Recently, University of Alabama Sorority Girls posted a recruitment video on Youtube, singing a Chris Brown rap song (with different lyrics) and Rebecca Black's "Friday." Give boys a video camera and they're re-enact Jackass endlessly. Give girls a video camera, and they'll sing and dance (badly).
Perhaps the popularity of Rap videos among White girls (and guys) is how easy they are to ape. Classic 1980's videos require … actual singing. Rap means basically nasal and monotone well, rapping with no attempt at a melody, harmony, nothing but rhythm. Everything else is fixed in Auto-tune. It is striking however how the 1980's represented the last gasp of the traditional White rock/pop artist, with only niche (gay-fan created Lady Gaga) people remaining. All else is Rap, and Country, which should be the natural music of these young ladies (this is after all, the University of Alabama) is absent. No country songs mimicked (the Country artists put out tons of them, all easily accessible by the internet). Country is all over the radio, even out here in LA, and particularly in the South.
Maybe we do need a law. Banning both rap videos and any remakes of them by out of tune, off-pitch girls and boys. Its sad that all the girls could come up with was a Chris Brown rap video and Rebecca Black. Poorly made fashions of the moment.
That the girls are bad singers goes without saying. Singing well is a matter of both native talent and endless practice, usually acquired in a Church choir while children. The decline in Church attendance among other things radically reduced the amount of raw musical talent among Black and White populations alike. No wonder current music is so bad. No one can sing anymore. It certainly is indicative that Chris Brown, he of the beat-down administered to Rihanna, seems to have no problem with the sorority girls here. They are certainly willing to sing his rap song. No doubt his notoriety only made him more attractive as a model to copy.
The campus certainly looks pretty, though. No doubt it could stand in for any number of Ivy League schools. Ironically the University of Alabama entering Freshman are 84% White, and only 12% Black. Which matches both the South and the nation as a whole. Whites move heaven and earth to stay away from Black people physically, yet copy Black rap artists and athletes endlessly. Even if in the case of rappers, there is not any artistry. [Jazz and Blues and R&B Black musicians and composers are and were great artists, there is much wisdom in copying men and women who achieved great things: The Marsalis family, Marvin Gaye, Duke Ellington, and Billy Holliday (in singing only of course) are all great artists worthy of copying. Chris Brown is not.] White attitudes remain schizophrenic towards Blacks. Great artists regardless of color should be emulated for their greatness. Their music repeated, copied, admired. Those who are bad (which includes all rappers) should be ignored. It is very puzzling why these girls ignore the talented and far more musically interesting and melodic country artists they can hear on the radio in favor of … rhythm only Rappers or bad internet sensations.
The girls don't even want to be this girl:
They'd rather be Chris Brown or Rebecca Black. How sad is that?
...Read more
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
NBC bets on Cable: Hollywood's Detroit Rock City
The Wall Street Journal reports that NBC has elevated Jeff Glaspin to chair it's entertainment television business. Glaspin's background is in cable TV, being most noted for running NBC's cable channels including USA and Bravo. Glaspin is associated with "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and in the 1990's, "Behind the Music" at VH1. Glaspin's promotion shows how NBC is still focused on reducing costs, as a measure of profitability, and the undue fascination with cable revenue as a "savior" for NBC.
This is a move doomed to failure, and the parallels with Detroit's fixing on the SUV as a "savior" for it's inability to produce reliable profits and the collapse of the Music Industry are downright eerie. NBC's average number of prime-time viewers has fallen 11% in the past two years. It trails ABC, CBS, and Fox in average viewership/ratings. The only bright spot has been NBC cable networks, which have seen operating profits increase. Second Quarter operating profits at NBC Universal cable networks was up 7% from the prior year. But cable networks and operating NBC like a cable network won't save NBC Universal. Anymore than the Chevy Suburban saved GM.
The problem is, that even with Cable revenues, NBC's cash flow has been terrible since 2004:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
NBC's cash from it's networks have declined by nearly a factor of five over the past five years, with 2009 showing a horrific drop-off of nearly 200 million dollars. All the cheap reality and cost-cutting in the world will not save NBC, any more than fat margins on the SUVs were able to save Detroit.
NBC's problem, is that it has accepted and embraced decline. Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's CEO and Glaspin's boss, is quoted by the WSJ as saying viewer declines at NBC will continue in the next five years. This is acceptance of failure.
Cable revenue growth is capped. There aren't hordes of consumers who lack cable signing up for the service, thus providing new fees (channels like Bravo receive payments from cable and satellite operators for every subscriber who receives the channel as part of a package). Indeed, cable channels face a number of vulnerabilities to operating profits. Chief among them, push-back from cable and satellite operators to reduce payments, or even eliminate them, as cable and satellite operators themselves need to cut costs in a tough consumer environment. Given the make-up of Congress and the White House, it's entirely possible the cable and satellite operators could make a "deal" that is "consumer-friendly" (i.e. lower rates for consumers for cable/satellite) at the expense of cable channels like Bravo and Oxygen (which have few viewers and make most of their money from fees not advertising). Advertising dollars at Bravo or Oxygen can not make up for lost revenue from cable/satellite operators, let alone losses at NBC.
This risk is as entirely foreseeable as new, increased mileage standards targeting SUVs and Trucks in a Democratic Congress and White House, or consumers abandoning low-gas mileage vehicles for more fuel-friendly ones (from Japanese and Korean competitors) during high gas prices. Cable revenues are at best a mature and non-growing source, they certainly are not growing any more than CD sales did in 2004.
NBC reaps increased revenues from cable operations, but not enough obviously to stem the losses at NBC itself. But even these revenues are at risk if Congress and the White House mandate lower or no fees to cable channels, or consumers simply drop cable altogether.
Ford's return to long-term profitability rests on it's ability to sell a broad range of cars and trucks that consumers want at decent profit margins supporting Ford's relatively high fixed costs. Producing vehicles that have high quality (good fit and finish), high reliability (they don't break down), good gas mileage (they are cheap to operate) and competitive pricing (they are competitive in pricing with Japanese and Korean models). This is not particularly complicated, indeed it's simple. But the simplest things are often the hardest to execute well, consistently, year in and out.
NBC plans to run Jay Leno's talk show from Monday through Friday at 10 pm as a cost-cutting measure. Because his show is radically cheaper to produce than even an hour of reality programming. But no amount of cheapness will substitute for hit shows. NBC like Detroit has a high fixed cost, including corporate overhead, an analogue to the dealer network (affiliates) and various regulatory burdens. This is not a problem if either Detroit or NBC operates in high-volume with satisfied customers. For Detroit, that means selling a lot of vehicles, at decent profit margins, that consumers actually want. In Southern California, for example, it's quite common to see Ford Mustangs driven, even though California has relatively fewer US car makes and models sold compared to other parts of the country. Even among a population averse to American cars, Ford has not had problems selling it's most distinct car in Southern California.
NBC (and most of Hollywood, in television and in movie studios) are ignoring the competitive threats. DVD price erosion, at home and abroad, from piracy to the alternative of simply re-watching already purchased DVDs, present large threats to revenues for Hollywood as a whole. Since most movies lose money at the box office, and only recoup it in DVD, pay-per-view, video on demand, TV, and foreign movie rights, piracy or consumers simply not spending money presents a mortal threat to the movie studios, and to TV networks and studios who hope to recoup revenue on even canceled series from DVD box sets. Why spend money for a box set when you can watch it for free on Hulu, or purchase for a fraction of the price from a street vendor making pirated copies?
But the threat is larger than mere piracy. Increasingly, Hollywood seems sliding to the irrelevancy of the music industry.
A recent New York Times article on the deathwatch of the Music Industry shows just how quickly an industry can collapse. According to the RIAA, music sales since their peak in 1999, have collapsed by half in inflation adjusted dollars. According to the study by the NPD Group, teens purchased fewer CDs, fewer online downloads, fewer Peer-to-Peer downloads (pirating), and borrowed fewer copies of music, in 2008 compared to 2007. Teens cited (this was before the global recession) overall cutbacks in entertainment spending, but lack of excitement over current music was also a factor (given the declines of 6% in Peer to Peer downloads and "borrowing" music by 28%). A full 23% of teens purchasing less music cited an already established collection of music that satisfied them, and 32% of teens purchasing less music expressed dissatisfaction over current offerings. This among the most disposable income, entertainment oriented group, before the recession.
Among key factors in the change of behavior was the growth in online and satellite radio, and free music from MySpace Music, Pandora, imeem, and other sites, making music nearly always accessible, and with social networking built in (recommendations, etc. based on music listeners like). Even pirates cannot beat "free."
A similar study of British teens found streaming music replacing file-sharing. The reason? Both are "free" but streaming music, by offering recommendations and novelty (the social networking component) is more attractive than searching around for pirated content on the internet.
Or, as the New York Times article put it:
This applies to video as well as music.
Again, this applies to video as well as music.
