April 20 marks the beginning of Turnoff Week 2009. (There’s another one starting Sept. 20.) It’s an effort by the national nonprofit organization TV-Free America, founded in 1994 to raise awareness of our couch-potato society’s increasing obesity and to generate interest in activities that are more literate, productive and engaged than watching Gilligan’s Island reruns.

According to the Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness (www.screentime.org), “On average, people watch 4 hours of television and then spend another 4 plus hours with computers, games, video, iPods and cell phones.  According to Nielsen, the average World of Warcraft gamer plays for 892 minutes per week!  The company that owns Second Life…claims that its users spent over 1 million hours on line.”

Across the nation, schools and bookstores, along with municipalities and activists, are planning events to encourage us to turn off our TVs and get more active. Here in the NOLA area, the Metairie location of  Barnes & Noble is planning special activities to celebrate Turnoff Week, including story times, games and costume parties. (Hmmm, sounds like a Harry Potter book release!)

In conjunction with Turnoff Week, Saturday, April 25 is The Great American TWEET-OFF.  Organizers are asking tech junkies to “consider leaving that computer off for the day, staying away from the cell phone and doing things you just don’t normally do.”

Turnoff Week has been around since 1994, but efforts to make us less media dependent, if only momentarily, go much farther back. In 1971, John Denver exhorted us to:
“Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own.”*

If you’re at JazzFest on May 2, you’ll hear local favorite Cowboy Mouth remind us that:
“Jenny says turn off the radio
Jenny says turn out the light
Jenny says turn off the video.” **

Just don’t forget to turn the TV back on and pick up that newspaper. Journalists across American need the jobs!

* by John Prine “Spanish Pipe Dream” 1971
** by Fred LeBlanc “Jenny Says” 1992

At Thursday’s Spring Fiesta we recognized our outstanding mass comm majors, students who have received scholarships and will receive awards during Honors Day ceremonies.

It made me realize the SMC is home to many students who are engaged, involved and outstanding in media jobs, extracurricular activities and other areas of their lives.

This year’s Maroon staff continues to bring home awards for their writing, editing and photography work. Most of the staff members also work off campus in print, broadcast and online media. One Marooner is off to Hawaii for a summer newspaper internship.

In my PR Writing class, two students are active in theatre. One will be directing a senior one-act soon, while the other is performing with Southern Rep. Class members also belong to sororities and fraternities, work with UPB and tutor in the WAC lab.

Advertising majors are selling ads at The Maroon, raising money for worthy causes through fundraisers, working with the Louisiana State Museum and promoting events around town.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. (I’m exhausted thinking about it.) Mass comm majors set the bar for other Loyola students, and we are proud of them and their accomplishments.

On a side note: April is National Donate Life Month. Are you a registered donor?

If you didn’t make it, you missed a great opportunity! Networking Night (April 14) brought together more than 100 media and communication professionals and mass comm students from around the city. The Press Club and the SMC co-sponsored the event, designed to allow students and professionals to meet, greet (and eat) as they made important connections for internships, mentorships and possible future jobs. Studio A morphed from a classroom/video production facility into a reception hall, thanks to some strategically placed snacks and trees donated by Hike for KaTREEna, a local nonprofit whose goal is to replant the 100,000 trees lost during Hurricane Katrina. (The trees will be planted this week.) Reviews were glowing, so we hope to make this an annual event.

We’re not done yet! Thursday is Spring Fiesta, our outdoor celebration of spring and student recognition program. It’s another meet-greet-eat opportunity for mass comm majors to rejoice in their accomplishments over the past year. Student scholarship and award winners, as well as club officers, will be highlighted. We’ll have door prizes and live music to make the event even more festive.

And while they won’t be there at the Fiesta, we salute the Ad Team, our student advertising competition team, off to Baton Rouge to present their campaign. Part of the American Advertising Federation’s National Student Advertising Competition, the Ad Team will be competing against other schools in the district for the right to go on to the national competition. Congratulations to Temple Ruff, team adviser, and the team members. We know you’ll do us proud.

It is entirely feasible that, more or less soon, your life — your entire life — can be recorded and stored.  Instead of posting the occasional Twitter update, instead of compiling the sporadic online photo album, why not just leave your own personal digital recorder constantly on?

Further suppose this recorder — embedded in your necklace, your earring, your wristwatch — communicates with all the other digital devices in your environment.  If you type at a computer keyboard, for instance, your recorder captures what you type and stores that file.  If you drive within range of a city traffic camera, your recorder copies and stores whatever images of you are on that traffic camera.  When you buy tickets to a Saints game, your recorder is there, noting your ticket price, your seat number, your barcode.

