67 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
67 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
Blame The Audience
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<p>In <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/movies/24slum.html?ex=1282536000&en=d4926eee92216196&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss'>Summer<br />
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Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle</a>, a writer for the <cite>New York<br />
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Times</cite> explores the theory that movie attendance is tanking<br />
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because the quality of all too many mega-hyped “major movies” has<br />
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plunged into the crapper. Well, no shit, Sherlock — what was<br />
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your first clue? <em>Pearl Harbor</em>? <em>Alexander</em>?<br />
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<em>Mission Impossible II?</em> What’s really news about this story is<br />
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that it’s news — a startling break from the blame-the-audience<br />
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thinking so prevalent in Big Media over the last decade.</p>
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<p><span id="more-200"></span></p>
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<p>It’s been most egregious in the music industry, which has spent<br />
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most of that decade desperately trying to pin the blame for anemic<br />
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sales on anything other than the fact that it spends its marketing<br />
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budget pushing no-talent assclowns like Limp Bizkit and ‘N Sync (and<br />
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yes, for you <cite>Office Space</cite> fans, Michael Bolton too).<br />
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“Nah,” say the record-company executives to themselves, “It couldn’t<br />
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be <em>that</em>. I know, let’s blame file-sharing! Bad audience.<br />
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<em>Baaad!</em>“</p>
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<p>Newspaper circulation is in a death-spiral so steep that at least<br />
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four major-city dailies and a national syndicate have been caught<br />
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making up millions of readers out of thin air just to stay<br />
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viable-looking to advertisers. Could it due to be shallow<br />
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print-the-press-release reporting, political bias, and a surfeit of<br />
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sensationalism and fluff? “Nah,” say the newspaper executives to<br />
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themselves, “It couldn’t be <em>that</em>. I know, let’s blame the<br />
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Internet! Bad audience. <em>Baaad!</em>“</p>
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<p>Of course, one could argue that Big Media is simply taking its cue<br />
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from the Democratic Party. (Yes, I know one of those is a wholly-owned<br />
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subsidiary of the other, I just can’t keep straight which one is on<br />
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top.) If Republicans are beating the stuffings out of you in every<br />
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election, it couldn’t be because you have no program beyond screaming<br />
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“George Bush is eeeeevil!” and licking the anus of the Designated<br />
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Victim Group Of The Week. “Nah,” say the DNCers to themselves, “It<br />
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couldn’t be <em>that</em>. I know, let’s blame talk radio and Karl<br />
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Rove! Bad audience. <em>Baaad!</em>“</p>
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<p>What’s really going on here is a confluence of trends. One, which<br />
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the <cite>Times</cite> article points out, is that audiences are<br />
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getting better at seeing through hype and rejecting the crap. A second<br />
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that the article doesn’t highlight is the proliferation of media<br />
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channels and the rise of the Internet. Blogs, cable, satellite radio,<br />
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podcasts, remix culture, — these are all part of a trend that<br />
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gives media consumers far more choices than they’ve ever had before.<br />
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Which means more alternatives and less temptation to settle<br />
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for the crap.</p>
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<p>Which means that, exactly as audiences have been breaking free of<br />
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media oligopolies, media bosses have been telling them they should<br />
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kiss their chains. Bad audience. <em>Baaad!</em> But wait —<br />
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perhaps this <cite>Times</cite> article, brought to you by the Grey<br />
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Lady aka Dowager Empress of Big Media, is a leading indicator that<br />
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some tenuous contact with reality is beginning to develop in the<br />
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media-bosses’ brains.</p>
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<p>That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I’m not holding my breath.<br />
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Here are some indicators to watch for. More movies like the<br />
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<em>Rings</em> trilogy or the <cite>Harry Potter</cite> sequence that<br />
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actually seem to have some kind of heart and respect for their<br />
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sources. More pop bands like Lynkyn Park and System of a Down that can<br />
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actually play their instruments and seem to have some ideas that weren’t<br />
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test-marketed to death by some soulless A&R hack. Newspapers where you<br />
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can actually tell the war news from the partisan editorial ax-grinding<br />
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(sorry, can’t think of any of those). And — OK, I know this<br />
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is a stretch, but stay with me here — a Democratic Party with<br />
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an actual <em>platform</em>.</p>
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<p>Hear that, media bosses? Best you get it together, because here’s<br />
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the sentence that will spell your doom otherwise: I have choices,<br />
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and I know how to use them.</p>
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