Latest Middletown study looks at media consumers

published 10/25/05

A groundbreaking project undertaken just miles from here reveals that people do not spend most of their living day encountering others face to face. The bulk of their days are not used for meditating on the conundrums of the world. They do not spend most of their hours pursuing the physical adventures of play and exercise. Most of their day is not dedicated to sleeping or eating. In fact, in terms of total hours, most of their day is not spent on the job.

What the Middletown Media Studies, conducted just up the road at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, has determined is that most of us put in a nine-hour day using various media. This observational study followed its subjects from the time they stumbled out of bed in the morning until they stumbled back in at night, measuring the amount of waking hours they engaged in 15 different media. Those media include television, cell phones, the Internet, instant messaging, e-mail, radio, iPods, books, magazines and, of course, newspapers.

The Center for Media Design hoped to discover the media behavior of a typical American community, or “Middletown America.” According to their Web site, the work was to build on the famous sociological look at life in East Central Indiana in the 1920s and 1930s, known as the Middletown Studies. Technically, the research for the Middletown Media Studies did not take place in Middletown but in Muncie-town and Indianapolis-town.

Because it’s an unprecedented look at media behavior, I couldn’t help but do my own personal audit and see how I stacked up with the average Joe from Middletown. Frankly, I’m a little leery of media studies since it’s a way of finding my “address” in the media world, but hey, anything for a colleague…

• TV: “Middletowners” consume four hours each day in front of the tube, which seems to be the national average. I spend 30 minutes surfing among the ruins of the vast wasteland. Maybe it’s the media general’s warning. But it’s probably because of this next category…

• Computer Use: On most days, I probably rack up nearly hours 10 hours working in front of this tube—of course, how do you define “working” in today’s world? My 10 compared to Middletown men and women who logged between two and three hours and then found something better to do.

• Internet: During their hours of computer use, most people put in 90 minutes on the Internet. I’m probably caught in the Web at least a couple of hours each day.

• Radio: I was surprised to learn that people today listen to 80 minutes of radio. If I’m not in the car, I hear no radio. If I’m in the car 80 minutes, I’m average.

• Music: This category included radio, MP3 players and other usage of recorded music. While Mr. and Mrs. Middletown were observed listening to music an hour and a half each day, I would have skewed the study with my eight hours of listening to cliché boomer music such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Band and Rush, who, by the way, do a tune called “Middletown Dreams” on their “Power Windows” project. But this category should have allowed for recorded music played on turntables and 8 tracks.

• All Print Media: I’m a foreigner in Middletown here, too, with the average person spending a half hour daily with books, magazines, newspapers and the such. In this category, I’m Old School with no chance of graduating—and putting in eight hour days with print.

One of the study’s biggest revelations was that during their media day 30 percent of Middletowners used media concurrently. In other words, they watched TV while surfing the Web or they talked on the phone while using the computer. Some read newspapers while they watched TV. Is it multitasking or is it ADD?

When I read a study like this, I want to bring back the late media genius Marshall McLuhan, who once wrote, “All media work us over completely… they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage.”

It’s one thing to ask how we are “consuming” media. Another question is just how it is consuming us.

Meditations on a month in time called October

Published 10/18/05

It was a fall weekend worth framing. And by the end of this week, central Indiana, according to one forecaster, would to see “a tranquil pattern of unseasonable weather for the foreseeable future.” His foreseeable future included some upper 70s and lower 80s! If that’s not breaking news, I’m not a weakly columnist in search of a subject.

Last week it was a real temptation to walk through the house, lock down the windows and hoard the heat, what with the coming of the cold and fuel bills of apocalyptic proportions. But the heating bill collector be damned, I have thrown up the sashes to let Indian summer in. To revel in the clean autumn air.

One of the great ironies of this time of year is that it’s often warmer outside than it is inside. Sometimes, on what feels like a cool morning, you can just go to the window and tap in to the free warmth from on high instead of flipping on the thermostat. By mid October, each and every warm, blue-sky day is a gift from The Man. And another chance to stick it to The Other Man, The Owner of the Oil, whoever he is. No doubt his house will radiate this winter.