Digital storage is virtually infinite.  Digital storage is virtually free.  Why not just store everything in the cloud and then, whenever you like later, sort out the good stuff?  Would you want to do that?  Would you want to have a complete and total record of your life?

If you don’t, somebody else might.  Your mother, maybe.  Your employer, maybe.  Your government, maybe.

Currently, everything — EVERYTHING — you do on the web is recorded somewhere, by somebody, for some reason.  The difficult part of this task is not in the recording and the storing; the difficult part is in the accessing.  You remain anonymous on the web, for the most part, because what is being recorded about you looks identical to what is being recorded about everyone else — and you are hard to pick out of that big crowd.  But if someone really wants to find your individual little needle in that big digital haystack, they can do it.

Look at it like this:  If they can find Jason Bourne, they can sure as heck find you.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  You might think, for instance, that cookies on your computer are a good thing.  These cookies save you time; they point you in the direction of products and services that you want to buy and use.  These cookies make you easier to identify, to find, and, perhaps, to serve.  Or, perhaps, to prosecute.  Or, perhaps, to prosecute severely.

New media offer us a great variety of ways to communicate with one another.  Do these new media offer us the same opportunities to NOT communicate with one another?  Social media applications can quickly become oppressive in the degree to which these new media applications — MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, even multiplayer online games — promulgate conformity, convention, and a bully-boy, celebrity culture.

Idiosyncrasy and dissent — perhaps, even, in some cases, radical dissent — have proven important catalysts to creativity, innovation, and change.  Curious George knows this well — regardless of any rules laid down by Men in Hats.

Still, I wonder how curious a Curious George might be willing to be — or might be allowed to be — under the Homeland Security Act and the auspices of an NSA armed with lots of little digital recorders turned constantly on.

Less Curious George, more Circumspect George.

A flying ice cream truck (interesting story) diverted my Spring Break trip from the autobahn (aka Interstate) to the back roads. I didn’t mind; it gave me a chance to see the countryside at eye level, going 35 miles an hour rather than 70.  I was able to “study” the outdoor advertising along the way. (Fun fact: At 60 m.p.h. you only have about three seconds to see a billboard. Your exposure doubles at half that speed.)

I found some entertaining, educational and informative outdoor messages. Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits are playing at a nearby casino soon. There’s a convenience store somewhere in the woods that sells live bait, fishing tackle and lottery tickets. (How’s that for one-stop shopping?) And there are zillions of people running for office in Mississippi.

I didn’t see anything approaching the memorable Burma Shave (brushless shaving cream) roadside signs, dating from 1925 when Allan Odell got a $200 loan from his father to advertise with pithy sayings like:
His cheek
Was rough
His chick vamoosed
And now she won’t
Come home to roost
Burma-Shave

At the height of their popularity, there were 7000 Burma Shave signs; alas, they’re all gone. However, today in America there are half a million billboards advertising other products. But they’re fighting for their lives. Increasing regulation is affecting outdoor advertising across the nation.

The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 was passed with a big push from Lady Bird Johnson. It sought to control billboards on national interstates and highways. Four states have banned billboards: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. Two more (Rhode Island and Oregon) have prohibited new construction. Other states, including Georgia, have very restrictive laws about billboards.

In Los Angeles, the city council passed a moratorium on outdoor advertising as they work to craft a more restrictive policy on its use. One day after the moratorium took effect in January, giant outdoor ads popped up around town in defiance.

In France a group called the Dismantlers defaces outdoor ads, calling them manipulative and seeking arrest for their acts…and of course the resultant publicity. (I have a mental image of furtive Frenchmen, darting around under cover of darkness, wearing berets and bearing paintbrushes!)

Here in the Crescent City we’ve got billboards galore. My favorite is for a local gentlemen’s club that bears the slogan:  NOT THE SAME OLD THONG AND DANCE. You can’t help but laugh when you see it. And you can’t help but remember it. (Wonder if you can get a lottery ticket there too?)

In a recent interview by one of our journalism students, I was asked why I thought the new digital communication class, A201 – Digital Communication, is necessary. In typical academic fashion, my first instinct was to turn the question back on the interviewer: Why not? Most of the new forms of communication to emerge in the last decade are enabled by, and experienced through, digital media. Digitally mediated communication, in the form of computers and hand held devices, has certainly expanded the access to media in everyday life. At the same time, evidence suggests that mediated experiences are becoming the dominate, and perhaps even preferred, forms of experience in our culture. As Nicholas Mirzoeff says in An Introduction to Visual Culture,

Modern life takes place on screen… [Media] is not just part of everyday life, it is everyday life.

So maybe we agree that media is pervasive in modern life, but I have yet to answer the main question: Why is a class in digital communication necessary?  To be fair, digitally mediated communication is still made up of words and images, just like newspapers, books, and television, so what has changed that this form of communication merits creating a new core requirement in the School of Mass Communication?

