Blog Post 4

@kylechinn1

Watching the news from the 1990s was interesting to compare to news today. The first thing I noticed is that there was not a scrolling news and stock data on the bottom of the screen. The news also seemed to be much more about the interview and lead in to the story versus multiple shots of b roll and visual images. It seemed much more simple. This is probably due to the fact streaming video had not been invented yet so getting video quickly was not as possible due to editing the 8mm film everything was recorded on. I enjoyed the commercials from the 90s too. They relied more on sincere acting and camera angles like in the UPS commercial and lacked the special effects used in commercials today. The commercial for the cold medicine with Mike Ditka had hand drawn effects to show the areas the medicine affected the body They seemed a little cheesier too then commercials of today. According to Bolton and Grusin, “new media is offered as an improvement” (pg. 79) This is true to news of today. With the Oprah news clip they tied in 3 different people in different places talking about Obama all at once, which was seamless and easy. This was not as easy to do back in the 1990s. The news is much more interactive now with lots more up to date b-roll, twitter feeds, blog and comment feeds, and is heavily driven by digital technology.

What a blast from the past netscape navigator! I remember using that program when it came out, then Microsoft killed it by copying it and calling it internet explorer and stopped selling their operating systems. Same story with word perfect… Gotta love a good monopoly!

Comments are closed.