But is this really Indian summer or just Indiana fall? I won’t debate that with the almanac experts. But it is interesting to note the origins of the term “Indian summer.” A Web site called World Wide Words says that it probably originated with the early colonists who used the term “Indian” to describe something that they thought was a poor imitation of the real thing, hence, “Indian corn,” “Indian tea” and “Indian summer.” OK, so the settlers weren’t the most culturally sensitive people on the face of the New World. If anything, the beauty, the wonder and the surprise of the phenomenon known as Indian summer should restore new meaning to the term. Can you experience an Indian summer in Indiana and call it a fraud?

There’s something weird about “October.” I don’t mean the month, I mean the word. It’s an “oct” word, like octagon, octave and octopus and other words deriving from a Latin root word, meaning “eight.” In fact, October means “eighth month.” Not on my calendar. But apparently it was on the Roman calendar.

To me, October has an otherworldly dimension about it. And not just because of college football, the World Series, Halloween or an album by U2.

October in my life has been a period of new deals, re-arrangements and start-overs. I said “I do” in October—and I do celebrate the event every October 18. Every new job offer I’ve accepted has happened in the month of October. Yo!

Of course, October can also be ominous. Particularly for those who dread winter. In a time of climactic weather changes, it may be the calm before the storm. Like this October, it may be warm days sent to savor. It may be time to stock up for what’s on the horizon. A time to bring in the harvest not to mention the lawn chairs and the hammock.

Does everybody know what time it is? No, it’s not tool time. It’s borrowed time.

One man’s story of reinvention and an empty tank

Published 10/11/05

When I decided recently to re-invent myself, I had to face the fact that I was no visionary along the order of, say, a Benjamin Franklin or a Thomas Edison. Knowing that I needed some help, my first stop was the Official U.S. Vocational Guidance Office…

Vocational Guide: OK, Mr. Williams, as a highly trained vocational guide, I’ll be asking you some personal and probing questions related to your professional and vocational aspirations. So, let’s get started. How do you want to spend the rest of your pathetic life? And make it quick. I’ve got other baby boomers to re-invent today.

Me: Well, to be honest, Vocational Guide, I’ve spent most of my life moving words around, you know, just kind of tinkering with sentences—

Vocational Guide: Hold on, let me turn to the Book of Jobs--

Me: You mean the Book of Job in the Old Testament??

Vocational Guide: No, you dolt, I mean the Book of Jobs, the Master Database of Vocational Opportunities…let’s see here, tinkerer, tinkerer, tinkerer…Nope, no openings for tinkerers. Guess, you’ll have to go with Plan B. And let’s stay in the T section because this is one monster of a reference book.

Me: Now that you mention it, Mr. Vocational Guide, I-I have always wanted to work for a think tank, you know, as a hired head, a professional ponderer--

Vocational Guide: Are you serious? A think tank? Hold on, let me find one here. Okay, Brookings Institution, Hudson Institute, Hoover Institute, Manhattan Institute…Hmm, pal, I’ve got some really, really bad news for you. There are no think tanks in Madison County. I guess you’ll have to start your own. Here, take your typo-laden resume with you…

So that day, I left the Vocational Guidance office empowered to pursue the road not taken, the office not opened. Just days later, in an empty Fortune Management building in downtown Anderson, I threw open the doors to my startup, doing business as “Jack’s Tank.”

As you may know, until 1970, there were perhaps only a couple dozen think tanks across the country, most of them providing non-partisan policy and military advice to the U.S. government. But after 1970, the number of think tanks exploded. I don’t mean the tanks exploded—which might happen if one of the senior fellows, as tank employees are known, lit up a Lucky. What I mean is that the number of tanks expressing various partisan, political and ideological views and doing policy-relevant research, data analysis and dissemination multiplied exponentially. Well, relatively exponentially. Today, there are 300 such think tanks around the world!

For a short while there were 301. In the first few weeks, life at Jack’s Tank was a vocational dream. You’d go in to the tank each day, sit with a furrowed brow, scratch your head a few times, maybe play around on the Internet, take a long lunch hour and leave early when you’d finished thinking. Oh, the life of intellectual entrepreneurship, just tinkering in a think tank.

