The Media In Your Life Final

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Vaudeville Show as Early Movie Theater: In the early 1900s, popular comedy, dramatic skits, or song-and-dance entertainment was presented in local vaudeville theaters. Early silent films, usually with piano accompaniment, were also shown in these theaters.
Star System: By the 1930s, the New York--financed Hollywood studios had developed a system for ensuring financial stability based on movies featuring popular stars in familiar roles. Ironclad contracts forced actors to accept scripts that enhanced the particular image the studio wanted the star to project. Stars also were required to behave as their fans expected them to, both inside and outside the studio.
Domination of the Domestic Film Market: By 1930 five giant Hollywood studios dominated world filmmaking: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Bros. World War II cut Hollywood off from film markets abroad, but demand for movies intensified in the domestic market.
Response to television: In the 1950s, the movie industry, desperate to recapture audiences lost to television, competed by offering technical novelties, including 3-D Panavision. Soon Hollywood also collaborated with television, providing studio facilities for making innovative TV series.
Social Realism: A genre of films critical of society's structure that has maintained its thread throughout the years of movie production, although it rarely dominates the big screens. Such films have played an important part in the marketplace of ideas.
Code of Film Content: Various regulations have been in place, particularly at the local level, to control the content of films shown in communities. The film industry, constantly facing pressure to produce exciting films yet avoid moral injury to young audiences, developed a production code to comply with various local government restrictions. In 1968 the industry altered its position from controlling content to developing a system of ratings to identify levels of sexual and violent content and adult language.
Politics in the Movies: Even before McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, some politicians saw films and television as sources of corruption of society's political or moral values. The U.S. film industry, seeking to avoid such criticism, has typically discouraged controversial political content in movies.
Stereotypes of Women and Minorities: Despite a steady evolution toward more positive roles and the elimination of the most insulting stereotypes of gender or ethnic behavior on screen, most movies continue to show only relatively narrow ranges of behavior and few substantial roles for minority and female actors. Rarely are African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, or Native Americans portrayed in films outside a small set of social settings, and seldom are women shown in strong or dominant roles.
home-viewing revolution: At the time of its appearance in the mid-1970s, the videocassette recorder (VCR) was perceived as a threat to the traditional film industry. Movie producers feared consumers' ability to record movies from television to watch at their leisure. However, the industry quickly learned to join the revolution, to profit by spinoff sales of tapes of popular films, and to create products directly for the home-viewing market.
Competition in the International Market: The international sale of films has been an important source of profit for the U.S. movie industry, which sometimes earns more on violent or sensational U.S. movies abroad than at home. Some countries see U.S. films as a threat to their domestic film industries. However, several nations have vigorous movie traditions of their own, and British, French, and Chinese film styles have influenced U.S. filmmaking.
Magazines and Correlating the Parts of Society:: People from various social groups have used magazines to discover and make sense of the behavior of other groups. Information about others in magazines may help a group bring into perspective, or correlate, the actions of one part of the society with the actions of another.
Magazines as a Unifying Force in American Life:: Magazines have allowed people across class, social, and racial divisions to read common material, thus providing the basis for mutual understanding.
The Industrial Revolution and Magazine Technology:: In the mid- to late nineteenth century, developed societies were completing a transition from an economy based on handwork and agriculture to one based on mechanized industry. The shift from handwork to mechanized production increased efficiency and radically lowered the cost of printing, which made magazines and newspapers affordable for a large population.
Era of Democratic Reading:: By the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to the availability of cheap publications, all classes of society were encouraged to become readers. The new democracy of readers eagerly devoured newly created magazines and newspapers.
Specialization in Publishing:: As early as the mid-nineteenth century, magazines adopted the practice of targeting specific segments of an audience rather than appealing to the general public. Magazines continue this trend in the twenty-first century.
Muckrakers:: The label muckrakers was introduced by Theodore Roosevelt and has long been applied to investigative reporters who dig into backgrounds of people and organizations, often exposing corrupt political or business practices. The label sometimes connotes sensationalized or even irresponsible and unethical reporting.
Consumer and Business Magazines:: The two main types of magazines are magazines for general audiences of consumers and magazines for specialized audiences of professionals and businesspeople. Consumer magazines are distributed to the public through either subscriptions or retail sales, carry advertisements for consumer products, and may cover any general or specialized topic. Business magazines, sometimes called trade journals, are distributed through controlled free subscriptions or paid subscriptions and contain articles and advertisements that are of interest to small target audiences
Market Segments for Magazine Advertisers:: Each magazine strives to sell content and advertising to a specific segment of the total population that the publisher has selected as its target readership. The tastes of the target audience determine the nature of the magazine's offerings.
