Post Four: Number One Listener

The development of radio is a fascinating one because every factor correlates to one another in a way that without one of them, radio may not have become such a popular and defining entity in America’s media culture. Many forces helped to precipitate the rise of the radio including technological change (Marconi’s “wireless telegraph”), industries and institutional factors (competition between networks), regulation and government intervention (Federal Radio Commission), and audience demand. However, the most influential force behind the spread of radio had to be and still is the audience’s constant demand which consequently leads to the other aforementioned factors.

Radio stations started to compete with one another to provide for the audience’s demands. Media is always a fickle industry because it is based on communication—a process that needs two or more parties. Obviously, radio stations can only be successful if they can find someone to listen to them. Radio stations applied networking which is “the linking of stations together to share programming costs” (Straubhaar 163) and allowed each station to keep up with the expenses. Further competition forced stations to gather affiliated ones and to adopt a variety of shows and music genres to appeal to different audience members. The stations experimented with comic books, adventure shows, and pulp-fiction westerns. Furthermore, radio stations created radio personas that helped promote advertisements on shows. They also tried to create regular programming so that listeners would invest themselves into the shows as part of their daily routine.

Since then, radio has had to work extremely hard in order to keep up with the wavering audience demand. In the late 1940s, television’s popularity grew exponentially; radio struggled to keep its stability within its audience members. The radio had to figure out quickly how to regain some of its power and focused on cheaper entertainment such as localized content including music, news, and talk shows. Even today, radio stations have to constantly change and keep up with the audience’s wandering attention spans in order to stay profitable. Nowadays, radio stations have to keep tabs on and research who their targeted listeners are and how they can succeed in reaching them. It is crucial that the medium tries new innovative ways to stay current whether it is playing popular music or offering their sounds through the internet.

Post Three: I Watch What I Wanna Watch

The concept of selective process argues for and helps to support the idea that people are the ones who sustain the power in the exchange of media. It states that audiences exercise selective exposure by avoiding media circuits that espouse certain messages with which members may not agree. In addition, certain members will watch those which advocate in what they already believe or propagate. This further confirms their beliefs as they find support from those considered more knowledgeable. By adapting this way of digesting information from the media, people can undergo selective retention which means their perceptions can become distorted or skewed to the point where they remember what they want to remember instead of what actually happened. This selective reception in which a person chooses what he or she wants to watch decreases media’s hold and impact on its audience members but can also negatively proliferate ignorance.

An example of selective process can be seen in this article. The Today Show, a significantly popular daytime and morning show, has decided to open its Modern Day Wedding competition to same sex couples after discussing the matter with GLADD, a pro-LGBT rights group. Many (in my opinion, progressive) people have applauded The Today Show for showing an interest in equality concerning gay marriages. However, The Today Show has also found its share of criticisms from other people who are not as like-minded. As seen in the comments below in the article, many people who are against the recent change have declared that they will be protesting the show.

A few of the comments:

DeeBoo: “I will watch another channel in support marriage being between a man and woman.”
JDTransplant: “I won’t watch NBC any longer.”
nj_tax_man: “As of now, I will no longer watch any NBC programming.”
Oksusieq: “I for one, will not be watching, nor do I condone same sex marriage. I am so disappointed that NBC has given in to ‘peer pressure’ to encourage the moral decline in the country.”

In addition, one user (Traveling1) summarized selective exposure very well: "You always have the option of not watching...but America is the land of voyeurs. We are so anxious to not live our own lives that we have to turn to TV to live the lives of others. Well, if those TV lives are not what you like, live your own and turn the damn thing off. Better yet. Sell it! lol"

As exemplified in the aforementioned snippets taken from the comment section of the article, many people are choosing to end their support of NBC and The Today Show in order to show their disapproval. They are using the selective process in order to avoid messages that contradict their own beliefs and so-called values. Granted, I do believe that they all have a choice on what they decide to watch. At least selective process attempts to correct the imbalance that media and its audience have with one another. However, media and television are great technological inventions and should be used to progress society’s amount of knowledge and open up its ability to access other peoples’ opinions and perspectives. Ignorance and such examples of bigoted thinking and shutting off completely to media circuits solely because they do not agree with your personal perspective end up stinting society’s growth rather than helping it along.



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Post Two: Another Spoonful Please!

The creators and owners of the media use hegemony advantageously in order to control exactly what the audience sees and to influence how the audience reacts to what it is seeing. According to James Lull, “hegemony is the power or dominance that one social group holds over others” and a “method of gaining and maintaining power” (Lull 62). According to Stuart Hall, it is a “framing [of] all competing definitions of reality within [the dominant class’s] range […]” (Lull 62). In other words, through the process of hegemony, the media insists on its power in order to influence subordinate parties in accepting their definition of what is normal and acceptable.

As the gatekeepers of media use agenda setting to advocate what issues are most important and relevant to the audience members’ lives, it also uses framing to influence how the audience should react to such pertinent issues. Framing is how the owners of media decide how and under what settings a story or issue should be presented. Media has the power, the resources, and reasons to take an event or subject matter and distort or skew it in its favor. And when the audience recieves what the media tells it based only on face-value, the media can and has gotten away with quite a bit!

Take for example of the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its effects on the locals and the workers. News companies reported that many clean-up workers directly in contact with the oil spill had become ill and had to be hospitalized. However, according to this article, CEO Tony Hayward and his public representatives responded to such reports by shrugging it off, saying that it was probably “food poisoning.” It was also reported that the workers did not receive gas masks because the company did not feel as though they were necessary; the company tried to make the oil spill look less harmful than it actually is. In addition, according to this video on the BP YouTube channel, the company is currently taking the effort and time to take care of the workers and locals. BP tries to frame the oil spill incident as a tragic event but an opportunity for them to come together as a community. BP tries to make it look as though they are taking the steps to approach the oil spill in the most acceptable and productive way by spinning the situation with a positive light.

Sadly, it is a very cynical yet true view of the media as a conglomeration of elitist companies sitting on their high-horses spoon-feeding the audience whatever it takes to keep them under their control. Framing is a very prominent technique and used quite frequently by media companies. Because of this, I personally have to make sure I do a double-take and re-evaluate what I had just read or viewed. Understandably, everything in media has a certain perspective behind it and so framing is just a part of the process. However, when it is done maliciously or with certain intent behind it, the exchange between the producers and the audience becomes more complicated and sometimes more so than necessary. In the aforementioned example of BP, I am not easily persuaded by its attempt to make it look as if the workers’ health is not jeopardy nor does its “attempts” to alleviate those who are affected.