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Originally Posted by Charlatan
Flaming Dog... it is clearly there as a pipeline to provide advertising... That said, you cannot completely dismiss the "Education. News. Entertainment." part of the mix.
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I can concede that certain incidents in our collective history have gained a certain amount of resonance because their images have been made timeless as a result of their repeated broadcast on TV. For instace, I'm not even American, and I can call to mind the famous picture of JFK's cavalcade. I suppose September 11th is another example of where the whole world watched an event unfold with baited breath, thanks to TV.
But even events like that, I have very clear and serious reservations about the way coverage of events like that were portrayed. That's another discussion though.
To my mind, increasingly, any worthy content on TV is being squeezed out by reality TV, lowest common denominator, 'escapist' rubbish, soap operas, TV movies and propaganda news. People will say that advertising just pays for the programming in between - a necessary evil... but it's my view that the programming increasingly hammers home the message of the advertising, simply because the vast bulk of the programming is absolutely worthless.
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Originally Posted by Charlatan
Television, historically, has been responsible for bringing nations closer together. As trivial as it may seem, things like the Superbowl, the Paul Henderson goal (ask a Canadian), the shooting of JFK, etc... were/are largely television phenomanons.
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Television has also, in my opinion, been among the most significant factors in increasing fear, paranoia and isolation among the populace while at the same time actually working to
decrease our ability to engage with each other. This was demonstrated to me as recently as yesterday. I tried to start a conversation, only to be asked to 'sh' because the person I was talking to was trying to watch 'Driving Miss Daisy'.
Nowadays, in my view, it communicates hegemony in the name of information, consumerism in the name of education, and gutter-level voyeurism in the name of entertainment.
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Originally Posted by Charlatan
The advertisers are not going to go away entirely but with new forms of delivery, it does look like subscriber based programming could diminish the power of advertising on our content.
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Unless they start taxing TV, or extorting a licence fee from you, like they do in the UK, the advertisers will never even approach going away.
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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
Our Ad Sales takes up 5-6 floors, our production offices? 3 floors.
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That's a perfect demonstration. It was the same on the paper I worked for, and that was a piddling little local title. The advertising staff earned 50 per cent more than the editorial staff, got company cars, company phones, worked strict, set hours, and were basically treated like gold. Editorial staff, such as myself, were paid peanuts, had to use their own cars, mobile phones, worked unpaid overtime without time back in lieu and were basically treated like dogshit.
Seems to me you can see right there a very clear picture of where the company's loyalties lay. I always had the distinct feeling that as long as readership didn't dip and revenue didn't drop, I could wipe my ass on a piece of plain paper and submit it as a story.