Comm 180 Entry

Hello from Happy Valley,

This past month has been quite eventful. I have left my hometown due to transferring from branch campus. I have had to deal with moving in, getting used to the bus routes, working at a new place, and going to a school with over 40,000 students. Overall I think the transition has been overwhelming but gradual.

In my Comm 180 class we are discussing the effects of Media including radio, newspapers, tv, internet and so on. Since I happen to be a media studies major this type of information is very appealing to me. In a class of 300 plus students we have gone over many aspects of how media has been portrayed over the years. In the last class period on Tuesday we went over the value of nielsen ratings and what the terms involved with those ratings mean.

If a tv show such as Two and a half Men gets a rating of 10.1 on the Nielsen system. That mean 10.1 percent of the 115 million households with tv's that tuned in. While the share is the actually percent of tv sets that were showing this show. The only thing I don't understand is how they can actually make a true rating systems with just a small percentage of the U.S. households. They survey a small number of people by phone and also chips are starting to be placed into the newer tv's. What if there are college students who do not have a house phone line and just a cell phone. It becomes a confusing search for a happy medium concerning the viewership and popularity of certain shows.

They have to take in another factor with the type of technology we have now. First Tivo, now Hulu where people can watch episodes for free in high quality over the internet. There are also illegal ways to obtain these episodes after they air and then are illegally downloaded over prograns such as piratebay, vuze and other torrent programs.

I wonder if any of these issues listed above are taking into consideration when Nielsen is doing their ratings each week.

Overall I am enjoying the class and I am anxious to learn more material so I can prepare myself for a job that is going to be surrounded by the things we are discussing.

Corey Righter