Magazine Start-Up and Financing: New magazines may get financial support from government or special interests, but most often the support comes from business financiers who have experience in the industry or are willing to take risks in hope of high returns. Some magazines seek funds from subscribers and patrons only (avoiding ads) or from advertisers only (offering the magazine free to readers), but most magazines are supported by a combination of advertising and subscriptions.
Magazine Publishing Process: To publish, magazines need the combined efforts of publishers, editors, writers, graphic artists, production staff, printers, ad managers, subscription managers, and distributors. These staff members provide content, physical print production, ad or subscription support, and distribution to the magazine's reading public.
Fragmenting Markets:: As rapidly shifting audiences and electronic technology push publications into geographically wider but more specialized segments, questions arise as to whether magazines will continue to correlate the parts of our society.
Broadcast Radio:: The technology of radio airwaves, which was originally conceived as a wireless telephone system or a narrowcast system, reaching a limited number of listeners, became predominantly a medium for sending out signals for wide-area reception by many radio receivers---a mass media system.
Network Broadcasting:: Broadcasting stations are usually linked in a cooperative system involving a formal business relationship, shared program content, and sometimes common ownership. These commercial networks shaped and dominated the U.S. radio industry from its infancy.
Airwave Scarcity:: Radio signals can be carried only on certain frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because the airwaves, as these frequencies are informally called, are considered public space, the government has regulated their use. Recent technological developments have enabled more signals to be broadcast on the airwaves, but government still plays a role in helping to determine how the expanded capacity can best be used.
Federal Communications Act of 1934:: Congress created the Federal Communications Commission with the passage of the 1934 act. The action was necessary after the radio acts of 1912 and 1927 proved ineffective at regulating wire and wireless communication. The FCC structure created by this act continues today with a major overhaul in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Commercial and Noncommercial Broadcasting:: Two types of stations make up the radio industry. Commercial broadcasting stations try to make a profit by selling advertising. Noncommercial broadcasting stations do not try to make a profit; they have other goals, such as public education.
Drive-Time Broadcast:: Significant audiences are available to broadcasters during the morning and afternoon periods when people are driving to and from school and work. These drive times represent prime markets for radio---and for radio advertisers.
Radio Markets for Consumers and Advertising:: The structure of radio markets requires that stations deliver content that listeners want, such as music, news, and talk, in order to gain an audience for advertisers' sales messages.
Radio Station Types:: The demand for information from various audiences is met by eight types of radio stations in the United States. In addition to the dominant commercially financed stations, there are stations run by governments, public consortiums, community groups, special interests, and educational institutions as well as shortwave operators and unregulated pirate broadcasters.
Internet Radio and Satellite Radio:: These two distribution systems resulted from the development of computer technology during the 1990s. The two forms of converging technology free radio stations from the geographic limits of terrestrial broadcasting and open up new audiences and markets.
Network Affiliate:: A television station typically contracts to carry one network's programming and commercials; the station thus becomes an affiliate of that network. In return, the network pays the station for use of its time. The three major networks---CBS, ABC, and NBC---historically gained much of their strength through powerful affiliation agreements.
Broadcasters as "Trustees" of the Airwaves:: Basing its regulations on the concept that airwave scarcity produces a common space that is subject to public laws, the U.S. government has long required that broadcasters function as trustees of the airwaves, operating by license in the public interest.
Single-Sponsor System:: In the early days of television, a single advertiser often sponsored an entire show. This system declined as television time became more expensive and the reputation of sponsors suffered from the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s.
Network-Owned and -Operated ("O and O") Groups:: Groups of stations owned by the seven television networks. They make more money for the networks than the network programming.
Demographic and Psychographic Approaches to Broadcast Marketing:: Research analysts looking for TV advertising markets identify program preferences using two common approaches: Demographic approaches stress statistical links between program features and factors such as age, education, income, and gender. Psychographic approaches stress links between programs and potentially measurable factors in audience lifestyles or in categories of personal likes and dislikes.
TV News and Information Formats:: TV information programming has evolved from a variety of formats ranging from the traditional evening and morning news shows to variations such as documentaries, interviews, and newsmagazines.
Entertainment Formulas:: Because of financial risks, producers of television entertainment tend to rely on standard entertainment patterns or formulas that have been successful in the past. They often extend adult formulas into entertainment for children; if violent programs attract young adult audiences, a similar violent format may be used in children's programs.
