What Future Does Professional Media Content Production Have?

In the Media Literacy class I’m teaching this semester, my students are engaging in a role-playing exercise in which they assume the roles of four groups that, traditionally, play a role in the development of a new medium: governments, advertisers, technology developers, and content producers. First, the students research the role that these groups played in the creation and popularization of print, radio, TV, film, internet, etc. Then, they form new groups comprised of representatives from each of these groups and discuss how to develop a heretofore un-developed medium. The first example I thought of for the un-developed medium is: virtual reality.

Most of us have an idea of what virtual reality could be. And this imagined reality of VR could have government regulation (determining how the content will be distributed, if the roll-out of VR will be subsidized like a utility, how to regulate violent/sexual content, etc.), advertising (product placement in virtual reality? Pretty much an advertiser’s dream!), and technology developers (Apple VR might have a cleaner look than Microsoft’s somewhat cluttered-looking VR), and content producers (custom-made luxury environments for you to relax in). Sounds like a good fit!

I’m going to do this exercise again later in the semester, and I’m having no trouble coming up with several other “media technologies of tomorrow”: augmented reality glasses, superior surveillance technology, a portable instant-fMRI machine, affordable 3D printing. Some of these technologies are already gaining a foothold in the market. It’s easy to see how governments, advertisers, and technology developers would be involved in the creation and development of these technologies. But where would the content producers fit in?

The more I thought about the exciting media technologies of the future, the more trouble I have thinking about how professional content producers (e.g., screenwriters or the equivalent) will fit into the picture. I’m quite confident that there will always be an appetite for well-told stories. People skilled at telling these stories, through words or pictures or sounds, will have a place in our media environment. But I suspect that people will devote less time to consuming those stories than in years past. During the golden age of radio and television, people spent hours every day consuming content created by professionals. Increasingly, we spend more and more time using Facebook, Twitter, and other activities that don’t involve much in the way of content production (yes I know, lots of conversations on FB & Twitter are about content produced by professionals, but still, most of the aggregate value of these sites, I would contend, is generated by the users and the creators of the venue, i.e., the technology developers). In thinking about the media technologies of the future, it’s hard to think of a place for the writers, the producers, the directors. I’m sure there will be a handful of greats who produce content we all talk about, but perhaps a shrinking middle ground, and a shrinking window of attention and time we all spend consuming professionally produced content. 

Aside from making my group role-playing project a bit more difficult to design, its hard to think of a downside to this future. Definitely something I'll come back to in class. 

Thinking Through the Inevitability (or obsolescence) of Advertising...Again

Thinking about whether ad creep is inevitable is a bit of an obsession with me. I try not to bug people I know by constantly ranting about it. Instead, I reserve such rants for this space (that's my basic argument here: being a tolerable company or a tolerable human being is all about knowing where to put certain messages). I like to think that I'm refining or extending my arguments, but maybe I'm just repeating myself. Here goes.

2 likely possibilities for which we might gather evidence:

1: ads have crept up a little in terms of where they are and how much of our conscious and unconscious attention they take up, but not all that much. There's always been push-back from consumers, and so they've reached a permanent stalemate w/ advertisers and sellers. Ads don't work perfectly, but they work well enough to be worth the trouble for the sellers.

2: prevalent promotion of any kind, much like record labels, is a holdover from a pre-networked information economy. During the broadcast era, the infrastructures and content needed for the pre-eminent modes of mass communication - TV and newspapers - were expensive to set up and maintain, so expensive that subscription fees wouldn't have covered the cost. During the networked communication era, the infrastructure had a high up-front cost but the cost of maintenance, while hardly nil, is far less expensive than that of traditional broadcast media. In addition, the cost of providing content of acceptable quality (user generated content, once it gets going) is virtually nil. The supplementary revenue generated for the service providers by advertising is not as essential as it was during the broadcast era. In addition, there are less expensive ways for the producers of goods and services to reach target markets (say, those in the market for a re-financed mortgage) than splashing ads everywhere. As a seller, you could spend money trying to cultivate demand where there was none (which advertisements do all the time, but is an expensive, unreliable, and difficult task given the ever-increasing, ever-evolving savviness of consumers) or you could spend less money targeting those who are "in the market" for something you sell to begin with. Since low overhead and greater sales trump all in a capitalist marketplace, promotion outside of a designated "marketplace" becomes obsolete. The practice will persist for awhile, especially in places where networked communication is less ubiquitous, but only due to institutional inertia which decays over time.

Argument for 1: promotion of goods is inevitable. I would grant this. If we want to use history as proof, we would see that promotion of one kind of another exists in every known culture in every place in every era (not that history should be used as an argument for what humans are capable of, but for the moment, we'll accepts this argument's utility despite its shortcomings). You can regulate it and restrict it, but if you do this too much, it would handicap your nation's companies in a global marketplace in which it must compete with less-regulated markets.

Argument for 2: In most cultures, promotion was/is relegated to a certain space - the marketplace. If you went to the marketplace, you were prepared for people selling their wares. If you were in a domestic setting, if you were listening to a story, if you were at work, you heard far less explicit or implicit promotion of goods or services.

What happens when ads move outside of the marketplace? You get greater sales, for the time being, but you also eat into the collective brain power of everyone in your culture. More time spent paying attention to ads, attempting to resist ads, and engineering more sophisticated ads is less time working, socializing, fucking, etc.

I'm particularly interested in studying the side effects of promotion that are not noticed by the conscious mind, b/c this seems to be the way advertising is going. Most product placement works this way. Maybe some online banner ads work this way on you. Its pretty well established that this kind of advertising works to some degree, in that it can convince us to buy things we wouldn't have bought had we not been exposed to the ads, though consumers cannot notice when it works. This is good in the sense that, unlike explicit advertising, this doesn't interfere with conscious processes (e.g. our abilities to concentrate on a complex narrative, to do work, to socialize w/ others). But it may interfere with unconscious processes. I would bet that our brains are working through things without our being conscious of it. The result of this "working through" is a stable sense of self, an ability to generate new ideas, and an ability to find some sort of equilibrium in social relations. It is possible that if you introduced a signal that interfered with that unconscious processing, it might prevent us from doing those things as effectively.

