The Modern View of Marriage

A recent Citibank commercial exhibits the modern view of marriage found in the young, White professional women who are the target of Citbank's rewards program. The commercial features an attractive, athletic woman who says, "My boyfriend and I were going on vacation ... we talked about getting a diamond, ... but with all the points I earned ... I flew us to the rock I really had in mind."





The guy, is never shown in detail, and is a lesser rock climber than the girl (who goes first and stands alone on a towering, dangerous spire). Complete with faux-tribal yodeling and grrrl power! singing, its almost a SWPL parody. One might ask why marriage has become less attractive, to the point that Citibank (which only cares about getting consumers to sign up for its rewards cards program so they can reap fees off it, in the essentials) points out that its target young White female professionals can use the card to go rock climbing instead of getting married?

Let me repeat this. The commercial says flat out that the card allows women to avoid marriage in favor of "exciting" rock-climbing. The "rock I really had in mind."

How has marriage come to this?

It came to this, because in essentials, most White women find their men not very sexy. After all, modern life provides a lot of comfort and security. But the essentials of that security and comfort can only be provided if the men trade-off sexiness for reliability and agreeableness and cooperation. Women don't find happy, smiling men attractive, as any reader of Twilight or its "Teen Paranormal Romance" spawn (that's a genre inside Barnes and Noble Bookstores, no lie they have an entire section devoted to it) would know.

More than a thousand men and women were shown pictures of faces making various expressions and asked to rate them for attractiveness. Some pictures of a neutral face were also included.
The women were least attracted to the smiling happy men and most interested in those whose head was held high with pride. They also found the men who looked ashamed rather attractive, the journal Emotion reports.
Researcher Jessica Tracy said: ‘Pride may signal a man’s competence and ability to provide for a partner and offspring.’

Just as Satoshi Kanazawa's work showing that Black women were the least attractive to men of all races (which earned him a PC defenestration and forced, Gallileo-like apology after a PC inquisition) has not been disproven, just shouted down as not following the dogma of PC, this work and others are sure to generate lots of PC heat.

Is this assumption accurate, i.e. the cooperative, happy, smiling men who are "nice" and mostly equal to most women, are less attractive, than bad, broody guys, and thus account for the decline of marriage (because that is the supply essentially of prospective grooms -- agreeable "nice guys" for the most part)? Probably a lot more study is needed. It might very well not be. But then again, it might.

Does it make sense, or this another History Channel "Ancient Aliens Were At the First Thanksgiving (Hunting Bigfoot)" series?

In my view, there are reasons to suspect something along these lines. Every pundit from John Derbyshire, to Spengler at the Asian Times and Pajamas Media, to Theodore Dalrymple, to Mark Steyn, has remarked upon: plummeting birth rates in the West and places where women have better conditions and status and earnings and independence. Also, decreased marriage rates. Also, vastly increased female preference for "bad" i.e. abusive, violent, and dangerous men. Also, among women, vastly increased display of skin and figures, i.e. "slutty" and ultra-revealing clothing. Also, as Steve Sailer once noted, prevalence of tattoos on young women to indicate an easy attitude towards sex. The Daily Mail has shown series after series of drunken young British women stumbling around in next to nothing looking for sex on the weekend nights.

All of these things are well known. But no pundit has ever said why. The best they can come up with is … well these things just happen as a rule, because well that's what modern life is like. But why is that?

In my view, the reason for the disdain for marriage, the dislike of Western Civilization, the preference for bad boys, and all the rest is the profound dissatisfaction with "Kitchen Bitches," that is equal or mostly equal men who are smiling, agreeable, cooperative, building wealth and security and comfort but providing no sexiness. No danger. No excitement. And no pure, powerful arousal.

Joran Van Der Sloot after all has aroused many women Straight-A, Bible Study Natalee Holloway wound up leaving the disco with hulking, six foot four Van Der Sloot. She was never seen since and Van Der Sloot admitted on TV her murder. Another woman in Peru went with him to his hotel room (and her death). Van Der Sloot apparently used his notoriety to cut a wide swath among women in Asia. As did accused wife killer (yes plural victims) Drew Peterson, a former police officer in Ohio, well into his fifties, with coeds from local colleges.

In the early days of his detention, the Lima papers were full of reports about him reading reams of letters from women who claimed to be in love with him. “I get more letters every day,” he bragged to the downmarket Dutch paper De Telegraaf. “One of them even wanted me to get her pregnant.”

Even a Florida Doctor, a woman in her fifties, was not immune to his spell, spending considerable amounts of money to see him, and hiring attorneys.

What is this? Nothing but market failure. Modern society requires men to be agreeable, smiling, and cooperative. And that coupled with their near equality, makes them sexless. Causing in turn a desperation among women for sexiness no matter what. This is not evil, or a reflection of "evil women." It is simply an adjustment that women need, a set of proper incentives and investment.

Women won't value marriage (to Joe Average) if the trade-off is no sex and excitement. Game, being a PUA, working on sexiness, will all help to some degree fill that market gap, but there are limits. A man can't neglect his job, his other duties, simply to be sexy all day. No group of men spends more on being sexy and dominant (primarily through ultra-thuggery) than Black men in the ghetto. Optimizing for sexy men means minimizing for wealth and security and comfort.

The problem is one of incentives. Women are essentially, among both White working class (illegitimacy around 40%) and the White professional class (illegitimacy around 20%) betting it ALL on a continued long run of prosperity, safety, security, and comfort. Where life is so risk-less and "boring" that rock climbing, and other thrills (named Mr. Sexy Bad Boy) are required just to feel alive. Starving women in the Third World feel no such requirement for adrenaline fixes nor bad boy parades. They'd be happier if their husbands did not patronize prostitutes, drink the family money away in bars, and did some actual work at home and outside.

Women need to know that the comfort, safety, and stability of the West is an illusion. All those disaster movies, the end of the world movies, the zombie movies, and so on have played upon the fears that indeed, the surface stability and safety is just such an illusion. One destined to be shattered. There **IS** a cultural awareness that the West is not all powerful, and can be shattered at any moment. For a long time after WWII, this was centered around the Cold War and nuclear annihilation. Now, bio-terror, or zombies, or aliens, or ancient prophecies, or "climate change" nonsense articulate this fear. Which is the "entertaining" version of the real risk -- social pressures and competition for limited food, water, and other resources in a global oil shock, or global famine, or any other threat (like a failure of the Euro and a global banking shock).

Forget the fantasy of zombies or aliens landing. If gas goes to $10 a gallon, there are roaming packs of inner city marauders, looting the suburbs, a "Kitchen Bitch" with a shotgun who sticks with you looks better than fabulous rock climbing and a bad boy who does not stick around. No matter how moody and thus sexy he is. It is all a question of incentives. Women and Men behave EXACTLY as incentives push them, in the mass. [Individuals can and do vary, but the mass is what we are concerned with. It does society no good to have a few wise women choose security and the nuclear family when most abjure it for risky single motherhood.]

Marriage does not work for women, now, because they assume the stability and power of the West is eternal. Never threatened, always "boring." This is a poor bet, and likely to work out disastrously in fairly short order. Food, oil, and other resources are tight globally, and an external shock (and there is ALWAYS an external shock) in the global system will push everything over. Not aliens invading, or zombie apocalypse, or Mayan prophecies, but a corn harvest failure in Brazil, or a Wheat harvest failure in Russia, the Ukraine, and Australia. The closing of the Persian Gulf to oil shipping for six months or longer. The Euro collapsing. Perhaps all of these, are enough to send the economy into a nose-dive and mobs of hungry people from the urban centers into looting marches on the suburbs. With a paralyzed and inept bureaucracy unable and unwilling to use force to stop it. In other words, the LA Riots writ nationally.

