In what ways do media and advertising work together?

Media and advertising have a very interconnected relationship, with media relying on advertising as a place to sell time on their programs while advertising needs media in order to spread the awareness of whatever product or business they are supporting. When a movie is being shown in theaters, the movie needs money in order to start earning back the massive amount of money they lost during production. They do this by selling time periods before the movie starts where other movies can show promotions for their film. This relationship works out, as 80 percent of people remembered ads shown before the movie when they left while the ads spur an increase in revenue of about $356 million per year.

Another example of advertising and media working together harmoniously is in media plans, which figure out the most effective way to advertise a certain product using different media outlets such as television, movies, or radio. If media had less outlets or limited a company to choosing one outlet to advertise their product, the advertising committee would have a much tougher job trying to figure out which one route would gain them the most net product. In this way, the media companies fill all their slots on all their different outlets, and the advertising companies get their message out to the optimal number of potential customers for the lease amount of money possible. Without one another, these businesses would be much less efficient and would be losing money instead of making it.

How is public relations used as a persuasive tool in communications?

Public relations is a very powerful tool in the area of communications as it focuses on so many different aspects of the business and is in control of many different functions. The public relations office of any corporation has to achieve four steps to accomplish their set goals. The first step is identifying the existing relationship, which means the company has to figure out which specific audience they are dealing with in each scenario and what their relationship with the company is. The next step is for the public relations office to evaluate the relationship, this step is constantly happening as the quality of certain relationships is continually changing. The third step is to design policies to improve the relationship, if, for example, the legislation of a company no longer supports a member of the company because of a scandal they were involved in and they are making it hard to get things done, the policy to improve the relationship is to either deal with the scandaled employee or find a balance with the legislation. The final step a public relations office must accomplish is to implement said policies, if this final step is not carried out then the office is left with a bunch of idea on paper but no progress happening in the company. Using this four steps, a public relations office of a major company can have a huge influence in the communications part of the company because they can control the media surrounding the company and also deal with problems inside the company, making them a very powerful and persuasive tool.

How has mass media technology changed the way audiences are entertained?

Back when Johannes Gutenberg's printing press with movable type was the most recent technologic development in mass media, audiences were perfectly entertained to sit down with a Bible which might have some spelling errors or some difficult to read words. Now, however, if one thing is messed up in a mass media form, it gets ripped to shreds by critics. With the introduction of new technologies the mass media audience had become used to better quality, faster production times, and non-stop stimulus to entertain them. With the development of telephone people would no longer stand telegraphs and with the addition of television the only place you see radios anymore is in cars, where televisions would be impractical and dangerous. With greater technology comes more critical audiences who become harder and harder to please with the old tricks until new ones are thought up, and the cycle continues.

In today's movie world, even the high quality and large screens of movie theaters is becoming not good enough and people are demanding all movies be released in "eye-popping" 3-D. When people get tired with 3-D than what is next? A 3-D movie which adds another element? They already have those movies in theme parks, called 4-D films, these new forms of entertainment not only invoke the classic 3-D look of the visuals coming at you, but also include another element or spraying you with water when the main character gets wet or turning on fans when the wind is howling in the film. So, yes the newer technology in mass media has changed how and to what extent audiences are entertained, the only question is, what's next?

How have blogs and the internet changed the way news is reported?

In the early days of reporting the news was compacted into a newspaper and distributed on a weekly basis, so that the population had to wait a week to gain knowledge about what was going on in their community. As printing presses became more efficient the papers began to be issued on a daily basis, bringing the citizens the news every morning on their doorstep. After the development of radio, the print and radio industries fought over customers, radio winning over the customers who were more concerned with learning about the news as soon as possible and print retaining the people who wanted a hard copy along with pictures as their news format. The next major development in the media world was the television, which had the speed of the radio coupled with the pictures of the print. In today's world, however, there is a new medium which is changing the way news is reported, the internet.

The internet allows much more convenient access to the news as soon as it happens, as some websites will even provide live video feeds of what is happening in the story, like with the BP oil spill. Another advantage of the internet is that instead of picking up a paper and looking through it or turning on the news and waiting for the story you want to hear, you can easily search for the topic you want to know about. With the increased interest in the internet, the way news is reported is changing from a process which took time and involved reporters appearing on television or radio, into a process where people can find out what's going on almost instantaneously and reporters never have to be seen or heard.

Who are the gatekeepers of news? How effective is investigative reporting at informing the public?

When a story comes into a newsroom it has two possible roads to travel, either it makes its way into the broadcast or newspaper and it becomes part of the news, or it is decided that there is either not enough room, not enough time in the broadcast, or not enough evidence to pursue the story. The people who make the decisions on whether the story will make it or not are called the gatekeepers, who have the job of deciding what is important enough to inform the public about and when and how it will be presented. Gatekeepers can also use their position to make creative changes to stories, like condensing a story to make it more potent or adding more footage to increase the credibility.

Before the story makes it to the gatekeepers it must first make it through the reporters, who decide whether to pursue a story or not. Among these reporters are the hard-hitting investigative reporters, who, instead of just showing up to a scene to report about a break in at a hotel, try to find out who broke in and why. Two of these reporters were Woodward and Bernstein, who covered the break in at the Democratic headquarters in Washington and connected the crime back to President Nixon, eventually forcing him to resign. Investigative reporting is very effective at informing the public of important information which they otherwise would never had received.

How has conglomeration changed the movie and television industries?

Conglomeration is defined as a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses together in one corporate structure. An example of a conglomerate in the media world is Disney, who combine their television channels and film content under one name. With the ability to control both a film outlet and and television outlet, Disney has the ability to produce movies and then play they on their own channel without additional cost. Some people criticize conglomerates as being unfair as the company can control so much content that it becomes difficult to get word out if the company is doing bad things because they control so many media outlets. The ability to control so many aspects have media has changed both the television and film industries in that companies now have to have a share in both television and film in order to be a viable business. Companies who only have holdings in film end up losing money when they try to get their film onto television and companies with holdings only in television miss out on the massive profits associated with movies. Conglomeration has made the old companies who have a single focus almost obsolete and has propelled the film and movie industries into an era where huge companies control every aspect of the businesses.

In what ways has deregulation changed the radio and recording industries?

Deregulation was introduced by Ronald Reagan under the idea that his presidency would "get government off the back of business", however, his dream only came true in the world of broadcasting seven years after his term ended, in 1996. The beginning of deregulation was when the Telecommunications Act relaxed the limits on how many radio stations a single company could own. This immediately lead to mergers where companies joined and became even stronger. This also lead to the government backing out of the radio industry, as it no longer "saw its role as an intermediary for the public as necessary to ensure that the industry performed in the public interest."

Basically, deregulation freed the radio industry from the government, allowing companies to do and play what they wanted. This, in turn affects the recording industry and they did not have to adhere to the strict listening rules of the government and could record songs which wouldn't have been played on the radio before 1996 without the fear that no one would hear it and they wouldn't make any profit. Instead of letting the government decide which stations would be aired and which wouldn't, the industry developed a marketplace concept which allowed listeners to vote with the simple turn of the dial. Simply, if a radio wasn't liked, people wouldn't listen, if people didn't listen then the station would lose advertising, and if the station lost the advertising and the funding that came along with it, the station would cease to be a viable business and fade from existence.