You can't determine whether or not this is the case by simply asking people. If I could conduct an ideal experiment, I would take some similar people, immerse some of them in ad saturated culture, immerse the others in the same culture where the ads were relegated to certain websites and physical areas (stores, neighborhoods, malls), and see if their abilities to do other things changed over time.

In closing, I might ask why telephones or electricity were never served up w/ ads. Why were we charged a subscription fee for those without having to pay for either service through our attention to advertising? Why weren't our telephone calls interrupted every five minutes w/ very brief ads for something? Was it just some artifact of the early monopoly on both which trained us to be intolerant of interruptions, or is there something about the proximity of extremely personal information (on the phone) and unrequested content (ads) that we can't tolerate (in which case we would be less tolerant of ads alongside emails than embedded in hulu videos). Surely, we would've complained about ads in our phonecalls but then, given the lack of other viable options, we would've tolerated them, and this would've generated more $ for advertisers, sellers, and the phone/electric companies. If ads work, as a way of selling goods and as a business model for media providers, then why aren't they literally everywhere?

Another Ad Rant (w/ Some Love for Nike)

Reading Josh Levin's terrifically funny and insightful ad crit on Slate prompted me to examine one of my abiding passions = Nike ads. Ever since I was a scrawny teen trying to cobble together an identity from the images and words around me, I had some sort of deep emotional connection to Nike ads. To this day, some Nike ads are capable of stirring up my emotions in less time than any video, TV show, or film. Sure, the power of these ads chiefly derives from other people's accomplishments: kick ass music and superhuman athletic performances. In this way, Nike ads are just really well executed mashups, ideally suited to the era of remixes and contextless clips, AND they've got the $ to do it legally by paying the exorbitant use rights for the clips. The critical acclaim these ads garnered only serve to legitimize my connection to material in the most debased of all cultural forms: commercials.

This strong emotional attachment is the effect that all advertising creators hope to forge. And yet, how many pairs of Nike shoes have I bought? Quite a few when I was in high school, but none since then. Price, comfort, and fashion trumped that emotional bond. Is an emotional connection with an ad the same thing as an emotional connection with the product? Is the associative link between an emotionally affecting 1 minute spot and a shoe strong enough to overwhelm my preference for a more comfortable, cheaper, more fashionable shoe?

The larger question is: What is the value of advertising today? Studies have shown that ads (be they 30 second spots or banner ads) work on a sub-liminal level, that most of the time we are not aware of how they prompt us to notice brands in stores or online. Its also thought that by getting people talking about that last Nike ad, Nike remains in the popular consciousness and is thus more likely to be purchased and preferred over other brands. Advertisers and product peddling companies stretch this logic of these links between appealing, memorable, or controversial advertising and product purchase way too far. No one has taken them to task thus far, and no one will have to. There is some link, though its hard to prove exactly how much advertising affects purchase decisions b/c the ads are part of an ocean of symbols and mixed messages about products.

Ads became popular because mass communication (magazines, radio programs, TV programs) were very expensive to distribute. They needed to be subsidized someway. Given the choice between paying high subscription prices for content and tolerating content that was not their choosing (i.e. commercials), viewers would probably have chosen the unwanted content of advertising. In effect, the question posed to the viewer/consumer was "would I pay 1/10th of my monthly salary for content I chose or not pay anything and tolerate some content not of my choosing?" But that equation has changed. It is considerably less expensive to create and distribute content. As more and more of the country and the world gets wired to broadband Internet, these costs will continue to fall. Soon, the consumer may ask him/herself "would I pay 1/1000th of my monthly salary for content I chose or pay nothing and tolerate ads?"

The prevalence of advertising is an artifact of the era of expensive distribution. There are already ad-less websites with business models that understand this: wikipedia and craigslist for starters. Craigslist works by soliciting micropayments from users and wikipedia asks for donations of time, expertise, and money. It would be an interesting economic experiment to see if consumers would be willing to pay small amounts of money to keep a site ad free. Such efforts failed to catch on in the past, but I'd argue that was b/c the amounts weren't small enough ($5-$10 per year seems appropriate to me) and that people don't recognize the true "cost" of advertising.

Most people say that they're not bothered by small banner ads, but I would counter by saying that they didn't choose that content nor is it consistent with the content they chose in terms of its emotional tone, the values it promotes, and its aesthetics. Therefore, it is a kind of cognitive tyranny imposed on the consumers who, though she or he is not aware, have their emotional experiences dampened by the interference of ads. I must stress the point about self-awareness not mattering. Just because you report not minding ads doesn't mean they don't affect your viewing/listening/reading experience in a detrimental way. This would be easy enough to test: show a group of people a show w/ ads and another group the same show w/o ads. If the group who sees the show w/o ads rates the experience higher in terms of enjoyment and information retention than the group who views the show w/ ads, then ads are costly to the consumer even if they are not aware of such a cost or claim to not mind ads.

Ads have costs for the producer (market research, ad creation, ad distribution) and for the consumer (worsened media experience, lost time). Ads have benefits for the producer (more products sold) and the consumer (directed to goods that they benefit from, an occasional laugh). Their costs and benefits change as the cost of producing/distributing content falls and consumers' access to information on various products increases via search technology.

This isn't to say that ads can't be brilliant, like those Nike ads or whatever ads you happen to find funny, moving, or thought provoking. But the creative folk who put together the ads are hampered by having to shoe-horn in a product, and if brilliance happens its more of a happy accident than anything else.

BTW, Levin's cataloging of random images from that one Nike spot is terrific but not exhaustive. Around :49, there's Pete Sampras vomiting and a drawing of two lute-playing jesters. wtf.

Superhero Movies - More Diverse Than You Think

At the risk of using a classic snowclone, Superhero (or comic book) movies are the new Westerns. What I mean is that the genre is both popular and diverse enough to be regarded as a venue for working through our collective philosophical and psychological issues.

Other genres (horror, melodrama, comedy) also hold up a mirror to our collective psyches, but not in the way that the Big movies do. The lesser genres show us what we want - morally, aesthetically, emotionally - but only part of what some of us want. The dominant genre of the time, be it Westerns, gangster movies, or superhero flicks, reflects most of what most of us want. I would consider comparing gangster movies and TV shows to Westerns, if you were to say that Westerns were more of a way of defining masculinity. But I think Westerns, in their time, were bigger than gangster films/shows like The Sopranos, Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface are today.