In those days, in spite of our casual corporate culture, the research at Jack’s Tank was informing, if not impacting, both foreign and domestic policy. We had so much walk-in business that we had to open a think tank drive thru so people could order and pick up their research without leaving the convenience of their cars. The drive thru distinguished us among think tanks throughout the world.

And then the rent came due. As theorists, scholars and thinkers, we just weren’t accountants. We had forgotten to hire a CFO. Well, you can probably guess what happened to Jack’s Institute. You’re right. It tanked.

Presently, I’m back in the land of re-invention. And I keep thinking about the poster I saw on the wall of Mr. Vocational Guide, one which offered some life planning advice that all of us “re-inventors” should take to heart. It was a quote from actress and comedienne Lily Tomlin, who said, “I always wanted to be somebody. I guess I should have been more specific.”

Women clean up in latest lavatory comparison study

Published 10/4/05

Okay, tell me if this has ever happened to you: You’re in a public restroom and behind closed doors but, let’s say, in no position to monitor the activities of other patrons of the facilities. You hear someone enter, complete their, uh, transaction, and then exit without apparently using the faucet.

Gag!!

But what you heard could well have happened, says the American Society of Microbiology, which has been conducting a study concerning America’s hygiene habits.

During August, according to the Associated Press, the ASM visited public restrooms in assorted American cities and observed how many people washed their hands before leaving. Well, they didn’t go in with pencils behind their ears and clipboards in their hands. They went incognito and counted discreetly. This year’s restroom research was conducted in Atlanta, Chicago, New York City and San Francisco.

But the researchers didn’t go to just any restrooms. They hit the facilities of famous American attractions—Atlanta’s Turner Field, the Shedd Aquarium and Museum of Science and Industry in the Windy City, Grand Central Station and Penn Station in the Big Apple, and San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal Farmers Market. Informants monitored the activities of more than 6,300 bathroom users. Interesting work if you can get it.

And here’s the punch line of the story, one which women have been waiting for. The study showed that, in city after city, women washed up 90 percent of the time while only 75 percent of the anthropoids—that is, creatures resembling men—soaped and rinsed.

Of course, studies tend to make sweeping generalizations and results will vary from city to city. For example, 88 percent of the visitors to San Francisco and Chicago washrooms reportedly washed their hands before leaving. On the other hand, and probably not one that you’d want to touch, more than 25 percent of baseball fans attending an Atlanta Braves game at Turner Field did not lather and rinse. While 84 percent of women did, the average dropped when only 63 percent of men washed. Of course, in defense of men, you can’t linger in the lavatory when the pennant chase is getting interesting, the bases are loaded and Chipper Jones is coming to the plate.

Public hygiene habits between men and women were also pronounced in NYC’s Penn Station where 92 percent of women freshened up but only 64 percent of male New Yorkers did so.

So, what can we learn from the survey besides the fact that women have cleaner “genes” than men or that we shouldn’t shake hands with guys from New York and Atlanta?

October is when we throw out the first germ to officially open the American influenza season. Let’s come clean here: Each year between five and 20 percent of the nation’s population is infected with the flu, more than 200,000 are hospitalized and nearly 36,000 die of flu complications, so says the Centers for Disease Control. (Because the CDC is located in Atlanta, they should be able to do something about those bacteria-laden Braves fans.) And yet, according to the ASM, cold and influenza viruses are spread as often, if not more, by unclean hands than through the sneezing of airborne respiratory droplets onto innocent American victims.

In other words, we can stay healthy this fall by spending just a few seconds at the spigot and the dispenser.

In conjunction with the restroom study, the ASM also conducted a national telephone survey. Answering several hygiene related questions, 23 percent of respondents admitted that they didn’t wash before handling food, 27 percent said they did not scrub after changing a diaper, 58 percent reported not washing after petting a pet, and 79 percent pleaded guilty to not rinsing after handling money. (Since it’s been proven that most of the cash we use is contaminated with bacteria, our money may be in need of an occasional laundering.)

Asked if they washed up after using public powder rooms, 97 percent of women and 96 percent of men surveyed answered “yes.” What did this project prove? That not only do we have illness-causing cooties on our hands, but we’re big fat liars, too.

I’m no germa-phobe but this fall I can guarantee you I’ll be holding the hands of more women than men.