Mass Media communication

Mass Media

I think that media are well known to everyone of us. They are everywhere around us.

The term mass media is applied to all media that reach a mass audience. Media are very important for mankind. They have a significant part in our life and they enable us to get new information from each corners of the globe promptly and efficiently. Because of this fact our modern society is often called the information society. By mass media we mean those means of communication which reach large or mass audiences such as the press, radio and television. We can use electronic media, too such as compact discs, digital tape recorders, personal computers in our day to day to get some news.

Newspaper

Newspapers belong to printed media which we can find in each newsagent in our town. At any newsagent’s counter we can notice the vast choice of newspapers of various size and format. We can divide them into many categories and the most common way people distinguish them is by the differences between broadsheets (large sheet) and tabloids (small sheet). The broadsheets are known as quality newspapers and the tabloids are called popular.

Broadsheets report national and international news and are serious in tone. They usually have editorials, which comment on important issues and also reflect the political views of the editor. They contain financial and sports news, features, obituaries, listings of television and radio programmes, theatre and cinema shows, comic strips, advertisements, the weather forecast, crosswords, business news, political commentaries, the letter page, classified adds, reviews.

The Times - they are the oldest broadsheet and used to have a very good reputation. These days it is perhaps less admired, but it is still read by influential people. It tends to be quite conservative and right-wind in its attitudes.

The Daily Telegraph is very conservative and right wing in its attitudes but is rather less elitist and therefore more popular.

The Guardian is on the political left.

The Independent is much younger than the other quality papers tends to be left-of-centre in its views.

The Financial Times is printed on distinctive pink paper, deals mostly with business and financial news and is mostly read by people working in those two sectors.

Sunday papers are The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Independent which have more pages than dailies and also have supplements on arts, motoring, sports etc.

Tabloids have a smaller size and report less serious news. These are usually “human-interest stories” and often discuss the personal lives of famous people. They feature “page three girls” and very often photographs of half naked people, especially young women. These magazines are sometimes called the gutter press and in Britain the most popular are:

The Sun - it is famous for its clever joke headlines and its Page Three models who are near naked young women.

The Daily Mirror - The Sunday Mirror has traditionally been a left wing newspaper and has always supported the Labour Party.

The Daily Express (are right wing) and The Daily Mail - its Sunday equivalent The Mail on Sunday are conservative and are popular with older people.

British newspapers can be divided into national and local paper too. National are published nation-wide and local are distributed in a particular area. Some local newspapers are weeklies and contain news of local events and sports publish advertisements of local businesses and real estate agencies. They are often paid for by the advertisements published in them and are delivered free to people’s homes.

In the USA there is only one national newspaper, USA Today and all the other papers are local, such as The New York Times, and The Washington Post which are even so read all over the country. Newspapers can be subscribed to, which is much cheaper, r brought in bookshops and supermarkets. A local daily usually has between 50 to 75 pages, divided into different sections.

Magazines

Printed media includes magazines, too which are on the one hand aimed at women, men, young people, and sportsmen but on the other hand there are many of them which are aimed at hobbies or leisure interests such as sailing, tennis, golf, fishing, extreme sports, embroidery. Some magazines are for specialized in a particular field, e. g. computer programming, fashion, medicine, or biology. General interest magazine concentrates on subjects of interest to many people: an ideal home, garden, news, good food, mother and baby, DIY, cars, sports, travel, films, music and theatre. Some of theses are “, Rolling stone, New Musical Express, Mixmag, Total Sport, Top Gear…Gossip magazines such as Hello! or The National Enquirer in the US have stories about the rich and famous. Magazines such as TIME, The Ecomnomis, Private Eye, The Spectator, New Scientist, Scientific American have a more intellectual content and include current affairs articles, analyses, reports, and reviews accompanied by pictures of the world´s most renowned photographers. Teen´s mags have information and advice about clothes, school, friends, and entertainment. Many regional magazines contain articles about a particular state or city, trade magazines aimed at people who work in various industries.

There are many newspapers and magazines available in Slovakia, too. We divide newspaper to local and national. The most national newspaper is The Pravda or The Sme. But there are many local one such as The Korzár, which is published Košice. There is just one newspaper published on Sundays and it is called The Nový čas. I can say that I do not read newspaper very often and if I read it I just look at horoscopy or gossip. I know that it is not the right way to broaden my horizons but I do not have enough time for reading serious news.

But do you wonder how I realize new information about things all over the world? Ok I reveal it. Nowadays there are many other media except of newspapers and magazines which enable us to get new information much more promptly. I am talking about television, radio and the Internet.

Radio and television can be divided into two categories: commercial and non-commercial.

Commercial stations are supported by charging money to companies that would like their goods or services advertised on the station.

Non-commercial stations, on the other hand do not advertise products, are either financed from state budget or supported by donations, grants, or private organizations.

Television

Nowadays children can not survive a day without watching TV. This invention had been developed by this time. Television was developed in 1926. It is a piece of electrical equipment with a glass screen which shows broadcast programmes with moving pictures and sounds. Nowadays people are used to watch their favourite programmes on colour televisions. They are pretty very popular and many people become slaves of television by the time because they prefer to sit in front of television for many hours instead of going for a walk to the country or reading some interesting, romantic or detective novel. It is a very important source of information and we can entertain ourselves by watching TV. Our modern life is very closely connected to television as sources of education or just background noise. TV station are divided to two categories the same as newspapers. We can watch some local or some national station.

I know just the only one local station which broadcasts in Košice and it is called Naša. I do not watch it but my father watches it very often to realise some news about events happening in our district. This TV is concentrated on local news, traffic reports or pop music.