No one would doubt that superhero tales are quite popular, more popular in the last 5 years than ever before and more popular than any other type of film with the possible exception of talking-animal-CGI films. If you were keen on making an older comparison, you could liken them to myths or fairy tails, other dominant genres of their times. But what about my claim that the genre is diverse?

Enter The Dark Knight, in some sense a synthesis of the superhero movie and the gangster flick. And yes, I know Batman isn't technically a superhero because he doesn't have superpowers. But genres and classification aren't defined that way. They're defined by the language we use to refer to the texts, by marketers, vendors, critics, and fans. And I'm willing to assume that most of them would classify this as a superhero blockbuster film. While watching it, I couldn't help but compare it to another superhero blockbuster - Iron Man. These films came out in the same year, they're of the same genre, I'm willing to wager they make roughly the same money (they're as popular as one another), and, significantly, they have almost the same amount of critical acclaim (79 for Iron Man on metacritic, to Dark Knight's 82).

If we were going to plop down $15 to see the Dark Knight on the Imax, maybe we'd like to have a good idea of what we're in for. Ads are of no service here, as they remain startlingly homogeneous. They have to. Ads have to appeal to the largest group possible, even if they have to misrepresent their product, which they frequently do. Ads for Iron Man, Hancock, and Dark Knight look pretty similar to one another - lots of action, some ironic wit, good-looking wounded-yet-rough men, sexy women. To take Dark Knight as an example, its interesting to note that almost all of the clips in the many previews come from the first 2/3 of the movie (which, in my opinion, are the least interesting part of the movie, certainly not as morally complex as the last third). So ads are not a good indicator of content.

What about critics? Shouldn't critics be the corrective to misleading advertising? Well, it depends on how much you bother to read. If you're just looking for general thumbs-up-thumbs-down assessment, as most people are, then the critics are of no use. Yes, all of the critics like both movies, but I have a tough time believing that the public will like both movies equally. One is pretty frothy and fun, the other is pitch black and quite complex. If you dig a little deeper and read the reviews, you can see that most critics recognize these differences. Its important to say that I do not think critics should've praised Iron Man, damned Dark Knight, or vice-versa. But to fail to acknowledge the stark differences between these movies, as thumbs-up-thumbs-down reviewing does, seems to indicate that there's something wrong with that kind of popular film criticism.

Let's go over some of the differences:

Humor: the humor in Iron Man relies primarily on understatement - the hero reacts to a huge explosion with raised eyebrows. There are plenty of catchphrases and instances of Tony Stark reacting in more laid-back fashion than the situation dictates. In the Dark Knight, the humor is more dry and British, quicker and, depending on your taste for these things, either clever or too clever. There's more gallows humor as one would expect with the Joker (here's hoping that Heath Ledger's death doesn't totally overwhelm critical appraisal of this film).

Romance subplot: While both protagonists are playboys, Tony Stark gets the girl in the end while Bruce Wayne is left to brood over a dead lover. Not exactly a minor difference in terms of tone.

Morality: Iron Man dabbles with moral complexity, casting a reformed arms dealer as hero (who ultimately ends up using weapons he designed to kill bad guys, much like the military does). The Dark Knight, on the other hand, had scene after scene in which characters were made to ask themselves (and the audience) tough moral questions: is it ever moral to kill large numbers of people? Is it okay to lie to the public in order to maintain order? Is it okay to survey the public without their knowing? Does using force against the enemy breed more insidious, amoral enemies? Can we delegate the killing that our situation demands to superheroes (read: soldiers) because we can't do what needs to be done? The film was practically an ethics class.

There's one scene that really brings home the dissimilarity. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark holds a press conference and announces that he is Iron Man. The scene is subversive, in that it goes against what we know about superheroes: they like to keep their true identity a secret. In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent calls a press conference and announces that he is Batman (when we know that he's not). Iron Man is content with a few double crosses here and there but doesn't want to confuse the audience with too many. The Dark Knight assumes the audience can maintain an understanding of character motivation even when there are many, many more double crosses.

If there's anything to learn from this, it is that looking at who wrote and directed the movie might be a better indicator than any as to what the film will be like, lending credence to the beleaguered auteur theory. I think that auteur theory is imperfect in that it fails to recognize the fact that creators could create something especially similar to other creators' works and dissimilar to their own previous work. This happens plenty, and the good critic can recognize it.

So, what are the recurring authorial themes? Right away, there's identity. In the first two scenes, the Nolans play with our expectations of who's who, just as they did with the twins in The Prestige, the hero/villain of Memento, and superhero-as-symbol-transcending -individual concept in Batman Begins. They take the idea of superhero's symbolic power being more important than their individual identity to a new level by making a mockery of the personal-history-as-destiny concept. The Joker tells a couple of different versions of how he got to be as fucked up as he is, and none of them is the truth. Each version suits his situation. This film deals far more with moral, political, social, and philosophical issues than psychological or personal ones. Another point of difference from some comic book heroes (Hulk) but not terribly different than others (Spiderman).

And for those of you who think web criticism doesn't matter, check out this article from Slate. Be advised that the article never claims that critics cause a movie to be popular. Only that they are able to anticipate the popularity of a movie better than non-experts and better than chance. Surely, some critics exert some effect on the popularity of a movie (probably the ones who have been especially good at predicting how much the public will like it). Anyway, if critics learn to write from the point of view of the experienced expert and not from the point of view of the cultural elitist, then they will be valued widely. As long as they assume that their job is to say what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is trash, instead of being able to distill the differences of films and be able to present those differences in a way that consumers can make decisions based on them, they'll be writing for just another niche.

First Taste for Free

A couple of weeks ago, Nine Inch Nails "released" an album online for free, prompting me to consider the viability of such an economic model.

First off, we need to note that NIN is (are?) a well established artist. People know their music, like their music, and would spend time listening to their music. And that's the key - consumers would spend time listening to the album. Forget money. Money spent for any particular text does not matter so much in the new media economy. Attention and time matter. Once you build up interest, you can charge for a subsequent album, a t-shirt, a concert, etc.

