This week there were three main areas of focus in class: Fandom, Uses and gratification, and Galaxy Quest. Fandom can be described as the state or condition of being a fan of someone or something. This is something we see each and everyday, whether it be from ourselves or others around us. Often people fall into a fandom that suits their interests and the other people within that group more times than not hold the same interests. For me growing up on the beach I have always been bug into surfing and skating, therefore when the show Rocket Power came on you could find me with my ass planted on the couch in front of the television because I was a huge fan. Everyone has their own thing and often more than one. Fandom is important to the industry because without fans there would be no one to produce for. Also fans are the ones who drive companies to be better and grow upward.

Speaking about the importance of fandom, in the screening of Galaxy Quest this week it was the fans who saved the day in the end. When it comes to fandom though, it is important that the fans and actors have a mutual respect because if the stars are not giving back to their fans than they will quickly lose them and in turn lose their job. If it had not been for the unbelievable amount of knowledge a group of friends had about the television show then all of the actors in the crew would have died in the clenches of an alien villain. Although fictional space alien wars and what not are usually not my cup of tea, I did find myself enjoying the film.

Uses and gratification theory is a rather simple one to understand, it focuses on the reasons that people use certain pieces of media for any given reason. In my case, If I have a couple minutes of boredom I will open up my Instagram app and just scroll through instead of sitting and staring at the wall. There are many other reasons such as some that we spoke about in class such as having the television on to null the silence and have some other voices in the room instead of being alone. In some other cases people will use social media as their main source of information, for example a lot of people will scroll through twitter to get the latest news. The lessons this week were very relatable.

-Shane Weber

This weeks lessons were focussed on the news as well as outlets of the news. As we are all aware, there are many different “news” stations that you can throw on each day to gather some intelligence of what may be going on around you that day. It is always great to have options but that might not be the case when those options have agendas. This idea brings us back to a past topic of agenda setting. Each news outlet will broadcast what they want you to see and think. In the two screenings of the Newsroom that we observed this week the ACN team was able to show us how ratings and some other factors can be the dictators of the news as opposed to just broadcasting ACTUAL news.

From what was shown in those two episodes, people should take a deeper look at the news that they watch and ask themselves if they are being giving all the information / all the truth. Our current president was one person who went ahead and called out the news outlets claiming “FAKE NEWS” which is important that we do. We must check the credibility of sources to be a properly informed people. The great importance of this dates wayyyyy back. If the people are not properly informed than they will be unable to make informed decisions when it comes to government, safety, health and basically everything else.

Part of this is the reason I have the lack of news following habit that I do (aka none). I know it is not optimal for myself and others in the same boat as me to not follow any news, but personally I hate when people ramble at me about things that do not effect me or those around me. For example I don’t need to know all the gossip on what the celebrities are up too, but I would like to know about all the civil wars that are going on around the world or when there going to be decision made that will change the future. WE WANT PERTINENT REAL NEWS!!!

The television series the Newsroom did a good thing in coming out to try combatting fake news. This show focuses on how they are trying to break away from the way everyone is reporting news and go back to the way news used to be reported. Back when people were able to put trust in their anchormen and the anchormen had nothing to prove so they were able to just tell what was needed to be reported on. It is too bad that today we have to fact check everything that we are told in order to gain one piece of truth. BRING BACK REAL NEWS PLEASE!!!!!

-SHANE WEBER

Over the past week in class we have gone in to pretty great depth of the connection between people and the media. Along with that, we focused on how the media has a way of choosing for the people how they should feel and what they should think. Sprinkled in with the effects of media were a couple examples of past experiments that truly changed the psychology world as well as the real world.

The theory used when talking about how the media tells people what to think is “Agenda Setting theory”. The definition of agenda setting is fairly straight forward; the media picks what they want the people to know and only show the one side that they agree with. In layman’s terms, the media outlets show certain things that they want the people to see while withholding other information that may be pertinent to the story. An example of this that was used in class was when MSNBC cut off a congresswoman speaking about important things going on in our country, to tell everyone watching that Justin Bieber had been arrested for street racing. In a case like that it is simple to see that MSNBC may not have agreed with what the congresswoman was speaking about so they just shut her down. We can see instances such as this all over but we must be aware that it is going on.

Moving into the social experiments, the first one we spoke about was the Milgram Shock Experiment. Stanley Milgram was a professor at Yale University when he conducted this experiment in 1961. The basis of his experiment was to find out how far people would go with something if they had someone of an authority position was telling them too. In Milgrams experiment he had random volunteers sit behind a device which they though was shocking someone in the next room (even though the person in the next room was part of the experiment and not getting shocked at all). they would then read questions and deliver a shock for wrong answers. Milgram was very surprised to see that many people went all the way up to fatal shock levels simply because he had a doctors coat on and was telling them too. This shows that people respond in a certain way to authority.

