Mass Communications Week at Emory & Henry

Hey all.

Following is am important message from Dr. Teresa Keller of the Mass Communications Dept.


MCOM weekend is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Mar. 18 and 19 -- the weekend of our return to classes.

Sorry we haven't promoted the event as we should have, but I hope you'll be able to come. Please talk to those who have been before and you will be assured of a good time.

Good food. Awards (will you get one?)! Senior video!

$5.00 for a very expensive meal.

Please get your money to a MCOM faculty member as soon as you get back because we'll have to turn in names of those attending.

I'm attaching a draft of our program for the weekend so you can see what's happening.

Basically, the Friday events at 6:00 in Van Dyke.

Saturday morning at 10 - 10:30 in Miller to hear about internships and alumni panel.

Please, please don't make us beg and hunt you down. Come with a smile and $5.00 as soon as you get back.

A good time will be had by all!! Be part of it!

Dr. Keller

PS I doubt that I have all the MCOM students who might be interested in coming on this distribution list. Please pass the word to anyone in a MCOM class -- or otherwise -- who is interested in attending, but remember to turn in the $5.00 and name ASAP when you get back to campus. Enjoy the rest of your break.

Radio and the FCC (and other things about broadcasting)

Hello everyone in my MCOM 101 class. 

We should all remember, in connection with our study of radio (chapter 6) how important the FCC is in regard to the licensing and re-licensing of a radio station.  Licensing and or re-licensing of a radio station is NOT a given or is NOT an automatic. 

Some radio stations actually are turned down on their applications for re-licensure--for various reasons. (broadcasting obscene or indecent material; being unfair to a political candidate; broadcasting libelous statements; levying unfair advertising rates—charging one rate to one person or firm and another—much higher rate—to someone else).

The FCC requires that radio stations, to keep their licenses or to be re-licensed, have to operate as a service to "public interest, convenience and necessity.” 

Keep in mind that radio and TV (electronic forms of mass communication) are unlike print inasmuch as print (newspapers and magazines) are not regulated in any way by the federal government.  

So why is it that the FCC gets involved with the licensing (and regulation to some extent) of radio and TV stations?   We will discuss this in class. But chapter 6 (page 111) touches on the reason for FCC regulation of radio.

Some folks who work in or own radio or TV stations, think that FCC purview is an unfair slam against the electronic media.  But, again, remember why the federal government has its fingers (some would call it “sticky fingers”) on radio and TV but not on print media such as newspapers and magazines.

It should also be noted that radio is becoming, increasingly a niche medium of mass communication--what with the examples of radio stations that have, for example, a country and western format, or stations that have a soul format, or stations that appeal to oldsters like yours truly who can't seem to escape the time warp of the great, fantastic, enlightening, uplifting music of the 60s and 70s (The Supremes, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, the Mamas and Papas, Aretha Franklin--oh, what an era of music!— and I can still get it via stations on my Sirius XM radio.

Other popular radio formats include: classic rock, gospel or religious, sports, news/talk, adult contemporary, Spanish (see page 122 in our textbook).

Today, as chapter 6 notes, this is the era of “narrowcasting” in radio. Know what this is and be able to give some examples of it.

As to who does what at a typical radio station, what follows is a sketch of the key players at a station and their duties/area of responsibility.  Of course, this will vary a bit from station to station, depending on how individual stations are set up in various markets, but the following structure can help your understanding of the personnel makeup at a typical radio station:

General manager runs the radio station.

Program manager oversees what goes on the air, including news programs, the station’s format and any on-air people. 

Sales people who are called account executives sell the advertising for the programs.

Traffic people schedule the commercials, make sure they run correctly and bill the clients.

Production people help with local programming and produce commercials for the station. 

Engineers keep the station on the air.

Administrative people pay the bills, answer the phones and order the paper clips.

At a small station, as few as five people will handle all of these jobs.  Easiest to break into that first job in radio by finding a station in a small market or small town.  You can learn to be a generalist and then move to a larger market.

But enough for now. More about the ins and outs of radio when we focus on it in class this week. See you all very soon.

Chapter 6 "Radio: Riding the Wave"

We’ll be focusing in MCOM 101 this week (March 14-18) on chapter 6 “Radio: Riding the Wave.”