Even more revealing is the New York Times graphic (link here) reproduced below:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
CD sales revenue have not been replaced by digital downloads, either albums or singles or "mobile" (i.e. ringtones). Fat profit margins, with consumers forced to pay full CD prices to get the few songs they wanted, are gone. The same is happening to Video, for both Hollywood movie studios, and for TV networks. Old models are eroding, consumers are adopting online "free" content (such as Hulu.com or SouthparkStudios.com) that is advertiser supported. Note the comment at TV By The Numbers that Hulu has problems selling most of it's inventory, i.e. old obscure shows such as "New Dragnet" (an obscure 1989 version of the classic "Dragnet" with Jack Webb, different from "LA Dragnet" with Ed O'Neill and Ethan Embry). "The Long Tail" is fairly useless if you can't make money on it, and the trend seen in music sales, with 80% of revenue coming from less than 1% of songs, is the same at Hulu. Hulu lists their most all-time popular TV shows as variously, "Burn Notice," "Bones," "House," and "Family Guy" among others. All shows with sizeable audiences, unlike say those recalling "the New Dragnet."
It's clear that in music, and online, the ability as in years past to milk the "Brandon Tartikoff model" and charge advertisers premium prices for ever-declining amounts of "desirable" demographics is not sustainable. Not only are young (White) people a declining group, due to the birth dearth, but their behavior is changing as well, moving to streaming content that is "free" and has social-networking "extras." Young people are shifting towards it even over piracy or "borrowing." [Hispanic youth watch and listen to, of course, Spanish-language media.]
It's also clear that five years of declining revenues at NBC, before the recession, show this shift taking place to the point where there is nearly $300 million less operating revenue than in 2004, mirrored eerily by declines at GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and the music industry. Specialization won't help, since it leaves producers at the mercy of regulatory or consumer shifts.
Instead, what NBC needs, is not cable-specialization, or more "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" shows, but rather broadly accessible and popular shows. Shows that appeal to men and women alike, along with young and old. Shows that can draw viewers back to NBC, and be streamed on sites like Hulu with full sales of "inventory" (i.e. ad spots on the streaming video).
This won't be easy. Men have largely abandoned TV, and need persuading to come back. Broadcast TV is of course the "ultimate" in streaming video, and free, over the air broadcasts beat the cost of even cable or satellite. Storylines, characters, actors, and the like need at a minimum to be "friendly" to men, and dump the various elitist and politically correct moralizing that characterizes much of TV. Which includes male-bashing. Attracting men of course must be done in ways that do not alienate female viewers, with characters that appeal to women but don't offend men being part of the creative solution. In other words, independent and intelligent leading ladies, but no "Twilight" derived male fantasy figures or junior "Sex and the City" "Mr. Big" knock-offs as leading men. Older audiences too, must be part of the mix, which means care not to needlessly offend those who hold traditional values at a minimum and stopping the tired trope of relying on shock in place of well thought out plots.
All of these creative efforts will require years not months to accomplish, and public communication to viewers, creative people, advertisers, and the public as to what the network wants to accomplish, how it intends to do it, and progress along the way. This requires patience and the ability to sustain losses as the network battles its (rightfully so) perception that NBC is hostile to male viewers.
But the alternative is simply to collapse into a GM or Music publishing slump, from which there is little escape (even with government bailouts). Clearly the views of pundits galore that "de-massification" of culture would proceed indefinitely has been proven wrong. Technology, with the ability to stream "free" content (likely to migrate to video phones soon) has helped make this change.
...Read more
This is a move doomed to failure, and the parallels with Detroit's fixing on the SUV as a "savior" for it's inability to produce reliable profits and the collapse of the Music Industry are downright eerie. NBC's average number of prime-time viewers has fallen 11% in the past two years. It trails ABC, CBS, and Fox in average viewership/ratings. The only bright spot has been NBC cable networks, which have seen operating profits increase. Second Quarter operating profits at NBC Universal cable networks was up 7% from the prior year. But cable networks and operating NBC like a cable network won't save NBC Universal. Anymore than the Chevy Suburban saved GM.
The problem is, that even with Cable revenues, NBC's cash flow has been terrible since 2004:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
NBC's cash from it's networks have declined by nearly a factor of five over the past five years, with 2009 showing a horrific drop-off of nearly 200 million dollars. All the cheap reality and cost-cutting in the world will not save NBC, any more than fat margins on the SUVs were able to save Detroit.
NBC's problem, is that it has accepted and embraced decline. Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's CEO and Glaspin's boss, is quoted by the WSJ as saying viewer declines at NBC will continue in the next five years. This is acceptance of failure.
Cable revenue growth is capped. There aren't hordes of consumers who lack cable signing up for the service, thus providing new fees (channels like Bravo receive payments from cable and satellite operators for every subscriber who receives the channel as part of a package). Indeed, cable channels face a number of vulnerabilities to operating profits. Chief among them, push-back from cable and satellite operators to reduce payments, or even eliminate them, as cable and satellite operators themselves need to cut costs in a tough consumer environment. Given the make-up of Congress and the White House, it's entirely possible the cable and satellite operators could make a "deal" that is "consumer-friendly" (i.e. lower rates for consumers for cable/satellite) at the expense of cable channels like Bravo and Oxygen (which have few viewers and make most of their money from fees not advertising). Advertising dollars at Bravo or Oxygen can not make up for lost revenue from cable/satellite operators, let alone losses at NBC.
This risk is as entirely foreseeable as new, increased mileage standards targeting SUVs and Trucks in a Democratic Congress and White House, or consumers abandoning low-gas mileage vehicles for more fuel-friendly ones (from Japanese and Korean competitors) during high gas prices. Cable revenues are at best a mature and non-growing source, they certainly are not growing any more than CD sales did in 2004.
NBC reaps increased revenues from cable operations, but not enough obviously to stem the losses at NBC itself. But even these revenues are at risk if Congress and the White House mandate lower or no fees to cable channels, or consumers simply drop cable altogether.
Ford's return to long-term profitability rests on it's ability to sell a broad range of cars and trucks that consumers want at decent profit margins supporting Ford's relatively high fixed costs. Producing vehicles that have high quality (good fit and finish), high reliability (they don't break down), good gas mileage (they are cheap to operate) and competitive pricing (they are competitive in pricing with Japanese and Korean models). This is not particularly complicated, indeed it's simple. But the simplest things are often the hardest to execute well, consistently, year in and out.
NBC plans to run Jay Leno's talk show from Monday through Friday at 10 pm as a cost-cutting measure. Because his show is radically cheaper to produce than even an hour of reality programming. But no amount of cheapness will substitute for hit shows. NBC like Detroit has a high fixed cost, including corporate overhead, an analogue to the dealer network (affiliates) and various regulatory burdens. This is not a problem if either Detroit or NBC operates in high-volume with satisfied customers. For Detroit, that means selling a lot of vehicles, at decent profit margins, that consumers actually want. In Southern California, for example, it's quite common to see Ford Mustangs driven, even though California has relatively fewer US car makes and models sold compared to other parts of the country. Even among a population averse to American cars, Ford has not had problems selling it's most distinct car in Southern California.
NBC (and most of Hollywood, in television and in movie studios) are ignoring the competitive threats. DVD price erosion, at home and abroad, from piracy to the alternative of simply re-watching already purchased DVDs, present large threats to revenues for Hollywood as a whole. Since most movies lose money at the box office, and only recoup it in DVD, pay-per-view, video on demand, TV, and foreign movie rights, piracy or consumers simply not spending money presents a mortal threat to the movie studios, and to TV networks and studios who hope to recoup revenue on even canceled series from DVD box sets. Why spend money for a box set when you can watch it for free on Hulu, or purchase for a fraction of the price from a street vendor making pirated copies?
But the threat is larger than mere piracy. Increasingly, Hollywood seems sliding to the irrelevancy of the music industry.
A recent New York Times article on the deathwatch of the Music Industry shows just how quickly an industry can collapse. According to the RIAA, music sales since their peak in 1999, have collapsed by half in inflation adjusted dollars. According to the study by the NPD Group, teens purchased fewer CDs, fewer online downloads, fewer Peer-to-Peer downloads (pirating), and borrowed fewer copies of music, in 2008 compared to 2007. Teens cited (this was before the global recession) overall cutbacks in entertainment spending, but lack of excitement over current music was also a factor (given the declines of 6% in Peer to Peer downloads and "borrowing" music by 28%). A full 23% of teens purchasing less music cited an already established collection of music that satisfied them, and 32% of teens purchasing less music expressed dissatisfaction over current offerings. This among the most disposable income, entertainment oriented group, before the recession.
Among key factors in the change of behavior was the growth in online and satellite radio, and free music from MySpace Music, Pandora, imeem, and other sites, making music nearly always accessible, and with social networking built in (recommendations, etc. based on music listeners like). Even pirates cannot beat "free."
A similar study of British teens found streaming music replacing file-sharing. The reason? Both are "free" but streaming music, by offering recommendations and novelty (the social networking component) is more attractive than searching around for pirated content on the internet.
Or, as the New York Times article put it:
This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model.
This applies to video as well as music.
A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.
Again, this applies to video as well as music.
