CI 5472 Post 6.1 - Assignment / Rationale #1

**ASSIGNMENT ONE**

Title: Telling it like it is? Or white-supremacist morning radio?

Objective:

• Students will analyze the complex uses of comedy in popular morning radio programs to explore the potential underlying purposes of comedic / humorous approaches to news. After their analysis, students will be able to craft an informed, well supported thesis arguing how a morning radio program of their choice uses comedy to “distort” or “clarify” reality as objectively as possible.

Procedures:

Lay a conceptual framework: spend time discussing:

• Although comedy can make us laugh, laughter alone is RARELY the underlying purpose for using comedy.
• Comedy can be EXTREMELY powerful; comedy can attack, embarrass, and bring an individual to tears for circumstances / attributes either in or out of their control (their weight, health, job, race, sexuality, education, and so on), OR comedy can expose and bring to justice a liar, bigot, thief, criminal, and so on.

Generate specific criteria / concepts if you wish:

• Possible underlying forces responsible for the varying uses of comedy may include...
• Potential underlying network ideologies / assumptions / motives
• Potential underlying personal ideologies / assumptions / motives
• The potential pressure from advertisers and sponsors who hold their own sets of ideologies / assumptions / motives
• (Anything else you, your colleagues, and your students can think of!
• **The idea is that by critically viewing / listening to morning show news segments’ specific uses of comedy, we as the audience can 1.) explore the potential ideologies, assumptions and motives behind its use, 2.) ask if comedy is being used to “distort” or “clarify” our reality as objectively as possible (in other words, comedy as perpetuating harmful ideologies / assumptions OR fighting to challenge harmful ideologies / assumptions and more accurately represent humanity as objectively as possible), and finally 3.)ask if these underlying ideologies, assumptions, and motives are what we want / where we want to go as a global community.**

Gather examples and stuff to talk about in class!

• I recommend going to iTunes and downloading examples from the following FREE podcasts; KQ Morning Show (from MN based classic rock station 92.5 KQRS), Half-assed Morning Show (from MN based hard rock station 93.7 93X), KS95 Morning Show (from MN based alternative rock station Cities 97 97.1), The KDWB Morning Show (from MN based pop station KDWB 101.3), The Jack Diamond Morning Show, the list really goes on and on.
• NOTE: Your selection of texts here really depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want to explore the possible underlying ideologies, assumptions, and motives unique to your specific community (in this case the Twin Cities), the TC morning shows would work great. However, if you wanted to perhaps compare the content of these to other morning shows, it would be beneficial to pull in texts from other regions of the country, or from the English speaking world for that matter (for accessibility purposes). Either way iTunes gives you a ton of accessibility to whatever you want for free.

Pull out some salient specific excerpts from shows to critically analyze as class.

Using the KQ Morning Show as an example, see bellow. NOTE: finding and editing specific, salient examples of anything can take a very long time. Although the initial time commitment may be great, you really only have to do it once. Then, the texts can be reused for as long as you see fit / relevant.





Again, the way you work through these texts with your students is largely dependent on your overall purpose. However, I recommend exploring questions of varying and increasing complexity such as the question set bellow. Also, you might want to publish these on a hand out so students can refer back to them while writing their summative assessments.

• What, specifically, do you hear during the story / stories? (For example, when it comes to the KQ morning show, the sound tech plays laughter, fart sounds, vomit sounds, random bits of
audio from past shows, burp sounds, train wreck sounds, basically a huge assortment of sounds).

• How, specifically, do these sound drops effect meaning in the story / stories during which they occur? (For example, when it comes to KQ, the sound tech will play a fart / poop sound during a news story that is talking about someone falling, someone yelling “HOMO!” or “FATTY!” during a story talking about gay marriage or obesity, and a gong if a person or topic of Asian descent is mentioned).

• What underlying ideologies, assumptions, or motives toward the subjects in this story / stories might these sounds reflect? How can you tell?

• Where does the news story / stories “fit” within the overall structure of the show? (For example, when it comes to KQ, stories may be sandwiched between the “Who is that porn star?” listener game show, and people calling in for Erick Clapton concert tickets. Also, a story about terrorism may come immediately before or after a story about illegal immigrants in the U.S.).

• How, specifically, does this placement effect the meaning of the story or stories?

• What underlying ideologies, assumptions, or motives toward the subjects in this story / stories might this placement reflect? How can you tell?

• What kind of commentary do the hosts give about the story / stories at hand? What specific word choices do they use? What kind of tone do they use?

• How, specifically, might this commentary, language, tone reflect the underlying ideologies, assumptions, and motives toward the subjects in this story / stories?

• What types of advertisers did you hear during commercials breaks, and what kind of
promotions and sponsors did you hear during the show?

• How might the sounds you hear, what the hosts say, and the placement of stories reflect the underlying ideologies, assumptions, and motives of any of these entities?