Hipster rock climbing instead of marriage is all well and good, but a woman's "boyfriend" is not going to display the same sacrifice and courage in fighting off intruders as one's husband.
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A Christmas Commercial

A particular Christmas Commercial caught my eye:



The point about the commercial is how little controversy it creates. It is an article of faith that 85% of all Branded Purchases are made by women. Car companies in particular are targeting women. Certainly this ad does. What is the ad targeting? The Kardashian fantasy.


Keeping Up With the Kardshians is a female-targeted reality show featuring the daughters of the late (O.J. Simpson lawyer) Robert Kardashian, as they navigate various Black Athlete celebrity boyfriends/husbands, paparazzi, fame, fabulous parties, and the like. Another princess fantasy, as Virginia Postrel writes about in the Wall Street Journal. Now the Prince Charming is a Black Athlete. Famous. Rich. Powerful. Privileged. [See Michael Vick. A White Athlete who had done what he'd done, would be out of the NFL forever.] And critically, allowed to be masculine in a way that most (Beta) White guys are not.

Its not just this Christmas Commercial either. This Levi's Commercial spoke to the same desire:



Apparently Walt Whitman was a fervent proponent of Levi's Jeans. Who knew? But the point is obvious. The Black guy is presented as the far more desirable choice than the skinny, "kind of gay" White guys, and the kids doing athletic tricks are all Black.

This is not surprising. Show "Joe Average White guy" as a doofus, or icky Beta guy, and there's no place else to go in ads, for a masculine presence. Other than a Black guy. When the commercial is aimed at White women. As nearly all are.

Whatever the reality or myth of Black comparative sexual/romantic masculine advantage (and ahem, "attributes"), there is no question that culturally, Black guys don't have the diffident, nerdy, deferential manner that most White guys adopt as a matter of workplace survival in most workplaces and certainly in the "White Guy hostile" University environment.

Carlton Banks from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (who did the "White Guy Dance" to Tom Jones "Its Not Unusual"):



Is funny because it is untrue. He's a fantasy character just like Urkel from "Family Matters". The equivalent to Vanilla Ice or Eminem. Characters adopting the extreme cultural characteristics of another race, that usually has oppositional characteristics. I.E. most Blacks are not nerdy, and disapprove of nerdiness (hence the Will Smith bit at the end of the Carlton Dance bringing an end to the Tom Jones-foolery). Or most Whites don't adopt the mannerisms and behavior of Black rappers like Vanilla Ice or Eminem, and consider both kind of jokes.

Indeed the existence of these four characters, Urkel, Carlton Banks, Eminem, and Vanilla Ice, point like arrows to the characteristics around race, at least the way the mostly White female audience of TV consider the characteristics of race (most TV viewers are and have been for some time, White women). Black guys, excluding the comic exceptions, are not nerdy. And White guys, excluding the few (somewhat comic) exceptions, are not uber-macho rappers. Certainly Vanilla Ice is viewed as a comic character, a suburban guy posing as tough rapper.

Clearly, Advertisers are in point of their own making. They have no way to portray, in ways that move emotionally, the target female audience, in association with a product and desirable, high-status, macho White guy. Absent a few celebrity pitchmen and such. The point of the Levi's Commercial is that "the jeans come with a hot boyfriend." Indeed, it is patriotic, and Walt Whitman approves, of your Black Boyfriend! Because Advertisers (and popular entertainment) have mostly pushed the line that Beta White guys are icky, and nerdy (unsexy), that hot boyfriend must be Black if he's not a White Alpha celebrity (see the ads with Ashton Kutcher, very absent Demi Moore). Same with the car commercial. The Lexus comes with the rich, (likely Athlete) and sophisticated (the house is a modernist dream) husband. Right straight out of the Kardashian's reality show.

Ashton Kutcher only sells Nikon cameras. Advertisers seeking that "hot guy with the product" vibe have to go beyond the limited Alpha A-hole celebs.

This has moved the culture in ways unimaginable, before. You'll note that there are no commercials featuring a White guy and "hot Black girlfriend."



The point of the above ad being that the White guy is so clueless he doesn't get that Beyonce is right there in front of him. This being the second attempt to show a clueless White guy and Beyonce, the (now defunct) Circuit City commercial with the clueless White clerk drooling over Beyonce being the first attempt.

Which is not surprising. The commercials are in all cases, aimed at White women. Who tend to find the commercials, portraying White guys as doofuses, amusing and "accurate." Very likely, the very diffident, mild, and unassuming manner that White guys generally adopt in the multicultural workplace, with its White-guy-hostile attitudes, create a repellent effect on their female peers. It doesn't get them hit with sexual or racial harassment lawsuits, or counseling from HR. But it does not win them respect from their female peers as "real men" either.

Advertising (and popular entertainment) is pushing the idea that (Beta) White guys are doofuses, the only appropriate Prince Charmings being outside that group, are either White Alpha A-holes (paging Ashton Kutcher) or Black guys. Don't underestimate the power of advertising, or reality TV (catering to princess fantasies) to move the culture.



Ashton Kutcher's Nikon commercials all hit the same button. Alpha A-hole doing whatever he wants (crudely, but you get the point). The longing look by the chick with the doofus male companion tells it all. Of course the Lexus commercial is more sophisticated, the fantasy of being basically a "cultured Kardashian."



The above Star Trek scene was considered controversial (the first inter-racial kiss on TV) in the 1960's when it aired. The sad thing is, the same pairing would be considered controversial today, which is why it has not been repeated. The pairing of a White guy kissing a Black woman, is just impossible. Black guys object, just as Black women don't like the Black guy and White woman pairing much either. But that's not the reason you don't see White guys smooching up Beyonce.

It is that White women, who form the target of the commercials and reality shows and most of TV, object. If Black women had cultural power, their objections would have killed the Lexus commercial and the Levi's Commercial. Lexus and Levi's don't care. They're selling to White women, and basically no one else. This is why, more than forty years since Kirk kissed Uhura on TV, it is almost impossible to find a White guy and Black woman pairing. While the other way around sells jeans or luxury cars. It is certainly "funny" to mock clueless White guys ("Hey, Beyonce is right THERE dummy!") in female-oriented commercials.

[Interestingly, there are a few commercials featuring a White guy and Asian wife/girlfriend. Almost none of the other way around, Asian Guy and White Wife/girlfriend. It would appear the losers in the way the sexes are depicted inter-racially are Asian Men, and Black Women, most of all. The SWPL blog entry entitled "Asian Women" generated thousands of vituperative comments from Asian men, complaining about the disparity and how they are viewed in the ruthless sexual marketplace. So diversity tends to produce winners and losers. Asian men find the White guy / Asian woman pairing no less disagreeable than Black women find the Black guy / White woman pairing.]