Even more revealing is the New York Times graphic (link here) reproduced below:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
CD sales revenue have not been replaced by digital downloads, either albums or singles or "mobile" (i.e. ringtones). Fat profit margins, with consumers forced to pay full CD prices to get the few songs they wanted, are gone. The same is happening to Video, for both Hollywood movie studios, and for TV networks. Old models are eroding, consumers are adopting online "free" content (such as Hulu.com or SouthparkStudios.com) that is advertiser supported. Note the comment at TV By The Numbers that Hulu has problems selling most of it's inventory, i.e. old obscure shows such as "New Dragnet" (an obscure 1989 version of the classic "Dragnet" with Jack Webb, different from "LA Dragnet" with Ed O'Neill and Ethan Embry). "The Long Tail" is fairly useless if you can't make money on it, and the trend seen in music sales, with 80% of revenue coming from less than 1% of songs, is the same at Hulu. Hulu lists their most all-time popular TV shows as variously, "Burn Notice," "Bones," "House," and "Family Guy" among others. All shows with sizeable audiences, unlike say those recalling "the New Dragnet."
It's clear that in music, and online, the ability as in years past to milk the "Brandon Tartikoff model" and charge advertisers premium prices for ever-declining amounts of "desirable" demographics is not sustainable. Not only are young (White) people a declining group, due to the birth dearth, but their behavior is changing as well, moving to streaming content that is "free" and has social-networking "extras." Young people are shifting towards it even over piracy or "borrowing." [Hispanic youth watch and listen to, of course, Spanish-language media.]
It's also clear that five years of declining revenues at NBC, before the recession, show this shift taking place to the point where there is nearly $300 million less operating revenue than in 2004, mirrored eerily by declines at GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and the music industry. Specialization won't help, since it leaves producers at the mercy of regulatory or consumer shifts.
Instead, what NBC needs, is not cable-specialization, or more "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" shows, but rather broadly accessible and popular shows. Shows that appeal to men and women alike, along with young and old. Shows that can draw viewers back to NBC, and be streamed on sites like Hulu with full sales of "inventory" (i.e. ad spots on the streaming video).
This won't be easy. Men have largely abandoned TV, and need persuading to come back. Broadcast TV is of course the "ultimate" in streaming video, and free, over the air broadcasts beat the cost of even cable or satellite. Storylines, characters, actors, and the like need at a minimum to be "friendly" to men, and dump the various elitist and politically correct moralizing that characterizes much of TV. Which includes male-bashing. Attracting men of course must be done in ways that do not alienate female viewers, with characters that appeal to women but don't offend men being part of the creative solution. In other words, independent and intelligent leading ladies, but no "Twilight" derived male fantasy figures or junior "Sex and the City" "Mr. Big" knock-offs as leading men. Older audiences too, must be part of the mix, which means care not to needlessly offend those who hold traditional values at a minimum and stopping the tired trope of relying on shock in place of well thought out plots.
All of these creative efforts will require years not months to accomplish, and public communication to viewers, creative people, advertisers, and the public as to what the network wants to accomplish, how it intends to do it, and progress along the way. This requires patience and the ability to sustain losses as the network battles its (rightfully so) perception that NBC is hostile to male viewers.
But the alternative is simply to collapse into a GM or Music publishing slump, from which there is little escape (even with government bailouts). Clearly the views of pundits galore that "de-massification" of culture would proceed indefinitely has been proven wrong. Technology, with the ability to stream "free" content (likely to migrate to video phones soon) has helped make this change.
...Read more
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Rock is Dead: Rolling Stone and the Lack of Young People
Rock is dead. Or, more to the point, the youth culture that created rock music is dead. Because we don't have enough young people. Not enough at any rate to create the kind of robust, competitive, and creative youth market that characterized the course of Rock music from the 1960's through the 1980's. For anyone seeking proof of that, simply examine the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
[click Image to Enlarge]
This isn't unusual. See the site Magazine Death Pool for the betting line on which magazines will cease publication. Note that Blender, which ceased publication in March 2009, had on the cover such rock "artists" as Kelly Clarkson. Meanwhile, the current Rolling Stone covers such cutting edge youth concerns as Obama's Energy Secretary saving the Planet, stories on "Mad Men," "Entourage," "True Blood," and "Weeds" (all skewing heavily female, and older, mid forties or later). American Idol's Chris Daughtry, and Willie Nelson are featured, along with the shocking news that American Idol's Adam Lambert is indeed, gay. Lambert of course poses on the cover as a seductive pop tart, reminiscent of Rolling Stone's 1990's era cover featuring the edgy, youth-oriented Britney Spears (pre-meltdown, pre-Federline).
None of these features, stories, photos, or series of covers screams youth orientation, and of course nearly every bit of content skews heavily older and female.
This is because America's most scarce resource is young (White) people, who drive Rock and other aspects of youth culture.
The short story of 20th Century demographics would read something like the following. In the 1920, prosperity and an increased supply of youth (born after the turn of the Century in good times) created a youth culture. Increased prosperity also led to more babies being born. Then the Great Depression ended the Youth Culture, followed by WWII, which made teenagers who turned 18 in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 (born in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927 respectively) into adults very quickly. Youth culture did not return, until the post-War baby boom and rising incomes created it as in the 1920's. Starting with first toys and then music, youth markets exploded. The Davy Crockett craze, and toys, were as important as Elvis. For example, Hula Hoops came on the scene in 1957, along with Frisbees. Kids who were ten or eleven in the 1950's, entered their late teen age years and early twenties in the 1960's, and drove the youth culture, from music to fashions.
But, births became radically reduced in the latter half of the 1960's. Rising costs of living, declines in real wages, ending of restrictions on abortion, contraception, and the belief in delayed marriage reduced fertility and births every year starting in 1965. During the 1970's, this reduced fertility (as families were also hammered by a poor economy) only increased, recovering somewhat in the 1980's, only to fall again in the early 1990's during the recessionary period, and the high cost of housing in the inflationary period of the latter 1990's and early 2000's when the Dot-Com and Housing bubbles drove prices in urban job centers (mostly on the coasts) up past affordability for many families.
This has left marketers, publishers, creative people, pundits, and many others in a mental prison. Their model of how the world works (there is always more young people, and a large group of young people drives an ever changing culture) is at odds with the reality: there is an ever smaller supply (of young White people) who are the engine of youth culture, and this lack of young (White) people is the chief cause of the decline of youth culture in all areas.
While it is true that internet piracy, decline of the CD as a sales medium for music, and the growth of low-cost online sales of mp3 versions of music on sites as diverse as Apple's Itunes store and Amazon's own online offerings have seriously diminished the money rock artists (and everyone else) earn from recordings, live performances are still lucrative.
It's still possible to make (considerable) amounts of money from rock music, by touring and performing live, where fans will pay considerable amounts of money to see favored artists. It's interesting however to see just who ranks in live performing revenues.
The 2004 Rolling Stone Rich List has for example, James Taylor making about the same amount ($20 million) as Eminem. The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Eagles are the top three performers. In 2007 Miley Cyrus earned a combined $64 million from concerts and music sales. But no new artists like Elvis in the late 1950's or the Beatles in the mid 1960's are earning this amount of money, from either recording or touring. Cyrus, working the tween girl market, made close to the amount that the Eagles did in 2004 ($63 million for the Eagles vs. $64 million for Cyrus).
As an aside, it's interesting that while musicians can make money from older fans (the Stones, Springsteen, the Eagles) or young tween girls (Cyrus), there's little evidence of any performer who can draw young White men in appreciable numbers to be competitive with the top revenue earners in pop music. Young men seem completely absent from popular music.
The 2000 Census data can be found at that link, while the 1990 Census data (for White Alone) data can be found here, while the 1980 Census data (PDF only) can be found here.
Here is the graphic version of the 1980 Census:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
Using the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census, I've constructed the following table.
From this data, I've constructed the graph below showing the decline in youth cohorts from the 1980 Census data:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
I must mention that the estimates from the US Census Bureau show an increase in youth cohorts, wrt to 2008 vs. 2000, but these are estimates and not complete enumerations. They also fly in the face of the other data, which suggests a birth dearth and scarceness of young people. Among others, the losses at the UPN and WB networks, and continued losses at the merged CW network, aimed solely at teen girls. For example, the highest ratings of WB/UPN series Buffy the Vampire Slayer were 5.3 million, while that of the 1980's series the A Team were 20.1 million viewers.
Nevertheless, the data for White Alone youth cohorts for the 2008 estimates show an increase in young people created during a decade of high housing costs and declining real wages. Perhaps people magically had children at little cost, unlike earlier decades. Or some other cause is at work (immigration from Europe with pre-existing children)? I do find it puzzling that the peak numbers of the Baby Boom (16-17 million per cohort) is now approached in numbers (around 15-16 million) for the younger age cohorts, under age 5 to age 29. Particularly since the numbers of age cohorts in 2000 who would naturally age (8 years later) don't match up, there seems to be an extra 3 million people added with no explanation. Completeness however demands I point out that data, and let readers draw their own conclusions. My own are that the over-counting might well be from faulty estimates and wrong classifications (Hispanic/White being put into the White Alone category).
