On Jul 5, 6:10 pm, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > n Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > > If you happen across a published study on that, can you please forward > > that to me, on or off list? I'd want to read those findings before I'd > > feel confident in responding to them. I will state that from the > > communications classes I took in college, it goes against the majority > > view. There is generally a reason why A&E, Bravo, AMC, etc. no longer > > specialize in entertainment geared toward the intellectual, and it is > > generally that the intellectuals weren't buying enough. > > I am going to vote with Tom on this (and was going to make a similar post > before I saw his). I don't know what the Communications literature has to > say about this, but the psychological literature suggests that intelligence > has very little to do with being influenced by advertising (unless perhaps > in actions that lead to minimizing exposure to advertising in the first > place). I doubt seriously that A&E dumbed themselves down because smart > people were not being influenced by their advertising - more likely they did > it because it attracted more viewers to be influenced.
My view all along to why Bravo and A&E did what they did has been that intellectuals hate television and have always hated television by virtue of its very existence and its demands on the audience, unlike radio, which doesn't request that you stare at it every minute. Therefore, they are not going to spend the extra money to shell out for programming on cable or satellite because (a) they don't want to pay for the pro wrestling and rock videos and (b) they're convinced that PBS is dumbing down, as well. I would bet even money that the last people to buy the converter boxes when the digital conversion came around were tweedy professorial types. They would've been the first to tell you that A&E and Bravo would eventually give up on the arts way back in the 80s, when cable was still being heralded as the new haven for culture--and they would be smirking to see that Ovation is now airing "Fame" reruns and plans to start rerunning "So You Think You Can Dance" later this summer. (As for AMC, when I once told my eightysomething mother who stopped watching Ellen because she couldn't stand the studio audience screaming of my love for "Mad Men," she dismissed that show as too intellectual for her. And even at Bravo, "Work of Art" provided a primer on modern art to audiences, especially whenever Jerry Saltz was speaking--I'm assuming that Bravo is doing a second season and it'll start later this summer.) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
