and gender swaps in its movies, Asian American actor George Takei was not impressed. "It's all too plainly outlandish," he told the New York Times. "It's getting to the point where it's almost laughable. . . . Hollywood has been casting white actors in Asian roles for decades now, and we can't keep pretending there isn't something deeper at work here."98 Interestingly enough, it appears that the whitewashing of the Doctor Strange character was deliberately done to remove a Tibetan character from the movie so that the film would not offend the Chinese government. The Chinese government has occupied Tibet since 1951, and Disney (which owns Marvel) has been careful in recent years to not endanger its access to the Chinese box office.99
Describe how major developments in audio technology changed how people experience music.
The public radio network remained relatively small until two major developments occurred. The first was the growth of the satellite delivery of network programming. Satellite allows good signals go out to all stations no matter how remote they are. The second development was the installation of FM radios in most private cars. Since public radio was almost exclusively on the FM band, the advent of FM car radios made it possible to reach interested people with enough time to pay attention. Not surprisingly, NPR's biggest audiences are in cities whose workers have long commutes.95 By 2016, there were 950 NPR member stations reaching a monthly audience of 33.6 million.96 NPR launched the two-hour news program Morning Edition in 1979, and since then it has become the most-listened-to morning news show in the country, with 12 million listeners tuning in every week. This is more than the Today show and Good Morning America audiences combined. Of course, this isn't a completely fair comparison because Morning Edition is on radio and the other two shows are on television.
How are musicians using long-tail tools to create new ways of sharing their music while still making money?
There can be no question that the many sectors of the sound industry are currently facing a massively changing media world. The issues of file sharing, user-generated content, and music videos (topics also covered in Chapters 9 and 10) are forcing changes in how radio and the recording industries can make money. Image 7 Spotify to become the music platform of modern dating. Computer technology has made it easy to manufacture pirate editions of CDs that can be sold on the street at a deep discount. (For that matter, it has made it easy for consumers to "burn" copies of their CDs for their friends for free.) The industry charges that this is stealing from artists and that the new media for distributing music are going to destroy the recording industry. These new technologies are certainly changing the music business, but they probably aren't destroying it. USA Today's technology writer Kevin Maney points to the example of China, where the music business is thriving even in the face of rampant piracy. Maney argues that in China, most CDs on the market are pirate editions, so artists have no choice but to make an income through live performances, sale of merchandise, and commercial endorsements.
How can advertisers grab the attention of consumers when there are so many competing advertisements they are being exposed to?
There is more to marketing a product than advertising, but advertising is the most visible aspect of marketing, and it has to provide what legendary advertising executive David Ogilvy called the big idea—an advertising concept that will grab people's attention, make them take notice, make them remember, and, most important, make them take action. Leo Burnett, founder of one of the nation's biggest agencies, agrees with Ogilvy: The word "idea" is loosely used in our business to cover anything from a headline to a TV technique. [But] I feel that a real idea has a power of its own and a life of its own. It goes beyond ads and campaigns. Properly employed, it is often the secret of capturing the imagination of great masses of people and winning "the battle for the uncommitted mind," which is what our business really is about.33 In advertising, a tension often exists between creativity and salesmanship. An ad may do a great job of grabbing people's attention and generating talk, but if the ad doesn't have a solid sales message, consumers will not remember the product or give serious thought to buying it. A number of ads have done a great job of grabbing the public's attention. But have they done a good job of promoting the product? Have they built the value of the brand?
Discuss how public relations shapes the news we receive and our view of politicians.
This chapter has so far looked at public relations largely from the point of view of either PR firms or their clients. But it is also useful to look at it from the public's perspective. Public relations shapes the news we receive through newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and even the Internet. In the form of "spin control," it attempts to shape our view of politicians and public policy, and it is also a central component of social movements. Along with the general public and media, the various levels of government are major external publics. Through their government relations departments, PR firms represent their clients before the federal government, federal agencies, state legislatures, and even municipal bodies. As businesses face increasing government regulation, they have increased their efforts to work with government to shape legislation and regulations that are favorable to their interests.91 Government relations includes lobbying for laws that will best meet the needs of the organization, as well as simply building goodwill with legislators and regulatory bodies. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that studies the influence of money on elections and public policy, estimates that, in 2013, there were 11,518 active, registered lobbyists in Washington who spent approximately $3.22 billion trying to influence the federal government on policy issues.92 But that figure, as big as it is, only tells part of the story. Work by the Sunlight Foundation, another nonprofit focused on open government, found that for every dollar spent on reported lobbying, another dollar was spent on influencing activities that didn't meet the narrow legal definition of lobbying that was required to be reported. Thus, the total amount spent on "government relations" in 2013 would be estimated to be $6.44 billion.
