Mainstream media have evolved greatly since its inception since the beginning of the twentieth century. Today television and radio stations use a rating system during broadcasting which started as a need for sponsors to know how many people watched their advertisements. It was invented and first carried out through telephone interviews and surveys to project daily estimates of audience size of the nation’s networks (Thompson). This method was also used for radio programs. The ratings are used to estimate whether these programs will be canceled altogether or whether the advertisements are reaching the intended targets.
There was a shift in the market share of television channels where people prefer to rent movies and pay for cable channels. It also caused the sponsors and the business to change their advertisement tactics and strategies. With the emergence of cable television where people could access programs, entertainment, news channels at will and on demand; there emerged studios that made movies only for this purpose. Large corporations sponsored these programs they incorporated their names in the titles of the programs as a way of creating awareness for their brands. Cable advertising has the benefits of targeting, frequency and lowers media price, making it one of the popular media for marketing.
Cable advertising is another cheaper way to do advertising on network television, usually by about 10% - 20% of the rate of conventional transmission time (Thompson). As such the big businesses now have a more distinguished role on cable television rather than network TV. Since cable offers several productions and dedicated channels, it reaches the target market, which is more attractive to large corporations. However, large corporations still have a stake in television production and radio programs, but it is significantly lower than it was in the twentieth century (Thompson). Today big businesses prefer to advertise on the internet where they are likely to reach larger masses because there is a wide accessibility to the internet for a large portion of the population.
Work Cited
Thompson, Ben. "The Changing-And-Unchanging Structure Of Tv". Stratechery (2015):
