The Media

Ever since mass media became mass media, companies have naturally used this means of communications to let a large number of people know about their products. There is nothing wrong with that, as it allows innovative ideas and concepts to be shared with others. However, as the years have progressed, the sophistication of advertising methods and techniques has advanced, enticing and shaping and even creating consumerism and needs where there has been none before, or turning luxuries into necessities.

Note 1

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Interesting ***

The Audience Also As Consumer

Ben Bagdikian, a prominent media critic, and author of the well-acclaimed book The Media Monopoly, provides more detail and examples. In Chapter 6 of his book, for example, Bagdikian describes in detail the pressure on media companies to change content (to “dumb down”) and to shape content based on the demographics of the audiences. Slowly then, the content of media is not as important as the type of person being targeted by the ads.

He also shows that the notion of “giving the audience what they want” is also a bit misleading because, if anything, it is more about targeting those readers that can afford the products that are advertised and so it is almost like giving the advertisers what they want!

The “dumbing down” of the content also acts to promote a “buying mood.” Hence, as Bagdikian summarizes, “programming is carefully noncontroversial, light, and nonpolitical” (see p. 133). As he traces briefly the history of advertising in magazines he also hints that this has happened for a long time:

The influence of advertising on magazines reached a point where editors began selecting articles not only on the basis of their expected interest for readers but for their influence on advertisements. Serious articles were not always the best support for ads. An article that put the reader in an analytical frame of mind did not encourage the reader to take seriously an ad that depended on fantasy or promoted a trivial product. An article on genuine social suffering might interrupt the “buying” mood on which most ads for luxuries depend. The next step, seen often in mid-twentieth century magazines, was commissioning articles solely to attract readers who were good prospects to buy products advertised in the magazine. After that came the magazine phenomenon of the 1970s — creating magazines for an identifiable special audience and selling them to particular advertisers.

— Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), p.138.