Media Meditation 8: Comcast’s Faulty Cable and Internet

The beginning of June in Burlington, Vermont will be a month filled with college students moving into their new apartments. It will also be a month filled with appointments with Comcast to set up their cable and internet. Unfortunately these students should prepare themselves for the problems that they may experience with the cable provider. One of its latest singalong commercials, entitled Dream Big, proclaims that the company provides faster and stronger internet connection, along with a variety of cable and telephone options. It sends the message that their cable company is always “dreaming” to make itself better, but this is not the case. Comcast is unpopular with many college students including me. From my experiences with the company I have found that it is all around unreliable both in the services it provides, and its customer service. My roommates and I first started experiencing problems with the company about a month after they installed our cable and internet and have since experienced four more issues. Their have mostly been problems with the internet connection, which to this day is still ongoing. The last time we called about our internet not working my roommate and I took turns talking to the people and were on the phone for a total of 3 hours, and finally reached the conclusion that the company would send people to look at the problems and that we would receive no benefits to compensate for our previous problems. During the time of their appointment we had left a note saying that we would be back within fifteen minutes, but apparently this did not concern the company’s repairmen because they left. I called them again the reschedule the appointment and left a message, but received no call back. To this day our internet has not been working properly for three months, and my roommates and I have become aware of how dependent we are on the Internet, both for entertainment and school work. We often become frustrated when we are unable to go online to complete homework assignments that require the use of the internet, or when we are not able to see what the latest news is on our facebook home pages. These concepts of dependence on technology and the inability of its service providers to fix its problems is demonstrated in M.T. Anderson’s, Feed through the character Violet as her body is dependent on her feed, which cannot be fixed. In the book Violet’s feed slowly stops working and causes her body to shut down. Unfortunately the people who provided her with the services of the feed are unable to figure out why it isn’t working and how to fix the problem. This is similar with my experience with Comcast as the company is unable to fix its problems with the services it provides, which my roommates and I are dependent on to do our homework and for entertainment. Neil Postman would also include Comcast in his idea of people entertaining themselves to death. Most people have access of at a few News television stations without Comcast, but they choose to use the cable provider so that they have channels that they watch strictly for entertainment, like HBO for example.

Tribune Brain: Comcast’s new commercial engages the Limbic brain a great deal through conveying its message through music, which is processed in the Limbic brain. The music is up beat and fast paced, which gives viewers emotions of happiness and a feeling of progress with the cable provider. This makes them have positive feelings towards Comcast and believe that it is always moving forward to better its services. The commercial also engages the Limbic brain through its images of happy animals and of people doing leaser activities such as skate boarding, and sitting in a hot tub. Comcast’s advertisement does engage the Neocortex through the way it presents the words that the people are saying. In the commercial the people talk extremely fast so it takes a relatively high degree of thinking in the Neocortex for viewers to process and understand what the characters are saying about the cable providers services. The Neocortex is especially engaged at the end of the film when the actors spell out the name of the company. In this part each person says a letter in the word Comcast, but they never say the word so viewers must use their Neocortex to put the letters together and understand what they spell.


8 Trends…

Epistemological Shift- Comcast’s commercial demonstrates the epistemological shift from word to image. The advertisement consists of almost all images that display the town, animals, people, and the activities they are doing. The only words in the commercial are basically at the very end with the letters that spell out the word Comcast and the words, dream big, next to them. Their are a few random other words in the middle of the commercial that are rather insignificant. Neil Postman talks about the epistemological shift in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death as he discusses how most people do not gain information through reading about it, and that it is usually obtained through images that also entertain them at the same time. This is true with the Comcast commercial.

Aesthetic Shift- Comcast also represents an aesthetic shift of convergence. The cable company converges the medias of the telephone, cable, and internet into one service. Comcast also demonstrates convergence as it provides different types of channels together such as News stations, music stations, cooking stations, and movie stations.

Economic Shift- Comcast is also an example of the economic shift to corporate consolidation. Instead of being a local cable provider, Comcast is a large corporation that provides its services to people all across the United States. The company then chooses, which local stations, or shows it wants to be apart of its service and then provides those to the people. The disadvantages to Comcast being such a large corporation is that if people have a problem with its services they may spend hours trying to get help from people on the telephone who may even be in a different country, that cannot actually provide them with assistance. The other issue is that a person does not have access to some of the channels he/she may want including local ones. (Comcast Building above)

7 Principles…

Reality Construction- Comcast’s commercial engages in the principle of reality construction. This is done through the characters they use and the way the advertisement is produced. By having characters that represent every age, gender, and lifestyle saying positive things about the company constructs the reality that Comcast is a good cable provider that has services to satisfy everyone. By having it produced like a cartoon in a positive atmosphere of a town and people doing fun activities also constructs the reality that Comcast is a positive company that the viewers will have positive experiences with. However this reality comes at the consequence of people using its services and not getting everything that the company makes itself out to be in the commercial.

Pacing- Comcast’s commercial is all about the principle of pacing. The company sets the commercials pace to be very fast in terms of what the characters are saying, while their settings are noticeably slower when viewed critically. By having the words be said quickly, viewers are distracted from thinking about them analytically and simply take them in. Also by having the happy settings move at a slower pace viewers have more time to notice them and as a result are more likely to take them in and have positive feelings associated with Comcast.

Emotional Transfer- Comcast’s commercial most operates on an emotional level. The entire commercial conveys its message through an upbeat song, which engages positive emotions and feelings of progression. It also operates on emotion through its images, which also derive positive emotions and feelings.


Persuasive Techniques…

Warm and Fuzzies- The commercial contains a little bit of the persuasive technique of warm and fuzzies. This is done through using the cute animals of the squirrels playing the instruments at the very beginning, and the dog pulling the guy on the skateboard, which make viewers smile at the sight of these images. It also uses this technique through having the boy talk about what he likes about the T.V. services Comcast offers and the little creature next to him, which makes viewers laugh.

Plain Folks- Comcast’s commercial uses the persuasion technique of plain folks a great deal. This is done by having a bunch of different, but at the same time average people conveying its messages.

Diversion- The commercial also persuades through diversion. By having the people say their words at a really fast pace, viewers are diverted from critically thinking about the words and simply to them in.

Repetition- Comcast’s commercial also demonstrates the persuasion technique of repetition a great deal. From the beginning to the end of the commercial there are people delivering the same message of the company progressing each media of the telephone, television, and the Internet that was conveyed first through the blond character at the start of the advertisement.