Obsessed fans, Iron Man, Censors, & Rush – Pop Culture Roundup

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Ralph Hanson
Posted in Chapter 11, Chapter 4, Chapter 7, Chapter 8 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Obsessed fans, Iron Man, Censors, & Rush – Pop Culture Roundup

Mountain Dew Uses Racism and Violence Against Women to Promote Caffeinated Sugar Water

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

mountain-dew1

The ad for Mountain Dew is pretty stark.

As Your Black World points out.

If you’ve never heard of Felicia the Goat, you’ll know about her soon. Felicia the Goat is the main character in a recent Mountain Dew commercial, created in part by Tyler the Creator. The video shows Felicia in a line up of criminal suspects, all of whom may be charged with a crime….

On the other side of the one-way glass is an innocent, feeble, trαumatized white woman, standing next to a detective telling her to “nail this little sucker.” 

Throughout the video, the woman is trying to decide whether to identify the suspect, and is being threatened by the goat who is telling her that you “betta not snitch on a playa.” The goat also starts out by saying, in a scruffy voice, “You shoulda gave me some more….I’m nasty….”

As the woman is shaking, crying and trying to decide what to do, the goat says, “Snitches get stitches fool.” After that, he says, “Keep ya mouth shut. When I get outta here, I’m gonna do you up…

This ad for Mountain Dew was so awful, I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea.

As Mashable points out:

A Pepsi rep told Adweek: “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended. We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels…”

Could be perceived?

Yeah.

At least Mountain Dew had the good sense to pull the ad once the criticism started coming in.

 

Posted in Chapter 11 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Mountain Dew Uses Racism and Violence Against Women to Promote Caffeinated Sugar Water

Continuing to Learn From Your Mistakes

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

F-bombing anchor A.J. Clemente lost his job at NBC’s Bismarck, North Dakota affiliate last week for his ill-advised comments on an open microphone.  But then his flub went viral on the Internet. So now he’s getting interviewed on NBC’s Today show, with an appearance on Letterman to come Wednesday.  It will be interesting to see how this story plays out.

UPDATE: He’s going to interview celebs on the red carpet of a movie premier for Live with Kelly and Michael.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted in Chapter 9 | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Continuing to Learn From Your Mistakes

Learning From Your Mistakes – North Dakota Edition

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

So by now just about everyone has seen the video of A.J. Clemente having a really bad first night on the air at KFYR-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota.  The newly minted West Virginia broadcasting grad was reportedly practicing pronouncing the Tsegaye Kebede when he cut loose with a “f#$in s%&t” over a live microphone.  You can see the video here:

To those of you getting started in broadcasting, those are not likely to to be the first words you utter on the air.  A.J. was promptly suspended from the station and very shortly after that fired.

And then… the sports blog Deadspin picked up on the story, and it went viral.  You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the story.  The famous F-bomb clip even showed up in bleeped form on Letterman this week.

So what happens to Mr. Clemente now?  Edward Esposito, of the Radio Television Digital News Association tells him:

“Don’t worry, it’ll pass. 

You’ll always be “that guy” who lost his first anchor gig on the first day he anchored by muttering two very bad words right off the bat. You’ll always be the guy who lost his job over it. You don’t have to be the guy who sinks his career over it.”

A.J. is trying to keep up his side of the story through his Twitter account, though he’s been pretty subdued.  He did note that he’s going to be on the Today show tomorrow.

I should note that I was on the journalism faculty at WVU for 15 years before moving to Nebraska, and both A.J. and WVU (and Bismark’s NBC affiliate for that matter) all have my sympathy.  But I thought the most interesting comment I saw on this case came from my old buddy “Doc” Ivan Pinnell, public relations professor and retired Army lieutenant colonel.  He wrote on Facebook:

“Deep in the bottomless pit of every broadcaster’s stomach there was a twitch of relief when they heard A.J.’s story. Emotions? Sympathy? Empathy? Sorrow for A.J.? A desire to reach out to A.J.? Thank God it was A.J. and not me! Some station somewhere will snap him up in a heart-beat, and out of sheer curiosity some potential broadcast student and/or his/her parents who did not know WVU had a School of Journalism will pull us up on the internet just to check us out. In the long-run A.J.’s mishap may be a positive for A.J. and the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism. Every cloud, even the darker ones, has a silver lining. We just have to look for it.”

Good luck, A.J.  And watch the open mics….

Posted in Chapter 9 | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Video Blogging Examples for my Commentary Students

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

My Blogging and Commentary students are hard at work right now on their video blogging assignments, so I thought I would put up some links to work by former students from this class and also just some fun examples I’ve collected over the years:

Posted in JMC 406 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Video Blogging Examples for my Commentary Students

What a Media World Mess – News Misfires & Successes Covering Boston

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

Last week was not the best of weeks for the news media, both legacy and social.  There was a lot of good reporting going on, but there were also a number of high profile screw ups that happened on the national stage in front of everyone.  And to be fair, few industries conduct their business as publicly as journalists do.  With that in mind, here’s a round-up of stories about last week’s journalistic misfires:

And finally, Neil Diamond leads crowd at Fenway Park in Sweet Caroline Saturday. 

Posted in Chapter 14, Chapter 6 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on What a Media World Mess – News Misfires & Successes Covering Boston

Fred Rogers reminds us to “look for the helpers”

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

There is an old quote from children’s television host Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers) that started spreading virally following the Newtown massacre in December.  It goes like this:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 

At a time when a lot of us were looking for words of comfort when something utterly un-understandable was going on, the words of Mr Rogers spoke to us. (I passed the quote on at the time through my Tumblr blog.) The words of Mr. Rogers were often paired with a photo taken by Jim Judkis, the man who for years was the official photographer for Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. (I learned this part of the story by reading an article by Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis, Jim’s daughter.)