The White Alone category is the driver of the youth market, because Hispanics tend to strongly prefer Spanish-language media. As I've noted in other posts, during the campaign for and against California's Proposition 8 (overturning gay marriage), the opponents of Prop. 8 recruited Puerto Rican actress America Ferrara, star of the ABC-TV series "Ugly Betty" to record spots against Proposition 8. In English. Proponents of Proposition 8 got actual, Mexican native and Spanish speaking Telenovela stars to record spots in Spanish for Prop. 8. This undoubtedly helped Proposition 8 to pass.
America has a substantial Hispanic/Mexican youth population, but they tend to inhabit a separate and distinct cultural universe which only occasionally intersects with the English speaking, White/Black culture. Blacks do share many if not most of the cultural assumptions and enthusiasms of the White population, and a quick check of Nielsen's excellent ratings portal confirms that Black and White preferences for Television remains pretty much the same. While Hispanics don't share many of the same viewing patterns. Howver, there simply are not that many Blacks (12.5% of the population) to make an impact as a mass-driver of youth culture.
[Note to bloggers, for those seeking to copy/paste data into Excel from web-pages, a good Text Editor that can do regular expression search and replace is critical. For this post, I'd selected web pages generated by the US Census Bureau website and copied into TextWrangler, the free text editor from the BBEdit folks for the Mac. Using regular expressions I replaced the pattern of \r\t\r\r (a carriage return, a tab, two carriage returns) with \t (a single tab). Of course you need to show the invisibles to figure out what to replace. Gedit on Linux does not have regular expressions, both Kate and Jedit (the latter also available on the Mac) have regular expressions in Search and Replace. Once you've set up your text file properly, save it and import it into Excel or Open Office as a delimited (tab) text file and save yourself lots of tedious typing. It's faster and you don't get errors. A good text editor is also critical in replacing the junk that Excel or Open Office create when it saves HTML files, which I've done in creating this table for Blogger.]
Rolling Stone is as tedious, older skewing, aimed at a mostly older, female readership, as it is, because there just are not that many young people. Not enough young people to make say, either the Killers or Arctic Monkeys (both formed in 2002) as well-known, as popular, and as profitable as say Elvis, the Beach Boys, or the Beatles, in their hey-days, or even as the Eagles in 2004, a band at that point 32 years old (the Eagles were formed in 1972).
Everyone knows the data, but some times it takes the posed glamor shot of an ... American Idol contestant to understand how rock, and youth culture in general, are both dead. Because there are not enough young people.
...Read more
[click Image to Enlarge]
This isn't unusual. See the site Magazine Death Pool for the betting line on which magazines will cease publication. Note that Blender, which ceased publication in March 2009, had on the cover such rock "artists" as Kelly Clarkson. Meanwhile, the current Rolling Stone covers such cutting edge youth concerns as Obama's Energy Secretary saving the Planet, stories on "Mad Men," "Entourage," "True Blood," and "Weeds" (all skewing heavily female, and older, mid forties or later). American Idol's Chris Daughtry, and Willie Nelson are featured, along with the shocking news that American Idol's Adam Lambert is indeed, gay. Lambert of course poses on the cover as a seductive pop tart, reminiscent of Rolling Stone's 1990's era cover featuring the edgy, youth-oriented Britney Spears (pre-meltdown, pre-Federline).
None of these features, stories, photos, or series of covers screams youth orientation, and of course nearly every bit of content skews heavily older and female.
This is because America's most scarce resource is young (White) people, who drive Rock and other aspects of youth culture.
The short story of 20th Century demographics would read something like the following. In the 1920, prosperity and an increased supply of youth (born after the turn of the Century in good times) created a youth culture. Increased prosperity also led to more babies being born. Then the Great Depression ended the Youth Culture, followed by WWII, which made teenagers who turned 18 in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 (born in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927 respectively) into adults very quickly. Youth culture did not return, until the post-War baby boom and rising incomes created it as in the 1920's. Starting with first toys and then music, youth markets exploded. The Davy Crockett craze, and toys, were as important as Elvis. For example, Hula Hoops came on the scene in 1957, along with Frisbees. Kids who were ten or eleven in the 1950's, entered their late teen age years and early twenties in the 1960's, and drove the youth culture, from music to fashions.
But, births became radically reduced in the latter half of the 1960's. Rising costs of living, declines in real wages, ending of restrictions on abortion, contraception, and the belief in delayed marriage reduced fertility and births every year starting in 1965. During the 1970's, this reduced fertility (as families were also hammered by a poor economy) only increased, recovering somewhat in the 1980's, only to fall again in the early 1990's during the recessionary period, and the high cost of housing in the inflationary period of the latter 1990's and early 2000's when the Dot-Com and Housing bubbles drove prices in urban job centers (mostly on the coasts) up past affordability for many families.
This has left marketers, publishers, creative people, pundits, and many others in a mental prison. Their model of how the world works (there is always more young people, and a large group of young people drives an ever changing culture) is at odds with the reality: there is an ever smaller supply (of young White people) who are the engine of youth culture, and this lack of young (White) people is the chief cause of the decline of youth culture in all areas.
While it is true that internet piracy, decline of the CD as a sales medium for music, and the growth of low-cost online sales of mp3 versions of music on sites as diverse as Apple's Itunes store and Amazon's own online offerings have seriously diminished the money rock artists (and everyone else) earn from recordings, live performances are still lucrative.
It's still possible to make (considerable) amounts of money from rock music, by touring and performing live, where fans will pay considerable amounts of money to see favored artists. It's interesting however to see just who ranks in live performing revenues.
The 2004 Rolling Stone Rich List has for example, James Taylor making about the same amount ($20 million) as Eminem. The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Eagles are the top three performers. In 2007 Miley Cyrus earned a combined $64 million from concerts and music sales. But no new artists like Elvis in the late 1950's or the Beatles in the mid 1960's are earning this amount of money, from either recording or touring. Cyrus, working the tween girl market, made close to the amount that the Eagles did in 2004 ($63 million for the Eagles vs. $64 million for Cyrus).
As an aside, it's interesting that while musicians can make money from older fans (the Stones, Springsteen, the Eagles) or young tween girls (Cyrus), there's little evidence of any performer who can draw young White men in appreciable numbers to be competitive with the top revenue earners in pop music. Young men seem completely absent from popular music.
The 2000 Census data can be found at that link, while the 1990 Census data (for White Alone) data can be found here, while the 1980 Census data (PDF only) can be found here.
Here is the graphic version of the 1980 Census:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
Using the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census, I've constructed the following table.
| 2000 | 1990 | 1980 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 5 years | 12,859,892 | 13,649,490 | 11,789,394 |
| 5 to 9 years | 13,944,882 | 13,616,268 | 12,200,468 |
| 10 to 14 years | 14,322,638 | 12,853,558 | 13,699,871 |
| 15 to 19 years | 14,167,148 | 13,342,703 | 16,138,482 |
| 20 to 24 years | 13,064,891 | 14,523,912 | 16,541,315 |
| 25 to 29 years | 13,501,773 | 16,638,544 | 15,262,799 |
| 30 to 34 years | 14,818,786 | 17,351,513 | 14,143,721 |
| 35 to 39 years | 17,031,493 | 16,081,606 | 11,290,738 |
| 40 to 44 years | 17,265,995 | 14,506,390 | 9,408,654 |
| 45 to 49 years | 15,810,626 | 11,585,703 | 9,034,158 |
| 50 to 54 years | 14,213,875 | 9,504,871 | 9,812,613 |
| 55 to 59 years | 11,107,247 | 8,968,416 | 9,990,620 |
| 60 to 64 years | 8,945,842 | 9,211,123 | 8,813,447 |
| 65 to 69 years | 8,040,225 | 8,899,637 | 7,641,210 |
| 70 to 74 years | 7,648,193 | 7,126,564 | 6,001,564 |
| 75 to 79 years | 6,530,019 | 5,485,025 | 4,229,594 |
| 80 to 84 years | 4,408,597 | 3,552,695 | 2,631,873 |
| 85 years and over | 3,778,504 | 2,788,052 | 1,972,317 |
From this data, I've constructed the graph below showing the decline in youth cohorts from the 1980 Census data:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
I must mention that the estimates from the US Census Bureau show an increase in youth cohorts, wrt to 2008 vs. 2000, but these are estimates and not complete enumerations. They also fly in the face of the other data, which suggests a birth dearth and scarceness of young people. Among others, the losses at the UPN and WB networks, and continued losses at the merged CW network, aimed solely at teen girls. For example, the highest ratings of WB/UPN series Buffy the Vampire Slayer were 5.3 million, while that of the 1980's series the A Team were 20.1 million viewers.