In today's media economy, if an artist can establish a fan base, they don't have to charge them for every album or every concert. As long as they can maintain some profit margin, as opposed to the huge profit margin they enjoyed before, the artist can make a living. Before, labels and studios had to charge consumers way more than a CD or a movie cost to produce b/c they had to pay for the duds that they churned out (Pareto's principle). They couldn't know which one of their products would be duds and which would be smashes. They also had to cover the costs of developing new talent (equivalent to R&D costs). But I don't think that distributors need to pay for that anymore. Artists can record and film stuff on the cheap, put it out there for free, see if its popular, cultivate interest in the unique output of that artist, and then charge $ for the subsequent output of that artist. You could also whore yourself out to advertisers and make $ off of modestly popular work, but I think the purest model for art/entertainment sales should be: give them a taste for free, then charge them for more once they're hooked (the drug-dealer economic model). Ads just add clutter, and I'm not sure they even work well enough to justify their existence.

Really, the only thing that agents, studios, and labels are useful for is visibility. They can artificially boost the visibility of an artist's output through promotion. But bloggers (gatekeepers, tastemakers) and the transparency of popularity on the web counteracts such promotional efforts. Right now, a small percentage of consumers make their decisions as to what to spend their time listening to or watching based on bloggers or online popularity tracking (that may in fact be affected by promotion). That's right now. But what if the people who paid attention to bloggers and popularity trackers were jsut early adopters? What if, in the coming years, most people took their cues from these sources? Could it render advertising, promotion, labels, studios, and agents all obsolete? I think that it could.

Whenever I raise the possibility that promotion may be futile in the new media economy, I hear a voice saying that promotion is more insidious than I imagine it to be, that its influence is hard to track but still exists. This voice says that anyone questioning the viability of promotion and advertising is hopelessly naive. This strikes as possibly true, but doesn't seem like a strong argument; more like something said by those with a vested interest in defending the business model of advertising and promotion. Its going to get very hard to trace whether an artist or a work become popular due to promotion or organic word-of-mouth popularity based on the merit of the work. However, the internet makes these paths visible, so maybe we could begin to see how effective promotion is when compared to the aggregated tastes of millions of users. If you want to defend the role of promotion and advertisement in the art industry, fine, but back your argument up with some hard data. If you're really about making money, then do it efficiently. Spend your money figuring out what makes a work good or popular and then make it. Don't promote shit that you're uncertain about. To quote Martin Sheen in Wall Street: "Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others."

Giving some of your work away for free is, in a sense, the ultimate promotion. Usually, ads and previews for movies are distorted pieces of a larger whole that are designed to make the whole more appealing than it actually is. But if you give away a whole album, a whole season, a whole movie for free, then there's nothing distorted about that.

And yet, it would seem unfair if, say, the creators of Lost gave away most of the narrative for "free" on TV and then concluded it with a movie that we have to pay to see. I see this with online video: its very difficult to tell whether an individual video is functioning as a satisfying media product in and of itself, a piece of a larger work that you could either have to pay for or tolerate ads with (in which case it is just an "ad" for the larger work), or both.

Maybe promoters are necessary, or inevitable. But I certainly don't think that art couldn't be sold w/o them. Artists are engaging in large scale economic experiments, and the results suggest that we should start reconsidering the role of promoters in the art business.

WGA Strike and Online Video: Talking Through Some Scenarios

This blog entry at Newteevee.com got me thinking about the role of unions in the development of online video. Let's assume that the best writers are part of the WGA. If the WGA uses its clout in the TV industry by preventing its members from generating online content in order to get its members more benefits, then it seems likely that many creative people who want to break into the business will create better online content to fill that gap. Granted, the content they produce probably won't be up to TV/film standards, but it won't have to compete with TV/film that's very good b/c the writers will be on strike. In that sense, a strike is the best thing that could happen to budding online video makers.

As I scanned the past month's blog entries on newteevee, I began to realize just how big the rapidly expanding world of online video has become. I started to feel overwhelmed and a bit guilty about not knowing more about this world, but I tried to use my outsider status to put it all in perspective. Really, I have yet to see anything that isn't in sync with my general thoughts about the motion picture ecosystem: online content (be it blogs, video, whatever) is of some value, but it will always be more disposable than books, TV, and film. Maybe that's why there would be no point in offering a subscription to an online video series. But I still think those things are tied together - that online video will be disposable because it won't adopt a subscription model, because it chooses to embrace the advertising model.

Its not just the disruption-of-narrative issue. Its a sign of a lack of faith by the creator or owner of that story. Distributing your story through an ad-based model is essentially acknowledging that it is not worth people's time and attention. Watching motion pictures with advertising is paying for it, not with dollars but with cognitive energy and attention, both of which are in short supply these days. The viewer who thinks they "put up with" ads is actually depriving him or herself of complex (and therefore superior and lasting) narratives and diminishing his or her ability to complete complex tasks relative to those who pay for their content. Just because we haven't been able to measure this effect doesn't mean it is happening or won't happen in the future. Nor does it mean that it will, but I'm committed to following up on my hunch.

Art vs. Commerce, Resolved

While wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago, I started thinking more about the difference between "classic" art that lasts hundreds of years and commercial "art" that is replaceable and disposable, at least in terms of the way it is created, received by the general public, and its role in the economy. Some of the art in that museum had been appreciated by billions of people, and had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the years. What accounted for that? Was it a cadre of critics who deemed the work "classic," or did those critics and curators recognize some intrinsic appeal that is not limited by time or culture?

I'm pretty sure that the determining factor between art and commerce is longevity or lasting value and universality. Longevity and universality can be achieved two ways: remaining in sync with the aesthetic and cultural values of society over time and space OR by using one's station in life to acquire the markers of "classic" status, if not the substance.

The relevation that I had while staring at "The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist" was this: certain kinds of art critics are no different than advertising: they're both using their accrued capital (either social, in the case of critics, or monetary, in the case of ads) to artificially boost the value (the longevity and universality) of a work.

If you'll allow me the opportunity to completely "dork out," I've worked up this chart that better explains what I'm talking about.



I think this might be related to thoughts I've had on the debate over the wisdom of crowds vs. the wisdom of experts. You could replace "experts" with "critics." In order to determine the relative value of crowds vs. critics, we must first determine which critics simply use their station in life to subject the masses to their opinions and which critics predict the popularity of a work over cultures and time. Then, you could compare the thoughts of the predictor critics to those of the masses (i.e. crowds, the public, first weekend box office, democracy). My guess is that they'd fare pretty well, b/c as wise as crowds are, they can't see beyond their own micro-culture and they tend not to base their collective decisions on thorough research of previous successes and failures the way an informed critic could.