Is it likely that these commercials will generate a mass wave of inter-racial marriage/kids? Nope. Most people marry and have kids within their own race, and this is unlikely to change, being quite stable over time. While there are solid advantages to mating across races (hybrid vigor, disease resistance among some groups, avoiding genetic bottlenecks among some groups, attraction of the "forbidden" and even racial preferences for not being White), the question of who your in-laws will be remains large. Marriage and family is not merely a question of passion and romance. There is the question of a whole host of people who are now related to you, and to whom you have mutual obligations. Mass immigration also tends to suppress marriage across groups. Hispanics after mass immigration, as well as Asians, tend to inter-marry less where there is a large pool of people of the same race (like Southern California). It makes family life easier, juggling in-laws and grandparents and the like. Only among the military (where the civilian/military divide looms larger than that of race, try being deployed for two years in Iraq) is inter-racial coupling anything other than rare. Jewish enthusiasm for out-marriage is probably the anomaly, and likely explained by a desire to avoid considerable genetic bottlenecks (it is not fun to have a kid with Taysachs disease).

It is entirely possible, however, for the natural disdain that White women have for White guys who adopt the typical Beta male posture (diffident, non-aggressive behavior that "keeps heads down" in the multicultural wars) can be accelerated by this advertising and reality blitz. The beneficiaries won't be rappers, or Black athletes, but rather the few men, mostly White, who can create "soft harems" by appealing to their inner Ashton Kutcher. Acting like a self-centered jerk. Which is the whole point of the Kutcher commercials. "Of course he's a jerk ladies, but you still want him, BECAUSE he's a jerk. And his camera!"

Which is a dagger aimed right at the heart of the West. Most women can't marry Reggie Bush. Or even be his girlfriend/mistress on the side. Even Tiger Woods could carry only a few hundred or so. But the rest can be the shared, part time girlfriends of would-be-Kutchers. Instead of generally happy wives/mothers in a relationship like that of their grandmothers at least. One that produces the next generation of people.

The end result is not widespread inter-racial marriage. But a sterile, San Francisco/Portland/Seattle playpen for adults. No children present, save the one designer eugenic baby by IVF at age 41, by a single mother. Beta White guys are already not very popular. It won't take much to make them even less popular.
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Advertising: Get the Man Out!

Advertising forms the basis for much of what is deemed mainstream and acceptable culture in Western society. Advertising is everywhere, all the time. Drive down the road and you'll see billboards. Listen to the radio and you'll hear ads. Watch TV and you'll see ads. Mostly what the ads push is a new model of male behavior and identity. Which is, gay or asexual to the point of androgynous idiocy. The message being that traditional masculine behavior is threatening.




While the ad may serve as a parodic insight into what most of the SWPL class view the world, an "unthreatening place," where natural instincts are obliterated by the power of SWPL-ism, pay attention to the singer (and the song). Lost is any real musical power, any sense of the natural world. The beat is a drum machine, tinny sounding and as natural as artificial sweetener. The singer has all the masculine presence of a ten year old boy. Because, again, traditional men, just by existing, are threatening.

Then of course, there is the ATT commercial:



Apparently, ATT wants to put a giant orange burqua over every single building and monument (and even the sea-shore) in anticipation of Islam being the official religion of the US. In a tribute to Christo, famous for, well wrapping large buildings in what amounts to a burqua. Pre-emptive artistic surrender.

The music is of course, so devoid of any masculine identity as to be totally "unthreatening," and is the work of the late recording artist Nick Drake, a very sad case. Described by a friend as "the most withdrawn person he'd ever met, Drake had reportedly no sexual or romantic relationships in his life.

While his work has been cited by many as the inspiration for their own (much like the quip about the Velvet Underground, they sold only a few thousand records but everyone who bought a record started their own band), including R.E.M. and the Cure, the question is, why did the producers of this commercial choose this particular recording by this particular artist?

Because the song is so devoid of identity that it signifies, nothing at all. Not even a trace of a desire, to do or be anything, remains in the song or the performance. The commercial is all about a politically correct number of "diverse" and multi-cultural individuals witnessing the the burqua-ization of America, complete with breathy, non-masculine singer who sings about … nothing.

This is not isolated, InMalafide.com has a post on "So You Want to be a Dickhead" (very definitely not safe for work). Video below:



Much like the Gay Hipster Fight seen in the video below, traditional masculine behavior seems to have vanished among young urban, middle class men:



Gay or androgynous is apparently, the new mandate for men. Traditional masculine behavior is so absent from advertising that its shocking to compare commmercials from the 1980's. Check out this Miller Lite commercial from 1987 with Yogi Berra and Jason Alexander:



Or this bizarre ad (with John Madden and Sonny Bono):



It would seem that traditional masculine attitudes, behavior, like the 1995 Microsoft Windows 95 launch video:



simply don't apply to today's, hipster-only, masculine models. No one ever accused Mick Jagger of possessing Jessie "the Body" Ventura levels of testosterone, but the song accompanying the video pretty much is the message. Start up Windows 95 and you're full of energy. The song and the singer are about something. Which is, doing something (the video is full of images of people doing things, message, Windows 95 makes you productive).

Advertising is filled with the kind of hipsters (and very, multicultural, diverse people, mostly women and non-Whites) that cannot connect with middle America anymore, and certainly find traditional masculine energy both threatening and slightly obscene. This is why traditional masculine behavior is so absent in commercials, and the mass culture has been defined towards some passive, folky-rock with acoustic guitar, meaningless nothing.

Each individual commercial is of course nothing, but the media culture that is inescapable, from billboards to radio to TV to print to the web, makes the cumulative effect like a series of raindrops forming a river. Eating away at the traditional notions of what culture and cultural roles are, in an attempt to "start from Zero."

Traditional masculinity of course, is threatening. It is independent, resistant to "taming" and won't allow others to dominate it (though it will submit to authority if persuaded its wise). The same holds true of course, for traditional feminine identity, which is not "submissive" or "barefoot and pregnant" and is matchingly independent, but does not seek to dominate either, the other sex, out of fear. From women-inspired "skinny jeans" to figures like Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz maintaining he is "half gay", it is striking at how lacking in masculine assertiveness most of popular culture really is.

And this contains within it, a possibly fatal weakness for the West. When in time of great crisis, it is absolutely essential for a culture's or nation's survival for men and women to act. Independently, and aggressively if required. Not the breathy, passiveness of "look see the sights" but with the energy of "Start Me Up." If a hurricane comes, and people are stranded in a city, they need rescuing. A government, be it local, state, or federal, will be hamstrung by procedures and rules and so on, and it takes a Dunkirk-like evacuation to rescue people. The same holds true for war, which has not been abolished, any more than human nature. Or low-level conflict involving crime, ethnic cleansing, or any other ills that beset a now globally connected, constantly changing society. Change bringing stress and conflict along with increased riches.

The lack of being or standing for much of anything other than the message of "I'm Cool and You're Not" is why so many commercials are inexplicable, incomprehensible, and do such a lousy job of selling whatever it is they are selling. ATT promises … a burqua for every building? Traveler's Insurance promises a fantasy land where animals don't eat each other? At least Miller Lite had a message: drink this and you're one of the guys, like the funny male celebrities. It is striking how much power corporations have handed over to advertising agencies run by disconnected hipsters. The only rational explanation is that corporate executives are too, disconnected and stand for nothing. As children of the 1960's and 1970's, who had their formative years in the mid to late 1980's to early 1990's wave of political correctness, have the masculine or feminine identities knocked out of them. Being "half gay" or the like.

This is why it is essential to change the advertising environment. There is just so much of it, and the messages about what is approved and what is not (in: gay hipsterism, out: traditional masculinity) so powerful by simple repetition, that deep cultural change can only come about by changing how ads are made and distributed.




