To some, the Fox network was a bad guy for removing its African American programming at a time when it seemed many of the shows had just hit their stride and were finding success. As Zook points out, these programs were developed primarily as differentiators from the other networks who as Butch explains, don’t take risks against unknowns – can’t rock the boat with the audience or the advertisers.
After the passage of time, Fox became a hero for its bold efforts that paved the way for broadcast and cable outlets by proving that there are indeed audiences for niche programs. Byars and Meehan cite an obvious example of this in their discussion of narrowcasting as it pertains to the Lifetime network’s relationship with women. I am overlooking the social issues that present as a result of my perception of Lifetime’s perpetuation of negative female stereotypes (despite it’s offering of programming more broad than the melodrama) because I don’t want to give television too much power and because more relevant to me in the study of their network is their ability to attract advertisers who want to sell more than just cleaning products to the almost exclusively female audience.
Locke made entirely too much of the depiction of Judge Lance Ito on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Whoever else might have drawn the short straw to hear that case would have been equally as caricaturized to keep the show’s “newscast” entertaining – just with the spotlight pointed to whatever anatomy, hairstyle, physical trait or other characteristic that could be comedy-ized.
Young reminds us that caricaturized personas – political or otherwise – are not accurate depictions of people, news or issues. They are not real and anything associated with them should be considered commentary. McCombs & Shaw address this to a point as well. While these writers encourage television audiences to investigate news and politics in an effort to secure a larger picture of the issues, the sad truth is that most people don’t and are therefore left with what they see on tv as a seemingly credible, complete and accurate source of news and information. The Grossberg reading seems to articulate these concepts nicely but I am only halfway through the chapter at this writing so will withhold comment until class.
I appreciated Hubert’s discussion on Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out on Ellen and the blurring of character versus actress but find fault in the assertion that the episode was not part of an agenda. By contrast, she quotes DeGeneres, “the whole point of what I’m doing is acceptance of everybody’s differences.” I don’t object but that sounds like an agenda to me.
References
Grossberg, et al., Media Making: Mass Media in a Popular Culture, 2nd Ed., chapter 11.
Dines, et al., Gender, Race & Class in Media, 2nd Ed., chapters 54, 55, 57, 58, 62.
Young, “Late Night Comedy and the Salience of the Candidates’ Caricatured Traits in the 2000 Election”
McCombs & Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media”