Reflection on Tivo-Technology and Culture-Brief Article

By John Buell

This article discusses Tivo and its affect on advertisements. It discusses the fact that because of Tivo, advertisement companies are putting their advertisements into the television shows and making their commercials shorter. They have been forced to do this because Tivo gives people the ability to skip through the commercials. This is why product placement has become so prominent in television today. This article discusses the fact that no technology, especially Tivo, will ever get us away from commercialism.
I have a Tivo in my house, and, to me, it was the greatest invention. If I was too busy to watch a television show I liked, or a skate competition, I could just record it, and watch it when I had a chance. This was great, because I could watch the show when I had time, and I could skip through the commercials and just enjoy the show. But, product placement has increased, even though I might not have noticed. Now, characters in the TV shows I watch are drinking Coca Cola, or wearing Nikes. I feel like this added product placement could be detrimental to the younger people watching TV, especially if the products advertised are sugary, fattening foods. If young kids see their favorite characters drinking Coke and eating McDonalds, they are much more likely to do so themselves. This article also mentions the fact that, for those who don’t have Tivo, they are getting fed double the amount of commercials. John Buell also points out that the product placement is extremely prominent in sports arenas. Many young children and adolescents watch sports and they are constantly bombarded with products. Tivo has aided to the fact that sports arenas have billboards all over the arena for things like Gatorade, Dunkin donuts, etc. Sports should be the place where kids can be safe from the fattening and fast food culture that everyone is exposed too, but it has come to be a place of increased product placement. I think this is really sad.
What is interesting to me is the fact that a lot of the product placement in TV shows goes unnoticed by me, and I think by most other people. That is what makes me nervous about the increase in product placement. People are being brainwashed into wanting the product that is being advertised. At least in regular commercials it is obvious what the advertisers are trying to sell to me. In product placement, it is not. I think that all of this could be harmful to the people watching TV. This adds to the fact that TV has become something that isn’t really good for people, especially young children. When young girls see Hannah Montana drinking a Coke, they are much more likely to want to drink coke, than they were before they saw the show. When they se her wearing a certain brand of clothing, they are much more likely to nag their parents until they get that brand. Therefore, Tivo has led to an increase in product placement, making it worse for TV viewers in general.

True Fans

I have always been interested in the idea of the “starving artist” because I enjoy art produced by non-mainstream artists. I feel like these people are the true artists of our time. I feel this way because they don’t produce their art for the money they will gain, but because of the message that they are trying to give out. Like Robert Rich, these artists feel that if just one person is strongly affected by their art they have succeeded. Their goal isn’t to sell a million albums, but to move people. I really respect the artists “living in a micro-niche,” because I can relate. I am studying film, and although filming big screen movies would give me a good, solid income, I really want to focus my attention on filming the thing I love, skateboarding. Although this won’t get me the same amount of money that filming a big screen movie would, it will make me happier, and this is how these starving artists feel, I think. Like Rich says, they are the “sort of artist who would be happy doing nothing else.” In my opinion, they make their art, not for their own success and pleasure, but for the betterment of other people. Another aspect touched upon in this article is bootlegged art. It must be frustrating for Rich, in my opinion, when people get his music through bootlegging. I never actually put that into perspective because stealing popular artists’ music doesn’t really harm them. But, every purchase counts for those artists “living in a micro-niche,” and when their music is stolen, it makes a huge difference.
These artists dedicate their lives to sending out a message through their art that not all people hear. Because of this dedication, I feel like these artists deserve more credit than those artists who do it for the money. I feel like it’s really unfair that those artists who sing meaningless music, most of the time not even written by them, get many times more money than those musicians who sing from their heart. According to Robert Rich, the Internet has helped him gain more of an audience, and this makes me happy. I like that the Internet is making it easier for these artists to gain an audience. In my opinion, it will be better for everyone if people started listening to the music produced by someone who feels passionate about something, not some rapper who sings about things that he feels will get the most audience. Also, although these artists don’t have many followers, they have dedicated ones. It also interested me that these artists think so much into how they present their product. Rich describes the different consequences of promoting their albums in different ways. Starving artists who rely on their small pool of fans need to be careful how far they go with their art, or how similar they stay. Both of these things can turn off their audience, which would be terrible. This article showed me that being a starving artist is more complicated and frustrating than I thought. For this reason, these artists deserve to be respected even more than they are.

The Long Tail

            This article really interested me because I am one of those people who have Netflix and I have chosen many movies based on their “If you like this movie, you’ll like these” category. This category allows people to open their minds to something that seems familiar, but really isn’t. I have chosen so many movies that, otherwise, would not have crossed my mind. Like the example in this article of the not well-known book, Touching the Void and the well-known book Into Thin Air, people are more likely to choose an unfamiliar book if it is recommended next to a book they know. Because Into Thin Air became so popular, people felt more inclined to read a book that they hadn’t heard of because it was very much like the one they enjoyed. This is a clever way to open up people’s minds to new material by new artists or writers or filmmakers. This is also used in the clothing industry. Whenever I see my girlfriend online searching for clothes, she is always given a category option that gives her choices of items that she might like based on what items she has clicked on. This allows her and other people to look at things that they might not have looked at. This is a great technique for distributors, but it is also good for people who have closed minds. It can help them to realize that there are other things out there that they might like.

