Marshall McLuhan on the Mobile Phone

[Typist]

What is it that you find inaccurate?

[keithprosser2]

I think it's "The primary function of the content is to keep us connected to that channel until the next ad. This is the business the media is in, selling ad space."

I think that is a rather old-fashioned view. I'm sure it did apply universally, once but now it applies only in some (perhaps most by volume, but not by signficance) cases.

I tend to watch the BBC, Al Jazeera and msnbc and none of them carry significant commercial advertising. They are without doubt being paid for by something else, not ad revenue. I don't get Fox news here (in Uganda) but from what I gather, the news items are not there purely to link the ad breaks. Of course the principle of the programs being the excuse for the ads is not absent in sport/entertainment based channels, but even there that model is being challenged by the 'pay-per-view' model. (btw Soccer has got to be least ad friendly sport there is...)

In the print media I don't know the ratio of ad revenue to 'newstand price', but only a very blinkered free-marketeer would imagine that the Daily Mail selects and manipulates its stories the way it does just to please it's advertisers.

It is more a case that I wish the 'matter' was only there to excuse the adverts. It would be far less sinister than the co-ordinated mis-information and propaganda that we are presented with. It's easy to be cynical - but sometimes it's hard to be cynical enough.

[Pluto]

I tend to watch the BBC, Al Jazeera and msnbc and none of them carry significant commercial advertising.

The ad is not the only persuasion entity on the box. It is the program content itself that is persuasive. The program is the advert. And what is it advertising is the question.

[Pluto]

It's advertising the life it wants you to internalise, become and promote. Why?