COM/WRI 212 - Blog #6

Arrested Development’s “Motherboy XXX” is the episode I watched to see product placement in a non-animated sitcom first hand. Arrested Development follows a fictional family called the Bluths. The Bluths are wealthy, dysfunctional family who lost everything and one son, Michael Bluth, was force to keep his family together.  “Motherboy XXX” is about the aftermath of Buster's losing his hand from a “loose seal” as well as Tobias looking for work in the acting field. Embarrassed by her son’s missing hand, Lucille recruits George Michael, Michael’s son, to compete in the 30th annual "Motherboy" contest with her. On the other side of the town, Tobias meets with acting coach, Carl Weathers to talk about possible acting jobs for him. The episode “Motherboy XXX” only had two product placements but they were two huge product placements.

            The first product placement is VERY obvious! Tobias meets Carl Weathers in a Burger King. They talked about how great the fast food restaurant is and how they are getting money for shooting a scene from their television show. Arrested Development is known for having running jokes throughout the show as well as tongue in cheek humor so this direct line of product placement while obvious still makes a jab at people who take product placement deals. Tobias comes back to Carl Weathers in the Burger King and true to Arrested Development nature their product placement hilarious. A sign for Burger King’s Angus Burger is in the background of the shot and with the way the shot is the “g” in Angus seems to be blocked. This makes burger not so appealing but still calls for laughs. Later within the episode, Michael, George Michael, and Buster are shown drinking out of Burger King cups just to round out the Burger King product placement. While everything is happening in Burger King for Tobias, Lucille and George Michael head off to Motherboy 30 (XXX) where another product placement is placed.

            Lucille and George Michael walk into the hotel where Motherboy is being held and see another mother son combo in sailor outfits. This causes Lucille to rent a room so they can change their outfits. While checking into the room, Lucille states her purpose for staying was Motherboy and this is where the second product placement. The hotel receptionist states that it is the mother son competition instead of the 70’s rock band with the same title. The Narrator also comments that the show is legally obligated to make a distinction between the band and the pageant. I thought when I watched the episode, Motherboy was real but after watching the episode multiple times I realized that one of the band members looks oddly familiar. I did some researching and it turned out that the band Motherboy does not exist. This scene from the episode was just a product placement on the show itself. During the pitching of the series, a band with the same name of the show sued the producers for copyright infringement. This is Arrested Development’s way talking about the issue and saying how they got through it in a funny way.

            This leads to the final but indirect product placement, which is the show’s title. When googling the name of the show, you will get multiple sources. One will be for the show but they other will be for the band with the same name. This allows for the band or the show to get more people to get more popularity because they googled “Arrested Development” and wanted to see the difference between the two.

COM 327 - Blog #3 Methods

The First World Problems meme is a tongue and cheek image of popular culture which calls on the more privileged in life to talk about their problems whether they be the barista spelling your soy milk caramel macchiato or having to plug your MacBook into its charger so it can update. As a country full of privilege no matter how much or little, there are other countries who don't have the luxuries like water or personal laptops. We as a privileged society have a Ideological stand point on the world.
In a Ideological stand point, there are many viewpoints but the main one everyone know about is the hegemonic view point. The hegemonic view point is a social control over society due to power and it is how content in which all experiences are evaluated even if they don't apply to that situation.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #5

I watched the March 19^th, 2015 episode of “The Daily Show with John Stewart”. In the episode, Stewart spoke about Fox News reporting of the Ferguson second report findings. The second report finding stated that there was some racial biases and Fox News just wanted to the other forms of media to apologize for giving false information.

Stewart went further by talking about the Benghazi innocent and the officially released findings by the mostly republican house intelligence committee. He compared the two findings and stated that Fox News should apologize for reporting falsely on the innocent. Steward states that Fox News doesn’t hold itself to the standards they hold other people.

            Later in the show, Steward breaks the very serious news into something comical. The comical news is that the United States is buying chess players to win their first gold metal in chess in the last decade. He and his correspondent, Trevor Noah, have a little banter back and forth about why the US is buying the chess players, which is because the US wants to be better and get back at Russia. This part of the show is funnier allowing for the audience to relax and laugh at little. Stewart plays the role of typical American and they give many pop culture references during this part of the show.

