television — AEJMC Hot Topics

Why ‘Advanced’ TV Ads Haven’t Spawned a Marketing Utopia

April 16, 2012 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Matt Creamer on AdAge, April 16 –

That I live in a city (New York) where 54% of residents are car-free means chances are good that I don’t own a vehicle. The odds increase with my address in Manhattan, a borough where by some counts about 75% go without wheels, and positively soar in my parking spot-desolate ZIP code.

The author sees lots of TV ads for cars — in Manhattan.

So it’s a safe bet that all the auto ads dominating commercial pods I see nightly aren’t safe bets at all. Despite being nowhere near a sales funnel that might eventually deposit me behind the wheel, I am besieged by car and car-related pitches. I see Lincoln pitchman John Slattery more often than I see my friends, and the Jay-Z flourish announcing that Chrysler 300 spot loops endlessly in my mind. Don’t even get me started on Progressive ‘s Flo and the Geico Gecko.

Read the full post on AdAge

Filed Under: Hot Topics Tagged With: Advertising, Media, television, TV

Book Review – Television Truths: Forms of Knowledge in Popular Culture

May 17, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Television Truths: Forms of Knowledge in Popular Culture. John Hartley. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 290 pp.

John Hartley’s name has been on the short list of influential television studies scholars for over thirty years. He has held numerous academic posts and is now distinguished professor, Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, and research director of the Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He has earned the right to use a similarly authoritative and profound primary title for his most recent book.

What is “truth” with regard to a medium? In Television Truths, Hartley addresses the TV via lenses of epistemology, ethics/politics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. He does so by dividing the book into four parts, each headed by a question: Is TV true? Is TV a polity? Is TV beautiful? What can TV be? While perhaps not entirely or definitively answered, they are the types of questions that cut to the very core of television’s being. Hartley covers both the breadth and depth in an eminently portable book.

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Filed Under: Quarterly Winter 2010, Reviews Tagged With: aejmc quarterly, culture, John Hartley, television, truth

Book Review – The Rise of 24-Hour News Television: Global Perspectives

May 11, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

The Rise of 24-Hour News Television: Global Perspectives. Stephen Cush-ion and Justin Lewis, eds. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010. 350 pp.

Well before arrival of the Internet, 24/7 news from satellite and cable television services transformed public perception of what news is. Starting with CNN in mid-1980, no longer did we have to await evening television newscasts or the morning paper—we could see and hear about breaking news just as it happened. Now taken for granted by a new generation, many of us still remember the wonder of obtaining what James Curran calls “disposable news” at any hour of the day—or night.

This anthology of seventeen essays examines the first two decades of twenty-four-hour news from a variety of viewpoints and countries, assessing both its content and its impact.

Book Review – Reinventing Public Service Television for the Digital Future

May 11, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Reinventing Public Service Television for the Digital Future. Mary Debrett. Bristol, England: Intellect, 2010. 253 pp.

There has been considerable ink spent in recent years bemoaning the dour outlook of traditional public service television broadcasting in the face of growing competition from digital commercial services. Mary Debrett, a senior lecturer in media studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, takes a different tack to that competition by examining in some detail the ongoing story of six major public service broadcasters in four countries.

Chapters deal with Britain (the BBC, of course, but also Channel Four), Australia (ABC as the national broadcaster, and SBC, the Special Broadcasting Service, which centers on indigenous people), the United States (the Public Broadcasting Service), and New Zealand (Television New Zealand). Such a choice is obviously quite narrow—all these countries speak (largely) English and are industrial democracies. Inclusion of such developing regional powers as Brazil, India, or perhaps South Africa might have produced more generalizable results.