Narrowcasting

      Narrowcasting is when a television station targets a specific population within a society. This is most commonly spoken about when it comes to the cable network for FOX News, which popularly narrowcasts notoriously conservative-directed news stories.

    MSNBC is typically considered to be the directive of the liberal media. So after for example, the Sandy Hook tragedy, the liberal media began running stories advocating for more and more gun control and an assault weapons ban, while channels like FOX News began running more stories that criticized the liberals for trying to take away Americans 2nd Amendment rights by taking away their guns. FOX News stories began to veer in the direction of how we need more guns to protect our citizens and that if the teachers had been armed with guns, that the tragedy would have been prevented. 

     CNN is typically considered to be more in the middle when it comes to a liberal or conservative slant, but often people of the opposite sides will accuse CNN of leaning right or left, just because they don't like the story that they are reporting because it conflicts with that person's views.

            Narrowcasting can lead to narrow minds which is very dangerous to a society. People will tune into a channel just to hear from a specialist or an anchor that will report with a slant towards their views, which can inhibit the amount of information people take in. With the lack of non-biased information, people selectively pick and choose information based on what they want to hear, creating individuals who are not well rounded.

    In addition to stations that are directed to a certain group of people based on political ideology, there are stations that exist solely based on ethnicities such as with Univision and Telemundo, which are channels with Hispanic-directed programming. Christian conservatives can watch the 700 club and there are also African-American directed television shows on BET. 

   Narrowcasting is quite controversial, because although it allows people to be able to seed out the type of television programs they watch, but it can also polarize a nation, especially in an election season.