Read the following passage and answer questions
Television is a cultural commodity. It works within an economically determined capitalist economy, but when we have said that about it we have said both much and remarkably little. There is a financial economy within which wealth circulates, and a cultural economy within which meanings and pleasures circulate, and the relationship between them is not as deterministic as some theorists have proposed. In the financial economy, television symbolises programmes and advertisements, not textuality. A programme is a commodity produced and then sold to distributors. In distribution, its role changes and it becomes not a commodity, but a producer, and what it produces is a new commodity, the audience which is then, in its turn, sold as a commodity to advertisers. The ramifications of this financial economy are fascinating. Here the role shift undergone by the programme in the financial economy-that from commodity to producer is now undergone by the audience, who are left as a commodity sold to the advertiser. But in the cultural economy the audience rejects its role as a commodity and becomes a Producer, a Producer of meanings and pleasures, and at this moment stops being 'an audience' and becomes different materialisations of the process that we call "viewing television". While the metaphor of a cultural economy is productive one, we must not let it blind us to differences between it and the financial. Meanings and pleasures do not circulate in the cultural economy in the same way that wealth does in the financial. In the first place there is no exchange of money at the point of sale or consumption. Television appears to be free, however, it may by actually paid for. Payment has no direct relationship to consumption-people can consume as much as they wish and what they wish with no thought of what they are able to afford.
1. What are the ramifications of television as a commodity in financial economy?
(a) Making huge profits
(b) Importance to distribution channels
(c) Audience for advertisers
(d) Enculturisation of audience
2. When we consider television as a product, then it operates in a/an
(a) Deterministic cultural system
(b) Circulatory commercial system
(c) Audience power system
(d) Distributive pleasure system
3. How viewing television in a cultural economy affects the audience"
(a) Audience assume a new role
(b) They become a new commodity
(c) They cannot differentiate between the financial economy and cultural economy
(d) Audience restrict the circulation of meanings and pleasures
4. What is unique about television audience in a cultural economy?
(a) They are non-stop producers of meanings
(b) They cannot fathom the finer nuances of financial economy
(c) They do not pay for content consumption
(d) They can consume as much as affordability
5. In distribution television becomes
(a) Cultural commodity
(b) Producer of a new commodity
(c) Purveyor of textuality
(d) A source of theorisation
ANSWERS
1 - c
2 - b
3 - a
4 - a & d
5 - b
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