Predict the Future with a No. 2 Pencil

All MC101s are invited to participate in the first-ever 'Back of the Scantron' media survey during the final exam.

The medianote today and tomorrow will be about what you--the Mass Comm 101 students of Spring 2007--predict will happen to the various types of mass media over the next 10 years. Between now and next Monday, MC101s are encouraged to send me survey questions. Here is an example of the type of question I am looking for:

Will college textbooks be on paper in 10 years?
A. Yes. There will be little change.
B. There will be some paper textbooks and some digital textbooks.
C. Most students will have digital textbooks, but a few will be on paper.
D. Paper textbooks will be like vinyl records… a thing of the past.

Any student who sends in a usable question gets an hour of extra attendance credit. Any student who fills out the survey gets an additional two points on the final exam.

So if you've got a survey question, submit it by using the comments link.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #51

Writing Home, v. 2.0

The true genius of MySpace came when the corporate types stood back and waited to see what millions of energetic young people, unburdened with old habits or expectations, would do with a set of simple, yet powerful online tools. While many have used the site exactly as intended, others have developed surprising new uses for MySpace and other social networks.

Case in point: soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning their MySpace sites into more than a way of keeping in touch with family and friends. They are using it to record their experiences, explain their thoughts, and leave behind a cyber memorial to themselves should they not make it home.

This medianote comes from an Associated Press story that I saw in the San Luis Obispo Tribune on the Saturday before Memorial Day. The story focused mainly on soldiers who have died, but are survived by their MySpace site.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #50



***BIG BUCKS I finally got the check for turning out 72 MC101s, friends and your humble blogger for a taping of The Showbiz Show on March 14. We earned $1440 and turned over every penny of it to Food for Thought, a campus group that helps students who face serious financial hardships. Contact the Financial Aid Office to learn more about Food for Thought.

Life Beyond the Tube

Today's medianote comes from a Los Angeles Times review of a book written by a woman who turned off the television permanently because she wanted her son to grow up TV-free. In The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid, Author Ellen Currey-Wilson states that television watching harms creativity, intelligence, well-being, and the ability to put thoughts in logical sequence.

The MC101s did a good job of examining the author's assertions.

MWF classes only

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #49

Censorship or Business Decision?

XM Radio has suspended shock jocks Opie and Anthony over a particularly obnoxious comedy skit on a recent show. Presumably they will be back on XM if the public outcry dies down. Otherwise, they may suffer the fate of Don Imus.

After listening to the the following National Public Radio story, the questions to the class included the following: Is this censorship? Or is it something else? And what limits, if any, should there be on radio content?

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #48



Members of Glendale College's award-winning Speech and Debate Team perform at the May 24 Humanities-Social Science Lecture. Several dozen MC101s were in attendance.

Couch Potato Famine

Where have all the couch potatoes gone?

That's a question network television executives are asking themselves as they preview next season's shows for advertisers. As the the following National Public Radio story points out, TV viewership is down seven percent just in the last six months. And there is a growing belief that advertisers of mainstream products may soon begin to look for other ways to get their messages in front of millions of eyeballs.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #47

'Local' Coverage

Pasadena Now is an energetic news website that is already providing tough competition for the local daily newspaper, the Pasadena Star-News and the city's alternative weekly, the Pasadena Weekly.

Publisher James Macpherson recently apparently can think outside the box... thousands of miles outside the box, in fact. He is attempting to outsource local reporting. Macpherson has placed an online help wanted ad for journalists to cover the Pasadena City Council ... from India.

According to this brief story on National Public Radio, covering Pasadena from half a world away is possible because the city council is now broadcasting its meetings on the Internet and a reporter can email council members and others for quotes afterward.

Could this possibly work?

MWF classes only

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #46

Hey Baby, Put Down That Remote!

Just-published research has indicated that a distressing number of American babies are becoming miniature couch potatoes and that watching a lot of TV early in life can lead to attention and behavioral problems by the teenage years. Here's a factoid that jumped out at this blogger: children who watched less than an hour of TV per day were twice as likely to go to college as those who watched three or more hours per day, even after controlling for socioeconomic status.

Research that appeared recently in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that 40 percent of infants under three months and 90 percent of toddlers under age two were watching television regularly. Said the author of a second study that concludes that TV watching can shorten attention spans when those babies become teenagers, "Over time it could really dumb down society."

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #45




Here are some early arrivals at our field trip to the Getty Center last Friday afternoon. Some students brought guests.
***SPECTACULAR TURNOUT Last Friday's field trip to the Getty Center drew nearly 100 students and guests, making it the best-attended field trip of the semester and one of the best-attended field trips in MC101 history. The record was a TV taping a few years back that drew 117.

Back to the Future

Rabbit Ears--those goofy antennas that evoke the Golden Age of television--are back with a high-tech twist. High Definition television looks great when the signal is captured by an antenna. Because the signal is digital, the viewer either gets perfect visuals and sound or nothing at all.

Now comes the ironic part. Cable television began in the 1960s to give folks better TV reception. But in many cases over-the-air HD offers a better picture than the compressed signals that come from many cable and satellite companies. This Yahoo! News story tells the tale.

We're likely to see a lot more antennas sprouting up on rooftops as we get closer to Feb. 17, 2009, the date that analog TV broadcasts will end and the world of HDTV will completely take over.

MWF classes only

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #44

Glendale ... We've Got a Problem!

Today's medianote is a little different. A committee at Glendale College is updating the plan for notifying students and others if the campus has to be suddenly shut down. In the years that this blogger has been at the college there have been closures due to nearby mudslides and brush fires. And, of course, the tragedy at Virginia Tech is prodding everyone toward better communications policies.

We talked about mass emails and phone messages, text messages and other stuff. Students had some excellent suggestions.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #43

A Spider Web of Hype

Along with millions of others, I spent nearly three hours of my weekend in a movie theater (in my case, L.A.'s retro-cool Vista Theater) watching the dazzling special effects in Spiderman 3.

But also dazzling was the advertising, publicity and merchandizing that surrounded the opening of this blockbuster. This National Public Radio story pegs the cost of hype for this movie at $150 million. If accurate, this is more than was spent on presidential campaigns not too many elections ago.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #42




***FIELD TRIP UPDATE This is the time of the semester where MC101 students begin to stress out over grades. Remember that you have two extra credit field trips, the Writing for Video Games seminar at the Museum of TV & Radio on Wednesday night and our visit to the Getty Center on Friday afternoon. See the flyer (available in class) for details.

Breaking Records (Over Students' Heads)

To some college students, the Recording Industry Association of America is about as fun as a hunting trip with Dick Cheney. Students at colleges and universities across the country have received intimidating letters from the RIAA accusing them of illegally downloading copyrighted music. They have been warned that they could soon be defending themselves in court unless they go to a web site run by the RIAA, confess to their sins, and subject themselves to the civil equivalent of being sent to bed without supper.

After listening to a relevant National Public Radio story, I expected MC101s to be breathing fire over this. But that's not what happened.

MWF classes only

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #41

It's a Guy Thing

Pork rinds, pickup trucks, NFL games on TV, handguns, chest hair, The Three Stooges.

All of the above are Guy Things. And now I've got one more thing to add to this manly list: YouTube videos.

According to a study by eMarketer, there are now more American women on the Internet than men, but the audience for Internet video on YouTube and elsewhere skews decidedly male. This is odd given that television audiences typically skew female. According to Debra Aho Williamson, who wrote the report for eMarketer, women tend to use the Internet to get things done while men are more likely to use it for entertainment.

This makes me want to run a YouTube video while I crush beer cans against my forehead.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #40