Blame The Audience
<p>In <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/movies/24slum.html?ex=1282536000&#038;en=d4926eee92216196&#038;ei=5088&#038;partner=rssnyt&#038;emc=rss'>Summer<br />
Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle</a>, a writer for the <cite>New York<br />
Times</cite> explores the theory that movie attendance is tanking<br />
because the quality of all too many mega-hyped &#8220;major movies&#8221; has<br />
plunged into the crapper.  Well, no shit, Sherlock &mdash; what was<br />
your first clue?  <em>Pearl Harbor</em>?  <em>Alexander</em>?<br />
<em>Mission Impossible II?</em> What&#8217;s really news about this story is<br />
that it&#8217;s news &mdash; a startling break from the blame-the-audience<br />
thinking so prevalent in Big Media over the last decade.</p>
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<p>It&#8217;s been most egregious in the music industry, which has spent<br />
most of that decade desperately trying to pin the blame for anemic<br />
sales on anything other than the fact that it spends its marketing<br />
budget pushing no-talent assclowns like Limp Bizkit and &#8216;N Sync (and<br />
yes, for you <cite>Office Space</cite> fans, Michael Bolton too).<br />
&#8220;Nah,&#8221; say the record-company executives to themselves, &#8220;It couldn&#8217;t<br />
be <em>that</em>.  I know, let&#8217;s blame file-sharing!  Bad audience.<br />
<em>Baaad!</em>&#8220;</p>
<p>Newspaper circulation is in a death-spiral so steep that at least<br />
four major-city dailies and a national syndicate have been caught<br />
making up millions of readers out of thin air just to stay<br />
viable-looking to advertisers.  Could it due to be shallow<br />
print-the-press-release reporting, political bias, and a surfeit of<br />
sensationalism and fluff?  &#8220;Nah,&#8221; say the newspaper executives to<br />
themselves, &#8220;It couldn&#8217;t be <em>that</em>.  I know, let&#8217;s blame the<br />
Internet! Bad audience.  <em>Baaad!</em>&#8220;</p>
<p>Of course, one could argue that Big Media is simply taking its cue<br />
from the Democratic Party. (Yes, I know one of those is a wholly-owned<br />
subsidiary of the other, I just can&#8217;t keep straight which one is on<br />
top.)  If Republicans are beating the stuffings out of you in every<br />
election, it couldn&#8217;t be because you have no program beyond screaming<br />
&#8220;George Bush is eeeeevil!&#8221; and licking the anus of the Designated<br />
Victim Group Of The Week.  &#8220;Nah,&#8221; say the DNCers to themselves, &#8220;It<br />
couldn&#8217;t be <em>that</em>.  I know, let&#8217;s blame talk radio and Karl<br />
Rove! Bad audience.  <em>Baaad!</em>&#8220;</p>
<p>What&#8217;s really going on here is a confluence of trends.  One, which<br />
the <cite>Times</cite> article points out, is that audiences are<br />
getting better at seeing through hype and rejecting the crap. A second<br />
that the article doesn&#8217;t highlight is the proliferation of media<br />
channels and the rise of the Internet.  Blogs, cable, satellite radio,<br />
podcasts, remix culture, &mdash; these are all part of a trend that<br />
gives media consumers far more choices than they&#8217;ve ever had before.<br />
Which means more alternatives and less temptation to settle<br />
for the crap.</p>
<p>Which means that, exactly as audiences have been breaking free of<br />
media oligopolies, media bosses have been telling them they should<br />
kiss their chains.  Bad audience.  <em>Baaad!</em> But wait &mdash;<br />
perhaps this <cite>Times</cite> article, brought to you by the Grey<br />
Lady aka Dowager Empress of Big Media, is a leading indicator that<br />
some tenuous contact with reality is beginning to develop in the<br />
media-bosses&#8217; brains.</p>
<p>That would be nice, wouldn&#8217;t it?  But I&#8217;m not holding my breath.<br />
Here are some indicators to watch for.  More movies like the<br />
<em>Rings</em> trilogy or the <cite>Harry Potter</cite> sequence that<br />
actually seem to have some kind of heart and respect for their<br />
sources. More pop bands like Lynkyn Park and System of a Down that can<br />
actually play their instruments and seem to have some ideas that weren&#8217;t<br />
test-marketed to death by some soulless A&#038;R hack.  Newspapers where you<br />
can actually tell the war news from the partisan editorial ax-grinding<br />
(sorry, can&#8217;t think of any of those).  And &mdash; OK, I know this<br />
is a stretch, but stay with me here &mdash; a Democratic Party with<br />
an actual <em>platform</em>.</p>
<p>Hear that, media bosses?  Best you get it together, because here&#8217;s<br />
the sentence that will spell your doom otherwise: I have choices,<br />
and I know how to use them.</p>
