COMMON THREADS
One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is the commercial nature of the mass media. The U.S. media system, due to policy choices made in the early mid-twentieth century, is built largely on a system of commercial sponsorship. This acceptance was based on a sense that media content and sponsors should remain independent of each other. In other words, sponsors and product companies should not control and create media content. Today, is that line between media content and advertising shifting—or completely disappearing?
Although media consumers have not always been comfortable with advertising, they developed a resigned acceptance of it because it “pays the bills” of the media system. Yet media consumers have their limits. Moments in which sponsors stepped over the usual borders of advertising into the realm of media content—including the TV quiz show and radio payola scandals, complimentary newspaper reports about advertisers’ businesses, product placement in TV or movies, and now “Sponsored Stories” on Facebook—have generated the greatest legal and ethical debates about advertising.
Still, as advertising has become more pervasive and consumers more discriminating, ad practitioners have searched for ways to weave their work more seamlessly into the cultural fabric. Products now blend in as props or even as “characters” in TV shows and movies. Search engines deliver “paid” placements along with regular search results. Product placements are woven into video games. Advertising messages can also be the subject of viral videos—and consumers do the work of distributing the message.
Among the more intriguing efforts to become enmeshed in the culture are the ads that exploit, distort, or transform the political and cultural meanings of popular music. When Nike used the Beatles’ song “Revolution” (1968) to promote Nike shoes in 1987 (“Nike Air is not a shoe … it’s a revolution,” the ad said), many music fans were outraged to hear the Beatles’ music being used for the first time to sell products.
That was more than twenty-five years ago. These days, having a popular song used in a TV commercial is considered a good career move—even better than radio airplay. Similarly, while product placement in TV and movies was hotly debated in the 1980s and 1990s, the explosive growth of paid placements in video games hardly raises an eyebrow today. Even the lessons of the quiz show scandals, which forced advertisers out of TV program production in the late 1950s, are forgotten or ignored today as advertisers have been warmly invited to help develop TV programs.
Are we as a society giving up on trying to set limits on the never-ending onslaught of advertising? Are we weary of trying to keep advertising out of media production? How do we feel about the growing encroachment of ads into social networks like Facebook and Twitter? Why do we now seem less concerned about the integration of advertising into the core of media culture?
KEY TERMS
The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.
For review quizzes, chapter summaries, links to media-related Web sites, and more, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
Early Developments in American Advertising
The Shape of U.S. Advertising Today
Persuasive Techniques in Contemporary Advertising
Commercial Speech and Regulating Advertising
Advertising, Politics, and Democracy
QUESTIONING THE MEDIA
ADDITIONAL VIDEOS
Visit the
VideoCentral: Mass Communication section at bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture for additional exclusive videos related to Chapter 11, including:
An executive for MTV New Media explores how recent television programs blur the line between scripted and reality shows—and how MTV markets online to reach today’s younger viewers.