The Commercialization of American Culture

I bought this book after taking several classes with Dr. McAllister at Virginia Tech. It is basically a summary of Virginia Tech's Media Institutions course (which, as Dr. McAllister announces the first day, is entirely dedicated to anwering the question "How does the way media is funded affect the content of that media?") The book uses basic, real world examples to illustrate concepts and is written in a very conversational tone, much like the way Dr. McAllister lectures.The scope of the book is very broad; it touches on all major categories of media which are touched by advertising. It is an excellent survey or introductory book. It is not laden with undefined industry or academic jargon, so I would recommend it to people who have no formal training in media theory. However, as an academic research publication, it is not a book that should be approached as light, before bedtime reading material.If nothing else, this book should completely change the way one watches television, read the paper, etc. and should sensitize the average consumer to the deregulation and merging of major media companies (AOL/Time Warner, for example). Dr. McAllister manages to present the information in a non-threatening manner rather than taking the cynical, fear-appeal tone that many other authors use in their "big-media-is-bad" diatribes.A good companion book for this is Ben Bagdikian's "The Media Monoploy" which focuses more narrowly on the newpaper industry.