I suggest it is not media that has changed, it is the media consumer that has changed. Us. The humble viewer. As David Myers suggests, the relationship of audience to media has become problematic for media producers. We are no longer a society of passive consumers of media content. We are redefining our role. Because of digital technologies, we can be active producers of media content.  Not only that, we can distribute our content via the Internet through such digital media channels as YouTube, Flickr, iTunes and so on, or even create our own media channels via a web, wiki, or blog site.  This has great democratizing potential, especially for those who know how create and distribute media content themselves. Almost anyone can have a voice in this emerging mediated global conversation. That is the goal I have for the Digital Communications class in the SMC curriculum. By knowing how to use digital media tools to create complex and aesthetically pleasing communication messages, our students can become actively involved, and successful, in these new forms of communication.

The journalist then asked if I am “concerned that the influx of digital technology in the media world will impact students embarking on communications careers in a negative way.”  A very reasonable question. The concern seems to be that digital technology may change the Mass Communication disciplines of Journalism, PR, and Advertising for the worst. The key word there is “change,” but in the evolutionary sense. Digital technology won’t eliminate or render inrelevent these professions, but there will be changes to how we currently understand them.  Throughout history, new communication media have been seen as a threat to existing ones: film would ruin newspapers, radio would kill film, television would destroy radio. It didn’t happen. Instead, we find that media use is an evolutionary process, so the real question is: How should I prepare for the future in my chosen profession? The future is hard to predict, but the existing SMC curriculum already provides an outstanding foundation for a career in mass communication, no matter how these professions evolve. However, I think it safe to assume that digitally mediated forms of communication are going to be a big part of the changes.  This is yet another reason why the new Digital Communications course is necessary.

Dear Those-Who-Want-Me-to-Pay-You,

The single marketable product produced by the entertainment industry is an audience.

That audience is then sliced and diced and sold to advertisers, who wheel and deal and negotiate with the companies that produce the products that are promoted in the ads that are displayed in the media that are consumed by the audience.

So let’s cut out all this inefficient middle-man stuff.

You want me to pay attention to your product? Okay, pay me.

Any record companies want me to play their music? Okay, pay me.

Any websites want me to install their widgets and gadgets and crapware? Okay, but pay me first.

It’s not that hard. You already know who I am. The cookies you put on my hard drive tell you who I am. (BTW, you want to put a cookie on my hard drive? Okay, pay me.)

I can pay you by clicking on a little PayPal button or something; you can do the same for me. (BTW, PayPal, want me to use your service? Okay, pay me.)

You think audiences grow on trees? Audiences don’t grow on trees. Creating an online audience takes paying a little attention and doing a little clicking and having a little time to do both. That time has opportunity costs associated with it. That time is not free – you can ask those lawyers you pay to enforce those outdated copyright laws for you. You can ask the economists. Heck, ask Wikipedia.

So what is my opportunity time worth? Here’s the part you’ll like: My opportunity time is cheap. Really cheap. And, best of all, if I don’t show up in your audience, then you don’t have to pay me at all. Win-win.

And the lose-lose? Here it is: If you don’t pay me, I don’t come around. I don’t use your service. I don’t listen to your music.

Ah, but you might be thinking by now, yes, you will. You will come around, and you will use my service, and you will listen to my music, because you will LIKE it.

But no, not really.

Because, even if I REALLY REALLY like it, I’m still going to click and use and listen to whoever pays me the most to do so. I’m more than willing to sell my audience creation powers to the highest bidder — because that’s a free market, baby.

Right now, for instance, if some website wants me to pay to listen to its music, then I’m just going to go somewhere else and listen to that music for free.  Because I can.  And if some website wants to charge me to use their servers for online storage, I’m just going to go somewhere else and store my stuff for free.  Because I can.

And, as soon as some websites start giving me marginally BETTER than free – when they start paying me, for instance – then I’m going to go and click and use and listen to all the stuff I really like on those websites instead of yours.

Because there is no monopoly on the things I like. Not anymore. And because who or what OWNS those things really doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Because wherever those things are – in private, in secret, in servitude, wherever — they are simultaneously and also SOMEWHERE ELSE.

So, here’s the deal: I don’t pay you. You pay ME.

Sincerely,

Your audience and friend (as long as you pay me),

David

Don’t you just hate it when you can’t get rid of that song in your head? You walk around singing it, driving yourself – and your friends – crazy. My niece Caroline has been singing part of the requiem she performed last month at Carnegie Hall, annoying the daylights out of her father. She claims to be unaware she’s doing it. My friend Karmen can’t listen to the “Rent” soundtrack before bed because she sings it in her sleep all night.

