Revised Blog 6

Advertising, also known as any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor in which gives information about a product, is something that is portrayed almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week whether or not we are aware of it.  In the United States alone, over 263 billion dollars a year are spent on advertising. After observing the amount of advertising done in a 24 hour span, I came to the conclusion that I truly am not aware of the amount of advertising that is placed in front of me on a daily basis. 

At just 7:00 a.m. when I wake up to start my day and turn on the music channels, there are advertisements on side of the screen.  The type of advertisement depends on what time of music station I am listening to. When I turn on the country station, the advertisements that tend to come up are promoting for the country singer such as their cologne and perfume.  On the radio for country, there are a lot of dealership advertisements for trucks. When it comes to the hip-hop stations on television, the ads tend to differ.  They are more focused towards clothing and cosmetic products such as crest white strips, Herbal Essance, and Lancôme products.  When I get on my computer before I go up to class, advertisements that pop up are things such as Verizon Wireless (my cell phone company), and clothing products since I do a lot of online shopping. On my way to class every day I see the same advertisements for all of the restaurants up and down Main Street.

                Around 12:00 p.m. on my way back from class I also see those same advertisements on Main Street.  When I get home from class and turn on the television, I normally tend to turn on Lifetime Movie Network. After doing this project, I realized that the advertisements for this channel are focused more on middle-aged or older women.  Between one and my next class at 3:00, advertisements that were portrayed were Activia, Granola Thins, Prescriptions Savings Card, Laser Spine Institute (for back pain), Toyotas, Anti-depressants (Cymbalta), Exelon Patch (Alzheimer’s), Ourtime.com, Match.com, and Puristics.  All of these advertisements are types of ads that a young woman at my age would not be interested in because most people at my age tend to watch MTV instead of Lifetime.

                After class, I took a trip to the Lehigh Valley Mall where on the way I saw so many advertisements that if I would have tried to keep track by writing them all down I would have caused a car accident.  Everywhere you look there is an old fashion billboard or the new electronic ones with multiple flashing advertisements.  Some that stuck out that I could remember were a Kutztown billboard, a Penn State baseball billboard, Never Quit Smoking billboard, T-Mobil, Verizon Wireless, DeSales University and jewelry billboards.  At nighttime when I get home and turn on MTV, the advertisements drastically change for the age range.  The advertisements are clearly directed more towards adolescents.   Some that showed were Snapple half and half, Twix, Maybelline, 10 minute trainer workout, Head and Shoulders, Febreze, and crest 3D white strips.  There were also advertisements for Hershey Kisses, goldfish grains, Arby’s and Scion. 

After doing the observation of advertisements, I found that the signaling that the distributers are trying to get across differs from the different type of station you are listening to or watching.  Channels for younger people direct their messages more towards the “new trends,” while channels directed towards older people focus more on health care and old habits that most probably already follow. With all of this clutter being put into our minds 24/7, 7 days a week, it turns out to be a negative impact on the consumers.  They feel as though the products they see advertised in the media is something that they need to have because if it works on television, chances are it’s going to work for them. I feel as though most people look past how pervasive commercialism is.  Society believes that this stuff being shown in the media is a “must have,” causing times to be even harder than they are in today’s economy.  Between radio, television, billboards, magazines, the internet, and multiple other types of media, it’s consistent involvement in our lives and has become intrusive.  We can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by some sort of sign saying “buy me!” in the long run, this is going to have a negative impact on the consumer but a positive impact for the producer.  

Ethical or Unethical?

Ethics help us sort things out when we have issues.  It helps us decide what it is right to do as an individual or even when it comes to society.  According to our text, an ethical decision should be explainable to others in a way that they will appreciate, regardless of whether they accept it. Overall, it is deciding whether or not you are going to choose to do the right thing. When it comes to downloading music illegally, most people question as to whether this is ethical or not.  According to the definition, this would be highly unethical for someone to do.  There is no acceptable reason as to why people should be able to download music for free that other people work hard to make for our entertainment. Most people do not stop and take the time to ponder this thought because they are too busy downloading other people’s work for free.  Immanuel Kant asks us to think of what the results would be if everyone acted the same way.  If everyone thought that it was perfectly acceptable to download music illegally, musicians would probably stop making music for our listening purposes. They work hard and put in a lot of time and effort in order to please their fans, so their fans should respect them back by paying for their music.  Loyal fans and music listeners should not mind paying a few dollars to support the musician in hope of them coming out with a new album. People who download music illegally need to think of the consequences that could happen if everyone decided that they were just going to get music for free on a daily basis. It is understood that as high school and college students money is tight, but how about all of those long hours and all-nighters that they pull to write a term paper?  If those papers were up on the internet and people were using it to their advantage the creator of the paper getting paid for it, they would be highly upset.  There is no acceptable reasoning to give that would prove that downloading music illegally is an ethical decision.   

