15. News and Media (Mediální prostředky)
In the Middle Age the only source of information were merchants going from place to place and inhabitants of towns and villages waited for the news they brought. Books belonged to a very small group of educated people (nobility and clergy-men).
After Guttenberg’s invention of printing, distribution of new information became easier, books (mostly Bible) appeared in common homes. Newspapers became the only one source of information until the invention of telegraph, cinema and telephone.
Later, in the 20s of the 20th century, when radio broadcasting started, people were able to receive new information more quickly than before. Radio is a powerful thing, and although it has no screen like television does, it may broadcast 24 hours a day. Most people are too busy to watch TV during the day but they can turn on their radios when working, cooking, even in night….There is a number of radio stations so everyone can choose the one that he likes best.
In the early 50s television broadcasting started. Watching TV became the only evening activity in several families. TV brings not only fresh news, but several kinds of entertainment. Every day you can watch many programmes as: live sports programmes, interviews with politicians, chat shows, game shows, films, soap operas, documentaries, ….. There are also lots of advertisements that use attractive people or funny situation to sell products like cars, perfumes, beer, etc. The Czech Republic has two public service stations – ČT 1 and ČT 2 and two commercial stations – Nova and Prima. There is much less advertisements on public stations than there is on the commercial ones. ČT 2 is target at more demanding viewers, showing subtitled films, documentaries, musical programmes, drama and concerts, whereas commercial channels are less serious, the news are sensational, exciting and full of action. The most known in Great Britain is BBC channel (the British Broadcasting Corporation).
In the later 80s and the start of 90s Internet boom became. It brings the most quickly way of changing dates and information. It gives possibility to communicate to people on the other side of the Earth, you can find thousands and thousands information from any area you choose. As the technology improves, Internet becomes quicker and quicker. Most people stopped posting classical letters and send only e-mails. A lot of business are based only on the Internet.
Another modern media of communication are mobile phones. Especially in our country nearly everyone has the mobile phone, included teenagers and some younger children.
The communication technology improves, and every day it becomes more and more perfect. However, lots of people buy the newspaper every morning and like to spend their time to coffee with a piece of paper. The daily press informs about the latest news in political, cultural and economic life. There are interviews with famous people, important sport results. Supplements are pages put inside the main newspaper. The most frequent papers in Britain are: The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent. Magazines provide entertainment or information. Some brings offers of various goods. Women prefer clothes whereas men are interested in technical devices. Magazines are published not daily but weekly, fortnightly, monthly, …..This is the main reason why they can’t give fresh daily news. So the contents make magazines a lot different from newspapers.