I’ll be covering a wide range of material in class, but to help jump-start your study of this important chapter, here (from the chapter) is a list of key people, key terms, key concepts, key ideas you should become thoroughly familiar with. 

 

War of the Worlds radio broadcast

Government regulation of airwaves

Guglielmo Marconi

Lee de Forest

KDKA in Pittsburgh

NPR

Satellite radio

Nielsen Company

Samuel F. B. Morse

David Sarnoff

“Public convenience, interest or necessity”

FCC

Wlliam S. Paley

FM

Drive-time audiences

payola

management structure or areas of operation/work at radion station

radio ratings

radio formats (examples)

narrowcasting

DAB

Internet radio

Critical Questions 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 at top of page 127. Be able to answer these.

Don't steal or copy it because you might be violating COPYRIGHT

Hello to all of you in my MCOM 101 class.

We covered copyright (or intellectual propery law) our last class before sprng break—Friday, March 4.

Hopefully this blog post will reduce to writing much of what we focused on in class on March 4.

Bottom line: Read and study this post carefully! Might pull from it for quiz or test questions in near future.

We need to have a clear understanding of copyright—a key area of First Amendment law—regardless of what branch of mass communication we work in.

Copyright comes up often in chapter 5 “Recordings.” See for example, how artistic copyright is mentioned on pg. 88; also pages 97-98 deal with stealing or illegal downloading/copying of music.

As we mentioned in class, Chapter 5 notes that the entire recording industry is fighting copyright infringement (violation).

I covered several key areas of copyright law in class on March 4—among them: the scope of copyright law (what sorts of intellectual property are protected by copyright law); fair use; the idea that an idea or fact is not copyrightable; the question of whether the amount of intellectual propery that is stolen or lifted or copied factors into copyright violation; whether attribution or sourcing of intellectual property protects a person against copyright infringement; the meaning of the copyright symbol (C in a small circle); and the critical importance of getting the permission of the creator of the intellectual property before using said property for your own purposes.


First (as I write this blog post) a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV.

So I don’t claim to be an expert on copyright.

But I know enough to help all the future professional journalists or other kinds of communication professionals in our class.

A few key points:

1. What is copyright? Basically, it’s a law that protects a person’s intellectual property. If a person writes or creates some sort of expression (photo, graphic, painting, story, sketch...), copyright assures the creator of that expression a certain degree of protection from intellectual theft.

2. When you research or read about copyright law, one word keeps coming up over and over. The word is “PERMISSION.” This means that if you are not sure if something is copyrighted, then it probably is copyrighted! Always, when in doubt as a writer, artist, photographer... and you want to borrow someone else’s work for your own use, ask the creator of that work for HIS/HER PERMISSION.

3. Even though you cite the source of expression (that you have lifted from someone else’s work and used for your own purposes), you could still be guilty of copyright infringement, especially if you are getting money for your writing, graphics, photography or whatever. Again, always best to get PERMISSION OF THE CREATOR OF THE WORK BEFORE YOU LIFT IT FOR YOUR OWN USE.

An exception to the above is if you are researching and writing a paper for a class or course. In that case, if your work is purely for academic reasons and you don’t intend to have it published, and you will not gain financially from it, you probably don’t need to get permission from the creator of the work you have cited or borrowed. But you definitely need to source it (give the original author credit) in your paper.

4. There’s a common misconception that writing, photography, graphics, painting, songwriting, sculpting or other forms of expression have to be accompanied by the copyright symbol (letter C inside a circle) before the expression has copyright protection. Not true! All things written, captured on camera, or sketched or otherwise created are immediately copyrighted! When you write an email, it immediately has copyright protection. It’s yours. You created it. No one else can legally reproduce or copy it or forward it to another party without your permission. Notice that P word (permission)!

That said, it is the case that the copyright notice (which you can also have registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) reinforces protection of the creator of the original work. The notice is a caution or reminder to people not to steal or rip off the work without permission of the creator of the work.

5. One big factor that comes into play regarding copyright law is commercial benefit. Are you, through your writing, photography, singing, infographics, sketches, getting paid for that expression? And, if so, does what you claim to be totally your expression (writing, photography, whatever), contain the work of others? Careful if this is the case! You could be found guilty of copyright infringement and pay big money (to the original creator of the expression) in a court of law.

