Checkpoints

Audience profiling

1. Demographic profiling in grouping an audience in terms of age, gender, area interests and status. It is a simple way of defining audiences.
   
2. psycho graphic profiling is market research which categorize audiences in terms of needs and motivation rather then simple demographic factors.
   
3. Nicknames are used to target audiences more easily. For example YUPPIES
   
   Uses and gratifications
   
4. Four motivation theories that Blumer and katz suggested are:
   Diversion
   Personal relationships
   Personal identity
   Surveillance
   
5. Cultural codes are when socio economic groups interpret media texts in different ways.

Murdoch wants Sky News to be more like rightwing Fox

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
The Guardian
Saturday November 24 2007

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has said he wants Sky News to become more like his rightwing US network Fox News, and revealed the extent of his editorial grip on his British newspapers to a House of Lords committee.

The communications committee, chaired by Lord Fowler, toured the US in September to meet media executives, regulators and consumer groups as part of an inquiry into media ownership. Their conversations were made public yesterday in detailed minutes.
Murdoch said he wanted Sky News, which has confounded cynics by maturing into a well-funded and award-winning 24-hour news operation, to be more like Fox News to make it "a proper alternative to the BBC".

Due to the lack of impartiality laws in the US, Fox News became successful as a rightwing counterpoint to the perceived leftwing leanings of its rivals.
Murdoch said Sky may become more like Fox, even if there was no overhaul of news impartiality laws by Ofcom, by copying its presentational style. He complained that changes had not been made because "nobody at Sky listens to me". The BSkyB chief executive is his son James.

Murdoch, 76, recently added the Wall Street Journal to an empire that includes 20th Century Fox, the Times, the Sun, a stake in BSkyB, MySpace and interests in South America, Asia and Australia.
Murdoch restated his antipathy towards British legislators and regulators, saying the UK was "anti-success" and this had prevented him from expanding his media empire further. They kept investigating his purchases on the grounds of plurality, he said, but he had invested in plurality by keeping the Times afloat and putting 200 channels on the air through Sky.

He claimed the government's concern about cross-media ownership was "10 years out of date" given the proliferation of media outlets, and said concern over BSkyB's purchase of a 17.9% stake in rival ITV stemmed from "paranoia".
Next month John Hutton, secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, will receive the Competition Commission's final verdict on the matter and decide what action to take.

In the minutes, Murdoch distinguished between the Times and the Sunday Times, in which he said he did not interfere in editorial matters, and the Sun and the News of the World, where he said he acted like "a traditional proprietor". "He exercises editorial control on major issues - like which party to back in a general election or policy on Europe," said the minutes.

this article is important because murdoch is one of the most influential men in the media. he wants expand his media empire but the British won't let him. this relates to what we are studying at the moment about elites taking over and the amount of control and choice we have about what we see in the media.

Effects theory checkpoints!

checkpoint one: what is the culture identity?
the culture industry is the rise of the media industry, it means that society controls almost everything even culture. culture is produced by the industry of media. the mass audiences are manipulated therefore making them passive. the mass media prevent culture from being effectively communicated to the audience until it has been mediated to fit the capitalist system.

checkpoint two: what do we mean 'desensitised'?
desensitised is having to repeat what the audiences see because it is difficult to prove the effects an individual media texts have on an audience. an example of previously banned films which are later broad casted generate different responses to the ones they had received before this is because of the change in social attitudes and expectations have changed.

Double trouble for Virgin and Sky ads

Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday November 14 2007
Bitter rivals Virgin Media and BSkyB have both fallen foul of the advertising watchdog this week.

Virgin Media was rapped for its claims over the speed of its broadband service, after the Advertising Standards Authority received 30 complaints including one from Sky.
Meanwhile, Sky was singled out for advertising its new on-demand service, Sky Anytime, without making it clear it was not available to viewers that subscribed to Sky channels on other platforms.
Complaints about Virgin Media centred on the broadband service, with Sky and others challenging the claims of a "superfast" 10MB download speed.

