In the beginning, there was the word. Actually, before that, there were probably the grunt and the gesture. Communication between/among humans was a pretty simple thing, even when we moved on to smoke signals, written letters, and the telegraph. All these media were intended for communication between one or two individuals on the sending end, and an equally small number on the receiving end.
Then came the mass media. A marketer's dream, if not a marketer's invention. My recent post on robocalls to cell phones put a new spin for me on the historical development of our mass media. Of course, one reading is that we advance from one system to another because technology makes it possible, and because we reap improvements of some kind - increased speed, a wider reach, or better audiovisual clarity. There is some truth in that.
Yet from the consumer's perspective, it's also possible to see our progression as a constant cycle of advertising-avoidance. I recall the days when radio had actual "shows" that people tuned in to (Fibber McGee and Molly, for example, or Jack Benny). Eventually, though, AM radio became so thickly infused with advertising that people flocked to other media: FM, then television.
Television was an advertising medium from the git-go, but there was a time when the FCC had some reasonable limits on the minutes of advertising that could be programmed in an hour; in my observation, these seem to have been relaxed to the point where they have become almost meaningless. Cable TV brought some relief for a while; until cable introduced its own ads. Viewers are now fleeing in droves toward DVDs and streamed videos of movies and television shows.
In voice communications, our home telephones (the old hard-wired variety) were transformed from their original usage as instruments of that old-fashioned one-to-one communication (call Mom on Mother's Day! Hear from Junior who was in the Peace Corps halfway around the world!) into just another means of opening ourselves up to the assault of hucksters. We have learned to fear the telephone, which became less and less purposed toward "reaching out" and more and more utilized by businesses, political causes, and charities trying to "reach in" -- to our wallets. (At my house, we are currently getting about 10-15 of these per day.) Again, consumers took flight to caller ID and to the relative quiet of their cell phones, which were protected to a degree by the restrictions that H.R. 3035 seeks to weaken.
This view of the life cycles of our media technology offers a strong rationale for resisting the current efforts to relax restrictions on automated calls to cell phones. Unfortunately, it also implies that ultimately the battle will be lost, and we'll find ourselves waiting for the next new thing in voice communication that will promise - and perhaps even deliver, for a short period - escape.
Hi, I found your blog via GabbyGeezer. This is an interesting "take" on the media, one I hadn't thought of, but it seems to me it's largely true. The entry led me to peruse some of your other postings, all of which are interesting and thought provoking. I dunno if I agree with you on national holidays -- but again, a fresh original proposal.
P.S. I, too, am a political and social moderate -- a group that is much maligned these days, so we ought to stick together!
Posted by: Tom Sightings | November 26, 2011 at 02:28 PM