• How might the sounds you hear, what the hosts say, and the placement of stories reflect the underlying ideologies, assumptions, and motives of the overall network?

• How, specifically, are the story / stories and the groups of people that they concern represented? Are they represented in a “positive” light? Or a negative light? How can you tell?

• Based on your experience with these groups, are these portrayals accurate? Why or why not?

• **Does this morning show’s use of comedy work to “distort” or “clarify” our world? Why do you say so?**

And the list really goes on and on depending on your specific purpose. NOTE: These are just some ideas. I could see someone EASILY spending a number of days on one or two of these questions.

As far as format wise, these questions could be handled…
• As an entire class in the large group setting
• Distribute different questions / tasks to small groups and reconvene as a class
• Individual
• And so on

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT

As homework, chose a specific morning show to commit approximately ½ hour to. Feel free to podcast shows if you can’t catch them as they’re on live.

Using SPECIFIC examples from the morning show you pick, how does the show’s use of comedy work to “distort” or “clarify” our world? Think back to the questions / analysis we talked about in class!

During class on the assignment's due date, students could pair into similar groups (everyone who picked the KQ Morning Show in one group, everyone who picked the KS95 Morning Show in another group, and so on), or you could mix the groups up the best that you could. Students could then discuss and share their assignments. From there, the class could continue to have a discussion on how morning show news content reflects specific ideologies, assumptions, and motives across networks, advertisers, geographical regions, cultural groups, and so on.

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RATIONALE

Although extremely anecdotal evidence, Radiotime.com (portal to all things talk radio) confirms my hypothesis that morning talk radio is a significantly viewed source of news media. Using the wildly popular TC based KQ Morning Show as an example, Radiotime.com states, “KQRS has been number-one in the market among the 25 to 54 year-old demographic for thirteen consecutive years. In addition to playing great music, KQRS is known for its dominant morning show. The show is 100% local, and is the "go to" source for current events among Minnesotans between the ages of 18 and 64.” Although I have not verified these specific statistics against any other more credible sources, the point remains the same either way; morning radio is perceived as a significant source of news by a huge portion of the population, including young people. As further anecdotal evidence, I used to, and in fact still do, tune into morning shows as I commute back and forth to school and work. Furthermore, during my time student teaching at Simley High School, not a day would go by that I wouldn’t hear a group of students discussing something that they heard on the radio during their drive in (e.g., the swine flue, Somali pirates, and so on).

What makes morning shows so popular and entertaining, particularly the KQ Morning Show, is the integration of comedy / humor into their various segments. In addition to approaching every news story with a commentary-filled comedic / humorous tone, the listener is further entertained as stories are sandwiched between call in game shows, chances to win prizes and concert tickets, celebrity interviews, and the occasional piece of music. After all, it is a radio station.

In her article “When Fake is More Real: of Fools, Parody, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Ana Kothe cites theory that supports comedy’s / humor’s power to afford critical reflection of what we view as news as she states, “…the sort of humor that ridicules abusive politics has the effect of creating a space where rational reflection on issues can take place – it provides a more balanced perspective when the official news cannot” (4). However, depending on how it’s specifically used, Kothe counters that “mean-spirited” comedy / humor can also be used to continue to protect (support) those with power and attack (subjugate) those without (4). In other words, just as comedy / humor has the power “clarify” our world and render it as objectively as possible, it also has the power to “distort” it based on certain prejudiced ideologies, assumptions, and motives extremely pervasive in our global community.

If the above statistics are correct, and people do indeed spend so much time listening to and deriving their perceived understanding of the world from morning radio, it is EXTREMELY important for them to question…

1.) how specifically comedy / humor is being used
2.) what ideologies, assumptions, and motives it is working to reflect / shape
3.) how it is working to reflect / shape them
4.) if this is the direction in which we want our global community to go
5.) what group(s) it is working to give power to
6.) what group(s) of power it is working to take power from
7.) and if it is working to “clarify” or “distort” our overall perceptions of the world.

Furthermore, critical analysis of morning radio shows affords students the opportunity to explore how the news may be used as yet another corporate tool to perpetuate certain dominant ideologies, assumptions, and motives. Labeled as the "propaganda model," Chomsky and Herman propose that corporations "propagate their own ideological perspectives in news content and coverage" (Beach 92). As such, it is extremely important that students learn to detect, analyze, and question when corporations are exerting their power in the news, how exactly they are doing so, to what end, and if said end is desirable. Because morning radio is funded and supported by a host of advertisers and sponsors (and they are not bashful to say so "more of the KQ Morning Show brought to you by McDonalds!"), critical analysis of morning shows across the country afford students a limitless supply of material to explore "the problems of news sponsorship" (Kothe 5).

Thanks for reading, watching, and listening!