The Original Media Clowns

I've always wondered why some scandalous politicians and celebrities of today are easy fodder for the media, specifically entertainment, to cover. If you're wondering who I might be referring to, it's easy to point out numerous cheating politicians like Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and colorful celebrities like Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan. I would characterize these omnipresent personalities as today's media clowns. By my definition, media clowns, represent eccentric characters that emerge into the news through the odd or deplorable things they do. Once established in the media, the quickly learn how to play up to the camera, essentially using their own air time to benefit financially and always push their own agendas. In other words, these are deprived, desperate and attention-seeking people. It is not enough that Lady Gaga out shines everyone at one of the million televised award shows by dressing up like Madonna, so she shows up in a suit of literal raw meat the next time around. Likewise, it is also not enough that Anthony Weiner, husband of one of Obama's cabinet members, to be accused by some woman of sending her pictures of his wiener. No, he has to go on a media crusade to save his name while more naked pictures of him emerge.

With all this in mind, I present to you what I think helped pave the way for attention-grubbing celebrities or the inexplicable willingness for media outlets to frequently gravitate around these people: the Yippies. The Yippies (Youth International Party) were a counter-culture group of people that first emerged during the Vietnam War and the Anti-War Protest Movement of the 1960s. If you're wondering, the Yippes adapted their name from the Hippies and was the inspiration for the naming of the Yuppies in the 1980s. Unlike, the Occupy_______ protesters of today, the Yippies had two leaders that would become a media joke: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Their sole mission as an organization was to make a mockery of the media, protest the status quo and materialism of the country and symbolically elect a pig for president in 1968. Abbie, Jerry and the rest of the Yippies' pranks and jokes begin innocently enough like when they managed to get a tour of the New York Stock Exchange building where they threw hundreds of fake and real bills off the balcony above the stock room. They watched with glee as the traders down below scrambled to scoop up as much money as they could. They also both participated in a group effort at the Pentagon where they tried to levitate the building. For these acts, they were subpoenaed by the House of Un-American Activities Committee and showed up to court wearing Santa Claus, Viet Cong or Uncle Sam costumes. But, their coup de grace came when their effort to stage protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention was thwarted by the city of Chicago and the police, leading, in part, to the rioting that overshadowed the entire DNC event that year. An entire cross-section of the New Left including Hoffman and Rubin were tried with conspiracy to riot.

The conspiracy charges would be later dropped and both men would soon fade out of the media's attention as protesting the war was becoming more and more irrelevant. As cyclical has the four seasons, the media's job is finding the next attention-seeking clown who is too moon struck with promises of fame and wealth, albeit brief, to realize the fact they they're being shamelessly exploited on a national scale. Octomom, anyone? Who will be the media's next big victim? Just give it a few weeks!

News Distortion At Its Best...or Worst

Came across a tease for a news article of a fatal bus crash tragedy on a major news source. The tease screams at you with a picture of a school bus torn and gnarled and tipping over a ravine. The headline mentions some important aspects of a news story like a possibly reason to why the bus crashed, being "overpacked," and who was involved "18 kindergartners killed." The stimuli/picture/captions tug at our heart strings and we as readers, parents and human beings instantly put ourselves in sympathy mode as we think how awful it must be for the parents, family and school for these children. We also think how could this happen to such innocent children and where? Is my child effected? Is this near some distant relatives of mine?

Literally, the way the headline reads and the information they give makes us want to click and read to find out where this horrible bus crash occurred, because you are sure it's local. Well, all of these emotions went through me and I had to find out where in the United States this happened. I click and find out the bus crash was in China.

The entire second picture shocks me. Not only is the bus crash out of China and not the United States but, the school bus itself is different. The top picture is the traditional American school bus and the bottom is a yellow van, not necessarily known as a "school bus" to Americans. The top picture gives us every indication that it is an American school bus crash and therefore an important story for all Americans to read about because it may involve our children's safety. The bus picture change and the patent omission of where the bus crash occurred is "localizing" a news story for an American reader where our initial emotions or responses are raw. We expect to read a story that is going to sadden us about the tragedy, but also provide a critical commentary on the dangers of having a over-crowded American bus, a vehicle that historically has never had any seat belts. Now, the emotion to the fact that 18 innocent children's lives were taken shouldn't change, but we still breathe a collective sign of relief that it doesn't effect us or our children in America. But, alas, major news sources like AOL, Yahoo and MSN benefit off of our emotions not only in the wording or pictures used in their stories that distort the real facts, but also make money (pennies) on the frequentcy that readers click the "read more" option.