Explain how rock 'n' roll developed out of two different music traditions.
Though recorded music was on the market long before there was rock 'n' roll, rock 'n' roll was born alongside modern recording technology and flourished on the radio. It was amplified from the start, featured new instruments such as the solid-body electric guitar, and brought together a host of traditions from white hillbilly music to black rhythm and blues. World War II spurred the development of rock 'n' roll as a cross-cultural phenomenon because blacks and whites mixed socially during the war more often than they had before and because the Armed Forces Radio played a range of white and black musical styles.
How did Ted Turner transform cable television?
Turner's next big step was buying the last-place Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball franchise, thus guaranteeing him exclusive rights to a pair of shows (the teams' games) that would run more than two hundred episodes a year. It was also programming that would motivate Atlantans to make the effort to find Channel 17. When RCA launched a television satellite in 1976, Turner saw his next big opportunity. He realized that he could use the satellite to send his station nationwide and provide programming to the growing number of cable systems. On December 27, 1976, WTCG became Superstation WTBS (Turner Broadcasting System). With that step, Turner became one of the first of a new breed of television entrepreneurs who were turning local stations into national powerhouses.
What does your author mean when he writes "Everything is data"? What kind of transformation is taking place in the legacy media industry as more media are transmitted digitally?
We are moving into an age where more and more media are delivered digitally. And that means we will be moving away from old channels like cable television, paper, or cellular phone service and moving into the use of data services. Think about it—how often do you come close to using up your allocation of cell phone minutes? Maybe you don't even have a limit on minutes anymore. The same is likely true of text messages (i.e., SMS).
What is the difference in the "realism" of practical and CGI effects?
While Miller likes to point to all the vehicles he sent out on a desert chase in Mad Max: Fury Road, there were still about 2,000 visual effects shots out of a total of 2,400 shots in the entire film. So where's the truth here? The truth is more complicated than CGI is fake and practical is real.3 Digital effects are often used to give us things that couldn't exist in real life, so our brains apply a reality filter to them and say they look fake. Practical effects tend to be used for things that can exist in the real world, so they look more "real." One of the reasons that Mad Max looked so real was that the trucks and stuntmen were physically there; the reason it looked so great was that giant dust clouds and explosions could be brought in digitally.4 Visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson said that it was always worthwhile to shoot scenes with actual vehicles, just to keep it grounded: You shoot the layout and vehicles and gradually everything might get replaced except the camera and the positions of where things were. You may end up with nothing left of what was actually filmed, but the shot still inherits something real from the plate you shot originally. Grimes prides himself in making the physics of his scenes real. He wants to make his effects "believable, and logical," so that the viewers feel they are really there in the movie. Over the last couple of years, directors, critics, and even fans have complained about how "fake" digital special effects look. This is sometimes based on the effects being poorly done, but more often this is because these effects make impossible things happen—superheroes fly, and cities (even entire planets) collapse into themselves. The so-called real special effects are known in the trade as practical effects—things that are done with sets, props, and stunt people.2 Of course, nothing in a giant summer special effects-driven postapocalyptic movie is going to be real. Even in the days of movies like George Lucas's Star Wars or Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, there may not have been computer-generated imagery (CGI), but there weren't really giant cities with flying police cars or Death Stars ready to destroy unruly planets. They were simply illusions created with lights, miniatures, and smoke.
What does media journalist Ken Auletta mean by "an earthquake in slow motion"? How is that earthquake still going on today?
a set of changes that media writer Ken Auletta has called "an earthquake in slow motion." In 1976, the prime-time viewing audience belonged to the Big Three, with nine out of ten viewers watching network programming. By 1991, the Big Three had lost a third of their viewers. These viewers hadn't stopped watching television; they had just moved to other channels. In 1976, the typical home had a choice of seven broadcast channels; by 1991, it had a choice of thirty-three cable channels.50 Today, homes with digital cable programming can have access to hundreds of channels. Another part of the earthquake was that the original Big Three networks were sold to new owners in 1985.