Prouduct placement continued...

Since that last post, I've noticed more and more product placement. Some of the shows that I've been watching have been able to successfully pull it off without me giving more thought to it than "Wow! They always drink that same brand of bottle water in this television show, even while making reference to the per verbal water cooler." Other shows that I've watched have been a little too obvious with their introduction of the items - the number of these shows is far less, and I think it annoyed me, since I was forgot I was looking for it and it jolted me back from the plot line that had dragged me in. Its far less annoying than commercials - I'm curious now whether or not its more cost effective for all parties in the long run? I'll get back to "you" on that...

Product Placement in Television

I thought that Professor Macek's comment about product placement in television shows was interesting, since there have been shows like 30 rock that even made fun of product placement through using product placement to make fun of using product placement. Aiyee! Evening though it can be annoying - like the "Stride" episode of Smallville - other times I would prefer that to having to sit through sets of commercials that break up the story lines.

Response to politicial blog prompt

I think that this generation, the digital generation, does allow for its members to become better informed about the candidates and the political debates that have been taking place over the course of the past year (roughly). I even remember back during the elections in 2000 that there was a site that allowed you to fill out a questionnaire to see which candidates was better aligned with your own personal views. This wasn't one of those "quiz" sites though, it was an official and as far as I knew unbiased site that pulled all the details into one location to make it easier to catch up on election news.

I'm not quite sure why the site died and wasn't revived for the next election in 2004, but I guess there has been plenty of other sites that have popped up since then that provides a myriad of different views and positions on the candidates during the primary elections that are taking place now. I think that because of the prevalence of blogs and videos, both parody and serious, that a lack of even seemingly useless knowledge seems impossible. If you go online to look at or participate in even unrelated activities, there seems to be groups or comments about Barrack vs. Hilary, or the age of John McCain.

With shows, and their respective websites and print media, like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" cater to college students and keep them up to date with political and social issues. This is also done through using a voice that this generation is more likely to pay attention to, because of the wit and criticism of the world that we see falling apart around us. For me, the increase of satire regarding these issues has sparked an interest in reading more about the topics. I think that the associate of fresh humor and critique of events breathes new life into various arenas of the presidential election that would have otherwise remained flat and uninteresting.

Without shows like these, sites like hotrantsmedia, that the amount of time it would take a student to look for all of this information would be too great to allow them the time to research candidates in between classes and work. Because of the organization and the availability, which I am sure if due to the presence of the digital generation (otherwise there wouldn't be that target market), this allows for the circle of cyber culture to continue.

Long time coming

So I know that I should have posted more sooner than this, but a funny thing happens when insomnia becomes full-blown - even though you are up for more hours it doesn't mean that your brain will function during those hours.

Ok, on to the blog post....

Since there is no blog prompt up I thought that I would comment on the articles and sites that we visited during class and then talk about things in general that have been going on these past few weeks, since my life seems to involve new media non-stop.

I like knowing about hotrantsmedia now, since it leaves the wandering around looking for articles to someone else who has the time to track things down. Since I don't belong to any political party and fall under liberal for some topics and conservative for others, its nice to have a range of articles to chose from.

One thing that did disappoint me though was that all of the topics of the articles seemed to be focused on past events and speculations based on financial information. I mean I agree that these things are important, but I just wander how many times things will get talked about before people realize thats all that they seem to be talking about. Granted its still useful information to know when considering who I want as the next president, but when we're still listening to primary election coverage in other states then its twice as much information that is useless that is bombarding you. And we wonder why US citizens aren't as politically active. It would be a whole lot easier if we could just get things done and over with quicker. A person's character and stance should be known without having to be said, so all this parading around is getting absurd.

As for the interesting things that are going on, I've been researching more and more flash websites and have found that they aren't as well laid out as I used to think they were. Its interesting how the more that you know about some the less things seem impressive. I'm not saying that I'm not in awe of some designers or that I don't think that it takes skill to develop and publish flash sites. Rather what I am talking about it the prevalence of overkill and "underkill" when it comes to design. Unfortunately at this time, since I am yet again staying up later than I am supposed to, I don't have links to the places that I wanted to reference, so instead take this as an "announcement of a coming post".

To try and be able to process information in the morning, I am going to go and read through other posts and comment, to make sure that I keep up to date. Night!