Meeting Max Headroom

Who? Yeah thats exactly what I said when Mr. Corso started talking about this character last week. To be honest, I did not know what to expect when we watched the episode on wednesday. Would I be bored? Impressed? Confused? Turns out, I was somewhat intrigued by how relevant that particualr episode was with modern day. I was 1 year old when they aired that episode and here I am at age 22 and still very able to recognize what went on in that episode. I feel like even today, the media goes to ALL extremes to capture our attention, get the inside scoop on a story, and most importantly, win the ratings race. As portrayed in the episode, one tv news station went a bit far (a little farther than any stations do today) in order to make good news and be there for the best coverage. It reminds of the movie "Shattered Glass" and the young journalist who goes too far in writing the best story for his magazine. In order to succeed, he fabricates a story and publishes it which helps sell the comapany's magazine and gets him lots of publicity. However, once the story is found to be false, the journalist loses all his credibility and his job. The news station in the episode of Max Headroom did something very similar to this. Although it was a bit of a stretch on what happens today, I thought it was ironic how the show takes place "20 minutes into the future" and sure enough, the future has sort of turned out as the show protrayed it to. Not only news stations but thousands of companies, websites, tv shows, etc. take every measure possible to manipulte the media and set off our triggers. As I sit and watch the superbowl, I see this example perfectly, through witty commercials. Hundreds of companies trying to trigger our media literacy through comercials that dont even last a minute but cost millions of dollars. So as bizzare and possibly irrelevant as Max Headroom may have beeen back in 1986, perhaps he was trying to show us something about the future and where the media was heading. Even through this one episode, I can see many similarities to the way ratings and the battle for the best new coverage takes place 22 years later.