Nevertheless, the data for White Alone youth cohorts for the 2008 estimates show an increase in young people created during a decade of high housing costs and declining real wages. Perhaps people magically had children at little cost, unlike earlier decades. Or some other cause is at work (immigration from Europe with pre-existing children)? I do find it puzzling that the peak numbers of the Baby Boom (16-17 million per cohort) is now approached in numbers (around 15-16 million) for the younger age cohorts, under age 5 to age 29. Particularly since the numbers of age cohorts in 2000 who would naturally age (8 years later) don't match up, there seems to be an extra 3 million people added with no explanation. Completeness however demands I point out that data, and let readers draw their own conclusions. My own are that the over-counting might well be from faulty estimates and wrong classifications (Hispanic/White being put into the White Alone category).
The White Alone category is the driver of the youth market, because Hispanics tend to strongly prefer Spanish-language media. As I've noted in other posts, during the campaign for and against California's Proposition 8 (overturning gay marriage), the opponents of Prop. 8 recruited Puerto Rican actress America Ferrara, star of the ABC-TV series "Ugly Betty" to record spots against Proposition 8. In English. Proponents of Proposition 8 got actual, Mexican native and Spanish speaking Telenovela stars to record spots in Spanish for Prop. 8. This undoubtedly helped Proposition 8 to pass.
America has a substantial Hispanic/Mexican youth population, but they tend to inhabit a separate and distinct cultural universe which only occasionally intersects with the English speaking, White/Black culture. Blacks do share many if not most of the cultural assumptions and enthusiasms of the White population, and a quick check of Nielsen's excellent ratings portal confirms that Black and White preferences for Television remains pretty much the same. While Hispanics don't share many of the same viewing patterns. Howver, there simply are not that many Blacks (12.5% of the population) to make an impact as a mass-driver of youth culture.
[Note to bloggers, for those seeking to copy/paste data into Excel from web-pages, a good Text Editor that can do regular expression search and replace is critical. For this post, I'd selected web pages generated by the US Census Bureau website and copied into TextWrangler, the free text editor from the BBEdit folks for the Mac. Using regular expressions I replaced the pattern of \r\t\r\r (a carriage return, a tab, two carriage returns) with \t (a single tab). Of course you need to show the invisibles to figure out what to replace. Gedit on Linux does not have regular expressions, both Kate and Jedit (the latter also available on the Mac) have regular expressions in Search and Replace. Once you've set up your text file properly, save it and import it into Excel or Open Office as a delimited (tab) text file and save yourself lots of tedious typing. It's faster and you don't get errors. A good text editor is also critical in replacing the junk that Excel or Open Office create when it saves HTML files, which I've done in creating this table for Blogger.]
Rolling Stone is as tedious, older skewing, aimed at a mostly older, female readership, as it is, because there just are not that many young people. Not enough young people to make say, either the Killers or Arctic Monkeys (both formed in 2002) as well-known, as popular, and as profitable as say Elvis, the Beach Boys, or the Beatles, in their hey-days, or even as the Eagles in 2004, a band at that point 32 years old (the Eagles were formed in 1972).
Everyone knows the data, but some times it takes the posed glamor shot of an ... American Idol contestant to understand how rock, and youth culture in general, are both dead. Because there are not enough young people.
...Read more
Monday, September 8, 2008
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 2
In my prior post, Why Is It Always 1968 Part 1 I discussed some of the factors accounting for the astonishing fact that culturally, from music, to food, to dress, to politics, to entertainment (with some exceptions), twenty year olds from 1968 (that's a full forty years ago folks) share the same tastes as twenty year olds from 2008. [Men and women who are Sixty Years old do not generally play any video games save the Wii sports games. Finding the games too difficult and boring.]
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
In comparison, a man who was twenty in 1928 would have almost nothing in common with a man of twenty in the year 1968. Those intervening years saw great social and technological change (that drove a lot of the social change). A switch from mostly horse-drawn or electrified street car local transportation and trains for long distance travel, to the private auto for local transportation and cheap jet air travel for long distance transportation. Travel from New York to Los Angeles did not take days but hours. Radio was replaced by Television as the entertainment of choice in the home. Recorded music at home went from expensive, and fairly bad sounding novelties, to cheaply available. Telephones went from novelty to ubiquity. Social attitudes about race, sex, women, and more changed drastically as people moved from cities to suburbs. In 1928 women had the vote (nationally) for only 8 years, by 1968 it was nearly half a century old. In 1928, the world was stable, with no threat of sudden destruction of cities imaginable, the US protected by wide oceans, and the idea of war and destruction visited upon the US simply inconceivable..
Yet the world of 1968 is at least as different from today as 1928 was to it. Computers have gone from corporate data rooms, costing tens of millions of dollars, and the size of refrigerators, to commodities sold in Warehouse stores. Mobile phones capable of recording and playing video are common. The Internet, cable and satellite TV, laptop computers, and free wifi have all made unimaginable amounts of data and media accessible almost anywhere, any time. Jet travel is even cheaper and more available (if far less pleasant). Attitudes about gays (including Gay Marriage) unimaginable in 1968 are routinely discussed today on Daytime Television.
Why is it, then, that our culture remains stuck in 1968?
One reason might be the men who shape it, versus the men who shaped culture previously. Using IMDB.com, I used the data to construct the following tables. First, the culture that was replaced by the Youth Culture of 1968, the major cultural creators from roughly 1935-1954:
| Previous (1935-54) | Age in 1954 | Year of Birth | Years before WWI End |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Ford | 60 | 1894 | 24 |
| Samuel Goldwyn | 75 | 1879 | 24 |
| Louis Mayer | 70 | 1884 | 34 |
| Jack Warner | 62 | 1892 | 26 |
| Orson Welles | 39 | 1915 | 3 |
| Preston Sturges | 56 | 189 | 20 |
| Howard Hawks | 58 | 1896 | 22 |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 55 | 1899 | 15 |
| Frank Capra | 57 | 1897 | 21 |
| Anthony Mann | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Charles Laughton | 55 | 1899 | 19 |
| J Lee Thompson | 40 | 1914 | 4 |
| John Huston | 48 | 1906 | 12 |
| Average | 56 | 1898 | 20 |
There are some interesting things about this table. First, you'll note how Old these key movie makers were. The Average Age was 56, they were on average, born in 1898 and had twenty years before the end of WWI (when the public found out just how bad the debacle in the trenches was, and how many were lost).
For the most part, these men were men of the Nineteenth Century, not the Twentieth. It showed in the movies they made. More leisurely, with more adult content, less desire to use shock to cover up lack of ideas, and a focus on making films for all ages, older (past 20, anyway) and young alike. Remember, back in the era of 1935-54, as Ed Driscoll points out, men were supposed to act (in public at least) like adults. Not overgrown boys. And women, well acted like women. Not overgrown girls.
Therefore, even men of 21 were expected to conduct themselves as adult men. Not as lightly supervised boys. It's hard for people to understand, that in that era, it was common for men to wear hats, and jacket and suit pants, for nearly everything at hand save hard manual labor. Women wore dresses unless out on some picnic or working at manual labor. This included young men and women as well those in their forties.
While some might quibble with a name or two, in the list above, I think it's fairly representative. There are one-hit wonders (but what a wonder) like Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and those who churned out film after film, like Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Compare with those of today:
| Person | Age in 2008 | Year of Birth |
|---|---|---|
| JJ Abrams | 42 | 1964 |
| Joss Whedon | 44 | 1964 | Steve Soderberg | 45 | 1963 |
| Jerry Bruckheimer | 63 | 1945 |
| Josh Schwartz | 32 | 1976 |
| Chris Nolan | 38 | 1970 |
| Sam Raimi | 49 | 1959 |
| Alan Ball | 51 | 1957 |
| Seth Rogen | 26 | 1982 |
| Judd Apatow | 41 | 1967 |
| Kevin Williamson | 43 | 1965 |
| John Hughes | 58 | 1950 |
| George Lucas | 62 | 1946 |
| Steven Spielberg | 64 | 1944 |
| Tim Burton | 50 | 1958 |
| Average | 47 | 1969 |
An average of nine years younger, and the birth age of 1969. Instead of the formative years in the Nineteenth Century, today's movie and television producers and directors and writers came of age in the 1970's and 1980's. Is it any wonder that the attitudes of those eras still persist.
In some ways, it's not always 1968. It's always 1979. Carter, Disco, and the depressing "certainties" of the late 1970's reign supreme. In film, the collective efforts of the men above seem mostly to want to remake "the China Syndrome" or "All the Presidents Men" instead of creating something new, or at least adult and mature. Middle aged men avoid risk, and that these men largely do. Without, sadly, making entertainment that is truly adult. There is nothing more pathetic than powerful and middle aged men engaging in posturing against the man when they are, in fact, the man.
The creative class of today, if the table above is any use at all, is neither adult and mature enough to create timeless entertainment, for adults of all ages, nor young enough to challenge the status quo and create something exciting and new. Instead movies and television recycle the entertainment of their youth. Which wasn't new then, and has gotten more dated since. If past history is any guide, we're in for at least ten to fifteen more years of this rot. Until the above group is simply too old to make movies and television any more.
Thus, the reasons why it's always 1968. Or perhaps, 1979.
...Read more
Why Is It Always 1968? Part 1
Recently , Ed Driscoll linked to my post, Comic Books Dirty Little Secret, noting that:
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968.
