P-p-popular

The history of popular music shows that music is on the track to a rash change. Music is especially popular thanks to iTunes. Apples sells not only music, but music playing devices as well. Artistically I believe that there will be an emergence of another genre in the next ten years. Politely, I believe more and more lawsuits will take place. Personally, putting all morality aside, I think the government is wasting its time. It will never catch and fine/punish all legal downloaders,so why single out that twelve year old who never knew any better?

Copy Right

The internet did not allow for copyright music to be shared. At this point in time, artists recieve only$.075 per song. Challenges include iTunes becoming a monopoly. Places like Walmart would play the game, too, and attempt to sell CDs. This began in 1997.

Nap(ster)

Due to the immergence of MP3s, music could be downloaded (shared from one computer to another) from user to user. The copied would not be paid for, and therefore would be a loss to the music industry. Napster, founded by Shawn Fanning, was the first of biggest file share system of its time. It was developed in the late nineties and became a phenomenon in 1999. In 2000, the government forced, under pressure from music companies, Napster to close and made sharing digital music files illegal. Nowadays Limewire, and other social networking programs allow for illegal downloading – this is a huge copyright violation. In 2001, iTunes came out thanks to Apple.

Breaking Up Large Radio Groups

I actually think breaking up large radio groups would be a bad idea. I love when I listen to the radio and affiliates from other stations across the country tune in with their two cents. In this case I think the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a good thing. “It eliminated previous station ownership limits. For radio there are no national limits, and local ownership caps increase with market size” (186).

I also think that keeping large radio groups together would help save money, because when they wanted to purchase the rights to a song or syndication, they would most likely get a cheaper deal for many stations across the nation.

Others would disagree because people would argue that there is not enough diversity on the radio. If it went national, what people in New York were listening to, people in Texas would be listening to. They would lose their culture identity and thus their diversity. According to the text, if there is not enough diversity on the radio for you, you can visit the website: http://www.freepress.net/.

Personally I am happy with my radio experience and there is very little which I would change.
“Fewer radio stations owners than ever are local residents of the area their stations serve, which presumably limits their ability to understand local interest. Fewer owners are minorities or female. Fewer stations are programmed locally because group owners often supply programming from a central source. The local stations are automated and play just the prerecorded programming” (182). That statement saddens me. What does this mean for local radio jobs?

Understanding Podcasts, Internet Radio, and other Audio Media

Guglielmo Marconi created a “wireless telegraph” that may be traced back to the first form of radio. Marconi was forced to sell his American assets to General Electrics. Broadcasting then began. “Frank Conrad, Westinghouse engineer, began the first regularly scheduled radio broadcasts in the United States in the 1920s, attracting interest and newspaper coverage” (161). In reference to modern day commercial forms “AT&T become the first broadcast network, as it used its phone lines to link several of its station” (163). As television’s polarity began to rise, radio’s began to fall. This greatly affected advertising. Radio stations shifted from a national format to a more local one.

Politically, “the Radio Act of 1927 created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). It defined the broadcast band, standardized frequency designation, limited the number of stations operating at night, when AM signals carry farther during the day and are more likely to interfere with other stations” (163). FM radio took off in the 1960s.

“Early network radio programming in the late 1920s and 1930s was focused on music, but also included news, comedy, variety shows, soap operas, detective dramas, sports, suspense, and action. Thus, many kinds of programming that we now see on television were developed on radio” (163).

Broadcast radio is taking off as well. “Both broadcasters and industry observers fear that satellite radio could lead to a decline in both number and variety of locals radio stations, plus a concentration of programming decisions in the hands of fewer companies, as wekk as few jobs in the radio industry” (168).

Internet radio began to take off in 1995. “Full-time stations started in 1995 when hobbyists, and agencies, and regular broadcast radio stations began to create Internet radio stations. Near-CD-quality stereo can be had if you have fast enough network connection” (173). I know that I personally listen to internet radio, because it is a live broadcast and rich in quality. It does not sometimes lose signals like a regular radio. “Podcasting goes even further by letting almost any individual create audio programs that can be downloaded into computers or ever directly onto iPods” (170). I, personally have never listened to a podcast, but they are very popular on my favorite website.

