March Madness!

So, unless you live under a rock, you've heard of march madness and know that it's going on right now. Glad to say, my champion, Duke, is still in the running, while over 60 percent of the nation has their champion, Kansas, out. Either way, I was thinking of how marketable big name events like these are. If you've watched at all, I'm sure you've seen the clever Reeses' commercials that incorporate the "sweet sixteen" term into their sweet chocolatey product. I found myself somewhat bothered I guess watching these commercials. I guess the reason I'm bothered is because of how much corporations/companies have their hands on advertising, and how much of commercials you have to sit through. Granted, some commercials are funny, but for the most part, they are becoming really obnoxious. I'm not sure if this is a new fad, but I feel like any show you watch, you get 10 minutes of commercials, 5 minutes of show, 10 minutes of commercial, and this pattern continues. It really annoys the crap out of me, because I hate sitting through commercials. More than that, I hate sitting through commercials on the radio. The radio loves to play one or two songs then have a 20 minute commercial break. In case you haven't gotten the point of my rant, I HATE COMMERCIALS. What drives me even more mad is that I don't feel like many commercials for products are very effective. I hardly ever see a commercial and think "oh cool" or "oh I want that!". But they must work for some people or else these commercials and advertisements wouldn't be thrown in our faces all day every day.

Why talk without doing RESEARCH?

I love listening to sports talk radio. I've strayed from the right wing political station with a glimpse at sports on WEEI (primarily, Dennis and Callahan's illiterate right-wing four hour rants every morning) to the much better, SPORTS focused 985thesportshub. On each of these channels, though, people will call in and chime in about sports or what they think about these athletes or pretty much whatever they want to talk about, as well as it be related to sports. What drives me crazy is when people call in and have absolutely no RESEARCH to back up their points! Granted, every form of research has it's hand in opinion too, but why is it that no one does their research to back up their points? People will call in and say, "Man, Kevinn Gahhnett has nuthin this year", to which they respond, "well, he's had a rough season, but he's still averaging this and that blah blah blah". the caller usually gets defensive, yells, and they hang up on him. I guess my point is if you're going to go on public radio, do some research on what you're talking about, at least to the degree where your point does not make you seem illiterate! I've called in a couple of times, but I always think about what I'm going to say, and make sure my facts are straight so I have a valid point/argument to discuss with them. I wish more callers would simply back up their points with research, or at the very least, a slight bit of knowledge on what their rambling about!

Stereotyping...

In chapter five, it deals with the representation of people in the media. It uses the thought of the media literally re-presenting the person to us, molding them to their own personaly ideas. I've grown really tired of this representation of people in the media. I hate, first of all, how much attention we pay to public figures and their personal lives. First of all, we don't know any of these people. Minus the few who say something along the lines of "oh, tom brady's my dad's co-worker's neighbor's dog's previous owner" and act like they know tom brady personally, for the most part, we don't know any of these people! How come we feel like we've derived an accruate opinion on the type of person any of these public figures are?

Think of it, the only time we ever see these people is when they are IN FRONT OF A CAMERA. They know how to act and look good to us, so why not do anything else? For example, why was everyone shocked when that jon and kate couple split? who cares! How come we thought we knew the guy? Because we see him in front of the camera on his stupid show? It's really insane! And drives me crazy! Also, we see athletes and think we know them because we watch them play sports. Everyone loves Jason Varitek, and says oh man, tek's a great guy. Yet, he cheated on his wife with the freaking analyst on NESN!!! And we're all surprised by it! WHO CARES???!!! the media will obviously present people in a positive light for the most part, and when controversy stirs, re-present them in the darkest light possible. However, the whole point of my rambling is this: who cares. Really. I don't care if Kevin Faulk drives 120 mph with a shotgun and weed in his car. The guy is a great football player and that's all I take him for. We shouldn't spend so much time peering into these public figure's personal lives. Just let them do what they do, and complain about what actually effects us, but for the most part, just let it go!

olympics

Does anyone else think it's strange how much media popularity that the olympics received this winter? Most winters, I feel like people are not really that much into the olympics, because they simply don't care that much. However, so many people tuned into the olympics this year, and especially for the USA hockey team. The rating for the gold medal game was the highest rated hockey game since the miracle on ice game in the 80's. I just wonder how this has gained so much popularity. Was it advertised more to us? I know that speed skater Apolo Ohno had a lot of advertisements for him, especially with nyquil cold medicine. Maybe that's why these olympics were so highly rated, because we saw it advertised so much. I sometimes wonder how much power advertising really has, but I bet it has more power than we realize.

mo' power

I've been thinking alot about our discussions last week on audiences and their power. It's wierd how much power we have in what is thrown in front of us. What's even stranger is that we don't know how much power we have! I always feel like we're just floating along and the media is throwing in front of us random things that we'll consume. But the fact of the matter is, if we don't like it then we won't watch it or listen to it. And more truth would be that these media producers probably have crazy meetings where they discuss what is popular and what is not and how they can reach out to us better, and draw in more of a crowd, which obviously for them means more money.

I think we have made some realization, though, to the fact that we have some level of control over media. With the popularity of youtube and user produced media, we've realized what people like, and put it out there, with great popularity as well. It's almost like we're beating the "big dogs" to the punch, and throwing OUR media out there before they even know what we like. Wonder if they use youtube to see what's popular...