Cost per Consumer in the TV Advertising Market:: The key factor in selling TV advertising is how much it costs to reach a single consumer. Therefore, the number of viewers a particular program attracts determines the fee charged to advertisers. Some of the most expensive ad spots are in Super Bowl broadcasts, which attract enormous audiences.
Market Factors in International Television:: Satellite transmission technology and international corporate mergers have made television a worldwide force. Key factors include ownership and availability of satellite services, broad access to content through mergers of production companies, and the development of international television content through cooperative global conglomerates.
Cultural Imperialism:: The forcing of one country's cultural values on another country through dominance of media content. For example, many young people around the world imitate U.S. culture because of what they see in U.S. television programs and movies.
Digital Television (DTV): Digital television converts TV programming into a digital format rather than the analog format used since television was invented. By sending the programs as a series of ones and zeros, the picture is sharper than it would be with analog distribution. All TV programming must be digital by 2006.
High-Definition Television (HDTV):: By presenting the picture with a greater number of lines projected on a TV monitor than that found with standard digital television (SDTV), HDTV produces the highest level of TV reproduction quality. However, HDTV takes a larger bandwidth than SDTV. Some TV companies would rather send SDTV and use the excess bandwidth for other purposes, such as data transmittal and wireless telephones.
Folk Ballad Tradition:: In colonial times, American popular music was strongly grounded in lyrical or narrative ballad songs. Usually with a verse and chorus format, the tunes often originating in England, Scotland, or Ireland. These story songs gradually merged with other traditions to form distinctive American musical forms such as bluegrass, country, and western music.
Tin Pan Alley:: The sound of pianos in the commercial music district of New York City gave the name "Tin Pan Alley" to the industry that produced popular songs for sheet music, vaudeville and minstrel performances, and early recording in the United States. Today, popular music writing is concentrated in New York and California.
Rock 'n' Roll:: The increased demand for varied radio and recorded music in the post--World War II era encouraged a blend of styles that eventually merged the African American, urban popular, and country traditions to form rock 'n' roll in the 1950s.
Music as a Forum for Rebellion:: Popular music has often served younger generations as a way to express and encourage rebellion against existing social rules and norms. Music helps express the emotions people feel about their lives.
Blending of Musical Forms:: Popular music evolves as musicians blend different strains of music. Rock 'n' roll was born and developed this way. Sometimes social controversy emerges as critics and scholars debate whether culturally based music should be blended and who should be credited with changes in popular music.
Commercialization:: Music that has the potential to attract a wide audience undergoes a process in which individual expression is converted into a form that is designed to appeal to a specific demographic group. The commercialization process tends to move power from the artists to the recording executives and audiences.
Competing Technologies:: The 1950s saw an interruption in the steady advance (from zinc to wax to shellac to plastic disks) that major recording companies had developed in marketable audio technology. When an explosion of new technology confused buyers with three competing turntable speeds and two record disk sizes, the major recording companies decided on a standard (33 1/3 rpm) disk to regain the market. The smaller (45 rpm) record remained as a secondary format until the 1980s.
Majors versus Independents:: With their deep pockets and their ability to mass-produce copies of recordings at low average costs, the five largest recording companies have the economic advantage over independent companies. The independents try to counter this by promoting relatively unknown musicians who are creating new and exciting kinds of music.
Social Roles of Music:: Music serves as an important part of cultural rituals, helps promote rebellion among youth, provides an identity for generations, and promotes cultural norms through commercialization.
Recording Process:: The recording of music involves several steps of planning and assembling sections of taped sessions. They may be recorded directly all at one time, or multiple tracks may be recorded. In the editing and mixing process, complex studio equipment is used to merge the sections or the multiple tracks to make a single tape, which is then edited to produce the best possible mix of vocals and instrumentals that has the sound qualities the producer desires.
Revenue from Licensing:: For recording companies and artists, the licensing of performing and recording rights is an important way to increase revenue beyond the uncertain profits from direct record sales. The copyright owner (usually a record company) collects revenue whenever a piece is performed or rerecorded or whenever a recording is played in a public setting.
Recording Promotion and Distribution:: Companies traditionally promote a recording by making people aware of it through performances on radio and television. They distribute a recording by selling it directly to record stores or indirectly to discount and department stores. The latest electronic technology offers new opportunities for promotion and distribution. Many record stores provide listening stations that allow customers to sample records before buying them. The Internet offers sampling and downloading of music.
Payola in Music Promotion:: Paying DJs or program producers to play specific songs on a radio station or video channel to enhance the song's popularity. Investigated by Congress since the 1950s, the conspiracy between the recording and broadcasting industries is probably impossible to uproot, especially as combined ownership affects more sectors of the media and recording industries.