Today’s New Media Issues

The key issues for New Media expressed in the article are that we must find a way to make a profit. Additionally, with the outburst of homemade Applications, it leads me to believe there are less and less jobs available for those involved in New Media. At the same time, if you were to get a job at the big three (Google, Facebook, or Apple), you would probably be well-off. There needs to be more business taught in New Media because distribution of it is a huge factor.

Google Face(book) Apple

Authors Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff debate this topic in a heated paralleled article. According to Wolff there are three major player involved in the Web. Google, Facebook and Apple. Each have approached the Web in a different way. “Google, by managing both traffic and sales (advertising), created a condition in which it was impossible for anyone else doing business in the traditional Web to be bigger than or even competitive with Google.”

Google was dominating for a while, but then entered Facebook. It was a club-like atmosphere which was original protected from sites like Google. Originally you were required to use a university or school email in order to create an account. People liked that it was a ‘closed system.’ In 2006 this changed. “Facebook’s organization of information and relationships became, in a remarkably short period of time, a redoubt from the Web 0- a simpler, more habit-forming place.” According to Wolff: “Facebook became a parallel to the Web. . .”

Apple had a different approach to interactive media. Steve Jobs “built two of the most successful media businesses of the past generation: iTunes, a content distributer, and Pixar, a movie studio.” Unlike the original plans of the Web, Apple was all about the profit and sale.

Is the Web Truly Dead?

Authors Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff debate this topic in a heated paralleled article. According to Anderson the Web is dead. He states in his piece, “Producers and consumers agree: The Web is not the culmination of the digital revolution.” In 1997 Wired, the publication that published this particular article published an article called Push! cover story. Anderson cited it by explaining “‘Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we? But the center of interactive media – increasingly the center of gravity of all media – is moving to a post-HTML environment,’ we promised nearly a decade and a half ago.” Anderson also claims that the web is just Web is just an application on the Internet. Speaking of applications, Morgan Stanley predicts that within five years more people will be accessing the Net via mobile devices than PCs. Mobile devices use the Net but not the Web. The Web is also feeling pressure from profits.

SMCR Model

SMCR was created by Wilber Schramm in 1982 – he is often credited as the founder of mass communication studies. SMCR stands for Source-Message-Channel-Receiver. This can be applied to text messaging.

According to the model, the source is the originator of communication – in this case the phone. The message is the content of communication or in other words the information that is being exchanged. In this case it would be the text itself. The channel is the medial of transition system used to convey the message from one place to another. Examples of this include Verizon or AT&T. The receiver of this is the destination of the communication or the phone to which you were texting.

Other important terms to remember when it comes to texting are encoder, decoder, feedback and noise. Encoder translates the message into a form that can be communicated – often a form that cannot be interpreted by the human senses. This, when texting, flows through the air via satellites. A decoder reverses the encoding process. This turns the unreadable text back to font that can be passed on to the next phone. A feedback mechanism between the source and the receiver regulates the flow of communication. Noise is any distortion or errors that may be introduced during the information exchanges. This includes a dropped text – similar to a dropped call.

Clearly each of these terms are key to the use of text messaging.

Convergence in Media Industries

A convergence trend continues to propel the transformation of conventional media to digital forms . . . although the forces behind this trend are shifting (Media Now 7). The early 1990’s was a prime time for convergence. One prime example is the when Time Warner merged with AOL (America Online). At the time Time Warner was a publishing and cable television giant; AOL was the largest internet provider. Other convergences include the time News Corporation, the owner of Fox News, bought networking site MySpace.com. Former enemies in the media industry National Amusements (owner of Viacom cable networks and CBS), Disney Corporation and NBC Universal made, distributed and exhibited content across the internet; as well as by print, radio, recorded music, television and film.

Later on, new media companies took over. Apple iTunes became the most powerful player in the recorded music industry. Google became the largest advertising medium. TiVo revolutionized the way people watched television.

During the crisis in 2007, media stocks began to crumble. This was due to a general economic downturn. The hardest hit industry was newspapers. The number of two city newspapers began to decrease. Some cities faced the idea of having no news paper at all. The damage of the crisis was not limited to print media.

Charter Communications, one of the largest cable companies in the US, filed for bankruptcy. The owner of CBS television and Viacom, was for to sell video game maker Midway Games at a huge loss.

“Now, strategic sales of media properties are the centerpiece of corporate strategies” (Media Now 8).