Entries Tagged 'entertainment landscape' ↓

The NYT’s David Carr delivers grim news to “creatives”:

I’ve got some bad news for striking Hollywood writers: Election 2008 is a breakaway hit.

January was supposed to be the month when the writers’ strike took its toll, subjecting viewers to a menu of desiccated repeats and cheesy reality shows. Instead, the primary season is serving as the backdrop for one of the most compelling runs of event television in years, creating the kind of chatter network marketers would kill for and spectacular ratings for cable news.

Carr repeatedly tries to suggest that it’s the absence of appealing alternatives (like sports, late-night comedy, and scripted shows, for example) that accounts for the huge gains in audience numbers for “cable news” since 2004.

The Times’s Bill Keller disagrees:

“I think the level of interest in the presidential race would be intense even if writers were still churning out episodes of ‘24’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ” he wrote. “It’s a defining race for both parties, with a cast of fascinating candidates, some of whom fall into the breakthrough category. There also seems to be a visceral national yearning to turn the page.”

Perhaps. But I’m more inclined to accept the explanation of Brian Grazer, who is not a gazillionaire producer for nothing [e.a.]:

“There is a new episode on almost every night,” said Brian Grazer, a Hollywood producer who is in what is left of the Oscar hunt with “American Gangster.” “It is very human to be constantly searching for new stories, and now that the traditional outlets of those stories are shutting down, people are finding their drama in these unfolding events.”

So, yes, I agree with Grazer and with Keller. But neither one of them will come out and say the bleeding obvious: that it is the manner of coverage of politics that is drawing in the audiences. The “drama” is being manufactured by the cable “news” networks. (In this case, it is helped along by the wide-open nature of the political race, but that only makes it easier for the networks to churn out stories with unpredictable endings.)

It is not news. It is infotainment—in other words, information (none of which is necessarily true) packaged as entertainment.  

Now do you believe me when I say that Infotainment Rules? Here’s what I wrote:

Television, however, delivers what sells, and what sells is entertainment—or stuff that is packaged like entertainment. Infotainment doesn’t have to be bad or stupid or crass. High-quality infotainment may in fact be superior to dry “news” as a vehicle for delivering information to audiences.

Once again: I do not endorse the hideous devolution of TV “news” into infotainment. I am merely trying to get people to understand that what they’re getting on TV is not “news.” It’s entertainment, and the goal of its producers is to get you to watch their channel.

They do it by hooking you on stories. If the stories are exciting and the ending isn’t known to anyone in advance (as in an election, or a sensational kidnapping, or some violent flare-up somewhere, for example), people tune in. That’s why cable “news” is addicted to horse-race coverage of the U.S. election that is ten months away and can barely turn away to give any attention to the visit of our president to the Middle East.

If you want to know the news, take advantage of the vast amount of information available on the Internet and read widely.

If you want fictional rather than reality-based (and reality-bending) entertainment on TV and you want our political process to be a little more serious and less unseemly … I don’t know how to advise you. All I do is call ‘em how I see ‘em.

As the Hollywood writers’ “strike” continues, various heavyweights have started to make power plays–um, I mean, separate deals. Like Letterman:

CBS’s late-night star, David Letterman, is pursuing an interim agreement with the Writers Guild that would allow him to return with his writers on Jan. 2. Mr. Letterman is in a position to make such a deal because his production company, Worldwide Pants, owns both his show and the one that follows on CBS, which features Craig Ferguson.

The fly in the ointment?

One representative of a late-night show said that some members of the guild leadership might have concerns about making a separate arrangement with Mr. Letterman, and that an agreement was far from a sure thing.

Ya think? Nah. I think that everyone will be making separate arrangements soon enough. The same NYT article notes that Conan and Leno are going back on the air in some way, shape, or form come the New Year. No word yet on Stewart and Colbert, but I’m sure they’ll feel the pressure soon enough from their network, too.

The way they will rationalize this breakdown of strikers’ discipline is also suggested in the Times piece. In contrast to Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly, who are already back on the air and to whom “the writers [which ones? --ed.]] “reacted with anger”:

the NBC hosts, along with Mr. Letterman, Mr. Kimmel and the Comedy Central hosts, have won praise from the writers for staying off the air so long and for paying their staffs.

So the game is over. Those who played by the rules and paid the proper respect won the moral high ground—the only ground that seems to count inside the Hollywood bubble. The only problem with this formulation is that this time, the game was played (and it’s not over yet) in full view of a nation that is already furious with Hollywood, bored by its products, and contemptuous of its residents, except as fodder for deliciously corrosive and often ruinous gossip.

If the point of this strike was for Hollywood writers to garner respect for themselves, it is to laugh. Instead, they have exposed themselves as beyond clueless about the technological revolution that is swallowing up not just their future but their present.

Via Mickey Kaus, I’m encouraged to find out that some folks have been trying to get through to Hollywood:

The video is funnier than most TV comedies. It reportedly got 400,000 hits–more than many cable shows. It was put up on the Web by unpaid performers seemingly just for the hell of it (and maybe the exposure). Doesn’t that sort of make Marc Andreesen and Rob Long’s point about the tenuous positon of both Hollywood and the Writers Guild? … It’s as if the Linotype operators went on strike and decided to publish their story in four color offset!…10:36 P.M.

Steve Boriss is a little more pointed in his analysis, and sees Hollywood (properly) as only part of a much larger picture:

By placing all forms of entertainment, including news, on the same medium, the Internet has launched a Darwinian struggle where the news, entertainment, and video game industries are now direct, head-to-head competitors for the distraction of audiences from their daily concerns. Crueler still, they must also now compete against mere amateurs, talent around the globe, blogs, porn, and also their former selves — their own archives of older articles, older movies, older programs, and older games never before available. That’s why audiences are plunging and pink slips are flying across all media – newspapers, TV, and Hollywood. The emerging, unified Internet entertainment, a.k.a. “InterTainment,” industry is now just one big happy family – but only if you happen to be a member of the audience

So why “worms” in the title of the post? Because, as Stephen Jay Gould reminded us in 1997, natural selection favors worms:

Darwin himself told us in his last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, that we should never underestimate the collective power of worms on the move. Our general culture also recognizes two primary metaphors, one inorganic and one organic, for the reversal of received opinion. Well may traditionalists fear the turning of these two objects: tables and worms. The inversion of the humble worm, especially when disturbed, may bring down empires. Shakespeare told us that “the smallest worm will turn being trodden on.” And Cervantes wrote in his author’s preface to Don Quixote that “even a worm when trod upon, will turn again.”

A new media world will rise. Hollywood will not be left behind in the dust. Trust me.

In theory, I’m on the side of the writers in the current Hollywood War—because I’m pretty much always on the side of writers. However, this strike seems very ill-timed. Scripted television was already in its death throes before. This action just might push it over the edge.

The NYT reports:

As original episodes of scripted comedies and dramas dry up because of the Writers Guild of America strike, reality competitions and game shows are likely to reach record prominence on broadcast television in early 2008. …
Last week, NBC announced a winter schedule weighted with reality programming, including four unscripted premieres in January: an updated version of the athletic challenge “American Gladiators,” a celebrity version of “The Apprentice,” and new seasons of the game show “1 vs. 100” and the weight-loss competition “The Biggest Loser.”

Fox announced a revised spring schedule last month, including the introductions of two reality series and a new season of “American Idol.”

I don’t watch a lot of scripted television—or reality TV either, for that matter—so this doesn’t concern me too much. But doesn’t it feel like everything is changing right under our noses here in the early 21st century?