Recording Remix

If music fans won't buy CDs (and this is increasingly the case), and they aren't spending much money on legal downloads and ringtones, then how will the recording companies turn a profit? According to this Yahoo! News story, advertising on free download sites and corporate-sponsored albums are two possible answers.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #21

Pilots Grounded

As their audiences continue to shrink, the television networks are trying hard to cut costs. The ongoing writers strike is one reflection of that.

Another area of cost-cutting is TV pilots, the first episode of a proposed series. They are expensive and time-consuming to make, and a lot of them are never seen by the public, anyway. According to this National Public Radio story, the networks are making fewer of them. In some cases, shows are going from script to series.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #20

Seventeen with a Muslim Twist

A recent National Public Radio story discusses Muslim Girl, a glossy magazine for teenage girls that combines fashion, makeup and advice cloumns from a Muslim point of view. We discussed some cultural issues surrounding this magazine.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #19

Britney's Big Send-Off

On Saturday, Jan. 19 a group of MC101s took the Broadway Theater Tour with the Los Angeles Conservancy. Eric is our tour guide.


When an elderly ex-President or doddering Nobel Peace Prize winner dies, the serious news media is always ready with a remarkably well done obituary summing up the person's life and accomplishments. That's because top newspapers, news magazines and others prepare obituaries of those sorts of people well ahead of time. But what about if you're young, famous and self-destructive?

It surns out that the Associated Press, the nation's biggest wire service, has decided that Britney Spears, 26, is close enough to her final curtain call to warrant a pre-prepared obituary. As this Associated Press story points out, it's difficult to figure out when a young celebrity is troubled enough to warrant a pre-prepared obit.

This medianote was particularly relevant following yesterday's death of film actor Heath Ledger.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #18

Killer Research

Crime novelists trying to find yet another clever way to kill off a character or dig up a corpse or detonate an atomic bomb are finding the web to be a wonderful resource. According to a recent Reuters article, police blogs, forensic anthropologist message boards, anti-terrorist sites and many other things have been invaluable in writing a convincing contemporary thriller.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #16

The Hollywood Primary

According to a recent Los Angeles Times story, more celebrities than ever are endorsing and campaigning for presidential candidates. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are the two biggest beneficiaries of celebrity endorsements. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has certainly been helped by having Chuck Norris on his side.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #17

TV Ads with a Sporting Chance

Especially with the ongoing writers' strike, televised sports is more popular than ever with advertisers. Because fans want to see how their favorite team fared, most ad executives see sports as largely Tivo-proof. Furthermore, sports are good at drawing teenage and young adult male viewers, who advertisers covet and TV generally has a hard time attracting. This has led to televising non-sport sports such as online game competitions, according to a recent Los Angeles Times story.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #15

Politics without the Politics

The League of Women Voters puts out this non-partisan guide to the upcoming California election.

The following medianote was presented on Thursday, Jan. 10.

We had a medianote about finding clear, non-biased political information. In a world of attack ads and screaming pundits, that type of information is a little hard to find, in part because noise and extreme positions are what draw attention, and therefore profits. So it makes sense that non-profit organizations such as the League of Women Voters are in the best position to present who and what is at stake in a clear and fair way. We discussed the LWV's Easy Voter Guide to next month's California Election.

Media Watchdogs with a Partisan Bite

We briefly hung out with the Bike Cops on our walking tour of Downtown on Friday, Jan. 11.

As newspapers grapple with dwindling profits, high-cost investigative reporting has become more and more of a luxury. According to a recent National Public Radio story, this void is increasingly being filled by partisan (that is, politically oriented) organizations. They are raising money to hire journalists and researchers who can investigate politicians and others. Then the investigative report is turned over to a mainstream media outlet, such as the Wall Street Journal, for publication. It is perhaps inevitable that these organizations will investigate those they disagree with.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #14

Dinner and a ... DVD?

The following medianote was presented on Wednesday, Jan. 9.

Today's medianote came from a recent Los Angeles Times article about movie box office revenues and attendance at movie theaters. Here's the big picture: the number of tickets sold is down versus five years ago, but in 2007 movie ticket revenues increased a bit due to higher prices. However, the article provided a good jumping off point for a discussion about whether going out to the movies is a slowly dying pastime in the U.S.

Has the Parade Passed Them By?

The following medianote was presented on Tuesday, Jan. 8.

The printing press looked a little more like a relic last weekent when Parade magazine printed an interview with Benazir Bhutto 10 days after her assassination. Trouble was, as pointed out in this National Public Radio story, Parade was printed before there could be any acknowledgement of the assassination. And the 400 or so newspapers that carry Parade as a weekend insert looked incredibly out of touch as a result.

MC101 Is Back!

It's Opening Day of the Winter Intersession 2008 and Mass Comm 101 is packed to the rafters.

The Winter 2008 MC101 class looks like it will be lively and fun. Massive numbers of students turned out (I will not be able to take on any more adds) and clearly there was a lot of media savvy out there in the crowd.

Seven field trips are scheduled. The first will be tomorrow afternoon as we saddle up and mosey on out to the Autry National Center. We will have an assignment on the differences between actual reality and media-driven perceptions of reality.