I don't think it's right that news corporations make money off of our emotions or responses to headlines, but that's been happening since broadcast news began. The same tactics are now used with internet news sources that depend on subscribers, reader traffic and article clicks for their revenue. Watch for these kind of new articles where the wording is a little bit off or some huge part of the puzzle is missing like "where." Didn't we learn about the "who,what,when,where,why and how" paradigm in grade school?

"The Wonder Years" and a Study In Realism

One of my favorite sitcoms growing up was "The Wonder Years." This comedy-drama ran on ABC for six seasons from 1988 to 1993. It, of course, documented the life of the main character, Kevin, played by Fred Savage during the height of the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1973 (exactly twenty years earlier). My interest in the show never wavered because it continuously meant something different to me at different points in my life. I used to watch the show purely for the pleasure of picking up little parallels I picked Kevin's parents, Jack and Norma, and my own and between Kevin's friends and my own at the time.

That was then, this is now. I have recently re-discovered the show not for any of the reasons listed above, but instead to fulfill my hunger for anything and everything about the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement and how the war split opinions across previously tight bloodlines. The episode "Private Butthead" dealt with Wayne and Kevin being forced to make a decision about what they want to do after high school. Wayne struggles while studying for the SATs and comes to the realization that he's not good at anything. When Wayne comes home from supposedly taking the SATs, he instead drops a bombshell on his family that he has enlisted into the army with his best friend, Wart. Both his parents are shocked and Jack doesn't like it at all, trying to convince him not to go. In the end, Jack can't stop him, but shows up at the recruitment center to find out that Wayne didn't pass the physical test for the army either. In a later episode, Wart, who was recruited, returns with post-traumatic stress disorder in a town that isn't familiar to him anymore.

These type of story lines and the emotions that comes with it, feel very real to me. I would venture to guess that the writers and producers of "The Wonder Years"were either parents themselves or growing up during this turbulent time and used their experiences for plots of episodes. They were able to capture the realism of two different generations of people during this time: parents and their children. Parents like Jack and Norma with plenty of life experience of their own before the Vietnam War tries to instill 1950s values into their children who are growing up in a very vivid and confusing decade. You have one generation that holds back and reserves and another one that thinks more openly and acts more impulsively. This argument is, of course, the definition of all parents and children in every era of time, but I think this divide has became much more evident in eras, decades and generations since the 1960s.    For my next post, I will try to chronicle the entire anti-war movement including it's beginnings on the UC Berkeley campus, some of the media clowns that came out of it and the true death of the Hippie: the New Right movement of the 1980s.

Like Bobby Ewing Returning From The Dead...

"Television As You've Never Read Before" is back! I started this blog alomost six months ago to not only share my thoughts on the world of television and how it affects culture and society, but also provides a good writing forum for me. For my first returning blog, I will discuss where how my interests in media began:

My interest began in media during my first semester in college through a course called "Social Aspects of the Media." For the first time in my college career I was mesmerized. Not only was my professor refreshing, expressive and opinionated (in a good way)  but, she also treated her class as a forum, where anything media was open for discussion. Most of the class consisted of articles, studies, declassified documents and journal reviews. The handouts would explain the plight of each miniority group and how they were represented in the media (usually negitively viewed in the media or not covered at all). Some of these explosive examples include a review of everything the FCC deems either an obscenity, indecency and profanity on TV, the image of white and black masculinity on television and a press release featuring statistics of violence on popular TV shows. During the next few semesters, a few other classes would clench it for me. I was exposed to discussions and articles about various marginalized groups across society and how their efforts affected media in a social movement class and watched incendiary documentaries on McCarthyism, Vietnam and the New Right movement of the Reagan years in a news and documentary class. These years in college yielded some of my best and most investigative research papers.

Besides writing sitcoms, this became my second interest. And I fantasize of the day I can thoughtfully meld these two worlds into a sitcom that would give classics such as "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H" a run for its money in ratings and acclaim. However, right now it might be a pipe dream to have a successful sitcom about media issues, at least on the network frontier. Criticism in media is often geared towards the corporate trail that many parent companies of networks like Disney, Viacom, News Corporation etc. blaze. This idea is indeed a work in progress!