Programmes which are broadcasted on TV cater for viewers of different age groups, interests, educational background. Programme guides help us to make our own choice between the programmes whose aim is to entertain (chat/talk shows, quiz shows, comedies, cartoons, sitcoms, series, serials, breakfast shows or morning shows,, soap operas) and those which want to inform and educate people (documentaries, wildlife programmes,, nature programmes, the news with weather forecast, travelogues, plays, dramas).

We can have just a based set of programmes in our households which consists of five or eight programmes but there are many people who have really wide range of programmes at home.

I can say that I do not watch TV very often nowadays. I do not have enough time for it. I just watch news or weather forecast to know what I should wear following day to school. Only on Sundays I watch some film on TV and I am really furious when there is nothing interesting on. I watch mainly The STV, The Markíza and The Joj at home. I can not say which of them is my favourite one but I should admit that The STV broadcasts much more interesting programmes nowadays than in the past and many people are really delighted with this fact. I like watching charts on TV to know what is new in the world of music and I like relaxing at a romantic film. I used to watch soap operas because I like stories of poor girls which get married a wealthy boy... (z knihy!!!!)

Radio

The first radio was discovered in 1886 by a German physics Henrich Herty. In those times the quality of broadcasting was very low and there were no more than two radio station in the country. But now, broadcasting in UK is provided by BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), with channels for both radio and television. The quality of broadcasting is very high and there are more than 20 000 radios around the world. People in GB and in the USA listen to the radio a lot, especially in the morning and the early evening hours or while they are in their cars. Later in the evening television attracts a larger audience.

In Great Britain are nation and independent radios. The radio broadcasting structure is similar with that one in Slovakia. There are five national BBC radio stations: Radio 1 plays rock and pop music, Radio 2 broadcasts popular music and arts programmes, Radio 4 broadcasts popular news and current affairs, drama and arts programmes and Radio 5 LIVE has sport. Independent radio and TV stations broadcast in competition with the BBC, e. g. Classic FM, Virgin Radio and Talk Radio UK. Some smaller stations are run by students or by hospitals for their patients.

In the USA there are more than 10 000 radio stations. Many people listen to the radio during driving time, the time when they are travelling to or from work. There is a National Public Radio. There are also networks, i. e. groups of stations that are associated with each other. All radio and television stations must be licensed to broadcast by the Federal Communication Commission in the USA, which is an independent federal agency. Each license is given for a few years only and can be taken away if a radio or TV station does not keep the regulation of the FCC. Hundreds of radio stations of USA broadcast in other languages than English for minorities. Millions of American TV viewers watch television transmitted over cables. The cable TV is very popular as it increases the number of channels. Since the time the U.S. launched the world’s first communication space satellite in 1965, the satellite TV has become quite common in the U.S.A. and other countries of the world.

In Slovak republic we have approximately 20 radio stations. They have their own transmitter and they can broadcast with help of satellite in space. There are different kinds of radios: 1. State radios (Slovensko 1, Rebecca,…) 2. Private broadcasting authorities (Fun radio, Okej, Twist, Express,…) 3. Local radios (Tatry, Trenčan,…)

Radios are broadcasting a lot of different programmes: education and entertainment programmes, quizzes, discussions, commentaries, music charts, competitions, etc. Some programmes consist only of music, which the listeners wish. The radios are broadcasting the most important news in shortcuts every day in the same time. The style of them on state radios is very formal, on private radios their style is not so formal (Twist) and they are given by funny way (on Fun radio). The private radios have got a lot of advertisements. The state radios don´t broadcast so many advertisements.

Each station has a specific format, which it hopes will be popular with its listenership. Some staions play a particular kind of music, such as top 40, country or golden oldies. Other stations have talk radio and phone-in programmes in which radio presenters discuss an issue and invite people listening in to phone the station and take part in the discussion. There are also ethnic radio stations. They are operated by people from particular cultural group and offer programmes in languages other than English. Some stations broadcast religious programming. Many towns also have a public radio station. They often have public affairs programming and classical music, which is not common on commercial radio. The United States Information Agency, part of the US government, operates the “Voice of America”, which brings information about the US, its culture and language to people around the world.

What I really do not like about TV or radio are advertisements. They often interrupt the film in the best part. I know that many people like this type of break because they can go for a meal or on toilet but I think that too long advertisements during film are the main reason why many films end late at the midnight are. It is a right way to earn more money for television but it is waste of time for viewers and I can say that many people are so irritated with them that they stop watching film in the middle of it because they do not have enough patience. I am aware of the fact that they are very important to support demand for advertised goods but the block of advertisements during the night film should be shorter.

When I am really fed up with watching film on TV or when there is nothing really good on, I watch some film on my computer at home. The computer is really very important part of human life and I can say that nowadays almost each computer has installed the Internet. The latest technological contribution to media development is the Internet and e-mail communication. The Internet, an international computer network for exchange of information, was originally used mainly in the academic and military worlds but has since become available to the large and increasing number of people with personal computers and easy access to the Net. It is beginning to replace or substitute for the so called classic media (newspaper, TV, radio, telephones, telegraphs…) by offering the newest and most up-to-date services to modern man such as the World Wide Web, e-mail communication, and instant access to the latest news in all field of technology. It seems none of us will be able to do without the existence and help of this super-power of information in the future. Magazines are now increasingly available on the Internet.

There are many various opinions on the information which we can get from media. So for instance:

Zones.sk – Zóny pre každého študenta
https://www.zones.sk/studentske-prace/anglictina/17280-mass-media-communication/