Which got me thinking. Why is it always 1968?
The answer is complex, but as always, depends on demographics. The Demographics of the Youth Culture, and the creators of culture in general. The short version is that America ran out of young people. The long version is that technological stasis and a frozen ideology have put popular culture in amber. Though there are signs that might be changing.
In the short version, Americans stopped having kids, in sufficient numbers, to sustain a critical mass of young people. The Census Bureau provides enough data from the online 2000 and 1990 census to produce the following graphs.
First, the number of 20 year olds between 1955 and 2000:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
As you can see, there's a story there. The Depression made children expensive, and the war years removed most young men at home, with the remainder in great uncertainty. Not until 1947 did people have kids in greater numbers, which is why the huge jump in 20 year olds from 1966 to 1967. Lost in the nostalgia for the Sixties is the demographic reality that underpinned most of it (and it's predecessor the 1950's). First the shadow of the Depression, which produced understandably relatively few children, and then the uncertainty and chaos of the War years. People started having more and more kids, steadily, until 1960. At which point, birth rates declined. There is a big drop from 1965 to 1966, and bottoming out in 1969.
My hunch is that this temporary drop in babies, which recovered somewhat in 1970, and thereafter dropped even lower in the following decade with only a slight recovery in 1979, was due to social changes (likely the widespread availability and effectiveness of the pill and condom, along with lack of social stigma associated with same), combined with bad economics. Regardless, people had fewer kids in the late 1960's and 1970's, compared to the peak years of 1947-1965. About half a million less, never really recovering, and the cumulative effect of the decreasing birth rate had a huge effect.
Fewer young people hungering for a different Youth Culture than that of 1968.
The graph below (with data from the 2000 and 1990 Census) show more graphically the trend:
[Click Image to Enlarge]
[Yes, the numbers don't agree in the two graphs. I assume it's due to mortality, the 2000 Census is used for the Year 2000 20-year olds, while the 1990 Census was used for the # of 20-year olds in 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. Mortality tends to increase after age 50 or so, so the older census is probably more accurate. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not have older Census online, but the important thing is that the trends in both graphs agree. Not the absolute numbers. For convenience, I used the 2000 Census to produce the year-by-year graph of 20-year olds. Since it plugged into Open Office Calc easily.]
For whatever reason, around 1966, people stopped having children, in America. Without an ever increasing number of Youth, there is much more risk in the Youth Culture. This makes the popular culture stagnant. Since there's no ability to gamble, as there was in the late 1960's, when the number of Youth just kept increasing year by year. It's telling that very few new products for kids have been introduced since the 1950's-60's, no Hula-Hoops (1957), no Frisbees (1957), or Slinkies (1948), or Superball (1965), or Silly Putty (1957). All notably introduced when there were lots and lots of ten year olds around, increasing every year. There's been nothing like them since, sadly.
This is particularly important when even the cheapest movie, or hit song, costs a lot to market. Lack of a payoff will guarantee risk avoidance. Which coincidentally, is just what we have.
As Ed Driscoll points out, in 1968, the world of 1928 was forty years old and far distant. No twenty year olds shared the musical tastes of the generation of 1928. A twenty year old and a sixty year old that year would have little in common. They would not dress alike, they would not listen to the same songs (indeed music from 1928 would rapidly propel a twenty year old in 1968 as rapidly outside of hearing range of said song as possible). They would not eat the same food. They would certainly not hold the same social attitudes, on much of anything.
Yet as Ed Driscoll points out, consider how a twenty year old and sixty year old today would share almost all the same attitudes. A twenty year old would listen to the Rolling Stones, just like a sixty year old would. Or the Beatles. They would dress alike, in Jeans and T-shirts, mostly. They'd eat the same food, and share the same social attitudes. Far from repelling a twenty year old out of hearing range, the music of 1968 would not seem "old fashioned."
Moreover, a sixty year old fan of say, Louis Armstrong or Al Jolson in 1968, would have difficulty even comprehending the music of the Beatles, or Rolling Stones, much less enjoy them both as simple continuation of the music of his youth. No such adjustment need be made by today's sixty year old, who can listen to say, Arctic Monkeys or the Killers and enjoy both as natural progressions of the music of his youth.
In some ways, this heralds a return to the Nineteenth Century. A twenty year old in 1828, and a twenty year old in 1868, would probably share the same attitudes, manner of dress, taste in food, and music, in 1868. It's tempting to pencil in the rapid social changes of the Twentieth Century as "normal" but History suggests that century was atypical. It's quite possible the frozen in amber nature of our culture, with all it's negatives will remain with us for a long time.
What stands out in the Twentieth Century is the role of technology in "breaking" the popular culture of the past. Radio enabled youth to stay up late, even in rural towns, and be connected to the Swing Bands of the 1920's and 1930's, even up through the 1940's. Including bands that were all Black. There was no color line in the radio broadcasts, and bands like Duke Ellington, to artists like Miles Davis found fans around the nation based on their radio broadcasts. To say nothing of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw.
This was followed by Television, which allowed people to skip the movies, and cheap recorded music, first on 45 rpm singles, and then 33 and a third rpm "long playing" records. Playable on cheap phonographs that produced acceptable, to later excellent stereo sound. FM "College" Radio helped promote unknown bands, and the availability of cheap electric guitars, sound systems, and crucially, cassette tapes (to pass the music along from friend to friend, of unknown bands) helped form an infrastructure that allowed fringe acts to play cheap dives to polish their performance skills, if for little pay. Gain exposure in better clubs with tapes passed around and College Radio taking the place of the late night AM Radio broadcasts. Get featured on major radio and television programs, to reach a mass audience (of young people) who could be relied upon to buy the records in large numbers.
For a while, cheap "youth exploitation" movies from AIP and other outfits allowed directors and writers like say, Steven Spielberg to hone their craft and progress up the same ladder or experimentation to mass market appeal in movies. Sam Raimi, for example, was a director in the horror ghetto before he moved up to Spider-Man. Sadly, that path is gone now.
While the lack of an upwards path for movies is understandable, given the expense of making movies, that of music is not. After all, today's modern technology allows bands to make their own MP3s, freely available, on their own website. There are still plenty of clubs to play in, College Radio, with ever-new DJs, looking for new bands and sounds to make their mark with listeners. Equipment has become cheaper than ever. One might even argue that the availability of ITunes on nearly every computer makes it the equivalent of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965. With cheap video compression and greater availability of high-speed internet, one wonders why more people like Felicia Day are not constructing their own websites to sell their own productions, made cheap and fast and good, like AIP or Hammer Horror films, on DVD or ITunes (since Apple will sell videos as well as music). [Check out the link, her project "the Guild" is hilarious and free.] Heck YouTube allows "free samples" in the way that radio airplay on AM radio drove the hit singles of Elvis ,the Beach Boys, and the Beatles.
My guess is that it's due to a culture that avoids risk. This culture, like the minor aristocracy of Jane Austen's day, is obsessed with protecting status and prestige against any downward spiral. Ever present in Austen's books is the looming threat that all could come crashing down, to catastrophic poverty. For much of today's culture, that same fear, animates most everything creative people do. It's not as if there are enough opportunities in a huge pool of young people to overcome that stasis anymore. No reward to make the risk worthwhile. There's also something about the men who create popular culture in and of themselves that makes them risk averse, something for my next post.
Risk avoidance is made worse, of course, by a culture of Politically Correct Multiculturalism. If American creativity, among Whites and Blacks, was animated by huge amounts of cultural borrowing, today's insistence on separateness, makes that impossible, and a violation of the cultural aristocracy's unwritten but powerful rules of etiquette. Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, and Little Richard all borrowed across racial and ethnic lines. Particularly in places like along the Mississippi River, or New Orleans, or Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, with exposure to different people using different concepts and tools, musicians, writers, and artists would borrow all the time from people of vastly different races and backgrounds, simply because they saw the devices and tools working, effectively and sought to combine them with their own tools for their own uses. Popular music has particularly suffered, as Black artists no longer borrow freely from White artists, as say Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding did (from Frank Sinatra), and White artists no longer find anything of value in the sterile grounds of uber-macho Rap.
But possibly the most influential factor in accounting for why it's always 1968 is who are the key culture shapers, and just when they came of age. A subject for my next post.
...Read more
Monday, July 14, 2008
Death of the Niche Market
The death of the niche market is upon us. This has profound implications for our cultural life, which had been on a twenty year slide towards ever-greater fragmentation.
First, the background. Ever since the 1980's, American cultural life has been fragmenting. First, with the growth of technology allowing catering to diverse and discrete tastes in television and music. Cable and later Satellite TV allowed television watchers to follow Golf, or Motorsports, or Women's programming exclusively. Not to mention upscale pay channels like HBO or Showtime, home of Tony Soprano and "Weeds" respectively. Music too, particularly popular music, became fragmented, with Punk, Alternative, and Rap forming myriad sub-genres and cultures oriented around them. Everything from Christian Punk to "clean" Rap have fans and a following and of course, fashion and rules for belonging. The internet of course intensified this fragmentation, with first newsgroups, then forums and blogs for the like minded to discuss, say the latest obscure Manga comics, or dance bands from the UK. But all this started back in the 1980's, as anyone who watched the interplay between Goth fans of say, the Cure, and Rockabilly fans of LA based X can attest.
