This article was a very insightful perspective on the
influence of media by adaptation to the “attention span”. I found it very interesting that Sesame
Street was produced to adapt to the attention of the children watching. Growing up, I never watched Sesame Street so
I can’t reflect on it, however the article explained the debuting episode and
it seems like the show had rapid changes in scenes. The results of the testing
they did even proved that Sesame Street was able to keep the viewers attention
from external distractions. It’s kind of
creepy that this show was intentionally manipulated to capture and keep the
attention of children, but at the same time it is fascinating how it worked! It seems that ever since then, the way
television shows are created use similar techniques to keep the attention of
the views in all age ranges. It amazing
how there is a science in attracting people to staying in tune with television programming
and the pilot program was Sesame Street!
I agree with your ideas about the significance that was paid to understanding the importance of recognizing how programming could be improved when delivering messages to various audiences. I do not think that it is any accident that Sesame Street was the first to pioneer such a process since there was a committed goal of reaching children to be inspired to learn. The shame is that other writers and producers who have goals of only making money and not delivering purposeful content have also used this same technique and thus helped to dumb down society as a whole.
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