            The last part of the show was an interview with Will Ferrell. This was another comical segment for the show. This had really no news content other then the promotion of Will Ferrell’s new movie “Get Hard” and reminder that “The Daily Show with John Stewart” while be no more since John Stewart recently announced he’d be leaving the show. The March 19^th episode, I watched was very content heavy in the beginning but allowed itself to shallow the episode with more comical news.

            Overall, I feel like the episode was very content and serious in the beginning and to lighten the mood, so the show brought in a comical news story and a comedy actor to make it seems not so heavy. I do believe that entertaining and comedic news is a great way for people to get their information. I have many friend who don’t watch the news but watch shows like “The Daily Show with John Stewart” to get their information from what is going on in the world. I believe Stewart has found a great balance of funny and serious in his time on television. He can deliver very serious news to the audience and make a sensible joke about the hard news. Sometimes news giving out by majority news stations is very serious and dry but “The Daily Show” gives a refresh, lighthearted version of the news. The lighthearted version of news is still countable and reliable but isn’t as dry. When news gets to serious, people tend to want to forget about how bad the world may be but will comical and entertaining news the audience will want to remember or will remember the news more due to the way of the delivery.

COM 327 - Blog #2

Monahan, M. J. (2014). The concept of privilege: A critical appraisal. South African Journal Of Philosophy, 33(1), 73-83.

The First World Problems meme is a tongue in cheek image. It was created to show the daily struggles of people who are considered to have more privileges then other people in other countries that may be less fortunate. These daily struggles include but are not limited to having to watch the 3D showing of a movie because none of the 2D showings were working for you or being hungry but not for any of the food in your house. Privilege is "

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #4

In this post, we will be having FM radio vs. AM radio. For the FM radio, I chose to do B104. B104 is the Lehigh Valley’s hit music radio station. I grew up listening to this radio station with it’s playing of the greatest musical hits from the 80’s, 90’s and now. The commercials and information given out during my 20 minutes of listening felt like I was listening to the television with no picture. There were only three and a half songs that played during my listen experience, which totaled about 10 to 11 minutes. I also noticed that one of the songs was slightly sped up to make it go faster. Sneaky, sneaky B104 but I’m a Taylor Swift fan and I know when things don’t line up.

The rest of the time spent listening was to commercials and information instead of music, which is the biggest thing about radio stations. If you look at it, I spent about 50% of my time with the FM radio station listening to commercials or information. The commercials were about selling local valley events or businesses. I noticed that the station would chime in during the long commercials to make sure the consumers knew what station they were on. The news given out by B104 was more celebrity news than nation or local news. I learned about Kylie Jenner buying a new house for her and her potential boyfriend, Tyga. Things I don’t really care about but hey people like it and consume it.

For the next 20 minutes, I listened to WTKZ. This AM radio station is a sports radio station based out of the Lehigh Valley. I enjoy listening to this radio station especially during baseball season. This was the complete opposite to the FM radio station I listened to previously. It was a lot of talking about sports with the sprinkle of weather and major traffic problems around the Valley. There were about 5 to 6 minutes of commercial and information. This is was a little over 25% of the time spent listening to promotional on local sporting events with the Phantoms or Iron Pigs. The information was entertaining to me but to someone who isn’t a fan of sport especially Philly sports wouldn’t care for it. By the end of the time, I realized why I didn’t listen to this station as much as something like B104. The hosts always say something silly about the Phillies trading or keeping certain players or getting players from other teams and I find myself shaking my head. The hosts always find the negative in everything or say something silly that leads me to believe anyone who loves sports could get a job talking about sports.

I learned something from both radio stations I listened to. On B104, I learned about celebrity news and on WTKZ, I learned about possible trading information the Phillies are looking into. Both were entertaining to me, but the information I learned from WTKZ was more interesting to me then the news from B104. I did enjoy the music on B104 since WTKZ is just a talking station. Now if there was a radio station that played today’s hits with baseball news, I would be set for life.