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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 16, 1985)
—2— By DIANE M. BALK Associated Press D ayton, ohio - thomas skill, Au thor, teacher, and product of the tele vision age, wants to know how television influences people and vice versa. He has written two books and several arti cles on what many see as the softer side of pop ular culture and television — the soap opera. "Soaps, I think, tend to be kind of like sophis ticated morality plays," he says. "Eventually the stories do get resolved, good is rewarded and bad is punished. It may take a year or two years. "An interesting thing is if a character is so bad that there's no way for them to repent they generally get killed off. That's like the ultimate punishment, falling out of an airplane or get ting pushed down a flight of stairs or ultimately having a scheme of theirs backfire and they get killed in the process." Skill, an assistant professor of .communica tion at the University of Dayton, believes soap operas contain more realism than prime-time series because daily serials revolve more around character development. Weekly series MTV f s influence on ads CO <, W c v—• :» c/2 tend to be more adventure and less character exploration, he says. Skill, 29, began collaborating with a former faculty adviser, Mary B. Cassata, in 1977. Their work at the State University of New York at Buf falo led to a book in 1983 called "Life on Day time Television: Tuning-In American Serial Drama." The authors examined lifestyles and demo graphics of TV characters, images of the el derly, sexuality on television and music in soap operas. They also interviewed a tele vision program executive for Procter & Gamble Productions. Now, a second collaboration, a bibliographic essay called "Television: A Guide to the Literature," is being published by Oryx Press. It will be sold as a resource for tea chers and students of mass communications. While some may consider TV as a strange topic for traditional, empirical research or se rious sociological study, Skill says the auto mobile and television have been the most pro found influences on 20th-century society. "Popular culture is a very important part of our society," he says. "It's culture that arises out of interests of many people and it tends to be our source of entertainment. Entertainment has a very important function with us. It's not just work. It has a lot to do with our social well being and what we think of ourselves.," "America is popular culture," Skill says, not ing it is a product of the democratic process and free enterprise. "If it pleases a number of people, it has a very important intrinsic value." Historically, popular culture has evolved into respected culture, he says. "Shakespeare was popular culture," Skill says. "Today everybody talks about the won derful films of Frank Capra. At the time, they called them 'capra-corn,' because they thought they were so corny. It was popular cul ture. Today, it's respected filmmaking. "We're saying 'why not study popular cul ture as it's happening right now.' Why wait for 50 years or 300 years ... to decide popular cul ture is really high culture?" H E'S PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN THE role of the family and how it is portrayed on television — an interest sparked in part by criticism that divorce rates have risen as television became popular and that tele vision has led to the breakup of the American family. "The family unit is essentially the one thing that remains stable on television, Skill says. "Sure, a lot of times they'll show problems with divorce; they break up and tend to come to gether in a new form." Families tend to remain "core elements," with older characters the "tent pole characters" that hold the family together, he says. □ continued from page 1 music in advertising and advertising in general." Music is one of the most powerful advertising and marketing tools, he says. Segmenting and targeting in advertising and marketing make- music a powerful force because mu sic can break down markets into groups. HE EMOTIONAL IMPACT of music also makes it a pow erful advertising tool. Creative director Chuck Cilo writes about emotion as an advertising tool in Advertising Age: "Most of the time, the facts of a product are perilously similar to the facts of its competition. That's when logic should yield to emotion." In other words, except for those few times when a product is blessed with outstanding capabilities or unique attributes, consumers will choose a product based on an emo tional reaction. "EP is a powerful advertising in gredient that can give one product an advantage over other similar products in any given category," he writes. "EP is the Emotional Plus added to the facts of a product that imparts a separable image and mo tivating stimulus to buy.'' Consider the Oreo. The facts - Oreos are cookies that taste terrific, he writes. But so do a lot of other cookies. Oreo's EP is that people don't merely eat the cookie, they play with it. . While Oreos use an idea to accent a product's, good points, non-adver tising advertising such as Honda's Lou Reed commercial sells an image or an idea rather than the product. Music plays an important part in this emotional approach. Palmer says music also can be used to produce the creative com mercials advertising needs to keep its viewers' attention. "Because the greatest fear is zap ping (changing channels with a re mote control)," he says the industry must produce ads "that say to the viewer, 'Excuse me, but this pro gramming is filler for the advertising you are about to see, which is the most stimulating on TV.'" A Bryan advertising agency ac count executive agrees with Palmer. "It's got to be something entertain ing or people will just tune you out," Joe Buser Jr. of Joe Buser and Asso ciates says. "People will watch a commercial and you can ask them what it was when it's through - and they won't even know. "So you got to have something that they just look up and watch. And a lot of that is with music - just something that lets them know this is going to be a good one - this is something worth watching." T he creative head of Ogilvy Worldwide and presi dent of Ogilvy and. Mather /New York also says advertising needs to be entertaining. Norman Berry tells' Advertising Age: "Consumers are far more sophisti cated than we've given them credit for in the past. They are exposed to enormous amounts of visual and musical stimulation. To cut through this, advertising must be highly cre ative." He says advertising must reward the viewer for watching, as well as sell him the product. "It must intrigue and hold the viewer's attention, even if he has a zapper (remote control) in his hand.D Movies are listed alphabetically. The Grove movies will be shown on listed date only. The rating and theater code name are in parenthesis. The theater codes are: GR - The Grove 845-1515 ME — Manor East 823-8300 P3 — Plitt Cinema HI 846-6714 PO - Plitt Post Oak...: 764-0616 S6 — Schulman Six 775-2463 Back to the Future (PG,P3) A new Spielberg film about a kid who gets transported back to the 50s and sees his parents as high school sweethearts. Great Film. The Black Cauldron(PG,ME) New Disney film. E.T. (PG,S6) This tear-jerker starring our friend from outer-space is back. Fright Night (R,S6) The PR reads: There are very good reasons why you should be afraid of the dark. Three teenagers suspect that the newcomer to town (Chris Saran don) is a vampire. One of the stars is Amanda of "All My Children" fame. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (PG-13,S6) Mel Gibson and Tina Turner star in this Road Warrior sequel. Max is a. little mellower, but there's still a lot of action. It's worth it to see Tina. The Man With One Red Shoe (PG,S6) A Tom Hanks film that looks prom ising. Remake of the French film "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe." My Science Project(PG,S6) One of several movies that fall into the "back-to-school" genre. If these are the kinds of kids the school systems are turning out, then I don't under stand why people are complaining that kids aren't learning anything. National Lampoon's European Vacation (PG-13,PO) A second movie in Chevy Chase's ad ventures. I hope it's better than the first. Pee-wee's Big Adventure(PR,P3) This guy is strange; you'll either love him or hate him. But this is probably the most original film that was released this summer Real Genius(PG,S6) Another example of what happens when brains go awry St. Elmo's Fire (R,PO) Sort of a Big Chill for the college crowd. Mixed reviews. Sesame Street Follow That Bird (G, ME) A favorite for kids. Silverado (PG,ME) A great new western with an impres sive cast. (Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, Ke vin Costner, Brian Dennyhe, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum and Linda Hunt to boot). Summer Rental(PG,P3) John Candy goes to the beach for some farcical fun in the sun. Weird Science (PG-13,PO) This new film looks remarkably simi lar to another new film, "Real Gen ius." But this should be renamed "Real Weird". Stars Anthony Michael Hall ("Breakfast Club," "Sixteen Can dles").
