Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 7

Summary - Essay Example It took a whole 50 years before youth were first taken seriously as potential consumers. The three major ideals that changed it were deregulation, character licensing, and a new approach to market segmentation.1 The 1980s was a decade of great change in so many different ways. The debate over the regulation of the media industry during the previous decade helped open up the possibility of children to become consumers. Opponents claimed that children’s advertising was deceptive since kids could not possibly understand the hidden meanings of what was being marketed to them.2 Others argued that the government had no right to impose restrictions on what was acceptable in the marketplace. What eventuated was self-regulation, which broadcasters slowly let diminish over the years. Once this process had taken place in the United States, it was only inevitable that it would prevail in Canada too. Before the start of the commercialization of youth, young people were all lumped together in one giant market segment. Once youth advertising had begun to take place, audiences were segmented into separate niches.3 This was partly achieved through the creation of television networks specifically for children such as Nickelodeon and Music Television (MTV).4 These distinct networks were able to focus on a small set of viewers by involving their needs and wants in the makeup of programming.