What If You Ran for President and Nobody Noticed?

Today's medianote is from a National Public Radio story about the unequal amount of coverage that the news media gives to the various presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton ... lots 'o media coverage. Barack Obama ... news folk can't get enough of the guy. John McCain ... no problem with news coverage.

But what about Bill Richardson or Mike Huckabee or other announced candidates who, although they have impressive backgrounds (both are governors), really don't get a whole lot of media coverage? Who says that one candidate is worthy of being his or her own press groupies and another is not? And what about minor party candidates? They generally get very little exposure in the news media.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #20



***FRIDAY'S FIELD TRIPS Remember, MC101 classes do not meet on Friday, March 2. No Club MediaNote post on Friday, either. It is field trip day. We go to the Los Angeles Times in the morning (choose from tours starting at 9:15 or 10:45; we meet in the lobby at First and Spring) and the Los Angeles Central Library in the afternoon (we meet at 2 p.m. in the McGuire Garden and finish up around 3:30). Between the two tours we have a Downtown Walking Tour, highlighted by lunch at the Grand Central Market. See your field trip flyer for details.

Hopefully, They Won't Get the Oscar for Obsolescence

Today's medianote was about an article in yesterday's Opinion Section of the Los Angeles Times by Neal Gabler entitled entitled The Movie Magic Is Gone. Gabler lays out a pretty compelling case that the movie industry is going to have an increasingly difficult time being at the center of American popular culture. Of course, that can be said for just about all of the traditional (i.e. pre-Internet) forms of mass media.

According to Gabler, some of the societal trends that are working against the movie business as we currently understand it are

•An ever more fragmented, segmented audience,
•A growing disinterest in going out to a movie theater,
•Public fascination about celebrities' lives overshadowing movies that they act in,
•And a desire by viewers to be at the center of the action as they are in video games and YouTube videos.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #19




***SHHH! DON'T TELL MOM I'M AN INTERNATIONAL CELEBRITY: Yesterday's West magazine (which is inserted in the Sunday Times) had a cover article entitled The Secret Life of Cory Kennedy that, to me at least, just perfectly captures how the Internet is changing everything from how celebrities are created to parenting in the digital age. It seems that Santa Monica teenager Cory Kennedy became an Internet phenomenon and was hanging out with the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan before her parents really noticed anything was up. The article is a fun and illuminating read.

Spring has Sprung All Over MC101

Opening Day of the spring semester in Mass Comm 101 looked like LAX the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone was pretty much everywhere. I added more students than was wise or sensible.

Welcome to Mass Comm 101 and its evil stepchild, Club Medianote. Next Monday I will present the first medianote of the semester and the real fun will begin. Meantime, I will post part of an email I just received about the information competency workshops taught through the GCC Library. These workshops are available to MC101 students for extra attendance credit. Here are some relevant quotes from the email...

"Our series of eight workshops will be taught during twelve weeks: Monday, March 5 through Saturday, June 2. As in the Fall, we will offer 11 sessions per week including weekdays, evenings, and Saturdays.

The BIG NEWS is that we’ve launched our new Web-based registration database! Students no longer need to come to the library to register for workshops. They -- and you -- can register online at http://secure.glendale.edu/library/librarysignup.asp

Research shows that attendance at these workshops improves students’ grades and retention.

Descriptions of the 8 workshops are available at:
at http://www.glendale.edu/library/instruction/workshops-descript.html

A complete schedule of the workshops for Spring 2007 is available at:
at http://secure.glendale.edu/library/allworkshops.asp

Summing it all up...

Our last field trip of the semester was to the Getty Center. These MC101s are in the Getty Garden. The field trip assignment encouraged students to roam all around this world class facility.

It has been a great Winter Intersession in MC101. It was a large and enthusiastic class and I had a blast teaching it. Thanks for being in the class and for looking in on Club Medianote.

Today's medianote is a repeat. I presented this provocative audio from the Museum of Media History last Oct. 9. It works as the final medianote of the ssemester because it sums up a lot of what we've been thinking and talking about regarding mass media, new and old.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #18

Talking Meatball Terrifies Boston

Today's medianote was about the guerrilla marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting for the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” animated movie. (For the uninitiated, the "Hunger Force" includes a milk shake, a floating order of fries and a talking meatball.) In Boston, officials believed the blinky signs placed on bridges and tunnels might be bombs and shut down traffic, creating chaos. Two guys who placed the blinky signs around town were arrested, released, and the television company has been fined.

MC101 students generally had a hard time thinking that a few glowing TV ads could be mistaken for a terrorist plot. Here's the a National Public Radio story that we listened to on this topic.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #17

A Funny Thing Happened to Web Video...

Pizza was a highlight of MC101 final exam SI. We had a nice turnout and had fun.

Today's medianote comes from a Yahoo! News story that chaims the digital communications revolution has been good for stand-up comedians. Reason is that standup is very simple to photograph ... a comedian on a stage. This simplicity makes it a natural for YouTube or cellphone videos. Furthermore, a good comedy bit captured as an MP3 or other digital file can easily be passed around the online world.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #16

Viewers, DO Try This at Home...

A common theme in Mass Comm 101 this semester is the deprofessionalization of mass media. YouTube, Wikipedia, even American Idol are of amateurs entertaining and informing us through the mass media. But can they sell us stuff?

We'll see. The class listened to a National Public Radio Story about user-generated television ads. Frito-Lay has a contest urging regular folks to send in their homemade Doritos ads. The best of the lot will be shown on Sunday during the Super Bowl broadcast.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #15



HUNGRY TO LEARN? Pizza will be served at next Tuesday's Suppemental Instruction session (CR136, Feb. 6, 1-2 p.m., Mike Arvizu presiding). It will be the Final Exam study group and, as is widely known, it's darn near impossible for college students to study for finals without pizza.

Getting Small on Television

Steve Martin had a stand-up comedy routine in the '70s entitled "Let's Get Small." A riff on the drug humor of the time, Martin described driving his car around totally small but not trying to look small so the cops wouldn't stop him.

OK, that description doesn't do the "small" routine justice. Just take my word for it that everything Steve Martin did during his arrow-through-the-head stand-up comedy years was a hoot. You had to be there.

Well, there are entire television networks today that want to get small. So small, in fact, that they are willing to fit on cellphone screens. Today's medianote discussed Verison's plan to offer eight channels of television to its cellphone subscribers beginning next month.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #14




***LATE, LATE SHOW WAS BIG, BIG FUN We had an excellent turnout (35 MC101s and guests) for our field trip to CBS Television City yesterday. Everyone except a few of the late arrivals got to see the taping of the Late, Late Show. Yours truly managed to (unintentionally) annoy Warmup Comedian Chunky B. (I think I messed up one of his punchlines.) As he was bellowing at me I thought, oh geez, I'm going to get thrown off my own field trip. But the moment passed and all was cool.