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. 

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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.

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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:

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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…)

 

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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.

 

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Using this blog to help you teach

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

I’ve been asked by a couple of folks recently on how to use this blog to help teach your intro to mass comm/media literacy class.  That’s easy because the real reason I have written this blog since 2004 is that it helps me teach my own class.

So, briefly, here are several suggestions for making the most of this blog:

How can I find useful stuff on the blog?

  1. Use the category links on the right side of the blog.
    These links will take you to all the blog entries since early summer 2010 that deal with a particular chapter. (That’s when I switched the blog from being hand coded to being a Word Press site.)So, for example, if you are looking for links that deal with the movie industry, click on Chapter 8 under Categories. I try to categorize every post by the chapters covered in it.  With the omnibus (and often snarky) Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)posts, they can cover quite a few.I generally play a pre-class video as my students are coming in, and I often go looking for them using this tool.  Going back to the Chapter 8 category, I find that I have a post labeled “George Carlin and Movie Trailers.”  I check it out and see that I have two great movie trailer parody videos.  I decide to play the one for what We then went on to look at what Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would look like as a screwball teen comedy.
  2. Use the Tags word cloud
    Underneath the list of chapters on the right is a word cloud of topic tags.  These are the most popular words I use to describe the blog posts.  Click on a word or phrase and you will get all the posts that have that tag.So if I was looking for material dealing with the Super Bowl and the media, I would click on Super Bowlin the word cloud.Note that the bigger the word or phrase is, the more posts there are tagged with it.
  3. Use the Search box
    At the top right of the blog is a box with a Searchbutton next to it.  Type in whatever you are looking for (think key words) and all the blog posts that mention that word or words will pop up.So if I was looking for all the posts that deal with Jon Stewart, I would type in his name, click on Search and find all the posts that mention him.

What kind of useful things are on the blog? Here are just a few examples:

  • Many of the links from the fourth edition of the book are to my blog posts.  
    You can find all of the book links by searching for them. So, for all the book links from Chapter 12, Public Relations, type “link ch. 12”  into the search box and click Search.(Make sure you include the quote marks.) These will often give you pictures, video or audio that deal with material from the book.One of the blog posts this will bring you to is one that amplifies on the material in the book on the Domino’s Pizza social media crisis.  The post includes a video news story about the case and a video apology from the company’s CEO.
  • Updates on news that has broken since the book was published.
    It is impossible for any textbook to keep up with the rapid pace of change in the media industry, so if you read the blog on a regular basis you will see posts dealing with a wide range of updates including Univision scoring a sweeps rating victory over NBC (Do we need to be talking about the Big 5 networks?), Carnival Cruise Line dealing with a PR crisis, and Comcast completing its purchase of NBCU from GE several years ahead of schedule.
  • Fun pop culture case studies to use in class.
    Last fall everyone on campus, it seemed was either listening to or making a Gangnam Style video.  In a pair of blog posts written by guest blogger Charley Reed, we looked at what Ganghnam Style is, where it came from, and why it matters to us.  Along with the cultural history and the original video, there’s also a great parody of “Klingon Style.”

What else do I put online other than the main blog?

  • I have a Twitter account where I post and retweet links on a variety of media issues, many of which become blog posts.  You can follow me as @ralphehanson.  I try to use the hashtag #liamw (Living in a Media World) to identify posts that directly apply to the book.  You may find other teachers and students around the country using the same hashtag.
  • I also have a Tumblr where I post video, audio, pictures, and occasional text that I’ve found online that I find interesting.  The Tumblr is more eclectic, less serious, and more personal than the blog.  I never miss the opportunity to add items that mock Disney, post music I like, or link to interesting videos. The Tumblr is located at: http://ralphehanson.tumblr.com.
  • Finally, I have a Facebook account for the book, but it is mostly reposting of links to the blog.

Any more questions?  Don’t hesitate to contact me! My e-mail address is rhanson40@gmail.com.

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

And we’re back after a pause for getting fun things like taxes done.

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Chapter 9 – Television Links

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

Here are several links I’ve been talking about during our television unit in Global Media Literacy.

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Kathleen Parker for my commentary students – 2013

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

Updated 3/6/18

My commentary and blogging students are reading Kathleen Parker for class this week.  She’s one of my favorite columnists because she is always challenging conventional labels.  No Dreaded Talking Points from Parker! Class (and everyone else) here are her Pulitzer Prize winning columns, along with several more recent columns:

Interview with Kathleen Parker on C-SPAN’s Q&A program

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How Univision is Making NBC Look Bad – What The Latest Ratings Tell Us

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Ralph Hanson

While I was growing up, when talking about television, we always talked about the Big Three broadcast networks: NBC, CBS, and ABC.  Sure there were the PBS stations out there, but they were small and non-commercial.  So no one really talked about them.

In 1986, Fox Broadcasting went on the air, and for many years was seen as a second-rate network that did a good job of attracting younger viewers, but not a particularly big audience.

All that changed in 1993, when Fox got the rights to carry NFL Football.  With the addition of that “must see” show, Fox moved from always finishing in fourth place overall to finishing third some weeks, and by 2005, it won it’s first ever “sweeps” rating period, earning the right to claim that it was Number 1.

And that’s how things have stood for the last eight years or so.  I, along with many others, have been suggesting for some time that we consider the popular Spanish-language network Univision to be a part of the Top 5 broadcast networks because on any given evening, it can easily finish in the top 3 or 4 overall.  And in urban markets, the Univision affiliate can oftentimes finish in first place.

But this year in February, Univsion got that critical fourth place in the Nielsen February sweeps period among the prized audience of Adults 18-49.  Part of this success is because of Univision’s growing popularity, but some is also from NBC falling off the ratings cliff since he football season has ended. Now Univision is a long ways from having an established spot in the Top 4 because NBC can’t be counted on to be always self destructing, but it does have a growing audience.

As a side note, here are 35 shows that apparently no one is watching – or at least these shows don’t reach a “reporting threshold” with Nielsen.

 

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