Fusion of Reality TV and the News...?

I never watch the news anymore, because let's face it, I don't have time to sit on the couch for a half hour and watch news reporters leisurely discuss a story (especially if it's something that I don't care about). I also find that half of all news stories are depressing, so I avoid watching on behalf of my sanity. Thus, I--like many other people these days--have MSNBC as my homepage, and if I see a story that interests me, I click on headline and skim through the article.


Going to the internet for news, rather than the television, is an increasing trend: according to the Pew Research Center, 68% of people got their news from TV in 1991, which decreased to 58% in 2010; meanwhile, 44% of people got their news from the web in 2010.


This week, while watching shows other than the news, I saw a couple commercials for the local Channel 5 news (WPTZ) which suggest that they are trying to combat this trend (as they should be if they have a decent marketing department). One commercial channeled reality TV format and was about two neighboring families in a trailor park who do nasty things to each other (like pour acid on the other's car?!). The other commercial promoted a special about different iPhone/iPad apps, called "App All Night," which they cleverly supplemented with seductive music. I laughed when I saw both of these commercials, because they were obviously trying to make the nightly news seem as appealing as popular TV shows--which, by nature, the news is not. 


Should the news try to win more viewers by changing the nature of their content? Or is it just weird that they should try to be something that they're not, i.e. scandalous and compelling?

Promoting the Writing Center

I had to put my marketing hat on today--outside of class (gasp!)--when I went to talk to a freshmen seminar class about the St. Mike's Writing Center. The Writing Center coaches visit these classes at the beginning of every semester, so that new students will be familiar with our AMAZING service.

We are given a script to read off of to make sure we don't forget to mention anything important (but also as a buffer if we aren't a fan of public speaking). While going over the script this morning, I thought of how terribly boring it would be for me to read from the script and how much the students weren't going to care what I was saying and, therefore, not listen. The memory of our class discussion about elevator pitches popped into my head, and I decided to utilize my knew knowledge of pitching an idea to get these students interested. So I rewrote the "pitch" in my own words, made it more concise, and (sort of) memorized it.

And...

It worked! I definitely had all of their attention and I even got a few laughs. Now that I look back at the nine C's, I think I used them all to my advantage. But to spare you all from having to read about each one of them, I'll just say what I think worked best: being conversational. I kept it very casual, used my real intonation (not just reading from a script), paused, related to them, and made a couple jokes. So I think I won them over--or at least gave them a good first impression of the Writing Center. Now I just have to wait and see if they actually go!