TAKING IT TO THE STREETS

There is controversy in the air, unrest on the street. Sesame Street.

the long running children's TV programme that has been a staple of American TV in particular for the past 40 years has moved to HBO. that means you now have to pay a subscription to watch rather than its previous home on free to air channels.

In the battle to attract new subscribers and industry accolades, streaming services like Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and Amazon have all been investing heavily in big budget adult dramas full of sex and violence. But equally important to winning over millennials, many of whom are now entering their late 20s and early 30s, is having children's programming that can satisfy the next generation of consumers. That makes seminal programming like Sesame Street, the iconic series from PBS, a hotly contested item. It has appeared on both Netflix and Hulu, but is now breaking new ground by working directly with HBO to create a new season, one that will be temporarily exclusive to HBO in exchange for additional funding.

Jessica Goldstein at THINKPROGRESS website wrote:

It’s always been an expensive address. But for a while, the funding was there: From the federal government, a few philanthropists, viewer donations to PBS, and, most of all, Sesame Street stuff. Books and videos, toothbrushes and pajamas, balloons and birthday cards, stuffed Oscar the Grouches and Grover slippers as fuzzy as Grover. Such ravenous consumption by the preschool set of all things Sesame kept the lights on at the most beloved brownstone in America.

But the kids aren’t buying Tickle Me Elmos like they used to. They don’t want DVDs anymore. They don’t even know what VHS tapes are. The kids have tablets, which means the kids have control. The kids decide what to watch, and what the kids do not have is any sense of nostalgia or institutional memory. The kids do not care how much you care about Cookie Monster.

The controversy has not stopped at moving one of the most famous educational shows out of the reach of its original intention of reaching the poor sections of American society but that the move to subscription [and thus wealthier audience] has coincided with a revamp of the street, a yuppification as the old locations are upgraded. The bins are now re-cycling bins, the street has wi-fi, the apartments have been remodeled.

LESSON 1270: SUPER SUPER BOWL

It may not be the biggest sporting event in the world with its global audience of 150,000,000 -  it pales next to the World Cup where in China alone over 300,000,000 watched the 2012 South African FIFA event. Nor does it match the Olympics where over the duration over 4 billion TV viewers tuned in to watch the Beijing Olympics. However, when it comes to revenue the Superbowl takes some beating. Tis year the 2016 Final charged $5 million dollars for every 30 seconds of TV advert and was paid by over 50 companies to place their message in front of 120 million Americans.

Officially a game of American football lasts 60 minutes, broken up into four quarters of 15 minutes. But Super Bowl 50 hoovered up four hours of peak airtime, including a 30 minute half time show.

 

According to Advertising Age companies have spent $5.9 billion on commercials since the first Super Bowl in 1967.

The Super Bowl is a child of the television age. The first game, in which the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, drew an audience of just over 24 million.

Last year’s 2015 clash between attracted the biggest television audience in American history, 114.4 million viewers and was watched in 71 percent of homes. By the time of the winning touchdown this year  in 2016 there were more than 120 million people glued to their screens.

 The commercials have become as much part of the event as the game itself. The Association of American Advertising Agencies  state that:

“There is a guaranteed, built-in audience that will be not only watching the game, but talking about the advertising. Consumers recognise that, historically, advertisers have upped their game during the Super Bowl, that they will pull out all the stops to try to entertain them and that they’ll get to see something new.”

For years there has been as much hype around the adverts as the game. For weeks ahead of the event the adverts are premiered [most have a You Tube presence] and have been dissected as if they were part of the tactical plans of the teams. Soda Stream created controversy by being banned three years ago and for the past two years there has been many efforts by the advertisers to generate attention. Doritos 'Crash the Super bowl campaigns have been running since 2006 and invite the public to script their advert.

Most agencies hire in social media experts to analyse Facebook and Twitter traffic with 70 percent of the audience now watching the game whilst on social media on phones, laptops or tablets and many of these stating that they talk as much [more] about the adverts as they do the game.

Artists aren’t paid to perform, but given the size of the audience it is tantamount to free advertising. Last year, for example. Katy Perry sold just under 40,000 albums – including digital downloads – in the week before Super Bowl and nearly 60,000 in the previous week, while in 2014 Bruno Mars saw sales shoot up from a shade below 100,000 to more than 150,000.

So what do advertisers get for their money?

• Exposure
• Brand recognition 
• Glamour of link to the event 
• Sense that company has 'made it'
• Sales

Let's have a look at one or two and generate some media analysis - what can you find in this selection worth noting

Axe [or as we like to think of it, Lynx] are a major player. Owned by the Unilever corporation, AXE is a massive brand and plays upon a 'laddish' sexually non-PC image to attract its consumer base of young males 14-25.

LESSON 126016: EXAMINATION WEEK

Here we are at examination week!

Remember that for the paper you will have the by now familiar Section A where you will answer 4 questions based on the unseen clip that you will be shown 3 times. You need to spend 15 minutes on each question.

Section B is the case-study that you have been preparing for last week. You need to answer one question and use your own research to provide examples.

The Section A task will require a response that shows awareness of branding and brand identity - issues we looked at in the John Lewis 'more than a woman' campaign last lesson - as well as an audience based task that will require you to think about the audience theories we have been looking at in lessons both prior to and after the Xmas break.

Use the blog and booklets in tandem to revise the theories and debates.

LESSON 125916: MORE THAN A LESSON TO ME

In the lesson we examined the John Lewis advert more than a woman. We saw how what was the intention of the store to communicate what they termed 'the DNA of the brand' and to 're position the brand in the marketplace' lead to the construction of an advert that drew heavily on the influence of an Italian hosiery company's successful campaign. The advert was encoded with what they thought to be the core values of the brand - always there to support customers through the journey of life - and then how this was decoded by the audience in two very different ways.
One section of the audience saw a nostalgic glimpse of a woman's life, one that stressed the brand's attempt to lock in with its key demographic, whilst the other had many women seeing instead a sexist and regressive stereotype of womanhood.
This allowed us to consider STUART HALL'S encoding-decoding theory again where we could think about intention versus outcome.
We also considered how the advert used media forms such as music and editing to compress a life into a 60 second slot.

LESSON 125816

LESSON 125715: PANIC ATTACKS

New term, same old media issues. Next week is examination week and we need to ensure that we're all ready for what it will bring.

Remember that the mocks are key to us helping you in showing the areas of learning we need to target over the coming weeks in the run up to the main event in May.

Over the next few sessions we will be looking at the examination in terms of technique and how to apply the theory and ideas learned over last term. We will also be focussing on the case study so that you can have a go at answering what will be the most important task in the May examination.

We will begin by reminding ourselves of what is being assessed and how. The assessment objectives.

• AO1 Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of media concepts, contexts (and critical debates)
• AO2 Apply knowledge and understanding when analysing media products  and processes to show how meanings and responses are created

The examination paper section 1 is unseen - a media product that you will be shown 3 times during a period of some 12 minutes with the opportunity to make notes. You will then have 60 minutes to answer 4 questions based on the product. the questions will take the form of 

MEDIA FORMS [MEDIA LANGUAGE]

REPRESENTATION

AUDIENCE

INSTITUTION / VALUES

You should take time to consider beyond the surface features of the product as each task requires that you come up with a range of points [ 4 or 5 per task ] and that you are able to develop each of these in the classic PEEL structure by providing Evidence, Evaluation and  Link to the task. There will be marks allocated for SPAG and application of media language and theory to each task.