COMM 101 Mid Term

Media analysis & critique

Examine how media create meanings, operate, and exercise power; question why they work this way.

Analytical approach

Break media into parts and examine their relationships.

Critical approach

Question assumptions and the status quo; criticism need not be negative.

Media as culture

Media are part of everyday life and shared systems of meaning.

TISCA

Julie d'Acci's integrated approach: Text, Industry, Social Context, Audience; study their connections.

TISCA: Text

Content, form, representations, and meanings of a media artifact.

TISCA: Industry

Production, ownership, workers, funding, and business decisions.

TISCA: Social Context

Political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances surrounding media.

TISCA: Audience

Who encounters media and how they use and interpret it.

Media are never neutral

Media can reinforce or challenge values, beliefs, identities, and power.

Mass media

Centralized, one-to-many communication reaching large audiences.

Mass media examples

Newspapers, radio, television, and movies.

Media change time: example

Scheduled broadcasts organize viewers' activities around broadcast times.

Media change space: example

Broadcasts bring distant events into the home.

Media change relationships: example

Shared broadcasts create common experiences; targeted media connect particular groups.

Society-making media

Bring large populations into shared cultural experiences and concerns.

Segment-making media

Address particular audience subgroups with tailored content.

Mass-media timeline

Newspapers → radio → television → cable → commercial internet → second Golden Age.

Timeline: newspapers and radio

1900s: newspapers dominate; 1920s-1930s: radio becomes a major mass medium.

Timeline: television

Emerges in the late 1930s-early 1940s; expands rapidly after WWII, especially in the 1950s.

Timeline: sponsorship to networks

1940s-1960: sponsorship era; 1960-1980s: Classic Network Era and spot ads.

Timeline: cable and internet

1980s onward: cable expands; around 1994: commercial internet.

Commercial media system

For-profit media funded by advertising, subscriptions, and data; business pressures shape production.

Commercial media: audience role

Audience attention and characteristics help determine advertising value and programming decisions.

Commercial media: competition

Companies compete for audiences and revenue; consolidation reduces competition and can cross national boundaries.

Sponsorship

A sponsor funds programming; early sponsors and agencies also produced shows.

Live advertisements

Ads performed during a live broadcast.

Advertising spots

Separate ads interrupt programs; rates depend on audience and time slot.

Product placement

Commercial products appear within a story.

Sponsored content

Content paid for by a sponsor.

Subscription

Audiences pay for media access.

Targeted advertising

Ads selected for audiences using characteristics or data.

Selling data / We are the product

Companies monetize user data, attention, and advertisers' access to audiences.

Advertising changes over time

Single-sponsor live ads → spot ads → mixed models including integrated ads, subscriptions, and data.

Before quiz show scandals

Sponsors/agencies produced shows; networks sold airtime; sponsors held substantial programming influence.

After quiz show scandals

Networks gained programming control and sold ad spots to multiple advertisers.

Quiz show lecture example

Twenty-One (1956), associated with sponsored programming and integrated live ads.

Newspaper chains

One publisher owns multiple newspapers.

Newspaper chain examples

Hearst, Scripps-Howard, and Gannett.

Media consolidation

Ownership concentrates in fewer companies, reducing competition.

Media conglomeration

A large company combines businesses across media sectors.

Vertical integration

Ownership across production, distribution, and exhibition.

Vertical integration example

A film studio also owns distribution and movie theaters.

Horizontal integration

Common ownership across different media sectors.

Synergy

Cooperation produces a combined effect greater than separate efforts.

Synergy example

Coordinate a property's films, television, merchandise, and marketing.

Synergy and audiences

Build prolonged brand investment; ownership controls properties, distribution, revenue, and branding.

Synergy criticism

Reusable properties and sequels may reduce cultural variety and medium-specific creativity.

Golden Age of Television

1947-1957: live broadcasts, sponsored anthology dramas, prestige talent, and broad family appeal.

Early television experience

Postwar viewing emphasized liveness, scheduled appointments, and continuous flow.

Live television / Liveness

Events or performances broadcast as they occur, experienced simultaneously by viewers.

Teleplays

Standalone television dramas, often approximately one hour within anthology series.

Why anthology teleplays succeeded

Prestige talent, high ratings, sponsor enthusiasm, and demand for programming.

Dead-centerism programming

Middle-of-the-road, family-friendly programming designed for broad mass appeal.

