I still like to read the State Journal Register because they have career journalists on hand who work full time to get their stories and photos. For a while I even had the notion of applying for work there. But the tide is going out for good on the old media, thanks to the Internet.
I wonder how many generations it will take before subscriptions to actual hard-copy newspapers fall into the red zone of being cost-prohibitive? Would online advertising be sufficient to support the structure that remains after the printing presses have ceased forever?
Remember radio? Radio is still a good hands-free form of entertainment, but AM is dominated by right-wing conservatism, a philosophy which proved its worth over the last eight years in the political spotlight, and evidenced by the presidential election of 2008. Unpopular.
As for FM radio, it depends on the artist and not the genre.
Genre radio is old hat. The Internet has exposed us to the reality of music. That there are really good songs, not really good types of songs. We as an audience can no longer accept being pigeonholed into arbitrary categories of Rock, Pop, Country, Jazz, Lite-Jazz, Classical, Heavy Metal, Blues or Big Band.
I occasionally listen to Amy Winehouse, Bjork, Tom Waits, Dethklok, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger, Ozzie, Tchaikovsky, Sly and the Family Stone, etc. No radio station will be able to keep me as an audience for very long.
Local Broadcast television is not doing too well either. The local news anchors most of the time are repeating the national news when they can't find local stories. Most of the remote news crews were once Union and are now gone.
During the time slot used by local news broadcasts I'm watching PBS. I'm already searching blogs and YouTube for local video on my computer instead of watching television. The Internet provides weather reports too. I don't know what the local broadcasters have left to hold up against the Internet. I think they are in worse shape than newspapers. Popular shows can be watched at Hulu.com
Barack Obama said change is here. This change is bigger than just politics. We are about to usher in a whole new cultural structure, the likes of which we can't yet imagine. Biggest of the changes is perhaps that there may be no such thing as mass communication anymore. Sub-cultures will re-arrange under totally different flags.
Philosophies will shatter and pieces from different ideologies will combine into never before seen colors.
People will be different in unheard of ways, because they will have their own custom-designed preferences thanks to the Internet. Everyone will be a stranger to everyone else, so we will simply have to shed fear.
Showing posts with label newspaper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspaper. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Methemphadvertising and the decline of the main-stream media.
Pew Internet research finds further evidence of main-stream media decline.
More people are now able to see media spin when they go online and watch political speeches from start to finish at YouTube, then share the video clips with their friends at MySpace and Facebook.
The “main-stream” media are paper publications, radio and television, all of which are limited by time and space. Because of these limitations, the main-stream media must only select portions of political speeches or news stories they deem “newsworthy.”
Consequently, they choose portions of information that serves their own agendas.
The main-stream media agenda is simply to survive in a competitive environment. They did that at first by trying to make friends with the largest portion of its audience.
Unfortunately, when you try to please as many people as possible, you wind up on the wrong side of all of them, because people more easily remember negative things that positive things. It’s just human behavior.
So the main-stream media chose to make friends with only audience members that could best help them survive, advertisers.
The main-stream became dependent on advertisers like Heroine ever since the late nineteenth century when newspapers could not longer just depend on their own sales revenue.
Cable television began as a non-advertising television medium. It was supposed to be the biggest threat to the broadcast networks in the late 1970’s and Ted Turner almost had ABC, CBS, and NBC completely over a barrel when he launched CNN. Cable was standing on only subscription revenues.
And cable television had no commercials, do you remember that? But low and behold, satellite television came along and cable had to become publicly traded on the stock market, and shareholders demanded growth and more money, so cable television buckled and started running television commercials. CNN, Fox News and other cable news networks are now no different than any of the broadcast networks because they too are addicted to Methemphadvertising.
The advertisers are of course, the drug dealers who make the networks do their bidding, or they hold back the “stuff” (advertising).
Now, Pew Internet Research has reported "A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others."
The broadcast, cable, radio, and print media are suffering from the addiction of advertising dollars as their only source of survival, and people are walking away because they are all tired of little sound bites and slogans.
There is no withdrawal from Methemphadvertising, only death.
PEW RESEARCH: The Internet and the 2008 Election
More people are now able to see media spin when they go online and watch political speeches from start to finish at YouTube, then share the video clips with their friends at MySpace and Facebook.
The “main-stream” media are paper publications, radio and television, all of which are limited by time and space. Because of these limitations, the main-stream media must only select portions of political speeches or news stories they deem “newsworthy.”
Consequently, they choose portions of information that serves their own agendas.
The main-stream media agenda is simply to survive in a competitive environment. They did that at first by trying to make friends with the largest portion of its audience.
Unfortunately, when you try to please as many people as possible, you wind up on the wrong side of all of them, because people more easily remember negative things that positive things. It’s just human behavior.
So the main-stream media chose to make friends with only audience members that could best help them survive, advertisers.
The main-stream became dependent on advertisers like Heroine ever since the late nineteenth century when newspapers could not longer just depend on their own sales revenue.
Cable television began as a non-advertising television medium. It was supposed to be the biggest threat to the broadcast networks in the late 1970’s and Ted Turner almost had ABC, CBS, and NBC completely over a barrel when he launched CNN. Cable was standing on only subscription revenues.