Of course, predicting the future success of a work is pretty difficult (though not impossible). As I was driving back from O'Hare today, I heard Marky Mark Wahlberg's "Good Vibrations," which, thanks to Wahlberg's rising status as producer of a successful show and his Oscar nominated turn in The Departed, probably gets more airplay than Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations." I guess critics can analyze the intrinsic values of some work and say that, "all things being equal," its likely or unlikely to withstand the test of time. But some of those "things" are the careers of the artists and the subsequent assignment of kitsch value. But that's a subject for another blog.

Mad Men - an HBO show by any other name?

While watching the series premier of Mad Men on AMC, I was straining to see the similarities between this show and the show its creator- Matthew Weiner - used to write for, The Sopranos. Usually, writer/producers leave the stifling confines of network TV for the liberating ad-free world of HBO (the 3 Davids are all former network scribes). So, what happens when they go the other way, and what influence is more powerful in determining the flavor of a show - the network brand or a staff writer? This is sort of a flawed question, b/c Weiner isn't David Chase, but still, I think you could look at Mad Men and ask whether it was an HBO-type show just by seeing how much it resembled the show Weiner used to write for.

AMC (and F/X, which has a few critically acclaimed shows like Rescue Me and The Shield) aren't network TV, but still, they have ads. Therefore, shows on those networks are broken up, interrupted by distracting advertising, and can't allow much in the way of swearing, nudity, violence, etc. Perhaps they're less likely to stand by a ratings challenged show, though its worth noting that even HBO has its limits in that regard. What I identify with HBO shows goes beyond profanity and violence. Its dramas (I'm thinking primarily of The Sopranos and The Wire, though I'm going to check out Deadwood and 6 Feet Under to see if it applies to them) seem to be:

• more serialized - the stories unfold over many episodes, and not much is wrapped up in each ep
  
• more dense in terms of plotlines and information doled out by the narration
• less redundant in terms of that information
  
• slower-paced - more scenes that work to develop character and don't advance the plot
  

I've surmised that these qualities are direct results of not having the interruption of ads. According to this theory, no show on an ad-driven network (like Man Men) could possess these qualities and maintain enough of an audience to survive for a few seasons. The ads take a viewer's attention away from the narrative, and if the show is too complex, then the viewer will become lost. Mind you, complex shows like The Sopranos or The Wire can be shown on ad-driven networks in syndication and have a significant audience b/c they've already built up an audience on distraction-free HBO. But to start out on the distraction-heavy medium of ad-TV and gain an audience while maintaining narrative complexity of this nature - impossible!

There's also a certain moral position on class in America that some HBO shows share (again, I'm thinking of The Sopranos, The Wire, maybe Deadwood): there is not one hierarchy but many, some on the right side of the law, others on the wrong side, though there seems to be very little meaningful difference between the two. Protagonists pursue success on their own terms, trying to climb the ladder and beat the other guy while vaguely aware that the whole point of their existence - to climb that ladder - may be utterly bereft of meaning.

I can't think of any network shows that address themes of class, power, and culture in that way. Though I can't say for sure, I've heard that ad-driven cable net shows like The Shield, Rescue Me, and Battlestar Gallactica do. As far as Mad Men goes, so far it seems to resemble the HBO thematic preoccupations. One of the main characters - Don Draper - is at or near the top of the game, but seems to slip into reveries every now and then, perhaps having doubts about the life he's living (but, unlike Tony Soprano, he can't blame it on not getting in on the ground floor). There's also the detached wit of those HBO shows, the way they occasionally cue us to laugh at the whole backwards culture, so seldom seen on network TV and even the aforementioned ad-driven cable net shows, which are more geared towards getting us to identify with the protagonist. Again, Man Men seems to be mocking the culture as much as it presents it as hip and appealing.

One way Weiner could maintain a certain integrity while working on advertising-driven TV: by having his show be about advertising. Its a bit too early to tell, but it seems to take a somewhat cynical approach towards advertising in general. The show would seem to offer more opportunities for product placement than any scripted show in TV history. But what does it mean for a brand to be featured in a show that's message is: ads are lies created to manipulate the masses into buying things they had no previous intention of buying, to convince them, as the protagonist so eloquently put it, that everything is OK? So, there's two questions: does a brand (like Lucky Strike, which was featured in the first ep and, not coincidentally, just stopped selling products in North America last year) suffer from being featured in the show; does a brand suffer from being featured in the interstitial ads during the show?

The answer to question two is most likely no, but perhaps sales wouldn't be boosted as much as if the product were featured in a more ad/product-friendly show.

In the end, I hope that this show, along with the other show created by an HBO ex-pat - Damages) embody some of the characteristics of The Sopranos. Given the lasting popularity of that show, in syndication and on DVD, maybe TV execs of all stripes will get the message that there's an audience for that type of show. Even if its inevitably watered-down, that distinct mix of narrative complexity, detached wit, and class consciousness that HBO pioneered in the beginning of this decade would be a welcome change from what we've seen so far.

The Coming Era of Visual Storytelling: Building to Last

I've been kicking around the idea of applying meme-tracking to the study of the proliferation of certain stylistic and narrative elements in movies, TV shows, and online video. Also, I'd like to track the popularity of individual texts.

The first step would be to log which movies, shows, videos had certain elements (non-linear plotting, infidelity, a female protagonist, dense information within scenes, intricately woven subplots) or were of a certain genre. The second step would be to track the popularity of a text or an element within texts over the course of many years. Step 3 would involve making some falsifiable hypotheses that would be supported or debunked by the data.

Let's go ahead and skip to step 3. Some films have stuck around. Others haven't. Now that we've started to make more and more films and TV shows available on DVD (and soon online), I think its worth asking why it is this way. Perhaps critics cause films and TV shows to stick around by drawing the public's attention to them, or perhaps some inherent quality of the texts caused them to stick around and the critics merely recognize these characteristics. Of course, the elements themselves might not matter as much as the frequency with which they change. We might be able to see more clearly the degree of variety and familiarity that is demanded by the public.