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Feminized TV: How PC Kills Revenue

The plot should be a no-brainer. TV Broadcast networks, free to anyone with a TV antenna, ought to be reaping recessionary rewards as people cut the cable or satellite payments and surf online and over-the-air. But TV Broadcast networks are still losing viewers. Some of it is simply bad programming (NBC is reportedly thinking of yanking Jay Leno's 10 PM show off the air after the Winter Olympics), but a lot of it is the simple inability of the networks to make anything that is attractive to male viewers. Lost in all the hype about female decision-makers driving 80% of all consumer purchases is the fact that men make up close to 50% of the population. A recent interview with "Criminal Minds" showrunner Ed Bernero at Deadline Hollywood Daily illustrates why: despite men at the top of the Networks, nearly all the executive staff is female (or gay). Which means, PC kills revenue.


As always, read the whole thing. But several points are worth excerpting:

EB: Television viewership has been declining for about 10 years. The internet has been blamed. Everything has been blamed. Except for what I think the problem is: that the networks own the shows, and they completely think that they make them. They don’t any longer let the people who make shows just make them. The networks have notes about everything. They are intimately involved in every aspect of the process. And I think it’s hurt the process.
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DH: Network/studio idiocy is infamous. But if you can link it now to network ownership...

EB: That’s when the erosion of viewership began. I also think one of the things that’s really hurting us is political activism of any stripe. Michael Jordan had it exactly right, he was my idol -- when he was asked about a political question at one point and he said I’m not going to answer it, and they said why not, and he said: Because Republicans buy gym shoes too, right? That doesn’t exist anymore, that kind of smarts.

Any time someone says anything right, left, whatever, I think we lose viewers. And somewhere around the country somebody says, I’m not going to watch what Hollywood does anymore. I wish we would go back to just being entertainers. Anytime we sign a petition that says let’s ignore the fact that Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old, we lose viewers. And I think that has reached a critical mass. We live in a very polarized country right now. So why would someone like Megan Fox want to diss middle America?

And it’s not just that they’re not going to watch her material, they’re not going to watch mine. There are people in Kansas who are going to say, you know what? Screw Hollywood. Because we are sort of thought of as this monolith, and I wish people would take that into account.
DH: That probably comes from the fact that you are from the middle. The Rust Belt.

EB: Yes, very much from the middle. I eternally fight internal battles about developing things that only appeal to the East Coast and the West Coast. For years I’ve been trying to do a Western, nobody’s interested in doing a Western, how can that be? Every time someone does a Western movie, people flock to it. It’s like, we’re continually programming to people who are least likely to watch us. People in Nebraska aren’t watching things on the computer, they’re watching television. Why aren’t we programming things for them? We only program things that appeal to New York and Los Angeles and in many ways spit on the rest of the country.

Berneros argument (again, read the whole thing) is that the relaxation of fin-syn rules (he notes he has been writing cop shows for about 12 years) has changed network relationships from simply buying shows from providers to owning them and making MBA weenies who know nothing about film or TV production into suddenly, film-makers. That moreover, politicizing things to make one feel better on the cocktail circuit is a disaster. As is the elitist view that only the viewpoints of LA and NYC matter, that the "stupid hicks in the middle of the country" will in fact watch anything the hip and cool people put on. Clearly, this is not the case, and the contempt for Middle America has hurt the networks.

But just as important, has been the process by which men have fled or been expelled from television, particularly broadcast television, which in turn has become a gay/female ghetto. More below:


ON TV CONTENT FOR MEN, WOMEN, AND THE NETWORKS

DH: When you look at the CBS lineup, I guess it’s the network that seems to have a lock on crime with the multiple CSI’s and Criminal Minds – but it’s controlled by two women, Nina Tassler and Nancy Tellem. And my understanding is that they are looking for more shows that have more female appeal. I just wondered what the deal is.

EB: That’s a point I’ve thought about a lot in developing over the last few years. Let’s see if I can say this without ending my development career. It’s very female, development. Development staffs are almost all female. It’s not that easy to get a male skewed show through development.

DH: Interesting.

EB: Most of the network television audience now is primarily women, but I think that’s because the shows are developed to appeal to women. I don’t know that there are too many shows that appeal to guys anymore. I’m not sure why that is, but I think that it may have something to do with the fact that most development staffs are women. I know it’s the case at CBS. I know it’s the case at ABC. Not that these are not brilliant women, but there’s a completely different sensibility in men and women, in what men watch and what women watch. Part of the erosion of network television is that men watch sports – there’s not that much on for them. There are not shows that have male themes. That’s all I want to say about that.

DH: And yet at CBS, besides the crime shows even the popular comedies are male-oriented, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.

EB: But Two and a Half Men is not male-oriented, it’s made to appeal to women. Charlie Sheen is playing a bad boy who can be changed…

DH: It’s got a lot of jokes that my husband likes.

EB: But it’s safe.

DH: What is male oriented?

EB: For example, almost all dramas are families, they are work families – ER is a good example, Criminal Minds is a good example. We have a character who is the mother, a character who is the father, a brother and a sister, we have the younger brother that everybody protects, we have the cute cousin…it’s very much a family, and I think that very much appeals to women.

You don’t see loners anymore, you don’t see a Mannix or a Rockford Files or something where it’s a tough guy standing against the world. It doesn’t appeal to women. Guys like a guy who stands up for right, and the Hawaii Five-0 that we were going to write, the issue was sort of like living up to your father, being a cop in a world where your father was a great cop, that’s really a male theme. Women don’t really compete with their mothers; men compete with their fathers. I know I had gotten into many conversations where people didn’t understand why it was important that the character be in competition with his father…men compete with their fathers.

DH: Men compete with everybody. Everything’s a competition.

EB: Right. Two and a Half Men is an example. Those two don’t really compete with each other. It’s not really two brothers living with each other, because two brothers living together don’t get along that well.

DH: Aren’t they like The Odd Couple?

EB: But The Odd Couple is different, because in the 1970s, the "Odd Couple" didn’t like each other. They competed with each other in ways that these two don’t. Because at the base of it all, they [Two and Half Men’s characters] really love each other.

DH: More like My Two Dads.

EB: It’s a subtle thing, but it’s very female-centered. Now, I don’t mean to say that I don’t love doing shows that women like – women like Criminal Minds, and women weren’t supposed to like this show. Our core audience is 35-40 year old women, who I think are an amazing audience. It didn’t surprise me at all, when you put on the show where those women are the primary targets of these monsters, and you put on a show where our team saves women from them every week, I don’t know how this couldn’t appeal to them.

DH: And women are very interested in character, as opposed to what you’re saying -- that sometimes men just like a straight-on hero who does it right.

EB: Yes, I think it’s extremely difficult to get a male themed show on television.

DH: The people who are running the networks are men, but the so-called creative executives, that whole level is mostly female.

EB: If you say this, make sure that you say that I’m not necessarily saying that’s bad…

DH: Just that it’s true.

EB: The TV audience is primarily female, so it’s not a bad thing…

DH: But if you have something that works on that male level, it’s hard to get it through.

EB: What gets made that’s considered for men – it’s really just T&A stuff. It’s not stuff than any guy I know really wants to watch, you know, the stuff with jiggling boobs and all that. Something with real sort of male themes and male strength and things I want to watch in a drama….

DH: The things men want to be respected for…

EB: Yeah, sort of the things that appeal to us, the things we compete for. Macho in a different sense, the kind of things that we think makes us a man. It doesn’t really exist right now. I really don’t want it to seem that I think it’s a problem that women are in development, I don’t think it’s as problem at all, I just think it’s an interesting time that we’re in. And maybe long overdue – maybe television for a long time was made for men and it’s long overdue.