And cable television had no commercials, do you remember that? But low and behold, satellite television came along and cable had to become publicly traded on the stock market, and shareholders demanded growth and more money, so cable television buckled and started running television commercials. CNN, Fox News and other cable news networks are now no different than any of the broadcast networks because they too are addicted to Methemphadvertising.
The advertisers are of course, the drug dealers who make the networks do their bidding, or they hold back the “stuff” (advertising).
Now, Pew Internet Research has reported "A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others."
The broadcast, cable, radio, and print media are suffering from the addiction of advertising dollars as their only source of survival, and people are walking away because they are all tired of little sound bites and slogans.
There is no withdrawal from Methemphadvertising, only death.
PEW RESEARCH: The Internet and the 2008 Election
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Winds of Change
The Illinois State Journal Register is now under the command of Gatehouse Media. They consolidated and compressed sections of the newspaper in order to either make it difficult for more than one person to read different sections from the same paper at the same time, or at the very least, save more trees. It would not be a far stretch to guess that somehow they think it will motivate multiple subscriptions per household.
However, they also have caved to the giant pharmaceutical industry and allowed full page advertising for a single product. This Sunday it was Lipitor, endorsed by Dr. Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart. If Lipitor is so great for you heart, are you sure that someone who invented an artificial heart is a good endorsement?
That’s almost as bad as Chrysler boasting about its Five Star Service. Would you want a product that might need five star service? I like the idea of having the guy who invented prosthetic legs as an endorsement for landmines.
Gatehouse is as blatant about their ideology as Hardees is about the health of its customers. The customer gets what he or she wants, no matter what the long term consequences. I wrote a response to a preacher’s letter that as of almost a week later remains unpublished. Following is my response:
In his letter to the editor, Reverend Weitzel of Beardstown wrote that prescribing Plan B is an “evil act,” and “Conscience is the judgment one makes concerning the ethical rightness or wrongness of a human act he is considering performing.” The Conscience of the physician who wrote the prescription is entirely different from the pharmacist who must fill the prescription, one of them knows more about the patient than the other; can you guess which one?
The reverend wrote “no one, no matter what his reason might be, may force a person to do something that he considers ethically wrong...” A thoroughly trained pharmacist is well-aware of the potential for getting into such situations. A pharmacist, who interferes with the health of a patient, should not be fired; but jailed.
The Reverend wrote “The Morning After pill has no other purpose than to cause abortion.” According to Barr Pharmaceuticals, Plan B prevents pregnancy, it does not end it. Barr’s website www.go2planb.com states “Plan B will not affect a fertilized egg already attached to the uterus; it will not affect an existing pregnancy.”
Finally, the Rev. Dr. Eugene J. Weitzel wrote “No woman needs the pill for health reasons, she only needs it to undo what she and her accomplice did the night before in a selfish moment for fun and frolic.” Unfortunately, not every situation that results in a pregnancy is a “selfish moment for fun and frolic.” I don’t know what to think about someone who characterizes men as mere accomplices in such situations, nor do I care to ever find out what other outlandish unsubstantiated claims echo across the pews in Beardstown.
However, they also have caved to the giant pharmaceutical industry and allowed full page advertising for a single product. This Sunday it was Lipitor, endorsed by Dr. Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart. If Lipitor is so great for you heart, are you sure that someone who invented an artificial heart is a good endorsement?
That’s almost as bad as Chrysler boasting about its Five Star Service. Would you want a product that might need five star service? I like the idea of having the guy who invented prosthetic legs as an endorsement for landmines.
Gatehouse is as blatant about their ideology as Hardees is about the health of its customers. The customer gets what he or she wants, no matter what the long term consequences. I wrote a response to a preacher’s letter that as of almost a week later remains unpublished. Following is my response:
In his letter to the editor, Reverend Weitzel of Beardstown wrote that prescribing Plan B is an “evil act,” and “Conscience is the judgment one makes concerning the ethical rightness or wrongness of a human act he is considering performing.” The Conscience of the physician who wrote the prescription is entirely different from the pharmacist who must fill the prescription, one of them knows more about the patient than the other; can you guess which one?
The reverend wrote “no one, no matter what his reason might be, may force a person to do something that he considers ethically wrong...” A thoroughly trained pharmacist is well-aware of the potential for getting into such situations. A pharmacist, who interferes with the health of a patient, should not be fired; but jailed.
The Reverend wrote “The Morning After pill has no other purpose than to cause abortion.” According to Barr Pharmaceuticals, Plan B prevents pregnancy, it does not end it. Barr’s website www.go2planb.com states “Plan B will not affect a fertilized egg already attached to the uterus; it will not affect an existing pregnancy.”
Finally, the Rev. Dr. Eugene J. Weitzel wrote “No woman needs the pill for health reasons, she only needs it to undo what she and her accomplice did the night before in a selfish moment for fun and frolic.” Unfortunately, not every situation that results in a pregnancy is a “selfish moment for fun and frolic.” I don’t know what to think about someone who characterizes men as mere accomplices in such situations, nor do I care to ever find out what other outlandish unsubstantiated claims echo across the pews in Beardstown.
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