The second experiment was the Stanford Prison experiment put on by Philip Zimbardo while he was a professor at Stanford University in 1971. In this experiment Zimbardo split the volunteers into two groups (guards or prisoners). As the experiment progressed you could see how the guards started talking the role a little too serious and began to actually mentally mess up the prisoners. They were in a position of power and began to abuse it. This is connected to agenda setting because the media outlets abuse their power and just tell people what they think the people should know.

People should be aware of the agenda setting that is constantly going on and not let it decide their views. We should be gaining our information from multiple sources so we can choose our own outlook on anything.

-Shane Weber

How and Why was Hollywood formed? It all started when younger and more curious people began joining the movie industry. They wanted to get away from the big parent companies located on the East Coast that were known to sensor and hold back the creative forward thinkers in the business. A second reason for the big leap across the country was for location in general. There is beautiful weather basically year round and there are so many different aspects of nature all within reach from the coastal beaches, the wooded mountains, to the barren desert. One last major factor for the industry moving out there was, There was cheap land, and I mean a lot of it, because not many people had migrated that way yet. For those reasons it is quite a unique place.

Around this same time and carrying forward a short amount of time we started to see very clearly who were the top dawgs and who fell inline beneath them. The top dawgs at this time are also known as the “Big Five” which consisted of Paramount, Warner Bros.,Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, and RKO. The smaller guys who trailed way behind were the “Little Three”; Columbia, United Artists, and Universal. The thing that made the big five so large and powerful was the way they ran their businesses. Each of them produced all their own movies with what goes along with that, as well as owning the theatres that the movies would be screen in. Therefore they were making money on all fronts.

Switching to the more modern times and the struggle over censorship and the organization that was built off of censorship, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). In the screening of “This Film is Not Yet Rated” we heard from many people who are in the film industry and their criticisms of the MPAA. The overall feeling I gathered from their statements and the investigation was that the MPAA is not fully truthful not forward with what actually is going on within the walls of the organization. I thought it was very interesting when they revealed that the rating of NC-17 could be placed on something the exact same as something that was rated R other than the fact that one depicts gay interactions while the other shows straight interactions (the image above depicts this). Along with many other instances in the film, I think that it is pretty wild how we allow such a small group of people who are nothing like the rest of the country decide what the rest of the country watches. We need people to ignore the ratings and watch what they think is acceptable for themsleves and children.

-Shane Weber

In this weeks classes, we began in the 1980s and spanned all the way to the early 2000s. We watched as sitcoms and live television both rose with glory as well as fell to the back behind a more modern style of television. Although I unfortunately missed our class on Monday, I was able to watch an episode of “Funny Ladies” and learn how that handful of women changed the way people viewed women on television as well as how people watched television in general. They went out as the leads in a business which was not used to having women front and center. After watching some things on Betty White I got very interested in how long her acting career actually was and my search taught me that she had a television career that lasted 80 years!!! Which is absolutely absurd.

Looking back on Wednesday, we watched an episode of the well known television show called ER which was filmed from 1994 through 2009 amassing 15 seasons for a total of 331 episodes. I am not positive as to which episode we watched, but with that being said it did not seem to be dated at all. The entire time it was playing, myself and Anthony we like “woah”. It was very intense and kept us focused and wanted to know what happened next. We actually we bored earlier today sitting on the couch so we decided to throw on another episode and once again we were captivated by the sheer amount of chaos packed into one episode.

I find it very amazing that ER was able to make that many episodes and still keep the viewings wanting more. Personally after 3-4 seasons of a show I watch, I tend to get a little bored. I am not sure if that is just me but ER was able to prevent this for their followers and still continue to do so. This weeks topics covered were all very different from one another but in the end they all are part of the foundation that has brought television to what we know it as today. It takes all kinds through trail and error to create a product worth keeping around

-SHANE WEBER

What usually comes to mind when someone mentions Television? For myself, I think of the endless commercials and advertisements that you never never seem to get a break from. It was not always like this for me and I am sure others feel the same way. This week in class we began the discussion of where and when television began. Television dates way back, but that was a time when the only ones who could afford a TV were the wealthy and there was very, very, limited options.

Advertisements and sponsors have always been an important part of television and the up keep of it. Without companies paying the Television stations to play their advertisements, the programs themselves would not be able to afford the air time, pay their workers, actors and writers. In moderation that is alright, but now there are so many advertisements that it almost completely deters me from watching it at all. Even if you decide to go the route of online streaming, the websites implant advertisements at certain points throughout your shows. Therefore even this can be frustrating to watch.