Blog #8

TV is going to change now that people can skip commercials. You are going to see more and more product placement for two reason.
The first reason is obvious. As people skip commercials, buying air time is going to be less effective so product placement is going to increase because people watch the show. This has some good and bad effects. The good effects are that the show is going to cost less to make becuase half the set is going to be provided by advertisers. The cars are going to be paid for, the furniture will be provided, the clothing, and anything in the set that you can sell will be paid for by advertisers. This will take the jobs away from set designers and degrade the quality of the set. It will also make it so less advertisers are needed to support the show because you save money on buying the set and paying the set designers. You will also see a decrease in shows that aren't set in our time period because it will be harder for advertiser to put products in the set, especially for Sci-Fi because it requirs unique set designs.
You also are going to see more productplacement because advertisers are looking for more creative ads that people don't realize are ads. They will be more effective because people aren't prepared to think critically about them. This makes the ads more effective and would probably be the natural shift anyway because of its effectiveness.

Blog #7

The media has a wide range of influence on us. The most surprising thing I have found is that mass media is made to bring the product to the consumer. The networks are selling their audiences so companies can sell to the audiences. It all seems very circular. It makes me wonder how the quality of our entertainment would change if we had a different system that didn't use money as its main influence. With money involved it makes everything very biased and makes it very important to learn how to weed out the bias and get our own view. The money does make more people join the industry so we get more points of view. But the only point of view we get is the point of view of money seeking companies so people watching only get the view that you need to earn money so it makes sense that our society is centered on money and the economy.