I don't think we can really say at this point whether either of these are true because until relatively recently, films and then TV shows were seen as a transient medium. Their economic and cultural value were temporary. They had expiration dates. Just within the past few years, with the expanding inexpensive and accessible libraries of motion picture texts on DVD (soon to be online), we're getting our first glimpse of what texts are still valued by the general public well after their release. To some degree, this happened with books, but even there, some amount of capital was required to take the book into a 2nd, 3rd, 4th printing.

And here we get to the "so what" of it: people (especially vendors and owners of texts) never really cared about what separated a classic text from a temporarily successful text because it didn't matter, economically speaking. If a film, TV show, or book were popular within the first year of its release, then it would get syndicated, or re-released, or go to a second printing. All texts (except maybe oral legends) cost money to keep going, and the best way to get that money was to make it popular right away. Any text's initial popularity is a reflection of its immediate relevancy as well the strength of the promotional campaign behind it, NOT qualities which might make it of value to people living in a different culture (either on another continent or in another era). Stories weren't built to last because it wasn't in the producer/distributor/ owner's best interest.

We trundled along, mixing advertising (time-sensitive messages that are intended to distract) with storytelling, for the better part of a century. Given the available technology and the high cost of storage and distribution, this made economic sense. But now things change. With the dramatic fall in storage and distribution cost, it is significantly cheaper to keep an old title selling than to produce a new one. For the first time in the history of commercial storytelling, the economic emphasis should be on creating a lasting product.

In terms of examining culture, its always been important to ask what makes classic stories so enduring and universal. Culture (particularly storytelling) has been yoked to commerce for so long that the only studies of storytelling that were read widely and mattered to those outside the academy were ones that pertained to stories that produced profit. Now, the study of the classic story can get that outside momentum behind it.

So, what makes a classic story? Joseph Campbell's pretty much got this covered, but to speak about it in more practical and exact terms, I'd love to examine the films and TV shows that have been produced so far.

A few testable hypotheses:

1. So-called "body genres" (porn, horror, and melodrama) are somewhat similar in narrative structure (simple, unvarying), and popularity arc (steep drop off after a brief period of time).
2. Films and TV shows that are unified and complex (in terms of the threads of the narrative) are likely to have a less steep drop off in their popularity arc than films and TV shows with simpler narratives. In terms of commerce, these stories have a longer "shelf life" than others assuming the appeal of all other things - the timeliness/timelessness of the themes and content, the acting style, and other elements that may go in and out of fashion - is equal.
   
3. Certain critics, over the years, have been more adept at picking movies that did poorly initially but sold well later and continue to sell well decades since its initial release than others. There's a problem of causality here - did the critic's praise result in higher ticket sales, or was the inherent superiority of the story responsible, and the critic's and public's reaction merely an inevitable result of those qualities?
   

My hope is that we can get past the rather defensive stance that all genres, subject matters, and styles are equal. When theorists use this term (or imply that it is the case by rescuing oft-overlook and maligned genres like the aforementioned body genres), its a value judgment - a soap is no worse or less important than a highly rated, critically acclaimed prime time show like Seinfeld; a forgotten B film from the 50's is no less important than a Hitchcock film. OK, fine. Though they can be considered equal, different types of films, shows, and videos are not the same in terms of their style and content (rather obviously, since that is what is typically used to tell them apart) as well as (less obviously) their "patterns of popularity": how quickly they fade from the public's consciousness, how often they return to it.

Then there are those movies, TV shows, and especially songs that weren't all that popular to begin with, then sank under the radar for years, maybe decades, only to resurface later. When you dig one of these long forgotten texts up, you feel this proprietary need to defend it. It feels rare. But maybe we can set this personal passion aside and look at things with some distance. Of course, the existing history of visual storytelling is tainted for the reasons I mentioned (lasting popularity relied on initial popularity in a way it doesn't have to anymore), but if we correct for things like differences in advertising budget and pay special attention to the texts and characteristics that weren't so popular initially but stuck around and grew in stature over the years, then we might begin to understand the qualities that make a visual story a classic.

Marketing and Terrorism, part 2: NIN's Year Zero ARG

I'm especially fond of stuff I find on the internet in indirect, multiple ways. First, I saw something on digg.com about the marketing of a new NIN album via strange websites. Then, a student of mine emailed me a story from mtv.com about the websites. At first glance, it appears to be an ARG (alternate reality game) dedicated to marketing the yet-to-be-released Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero. Nothing particularly remarkable there. But there are numerous references to bioterrorism. Will this get NIN and their marketing firm into hot water a la ATHF?

What's interesting is that once you get out on the web, authorship becomes so murky that it might be impossible to hold anyone responsible for possible confusion between marketing and terrorism. Whose to say which sites are officially sanctioned and which are not? I always thought of viral marketing as an insidious way of turning fans into unwitting marketers, which may seem harmless now, but in the long run may reduce us to state of paranoia where we spend untold hours and cognitive energy trying to figure out what is reliable information about our environment and what is merely an attempt to sell us something. But this idea of including a controversial topic like terrorism (is it overhyped? is it underhyped?) seems like a new, clever twist. Both NIN and ATHF (purposely in the case of NIN, accidentally in the case of ATHF, I think) are allying their product with one side of this controversy - the leftist position that terrorism is overhyped. If you wear a t shirt with Err giving the finger, or design your own Year Zero bioterrorism website, you're simultaneously saying that you think terrorism has been overhyped and saying that you like NIN and ATHF.

Its tough for me to be objective about this, since I'm a big fan of both ATHF and NIN, and I think that the current administration doesn't understand terrorism as well as it could. But if I take a step back, I realize that ARGs are becoming political, and perhaps involving the authorities in a kind of theater that they're not even aware that they're a part of (a la the "characters" in Borat). I wouldn't say that the motives of the company or the artist are either profit or politics. They're both. Its designed to get you to buy the album, but its also designed to get young people to recognize the manipulative nature of military recruitment.

Since this is open to fan participation, if the fans don't like the music or the direction the story takes, perhaps they can take those in a different direction, though I'm simultaneously skeptical that either a mob-rule story or the stridently political story that Year Zero is shaping up to be (yes, yes, we get it. Bush sucks) will be anything revolutionary.