Blog Post 4 - Advertisements

     Advertising, also known as any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor in which gives information about a product, is something that is portrayed almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week whether or not we are aware of it.  In the United States alone, over 263 billion dollars a year are spent on advertising. After observing the amount of advertising done in a 24 hour span, I came to the conclusion that I truly am not aware of the amount of advertising that is placed in front of me on a daily basis. 

At just 7:00 a.m. when I wake up to start my day and turn on the music channels, there are advertisements on side of the screen.  The type of advertisement depends on what time of music station I am listening to. When I turn on the country station, the advertisements that tend to come up are promoting for the country singer such as their cologne and perfume.  On the radio for country, there are a lot of dealership advertisements for trucks. When it comes to the hip-hop stations on television, the ads tend to differ.  They are more focused towards clothing and cosmetic products such as crest white strips, Herbal Essance, and Lancôme products.  When I get on my computer before I go up to class, advertisements that pop up are things such as Verizon Wireless (my cell phone company), and clothing products since I do a lot of online shopping. On my way to class every day I see the same advertisements for all of the restaurants up and down Main Street.

                Around 12:00 p.m. on my way back from class I also see those same advertisements on Main Street.  When I get home from class and turn on the television, I normally tend to turn on Lifetime Movie Network. After doing this project, I realized that the advertisements for this channel are focused more on middle-aged or older women.  Between one and my next class at 3:00, advertisements that were portrayed were Activia, Granola Thins, Prescriptions Savings Card, Laser Spine Institute (for back pain), Toyotas, Anti-depressants (Cymbalta), Exelon Patch (Alzheimer’s), Ourtime.com, Match.com, and Puristics.  All of these advertisements are types of ads that a young woman at my age would not be interested in because most people at my age tend to watch MTV instead of Lifetime.

                After class, I took a trip to the Lehigh Valley Mall where on the way I saw so many advertisements that if I would have tried to keep track by writing them all down I would have caused a car accident.  Everywhere you look there is an old fashion billboard or the new electronic ones with multiple flashing advertisements.  Some that stuck out that I could remember were a Kutztown billboard, a Penn State baseball billboard, Never Quit Smoking billboard, T-Mobil, Verizon Wireless, DeSales University and jewelry billboards.  At nighttime when I get home and turn on MTV, the advertisements drastically change for the age range.  The advertisements are clearly directed more towards adolescents.   Some that showed were Snapple half and half, Twix, Maybelline, 10 minute trainer workout, Head and Shoulders, Febreze, and crest 3D white strips.  There were also advertisements for Hershey Kisses, goldfish grains, Arby’s and Scion.  After doing the observation of advertisements, I found that the signaling that the distributers are trying to get across differs from the different type of station you are listening to or watching.  Channels for younger people direct their messages more towards the “new trends,” while channels directed towards older people focus more on health care and old habits that most probably already follow.

Blog Post 3

     After picking up American Motorcycle Association’s magazine, the magazine’s demographic strategy popped out right away.  This is not a magazine that a woman shopping in the grocery store would typically pick up while waiting in line at the check-out counter.  Through signaling, also known as the way media indicates to an audience that their product is intended for them, it was found that the magazine was mostly driven towards middle-aged men who enjoy riding motorcycles on a regular basis.  The pictures and colors that are used in this magazine are not something that you would see featured in a women’s magazine.  The advertisements are more directed towards items such as: tires, breaks, mechanical services, deodorant, and motorcycle riding equipment and clothing. The colors found in the American Motorcycle Association magazine are not those pretty pink and purples you find in women’s magazines, but they are colors like red, black, blues, browns, and greens.
       Other demographics that this magazine takes into consideration is that they seem to want their viewers to be interested in motorcycles, they want them to have a motorcycle, or they want to help them figure out the best made bikes for their upcoming purchase. They seem to direct their products towards middle-aged men who have a steady income and are a little bit above the “middle-class” average for household incomes.  The magazine also tended to target narrower audiences by presenting the articles in much shorter blocks of reading.
      After analyzing the magazine’s demographic strategy and looking into further research on the American Motorcycle Association magazine under Media Kit, it was found to almost be a perfect match to the preliminary assessment. This magazine has nearly 200,000 subscribers that pay $49.00 a month to read about motorcycles. After doing surveys it was found that most of the households that subscribe to this magazine have an income of or around $85,000 a year. Also, 84% own their own homes, and an additional 15.4% own more than one home.  They also showed that this magazine has influenced people to purchase motorcycle oil, brake pads, riding apparel, new seats, and street helmets within the upcoming year. This magazine's demograhpic strategies really stood out.

