The main idea of chapter 7 and this short scene was the concept of “quality over quantity.” While those weren’t the exact words used in the chapter this was the main idea. The video we watched of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip really had me thinking whether I would or wouldn’t want to cut the feed. Do we want our viewers to hear the truth? Or do we care too much about the politics and the views the channel is getting? I decided I wouldn’t cut the feed and continue filming encouraging viewers to “change the channel.”
I would choose to do this because number one, the man making the controversy would have been my boss. And number two, just like one of the workers behind the scenes stated, “I’m waiting for him to say something that isn’t true!.” Everything he was saying was, in fact, true and were all of the untold secrets behind the broadcast network that they don’t want viewers to hear. I found that the quote from the clip, “There’s always been a struggle between art and commerce” went hand and hand with a quote from Chapter 7 in Media Criticism In a Digital Age. Which was, “To ignore this fiscal inevitability is to ignore a fundamental reality with which all art in varying degrees, must come to grips… it’s trying to keep the suits at length and sell their product, but at the same time create something that has artistic integrity.”
What both of these quotes are insinuating is that there has to be a happy medium between the size of a shows audience and content that is not always what viewers are pleased to see and hear. There’s always the idea that there has to be a certain way of doing things perfectly on television. But in this case, I believe that what that man was saying about the network “lobotomizing” viewers was true. Therefor I would not have cut the feed because with that type of content, regardless of the way it was expressed, no one was changing the channel regardless.
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