Is the medium the message?

I would have to agree that Marshall McLuhan’s statement that the medium is the message has shown to be quite true in today’s society. Each different medium that is used, whether it be radio, newspaper, book, magazine, or television, is directed at a different type of audience as well as in a different fashion and format. You even see this in movies where novels must be condensed down drastically in order to continue to demand the attention of the audience throughout the film. In visual formats, such as television and movies, much of the accompanying details that would be normally be spelled out in text are now left up to the viewer to infer from the images presented on screen. This always leads to the idea that the message trying to be conveyed is adapted, altered, or omitted from certain types of mediums due to the fact that it cannot be universally transmitted into the different formats. For instance, a book would not be read aloud on television because it would quickly lose the interest of most viewers, but it could appeal to radio listeners as it fulfills the audio only expectations of the targeted audience. Television being considered a “cool” medium is probably largely due to the extremely large and diverse audience base in which it must appeal to in order to get ratings. Most content displayed through this medium is initially designed to be generally broad in topic, open ended in its idea structures, and targeted towards entertainment. Because you can both see and hear the messages being transmitted they tend to be shorter and rely more on the audience to interpret the message then have it spelled out for them.