Nor was this phenomena limited to the entertainment sphere. The phenomenal growth of niche retailers like Sharper Image, or Steve & Barry's attests to both the opportunity to cater to consumers demand for unique retail institutions and consumer's willingness to pay top dollar at such places. The growth of the mega-mall, with many small retail spaces expecting lots of passers by and traffic (generated by "anchor" department stores and/or other big draws) allowed retailers the opportunity to reach enough customers without massive advertising and marketing expenditures. Consumers, with rising wages, and lowered costs for food and energy (in real, inflation adjusted terms) were willing to pay extra to possess goods that differentiated them from everyone else.
This had an effect on advertising, much of which supports popular culture, particularly television. NBC built it's whole strategy from the 1980's onward towards appealing to a more wealthy audience, even if that meant sacrificing the size of the audience. Shows such as "Hill Street Blues," "St. Elsewhere," and "Homicide: Life on the Street," may not have garnered great ratings, but the critical acclaim and halo effect of the "snob appeal" helped cement NBC as the network for wealthy, status-conscious yuppies in the 1980's and 1990's. A tradition carried on with such shows as "My Name Is Earl," whose premise is amusing wealthy urbanites with the foibles of rural, "white trash" working class people. Think of it as a reverse "Beverly Hillbillies" where it's Mr. Drysdale laughing at Jed Clampett.
Most of popular culture has been aimed at ever more "selective" fanbases, to paraphrase the movie "Spinal Tap." Advertisers would pay money to reach selected demographics, mostly young people, and consumers were eager and able to pay money to listen to niche music, watch niche television, and buy niche products. All in an effort in a mass-consumer society to maintain a distinct and individual identity. Which ironically of course was itself a product of the mass-consumer society.
All of this process however, required money. Not just consumer niche spending, driving advertising spending on niche outlets, but investment capital as well. The print version of the Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2008, has a front page story on how retailer Steve & Barry relied on payments from mall owners desperate to replace absent Department Store anchors (closure of the former anchors a product of consolidation brought on by ... yes you guessed it, fragmentation of consumer retail spending). It was these payments, not continuing retail operations, that fueled the company's growth. Mall owners, heavily leveraged and victims of the ongoing credit crises, were unable to keep up the payments and Steve & Barry's filed for bankruptcy on Wed, July 9, 2008.
Just as in my post, Gossip Girl and the Aging of America, niche plays for audience or shoppers don't work in economic downturns. America has had an extraordinary run of more than twenty years of continuing economic growth, wage growth, low fuel and food prices, all allowing consumers spare money to spend on creating or maintaining a "niche" identity. That's coming to an end.
The print edition of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, July 11, 2008 reports that consumers are changing their spending habits radically, altering profoundly the retail landscape. Fair use excerpt below:
Wal-Mart reported it's best monthly sales gain in four years, benefiting from bargain hunting. Coupon redemptions have increased, halting a 15 year slide. The Toyota Corolla has displaced the Ford F-150 as America's best selling vehicle. Consumer confidence has dropped 38% from January 2007. Borders and Circuit City are reporting large sales declines as consumers, pressed by spiraling gas/energy and food prices, curtail all but essential spending. Consultants studies suggest that vitamin water, 100-calorie snack packages, and children's lunches in a tray are being replaced by tap water, value packed snacks, and home-made lunches respectively.
Retailers and manufacturers are weeding out niche products that don't have mass appeal. Some retailers are already dropping suppliers and products that don't generate big sales.
OK, what does this all mean?
It means that Satellite Radio may just not be the wave of the future. Lacking enough subscribers in a recession to cover the costs of expensive contracts with the NFL or personalities like Howard Stern. Broadcast radio, free and over the airwaves, may well attract more advertisers looking to reach the masses, since the niche market simply won't exist in many cases. Morning and evening drive time radio will be filled with broader-appealing music, and sports. Niche radio stations, particularly "Alternative" or College-radio music stations, are likely to be sold or changed over to more popular formats such as all-talk, or sports, to draw better advertiser rates. Remember, the consequence of the baby bust means that there are 8 million more seniors than young people. Alternative or College-rock radio stations in small markets are particularly vulnerable.
Musically, popular bands are going to get older. Audience wise at least. There simply won't be enough disposable income to be spread over untried, unknown bands. Live music venues in the smaller range, the incubator of pop music innovation, have already been in decline since the mid 1990's, with the decline of the numbers of young people and the aging of the former youth cohorts. New bands will still exist, coming into the public view. But there won't be that many of them, and their goal will be to move towards the center where the money is, and gaining mass popularity. Likely gone are the days where cult bands could profitably cultivate a more "selective" appeal and tour across America making money. The decline of the CD and high prices relative to buying a single song on say, the Itunes store via Apple makes record sales a dicey proposition for even self-financed bands. Most bands make money touring, not by recording, and that won't change. Just the orientation of the music, to include older fans because there simply won't be enough money to support a youth-only cult band.
Movies, though not subject to the demands of advertisers, are still a mass medium. Sales at discounters like Best Buy, or even the local supermarket guarantee that reality. As do continued price pressure from brazen pirates selling DVDs at local swap meets and flea markets, often supplied by China or other places beyond the reach of US law. Film makers like Judd Apatow are likely to be successful, with more culturally conservative messages (carefully hidden behind profanity), while edgy/hip film makers like Steve Soderburgh will find that audiences are not in a mood to be shocked with edgy material, but will demand entertainment satisfaction. With discretionary income limited, a few movies will be mega-hits, the rest will have to eke out small box office receipts and DVD rentals. It's likely that DVD sales of movies (and television shows) will have to be heavily discounted, as consumers just won't spend that much money on them with essentials so pricey.
In television, the CW is doomed unless it can broaden it's appeal beyond teen age girls. Given the strong perception that the network is not testosterone friendly, this is likely to be a Sisyphean task. Other networks will face large challenges in their fall schedules. Much of their current programming, and new fall or mid-winter shows were ordered under the old economic climate, with niche programming abounding. NBC's "Heroes" is likely to show continued declines, with a convoluted storyline, and lack of central and compelling characters who provide an enjoyable escape from ordinary life. Even worse is Fox's mid-season "Dollhouse," a new offering by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Joss Whedon. It would have been a tough sell in 1997, and this is not 1997. Niche, trendy-hip posturing just won't sell in a recession. Not with profound consumer shifts in spending and corresponding changes in advertiser spending.
Likely to improve in ratings are sports, including the NFL, College Sports, and Baseball, as people seek cheap and relaxing entertainment. Already TV viewership is up, according to the Wall Street Journal. Which makes sense. A night at home, in front of the TV, is cheaper than a night out at Applebee's. With gas flirting at $5 a gallon, this makes sense. Men are likely to spend more time watching TV, and shows that can capture the male audience are likely to do well. NBC's "Chuck" is likely to do quite well in this regard, as are any other show featuring an idealized "average guy" as the hero.
What is interesting is how CBS's "Moonlight" (not to be confused with the 1980's show "Moonlighting" with Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis) did fairly poorly this past season, and was canceled, with no pick up by any other network. A romance-novel copy of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spin-off "Angel," which was in turn a copy of the Canadian series "Forever Knight," the show was too niche in it's appeal, despite all the promotion and "buzz" surrounding the show. Men, of course, hated the show with a passion.
It's quite likely that most other networks will avoid these niche shows as their fall lineup inevitably fails and pursue the "CBS formula" as epitomized by "NCIS" and the various "CSI," "NUMB3RS," and so on. A strong, forty year old plus male character leads a team that includes a strong, capable female character or characters. Fighting crime, restoring order, or something of that nature. The goal being to attract men plus women with elements that appeal to both and don't repel either. The old strategy of advertisers and creative people slicing audiences into ever smaller fragments is probably gone for a long time. It will be a major adjustment for most creative people, who grew up in a time when it was always assumed that audiences will get both richer and smaller, ever more eager to demonstrate unique individuality.
That is, quite likely, a good thing. Lack of unified and unifying culture makes bonds across divisions, racial, sexual, class, regional, and income much more difficult. A common culture, valued and defended, protects against both usurpation of power at home by unchecked elites, be they political, cultural, judicial, or corporate, as well as a stout defense of the nation and it's people abroad. When everyone has seen the game last night, or understands the catch phrases of the latest sitcom, or watches the same hour long drama on television, social bonds increase, as do the ability for ordinary people to band together to demand or force action on issues where they hold common ground.
