Audiences negotiate meaning. Skillful readers and viewers examine different stylistic features of a media product and pay careful attention to the context in which the message occurs. This concept turns the tables on the idea of TV viewers as just passive couch potatoes. The fundamental skills of media literacy allow us to be conscious and deliberate about what we experience and, more important, how we interpret media experiences in our lives. Media have commercial interests.
Media are ad-driven businesses.
Newspapers lay out ads on their pages first. The space remaining is devoted to news. Likewise, TV programs don't exist simply to entertain us. They are there to ensure that a certain number of viewers will be watching when a commercial comes on. Corporate sponsors pay TV stations based on the number of people they expect to be watching.