Again, the problem that this creates, the problem that all contemporary viral or stealth marketing adds to, is an erosion of our ability to communicate with one another about our environment effectively. ARGs are post-modern media's logical conclusion in the era of convergence, and they raise the same question: are they good, b/c they get people to see how most our "reality" is a social construction primarily made up of media texts, or is it bad, b/c it encourages people to doubt everything, to not take anything seriously. While I mull this one over, it'll be fun to see what happens with Year Zero.

Oh, and BTW, doesn't wikipedia kinda spoil the surprise of ARGs? People just aggregate data on that site, so all you have to do is check up on it every so often. It undergoes a rigorous vetting process, much more rigorous than you and your friends, digg, cable news channels, or the New York Times could ever hope for. And it does it fast.

Aqua Teen Bomb Scare: The Other Story

There are really (at least) two stories to come out of last week's Aqua Teen Hunger Force marketing bomb scare: one has to do with the over-reaction of the police and the media, and artists playing the mainstream press for the bunch of chumps that they are. The other is the conflict between the profit motive and the security motive. This second story may turn out to be the more lasting and significant one.
I find that story more compelling because it pits one side of the ideological split in the US against itself. Granted, I'm writing and reasoning broadly here, but its not too much of a stretch to say that conservative America is for unrestrained capitalism as well as strong homeland security. This is a more compelling conflict than ideological conflicts between conservative and liberal American cultures (say, the conflict between security and privacy). In those cases, there is no internal conflict. People are either one way or the other. The two groups essentially operate independent of one another, watching their own news, investing in their own funds or companies, socializing with like-minded people, and flirting with the idea of actual debate by watching a bit of FoxNews/The Daily Show to angry up their blood before returning to the safety of their own belief system. Its wrong to think of these two Americas as geographically separate. They're neighbors, co-workers, spouses, etc. But in terms of their philosophy, they feel neither the overwhelming need to convert the other side nor be converted themselves.

But let's say you're of the conservative persuasion. You own shares in a multi-national media conglomerate, and you'll be damned if Uncle Sam tries to regulate any aspect of said company's attempts to maximize profits. If this company you invested in needs to put wacky signs underneath bridges and in subways to reach that coveted 18-34 male demo, well then you'd better not prevent them from doing so. At the same time, you can't believe that these weirdo artists have put us all in grave danger (and are laughing about it!) by putting bomb-like devices underneath bridges. But sooner or later, these two forces - the profit motive and the security motive - will come into conflict. And now they have. In this particular case, you could argue that Turner Broadcasting isn't as right-wing as most corps, but as a corp, I'm sure it has a lot of gung-ho Republicans sitting on its board.

This conflicts between unrestrained capitalism and a government's attempts to keep the country on lock down are bound to butt up against one another as long as there is a strong conservative bend to the leadership in this country. This isn't to say that every ideology isn't without its inner conflicts. But, since this one has to do with the limits of advertising, I thought it was worth pointing out here.

24, the Terrorist Threat, and Err

First off, you have the image of Err giving the finger alongside stern faced officials, and Shepard Smith saying, “their god is an Indian…that turns into a wolf.” There’s something so absurd, so satiric about these images and sounds that its hard to move beyond them. But, for the sake of argument, let’s consider another facet of this event: the two people on trial at the center of this. They could be cast as tools of a multinational corporate advertising behemoth or as artists with ties to Boston’s beloved academic community.

Really, I can’t see the parent company (either Comedy Central or Turner Broadcasting) as an enemy in the court of public opinion. The two likely enemies are (if you’re on the right) the long-haired, smirking artists who don’t realize how serious the terrorist threat is and need to be taught a lesson or (if you’re on the left) the incompetent authority figures (police, govt) that are trying to outlaw art via the war on terror.

As in most cases, people’s existing beliefs determine their reaction. But, for a moment, I won’t be so jaded, and I’ll believe that there are some people who haven’t made up their minds and would consider new information. What information might we consider?

To start with, you’ve got an box-like object that looked to be about 2’x1’ that had wires and possibly duct tape on its exterior OR you’ve got a lite-brite. The debate hinges on this visual, which cannot help but advertise ATHF, and also is proof that even if there is visual evidence, those who are passionately disposed one way or the other will see two different objects: one sees a lite-brite, the other sees a box with wires and duct tape. One sees an object that has been there for 3 weeks and has appeared in many other cities in similar locations, another simply sees that it is under a major bridge where there may have been graffiti but no protruding objects or devices.

Its impossible to ask everyone at all times not to do anything that might look suspicious to someone else. You can reduce the odds of someone setting off a bomb in a city by asking people to report suspicious packages or behavior, but if people report too many false alarms, then it makes the city less safe. So the crux of this argument becomes: what constitutes suspicious behavior or packaging? What could a bomb look like? Where would it be placed?

Each of our individual beliefs on this matter has to do with how great a threat we believe terrorism to be. The government and various corporations have an incentive to exaggerate the threat, while other groups (artists, terrorists, libertarians) have an incentive to see less of a threat than the one that truly exists. Some people may acknowledge the threat, but may feel that the actions taken in this case reveal our inability to detect false positives, thereby revealing how vulnerable we are on a very public stage, thereby making us more vulnerable (especially when the authorities cannot admit they made a mistake because they don’t want to lose face).

Its interesting that people have been bringing up 24 on the blogs, suggesting that the show has some influence over our perception of a terrorist threat. Its good that people are beginning to acknowledge the effects of fictional media on our perception of reality. The next step might be that each of us spend more time gathering information about the relationships between large states and those fighting against large states using violent tactics throughout history (Israel and Ireland seem like good places to start), the technology typically employed by these people, basic human psychology, the nature of insurgent movements throughout history, global politics, and encourage others to do the same. This holistic approach towards gathering information seems like the only way to recalibrate our individual or collective perception of “suspicious” behavior or packaging.

