TV, Magazines and more

A couple years ago I was a judge for all of the end-of-year presentations from the students at ITP.  There was one particular presentation that has stuck with me.  It was called Data Face.  The student, Greg Dorsainville, had pulled data across commercial media to see the faces that are on TV shows and advertisements.  It showed the vast diversity in broadcast media.  It was fascinating.

If you look at the diversity in TV advertising or even print advertising, it speaks to the people who are watching these shows. Broadcast media understood that diversity is the reality.  Audiences want to see a myriad of faces.  All of the big September fashion magazines this month are mixtures of cultures from across the globe as they should be.

It is the rise of a country that is truly a melting pot.  Minorities will outnumber whites in 2020.  The companies providing the content for all of us to consume know that and their content reflects it.  Maybe because of the current administration I am paying more attention to the faces the media puts out there from films to the TV to magazines to podcasts because what I am seeing gives me confidence in the future.

The old is out and the new is in.  A young generation of photographers is shooting Vogue covers because the last generation got outed for bad behavior.  There are young people running for office.  There is a movement to get the youth out to vote from their own peers.  The new change agents are a myriad of faces.  Change always wins. My fingers are crossed for change this fall…in a huge way.

Comments (Archived):

  1. awaldstein

    YupListened to a podcast a few months ago talking with the women who run National Geographic cross all channels and how they have intentionally supported a philosophy that the diversity of the photographers and storytellers they hire directly impacts the diversity of the images obviously. And how on a large scale, drives a more market true representation of the world. They btw also follow through with this with a major funding campaign as well.Cool to find stuff happening on a broad scale right under my nose that I knew nothing about.

    1. Gotham Gal

      It is real vs fake news

      1. awaldstein

        Good way to think about this.

  2. JLM

    .The problem with GOTV efforts on the 18-24 demographic is they don’t work. I see this all the time as a Precinct Chair and Election Judge though not as much as I did because Texas has an enormous period of early voting and you can vote at any polling place, not just yours.Rock the Vote was formed in 1990 in LA to do just that. The results in 2012 were laughable. RTV formed a control group of 800,000 young persons they had assisted in registering to vote.1. They bombarded 400,000 with Facebook ads counting down the time until the election starting more than a month out.2. They retained 400,000 untouched as their internal control group.3. Results? No difference in voting percentage between the two groups, well below the national average for the entire electorate.They tried the same thing with Election Day text messaging to 180,000 persons whose number they had.1. Day before Election Day texts raised voter participation by 0.6%.2. Election Day texts LOWERED voter participation. WTF?Now, remember, this was an Obama election, so youthful voters were on point, but the results speak for themselves.In 2014, RTV tried a different tack – issue orientation focused on reproductive rights, marijuana legalization, global warming, LGBT rights, student debt, gun control and deforestation – with the same results. Didn’t move the needle.They used a number of PSAs with a constellation of stars including Lena Dunham and Whoopi Goldberg. There was a funny backlash as neither had voted in the last mid-term themselves.It is odd that the most digital generation in the electorate is not responsive.This is why elections continue to be decided by the Baby Boomers and senior citizens who are the most reliable voting bloc in the electorate. This multiplies and leverages the incumbent advantage and explains why there is such little turnover in the Congress.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…