Introduction
All of us are consumers. Today, we are exposed to both print media as well as television media. The television set has recently become a common household communications device in homes and institutions whereas the print media was present much before this innovation. Both the media have their own advantages as well as disadvantages. This paper intends to compare and contrast the print media and the television media. There is a lot of difference between watching news on the television that of reading the same news in a newspaper. In television the news coverage may include the life or recorded coverage of certain incidences whereas the print media may only contain some still photographs of the same incidence.
Main text
Let us take for example the September 11 incidence that was shown in television news and also covered extensively in the newspapers. This was news that shook the whole world. People who watched the television also read the newspapers repeatedly. The reason behind this is that when a person watches he/she may miss out on some of the statistical or other important details which is much clear when it is read. Print sources undergo an extensive and painstaking publication process that comprises editing and article review. The procedure has fact-checkers, a number of reviewers, and editors to make sure excellence of publication (The OWL at Purdue University, 1995).
The mass dissemination of the written word remains the single most important development in communication technology. Today, the print media has further advanced to internet publications. However, it is a fact that in the underdeveloped world where the internet and other technologies have not reached, it is only the print media that dominates. Televisions are also the most popular media in these regions and help to spread various developments happening around the world.
The advantage of television is that the message can be easily understood by even an illiterate whereas print media is only useful to the literates. It is also true that electronic publications, particularly of the newspapers, books, journals and magazine provide has additionally benefited the paper-based documentation process. This is because the print media powered by the electronic advancement typically are delivered with a powerful mechanism to quickly search through them.
Television is a one-way medium in the sense that when a person turns on a program he passively sits down to watch it. The person has a choice to change the program in case if he doesn’t like it. On the other hand a person reading a newspaper picks up the first chose according to his interest and goes straight to that section and then later read other things. In general people make a choice what they prefer to see when they read a newspaper. This cannot be done with television (Center for Democracy and Technology, 1999).
Watching is easy to understand and remains in the memory when compared to reading. For instance, studies have shown that memory is retained better when students watch current events on television rather than reading about the same events in the newspaper or textbooks. Therefore television has the advantage to students by presenting issues that can easily be retained by the students than just memorizing from the textbooks. Those who watch the news on television keep in mind far more than those who read the print account (van der Molen and van der Voort, 1997).
Advertising in general tries to control people’s behavior and beliefs and television has proven over the years to be a dominant and attractive medium for advertisers to use. Advertising has become the most common subject and has become an inevitable part of product promotion both in the print as well as the television. It is used to convey availability of a product which can be a physical product, a service, or an idea and to provide information regarding the product which can stimulate demand for the product. Stimulating the demand is one of the main objectives of advertising.
Summary
When we compare the effectiveness of the advertisements in print and the television, it can be said that both have played an important role in popularizing various brands. The method of attracting them towards a product has undergone changes. Though earlier, producers did not give much attention to popularizing their products through advertisements, thinking that people who require their products will automatically run towards buying these products. However, today due to the increasing competition several strategies have evolved through the years to promote more effectively any product or services to a wide range of consumers. Finally, it can be said that print media still dominates over the other news media. However, television has played a major role and is the most popular media among all segments of people starting from kids to the elders.
References
Center for Democracy and Technology, (1999) Why is the Internet more like a newspaper than TV. Web.
The OWL at Purdue University, (1995) Evaluating Print vs. Internet Sources. Web.
van der Molen, Alma Juliette H. and van der Voort, Tom H.A. (1997). Children’s recall of television and print news: a media compassion study. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 89(1), pp.82 (10).