Reality?

It seems that reality TV has had a take over of television. It is the only thing to watch right now if you do not want to watch re-runs. The writer's strike cost the L.A. economy $2.5 billion. I wonder how big of an impact that is going to have on television overall. What changes are going to be made to the shows that come on. Of the shows in ABC's primetime line-up 12 of them are reality shows. The reality shows are getting more and more ridiculous. The situations more and more bizzare. A natural consequence of the strike is more reality programming. I am sure I am not alone in being tired of reality programming. I wonder how big of an impact it will have overall. Will people change their viewing habits. Will it costs the networks even more? It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few months.

Campaigns

The primaries are almost over and for the first time I can remember Texas is important. Our primary is so late in the "season" the candidate is normally decided by the time Texas rolls around. This year the democratic nomination is still up for grabs. What does this mean for us? We get political commercials. I do not know why this is so appealing for me but I love that we get to see the commercials. The last 2 elections Texas was skipped over because we were Bush country, this year is different. My favorite morning radio station had both Hillary and Barack on last week. There was a debate in Austin between the two candidates and there was even an ad in the Lariat for Barack last week. The candidates set up campaign offices in Waco. The candidates have even made trips to Waco in the last few weeks. For a political junky like me I absolutely love it. I can not get enough political coverage and having it in my own backyard is amazing. As much as a I love it though I started to wonder if other people were taking notice that Texas is important this year. I talked to some people, namely my little sister, and she had no idea that the primary was this next week. It is amazing that the candidates can do tons of debates, make countless appearances, spend millions on ads and still people do not know. It speaks for the shear volume of media outlets in our country. There is no way to reach everyone. People can simply tune out what they do not want to hear. If you do not care you can switch to one of the other 532 channels available with the super duper cable package. What is even more interesting is this is the first time my little sister can vote. She should at least care (I can understand if she does not share my level of excitement) who is running and what day she can go cast her first vote. I have a feeling my sister is not alone in knowing who is running. I am sure a lot of her friends fall in the same category as her. It will be interesting to see how campaigns will adapt to reach the younger generations. I feel that they have started to takes steps with blogs, facebook, myspace and other things like that. I think we will see a lot of changes in the next few months with the way campaigns use media. There are so many new outlets that are relatively untapped and there are countless ways to reach the younger generation.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUgA0nj8Xy8