How Ratings Work

The rating can be a shows best friend or worst enemy. The rating system for television shows single-handedly determine whether or not a TV show continues or is cancelled. In the Must-See TV era and  earlier, it used to be that networks gave ample time for a freshman show to gain an audience. Both "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" were ratings bombs for NBC for its first couple of seasons. Now, many shows don't make it past its first season or better still, don't make it past its first few episodes. A few shows were even recently cancelled before they aired their pilot episode. The idea, today, is that the economy is still slugging along, broadcast networks are hemorrhaging audiences and most shows are just too expensive to produce. The consequence of all this is a ratings decline and the instant this happens, the show has to be cancelled. Broadcast networks are, and for some time, have been trying to figure out how to compete and give its shows an edge in order to equally compete with cable networks. There are a lot of supremely edgy and provocative shows on cable and broadcast networks are just trying to re-find its place in the television world. But, like everything else in life, it's cyclical. We will see another golden age in broadcast network television. Below are definitions of both ratings and shares:

RATING: Audience measurement unit representing the percent of the potential total audience tuned to a specific program or station.

By 1997's data there were an estimate of 98 million television household homes in the country. The rating is a percentage of the total television households. So a rating of 1.0 represents 1% of all TV homes or about 980,000. A rating of 12.5 or 12.5%, would of course, equal about 12,250,000 potential TV homes watching the program.

SHARE: A measurement for comparing audiences; represents the percentage of total viewing audience tuned to a given station. The share gives information specifically on the percentage of homes that are using their television (HUT).

HUT: The rating percentage for every minute of television when in use. The rating fluctuates throughout the day as people turn on and off their televisions.

The relationship between a rating, share and HUT can be plugged into an equation to determine missing data. If a rating is unknown, the share and HUT percentage can be taken and put into this equation:
        
                                                                                 R
                                                                ________________________
                                                                   40 (S)                  5 (HUT)

In this case, 40 and 5 are multiplied together to make 200 and then divided by 100. The rating for this show becomes 2 or 2%.


Nielsen Media Research has been the primary company for recording ratings of TV shows. There have been other lesser known companies, but Nielsen has been far more successful and has since overtaken the market. Incidentally, Arbitron used to be one of these lesser known television rating companies, but has since moved on to recording ratings for radio stations.

Nielsen Media Research has employed several different kinds of methods for recording ratings for TV shows. When Nielsen Media Research began they had to first find a sample of the American population in which to get their data from. Originally, willing families were mailed surveys or "diaries" that required them to fill it out information about what shows they watched that week. These families were usually paid some nominal amount and become affectionately known as "Nielsen families." The "diary" method, however, was deemed inaccurate and biased. Since these were only mailed out in specific intervals to "Nielsen families", most people filling out the information forgot what they watched a week earlier and there was no way to prove what they actually watched. Surprisingly, this method is still being used by Nielsen, perhaps in very rural areas of the country, but much more high-tech ways of recording what people watch are more mainstream today. Since 1986, most "Nielsen families" today are set up with "people meters." This device is connected directly to the TV set and allows for viewing data to be separated by gender and age of each "Nielsen family." Each member of the family is assigned a certain viewing button where information like age and gender are pre-recorded. This method is, however, also likely to change in the next few years.

*Statistics, equations and definitions obtained from:

 Ferguson, D. & Walker, J. (1998). The Broadcast Television Industry. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. (APA, baby!)

News Media Theories and You: Part 2

Viewers of television news are often bombarded by stories of doom-and-gloom. It is the act of Agenda-setting that is helping the violent stories take precedence over any other tamer subject matter. These are the stories, of course, that hook the audience from a previous show into watching that ultimately equates to ratings and ad revenue. There is, however, a relationship that has been studied between light and heavy television news viewers and how one perceives the world around them. As you might expect, heavy television news viewers perceive the world as scarier and gloomier than viewers who don't watch much news. The theory and relationship is referred to as CULTIVATION THEORY or SCARY-WORLD THEORY. Local television news might be the best example of how this theory works. Local television news programs, like national news, put their most pressing and often violent stories up front.  Violence is being localized for many television viewers creating the Cultivation effect, but on a much more personal, regional level. Moreover, major national or international news events like coverage of earthquakes or hurricanes from across the world become local interest issues in your town. Many of these stories become "what if it happened here" scenarios where all the information conveyed is purely speculative. This certainly brings home destructive events occurring elsewhere for viewers and creates a brief heightened sense of awareness in everyone.