Appointment viewing

Watching at a program's scheduled broadcast time.

Flow

Raymond Williams: a continuous, planned sequence blending programs, ads, and promotions.

Flow: industry purpose

Keep viewers watching across programs and advertisements.

Television as cultural forum

Newcomb and Hirsch: TV lets texts and audiences work through shared concerns and disagreements.

Cultural forum: process

Working through conflicting views matters more than reaching one final agreement.

Polysemy

A text can support multiple meanings and interpretations.

Cultural forum and fragmentation

Niche audiences may avoid opposing views, weakening shared public discussion.

Second Golden Age of Television

Late 1990s-2000s onward: prestige programs, high production values, and complex storytelling.

Narrative complexity

Combines episodic and serial storytelling with backstories, layered meanings, and experimental forms.

Operational aesthetic

Admiring how a story is constructed and how its creators pull it off.

Narrative complexity: audience role

Viewers deepen stories through interpretation, rewriting, extensions, and circulating meanings.

Narrative complexity: cultural significance

Kackman: complex stories can support complex representations and political understanding.

Narrative complexity examples

LOST's Season 3 finale and The Wire.

Soap operas and complexity

Long arcs and complex backstories challenge assumptions that complexity belongs only to prestige TV.

Vast wasteland

Newton Minow's 1961 criticism: public-airwave broadcasters owe public service, not merely shareholder profits.

Quality media texts

Texts judged prestigious or valuable; standards reflect cultural values and social hierarchies.

Quality TV and other arts

Theater/cinema comparisons confer prestige; Kackman questions treating good TV as something other than TV.

Quality media audiences

Commercially desirable viewers likely to engage with brands and spend money.

Quality audience examples

Lecture demographics: ages 18-49 and women ages 18-34.

Mass audience

An audience imagined as a whole, often consuming the same media simultaneously.

Audience fragmentation

Audiences disperse across more outlets and viewing patterns.

Audience segmentation

Industries deliberately group audiences by shared characteristics and target them.

Fragmentation versus segmentation

Fragmentation: audiences disperse; segmentation: industries group and target them.

Ideology

Common-sense beliefs about how the world works and should work.

Ownership & ideology

Owners can influence content, representations, editorial priorities, and moderation.

Why ownership matters

Owners affect information, competition, and cultural access; Fowler's counterargument treats TV as an ordinary commercial appliance.

McChesney's ownership argument

Concentrated corporate power can undermine journalism, public debate, and democracy.

McChesney: market dynamism

An industry can change rapidly while still lacking meaningful competition or democratic service.

McChesney: alternatives

Public participation in policy, public-service media, and independent journalism.

Compaine's ownership argument

Merger headlines overlook new entrants, breakups, and competition; assess concentration with evidence.

Compaine: company size

Revenue growth does not necessarily mean a larger share of the overall media market.

Compaine's example

Gannett grew in revenue while shrinking relative to the overall media industry.

McChesney versus Compaine

McChesney emphasizes democratic needs and corporate power; Compaine emphasizes marketplace competition and choice.

Consumers versus citizens

People need political and cultural resources beyond their value as buyers.

Hoynes: consolidation

Few major players limit competition and try to reduce remaining competition.

Hoynes: market versus cultural success

Commercial success can coexist with cultural or political failure.

Hoynes: advertisers and representation

Content favors commercially attractive groups, often young/wealthy people, while neglecting others.

Hoynes: public broadcasting

Commercial branding can weaken public broadcasting's distinctive public-service identity.

Ownership and cultural access

Owners can remove programs, limiting access to popular culture.

FCC ownership cap: course case

Slides discuss removing the 39% household-reach limit, enabling more concentrated television ownership.

Paramount/Skydance + Warner Bros.: course case

Conglomeration raises concerns about competition, news independence, streaming, and cultural choice.

TikTok ownership: course case

Chinese ownership raises data/security concerns; slides describe a majority-American venture and secured U.S. data.

Bezos and Washington Post: course case

Opinion-page priorities of personal liberties and free markets illustrate ownership shaping editorial ideology.

Musk and X: course case

Ownership changes affect moderation, misinformation policies, advertisers, and audience experiences.

X: removed policies in slides

Crisis, COVID, and election misinformation policies; informational harm; named protections for disproportionately targeted groups.

X: expanded policies in slides

Child-safety/abuse definitions and violent-threat policies.