Television Vs. Internet

Several people have believed that Internet and Television have worked together in the decreasing of culture and reasoning power of the people. They put both in the same level and see both as guilt to the weakening of the relationships and to increase the distance between people. But I do not agree with this idea. In my opinion, comparing TV with Internet is similar to comparing the same TV with cinema. I believe the distance between TV and the Internet is even bigger. The main purpose of the TV in these days is to sell something for you, this is clear. The quality of the program does not really matter, what they want is to sell liquid laundry detergents to you during the breaks. For sure, this also happens on the Internet, however there the ads usually just attack you when you arrive in some website or web portal. After you start to read, to watch, to interact in some way with the page, usually you are not interrupted each fifteen minutes to know about the best toothpaste for your family. So, if your goal is to sell or discover some new product turn your TV set on; but if you want information, and to have some choice to see or do not see the ads, the best option is the Internet.

To talk about this commercial difference (ads and merchandising) this paper will talk about the power of the ads, the option of choice, and the information about the products that are being sold. To conclude, it will also talk about how TV and Internet have influenced the relationships in our days.

The first point to consider in this comparison, the power of the ads, will be related with the audience, the size of the audience of both, and the number of options of 'channels'. While when we talk about the audience of some TV program, such as the Grammy Awards in last January 25^th or American Idol in the same day, the number of viewers is bigger than twenty-five million; on the Internet the website with the biggest audience, Google, has about three hundred fifty thousands people accessing, and that is not in the same time, this number is during one entire month, December 2009, according to the website of The Nielsen Company - one company that measure audience in all types of media. It is also big the difference between the quantity of options. While on TV there are few options, in United States, for example, there are just four big television network and their affiliated; on the Internet the number of web sites, web portals, web pages of different format and sources are uncountable. Other point that makes this number even bigger is that Internet does not have to respect national boundaries. So, if you have some product to sell, where is the best place to do it: where there are just few options with a huge audience, specifically in your country and/or region; or where there are a huge number of options, but the audience is smaller and perhaps out of your area?

The second point, the option of choice, talks about how people can interact with the ads. In the Internet, usually, we can simply close the window with the ads, or scroll down the page. In the television it is so different. We are attacked by ads with no choice. The most interesting is that the kinds of products are directed to some group of people that the channel and/or the Nielsen ratings define that is better. As Charlie Hauck says in his article "My Plan to Save Network Television", usually these ads are directed to people under 49 (298-299). So, if you are older than this you are free of the attacks, but you are not free to lose your time watching ads with no interest for you. And in the same way, in this same age, you will not have information about products for you, after all, the audience of your group is small and it is not interesting to the big television networks. As this paper will talk about in the next paragraph, in Internet you have more choice, so you can see information about products that you have interest, and the size of your group does not matter.

The last point in this commercial comparison is about the information. When we talk about Internet this is one of the strongest points always. For sure, there are several kinds of information, and we need attention and critical analysis to recognize what is trustful or not. But the point now is that there is information. So, even if we are talking just about merchandising, in Internet we can see and know about much more than thirty seconds of a television commercial can show. You can, for instance, go to the website of the company that makes that product to see specifications, you can look for opinions of others consumers, you can access some official test that perhaps that product had been submitted, and, to conclude, you can buy that product directly in the Internet. So, even if the focus is commercial, and no culture or critical thinking, the Internet provides more information, options, and facilities. In Internet, the consumer is not some passive person that stays sitting in the couch absorbing all that the screen shows, as a sponge, with no thinking about anything.

Other point we have to consider when we talk about the influences of TV and Internet in our lives is the relationships. We can read people stating that Internet is collaborating to the weakening of the relationships. An example is Alice Mathias who tries to simplify and generalize the Internet's effects in relationship in her article "Love in the Digital Age", saying "we are trapped in the Age of the Emoticon" (265). Lots of complains we listen to about Internet, in my opinion, are not fault of the Internet. They are human behaviors that would happen with or without Internet. Maybe the cyberspace makes this faster, but what does somebody to be frivolous in his/her relationship is not the Internet, it just, at most, makes it easier. The same author says "In anonymous Internet attacks, people can say things they would never mention aloud while looking their target in the eye." However what could the author say about, for example, those anti-gay groups that targeting military funerals with phrases as "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers"? They are not in Internet and they are "looking their target in the eye." So, again, the Internet, is just a media that people use to express his/her own behavior freely.

To conclude, I believe is not fair to compare TV and Internet. People while TV viewer assumes, in the most of time, a passive position, with almost no interaction, few choices, just accepting everything that comes chewed to be swallowed. In the Internet, in the other hand, the interaction, the choice, the participation is almost a mandatory characteristic of its users. There are not any interactions between people while watching TV, even if they are in the same room. Again the internet goes in an opposite way, almost obligating people to interact, even if this interaction is using emoticons, this does not matter, this is just a way to communicate; the point is the Internet helps so much with communication between people. So, if you want just selling liquid laundry detergent your choice has to be TV.

Works Cited

Hauck, Charlie. "My Plan to Save Network Television." Present Tense. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. 298-99. Print.

Mathias, Alice. "Love in the Digital Age." Present Tense. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. 264-67. Print.

"Ratings and Rankings." Nielsen Ratings and Rankings. The Nielsen Company. Web. 6 Feb. 2010. .