Response #1 - Ch. 19

Ellyn Gary                                                                  Reading Response 1 – Ch. 19

            Chapter 19 was about the rise of many new forms of entertainment media, such as comic book, music and the recording industry, movies, radio, television, video games, and the Internet.  The chapter covered each of these topics and looked at their development over time.

            Halfway through the first page of the reading I found something contradictory to what has been happening in currently.  The author stated that television, newspapers and books are expected to loose time consumers spend looking at these mediums, but that no one is “predicting the demise” of these media.  I found this to be contradictory to books and especially the newspaper industry.  Although the book was published in 2011, Solan did not include anything about eBooks or eReaders (such as the Kindle or Nook).  I’m sure this is because at the time he wrote the book and had it published, these new forms of media had not reached the popularity and success they have presently in the second half of the year.  This considered, we still have seen a drop in books sold because of the popularity of these new technologies, and even large bookstores such as Borders close their doors for good because they cannot keep up.  My biggest question came from the mentioning of newspapers in that statement.  I believe that the newspaper has taken a significant hit from the emergence and success of the Internet.  I do not believe any of the larger city and national newspapers are going anywhere, we have seen the demise of many small newspapers.  These smaller papers have shut down because more and more people are getting their news online, instead of from the actual newspaper, and they simply cannot keep up or bring in as much revenue as they used to.  For these two reasons I was puzzled by the author’s statement about the effects of new technologies and media on newspapers and books.  While I believe that they will never completely go away, I do believe that he downplayed the severe hits that both mediums have suffered because of new technologies.

            In this chapter and in previous chapters, such as the one on radio, people in the time period when new mediums were coming about considered them to be fads at first, and eventually expected them to fade away and not last.  This was what was first thought of radio shortly after it was developed.  Yes radio is not as popular as it used to be, but considering that it has been around for almost 100 years, I certainly wouldn’t call it a fad.  One of this chapter’s subheadings was called “The Fad Turns Mainstream.”  The topic of this section was about the emergence of the recording industry.  At first the phonograph was considered to be a fad, but after improvements sales grew, and in turn so did the recording industry.  Recording industry is still around today and continues to provide entertainment for millions.  I wouldn’t classify recordings as a fad either.  This made me realize that possibly some of the things we think of as fads today, may not end up as fads after all. The best example I can think of is Apple.  About ten to seven years ago when the iPod and other Apple products were growing in popularity, many thought that it was just a fad.  As far as I can see, that’s not happening anytime soon, because the company has done nothing but grow year after year since then.  This example and the topics covered in the text lead me to believe that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about new technologies and just write some of them off as fads.