Another way in which I’ve noticed people using sort of the same technique is by putting out books when movies are made of them. For the Touching the Void documentary in the article, making a documentary out of the book increased its demand. When I was younger I used to go see movies and then go to the bookstore to get some coffee. Most of the time, I’d see a movie that was playing in book form. I’m not sure which came first, the movie or the book, but what I realize now is that when movies are based on books, normally the book will come out again when the movie is released. This is an obvious technique for selling books. It gets people to read a book because it is out in theatres, and therefore, must be good and interesting. I noticed this when the Da Vinci Code came out. My friend had read the book almost a year before, and then when it came out in theatres it was on the bookstands again.

Another thing this article points out is that because people did not have any other options before the Internet, blockbuster hits were the only thing that people could choose. This left us with the same hits and ideas that we see all the time. But, like this article says, things like Netflix, which open people’s eyes to unfamiliar movies, will force the movie industry to come up with different, more unique ideas. I am someone who is not really into the mainstream entertainment world. I don’t really listen to the radio, and I really enjoy movies that don’t gain that much success, or don’t come out in theatres at all. So, I think, if people became more accustomed to movies and music like this, they would realize that there is more to the world then just what is fed to them on the radio and in the movie theatres.

 

Get Out of my Namespace

This article discusses debates on names used by different people and companies and the rules that predict whether someone deserves the name or not. I find it really interesting that names used make such a big deal in the world we live in today. I feel like names could create problems if the same name is used for the same product. For example, in the article they discuss that in China, some coffee shops are using the Chinese name for Starbucks. Because Starbucks owns its name, they sued to stop these coffee shops from using their name. This type of name “warfare” seems to make some sense to me because both shops with the same name make the same product, coffee. Because Starbucks is a huge company that has tried so hard to make a name for itself, it would be detrimental for someone to confuse them with the coffee shops in Shanghai that have the same name. Therefore, I think it makes sense that a company would fight for its name if someone else, selling the same product, used their same name. It’s kind of ridiculous, however, when people fight over the name domino for example, which has so many different connotations. I think that if different companies or people use the same name, but for completely different products, there should be no discussion as to who owns the name. In the example of Bill Wyman, for example, it’s ridiculous that the other Bill Wyman would sue. If people really cared about the other Bill Wyman, they would know that he was a bass player and not a music writer, and there should be no confusion. These type of arguments about names seem a little ridiculous and not worthy of the time they take up.

            This issue seems to be important, however, when discussing medicines. It would be really horrible if someone was given the incorrect medicine because it looked like the name, or sounded like the name of another medicine. Fighting over names in this category is not only likely to happen, but necessary. In my opinion, it is in medicine names that people should fight to keep names very different for the sake of people’s well-being and health.

            Another change that has led to more instances of name warfare is the rise of the Internet. With the Internet, anyone can use a name to make a website. They can use the name of a company or the name of an actor or musician. The laws that apply to this type of name usage make sense to me. I don’t think that they should be extended anymore than they are. I find this whole name dispute very ridiculous and time consuming. I feel like people should focus their attention and time on something more productive like dealing with poverty or AIDS for example. I think that the rule should, as they do, only apply to actors or musicians or authors, and only be applied when the names are used in a bad way. It should only matter if the website, using a public figures name, is doing harm to the person’s reputation.

            Therefore, like the end of the article discusses, I don’t think that any of these laws should be tightened, but loosened. As long as the people using the names of these companies or people are not discrediting the people whose names they use, and as long as they do not claim to be these people, they should be allowed to live in peace. This whole idea of fighting over names seems pretty frivolous to me compared to the problems we have in this world today. 

TV viewers' average age hits 50

This article discusses the fact that in studies performed on the median age of TV viewers, the results have been surprising. They have found that the median age of viewers is higher than it has ever been. The fact that the median age of TV viewers is growing is a really interesting fact to me. What interests me the most, is that, in my opinion, most of the primetime television shows on networks like ABC and the CW are made for people around 13 to 25 years. It is very strange for me to think that networks with shows like Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, and Gossip Girls are getting viewers that are in their late 30s and early 50s. This must mean that the young people watching these shows, are only watching these shows. They are not watching anything else on the network, instead adults and older people are.

Also, I always thought that it was teenagers and children who spent most of their time watching TV. This is evidently changing. Now, it seems that children and teenagers are just focusing their attention on those certain shows on each network that occur once a week, like Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Other than those shows, teenagers and children must be filling their time with other activities. At the same time, the number of older people watching TV has increased. So, after work, older adults must be spending a lot of their time in front of the television, maybe as a way to relieve stress. The oldest group of people, according to this article, is watching Fox’s primetime and daytime news. This shows that the oldest people watching TV are more interested in the news of their day and are also very conservative in their political views because Fox News is known for its conservative reporting. This article shows that the youngest television watched is by 10-year-old children. I was also surprised that the median age of “Family Guy” viewers was 29 years. I watch this show and so do many of my friends who are my age. I had no idea that so many people watched it almost all the way into their 30s.

I think that this article can be interpreted in two ways. One is positive and the other negative. The positive way to interpret this article, as I have already mentioned, is that it seems to be that younger people are not watching as much TV. In every network and show discussed in this article, other than Noggin and Nickelodeon, the median age is never lower than 29 years. I interpret this to mean that children and teenagers are spending more of their time working, studying, playing sports, or taking part in after school activities. This interpretation should make people feel better about the issues of obesity in this country. With less TV watching, in my opinion, there will be less cases of obesity. The negative interpretation of this study would be that there has just been an increase in the amount of TV that adults are watching. This just shows that more adults and older people are filling their lives with TV, while the amount of young people watching TV has not changed. I personally will believe the positive interpretation because it has a more optimistic view of the future.