The media we want?

Whether we get the media we want, or whether we want the media we get is a very complex and thought provoking topic. My first thoughts supported the view that we get the media that we want, however I suspect that there will be a fairly even distribution of students arguing both ways as I find that this question verges on the philosophical.

In the textbook it comments on how “the media must satisfy their popular audience” (pg37), I think that this is the important idea behind the fact that we receive the media that we want because it highlights the underlying problem facing producers of media. The media must provide content that is interesting for the audience as people can choose to watch whatever they want. Nowadays there are thousands of media choices that we can make; there are hundreds of channels on our TVs and radios, and hundreds of different magazines and newspapers that we can choose from. This means that media producers have to provide media that is wanted by their target audience in the general public.

The producers of the media need to do all of this; because in order to make money they depend on advertisement. To attract potential advertisers the media producers must have high ratings and large volumes of watchers, buyers, or subscribers for the media that the advertisement would be on. This applies to many different media types such as TV, Radio, magazines, newspaper, and even internet sites.  This shows we get the media that we want because we hold the power in this situation, if the producers of media were to produce things that we don’t want they would simply fail due to lack of funding. To prevent this media producers actually research before making media, to see what is successful and what the viewers want.

However, when looking at a massive media source that I was constantly exposed to while living in England I can see exceptions to this general rule. The reason why the BBC is an exception is that it is funded through annual TV licence fees that all TV owners in the UK have to pay rather than advertising. This allows the BBC to have no advertisements in any of its media sources for the UK, in turn this then means that the BBC does not have to rely as heavily on ratings or viewer numbers as it has a guaranteed money source. This transfers the control over to the media producers; this is interesting as the textbook describes BBC media as having “programs with middle-class and highbrow values” (pg38), these are views you might be inclined to expect from the “white, middle-class male” (pg37) which is what most media producers in the BBC are.

Overall, this shows that we mainly get media we want because in normal free-market situations the media is mostly controlled by the audience and their viewing habits. However in some cases this control flips and we then want the media we get as less choice is available to us and a media source is presented to us that is seen as trustworthy like the BBC, which allows the producers more control.

Citation:

Media and Society , Michael O’Shaughnessy, Jane Stadler, page 37/38.