Virgin responded that its marketing usually qualified broadband speeds with the phrase "up to" but this had not appeared in some versions because of an oversight. The company provided data showing that at least 95% of users could achieve full speed at all times.

The ASA upheld the complaints and ordered Virgin not to repeat the ad without the qualifying statements.

The watchdog also ruled that Virgin was wrong to claim that its broadband was four times faster than its competitors.

Virgin supplied data to show its average speed was four times faster than its competitors' average speeds, but the ASA ruled this was misleading since one of the competitors had an abnormally low speed, bringing down the overall average.

The Sky adjudication focused on a TV ad for Sky Anytime, described as "the new on-demand service that lets you experience Sky on your PC".

The ad stated: "You can choose from hundreds of great films to watch on your PC ... and all at no extra cost from Sky". Text on screen added: "No extra cost for Sky Movies 1 and 2 subscribers. Minimum system and broadband requirements."

The ASA received one complaint from a viewer who said the ad made no mention of the fact that you also had to be a Sky Digital subscriber and that people who subscribed to Sky Movies 1 and 2 through a third party such as Virgin Media could not access the service.
Sky responded that the words "from Sky" and the on-screen text implied the offer was only available to its own customers.

However, the ASA ruled that the statements were ambiguous and the fact that the service was only available to Sky customers was a significant condition that should have been made clear in the ad.

this article is important because the two main tv institutions sky and virgins are in competition with other, both have alot of power. both institutions have received a lot of complaints about the information given on there advertisements, the amount of complaints made to ASA can damage there reputations

MURDOCH maclennan

• Job: chief executive, Telegraph Group
• Age: 58
• Industry: publishing
• Staff: 1,000
• MacLennan has said he wants the Telegraph to become "the cutting edge media group in the United Kingdom - fully integrated, efficient and profitable".
• "Our industry has survived because it has never failed to take bold and tough decisions when presented with profound change," said MacLennan.
• We need that courage again to traverse the dynamic changes gripping us - recognising that the 'do nothing' option is the surest way to decline and fall."
• A former executive at the Daily Mail, where he had worked since 1989, MacLennan's departure was a big blow for Daily Mail & General Trust chairman Viscount Rothermere. The two newspaper groups seem to have been poaching each other's staff ever since.
• Since the Barclay brothers put him in charge of their newly acquired newspaper group three years ago, MacLennan has turfed out its old-style "country club" management and instigated its biggest editorial clearout for two decades.

ITV shares slide again

Chris Tryhorn
Guardian Unlimited
Monday November 12 2007
ITV plc's share price took another battering today, falling to a fresh all-time low.
At 86p this afternoon, the shares were off 3.6%, or down 3.1p, on Friday night's closing price of 89.1p. The price fell as low as 85.1p at one point during the day.

It is the third time in four days that the stock has fallen to its lowest level since its debut as a merged plc in February 2004.

The slump on Wednesday was triggered by the disclosure that ITV wants BSkyB to sell its 17.9% stake in the broadcaster, leading to fears that there will be a shortage of buyers if Sky's shares are dumped on to the market.

Today, the price decline was given fresh impetus by a note from analysts at Morgan Stanley, who cut their target price for the stock from 117p to 83p.

The fall in ITV's shares is also bad news for Sky, which faces a loss of more than £300m if the government forces it to sell its shareholding at the current market price.
Sky paid 135p a share - or £940m - for its 17.9% stake in November.

The Competition Commission delivered its provisional findings on the stake at the beginning of October. It is due to hand over the full report to John Hutton, the secretary of state for business enterprise and regulatory reform, by early December.

this article is important as itv has many competitors wanting to buy the channel. such as Rupert murdoch and virgin with the loss of viewers i think that itv needs to buy the sell channel so they can get more viewings.

