Development of mass media

   

3. Truth

   

The Big Fat Truth Behind The Slimming Industry... Discover The Truth Behind The Dog Food Industry... The Truth Behind Commercialized Foods...

   

Writing headlines this way offers a sense of curiosity and draws the reader into a story of mystery.

   

4. How-To

   

How To Be A Millionaire In 10 Days

   

5. Reasons

   

10 Reasons Why Just An Apple A Day Won’t Keep The Doctor Away

   

6. Ask

   

When Is The Last Time You Brushed Your Teeth Like This? Why Pay More When It’s So Cheap? What’s Your Take On This?

   

7. Suggest

   

Use This The Next Time You Get A Backache Stop Headaches With This New Drug!

IV. ROLE-PLAY

• Scan the text “The skeleton of a newspaper” and find the italicized part in it. Read it.
• Work in groups: choose only dialogues from the part.
• Imagine your group is a working group in the newspaper. Your task is to present (act out) the conversation on the meeting.
• Be creative: you should change the names of the articles so that they will be urgent for the current situation. Mind the rules above and make different types of headlines.

 

V. CASE-STUDY

   

You are working on a yellow press newspaper. Your editor gives you the task to write an article about a celebrity (you should choose yourself). Moreover you should make up intriguing photos.

   

Present your article and photos in class. 

VI. ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION

   

Speak on the topic “Newspapers in Russia and abroad”. Find 3 Russian newspapers of 3 different types and 3 foreign newspapers.

   

Evaluate the papers you choose on the basis of quality of content, design, reliability, or other criteria you wish to use. Defend your position.

Discussion Points

• Beauty (as expressed in design, presentation, and format).
• Literary style (as expressed in writing).
• Universal appeal (to touch the heart or mind, to have lasting effect, to be addressed to a mass readership; to appeal to intellectuals, to rank-and-file people).
• Impact (great impact; lessening impact; lack of impact; long-term impact; short-term impact).
• Design. Good newspaper design strives to be clear and simple (to serve its readers best; to be gray and dull; to do a lot of graphics; few “jumps”, jumping a story – or continuing it from one page to another – is something that bothers readers; to use shorter stories that will end on the page they began).
• Color (readers like color; to design the color into the paper rather than using it as an afterthought; color doesn’t always help a reader; color makes something 25 percent more important than it would have been without it).
• Headlines (a range of headlines weights: to attract the reader to a story; should be bold or light; to reflect the mood of importance of the story).

 
 

Unit 3. TV AND RADIO PROGRAMMES 

Lead-in:

   

Look at the list of quotations devoted to television. Are there any contradictory ideas expressed in them? Comment upon them:

• All television is educational television.  The question is:  what is it teaching?  Nicholas Johnson
• I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.  There’s a knob called “brightness”, but that doesn’t work.  Author Unknown
• How can you put on a meaningful drama when, every fifteen minutes, proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?  Rod Serling, quoted in Submitted for Your Approval, Public Broadcasting Station, 1995
• I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  Groucho Marx
• Television:  A medium – so called because it is neither rare nor well done.  Ernie Kovacs

 

   

I. Read the text, search for the main ideas and make up a brief plan. 

   

TV and Radio Programmes

   

Programmes on radio and television may be referred to formally as broadcasts; and they may be referred to informally as shows, especially in American English.

   

Programmes or shows on radio and television are often presented or hosted by a programme host. Popular music programmes are presented by disc jockeys or DJs.

   

News programmes may be hosted, fronted, or anchored by anchors famous in their own right, sometimes more famous than the people in the news.

   

In more traditional news programmes, the news is read by a newsreader or newscaster (newscaster is now a rather old-fashioned word).

   

Reporters and correspondents, or television journalists, make reports. They and the camera operators who go with them are news gatherers. Together they form TV crews.

   

Broadcasters are TV and radio organizations, the people working for them, or, more specifically, the professional media people who actually participate in programmes.

   

Programmes and reports are transmitted or broadcast live in a live broadcast, with events seen or heard as they happen, or recorded for broadcast later. A recording of an event can be referred to as footage of that event.

   

A news programme might include:

   

dramatic footage of events such as war or disasters

   

interviews and studio discussions: pictures of people participating in these are often referred to as talking heads (an informal expression used to show disapproval of what can be a boring form of television)

   

vox-pop interviews, or vox-pops getting the reactions of ordinary people, often in the street

   

clips, or extracts, of any of these things.

   

People sometimes say that today’s news programmes are infotainment, a mixture of information, and entertainment, something that people watch or listen to for pleasure. Another example of infotainment is docudrama where real events are dramatised and reenacted by actors. This is a combination of documentary and drama: a documentary is a serious factual radio or TV programme.

   

There is, of course, a lot of competition between broadcasting organizations. Most TV and radio networks want to increase the size of their audience, or their ratings, at the expense of other networks.

   

Good ratings are especially important during prime time or peak-time, the time of day, or slot, when most people watch TV. Slot also means any short period in broadcasting reserved for a specific purpose.

   

High audience figures attract more advertising or commercials to be shown in commercial breaks between programmes. Commercials are also known as spots.

   

The media often talk about rating battles or ratings wars between networks when discussing competition in the industry (И.В. Миголатьева Международная журналистика. – РУДН, 2008).

