UNIT 6: THE MEDIA

UNIT 6: THE MEDIA

One-minute talk 

1. Talk about three stories that are in the news at the moment. How did you know them?
2. What TV programme did you like best when you were a child?
3. Do you listen to the radio?
4. Talk about your favourite newspaper/ magazine/television programme.
5. What do you know about paparazzi?
6. What do you read and don’t you read in the newspaper?

1. Types of programme 

Which group(s) below do the words in the box belong to?

chat show live sports coverage tabloids music

comics sitcoms current affairs programmes educational

documentaries soap opera traffic reports quiz show

1. radio programmes:
2. magazines/newspapers:
3. TV programmes:

- Think of more examples for each group.
- Think of an example for each type of programme.
Which type do you most enjoy?
- Are there any that you don’t like?

2. Which of the programmes you talked about in exercise 1 would you describe as 

1. informative? 2. controversial? 3. influential? 4. sensational? 5. often biased? 6. entertaining?

7. addictive? 8. harmless fun? 9. mindless rubbish? 10. usually worth watching? 11. aimed mainly at man? 12. aimed mainly at women?

     Discuss which of the areas in the table you would like to report on. What are the good and bad things about each of them? Rank them in order of which you’d most like to cover.

•  Iraq, Palestine •  sport •  national politics •  fashion •  motoring

•  technology •  Wall Street •  environmental issues •  travel •  Hollywood and gossip

     Read these comments on the positive and negative influences of television. Which one do you agree with? Add your own opinions.

Discuss these questions before you read the text. 

1. How important is television to you personally?
2. How many hours of TV do you watch in an average week?
3. Do you consider yourself, or anyone you know, a ‘telly addict’?
4. Why might someone decide to give up TV?

    First off, I have to admit the falseness of the title. You can’t give up television. You might want to. You might try. You might even succeed for about twenty-four hours. But, eventually you will go back. I know. I’ve spent the last three years trying to wean myself off the box in the corner.

    It started simply. I have satellite TV, and
therefore have, at the best guess, some 200 or so channels available, eighty percent being completely devoted to shopping. Of the remainder, some I felt I couldn’t live without. There were channels offering comedy, a host of BBC entertainment programmes I had previously enjoyed, drama, a huge choice of instant headline news to gorge upon, historical documentaries.

    Then one day I found, with an audible start, I had been sitting for over an hour flicking listlessly through all seven million or so channels, resting on each programme for no more than thirty seconds or so.

    A thought suddenly occurred to me. I was falling out of love with television. I’ve been in love with television for almost my entire life. When I first fell in love, television needed frequent break from me. Then came twenty-four-hour television. The satellite revolution brought more delights I couldn’t get enough of. More awful talk shows. More cheap adverts. A twenty-four-hour diet (though most go off between three and six a.m., thus giving me a chance to grab some sleep) of television without limits.

    And we both live happily ever after. Until that day, when I had wasted an hour of my life on television without actually finding anything to entertain, inform or educate me.

    Never mind. The next night, I was back, lying in front of The Box in the corner, idly flicking. And finding nothing. At that point, I decided to give up television. It’s been nice knowing you, but it’s over. So long, and thanks for all the eyestrain.

    But it isn’t possible. I didn’t manage to give up. But I did manage to detach. If I missed a programme I had read about I didn’t mourn or worry. I let the programme go. Next I gave up surfing. Easy. It was never rewarding_ proof not only that television had fallen out of love with me at the same time I had fallen out of love with television, but that television had come to hate me personally. Finding other things to do was easy.

    I went back to reading, devouring a whole book in an evening. Finally came news. I love news, possibly more than I love television. So this was the hardest to give up. But television actually helped. Ceefax gave me instant, always-on news at any time, better written and more succinct than television or radio has ever managed. But that leaves a single gap. The Simpsons. I can’t tear that final link. The equivalent of keeping wedding album years after the divorce is, for me, The Simpsons. Whilst every other programme has dropped away, The Simpsons remains. One day, I know I’ll give that series up too. At that point television will be part of my history. I’ll remain forever fond of the good times, and sour at how I was betrayed. But I’ll be free.

    Some time after the next episode of The Simpsons.

1. Should, and could you, give up TV? Would your life be better off or worse off without TV?
2. If you had to rely on only one of the media, what would you choose? Why?
3. Have newspapers become a medium of the past or do they still play an important role in people’s life?