Media diets

To attract an audience or readership and retain its continuing interest, radio, television and periodicals (dailies, weeklies, etc.) have to supply a varied 'diet' of programmes, articles, or visual materials. The variety is a compromise between responding to the interests of different segments of the same audience and holding the interest of any one such segment. The materials presented must therefore respond to the tendency for attention to wane and switch to some alternative by trying to ensure that that alternative is provided in some measure by the channel or publication in question. Programme directors and editors must therefore juggle with different materials of variable length to capture and retain a fickle attention.

In the government of any society the government must ensure that it captures and retains support by treating subjects which attract the attention of potential supporters for a sufficient length of time.

The well-developed skill required to select and balance materials.

The explicit nature of the shift to more satisfactory alternatives. The well-catalogued range of a material.

Scheduling techniques. How materials attract and hold attention. Development of the capacity to switch to an alternative and to choose between alternatives. Clarification of what is attractive to an individual, and when, in each category of material from the range available. Emergence of new categories of material. Attention management.