This week, following the Boston Marathon bombings, the quote resurfaced and may have been been even more quoted than it was during the Newtown aftermath.

Slate had a good history of the “look for the helpers” story on Tuesday.  Rogers first published his mother’s advice back in 1983 in a book called Mr. Rogers Talks With Parents. He has repeated the story multiple times, and quotes and video of him telling this story show up after each American tragedy.

I’ve seen the quote show up on multiple photos, but perhaps the best portrayal was on this cartoon by Randy Bish of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Randy Bish - Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Check out the amazing collection of Boston Marathon cartoons at Cagle.com.

Posted in Chapter 1, Chapter 10 | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Remembering Roger Ebert

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

“Roger Ebert loved movies.
Except for those he hated”

It was hard to get the news last week that Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert had died of cancer.  Just the day before he died, Ebert had announced on his blog that he was taking a “leave of presence” from the Chicago Sun-Times.  He said that he would be limiting himself to writing only about the movies he wanted to as he dealt with a recurrence of the cancer that cost him his jaw, his voice, and the ability to eat and drink. (Back in 2010, Equire ran a fantastic profile of Ebert by Chris Jones that talked about Ebert’s post-cancer, post-voice life online.)

I don’t have the time to write the remembrance of what Ebert has meant to me since I first started watching him on TV more than 35 years ago.  Suffice it to say that he has always been the critic I turned to first when I wanted to know what critics had to say about movies.  One of the things I loved about him is that he wasn’t afraid to trash a popular movie, praise an unpopular movie, and to love movies that are just plain fun. (The NY Times called him “a critic for the common man.“)  One thing I had not realized until the news of his death broke was what a talented student journalist he had been working at the Daily Illini.

I have long talked about Ebert (and his old TV partner Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune) in my commentary class, and was scheduled to talk about him in class right when he died.

As I started digging through my blog archives, I was startled to see how many times I had mentioned Ebert over the last 9 years.  Here are links to as many of the blog posts as I can find.

But first, here are two of his reviews from television with Gene Siskel.

Siskel & Ebert review The Shawshank Redemption:

Siskel & Ebert review Jurassic Park:

Mentions of Roger Ebert in this blog over the years:

Posted in Chapter 8, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Are mandatory cable channel bundles good or bad for consumers?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

There’s been a lot of talk lately as to whether some form of a la carte pricing on cable would be good or bad for consumers.  The idea here is that we get big bundles of channels from our cable provider.  As a subscriber, you might have a choice of two or three levels of service, but no choice as to which channels come within that block of service.  Don’t want five flavors of VH1 or ESPN, but do want all of the History channel options?  Too bad.  If they are packaged together, you have to take all of them to get any of them.

Local cable providers, such as Verizon and Cablevision, are in a similar position, according to the Washington Post.  They want to offer subscribers the popular Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon, but don’t necessarily want to be paying for little watched channels like VH1 Classic or the gay-themed Logo.

Cecilia Kang reports that Verizon and Cablevision are pressuring media companies, such as those owned by Viacom, to give the cable providers more leeway in choosing just the channels their viewers watch.

The counter-argument content providers make is that the bundles make small, less popular alternative channels available to viewers, and that if cable providers only carried the most popular channels, there would be much less diversity coming out of the cable box.

The problem here is that cable/satellite TV prices are climbing rapidly, and consumers – especially younger consumers – are turning to streaming sources like Netflix for a cheaper video fix than their getting from cable.

Given that this fight is going on between content giants and cable service giants, it can be a bit hard to tell who is really trying to best serve the needs of consumers.  (My guess would be neither…)

 

Posted in Chapter 3, Chapter 9 | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Are mandatory cable channel bundles good or bad for consumers?

How Did/Should Television Cover Kevin Ware’s Horrific Injury?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

In 1999, my eldest son and I went to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Milwaukee Brewers in a Fourth of July game.  I have no idea now who won, but I do remember seeing catcher Jason Kendall suffer a grotesque compound fracture of the ankle (that’s the kind where the bone sticks out of the skin) when he hit first base wrong trying to beat out a bunt.  The thing I remember most, other than Mr. Kendall writhing in pain, was seeing his ankle twisted at an angle no ankle ought to be at.

I was reminded of that summer afternoon over the weekend when the news came out about Louisville’s Kevin Ware suffering a compound fracture of his tibia and fibula in their game against Duke.

The sports blog Deadspin had an interesting post today that raises questions about how CBS handled their coverage of the accident.  The network showed the injury twice in fairly rapid succession, and then announced at halftime that they would not be showing the injury again.

As Deadspin notes, it’s not hard to find the video on the Internet, including the Deadspin blog, but I think that it is a very different thing to deliberately click on a video clip because you want to see it than having it play on your big screen TV before you quite realize what’s coming at you. (If you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you don’t.  It’s not that explicit, but you see a let doing something that is thoroughly unnatural.)

Dan Diamond, writing over at the Forbes web site, raises an entirely different ethical issue coming out of the Ware case.  He asks what does the NCAA owe Kevin Ware now? While I’m sure Louisville will do right by Mr. Ware, technically they could drop his scholarship, now that he’s not going be playing basketball again anytime soon. The point he makes is that the kids who do all the playing that draws the huge TV profits for the networks and schools do it all for a scholarship that may or may not last.

Food for thought.

 

Posted in Chapter 14, Chapter 9 | Tagged , , | Comments Off on How Did/Should Television Cover Kevin Ware’s Horrific Injury?