DH: I’m hearing the hero thing, how important that is to men, it’s not just about being understood in a touchy-feely way.

EB: No, not at all, it’s more about being misunderstood, but doing right anyway -- it’s Rockford and Mannix and all that kind of thing. Those kinds of icons don’t exist anymore. But I also love Glee. I watch it with my wife; I loved Desperate Housewives in the first couple of years. It’s not bad, it’s just something that I notice. And I think specifically what happened with Hawaii Five-0.

Bernero, obvious does not want to burn the bridges with the women he has to sell to, year after year. However, he acknowledges that TV simply cannot touch on what men want to see. Which is not families, nor relationship dramas, or hunky gay vampires, nor hunky doctors. But rather, individualists who are somewhat loners, who do the right thing even if they don't get rewarded, because doing the right thing is in fact difficult and a test and proof, together, of their manliness. Together of course with competition, of winning and losing, and keeping score.

Two And A Half Men, is indeed all about how the Bad Boy Charlie Sheen, can be tamed and changed, and how the female audience can laugh at the Beta brother Jon Cryer, who is a loser because he is not a bad boy. While Hanes has dropped Charlie Sheen (very late) from its ads, it is unlikely CBS will drop Sheen. First, he's the show, and second, women forgive ANYTHING from a bad boy. Anything at all. Womens groups have not been picketing CBS to fire Charlie Sheen for allegedly putting a knife to his wife's throat. They are unlikely to do so as they are unlikely to call for Roman Polanski's arrest. Women love the bad boys, Sheen's alleged actions only make him more of a bad boy. Presumably to be tamed by the "special" woman.

Meanwhile Cryer's character, is there so obviously for women to laugh at.

What is interesting is how Bernero essentially cops to CBS and other networks "Prime Time Crime Time" being oriented towards women. A "family" filled with relationship issues, in the workplace (I have never had any workplace be a "family" —I either produced revenue to more than cover my full cost of employment or I was gone, and I suspect most folks have the same experience), with emphasis on relationships within the family and romance for the lead female character. Absent the criminals, it might as well describe Hospital Soaps such as "Mercy" or "Grey's Anatomy."

This is why you don't see either a very male-oriented "A-Team" on television, or at least broadcast television, or private eyes who used to dominate TV: Mannix, Rockford Files, "Simon and Simon," or heck "Jake and the Fatman," and "Riptide." It is worth noting that "Jake and the Fatman" ran until 1992. Back in the 1950's through the 1970's, private eyes and fairly "loner" types such "Wild Wild West" (can anyone imagine such a show today?) or "Rockford Files" which ran through 1980.

With the loss of these shows, has come the loss of the male audience. Which means lower ratings, and lower advertising dollars, no matter how much spin on female-driven purchases marketers put forward.

PC kills. Sure it is "nice to have" all these "diverse" staff, with White males being at the top and the rest female or gay. [A recent episode of "Dog Whisperer" at Chiat/Day was revealing —nearly all the staff was either female (and many of them non-White) or gay. How that enables them to understand and sell to the White middle class particularly White men is a mystery to me. But perhaps nearly 60 years of go-go post-War prosperity made advertising fat and happy, instead of lean and hungry.]

Contrary to Bernero, the idea that it is "time" to have TV all-female, all-gay has real consequences. For NBC, it means money left on the table, that go to Video Games and cable outlets like USA, and to a lesser extent F/X. White women alone are not enough to drive profitable ratings. There simply are not enough of them. The small size of the Black Middle Class (approximately 5% of the total population, or 40% of the 12.5% of the Black population) makes them irrelevant. Hispanics prefer to watch Spanish-language TV. An all female and all gay development staff cannot produce shows that reach men, for the most part, and won't stick with the few that have potential (NBC's late, lamented "Life," with perhaps one of the most masculine, and self-contained loner types shown in decades). Reaching for more women as CBS plans to do, means fighting with ABC, NBC, FOX, and CW for the declining pool of White women (and a few "fabulous" gay men). This undoubtedly suits the prejudices and whims of the female development staff, and is "easy" in that it does not stretch the limits of their imaginations, but it will not fix the problem.

Bernero is undoubtedly correct that fin-syn rules, allowing networks to own shows, and thus making development execs who know MBA spreadsheets or (perhaps, given the revelations in business and politics regarding personal relationships between bosses, certain intimate knowledge of their bosses) into pseudo-showrunners, based on things that have nothing to do with making successful TV shows, has been hurtful to the ability to make shows viewers want to see. So too, anti-Middle Class, Coastal Elitism and politicking of any sort.

But as documented extensively on Whiskey's Place, viewer declines began decades ago, in the 1980's, before Cable TV, before Satellite TV, before the internet, before bit-torrent sharing of TV shows, before fin-syn. Before even, FOX Broadcasting. In the era of rabbit ears and only three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. The decline began, when men fled TV. Slowly, as more and more shows became female-oriented soap operas. More rapidly, as the development executives became more and more female (and gay). Finally, the last of the old-line TV shows were canceled or concluded in the early 1990's, and TV became a female and gay ghetto.

If TV remains merely a female-gay ghetto, then viewers will never return. Because the missing viewers are men. Video games, and specialized niche networks programming to men, such as Spike-TV and USA Network, will continue to grow in profits, with little competition from Hollywood and the major media companies.

The danger for Hollywood, and networks generally, is that TV's "proven" format of serial dramas, and comedies, can be easily adapted on the internet, with devices that free people from watching broadcast TV. Contrary to Bernero, a lot of TV (including undoubtedly, Criminal Minds) is consumed online or through a computer. Flo TV promises TV on the go, anywhere and everywhere. Apple is promising a tablet device that can provide both an e-reader and mobile TV, connected through Wi-Fi. Various cell phone companies are experimenting with mobile TV, including NFL games. While I will address this issue (portability and convenience versus an "immersive" but expensive experience) in a future post on Avatar (and why the movie is both more and less than it seems), the sum experience of consumer preference has been for convenience and portability at an affordable price over high quality and an expensive, immersive experience.

Consumers preferred cheap walkmen from Sony in favor of expensive home stereos. Later, they preferred a lesser audio experience with sampled MP3s in a convenient, portable form in the Ipod to the high quality of CDs. Apple already offers Itunes downloads for various TV and movies, some of them free, as does Amazon's Un-box, and streaming video at both Youtube and Hulu has generated millions of viewers. When given a choice between cheap, portable, and convenient, and a "family gathering" of the type Bernero mentions, consumers tend to choose cheap and portable and convenient. Moreover, declining marriage rates and very likely, in the recession, declining co-habitation rates, means more individual watching, alone, instead of gathered around the family TV set.

The future is likely to consist of cheap, networked devices playing streaming media, with ads, anywhere and anytime. Providers from Apple, Google and its partners, Flo-TV, and more, are going to be hungry for content. Content that appeals to at least half the gadget buyers, men. Content that can be provided, theoretically, from anywhere: New Zealand, with low production costs, or Canada, or Australia, or even somewhere outside Hollywood in the US. By independent producers, who keep costs low and stories tightly focused on the audience, be it male or female.

And what are we likely to see on these mobile, networked devices? Why, private eyes, and loner-type cops, and maybe even Western tough guys. Made cheaply, rapidly, for a voracious market. Supported by advertising dollars, often with in-show ads or with commercials that cannot be skipped (Apple has a patent for just such a technology). Men generally tend to be the early adopters, and they are unlikely to be consumers of say, "Cold Case" with a hefty dose of feminized PC moralizing by women and authority figures, or the mocking of doofus guys like "Two And A Half Men."

