#3- Radio Daze

In the roaring 20's, radio became an important technological change, not only for the United States, but also the world. This new technology, along with other factors, helped shaped the radio industry during the 1920's.

This force always plays an important part with any new invention. Generally speaking, the inventor usually spends many years developing the invention in question. After a final product is created, the inventor has two options: either pitch his new creation to possible investors and get it sold to them or create their own business that utilize the new technology and interests other companies to also use their technology. For the case of radio, the second path was chosen, but with a modification that pushed out Marconi of the American market.

Guglielmo Marconi, before he created his radio empire, invented the "wireless telegraph" that utilized "radio waves to carry messages in Morse code." (1) Weilding his new invention, he created stations in Italy and Britian under the company Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. When Marconi made its mark in the U.S., this sparked fear of internation control of an important technology that the Navy had began to extensively use. Due to this fear, a negotiation was made to force Marconi "to sell its American assets to General Eletric (GE). In turn, it set up a new company with American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and Westinghouse, called Radio Corperation of America (RCA)." RCA then created its radio broadcasting company, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which split into NBC and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and made a competitor with the Colombia Broadcasting System (CBS). (1)

The creation of these three companies, more commonly known as the "Big Three", created an oligopoly that not only controlled radio in its early days, but also when it became a national standard to own a radio. But these companies would not be in existence without the creation of RCA. RCA wouldn't be created if GE didn't obtain the patents from Marconi. And GE would have never gotten the patents if Marconi didn't expand to the U.S., much less have a company at all, without the invention of the the "wireless telegraph." So as I have illustrated, the would be radio industry without the technological change that spawned it.

1. Staubhaar et all, Media Now.

Post #3- Use It (Media) or Lose It (Gratification)

As most of us have grown up in a media dominated environment, college students (as well as many other Americans) have grown accustom to use media to the ends of our gratification. It is in this way that media study theorist have the notion of uses and gratification.
Uses and gratification is a media theory in which "users actively seek out media that meet their needs for new knowledge, social interactions, and diversion" (1). In other words, we as users of media, use different mediums in order to complete a goal we have in mind, be it to catch up on the latest horror stories in Iraq or to catch up on the latest celebrity gossip. In this theory, user's goal must match "the gratifications [...] we actually obtain from the media." (1) In this sense, if your interested goal (gratification) is to acquire knowledge pertinent to your RTF 305 blog assignment, reading Media Now would satisfy this goal whereas watching music videos by The Drums will not satisfy this goal (although it does create gratification for musical needs).
Now, as my example, if someone wanted to satisfy the need to laugh, watch a comedy, see inappropriate (but extremely hilarious) humor, or simply to admire the host, then viewing the following video would gratify that need. However, if you were in the market for something educational, dramatic, or romantic, you would not be gratified by this particular medium and would find a different medium that would satisfy that goal.

Post #2- Have You Been Paying Attention in Class?

In this blog post, I will describe the effects of hegemony and how it relates to media.
Hegemony, "refers to the ways in which the media encourage people to consent to status quo power structures." (1) This is done by constantly pushing certain ideals and morals to the point where the viewer/receiver thinks of these viewpoints as common sense. In this way, the "power structures," such as executives of broadcasting or advertising companies, who control most of the media, are able to shape the thoughts of those who are supposed as subordinates. Hegemony is a concept in which those who critically study media use in order to discern what media is really trying to tell us besides the face value content.

In the 1950's comedy I Love Lucy, we can use hegemony to describe how the power structure of the television networks wants the viewer to understand gender roles. Ricky, although may be considered a minority, is seen as the dominant male always yelling at Lucy when she goes beyond what the power structure deems as socially acceptable. In this way, Lucy is forced into a typical homemaker role, even though she pursues others interests. Other 50's comedies, along with I Love Lucy, also told America that the family structure consisted of a mother, father, and their children (always including a boy). Since both ideas were consistently reinforced by not only the comedies, but also by the commercials that aired with them and subsequent programming, these ideas became imbedded into the viewers vision of how a family should be and made them frown upon other family structures.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a clip of I Love Lucy in which gender roles are reinforced:

Sources:
1-Hegemony and Media Studies: Antonio Gramsci's Theory of the Hegemonic Media http://www.suite101.com/content/hegemony-and-media-studies-a52278#ixzz0z5LLh0z.