6. There is a little wiggle room in the copyright law. There’s an exemption called fair comment. This means that it’s okay for you to reproduce, without permission of the original creator of the expression, that expression if you are doing an evaluation or critique or review or even a parody of that expression. This helps movie and arts review (books, plays) critics do their thing in the media. But it’s not okay for you, even if you are a critic of some sort, to pass off someone else’s work as your own.

7. Always good to remember that facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted. But the verbatim (precise, exact) expression of those facts and idea are subject to copyright protection.

Example: I write a story about the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I note in my story, in my own words, certain facts about that trial such as: it occurred in the early 1990s; Mr. Simpson was accused of murdering two persons–his wife and his wife’s close friend; the two dead persons were found in pools of blood, butchered, on a sidewalk at Mr. Simpson’s home residence in Los Angeles; the jury in this case returned a verdict of not guilty and let Mr. Simpson go free.

On the other hand, if I lift verbatim a passage from another article (about Simpson’s murder trial) written by someone else (whether printed in a newspaper, magazine or from a Web site) and use that in my story (as if I had written that lifted portion), then I am guilty of copyright infringement.

8. It’s also a common misunderstanding that the amount or extent of text that a person lifts from another person’s writing, without that original creator’s permission, factors into whether a violation of copyright has occurred.

Careful! Courts have ruled that in some instances, even though very few words were stolen from another person’s work, those very few words constitute the heart and soul of the original expression; and thus violation of copyright has occurred. This situation has happened with regard to the words in songs or the musical notes of songs. Very little may have been stolen or borrowed or copied, but it’s still against copyright law.

9. Just because something is on the Web, it’s not free for the taking–UNLESS THE AUTHOR OR CREATOR OF THE WEBSITE STATES EXPLICITLY ON THE WEBSITE THAT MATERIAL ON THE SITE MAY BE USED FREELY FOR WHATEVER PURPOSE.

But again, be careful. If no such statement is on the website, the material on the site is copyrighted. We therefore get back to asking for permission to use or borrow.

Bottom line: If you did not create the material you located on a website, do not use it (especially for your own commercial or financial gain) without the creator’s permission. Without that permission, you cannot legally use or copy the expression for your own use. Without permission, you are a common, scumbag intellectual, lying, cheating thief who is guilty of copyright infringement!

Some may wonder how they can get caught for stealing work from a web site. It can happen folks! Big corporations and other entities today have “spiders” (software that scours or crawls the Internet) looking for intellectual property thieves.

Blogging: This is a fairly new phenomenon, in terms of copyright law, but my reading is that while you can blog freely, you should not reproduce or blog someone else’s verbatim expression as your own expression. Again, we get back to that important permission factor! It does seem okay, to have links in your blog (without the permission of the original creator of that link.) Didn’t I say earlier that copyright law is complex??!!

Well, okay folks, that’s about it now for copyright law.

See you in class very soon.

Magazine creative concepts

Enjoyed the team presentations on your magazine creative concepts. Working together, each team brainstormed and came up with an idea for a niche-targeted publication. Part of the assignment was also to come up with: a title/name for your magazine; an idea of what sorts of editorial content (stories and pictures) your magazine would contain; an idea of the advertisements that would be appropriate for your targeted magazine; and a description of the first edition's cover.

Here is what you came up with:

I commend the teams for some imaginative thinking that went into this assignment. And remember what we noted in class about what the first step would be were you to actually think about launching your magazine. What's the very first thing you'd need to do after you had settled on your creative concept?

Some of my favorite songs

Connected with study of chapter 5 in our textbook, please have a song or tune in mind when you come to our class. I might call on a few of you to sing it (nah!) or play it for the rest of the class on YouTube.

Here, just for the fun of it, are a few of my favorites. Turn your sound up and have a listen.

Music to our ears...

Hello everyone in my MCOM 101 course. We won’t be spending much time discussing chapter 5, but it still merits our close consideration. After all, who among us, doesn’t listen to music? Imagine a world without the Beatles, or Rolling Stones or Elvis or Aretha or Dolly or Whitney or Beyonce or Adele or Lady Ga Ga, or Lady Antebellum or any of the Motown greats like the Supremes or the Four Tops or Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson or The Temptations (and the list goes on and on…)

Speaking of Motown music, did you know it was started by Berry Gordy who founded Motown Records in 1958? I know. Ancient history to you, maybe, but Berry is one of America’s musical pioneers.