The threat, is then that networks could cease to exist as both advertisers and viewers move to mobile devices, that serve men as well as women. Unthinkable? That is what Detroit thought, with the introduction of cheap and reliable Japanese cars, at the end of the 1970's. I suspect the changes to network TV will be far more rapid. Because the "diverse" and politically correct staffs at broadcast networks will simply order the band to play louder as the ship sinks.

PC kills revenue. Among other things.
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Mad Men: The Most Feminine (and Revealing) Show on Cable TV

A recent (Friday, August 7, 2009, Weekend Journal, P1) article in the Wall Street Journal contained a few odd hints about the future of cable Televsion. First, it's very girly. The AMC series "Mad Men" may be the most profoundly feminine show on cable. Second, almost no one watches the broadcasts. Third, considerably more will watch on downloads or video on demand, with profound implications as I've noted here and here.


Lets take the last point, since it's buried in the article and is not very obvious at first glance. According to the WSJ, "Mad Men" averaged just 1.5 million viewers per new episode at 10 p.m. last season, up 63% from 920,000 or so the previous season. The subject of much hype, buzz and Emmys (being the first basic cable series to win an Emmy for Best Drama and nominated for a total of 16 Emmys this year), its performance in first-run episodes was pathetic. If you were an advertiser, you were not happy with the results. You would not have gotten much bang for your buck.

However, AMC claims that more than 30 million viewers saw the show last year on downloads, video on demand, and first run plus repeat broadcasts, excluding DVD sales. The latter is expected to exceed $18 million in the first six months. With a limited, 13 episode run for Season Two, that amounts to about 19.5 million for the first-run new episode broadcasts, and about 10.5 million for all other media, including repeats and downloads, and video on demand. That still makes "Mad Men" a niche show, giving it the equivalent of 2.3 million viewers per broadcast, but shows the growth in consumption of of TV shows outside normal first-run broadcasts. Nearly 800,000 people watched the show outside the normal first-run broadcast, or about 35% of the show's total viewers per episode.

Clearly, if you are an advertiser, you want product placement as your ad, so people see it regardless, and ideally you want the entire show to feature your products or services, positively, in the way that original radio shows did back in the 1930's. At a nominal $40 per box set (Best Buy has it for $40 as of today's date, Amazon has it for $32, the list price is $50, I'll use Best Buy as the likely average retail price, you can plug in your own assumptions) that would imply purchase by an additional 400,000 consumers.

The basic economics are fascinating — consumers are increasingly looking to view hour long dramas the way the listen to music. Which is on their own terms, often on their own schedule, at their computers, on portable devices like Ipods and Phones, or on DVDs which are very convenient.

Advertisers are quite likely to respond to these changes in basic consumer behavior, and want ads embedded in the shows themselves, so that viewers see them whenever they the view the show. This also implies that free beats pay, given that advertisers want as many people as possible to see the shows. At an average production cost of say, $3 million per episode, "Mad Men" costs $39 million to produce, about half of that covered by AMC's licence fees, or around 19.5 million. The extra 18 million or so from DVD sales in the first six months (the time for highest volume of sales) brings the show to nearly break even. Which means that moving production to say, New Zealand or Canada could allow the show to make a small profit immediately. Even with niche content that is obviously, not very appealing to a wide audience. More importantly, there is no reason that advertisers, looking to cut through the clutter, and reach consumers directly, could not create "free" web-based downloads and low-cost DVDs for consumers wanting to view the content on their own time, freed from the tyranny of a broadcast or cable network schedule.

Naturally, this is a large risk for Cable networks, which derive most of their revenue not from ads, but from fees to cable and satellite operators. If advertisers move significant amounts of spending to their own, "dedicated" dramatic series, or comedies (which are cheaper to film, being only a half the running time of dramas), Cable networks would be totally dependent on fees from satellite and cable networks. An unhealthy place for any business.

At any rate, even in a niche show like "Mad Men," the changing ways in which consumers watch dramas is evident in the numbers. Nearly 35% of the total viewers saw the show in a way other than watching the first-run broadcast.

That "Mad Men" of course is one of the girliest, most feminine shows on Cable TV there is no doubt:


[Click to Enlarge]

The Mad Men writers, from left to right, are: Marti Noxon, Lisa Albert, Kater Gordon, Dahvi Waller, Robin Veith, Cathryn Humphris, Maria Jacquemetton, at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.

Seven of the nine writers are women. Women directed five of the 13 episodes in the Third Season. The female writers, insisted over the objections of the male writers, that female character Betty Draper have a one-night stand. The storylines include: a secretly gay art director concealing his crush on one of his colleagues, a deserter from the Army posing with a stolen identity who is the womanizing star of the show (Don Draper), his wife "trapped" by a third pregnancy, an up and coming executive who sleeps with a secretary, impregnating her, an office manager who's fiance encourages her to underachieve and rapes her on the office floor [more on this later], and an older executive planning to divorce his wife and marry a 20 year old secretary.

With all the soap opera shenangans, it's a wonder anything gets done at the fictional ad agency. As one commenter on Whiskey's Place noted, much of female-oriented fiction consists of people screwing up their lives (often through sex) and wallowing in misery. It wasn't always so, of course. Jane Austen, for one, often brought her characters to the brink, but not over the edge, of screwing up their lives but allowed feminine good sense to reign over stupidity and lust in romance and love. "Mad Men" sadly follows the "screwing up their lives" cheap trick of much of female fiction. [Women are shoddily served, for the most part, in fiction that is created for them. Much of it worse in construction and execution than the worst slasher or most cliched action movie.]

Readers will note, of course, the themes. Women are "trapped" by marriage, victimized survivors, and longing to escape the cruelty of all the men in their lives, cruelty which also attracts them.

Fans of TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" will recognize former Executive Producer Marti Noxon. Who famously conceived the story line that Buffy's "bad boyfriend" Spike the vampire would rape her, and Buffy would love him even more. A story line that series star Sarah Michelle Gellar found obnoxious and tried to kill but failed.

Noxon was noted for her 0ff-Broadway plays about who were raped by their "bad boyfriends" and then committed suicide. Laugh riots. Her plays brought her to the attention of Buffy creator Joss Whedon, who made her a staff writer and then Executive Producer on the show.

This is a pattern repeated by series creator Matthew Weiner, who hired Kater Gordon, 27, after she had baby-sat his sons and worked for series Executive Producer Scott Hornbacher.

What makes "Mad Men" watchable for it's fans is not the writing, which would not pass muster on the cheesiest soap opera, but the amazing art direction and period detail. Even though the writers clearly intend for the audience to despise the lead character Don Draper, and sympathize with the oppressed women who are in some cases graphically sexually assaulted, the limited audience ("Mad Men" remains a very niche show with a very small audience) seems to like the lead character.

Interesting too is the hyper-liberalism of Hollywood, unable to connect to a larger audience. The themes of "Mad Men" which amount to "women good, men bad" are by definition, unable to attract a wide male audience. Even with the deliberate emphasis on a overwhelmingly female writing staff (itself an oddity, women made up between 35-23% of writing staffs in the 2006-2007, and 2007-2008 seasons) the show fights to gain what little audience it has, with all the other shows giving the same soap opera treatment.