Piggybacking off Cultivation theory is another theory that attempts to discover what people get out of watching television, such as gratification. This theory or construct is called the USES AND GRATIFICATIONS APPROACH. Expected consequences of using the medium is that viewers have psychological or sociological needs to be fulfilled by watching TV, and are only fully gratified when a pattern of watching television is developed and is used habitually. This approach is finally broken down into three areas of study: information or surveillance gratification, personal identity gratification and cognitive gratification. The viewer could watch a program simply to be entertained, or with an active involvement where they become briefly affected and may even respond more strongly to ads during the program. Keep all this in mind next time you're watching TV, just don't become like this kid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atv4SBq_MVE   

News Media Theories and You: Part 1

What does "the media" even mean anymore? There are innumerable amounts of information out there in which to get our news, gossip, videos and articles from each of our many personal tech devices. These devices, however, give us much of the same information or entertainment but, accessible in different environments. We view incoming e-mail messages from our smart phone when we're on the go, but use our laptops at home for the rest of our e-mails. This overload of information and sources where information is obtained is no less confusing and daunting for TV news. They're largest competitor is well, you. They now have to fight for their viewers attention. Because, even if ratings show a certain demographic and age bracket are watching their program, it doesn't mean they're watching whole-heartedly. Often, while the TV's on, we're on the phone, writing e-mails, checking our Facebook pages or Tweeting what we had for lunch. In fact, there is some simple terms for viewers attention spans while watching a TV show:

AVOIDANCE: Intentionally not watching commercials, through the use of the remote control or physically leaving the room.

Out of this term comes two actions that viewers take once the commercials of a show begin. There is passive avoidance where the viewer will simply leave the room or turn their attention to tech devices. And their is active avoidance where the viewer flips to a another channel.

ZIPPING: Fast-forwarding through commercials of shows that are taped.

ZAPPING: The removal altogether of each commercial block of a recorded show; the action of flipping the channel to avoid commercials.

These last two terms might be becoming outmoded, but the general action of zapping is still prevalent, especially with devices such as DVRs and TiVOs.

Now, news organizations and television networks like CNN, CBS, NBC, etc. deserves credit where credit is due. Many networks have wised up to their viewers and stepped up their "audience-capturing" methods. Many of these networks have expanded their presence online to include social media. CNN, CBS News and the like have their own Twitter pages where they can deliver second-by-second breaking news to a large online demographic rapidly. These messages can pop up to alert you of their presence at any time or at any place: Starbucks, while driving, in a meeting or even while watching a news show on TV of the same network.

In the last year, CNN has also drastically changed the appearance and presentation of their news programs. In fact, some anchors now stand and deliver the news. One obvious "audience-capturing" method they now employ on us is to present the newscast like the applications on a common IPhone or IPOD. They have several video windows stored on a large TV screen next to them and activate each video by touching it and then expanding the window with their fingers. Once one video is over they move the window across the screen and out of the way. And, of course to bring every a visual home for the viewers, they employ the screen writing utensil of the NFL to literally circle seemingly interesting items on the screen. CNN is novel in employing this high-tech method of presenting news, but the change was probably employed to save revenue, viewership and to create an edge amongst other news organizations. I think newscasts presented in this manner want to convey the message that the stories are unbiased, random and without an agenda. But, unfortunately, as long as there are TelePrompters, agendas follow.

AGENDA THEORY: The media's power to increase the importance of an issue in the public's mind by giving it more coverage.

This theory is as old as TV news itself. The very definition of news is structure, story and appeal. Every newscast has to have an ordered set of stories from most important to least important. Most important stories at the top of the newscast are given enough coverage where we as viewers can easily form our own opinions about the subject matter. But, what's to say this issue is actually important compared to any other story in the newscast?  It is this unbalance of news that we have to decipher for ourselves and decide which issue is actually important to us. I'll leave you today with a video example of this phenomenon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbCYr-U7MAQ

        

In the Sitcom World: Single-Cam v. Multi-Cam

This question has plagued creators and producers in the sitcom world for some time now. In the past ten years there has been a resurgence, or renaissance if you will, of single-camera comedies. At first glance, it would appear that the single-camera comedy might be winning the war, but this could be just smoke and mirrors. The single-camera comedy is still experimental and will most likely continue to evolve until it finds its most comfortable format. I don't think the newness has wore off yet as an overwhelmingly amount of new sitcoms are introduced to us as single-camera comedies. The ratio of failure then reflects this phenomenon with a large number of single-camera comedies cancelled within its first season, leaving the number of successful multi-cam and single-cam shows about even. Hence, "The Paul Reiser Show," "Running Wilde," "Mr. Sunshine" versus just "Better Together."

