Noelle's Blog

The obvious question following Oprah’ announcement to end her show after 25 years is how will the network fill this void when she leaves?

Oprah has been a staple in the media for over a decade, and ABC affiliate stations, like Philadelphia, have benefited from her loyal and devoted viewers keeping the station on after the show’s end and tuning into the evening news. I can’t imagine the amount of viewers that will not tune into evening news programs anymore because they weren’t glued to their television set from the hour before, listening to Oprah’s advice and the guests on her show with intense interest.
Another question is whether or not any advertisers, who know they will reach their target audience at commercial breaks when Oprah is on, will bail.

It won’t be easy to fill the shoes she has left, and it may very well be impossible for another day time talk show to gather the amount of daily viewers Oprah has managed to rope in. According to an Associated Press article, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” averaged 7.2 million viewers per episode this season. But even the Queen of Daytime TV was affected by people’s growing interest in niche cable television throughout the decade. The same article states that her daily average viewership was a whopping 12.6 million in the 1991-92 season, and was cut by more than half in the 2008-09 season with an average of 6.2 millioon viewers per episode.

Source: AP

Rome Hartman on the “Fox News-ization” of Media.

This article pertains to the PEW research survey that we were assigned to read, and its well-known revelation that the public still does not really trust the news media. In my response to the Communication Nation question, I stated that it is the networks breaking the public’s trust, more so than individual journalists themselves. The networks are just like any other business in a rough economy; doing their best to stay afloat and get the most viewers and ad revenue they can.

The EP of BBC World News America, Rome Hartman, says in this article that its hard for networks to do financially well if they’re not posting the junk that people are interested in. He goes on to say that FOX is great at broadcasting crap that their loyal viewers devour, and says when networks air things that are unreliable or nonsense because they need as many viewers as possible to stay alive, they are participating in the “FOX-News-ization of the media.” While I understand that networks need to keep their audiences interested, they do have a hard time distinguishing which stories are worthy and reliable, and which ones will simply draw some eyes for a few minutes.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/04/dolly.jessica.breasts/index.html

I hope everyone reads this article and is as flabbergasted as I am as to why, why, why CNN would post something like this.

First of all, as I’ve said in previous posts, mindless stories about celebrities don’t belong on sites like CNN.com. If they want to post controversial legal matters, or something of the sort, that celebrities are facing, fine. But this isn’t even an interesting story, let alone newsworthy.

The article is about Jessica Simpson and Dolly Parton’s responses to one another’s complaints via Twitter about the size of their breasts. This article on CNN’s home page is literally about celebrities’ boobs.
The only reason I read it was because of its ridiculous headline: “Jessica Simpson finds a bosom buddy.” I thought, no way can this be about her boobs, so I read it hoping to find some reason CNN would be reporting on this. I didn’t. The article goes on to inform us of the other complaints these women have made about their Double D’s over the years.

Since when do news organizations as prominent and reliable as CNN feel that it is acceptable to write an entire article based on chatter from Twitter? While tweeting is a great resource for journalists and the media, organizations should not go prowling around celebs’ Twitter pages, looking for a news story.

I still go to CNN for in depth reporting on important issues, because as dumb as I think it was for them to post this story, they still do a good job with real and important news. I would love to know if anyone else felt that this was an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for them to publish.

I have never heard of Utterli before being assigned this project in class. I wonder why it is not more popular & well known? It is a really efficient tool for people who want to communicate through the internet throughout their busy days, but can’t because they don’t have internet on their cell phones. It seems like everyone has BlackBerries and iPhones these days, but for those of who want to post an interesting video or humorous picture that presents itself to us on our daily routines withOUT paying an extra $30 a month for cell phone internet, Utterli is perfect!