Formal aspects: This book, as mentioned in my opening post, is a book which uses the framework of Alice in Wonderland for propagandistic means towards the NBC Red program. At the time of Sponsor-land’s creation, the Red program was in competition with NBC’s Blue program, explaining the ‘need’ for such extreme promotion of one program over the other. The book focuses mainly on the benefits of advertising with the Red program, and, on the number of people who regularly listen to the Red program. It is constructed as if it were a young child’s book with cartoon illustrations and brightly coloured everything. The pages are mostly dominated by images, it has a continuous narrative format describing the various shows that are on the NBC Red program day by day, but also laid out as if in small blurbs—could that be a nod to the radio format? The characters in the story are listed at the front describing the role they will be playing in the book as if in a play bill. Throughout the story the various illustrations ALL contain the phrase “Anytime is a good time on NBC Red” hidden somewhere. What I find most odd about this book is that it is a book form of advertisement for a radio program—why use a book to advertise the benefits of advertising on the radio? Perhaps as a more physical mode of representation? This only gets stranger when combined with the fact that it is mimicking a child’s book. Why use this framework? Perhaps comparing this book with the others will help reveal the benefits to this choice.

What makes it a parody?: It is playing with the commonly known characters of Alice in Wonderland but putting them in a new situation with a meaning contrary to that of the original. The title clearly plays on the original well known story which provides an easy framework for conveying information to an audience in a familiar format. The book is very self referential—“a bit awed by a book which could turn its own pages and answer questions put to it” and “the book, I mean. Its my own invention—an automatic presentation”. These refer to a presentation board which Alice encounters, but is clearly also referring the book itself as a mode of automatic presentation to the reader. In this way it becomes a parody of itself as well.

What makes it unacceptable for kids?: The information contained within it is mostly statistics, clearly geared at potential advertisers for NBC Red. It has no strong plot, instead just facts and numbers. It is clearly not geared towards children, despite the fact that its design is like that of a children’s book.