A Hollywood that works by PC quota systems, is unlikely, however good the Art Direction craft is, to be able to reach a broad audience. If advertisers do indeed wonder, "why am I paying for this when I could reach more people by doing it myself?" and start to offer free downloads and streaming video of what amounts to 45 minute serials, it is quite likely that writers will not be coming from Hollywood.

Which would be a good thing. Hollywood is itself so incestuous, particularly in writing, that their writers live in a PC, Multicultural bubble. In Hollywood's Golden Age, famous novelists like Dashiell Hammett and F Scott Fitzgerald would pick up easy money for lending their names and talents to scripts, but complain about the hackery of studio writers interested in appealing to the lowest common demoninator. Now, the problem is the reverse. Most of the writers would rather be acclaimed for hipness and "edgy" material, than write something most audiences would enjoy. As advertisers move in a long recession, with money tight all around, towards a broad audience rather than a wealthy niche one, the inability of Hollywood to write anything other than "my bad boyfriend raped me" will bite them squarely in the ass.

After all, even celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay is finding that his own restaurant empire faces recessionary pressures.
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Advertising's View of Husbands

Advertising today has a definite view of husbands. Witness the ad below for Yellowbook.com:




Now, this ad might be a bit extreme, but it's illustrative of how Advertising (and the target market of women) view most husbands. As utterly replaceable. The woman even has a half-smile on her face as she searches for life insurance.

The woman is no more attractive than her husband. Compare the ad with this one:



"Jackpot." Increasingly, men are as objectified to women in advertising, as women are to men in pornography. This is not a healthy environment for formation of stable families, and evidence of consumerism as an approach to relationships, with short-term decision making on money and looks being marketed to women explicitly. [There is almost no marketing towards men, an astonishing factor given that say, Cook's Illustrated has gone from 17% male readership a decade ago to now, 50% male, or that it's common to see half the shoppers in the Supermarkets after work comprised of lone males. The idea that women alone make 80% of the purchasing decisions is as flawed as the assumption that there is a large and ever growing population of White youths.]

Note the only attribute for the Groom in the ad. Being hot.

These ads, in tandem, comprise more arrows pointing towards a profound, and probably irrevocable shift towards chaotic, short-term relationships instead of the nuclear family.
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Advertising: Where the (White) Men Aren't

Thanks to reader Patrick, for the e-mail tip on the Jawbone "viral marketing" ads. While the ads themselves (originally on the Jawbone website, since pulled but still available on YouTube) are odious, virulently (anti White male) racist and sexist, that they exist and generate many positive comments on YouTube is indeed telling. What is absent from television and nearly all marketing is men. Particularly White men. At least in so far as White Men being the target of sales efforts, instead of mere reflexive hostility.

Below are a sample of the Jawbone Ads, created for the web as part of a "viral marketing" effort:

White Guy in Asian Dry Cleaner (1.1 Million views):



Noisy Guys in Pool (2,478 views):




Noisy Rugby Players in Bar (133,917 Views):



Responsible Marketing did not think much of the ads. Culture Buzz loved it. Top Rank Blog thought it was stupid and offensive. IntoMobile.com thought it was brilliant (because it was a White guy getting murdered by an Asian family).

But what is striking about these videos is the message (all directed by Music Video Director Samuel Bayer [Green Day, Garbage]). The message is that White Guys are terrible, and deserve to be killed, or better yet, turned gay. The video play on the hatreds towards White men by Women, Blacks, Asians, and so on.

Yet ...

Who is the biggest market for Bluetooth headsets? Why yes. White Men.

The older Black man sitting in the Dry Cleaner, ignoring the murder of the obnoxious White male customer? According to the Wall Street Journal, Middle Class Blacks are 40% of the Black population. Blacks themselves are 12.5% of the population. Thus the Middle Class Blacks are 5% of the population, and the Middle Class Black guy just sitting there ignoring the murder of the White guy is 2.5% of the population at best. While it may be quite typical for White women to wish that annoying White guys "turn gay," the gay population in the US is estimated at between 2.5% to 3%. While it's difficult to estimate, women remain a smaller technology buyer segment than men, though single women are increasingly more important technology buying segments, they still trail single men in buying technology, particularly cutting edge consumer electronics.

There isn't much payoff in terms of gaining new customers for new consumer technology like Jawbone's "Noise Assassin" bluetooth headsets by making the largest buying segments the targets of either "turning gay" or death by sharks or angry dry cleaning staff.

Indeed, the implicit message, being an obnoxious White guy gets you turned "gay" or killed by Women or Black Guys is pretty negative. It's one more example of the total failure of Advertising and Marketing to reach White Male consumers. Since the marketing people are so filled with hatred for those very same consumers.

As more and more men and women do not marry at all, or delay marriage well into their thirties, and high divorce rates equal lots of single people, a strategy of relying only on White female consumers and non-existent Black Middle Class consumers (or gay ones) is bound to fail. White Men remain about 50% or more of the potential consumer base for everything from consumer electronics to cars. Single people, whatever the cause, means that at least half of all household purchasing decisions will be made by Men. Most of them, White men.

These ads show how the entire creative culture is oriented around the desire to erase White Men from existence. By either wanting to "make them gay" or simply kill them. Such a culture, oriented in a rough coalition of women, gays, and non-Whites who all oppose the existence of White Men, cannot exist for much longer without a great deal of cultural and political strife. Indeed, the opting out of male viewers from Television and movies is only part of this trend.
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Why Dollhouse is a Flop and What It Means for Popular Culture

For those who care, and judging by the ratings, most don't, the latest TV series from Joss Whedon, "Dollhouse," is a flop. Judging by reviews, the series and lead actress (Eliza Dushku), have performed "below expectations" and even Television Without Pity, a forum of certified boosters of all things Whedon, have weighed in on a Dollhouse Cancellation Pool. Buzz has been negative, with delays in filming so scripts could be re-written, and the cast and producers/writers packed with various Whedon cronies and relatives.

"Dollhouse" is of course unimportant in and of itself. But it's probable failure, contains clues as to what will not work and what will in Television, and thus clues to important trends in popular culture: the end of "demassification" and subcultures, and the rise of a new mass unified culture. With of course, profound implications for politics and society.



Dollhouse is not very well executed. But it's likely execution does not matter that much. Had Dollhouse premiered in say, 1997, it might well have succeeded. But the recession, and changing ad market, are transforming the nature of television and pop culture in general. Contrary to the Long Tail hypothesis of continued "demassification" of culture, a lengthy recession is likely to significantly reduce fragmentation of culture, and produce a more unified culture. For simple business reasons: appealing to a broad group of society is the only way to make money given scarce advertiser dollars. Yes, we are entering an era of scarcity after nearly sixty years of nearly un-interrupted prosperity.

The failure of Dollhouse is thus a signal, of how the culture of America is being transformed from a fragmented mess of various sub-groups, into a more uniform (and populist) mass culture, not seen perhaps since the 1980's. This has significant impacts on how culture will drive politics and policy.

First, let's look at how pop culture worked under the old, "prosperity" model. A commenter on Television Without Pity summed up the old model, which traded mass viewers for a more "desireable" segment. This strategy of "demassifying" or cult culture, was pioneered by former NBC head Grant Tinker in the early 1980's, with renewals of low-rated but desirable demographics ( rich Yuppies) shows such as "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." This strategy sustained the low-rated "Seinfeld" during it's first few years (1989-91) as it drew low ratings initially but favorable demographics. Wealthy Yuppies that advertisers would pay premiums to reach created cult shows like "Hill Street Blues," and that model was later extended to young, female consumers with shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek." A lot of money was made selling Pantene Shampoo and Conditioner to young women.

