Activity

As with other objects used by capital, no expense is spared in producing the best possible good. Also like capital goods, commercials are tax deductible. During programming time (consumption watching-time), audiences create meaning for themselves. During commercial time (labour watching-time), audi…

Up until now, we have made a rather strict distinction between programming and advertising. In the historical development of the commercial media system, however, the boundaries between the two were very often blurred. The function of programming is much more than merely capturing the watching acti…

[...] Despite the fact that huge amounts of money (much more than programming) are spent on producing attractive commercials, people do all they can to avoid them. [...]

These findings have not been lost on the advertising or television industries, who have increasingly recognized that the tradi…

[...] the early history of industrial capitalism is tied up with attempts by capital to extend the time of the working day in an absolute sense, thus manipulating the ratio between necessary time and surplus time. [...]

However, as Marx realized, this absolute extension of the working day cannot…

[...] Watching is a real extension of the logic of industrial labor, even if it is not the same as industrial labor. However, as metaphor, it illuminates the obscure workings of the economy in general. As Ricoeur writes, "metaphor is the rhetorical process by which discourse unleashes the power tha…