MTV On A Sunday - Lecture 6

Walking into lecture six on a faithful Monday afternoon, I was feeling pretty content about life. I’d just had an amazing Sunday planted in front of MTV with my friends, ‘studying’ and watching the music countdown titled: Top 400 Song of the Noughties.

You can imagine my guilt when the lecture was on commercial media. I was ashamed to find that, yes; MTV was pay TV and thus a part of this commercialisation. Commercial media can come in different forms such as newspapers, pay TV and free-to-air TV, radio, magazines, and a lot of various digital media.  After listening for the lecture for about fifteen minutes, I wondered whether I should feel guilty about using commercial media. Sure, I did waste a whole Sunday watching pointless television, but it was worth it, right?

So todays lecture rant is about how the lack of quality in commercial media is dumbing down society. Long were the days when documentaries played on free TV. Gone are the days when decent radio and talkback happened without being interrupted by hundreds of ads. Really channel Ten? The Lara Bingle Show? Surely this will be the downfall of your station. As poor university students, we can’t afford to have pay TV, so are we left with game and reality shows? Where are all the programs on free-TV that have heart? Programs that enlighten us with knowledge and educate us, challenging our thoughts and opinions! Lara’s IQ can only be negatively affecting us!

 

It’s not only what they say on commercial media, it is the time consumption that also affects us. I lost a whole Sunday of being studious to watch a pointless music countdown. Yes, I could have turned it off, but advertisers have spent time and effort finding the perfect way to attract the audience and leave them hanging. All this potentially productive time spent on nothing. So my final statement of the rant is this: Although commercialisation of media seems to make the big dollars that everybody seems to love, it is ultimately not challenging those who use it and thus, not allowing their minds to grow and filling them with pointless advertisements. This may be the downfall of media as we know it.

Think about it.