Notes/points of emphasis for chapter 5 “Recordings: Demanding Choices”

Be sure after you read this chapter, you can define and explain the “Key Terms” in top left corner of page 104.

And know the answers to the “Critical Questions” (on the same page) just below the “Key Terms.”

Prerequisite for popular music (or music of any kind) was the means of recording and distributing it. In this respect, we owe deep thanks to the early efforts of Thomas Edison. Thanks largely to him, and to Emile Berliner of Germany, the world—in the late 19th century and early 20th century—got the phonograph and gramophone. These inventions led much later to the LP and compact disc.

Phonograph (and eventually radio) allowed vast expansion of people’s access to music and sound. Before invention of phonograph, folks had to go to a concert hall or theatre or other venue to hear music if they didn’t play it themselves.

Phonograph and radio brought a wider range of music to everyone but they also led to loss of so-called social music (music that folks played and sang for one another in their homes or other social settings.)

So what other forms of “technology” or devices have harnessed music and made it more accessible to millions of us down through the ages? Some include: 33 1/3 rpm records, 45 rpm records, 78 rpm records, transistor radios, Walkmans, CDs, iPod music players, Apple’s iTunes online music store, the Apple iPhone.

A few quick important facts about the recording industry:

1. Apple started iTunes, Apple’s online music store, in 2003. Billions and billions of 99-cent downloads later, iTunes has become a household brand in America.

2. Most popular forms of music in America (or the kinds of music that most people purchase) are: Rock, Country, Rap/Hip-Hop, Rhythm & Blues/Urban, Pop, Religious or Gospel…

3. The main (or most important) recording centers in the U.S are: LA, New York and Nashville. But most of you, I’m sure, already, know or have heard that Nashville is “Music City USA.”

4. Many recordings or artists who cut records depend on radio to succeed. The more radio play time of their music these artists get, the more likely they are to sell a ton of their records.

5. One of the most muscially focused magazines in the U.S. is “Rolling Stone.” Read it to get the latest reviews about recordings and profiles on the artists and bands who create those recordings.

6. “Billboard” is another important magazine focused on music. Known as the music industry’s leading trade magazine, “Billboard” regularly publishes the country’s top-selling records.

7. Content labeling is a big issue in the recording industry. So big that the Recording Industry Association of America (which has a lot of clout in the U.S.) has strongly encouraged its members to provide a warning label or to print lyrics on albums with potentially offensive content. This is a form of self-regulation by the music industry. It is not federally mandated regulation. Why would the recording industry want to self-regulate itself?

8. Overseas piracy is another big issue in the recording industry. We’ve all heard or read about countries such as China “stealing” or counterfeit copying American artists’ music. On top of that, the counterfeited music—which is a flagrant violation of copyright laws—is often not of the same high quality as the original. Unfortunately, policing international piracy of music is difficult and costly.

9. Yet another big recording industry issue is file sharing on the Internet. What is file sharing? Our textbook defines it as: peer-to-peer distribution of copyrighted material on the Internet without the copyright owner’s permission. MP3 player technology makes this very easy to do. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the process of Internet file sharing or illegal copying of music.

10. Illegal Internet file sharing of music threatens the entire recording industry. Licensed music is protected by international copyright law, and the recording industry aggressively goes after those unscrupulous users who steal or copy (without permission) an artist’s music. Some of the counterfeiters end up being successfully prosecuted, but many escape. Why? The Internet is vast and wild and untamed (for the most part) and it’s hard, at best, to catch those who steal an artist’s or recording company’s music. Illegal music downloads are a thorn in the side of the recording industry.

11. So where does the recording industry make its money? The pie chart on pg. 100 tells us. Interestingly, according to this chart, digital (Internet) sales account for 50 percent of the music industry’s income. That equals the 50 percent of the music industry’s income from physical sales.

12. In terms of the music or recording industry, what is Pandora? How about Spotify? Look these up, if you don’t already know what they are, and be able to define/describe them.

Okay, enough for now about chapter 5. What are your favorite songs? Who are your favorite artists? We might listen to a few of them soon in class.