Synopses & Reviews
What happens when kids are held captive to an endless stream of MTV-like television commercials? Armed with a tape recorder, Roy F. Fox, a language and literacy researcher, spent two years interviewing over 200 students in rural Missouri schools. Why? Because more than eight million students in 40% of America's schools, every day, watch TV commercials as part of Channel One's news broadcast. Students read commercials far more often than they read
Romeo and Juliet. These ads now constitute America's only national curriculum.
In this ground-breaking study, Fox explores how these commercials affect kids' thinking, language, and behavior. He found that such ads do indeed help shape children into more active consumers. For example, months after a pizza commercial had stopped airing, students reported that one brief scene showed a couple on an airplane. The plane's seats, students noted, were red with little blue squares that have arrows sticking out of them.^L ^L Also, kids blurred one type of TV text with another, often mistaking Pepsi ads for public service announcements. Kids replayed commercials by repeating or reconstructing an ad in some way—by singing songs, jingles, and catch-phrases; by cheering at sports events (one crowd at a school football game erupted into the Domino's Pizza cheer); by creating art projects that mirrored specific commercials, and even by dreaming about commercials (the product, not the dreamer, is the star).
Review
[A]n eye-opener. General and undergraduate collections in education, communication, and advertising.Choice
Review
This is a needed resource in any school wanting to teach an understanding of media literacy. Not only could this book be used in English or media studies, but it would also be an excellent resource for use in business classes as it studies the impact of commercials on students in middle and secondary schools. Highly recommended.The Book Report
Review
What happens when the historically protected and increasingly valuable sphere of the public classroom is invaded by the very images and messages that it should help students to evaluate? This remarkable, ground-breaking, and timely study addresses that question.from the foreword by George Gerbner, Dean Emeritus The Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania
Review
Kids today may well know the glittering surfaces and superficialities of ads--the slogans and the celebrities--but this book shockingly reminds us that kids are still kids. Despite the increased sophistication of modern persuasion techniques, kids are still very naive, uncritical, and innocent about the ways of the world of persuasion. As a patient researcher and listener, Roy Fox elicits and records the comments of children as they talk about the ads they've seen on Channel One as part of the nationwide captive audience delivered to the advertisers.Hugh Rank, Governors State University
Synopsis
Fox's groundbreaking study explores how kids respond to the TV commercials they must watch as part of their school day. After interviewing 200 kids in rural Missouri schools that receive the Channel One broadcast, Fox concludes that such commercials influence kids' thinking, language, and behavior, shaping them into more active consumers.
Synopsis
What happens when kids are held captive to an endless stream of MTV-like television commercials? Armed with a tape recorder, Roy F. Fox, a language and literacy researcher, spent two years interviewing over 200 students in rural Missouri schools. Why? Because more than eight million students in 40% of America's schools, every day, watch TV commercials as part of Channel One's news broadcast. Students read commercials far more often than they read Romeo and Juliet. These ads now constitute America's only national curriculum. In this ground-breaking study, Fox explores how these commercials affect kids' thinking, language, and behavior. He found that such ads do indeed help shape children into more active consumers. For example, months after a pizza commercial had stopped airing, students reported that one brief scene showed a couple on an airplane. The plane's seats, students noted, were "red with little blue squares that have arrows sticking out of them." Also, kids "blurred" one type of TV text with another, often mistaking Pepsi ads for public service announcements. Kids "replayed" commercials by repeating or reconstructing an ad in some way--by singing songs, jingles, and catch-phrases; by cheering at sports events (one crowd at a school football game erupted into the Domino's Pizza cheer); by creating art projects that mirrored specific commercials, and even by dreaming about commercials (the product, not the dreamer, is the star).
Synopsis
Fox's groundbreaking study explores how kids respond to the TV commercials they must watch as part of their school day. After interviewing 200 kids in rural Missouri schools that receive the Channel One broadcast, Fox concludes that such commercials influence kids' thinking, language, and behavior, shaping them into more active consumers.
About the Author
ROY F. FOX teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he also directs the Missouri Writing Project.