It’s known as an ear worm.

Urbandictionary.com says ear worms “most likely originated around the time of Hanson’s ‘Mmmbop’…any song that is so catchy, and at the same time extremely annoying, that it feels like a worm has crawled into your ear and eaten the intelligent parts of your brain so that you hum the song all day long, no matter how much you hate it. ”

(Of course, the term reminds me of that scene in “Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan,” when a creature crawls out of Mr. Chekov’s ear.  Yuck!!) But I digress.

Working with only 60 seconds (or less), advertisers having been creating ear worms for decades. They use music to catch your attention, set the tone and pull you into an ad. Jingles can give you product information and recognition and a catchy little tune to boot. Then next thing you know, you’re walking around singing all about their product, doing free advertising for them.

You may be too young to remember “N-E-S-T-L-E-S. Nestle’s makes the very best. Chocolate” from 1952.  Or “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, oh, what a relief it is” for Alka-Seltzer, circa 1976. But surely you remember “J-E-L-L-O,” even though it premiered in 1934. Or “My baloney has a first name…”

Jingles work, no matter how annoying we consider them – or what disgusting names we give them. We know them; we love them; we remember them. In a recent class, someone started singing the “1-800-SAFE-AUTO” song and everyone joined in.

A fast-and-dirty survey of my advertising students revealed they can’t stop singing:
• FreeCreditReport.com
• $5 foot long (Subway)
• I am stuck on BAND-AID® ‘cause BAND-AID®’s stuck on me!

Now, which of these will YOU be singing all day?

I once heard the editor of a large daily newspaper tell a group of high school journalists that Southerners make good journalists because we’re natural storytellers.

Those who love a good story should’ve joined us today for a jazz tour with Professor Michael Perlstein’s Travel and Culture Journalism course. We heard wonderful tales of this truly American art form, born right here in New Orleans.

Led by one of Loyola’s distinguished mass comm alums, John McCusker, this tour meandered through parts of town that I’d never been in, streets where the gods of jazz – and its kings – walked, lived, worked and created music we still perform and from which many musicians still “borrow” liberally. Along with biographical details on well-known jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, we heard about Kid Ory and King Oliver, less well-known but equally important in the development of this musical genre.

You might know John as a talented photojournalist with The Times-Picayune, but he is also extremely well versed in jazz history. As he pointed out the landmarks related to the musicians, he shared their music (via iPod), some of which included their own voices, speaking about their influences and experiences.

It was a great way to spend a glorious Saturday and one that reminds me why it’s a privilege to live in this city. I’m jealous of the students’ end-of-semester class trip, which begins in Memphis and traces the roots of the blues, down through Mississippi and culminating back in the Crescent City. And I can’t wait to read the stories they’ll write upon their return.

(The line “a Creole tune…. that fills the air” is from “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans;” lyrics by Louis Armstrong.)

Is it me, or have commercials gotten really long, like 60 minutes long?

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a brand name product on a TV show or in a movie. What once was a matter of getting a company to donate free “props” for a production has morphed into a mega-billion-dollar industry. We all know how Tom Cruise saved Ray Bans with “Top Gun” and “Risky Business.” You may have heard about Reese’s Pieces being the second choice for “E.T.” And who can forget the gratuitous product placement (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) in “Wayne’s World?”

I’m looking for a 12-step program for PPPF (Perpetual Product Placement Fatigue). There’s no escape. No longer just an effort to make a TV home look more like your momma’s kitchen, product placements have reached out, like a computer virus, infecting everything within sight and touch.

Main character has a headache? Someone’s bound to ask, “Want an Advil?” Cops no longer make donut runs; they “go to Krispy Kreme.” (I love Krispy Kreme, but seriously…) I never watched a single episode of “Sex and the City,” but I know its bywords were “Manolo” and “Jimmy Choo.”

“Project Runway,” one of my addictions, has no pretensions about their product placement. The words “Elle magazine” and fashion designer/product line “Michael Kors” can be heard as frequently as the “L’Oreal hair salon” and the “Tres Somme makeup room.” And let’s not forget the BlueFly.com accessory wall. (I have to admit that Kia’s product placement – a challenge to make clothes out of materials scavenged from their cars – was inspired.)

“American Idol” literally pours Coke down our throats. It’s so gratuitous that the 1987 movie “Leonard Part 6″ is starting to look tasteful. (Don’t know this film? Go to imdb.com! OOPS! A product mention.) Even the AI contestants are caught up in the game, creating singing commercials for show sponsors. (Save me from another musical car video!) What’s next? Contestants performing in a Coke or Ford T-shirts?

As a PR practitioner, I know the value of having your product seen by millions of TV viewers. As a media consumer, I can only shout, “Stop in the name of love!”