If you were able to deduce my opinion on this argument, I prefer multi-camera comedy, especially with a live studio audience. I feel like a old man saying it but, I think for someone who wants to be a writer in the television industry, the writer can heavily benefit from having a live studio audience present. It is the instant gratification that is most thrilling to writers and show staffs. The writer instantly knows if a joke they wrote works with an live audience or not. Depending on the degree of laughter attached to a certain joke, the writer can determine how much to ratchet it up to get a more satisfying laugh. I think the experience is also beneficial for the actor who has scenes to perform in front of the audience. Each scene is taken a couple times until they get just the right one where the actor displays impeccable timing, high energy and is in sync with the audience. 

Some notable elements of a single-camera comedy is of course the use of single camera instead of three or four. A major absence for single-camera comedies is the laugh track and a live studio audience. In the usually mockumentary style concept of many successful single-camera comedies, a live audience would not make sense. Often characters of this genre directly reference the camera because in their world, they know that a documentary is being filmed about their life. So, for a documentary's sake, it wouldn't make sense to also reference a random group of people laughing at them! But, then again, it doesn't make sense in the multi-camera world either. The notion that there's a group of unseen people laughing at jokes told by a cast of characters that don't know they're there is absurd! The benefit of a single-camera comedy is namely the freedom of camera angles and movement. These shows have a much more "in-your-face" feel. Sometimes a certain angle or motion can convey a story plot point, reveal or even be the punchline for a joke. The camera becomes another member of the family, one that's intrusive and bombarding, but also available when a character needs to vent their angry or cry their eyes out, in private and seemingly without judgement. This idea is innovative, unique and very effective in story telling.

Of course, no matter what format of sitcom is used, it helps as a writer to be surrounded by a staff of other writers where ideas are continuously thrown against the wall until something sticks. Both genres of sitcoms have a staff and above all, that is most important for any writer. However, the virtue of a live audience for multi-camera comedies have that Classical Greek and Roman feel that is undeniable. Performing in front of a live audience is an institution and should be preserved as such. It's hard to really say which genre is winning right now, CBS is one of top networks in the Nielsen's and the network produces solely multi-camera sitcoms. But, on the other hand, ABC has received a much-needed resurgence from their single-camera sitcoms. I think both genres will continue to perform their dance while fighting to lead until they finally draw a line in the sand and agree not to cross it. Yes, you can find relief in the fact that one day both genres will live harmoniously and fluidly as one in TV land!  

An Incarnation of Sorts

I'm an aspiring television writer and live in Los Angeles, CA. I've been dedicated to the television medium all my life and consider television to be anything but the passive activity it's portrayed to be. Television has had a bad rap in the last few decades, especially when regarding children and their television-viewing consumption, but everything in moderation, right? Television is a powerful, imagery-laced portal that transports its viewers into another realm that at the very least, stirs up viewer's emotions who might otherwise not be so extroverted. Every once in a while, you hear about some man, usually one living in a kind of house that's supported by wheels, blows out their television set with a shot gun because they were watching their favorite TV show and was pissed when they learned "so-and-so" was caught cheating on their boyfriend in an episode. Case and point, I believe popular past shows like: "Friends", "Seinfeld", "Roseanne", "Lost" and "Law and Order" would not be the powerhouses they once were if viewers didn't emote positive or NEGATIVE responses from their favorite characters.

The same logic of a character's likeability can be applied to the news as well. The images of certain news events like the 1969 moon landing, Apollo 13 incident, 1992 L.A. riots, O.J. Simpson murder trial and the 9/11 attacks brought to us live on television has elicited hundreds of emotions from its viewers.

One thing is clear: television is a powerful tool of imagery and raw emotion that keeps us coming back for more. In this blog, I want to explore the many facets of television that incorporates a deep and imbedded social history and impact, the influence of corporate news media and reviews and the sociology of some of your favorite TV shows. I hope to write entries once a day and I hope you get as much out of this blog as I will inevitably get out of it. Until tomorrow!