Blogs and Comments: reacting to news (plus a few notes on controversial advertising)

Its just a few hours after a bomb scare here in Boston, one that happens to have a particularly absurd bend to it. Initially, I saw the images of traffic stopped and the bomb crews under bridges on TV, and reports that it was not a genuine threat but a hoax. Then a friend told me that he had heard on NPR that the "suspicious packages" that were causing all the hubbub were lite-brite images of Err. This sounded too ridiculous to be true, so I didn't really believe it until I got home and looked it up on the web. Most of the articles in online newspapers are of the same sort: simply reporting what happened, which is what I'd want from them. But I wanted more than that. I wanted opinions. I wasn't so much interested in the event as the public reaction to the event. Would it just blow over really quickly? Will most people side with the Mayor and the Governor against the network and the advertisers, or will most people side with Comedy Central et al?

Obviously, the sites that people comment and blog on are not representative of the public reaction, but in just 30 minutes, I was able to find a wide range of reactions to the events that brought up a lot of good points that I would've never thought of and that TV news probably wouldn't have broadcast (generally, TV just parrots the same facts over and over, or presents one highly-opinionated viewpoint): that the placement of the signs (under bridges) combined with the fact that if they were not lit up and viewed from a distance they wouldn't look like Err giving the finger as much as a box with wires sticking out of the back make the alarmist claims somewhat understandable; that Shepard Smith said, "their god is an indian...that turns into a wolf"; that Bill O'Reilly suggested that a cartoon character be arrested; that the signs had been there for 3 weeks, etc.

You have to sift through a lot of erroneous, opinionated information while trolling blogs, but when something like this happens, they're more satisfying than traditional media simply because they moves faster. That's what I came to realize: the pace of information on blogs. This makes me all the more interested in blog or comment filtering (a la digg's system of making the most-recent, most-read, most-approved comments more visible than the others). Or perhaps the thing to do is find a community of bloggers or commenters that you've come to trust and go to those sites when big events happen. I'd guess that its this sped-up information that is largely responsible for the shortening of the news cycle. Cable news and legit press are just trying to keep up.

This event could also be proof of the point I made in a previous post about the unintended effects of advertising. There's no doubt that this particular situation had more to do with poor judgment on the part of the police and government than it does with advertising, but it does bring up an interesting point about the limits of advertising. Although, if this does, in fact, create buzz for the film (which it almost certainly will), and thereby generate more revenue for the parent company, then this would be considered effective advertising, and therefore should be mimicked in the future, no? It will be incredibly difficult to draw correlations between the profitability of the Aqua Teen franchise and this controversy. But as much as this might drive up their revenue, its an impossible thing to plan or duplicate. I'd argue that its precisely the perceived unintended nature of the publicity that makes it appealing to consumers. They're drawn to the product only b/c they believe the ad agency and the network when they say "we had no idea this would happen." And really, buying something related to Aqua Teen at this point (say, an Err shirt) isn't so much a vote for headline-grabbing controversy and police-bating as much as an assertion that the police, homeland security, and the FBI need to handle potential terrorist threats in a different manner.

On Distracting Advertising

I'd originally intended this blog to be strictly about blogging, the idea being that focused writing is better writing. But I don't see the harm in making this blog about media in general, so here are some thoughts on advertising.

First, there are motives. Let's assume that some advertising annoys people every now and then, or at least isn't as entertaining as most other forms of entertainment. Maybe it isn't annoying enough to make you change the station/website, but given the choice to go without it, you would. The economic incentives that more and more websites are offering for ad-free versions of sites are evidence of this demand. Let's also assume that companies want to sell as many products as possible while spending as little as possible on advertising. Advertising companies, on the other hand, would rather have these companies that actually produce things to pay for MORE advertising, therefore they will try to justify their existence and will try to expand advertising in whatever ways possible.

So, wouldn't a minimalist ad campaign benefit the consumer and the company that produces the goods? Is a 30-second TV spot or a flashing banner the most effective way to get people to buy your goods? Why couldn't one company create a 10 second ad or a slender, unadorned banner ad that says to consumers, "if you want less distracting advertising and the better entertainment experience that would result from that, then buy our product. If you don't buy our product, you are, in effect, voting for more distracting advertising and shittier content." If this worked, then other companies would follow suit.

Getting the consumer's attention is good. Getting them annoyed is bad. There's no distinction being made between attention and distraction in a lot of web advertising. Perhaps the web allows companies that produce goods to do an end-run around the advertising companies to go directly to the consumers. Much the same way the web rendered old-school record companies obsolete via social networking sites. Companies and the indivuals who work for them will fight for their livelyhoods by insisting that they're indispensible. But this refusal to evolve is to be expected, and has nothing to do with the effectiveness of ads or the economic necessity of a billion dollar ad industry.

As more and more websites tinker with how to generate revenue, the future of entertainment looks to be less like films and HBO and more like the shitty network TV everyone loves to dump on. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to this rule, but still, I would argue that there is a correlation between the lasting entertainment value of any cultural object and whether or not it is created for ad-supported media.

Perhaps this will encourage more...insidious forms of advertising, namely viral marketing, and maybe that's not such a good thing. Maybe our future will involve trying to deduce whether or not any conversation we're having with anyone is an attempt to sell us something, and so the distractions of our entertainment experiences will invade our social lives (spam is just the beginning). I'm willing to debate this point. I honestly don't have a strong opinion about it right now. Maybe this is the future and maybe its shittier than our present. But I just can't accept the horrible obsolescence of advertising as it is.

It also might make for more entertaining ads, and one could argue that since the inception of TiVo, this has already started to happen. Here's the easiest way to tell: if you give people the technology to easily bypass ads, are they still watching them? I have no problem with entertaining ads, and there are plenty of them. The real problem, as I see it, is the distraction factor. If you have a half-hour lunch break to go to your favorite online video website, you'd rather not spend most of those 30 minutes trying to filter through information deciding what's an ad and what's not. You just want to relax and be entertained. Perhaps you'd like to be informed of products that you might want to buy, but that is NOT the same thing as spending time filtering through distracting information looking for useful nuggets, which is what many of us spend countless hours doing.

I'm actually trying to watch football while writing this, and I've seen about 30 car ads even though I have no intention of buying a new car in the next 5 years. Yes, I accept the premise that these ads have some subliminal effect on subsequent purchasing decisions. Because I've seen so many Chevy ads, I'll think of them instead of Saturn (who doesn't advertise as much on the programs/websites I go to) the next time I'm considering buying a car. Ads serve a purpose in our economy. They are not worthless. But their worth has to be weighed against the cost they exact on our ability to function otherwise.