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August 22, 2008 Blog They say you are what you eat. You probably spend about 15 hours eating each week, but there are 168 hours. This only pertains to the physical part of you, but that is very important.
You spend around 50 hours sleeping or trying to sleep. That is also important, but few people I know have much influence over that part of their life.
Unless you are retired, you are probably employed. You take orders and fulfill obligations 40 hours a week, in order to get money to feed your family. If you are retired, you may or may not take orders. Enough said.
So much for what you are.
You are what you see, hear and do in the other 63 hours.
If you are a typical American, you spend half that time doing things like getting dressed or undressed, working around the house, spending time with the kids, attending games or other functions and shopping. The other half of that time is spent reading, listening and watching the various media forms.
A millennium ago, few people could read, so communication was mostly confined to speech and artistic expression, the bulk of which took place in churches. Few understood Latin, so paintings, statues and stained glass windows communicated the only message common people could understand. There was little communication with nobles. We can conclude that media made up a minuscule portion of a person's week.
A century ago, publications had become very popular. Many people learned to read and write and they read anything they could get their hands on. But they worked long hours and reading was mostly confined to the daylight hours on weekends.
That situation has changed drastically! Tiny tots hardly out of diapers spend hours a day watching TV and videos. Children watch an average of 28 hours of TV per week and the average adult will spend over 10 years of his or her life glued to the tube. We have radios in our homes, workplaces and cars. Most households subscribe to a weekly or daily newspaper and several magazines. And now the Internet is demanding a lot of our time.
We should be concerned about who owns and controls the media, but most people couldn't care less.
They are just consumers.
A tiny article in yesterday's Press of Atlantic City aroused my curiosity. The headline read, "120 Gannett workers cut at six NJ papers".
I bet you never heard of Gannett either, but they own a sizable portion of our minds. Gannett has been gobbling up media for nearly a century and now owns over a thousand newspapers including 85 dailys in America. Gannett also owns 23 television stations and online operations that amount to 15% of the Internet audience. Gannett employs 46,100 people.
I had never heard of Gannett.
My appetite was whet to learn more. I Googled "media conglomerates" and discovered that Gannett was not listed among the top five media giants. They are General Electric, Time-Warner, Walt Disney, News Corporation and CBS. In fifth place, with only 14 Billion in revenues (2006 figure), CBS has only 27 TV and 140 radio stations. http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main
Want to learn more? Check this site: http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html
This is an election year. We should really know who owns our minds.
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| RVHarvey.com |
