Television/ consumer society: Media 1920-2010

At the start of the 1920s, the availability of technology such as the radio was dependant on meeting the ‘necessary conditions’ model making it viable as a consumer product. The three parts of the ‘necessary conditions’ model (in this case, for the radio) are: Technology, and the affordability of radio sets; Demographics, having reduced costs experiences a boost to profitability of American media; Law and regulation. In the UK, the BBC was able to keep a monopoly on broadcasting rights up until the 1970s (resulting in pirate radio, most notably depicted for my generation, in the fun-time film “The Boat that Rocked.” and who says I’m not familiar with popular culture).

It is interesting to note the different paths that radio took in the UK and USA. Since the BBC had such a death grip over the airwaves of Britain, and since the BBC only dealt with “up market” content (wouldn’t want one to sully oneself now would we?) the newspapers were left alone with the popular agenda. This meant that there was no competition between the two forms of media. In the States however, there was no such monopoly as the BBC and as a result the radio was much more commercial. This resulted in the two medias competing with each other and since radio is much cheaper to set up and produce than the press, American newspapers were (for all intents and purposes) killed off by the 1950s/60s.Obviously the biggest factor in the demise of the newspaper industry was the lack of advertising in favour of the radio. Britain had no such problem (refer to BBC death-grip mentioned above).

The 1950s Keynesian based economy of Britain was currently embroiled in paying off the nation’s war debt. According to Keynesian economics it’s better to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in, as opposed to them being unemployed. At this time, there were plenty of ‘holes’ to be filled. Southampton for example.

The vast amount of government spending taking place during the post war period, resulted in a massive consumer society. Everyone was busy spending all their money, and advertisers were doing their darndest to get that money for themselves, TV being more popular than newspapers, the advertisers moved to the more fertile grounds. The money advertisers gave to commercial stations resulted in a rise of pop. Programmes such as Sit-Coms, sport, and Soap Operas. Advertisements fuelled popular programming as well as essentially brainwashing the public into buying completely useless rubbish, depending on what you believe, on a completely separate note, my purple hair dye worked really well… something else that advertisers do is follow the majority. The ‘baby boomers’ of the post war period being this majority. Whilst the Mirror trenchantly followed the parents of the boomers, the Sun (the TV paper) went after the boomers themselves and followed their particular wants at the time (for example as they’d all be in their 60s/70s, they might be more inclined towards news of health etc.). by the 1970s the Sun had essentially crushed the Mirror in circulation, and by the ‘90s, newspapers were dying, the same way they had in the USA. Here cometh the undeniable rise of the television as the most prominent media. And since America is now what popular media is based on. Anything popular is taken directly from America I.e. Rupert Murdoch.

Here endeth the (out of practice when it comes to blogging my notes) lesson.

WINOL Games Bloopers Episode

A collection of outtakes, bloopers and general silliness that accompany every episode of our games review show: WINOL Games.

Christmas WINOL Games

I think the title says it all...



You're welcome ;)

WINOL Games 3: Game Harder!

Another WINOL Games episode!



As always folks, comment and criticism is very much appreciated!

Seminar Paper - Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt - Ideology and Terror

Ideology and terror looks into the machinations of Totalitarian government. Arendt begins by comparing totalitarianism with other forms of political oppression, namely despotism, tyranny and dictatorship. She tries to define what makes a totalitarian government. Describing how it would invariably transform a society’s classes into masses, supplant the party system by mass movements, shifting the centre of power from the army to the police, and establishing a foreign policy almost solely aimed at world domination.

Fun with Freud

Our second lecture of HCJ and apparently we get to have some fun with Freud! The inventor of psychoanalysis and a “scientist” Freud’s theory boils down quite simply: you want to have sex with everyone and you want to murder everyone else.

He's judging all of us, and he's not impressed.

Much of Freud’s work is based around the existence of a subconscious. The place where repressed memories etc. are stored. Freud claimed that the unconscious is made up of three parts. The trivial mistakes of everyday life, perhaps most famously thought of as slips of the tongue or ‘Freudian slips’ these mistakes supposedly reveal hidden thoughts and motives from the subconscious. The second part is dreams, and the conclusions that can be made about our subconscious from studying them. And the third part are the symptoms of neurosis.

Freud’s sexual development theory is a lot of fun. He identified stages which can affect our behaviour in later life. The first stage (from birth to 18 months) is the oral stage. During this time we are fixated on oral pleasure I.e. sucking. Too much or little (see how usefully vague this is?) gratification during this stage results in oral habits such as, smoking, drinking or biting fingernails.

Hearst and Harmsworth

Our first focused (and I use the term lightly) lecture of the second year was a look at world and newspaper history of the early 20th century. More specifically, it was a look at William Randolph Hearst and Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe). Probably the most influential media-men of the time.

Hearst, we’ll think of him as the American media mogul, was essentially the inventor of the tabloid newspaper. The rising literacy rates of the time meant more of the working class could read, but this by no means meant there were up to ploughing their way through the walls of text that made up most broadsheets (hell, I’m supposedly well educated and I can barely stomach reading much of the telegraph, and I’m pretty sure the FT is all just freemason code…). As a result, he changed the formats of all of his papers, a hefty chunk of front pages, and entire papers were covered in striking, shocking and generally eye-catching pictures. The motto of the time was sensationalism, or ‘yellow journalism’ fierce battles were raging between various papers (on the pages of course, remember, the pen is mightier than the sword), each trying to outdo the others. Hearst’s stories could become unbelievable, sometimes literally. He also went about headhunting writers from other papers, in order to form his own crack squad.