...Read more
First, the background. Ever since the 1980's, American cultural life has been fragmenting. First, with the growth of technology allowing catering to diverse and discrete tastes in television and music. Cable and later Satellite TV allowed television watchers to follow Golf, or Motorsports, or Women's programming exclusively. Not to mention upscale pay channels like HBO or Showtime, home of Tony Soprano and "Weeds" respectively. Music too, particularly popular music, became fragmented, with Punk, Alternative, and Rap forming myriad sub-genres and cultures oriented around them. Everything from Christian Punk to "clean" Rap have fans and a following and of course, fashion and rules for belonging. The internet of course intensified this fragmentation, with first newsgroups, then forums and blogs for the like minded to discuss, say the latest obscure Manga comics, or dance bands from the UK. But all this started back in the 1980's, as anyone who watched the interplay between Goth fans of say, the Cure, and Rockabilly fans of LA based X can attest.
Nor was this phenomena limited to the entertainment sphere. The phenomenal growth of niche retailers like Sharper Image, or Steve & Barry's attests to both the opportunity to cater to consumers demand for unique retail institutions and consumer's willingness to pay top dollar at such places. The growth of the mega-mall, with many small retail spaces expecting lots of passers by and traffic (generated by "anchor" department stores and/or other big draws) allowed retailers the opportunity to reach enough customers without massive advertising and marketing expenditures. Consumers, with rising wages, and lowered costs for food and energy (in real, inflation adjusted terms) were willing to pay extra to possess goods that differentiated them from everyone else.
This had an effect on advertising, much of which supports popular culture, particularly television. NBC built it's whole strategy from the 1980's onward towards appealing to a more wealthy audience, even if that meant sacrificing the size of the audience. Shows such as "Hill Street Blues," "St. Elsewhere," and "Homicide: Life on the Street," may not have garnered great ratings, but the critical acclaim and halo effect of the "snob appeal" helped cement NBC as the network for wealthy, status-conscious yuppies in the 1980's and 1990's. A tradition carried on with such shows as "My Name Is Earl," whose premise is amusing wealthy urbanites with the foibles of rural, "white trash" working class people. Think of it as a reverse "Beverly Hillbillies" where it's Mr. Drysdale laughing at Jed Clampett.
Most of popular culture has been aimed at ever more "selective" fanbases, to paraphrase the movie "Spinal Tap." Advertisers would pay money to reach selected demographics, mostly young people, and consumers were eager and able to pay money to listen to niche music, watch niche television, and buy niche products. All in an effort in a mass-consumer society to maintain a distinct and individual identity. Which ironically of course was itself a product of the mass-consumer society.
All of this process however, required money. Not just consumer niche spending, driving advertising spending on niche outlets, but investment capital as well. The print version of the Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2008, has a front page story on how retailer Steve & Barry relied on payments from mall owners desperate to replace absent Department Store anchors (closure of the former anchors a product of consolidation brought on by ... yes you guessed it, fragmentation of consumer retail spending). It was these payments, not continuing retail operations, that fueled the company's growth. Mall owners, heavily leveraged and victims of the ongoing credit crises, were unable to keep up the payments and Steve & Barry's filed for bankruptcy on Wed, July 9, 2008.
Just as in my post, Gossip Girl and the Aging of America, niche plays for audience or shoppers don't work in economic downturns. America has had an extraordinary run of more than twenty years of continuing economic growth, wage growth, low fuel and food prices, all allowing consumers spare money to spend on creating or maintaining a "niche" identity. That's coming to an end.
The print edition of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, July 11, 2008 reports that consumers are changing their spending habits radically, altering profoundly the retail landscape. Fair use excerpt below:
"There has been a major shift in thinking by shoppers," says Thom Blischok, head of consulting at Information Resources Inc., which tracks spending on consumer goods. "Consumers are moving away from availability to affordability."
Wal-Mart reported it's best monthly sales gain in four years, benefiting from bargain hunting. Coupon redemptions have increased, halting a 15 year slide. The Toyota Corolla has displaced the Ford F-150 as America's best selling vehicle. Consumer confidence has dropped 38% from January 2007. Borders and Circuit City are reporting large sales declines as consumers, pressed by spiraling gas/energy and food prices, curtail all but essential spending. Consultants studies suggest that vitamin water, 100-calorie snack packages, and children's lunches in a tray are being replaced by tap water, value packed snacks, and home-made lunches respectively.
Retailers and manufacturers are weeding out niche products that don't have mass appeal. Some retailers are already dropping suppliers and products that don't generate big sales.
OK, what does this all mean?
It means that Satellite Radio may just not be the wave of the future. Lacking enough subscribers in a recession to cover the costs of expensive contracts with the NFL or personalities like Howard Stern. Broadcast radio, free and over the airwaves, may well attract more advertisers looking to reach the masses, since the niche market simply won't exist in many cases. Morning and evening drive time radio will be filled with broader-appealing music, and sports. Niche radio stations, particularly "Alternative" or College-radio music stations, are likely to be sold or changed over to more popular formats such as all-talk, or sports, to draw better advertiser rates. Remember, the consequence of the baby bust means that there are 8 million more seniors than young people. Alternative or College-rock radio stations in small markets are particularly vulnerable.
Musically, popular bands are going to get older. Audience wise at least. There simply won't be enough disposable income to be spread over untried, unknown bands. Live music venues in the smaller range, the incubator of pop music innovation, have already been in decline since the mid 1990's, with the decline of the numbers of young people and the aging of the former youth cohorts. New bands will still exist, coming into the public view. But there won't be that many of them, and their goal will be to move towards the center where the money is, and gaining mass popularity. Likely gone are the days where cult bands could profitably cultivate a more "selective" appeal and tour across America making money. The decline of the CD and high prices relative to buying a single song on say, the Itunes store via Apple makes record sales a dicey proposition for even self-financed bands. Most bands make money touring, not by recording, and that won't change. Just the orientation of the music, to include older fans because there simply won't be enough money to support a youth-only cult band.
Movies, though not subject to the demands of advertisers, are still a mass medium. Sales at discounters like Best Buy, or even the local supermarket guarantee that reality. As do continued price pressure from brazen pirates selling DVDs at local swap meets and flea markets, often supplied by China or other places beyond the reach of US law. Film makers like Judd Apatow are likely to be successful, with more culturally conservative messages (carefully hidden behind profanity), while edgy/hip film makers like Steve Soderburgh will find that audiences are not in a mood to be shocked with edgy material, but will demand entertainment satisfaction. With discretionary income limited, a few movies will be mega-hits, the rest will have to eke out small box office receipts and DVD rentals. It's likely that DVD sales of movies (and television shows) will have to be heavily discounted, as consumers just won't spend that much money on them with essentials so pricey.
In television, the CW is doomed unless it can broaden it's appeal beyond teen age girls. Given the strong perception that the network is not testosterone friendly, this is likely to be a Sisyphean task. Other networks will face large challenges in their fall schedules. Much of their current programming, and new fall or mid-winter shows were ordered under the old economic climate, with niche programming abounding. NBC's "Heroes" is likely to show continued declines, with a convoluted storyline, and lack of central and compelling characters who provide an enjoyable escape from ordinary life. Even worse is Fox's mid-season "Dollhouse," a new offering by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Joss Whedon. It would have been a tough sell in 1997, and this is not 1997. Niche, trendy-hip posturing just won't sell in a recession. Not with profound consumer shifts in spending and corresponding changes in advertiser spending.
Likely to improve in ratings are sports, including the NFL, College Sports, and Baseball, as people seek cheap and relaxing entertainment. Already TV viewership is up, according to the Wall Street Journal. Which makes sense. A night at home, in front of the TV, is cheaper than a night out at Applebee's. With gas flirting at $5 a gallon, this makes sense. Men are likely to spend more time watching TV, and shows that can capture the male audience are likely to do well. NBC's "Chuck" is likely to do quite well in this regard, as are any other show featuring an idealized "average guy" as the hero.
What is interesting is how CBS's "Moonlight" (not to be confused with the 1980's show "Moonlighting" with Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis) did fairly poorly this past season, and was canceled, with no pick up by any other network. A romance-novel copy of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spin-off "Angel," which was in turn a copy of the Canadian series "Forever Knight," the show was too niche in it's appeal, despite all the promotion and "buzz" surrounding the show. Men, of course, hated the show with a passion.
It's quite likely that most other networks will avoid these niche shows as their fall lineup inevitably fails and pursue the "CBS formula" as epitomized by "NCIS" and the various "CSI," "NUMB3RS," and so on. A strong, forty year old plus male character leads a team that includes a strong, capable female character or characters. Fighting crime, restoring order, or something of that nature. The goal being to attract men plus women with elements that appeal to both and don't repel either. The old strategy of advertisers and creative people slicing audiences into ever smaller fragments is probably gone for a long time. It will be a major adjustment for most creative people, who grew up in a time when it was always assumed that audiences will get both richer and smaller, ever more eager to demonstrate unique individuality.
That is, quite likely, a good thing. Lack of unified and unifying culture makes bonds across divisions, racial, sexual, class, regional, and income much more difficult. A common culture, valued and defended, protects against both usurpation of power at home by unchecked elites, be they political, cultural, judicial, or corporate, as well as a stout defense of the nation and it's people abroad. When everyone has seen the game last night, or understands the catch phrases of the latest sitcom, or watches the same hour long drama on television, social bonds increase, as do the ability for ordinary people to band together to demand or force action on issues where they hold common ground.
...Read more
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