Television, Our Generation’s Preferred Mass Medium

“Television became a mass medium much faster than film, music, and radio. As it became more widespread, television displaced radio—which had displaced national magazines—as the medium providing a common set of experiences.” - Converging Media

Much like film, television includes both sound and visuals. So why is TV more popular than film? Well, we can watch it in the comfort of our own home for much less than the price of a movie. When we go to the movies, we spend money on gas, tickets, food and drinks… which can average to around $60 dollars for a family a four for ONE night. Therefore, it would make more sense to just stay home, spend time with your family and watch your favorite show or movie. Television provides entertainment, information and education with several different forms of shows; soap opera, comedy, sitcom, news, weather, sports, advertising, drama, etc. Transmitting information live is common in news, weather, and sports. If you miss a show also now there are recording options, which allows you to record programs and play it back later; this is an example of time shifting.

According to our text book, Converging Media, “…[T]here is no doubt that television continues to have a profound effect on people’s attitudes about a variety of social and cultural issues.” We all have our favorite TV shows, and it’s pretty obvious that not all of them benefit us in any way. Jersey Shore? Honey Boo Boo?!  The SCSU Journalism Department, says in America today, young people spend more time in front of the television than they do in class. By the time an average American graduates from high school, he or she will have spent about 12,000 hours in class and about 19,000 hours watching the tube. Yes that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, this is our future generation.

The audio-visual feature with televisions benefits us more than radio does, for example in sports, we’d rather much watch the recap on television to see the footage than having to listen to it on the radio and imagine it in our head. It makes for a more appealing and entertaining experience. We listen to radio mostly in the car, as a way to have some background noise or to not distract us fully. In our text book, 98 percent of U.S. households have at least one TV. I can honestly say in my house we have a television in every room except for two (not including bathrooms of course). 8 televisions in one house seems a bit ridiculous for a 4 person household, if you ask me.

         Throughout the years the quality of TV’s have absolutely evolved with flat screen, LCTV, HDTV, etc. It will be no surprise in the future if we continue to see the upgrade in visual and sound quality in our Televisions. Our textbook says, “the large screen, flat-panel, high-definition displays have changed the television-viewing experience, bringing nearly theater-quality sound and picture clarity to living rooms and even 3-D viewing now.” It all makes sense now, right? Maybe in the future we’ll get super fancy waterproof television screens in the shower. Just today, I saw entertainment news and commercials on the screen of a gas pump. What will they think of next?

So All in Favor of DRM…? *Crickets*

According to the textbook, Converging Media, DRM or Digital Rights Management is defined as “various technologies or security codes used to protect copyrighted works from being illegally downloaded,” (pg 115). It is found more common with online music downloads since this is where most of the illegal files are being distributed. This anti-piracy technology allows the copyright owners to control who gets to access their work. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes disabling a DRM system illegal in the United States, but no surprise that people find a way to sneak around it.

For downloaded music, DRM can restrict the types of devices that can play that particular song, the amount of time it can be played or limits the song in whatever way they choose. According to, Internet for Beginners, DRM has four common stages: packaging, distribution, license serving, and license acquisition. These stages all limit the access of, in this case, music and be able to lock and unlock files. The padlocks that prevent from using or copying a file are called “license encryption keys”.

Since DRM gets to decide how and when you can use their files, it basically means you don’t really “own” the file unless you pay for it. And even if you pay for it, like eBooks online through your kindle.. they can be deleted without your permission from Kindle or Amazon. There is a substantial amount of things we can download illegally from the internet now; music, movies, books, computer software, just about anything. We are now even able to download apps for free illegally THROUGH OUR IPHONES (if your phone is jailbroken). Take that DRM!

Test blog !