Radio industry and its evolution

The industry of radio, as any other media we have today, has gone through a sequence of change since the early 1920’s. In the beginning one could think of it as a “family-gatherer” while today we can listen to it individually everywhere we go. Nonetheless, I think the role that the government played during the first decades of this medium was vital and it significantly helped shape the radio industry.

Government intervention has always been a controversial subject regardless of what it is they are intervening in. However, there was a scenario in which the government knew when it was the right moment to step in and when it was to step out. Most people recognized that it was a necessary action and appreciated the fact that the government left the radio industry the same or better than how they found it.

This outstanding example of which I’m speaking of is the government intervention in the radio industry during the World War I. The government realized that they were going to be needing radio in order to have better communication. They expropriated it from the private companies and once the war was over they gave it back to them and mandated U.S. ownership, so the British had to leave the industry. This is how the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was born. This is why, in my opinion, the government’s intervention was vital in the radio’s evolution process. 

Learning from past experiences?

          Sometimes I find it funny how we can become so strictly encouraging or disencouraging of a specific product depending on our past experience with that product. The media can try all they want to promote the product but one single bad experience is all we (consumers) need to cross it out of our shopping cart and possibly of our close ones’. I think the idea of social learning lets me understand the impact of this videoclip by explaining how sensible we can be towards a product based on our experience with it.

            Social learning can be thought of as the knowledge gained based on our level of satisfaction with a product, with which we make our shopping decisions. And, like previously stated, it can end up working as a ripple effect in which we either promote that product among our friends and family or we make sure they don’t ever purchase it. So it (this knowledge that consumers gain) is definitely a delicate tool that companies can have working for them or against them.

            In the attached video clip we can see how a flight attendant is filing her nails while people in the Low Fair Class, labeled “No Class,” are trying to call her to get some help. She, mischievously, laughs at the passenger’s attempt and keeps filing her nails. At the end of the ad there is a message reading: “Are you also tired of poor service? We take care of you wherever you are seated.” So, with the use of social learning, people can feel identified with the ad based on their own experience. If they, in fact, have received bad service in a specific airline, they will perhaps listen to what this one has to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7My23CipQRE

1st Blog Assignment! :-)

            A couple of days ago, while navigating the Internet, I ran into a public news website where they show a bunch of ads on the side promoting clothes, cars, watches, etc. And there was one particular BMW ad that caught my attention. The concept of hegemony lets me understand this advertisement from BMW with the use of framing as an associating tool.

            For years now, we (consumers) have been constantly influenced by the media everywhere we go, that’s a given. Nonetheless, many times there is a spin that the media put to the ads that we don’t see. It may be in a hidden message, in a double sense image or it may be put out there without any type of disguise. But in the end, it does have a considerable effect on the way a person views that particular subject at that moment. This powerful influencing effect that basically tells us how to think about any given object that is being promoted is called framing.

            In the ad, there is a couple fooling around in bed and the guy is very concentrated looking at the girl’s face. Only that, instead of a face, there is an open magazine showing a BMW and the message in the middle of the picture reads: The ultimate attraction. What, in my opinion, the ad says with the use of framing is that nowadays most men are very focused on getting a brand-new fancy car and, in many cases, it has something to do with the –attraction- part of the message. It (“the ultimate attraction”) representing the fact that once he gets in the car he takes on this role of an attractive “I-can-do-it-all” type of guy. This is how framing helps us understand the ad. By showing us how a typical guy can be thinking of a thousand other things (including a BMW) while he is in bed with his respective woman.