Reality TV

So I am not the biggest fan of reality television but sometimes I do find myself watching it. I am curious to know how real some of these shows are and often wonder if they are staged. Last month I found that most of my facebook friends were obsessed with Jersey Shore, so I decided I had to watch an episode. After watching a few episodes I realized that it was not my type of show, but I also wondered if the shows were real or not and if they were people told what to say. I mean many of the situations seemed like situations that would never happen. Many reality shows seem to be like this these days. I mean, if they were really portraying what was happening in a house like that, would it even be exciting enough to watch? I would like to see if anyone has a true answer for this.

There All the Same

I don't watch much tv anymore, but I noticed that the few shows that I do watch all seem to be the same as the episode before them. I thought this fit in well with this weeks reading because of the narrative subject, and talking about structure. I used to watch CSI Miami, but I stopped watching it because the episodes all seem to be the same just with different stories. They always open in the crime scene, and the detectives are always dramatic about what happened. The next 35 minutes are spent investigating and talking to different suspects. The last 10 minutes they usually find the criminal or criminals involved and charge them. Many of the episodes end with Horatio putting his sunglasses on and walking away. It was always too easy to predict what was going to happen in each episode, and I guess I got bored of this repetition. I just cant seem to find a television show that I really enjoy anymore. I guess there all just the same.

More on Fox News

I wanted to post an article I read in the paper last week in regards to Fox News. I found it interesting because many people in the class felt that Fox news was not reliable, and many of them said they will not watch it and do not like the the channel. Most of their opinions came from the Outfoxed video and from other sources such as "Family Guy." In my opinion you can not form a bias on a news channel just from watching a video, especially one made by former Fox employees. Family Guy may be a great cartoon, but it not reliable, and most of the material on the show is not true. The article in the Herald states that Fox News is one of the most reliable News channels and has high ratings on tv. It also states that people find Fox news to be more reliable then CNN and NBC. The Herald typically isn't too liberal or too conservative, so I do not feel that this article is not biased in any way. It also seems that recently more and more people are watching Fox News and are trusting them more. I guess I was just surprised and confused as to why so many people in the class did not like the channel.

http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1228502

New VCR technology

I was reading over the blog description for the course, and got some ideas on where to go with my next blog. It has always amazed me how much media technology has changed. When I was a child my family owned a record player and several VCRs. I never would have imagined that a decade later we would have DVDs and CDs and everything else is almost impossible to find. What led me to write this blog was learning that you can now take all your VCRs and put them on to DVDs to watch. I just learned about this new technology over the weekend, and think its crazy that it can be done. I was excited because we have many childhood tapes, and no longer own a VCR. Now we can watch our memories on DVDS! I felt this tied in with the class because I started watching some of the VHSs recently and in the background of the movies on our household tv was President George Bush Senior and Michael Jackson. It was funny to see how much the times have changed and how different the news looked then.