mass comm

Comic Books

publishers did great damage to the industry by overreacting to threats of government censorship

Comic Books

moved to "direct sales" model through specialty stores in the 1970s

Comic Books

an "in between" medium--not really a book, not really a magazine

Comic Books

characterized by a strong "geek factor"

Comic Books

a tiny part of the U.S. publishing industry

Image Comics is the 3rd largest comic book publisher in the U.S. T/F

True

Most of DC's comics are superhero titles. T/F

True

What writer/artist team was responsible for creating The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, and The Fantastic Four?

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

On what day of the week are new comic books released?

Wednesday

There are single issues of comic books that are worth more than $1 million. T/F

True

A regular monthly comic is about 22 pages of content. T/F

True

All of the following are media forms or genres that are popular worldwide. Which of these forms is not dominated by U.S. producers?

MANGA

Identify the primary function of the Comics Code Authority (CCA).

Censorship

One reason that exaggerated/improbable/fantasy anatomy is common in comics is that fantasy anatomy is easier to draw. T/F

True

Still photography is the pictorial medium with which we have the least experience. T/F

False

"Photography" literally means:

Writing or drawing with light.

Replacing the pinhole with a lens in a camera obscura creates what effect?

The image becomes brighter.

The first photographic experiments involved which of the following processes?

Pressing insect wings or leaves against a photosensitive material.

What is a heliograph?

The product of the first complete photographic system.

The daguerreotype was the first truly practical photographic process.

True

What disadvantage came with the invention of a photographic system that produced negative images?

The resulting prints had a naturally lower resolution than positive daguerreotypes.

The development of the dry-plate process brought what advantages to professional photographers?

Photographs could be taken much more quickly and stored for later development.

Dedicated portrait studios came about as early as the development of the daguerreotype. T/F

True

Documentary photography categorically includes all but which of the following?

Landscape Photography

The Civil War photographs most popular with the public were action shots of the battles. T/F

False

How did amateur photography differ from professional photography?

Amateur photography was largely unstaged, experimental, and spontaneous, whereas professional photography was characterized by careful composition.

What is a snapshot?

A photograph taken quickly and without deliberation.

Which of the following George Eastman innovations was key in the development of motion pictures?

flexible roll film

The first Brownie, a wildly successful consumer camera developed by Eastman, sold for $100. T/F

False

The first revolutionary change Eastman brought to photography was the idea of using sprocket holes for flexible roll film. T/F

False

The George Eastman innovation that was most important in developing a mass market for photography was his system for film developing and printing. T/F

True

Kodak's Kodachrome film was popular because of its extremely accurate and realistic color reproduction. T/F

False

Photojournalism is the photographing of staged recreated events. T/F

False

Flash powder greatly increased the number of situations in which news photography was possible. T/F

True

The intense competition among newspaper publishers during the Civil War created the first real photo reporters. T/F

False

In the period between 1900 and 1910, what innovation in photoprinting drove newspaper circulation to new heights?

Halftone printing.

Why were tabloid newspapers popular when first introduced?

Tabloids were packed with crime and sex stories and plenty of accompanying photographic material.

What was a composograph?

A staged news photograph.

The drawback of the Ermanox camera was that:

It used individually-loaded glass plates.

The Speed Graphic camera was standard equipment for many American press photographers until the mid-1960s. T/F

True

A photo essay is a series of related photographs and text. T/F

True

The person responsible for creating Life magazine was:

Henry R. Luce

The demise of picture magazines such as Life and Look can be traced mainly to:

Competition from television.

In World War Two, war photojournalists found their most effective photos in capturing what theme?

The human cost of the war.

Which of the following is NOT true of the extraordinary photographer Margaret Bourke-White?

Known for her famous photos of the Manzanar Relocation Camp during WW2.

Who is credited with building the first digital camera (in 1975)?

Steve Sasson

Kodak was one of the first to experiment with CCD-based photography, and leveraged that into a prominent place in the digital photography market. T/F

False

Electronic still cameras were digital from the very beginning. T/F

False

In the 1970s, who predicted a type of camera and uses of that camera that are very close to how we do photography today?

Edwin Land

Which medium best reflects the thoughts and feelings of the younger generation?

Music recordings

What did Alexander Graham Bell develop that greatly improved the phonograph?

A wax-covered cylinder recording from which a copy of a recording could be made

What was the name of the machine that played Emile Berliner's flat disk recordings?

Gramophone

Recording sound on wax-covered cylinders is an analog process. T/F

True

Both the Edison and Berliner machines electronically recorded sound with a microphone. T/F

False

Which of the following was NOT a factor that contributed to the success of the early record industry?

