For my final media paper I would like to talk about product placement and how it affects our media. I feel product placement is a very important thing that needs to be done and explored in the age of the internet and dvr players.

My major is advertising so it is kind of hard for me to think that advertising as a bad thing. I do believe that everyone is being advertised to on a second to second basis, not just children. So, why is marketing to children such a horrible thing? Is media bad for children? Children start watching tv at a very young age and some people use the tv as a babysitter. I do not agree with allowing your children to spend an endless amount of time in front of the tv, but I am a person that watches a  large amount of tv and I grew up with a tv in my room. I personally of course think I grew up just fine. If a child does not watch certain things growing up does that mean that they will be behind? I personally have two views on this. If a child does not grow up watching certain things than they will mostly likely not be academically behind, but they could be behind in terms of keeping up to date on events and current trends and fads, which never helps in the friend department. If a child watches too much tv or is affected too much by the media then they might be behind academically, but they would not be behind in the current events and trends.

So, who is to blame for this advertising frenzy? I think that parents play a huge role in controlling what their children watches, eats and plays with. A child cannot be controlled one hundred percent of the time because children go to school and to other children’s houses, but there is a filter system that parents need to try and control, and if your child is becoming overweight or watching too much tv, or is not able to have fun in the real world and can only solace  in a video game, than the parent should not place the entire blame on the marketer, they should take control of their own actions and look at what they could change to help their child.

I have always been a person who enjoys video games, but is not very good at them. Growing up I had a Nintendo game system and I think that is why I would choose Nintendo systems over any other system. My husband and I have 6 gaming systems in our living room, 4 of them being Nintendo systems.I personally only play them now and then  but I do carry a Nintendo DS in my purse all of the time and I still enjoy the concept of video games. I am not very good at them and they tend to get boring quickly if you’re dying all the time. I feel that I am an explorer, I enjoy looking around and visiting places. I know a lot of people have experienced things like “flow” and “telescoping” but I have not myself, and almost find it hard to believe because I can’t seem to play a video game for more than an hour or so without getting bored.

Today after class I really just wanted to come home and play some Nintendo. So, tonight we enjoyed some old school Super Mario Brothers. I think video games are a very important thing for everyone to experience at some point in their life. Video games are fun and entertaining but they also help with problem solving and hand-eye coordination.

The nine o’clock news tonight was a little boring with not a whole a lot going on around the city. The two main topics were weather and carjackings. Did you know that it rained 18 out of the 31 days of October? Man that is a lot of rain. I did not feel that there were any bias things happening in the news report tonight. In one of the stories about a carjacking they even used two examples and they were in two different parts of town; St.Charles and Maryland Heights. I thought it was neat how they used two examples to show that it’s not just “bad” parts of town where something like that could happen. During the news tonight I did not feel there were any double standards, skewed coverage or loaded language. I found the nine o’clock news interesting but a little boring.

 Do Not Text While Driving

video that got passed around Facebook like crazy. The first time I watched the video I kept thinking that I knew some people that really needed to see this, but then everyone in my news feed kept posting it. After a few days it just got old. I think internet viral videos can be funny and enjoyable but their are always people that take it to a level that makes it annoying! So, just as an example of exactly what I mean, I am going to be one of those annoying people and post this video…Enjoy!

The Amazing Race is a reality game show in which teams of two race around the world trying to win $1,000,000. The show started in 2001 and has had 15 seasons. The Amazing Race is on the CBS network on Sunday night prime time. The format of the show has never really changed thoughout the 15 seasons. Every week the teams travel around the world completing challenges, with the last team to arrive at a designated check point leaving the game.

The Amazing Race is a reality game show from the subgenre eliminational game show. I personally really enjoy this subgenre of reality TV. The teams on this show can be mean or rude and try to get the other teams to lose, but for the most part I don’t feel that the show is staged or faked in anyway. Each team can go from winning first place at a certain check point to last place or any place in the middle. I can never really pick out who is going to win each check point or even the whole show at any given time. Another reason I like this subgenre is because you can root for the underdog, because they always have a chance to win the show. Reality TV is very enjoyable to watch because it is so unpredictable.

Something that I think everyone pays at least a little bit of attention to is celebrity news. Every time I am checking out at a store I can’t help but look at all the magazines with celebrity news; either good or bad. But come on, lets face it, it is almost always bad. Why is that? Does the media make things look worse than they really are? Well, I personally think that everyone has their own idea about if the media pushes it too far or not, but my personal opition is that the media sure does not help in any way.  I do think that some celebrities these bad things upon themselves. For the most part you are always hearing about the same 10 celebrities over and over again. Why is that? I personally think that is because they bring it on themselves. Should celebrities be followed around tweny four seven?

The media is a wonderful things it brings truths and lies to the surface. It can be a bad thing and it can be a good thing.

Today in Suvey of Professinal Media we had a guest speaker; his name was Frank Baker. Frank travels around the world to spread the word of media literacy for teachers and students from grades K to 12. Frank is a gradutae of the University of Georgia and has had many interesting jobs but is currently an educational consult. Today Frank talked to the class about what media literacy is and how it is our everyday lives. They way people learn is changing rapidly and many teachers don’t know the correct way to teach them or even have the correct tools to either. Their is a shift in learning from print to visual and teachers are not educated in this, so they don’t want to teach that way, which is where Frank comes in. Frank Baker holds workshops to help teachers learn more about what media literacy is and how they can use it and teach it in their own classes. Today’s children are growing up in a tech savvy world but don’t have any training in it.

So the real question is, What is media literacy? My view of media literacy is how we recieve and interpret media and its messages. There are many different meanings to media literacy. Wikipedia says that Media literacy is the process of analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. Frank Baker says that it is helpping students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques. Some of the key concepts of media literacy are, all media is constructed, media uses its own languages, media conveys values. Frank walked the class through these key concepts, helped us understand them a little better, and even gave some really good examples.

Frank Baker talked about really interesting things, but one of the things I really find intertaning is how almost everything in the media is owned by only six companies. It is really hard to believe that so many things are owned by only six companies; another things I really found interesting was when Frank talked about product placement. He used an example about oreos in a Friends epiosode. The oreos were not in the airing of the show but are in the dvds of the episode. Frank explained that today people skip commercials so networks have now started placing products in the show itself to put the products in the consumers face.

I am currently taking Media Literacy at Lindenwood, but I still learned a lot from our guest speaker Frank Baker. Everyone can learn a lot from him by checking out his website or even checking out his two books, His first book, “Coming Distractions: Questioning Movies,” was published in January 2007 by Capstone Press and his second book “Political Campaigns & Political Advertising: A Media Literacy Guide” was published June 30, 2009 by Greenwood Press.

The Vampire Diaries is on The CW Thursday nights at 8pm. The show is about a high school girl names Elena. Her parents died in a car crash and she found herself feeling like she didn’t fit in with her friends any more, which is when she discovered a new boy in town. Stefan is a new student that Elena is drawn to from the beginning. There is just one problem; Stefan is a vampire, and his evil brother Damon has also come to town and started causing trouble. Stefan is a vampire that does not feed on humans and does not want to, but his brother kills humans just for the fun of it. Stefan has fallen for Elena, but so has Damon. The show is based of the novel of the same name by L. J. Smith.

The first season was only going to be 13 episodes, but with The CW’s highest debut ratings ever, 14.9 million viewers, the contract was extended to 22 episodes. The show is your everyday vampire story but if you like vampire stories than you should check out The Vampire Diaries.