Media debate Marxism vs. pluralism


Media texts are ‘dumbed down’ to generate mass audiences, they feel they can get more profits by doing this.

The media texts are only there to conform and cater to the audiences needs. Audiences are active but they choose against opposing or questioning what they see. They decide what they want to see.

By having one ownership they do not choose, many people are passive and therefore accept everything, which leads to elitists being in control not the audience.

The media we consume is from a wide variety, it is so diverse that we are in control of what we watch, hear or read. If we don’t read the sun we are able to read the The Guardian ( which is owned by someone different) so we are initially in control of our choices in media texts.

Yet still The Sun has a high circulation and is more likely to be read by the middle/working class. Murdoch is getting his message across political or not.

However the question of influence requires boundaries. It is necessary to consider that whilst Murdoch may own the main media institutions we are able to select what media texts we consume, if audiences choose to read The Sun you proving pluralism and the active audience theory who are actively able to choose their text.

Not everyone is aware that particular elites own a lot of the media, many may not understand what they read. To them a newspaper is simply a newspaper. They are being falsely exploited.

Basically the audience have control over what they read, watch and listen to, nobody can force feed ideologies into their minds but it is easy to sway ones ideas especially if you are an elite like Rupert Murdoch.

Comments:
1. Firstly this debate does not use enough media terminology. Possible words that could have been used are ideologies and monopolies.
2. Theories can be referred to such as the hypodermic needle. ‘And the active audience theory who are actively able to choose their text.’ Here instead of saying ‘the active audience theory’ it should be the uses and gratifications theory.
3. Finally the Marxist side of the debate isn’t as strong as the pluralist argument. It isn’t developing.

How much of a pluralist am I?

I believe I am a pluralist because I am aware of the media texts around and the way the producers work to manipulate audiences, this is possibly because I am media literate and an active viewer. As we get more media literate we as audiences become more demanding and selective consumers being able to choose from a wide variety. There is a wide choice of media especially because of the increased growth in the Internet, allowing audiences to spread their opinions in to others without restrictions. Individuals have the ability to choose texts, which suit to there preference.

Google makes friends with network sites to battle Facebook
Jemima Kiss and Richard Wray
The Guardian
Friday November 2 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/02/google

Google last night teamed up with MySpace and Bebo to battle against Facebook for a larger share of the booming social networking market.

Google has signed up MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and Bebo, a favourite among UK teenagers, to its new OpenSocial system that aims to link services on some of the web's most popular sites. It has also recruited the business networking service Linkedin, one of Asia's favourite social networks Friendster and its own Orkut network, the market leader in Brazil, as it goes head to head with Facebook.

Google has been searching for ways to counter the phenomenal growth of Facebook. Last week it lost out on a chance to take a stake in the business when Microsoft secured a 1.6% shareholding in a deal that valued the three-year old technology firm at $15bn (£7.2bn).
The OpenSocial network will give developers of applications such as games, video players and photo albums that sit on social networks, a standard software kit that will allow their applications to work across multiple websites.

MySpace's co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, said last night: "What we all want is for the web to be a better place, a more interesting place, as more innovation occurs."

Facebook has already exploited the popularity of applications. The site offers more than 7,000 tools, mostly built by independent developers and companies, that users can add to their profile pages for free, encouraging more time to be spent on the site and offering a promotional platform for other web companies.

By opening up part of its code to allow developers to build applications, Facebook stole a march on MySpace.

Mr DeWolfe said yesterday's agreement would create a new "de facto standard" for the development of home-made applications. "We really think the next level of innovation is going to be from deeper application integration."

Bebo has an estimated 10.9 million monthly British users. It will hope that opening its site to the OpenSocial network will encourage more international users and make the site more "sticky". Bebo's UK-based president, Joanna Shields, who joined the company from Google, described OpenSocial as "a positive step in the right direction".

"Developers and social networks have an important, symbiotic relationship, the success of which depends on developers not having to replicate the work they do to bring their innovations in front of the largest possible community