Multimedia Packages:: Sophisticated method to sell music with other media products, including videos, movies, game CDs, concert tours, and web sites. The inclusive items promote each other and increase overall profits.
Information-Based Economies:: Economies in which a large portion of the national product is accounted for through production of information for entertainment, investing, and economic decision making.
Information Society:: The United States, and to some extent the world, is in the midst of an information revolution that parallels the Industrial Revolution in scope. An information-age society faces the serious question of whether the members who have access to electronic equipment and an understanding of technology will become information-rich while others become information-poor.
Media Convergence:: Some scholars argue that media convergence---the blending of television and computers through technology, for example---only creates a new way of distributing information. Others believe that convergence of media technology actually creates new styles and modes of information, which has been transformed based on the way it is delivered.
Privacy and Anonymity:: Courts have ruled people have a right to privacy, but sometimes that right conflicts with the need to find those who abuse access to free communication over the Internet.
Regulation in the Information Age:: In the early days of the Internet, regulation was compared to law in the Wild West---there wasn't much. As more people use the Internet, pressures to make money increase, and issues of security evolve, regulation has grown. However, the extent and nature of Internet regulation continues to be an issue in courts and legislatures and will be for years to come.
Virtual Reality:: This technology can be used to simulate reality. Because it is expensive and still in development, it is most often used in practical situations, such as training pilots and paratroopers. However, if virtual reality technology is used for widespread entertainment, propaganda, or a combination of the two, it may pose serious ethical considerations.
Sensationalism:: In the 1980s, many media companies went public (offered sale of their stocks to the public) and became vulnerable to stockholders' demands for continuous high profits. They found that talk shows featuring sensational topics could be produced inexpensively and garner high profits. Other sensational content also seems to attract viewers and readers. However, media companies are also under pressure to balance the need for profit against social responsibility and a high quality of journalistic integrity.
Moral Reasoning Processes:: Media ethicists have developed various moral reasoning processes that communication professionals can use to help them make ethical decisions from a principled basis rather than by reacting intuitively.
Fundamental Ethical Standards:: Although most individuals and groups agree on a few fundamental ethical standards, they often disagree about specifics and about whether fundamental standards are met. The commonly agreed-on standards are accuracy, fairness, balance, accurate representation, and truth.
Credibility as an Economic Incentive for Ethics:: Credibility, or a measurement of how trustworthy a journalist or media organization is considered to be, is not just an ethical issue but also an economic one. Some critics believe that for a news organization to remain profitable over time, the public must view it as credible.
Conflict of Interest:: Along with government officials and others in positions of responsibility, journalists are under pressure to avoid allowing personal activities or interests to interfere with their professional responsibilities. Journalists have an obligation to strive for unbiased coverage of an event or situation.
Codes of Ethics:: Many media organizations establish codes of ethics to standardize their employees' behavior in response to events and to safeguard themselves against increased government regulation. Guidelines remind employees that ethical standards are considered important to credibility, profit, and the good of society.
Balancing Theory:: The Supreme Court, as well as the Congress, adheres to a balancing theory, which expresses the need for balance between individual rights and the rights of society as a whole. This balance is essential to a democratic government.
Direct Telecommunications Regulation:: Since the early stages of broadcasting, government regulated broadcast in more direct ways than it did print media. Supporters of government regulation argued that the airwaves, which are limited in quantity, belong to the people, not to the broadcasters, and that station owners should be responsive to the community and work in its best interest. This is often referred to as the trusteeship model or the scarcity doctrine.
Fairness Doctrine:: The collection of FCC rules that was first passed in the 1940s required broadcast stations to air competing views on controversial issues, although earlier regulations had prohibited such debate. The FCC no longer enforces the rules, and some critics claim that the result has been a watering down of public debate.
Content Regulation:: The regulation of subject matter and actual words in a broadcast or print message has been the most controversial area of regulation because open and robust discussion is considered essential to a democratic society.
Business Regulation:: Mass media outlets are usually owned by large corporations. As big businesses, media owners are required to adhere to labor laws, environmental regulations, and such standards as postal law. In many cases, media owners have protested having to abide by these laws, arguing that the laws infringe on their First Amendment rights.
Chilling Effect:: Advocates of absolute free expression argue that most regulations have a chilling effect on reporters; the regulations may prevent reporters from going after tough stories because they fear being sued. If lawsuits become too oppressive, they affect how information is disseminated and debated in the marketplace of ideas.

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