Radio was beginning to decline in popularity, so people had to use records to listen to their favorite radio personalities

What advantages for the recording industry were gained by the development of tape technology?

It permitted long, continuous recording and easier editing.

The LP, or long-playing record:

Recorded and played at 33 1/3-RPM with more grooves per inch and could play for fifteen to thirty minutes on a side

What audio format accounted for the most sales in the 1980s?

Audio Cassette

The creation of a record album involves many steps. Which of these steps is most closely tied to whether you, as a member of the audience, are likely to buy the product?

The quality of the publicity and marketing.

What division of a record company is responsible for scouting new talent?

A&R (Artists and Repertoire)

The largest percentage of the regular retail price of a recording goes toward:

Retailing costs and profit

Most music artists have an agent who receives between 30 to 40 percent of an artist's fees. T/F

True

How do composers receive payment for the use of their materials on the radio, in jukeboxes, and so forth?

Music rights organizations collect annual fees for the commercial use of music and distribute them to member composers, authors, and publishers.

Most radio stations only belong to one of the three licensing companies. T/F

False

Which of the following is NOT a music rights organization?

RIAA

The most powerful of the two musicians' unions, American Federation of Musicians (AF of M), represents whom?

Instrumentalists

What do the two musicians' unions NOT bargain for on behalf of their members?

Whether or not a broadcast station should censor a song

Independent record companies do not have the time or resources to invest in the development of young artists and would prefer to sign with already established artists. T/F

False

Independent record companies have little overhead because they own neither recording nor distribution facilities. T/F

True

What is the most important contribution independent and small record companies make to the industry?

Finding and popularizing previously unknown artists.

Which of the following companies is NOT currently among the major record distributors?

BMG

What is an advantage that the major record labels have over smaller independent record labels?

They are more resilient to fluctuations in the market

Payola is music industry slang for royalty payments. T/F

False

LP sales have been declining steadily over the years and currently fewer than 1 million units are sold annually. T/F

False

Until the early 1980s, probably no gatekeeper for any medium of communication had more power than the radio disc jockeys had over which recordings would become hits and which would die. T/F

True

How did rap music, an important genre in Black American culture, begin?

Disk jockeys in the 1970s, who worked at nightclubs and in parks, started experimenting

Which of the following is NOT an important way that music impacts our perceptions and interactions with others?

Music allows the youth to seek approval from and assimilate with older generations

Which of the following was NOT an underlying issue with 8-track technology that hindered its widespread adoption?

8-track cartridges were very large and could not be easily transported

Why was the Compact Cassette such a revolutionary innovation?

The Compact Cassette gave anyone the ability to record tracks of audio by themselves

What was the original purpose of the Compact Cassette?

Dictation

Cassette tapes reached their peak popularity in which of the following decades?

1980s

Sony released the first Walkman in 1992. T/F

False

Before the Walkman, listening to your own choice of music meant being limited to your home stereo or your car, or if you wanted portable music, you had to listen to a transistor radio playing music not selected by you. T/F

True

Which of the following was NOT a consequence of the Walkman's popularity?

Cassette tapes, which were primarily manufactured in rural American towns, were rendered obsolete

What prompted the inclusion of a second headphone jack and the ability for two listeners to talk to each other through a microphone in the design of the Walkman?

Concerns that the device was too isolating

Sony released the first commercial compact disc (CD) player in 1982. T/F

True

Most Americans in 1982 were familiar with digital devices, and this is why the CD was adopted so rapidly. T/F

False

What distinguishing feature of CDs enabled them to rapidly become more popular than existing technologies?

You could skip directly to the song you wanted to listen to

In what year did annual CD unit sales exceed those of cassettes for the first time?

1992

About how many minutes of music could be stored on a CD?

75 minutes

The CD's digital nature probably formed the basis of its own undoing. That is, the record labels digitized thousands of albums and released them on CD without any copy protection. T/F

True

One of the greatest problems that digital technology presented to the recording industry was:

Pirating of recordings.

In the year 2000, how much did it cost to download a single on Napster?

1 Cent

Napster made its two founders incredibly wealthy. T/F

False

Studies show that people who download pirated music actually purchase more music than they would otherwise. T/F

False

Napster no longer exists. T/F

False

When opening iTunes Music Steve Jobs argued that simplicity and ease of use would trump music piracy. T/F

True

The key enabling technology for the iPod was a tiny hard-drive that Toshiba didn't know what to do with. T/F

True

The initial response to the iPod by both the public and critics was not good. T/F

True

Apple probably expected consumers to purchase most or all the music for their iPods. T/F

False