I’m not entirely sure what the format of the blog post is supposed to be, but it seemed to me that it would be slightly rude to start off my digital footprint in JRN 450 without at least showing my face and saying hello. 

Now that we’ve met each other I should probably start to discuss the Pew Research Center State of the News Media annual report in order to get a passing grade on this post. 

After reading the report I learned of how many personal misconceptions I had about the current state of the news media. A perfect example of this is how I thought that the entire country was beginning to drop cable to exclusively use a streaming service like Netflix. I thought this because as broke college students, the majority of my friends and I decided to ditch cable to save money.

Turns out that prime-time cable is doing just fine. According to Pew Research Center analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, “viewership increased for cable news channels in 2016. In prime time, combined average viewership for the three major news channels (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC) increased by 55% to 4.8 million viewers.”

Much to my surprise, the rest of the country is not ready to give up their cable. I’d be curious to find out what role the presidential election played in the viewership of prime-time cable viewership, what do you think?

I found it interesting reading how many people still listen to terrestrial radio, I guess I’m in my own echo chamber because I thought everyone was using a streaming service instead.

Once again I was incorrect because according to Pew Research Center “in 2016, 91% of Americans ages 12 or older listened to terrestrial radio in a given week.” I’d be curious to see data on how long these people actually listened to the radio for.

As an avid consumer of audio entertainment, I can’t think of too many reasons why you’d stick with terrestrial radio instead of going to the digital alternatives. Another thing that comes to mind is how long did these people listen to the radio when they turned it on? Did it count as listening to the radio if they just heard it for 30 seconds when they turned on their car?

Overall, this report led me to have more questions than answers but I hope as this class progresses I can better understand and analyze the news media in these complex times we live in.

Despite this being a Friday class I’m incredibly excited to see what I learn from this course and hopefully can see a progression in my writing skills over the entire semester of doing blog posts like these!