   

Answer the following questions using the information from the text:

1. What is a show?
2. Who are shows on radio and TV presented by?
3. What is a DJ?
4. What is a newscaster and why is this word rather old-fashioned now?
5. What do we call the professional media people who actually participate in programmes?
6. What is a live broadcast?
7. What might a news programme include?
8. What do TV and radio networks do to increase the size of their audience?
9. When are good ratings especially important for TV and radio networks?

   

Match the following TV terms with their definitions

1. Chat-show    or   talk show 
2. Game show                     
3. God slot                         
4. Phone-in                         
5. Quiz show                       
6. Sitcom                            
7. Soap opera or soap         

 

1. Contest   of  skill,   intelligence   knowledge.   The   term   includes   quiz
2. shows.
3. Series about the lives of a group of people
4. Short for situation comedy. Comedy series based around a character or group of characters, often an “ordinary” family
5. A well-known host invites guests to talk, often about something they are trying to sell or promote, like their latest book
6. A host invites people to phone in and put questions to a studio guest, or just give their opinions about something
7. Religious programme
8. Contest involving answering questions

 

   

ROLE-PLAY

   

Your colleague-journalist from Italy comes to Russia. He speaks not only Italian and English, but also Russian, and has a desire to read Russian newspapers for entertainment and some serious ones. He asks for advice. 

 
 

Unit 4. ADVERTISING 

   

I. Answer the following questions, compare your opinions in a group discussion.

1. What are the traditional types of advertising?
2. Can you name advantages and disadvantages of each advertising medium you have mentioned?
3. Do you know any alternative types of advertising?

 

   

II. Read the text and compare your answers with the information given in it: 

EVALUATING ALTERNATIVE TYPES OF ADVERTYSING

   

Advertising, when properly understood, is a powerful tool for marketing.  It can be most effective with products that can be differentiated from similar products based on consumer-accepted quality differences. However, regardless of the quality of a product’s advertising, it is important to remember that a product has to compete on its own.  For example, brand preference cannot be established if the product fails to meet consumer expectations.

   

Below are forms of advertising you may want to consider:

   

1.  Newspapers

   

Advantages – short lead time, flexible, reach large audience, community prestige, intense coverage, reader control of exposure, coordination with national advertising, merchandising service, segment consumer by geography.

   

Disadvantages – short life span, may be expensive relative to other media, hasty reading, poor reproduction, lack of creativity.

   

2.  Radio

   

Advantages – audio capacity, short lead time, low cost relative to other media, reach demographic and geographic segmented audience, reach large audience.

   

Disadvantages – no visual capacity, fragmented and inflexible, temporary nature of message. 

   

3. Magazines and Journals

   

Advantages – selectivity for demographic and geographic segments, high in quality reproduction, lasts as long as magazine is kept, prestigious advertisement if credibility of magazine is high, extra services, issue may be read by more than one person.

   

Disadvantages – long lead time, lack of flexibility in gaining attention, often limited control over location of advertisement.

   

4. Outdoor Advertising

   

Advantages – inexpensive relative to other media, quick communication of simple ideas, repetition of exposure to customers, ability to promote products available for sale nearby.

   

Disadvantages – brevity of the message, short exposure time, cannot target customer, public concern over esthetics.

   

5. Television

   

Advantages – impact mass coverage, repetition, flexibility in getting attention of consumer, prestige, visual and audio capabilities, short lead time.

   

Disadvantages – temporary nature of message, high cost relative to other media, high mortality rate for commercials, evidence of public distrust, lack of selectivity, hard to target customer, requires production specialists.

   

6. Direct Mail

   

Advantages – flexibility in reaching target audience, short lead time, intense coverage, flexibility of format, complete information, easy to personalize.

Disadvantages – high cost per person, dependency on quality of mailing list, consumer resistance, may be considered as junk mail, may be difficult and expensive to access mailing lists (Захарова Е.В., Ульянищева Л.В. Public relations and advertising in close-up. Пособие по английскому языку для гуманитарных вузов. М.: Изд-во ИМПЭ-ПАБЛИШ, 2008). 

   

III. Define the following notions, use them in the same context as in the text:

1. consumer-accepted quality differences
2. short lead time
3. community prestige
4. intense coverage
5. public concern over esthetics
6. impact mass coverage
7. high mortality rate
8. public distrust
9. consumer resistance
10. junk mail

 

   

CASE STUDY:

   

You are the representatives of a well-known advertising agency. Your client is a coffee manufacturer, who owns a small company new for the market in Russia. Your task is to choose the best way to advertise the product of your client, keeping in mind that you can use only one medium of advertising.

   

Student A: You are the General Manager. You advocate conventional advertising media, giving preference to TV commercials. You run the meeting, comment upon the variants offered by your colleagues.

   

Student B: You are responsible for magazine advertising. You are keen on making use of the specific advertising vocabulary and different techniques attracting the customers’ attention.

   

Student C: You are responsible for TV commercials. You pay special attention to visual and sound effects.

   

Student D: You stick to “guerrilla marketing”, trying to find unconventional ways to advertise the product.

   

Student E: You deal with outdoor advertising. 

Unit 5. BLOGS

Lead-in:

• What is a blog?
• What types of blogs do you know?
• Do only professionals create blogs?
• What is microblogging?

    

I. Read the text and make up a table with all types of blogs mentioned in the text 

BLOGS

   

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log”) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

   

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.