Lecture Six: Commercial Media

Early in this lecture, an interesting point was made, that I suppose I always knew but never really wanted to acknowledge: "Advertisers are the real customers of commercial media, not the viewers."


Without advertisers, there would be no commercial media. Commercial media needs money to survive and fund itself, and subscribers alone would never achieve that. Because of this, commercial media is often, unfortunately, more about catering for what would sell advertising space, rather than educating, entertaining and informing the audience. While is important that the latter is achieved, without catering for the former, as I mentioned above, there would be no commercial media.


This means "exciting" television and news print. Commercial media needs to generate an audience, because without it there is no one to view or listen to their advertisers. To do this, they need to screen gems like "Dancing with the Stars", "A Current Affair", and "Breakfast", which tries to catch as many eyes and ears as they can, with broad interest generating themes (Dancing with the Stars: dancing for young people and women, celebrities for young people, skimpy dancing outfits for, well... anyone who isn't asexual; A Current Affair, always out for a salacious scandal; Breakfast, to cater for the half asleep, half awake worker bees getting ready in the morning who need something a bit light hearted to encourage them out the door and not back into bed to dwell on the depressing state of the world). Many programs also feature product placement during the show, not just in ad breaks, in the form of a soft drink being enjoyed by a lead character in a TV serial, an iPad or laptop being used by a news presenter or more blatantly, BODY TRIM PLUS INFOMERCIALS BEING YELLED AT US BY A MUSCLY GUY IN A TIGHT TEE-SHIRT! Would you like a H2O Steam Mop with that protein shake? Just stay tuned in, it will be right after the segment about the Kardashian sisters. Maybe the bit about the miserable state of the education or health systems too, but that's boring.


Commercial media is also often viewed as biased towards the opinions of whomever holds the most cash (to pay for all that advertising, of course). While this isn't always a fair assumption, it's obvious in some instances, such as the Fox News network in the USA, or various Australian newspapers. It can be debated that these platforms are catering for a specific audience, which will in turn engage them more and then help sell more advertising space, which can be tailored for said audience for maximum effect.


There are controls on the media as well, commercial and public, to help keep it in line. In Australia these laws are fairly strict, which is both fortunate and limiting. It helps to regulate and censor content, which means less *extreme* bias.


Ultimately, commercial media is just that: commercial. You need to take it for what it presents itself as, which is a presentation of information and entertainment, quality varying, to fill in the time between the next ad. It can be useful to you or not, but it is your choice to consume it.