August 19, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ • McDialogues™
Understanding the Grammars of Electric Culture and Propaganda Science™
An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™ and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science™
by Nelson S. Thall
Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca. and McLuhan Media Scientist, Former President/Director, Marshall McLuhan Centre On Global Communications, Toronto, Canada.
The Most Powerful Environment Is the One You Don't Know You're In
Muzak Played Programming. Television Programmed the People.
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Muzak famously described its business with the motto, "We don't play music. We play programming." But people hearing Muzak in stores, offices, elevators and public spaces thought they were simply listening to background music. What did Muzak understand about manipulating an audience that the audience itself did not understand?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Muzak is a manipulation of people in a very special way. Muzak puts on a huge audience which is not invited even to notice that it is being put on. The music is merely the content. The programming creates the hidden environment. That is why the media scientist studies hidden environments at all times, all media in their unconscious aspects. They are tranquilizers. Once an environment becomes sufficiently familiar, we cease to notice it, and precisely then its effects can operate without our conscious recognition. The music is the figure. The programming is the ground. Muzak understood that you do not have to capture people's conscious attention in order to alter their environment.
Television demonstrates the same principle on an enormously larger scale. One of its hidden effects is to remove people's private identity. Simply by watching it, people become corporate, peer-group people and lose interest in being private individuals. The viewer believes he is watching programs, but the programs are content. The hidden environment is television itself, quietly reorganizing the user while his attention remains fixed upon what appears on the screen. That is one of the hidden and perhaps insidious effects of television, and it explains why McLuhan insisted that we study media not primarily by what they say, but by what they silently do to us. Muzak played programming. Television programmed the people.
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All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence, aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM), was not employed. We hired a stenographer. No intellectual contribution or creative authorship is attributed to the AI tool. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com