CNN & Al Jazeera

After reading up and watching videos from both CNN and Al Jazeera news stations on the death of Whitney Houston, there are many differences amongst the two companies.  When it comes to CNN, they seem to take the approach of using social responsibility when it comes to announcing breaking news to the public.  This means that they give information to the public that is needed to bring together buyers and sellers, helps to serve as the governments watch dog, and they focus on giving the public information needed for self-governance.  With this being said, they take more of an approach by making sure that they cover all details and they watch what they say so that they do not offend anyone.  This falls under the category of being the governments watch dogs and making sure that the public realizes that the law officials are doing all that they can in order to try and answer the public’s unanswered questions.  CNN made sure that they talked about what an icon and a legend she was and will always be and tried not to focus so much on her drug addiction. CNN almost tries to “beat around the bush” by trying to put things in perspective that will make the public feel at ease.  On the other hand when it comes to Al Jazeera news, it takes more of a libertarian approach to letting the public know about breaking news.  They assume people want to know the truth and they should be guided by it by having opinions freely expressed with own personal thoughts.  It seems as though with Al Jazeera news, rational ideas are most accepted.  I believe that Al Jazeera falls under thing category because after watching what they had to say on Whitney Houston, they did not hold anything back when it came to explaining her drug addiction.  Not only were they blunt, short, sweet, and to the point, but they did not hesitate to point out the flaws of her husband Bobby Brown and the violent marriage in which the two of them had. Al Jazeera news made it seem as though the cocaine and marijuana addiction that she had was almost her own problem and that she did not do anything to stop it. They did not seem to focus so much on her as being a popular musician, but more on the facts of her drug problem. Overall, the difference between CNN and Al Jazeera news is that CNN is something that would be more family oriented to watch.  They seem to give more reassuring facts and comforting statements about things that are going on in the world.  On the other hand Al Jazeera is straight to the point about the facts and what is going on.  That always is not a bad way, but it could cause a lot of controversy and angry viewers if they do not agree with the opinions that this news company portrays.

Pretty Little Liars - Blog Post 1

When it comes to watching television shows and movies, a television show that is pleasing for me to watch is Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family on Monday nights. Not only is it a night where my friends and I have a social gathering to watch it, but the television show is very intriguing to watch.  Pretty Little Liars is a show that keeps you on the edge of your seat which is why I feel most adolescents watch it.  Why it appears good to me is because it is a show based on high school girls who are pinpointed to be liars.  They are the popular girls who do not always treat people with the respect that they should.  It is a mystery series where they are trying to find someone who is harassing them because he knows all of the secrets and he/she haunts them and calls them self “A.”  Parts of it that are made up are the fact that these girls have a stalker and are not doing anything about it.  They are not informing their parents or telling the police, they are just keeping it between themselves in their own social group.  In real life, authorities would be handling this case and not a bunch of teenage girls who are barely out of high school.  When looking at the comparison of this series and real life, the only thing that stands true is that it shows that people can definitely be liars as innocent are you may think they are.  It also shows that people do stab others in the back when they least expect it. Also, it shows many scenarios of the girls family problems that could stand true today such as: parents getting divorced and remarried, almost going bankrupt and losing their house, and kids having a hard time connecting with their step-siblings.  Other than that, when it comes to contrasting the television show and real life, there are many differences that would not happen in real life that happen on the television show. Like mentioned before, if this was going on in real life, the cops would be involved and helping these young teenage girls out. Another difference between Pretty Little Liars and real life is that there is a cop involved as a suspect that the girls believe may have been involved with a murder.  That is very unusual to hear about.  Overall, Pretty Little Liars appears good to watch and some parts of it do seem to be made up.  When comparing and contrasting the show to life, there are many real scenarios that could possibly happen in real life, and then again there are also many scenarios that would normally not happen in an average person’s lifespan.