By Paul Rule
President, Marquest Research
Most of us spend a lot of time with media – watching TV, eyeballing online videos, going to movies, etc. Plus there’s the audio stuff, tunes from radio, downloads or CDs. Then we have the print delights – newspapers, mags, books. It can total double-digit hours per day for dedicated media addicts.
Yes, I’m one, too. I’m the guy you met at the meeting of MJA (Media Junkies Anonymous), the couch potato who bravely stood up and said, “My name is Paul, and I’m a media addict.”
These thoughts came this week as I noted the 25th anniversary of the release of the film “Valley Girl” and read about a study reporting that high school kids who have TVs in their rooms earn lower school grades, eat more junk food and exercise less.
Okay, class, now what difference do we see between the teens depicted in “Valley Girl” and those camped out in their bedrooms, eyes glued to the screen or with hands clinched firmly to their Wii controllers? Well, mostly, it’s that the Valley girls were out actually doing something like socially interacting with each other in a non-digital environment, even if the setting was as mundane as a suburban shopping mall.
Media content is attractive because it has interesting stories involving interesting characters doing interesting things. This applies whether it’s a movie, a TV reality show, a video game, a news story or the lyrics of a chart-topping song. I’m not aware of anyone who has produced a hit media vehicle that showed nothing but the backs of people’s heads who were watching television. We’re media junkies because media allows us to be mental hitchhikers and vicariously experience situations that would be too threatening or that we’re unable or too lazy to experience for real.
Occasionally there is a bright light. Nickelodeon has a new show called “Dance on Sunset” that actually encourages tweens to get up from their couches and dance.
Plus, there is a lot of worthwhile educational and thought-provoking content. I learn more from the National Geographic, Discovery and History channels than I ever did from most of my school textbooks. I balance this by feeding myself guilty pleasures – searching the on-demand menus for really bad low-budget movies that require no more mental effort than necessary to keep me breathing and digesting my food.
I should spend more time doing things someone might want to make a movie about and less time watching other people do things on TV, but right now I think I’ll check to see if anyone might be running a Clive Barker film festival on the tube this week. I haven’t had a good dose of Pinhead lately. My name is Paul, and I’m a media addict.
Paul Rule is President of MARQUEST MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT RESEARCH in Beaufort, NC.