Blog #10 What I have learned

Before these past 5 weeks, I thought I knew a lot about the media. I thought that the stuff I already know would be simple. After the first week, I was so surprised that I knew nothing at all about media. From reading the book, Media and Culture, I learned that their are 5 major media companies that own what we watch today. The 5 major media companies are Disney, Time Warner, News Corp., Google, and Viacom. Of these 5 companies, they own movies, music, books/magazines, television/radio, and the internet. I was so surprised that there is only 5, because I thought the people from MTV own it, but they do not. When we first talked about these companies in class, I was so lost and I wanted to learn more about it. I was also excited about all these different aspects of the media, because my major is Film and Visual Culture. With the book, I am able to gain more knowledge of the media. I liked how we talked about the internet on how it is a great media source, because nowadays many people are on the internet and go to sites that companies can put advertisements for their products. One of the chapters that I liked was about Television. I found out that there were scandals and the fin-syn rules. With scandals, the quiz show, Twenty-One, had a successful contestant, who "won $129,000 in 1957 during his fifteen-week run on the program" (Media and Culture, pg. 153). The problem was the contestant, Charles Van Doren, cheated. The reason why he kept on winning was he attracted many viewers, which the network got a lot of ratings. Also, since Doren is good looking, many people wanted to watch instead of an ugly person, which will get no ratings. I feel like the attractive you are in television the more likely people are going to watch you on their television sets. Now, we have quiz shows like Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. With the fin-syn rules, I did not know they existed. Before, the networks "sometimes demanded as much as 50 percent of the profits that producers earned from airing older shows as reruns in local TV markets" (Media and Culture, pg. 167). Because of this, the FCC "banned the networks from reaping such profits from program syndication" (Media and Culture, pg. 167). I feel that it is bad for the networks, but regardless they already make a profit from all the viewers watching the shows. After reading and learning about Media and Culture, I feel well informed then before. WIth this book, I will still use it when I get confused or want to know more about other things such as the radio and video games. Also, I will be using this blog still, because after I started posting blogs, I wanted to post other things besides homework. I am going to blog about San Diego Comic-Con, because I want to tell the whole world how it is when I go this friday.

Media and Culture