The Motives Behind the Media

In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky explains how advertisers have a major influence over the media. Basically, the larger an audience that a media company can attract, the more advertisers want to purchase ads in that particular media. The more ads that are sold, the more the company can lower their prices. The lower the prices go, the audience grows even larger and the cycle repeats itself. Essentially, the power to attract an audience and the power to attract advertisers coincide and build off of each other. One leads to the other and so on. One of Chomsky's main points, is that this system favors strong companies getting stronger and weak companies dying out. Although his point was made using the example of newspaper companies, the same can be said in the digital age. One area where this is true is YouTube channels that focus on Video game "let's plays." The idea is someone records his or herself playing a game and posting the footage either to help the viewers do better or, as in most cases, to be entertaining by being funny. When it comes to channels who do this, jut like in newspapers, the popular channels get more popular while the smaller ones stay small for the most part. A channel that gets a lot of views will earn more money. Earning more money means buying better equipment. Buying better equipment means higher quality videos. Higher quality videos means more viewers. I have felt this system first hand. There are plenty of YouTubers that make their livings off of posting videos, while my channel (linked below) hasn't even earned me a dollar. Granted, I don't work on my channel full time, in fact I haven't touched my gaming PC since I moved into college, but even if I did, I wouldn't be able to achieve as high a level of success. Unfortunately, the internet is no longer an open frontier. The big players have already established themselves and it has become extremely difficult to break into the YouTube scene, or for that matter, in any part of the internet. Still, just like with newspapers, Television, or any form of media, the internet obeys the rules Chomsky identifies. A YouTuber will only continue a series if it generates enough views, just like how only "good" football games will be aired on TV. One example is this weekend in College football. What ended up being the two biggest games were Notre Dame vs. Michigan State and LSU vs. Auburn. Every other game involving a ranked team was a blowout, so LSU defeating Auburn by two touchdowns was a "close" game. The reason the two games mentioned were aired is because the TV companies knew that these two games would draw the largest viewership making the airtime more valuable to advertisers. Thankfully, the Fighting Irish and the LSU Tigers (my two favorite college teams) came out with a win in front of a national audience.

Geaux Tigers and Go Irish!

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