400 Channels Yet All The Same

David Croteau and William Hoynes’s The New Media Giants article addresses many great points about the billion dollar merging deal of networks to create huge media giants like Viacom. An interesting point this article posed that hit home for me is the way these industries use not just synergy, and the improvement of technology to increase profits but they also use globalization. As stated in the article “MTV is a well-developed commercial formula that Viacom has exported globally, by making small adjustments to account for local tastes…MTV is the most widely distributed network in the world” (35). Originally being from France, I have seen how MTV truly dominates a global market, every single one of my friends in France has watched or religiously watches an MTV show. In France (MTV.fr), the shows have different titles like MTV “Cribs” becomes “Ma Maison de Star” directly translated as the “Star House” more so meaning “The House of a Star.” Interestingly enough, I have realized the shows they present are often old shows we have already seen many times in United States, but are now using them towards a global market making more money and easily spending rather little for them. Many are even re-runs like we often run into on MTV in the United States. It is just any easy way for media giants to use their already made shows to their benefit and increase profit. After all it seems in the media world it is often about being on top and making excessive profit to survive. It really interesting that even presently with TV programming exceeding 400 channels we often run either into re-runs or the same “stupid” shows that lacks any meaning on stations like MTV, but are rather made fun of daily. As the article states, “More content does not necessarily mean different content” (29). Look at the video making fun of the MTV show, “My Super Sweet Sixteen” this show is absolutely ridiculous as the Show “Talk Soup” on E clearly shows. It shows spoiled, out of control pampered 16 year old girls excessively disrespecting their parents and their friends, when they are lucky enough to have a beautiful party to celebrate their entrance into a new age in their life. Not only does more content not just mean different content but also poor content like this show proves. Yet, somehow we as a society still watch these shows. There are many more ridiculous shows MTV that are just as bad and often these tv series do not last and are swapped out by others in the long run. What does this show even show to our society? When I first watched this, I did think it was funny, the more I watched it my dad looked at me with an appalled face saying “Julia, how can you watch this, how can you waste your time watching this crap.” He’s right. It is amazing to see that even when Viacom owns so many networks thus shown by the image above, that still we run into mass amounts of meaningless shows and an excessive amount of re-runs. Yet, these media giants continue to prosper so they must be doing something right. Their size is really what has has helped them stay on top. Being bigger means more capital to finance big projects by exploiting "synergy" and transforming books into movies, and TV series making a bunch of money through larger capital.