This was (and is) Amazon's model, selling lots of things that don't have mass appeal, but can be sold at a mark-up premium, to lots of people. Apple's Itunes store is another good example. Since their operating costs are low, and in the case of Apple inventory cost is near zero, they can afford to carry lots of songs or DVDs or books (in the case of Amazon, sitting in the inventory of partners) and sell them in small amounts (no major hits) to lots and lots of customers. Advertising had worked the same way, making lots of cult shows such as "Farscape" or "Battle Star Galactica" (the remake by Ron Moore) at least possible and sometimes even profitable, given the premium rates charged advertisers for desirable demographics, i.e. young and wealthy consumers.

As TV accelerated the process of dumping male viewers in favor of what advertisers wanted, which was female viewers (viewed as key purchase decision makers), this hyper-fragmentation continued. One network, the WB, was devoted almost entirely to young female viewers, and it's successor network CW has continued that focus. However, this strategy of cutting up the mass audience into small pieces and producing entertainment that appealed only to the small pieces required a constantly rising economy, rising consumer spending, and thus rising advertising rates as sponsors clamored to get their message across to ever smaller groups of tightly focused demographic segments. There was also the problem of the "missing men," who as they remained single longer and longer, remained out of reach of advertisers and relatively unimportant in consumer messaging.

This particular strategy of sub-group focus was failing even before the economy crashed. Last year it was rumored the CW network would shut down because of revenue shortfall caused by very low ratings and not enough advertising spending even with the desired 12-17 and 18-34 female demographic. The problem? Sponsors were seeing that demographic cut back spending on products such as specialty shampoos and conditioners, clothes, ringtones, and other luxury consumer goods that defined discretionary spending. Moreover, there just was not enough young women around, given the decline in birth rates.

Now ad spending is down even more dramatically. Of course Auto companies have been hit by the recession, even Toyota and Honda are shedding thousands of jobs and cutting back on TV and other advertising, let alone GM, Ford, and Chrysler. So too, banks, insurance companies, and other segments of advertisers, hurt hard by the economic crash, and in many cases taking bailout money that politically makes advertising almost impossible. Nor has there been any recent recovery in the spot market, indeed rates for spot advertising (instead of pre-arranged ad purchases) are lower than the contracted rates. Analysts don't see relief any time soon. Even Local TV stations are hurting. CBS, the most profitable of the networks, managed to eke out a small profit, but they are down more than 50% from last year.

The few advertisers willing to spend money, are packaged consumer goods companies like Proctor & Gamble, or Nabisco, and they won't pay extra to reach small segments of consumers, rather current advertisers want broader reach and all possible consumers, young and old, male and female alike. Since their message is value and affordability in a time of lasting recession and they cannot afford to ignore key segments such as men, as in the past. Advertisers such as Pantene have greatly reduced their advertising since their target customers, young women, have cut back on spending like everyone else.

A look at the ratings for 2009 is instructive. Fox's Ratings, NBC's ratings, ABC's ratings, CBS's ratings, and CW's ratings are all found at the links. Taking non-repeat showings, and averaging the numbers, produces the table shown below:

Network	Show	Average Non-Repeat Viewers (Millions)
Fox	Dollhouse	4.45
Fox	American Idol	25.49
Fox	House	14.88
Fox	24	11.74
Fox	Fringe	11.5
Fox	Lie to Me	12.1
CBS	The Mentalist	18.85
CBS	NCIS	18.45
CBS	CSI	19.3
CBS	CSI: Miami	15.05
CBS	CSI: NY	12.08
CBS	Without a Trace	12.82
CBS	NUMB3RS	10.33
CBS	Flashpoint	9.75
CBS	Ghost Whisperer	10.78
CBS	Eleventh Hour	12.02
CBS	Survivor	13.55
NBC	Medium	8.4
NBC	Heroes	8
NBC	Chuck	7.6
NBC	Law and Order	8.39
NBC	Life	5.4
NBC	Knight Rider	5.28
NBC	ER	7.28
ABC	Grey's Anatomy	14.5
ABC	Lost	10.85
ABC	Private Practice	11.02
ABC	Ugly Betty	7.42
ABC	Life on Mars	5.48
ABC	Desperate Housewives	13.95
CW	Smallville	4.03
CW	Supernatural	3.18
CW	Gossip Girl	2.43
CW	Privileged	1.43
CW	One Tree Hill	2.7
CW	90210	2.38

You can see in the data a few broad patterns. First, I've excluded sitcoms to focus on hour-dramas only. With a few high-rated reality shows to compare the dramas against. Even facing audience erosion after a number of years, a show like "American Idol" averages 25 million viewers. This is less astonishing, mind you, than at first glance.

In 1968, with a population of 200 million or so, "the Beverly Hillbillies" drew 60 million viewers. As compared to "American Idol" today with a full 33% more people, or 303 million. For "American Idol" to draw comparable numbers to the "Beverly Hillbillies" in terms of proportional amount of the population, viewers would have to reach 80 million or so. It's worth noting that the Superbowl the last two years has reached about 98 million viewers, so people will watch in those broad numbers if what is on offer is of enough interest. There is a great amount of money to be made in mass culture, "American Idol" alone is responsible for a great deal of Fox's revenues, given their only middling performance of other dramas.

But these issues aside, broad patterns emerge. Shows featuring a strong male lead, who in some way leads a team of disparate people, with strong female characters, generally will draw a lot of viewers. The shows feature a strong and conservative moral message, valuing teamwork, professionalism, loyalty, duty, family, decency and honor over career and status that mass audiences clearly like. Desire for closeness to family and loss (often of family) is a theme running through most of these shows. Moral lessons: don't cheat on your spouse, sleep around, neglect your family, put career first, act arrogantly, or care more about status than people, are often important plot points. CBS is chock-a-block full of those types of shows, their "Crimetime" police procedurals of one form or another, and their generally conservative throw-back nature (adult White Males are in charge in nearly all of them) appeal to both male and female audiences. Not lost on female audience is the fact that these types of shows almost always have strong female second leads who wield (responsibly) power and authority. These shows are the most popular after "American Idol," and include "the Mentalist" (18.9 million viewers), "CSI" (19.3), and "NCIS" (18.5). Even lesser rated or known shows such as "the Unit" (not shown) and "Flashpoint" ( a Canadian import) can pull in 9 million viewers or so. If CBS seems formulaic, they are. Because the formula works. Most of Fox's Dramas follow this pattern as well, from "House" to "24" to "Bones."

Female night-time soap operas, ranging from Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, to Ugly Betty, will garner 14 to 7 million viewers or thereabouts. Not as much as the "Crimetime" formula, and less consistently, but still respectable. Unlike the "Crimetime" formula, however, these shows are strictly for women only, with nothing in them to interest men who are not gay. Since these shows leave out men, advertisers are beginning to lose interest in paying a premium for them, given the need in a recession to make every penny of ad spending count.

Hour long shows that tend to straddle genres, such as comedy-dramas like "Chuck," or Superhero soap operas like "Heroes" or quirky mystery-conspiracy crime dramas like "Life" tend to underperform relative to straight up Female Soap Operas or "Crimetime" procedurals with a strong White Male lead in charge. The terminally PC "Knight Rider" is probably a good example of this, well matched in the ratings with the equally PC-lecturing "Life on Mars" from ABC. [It's interesting that the same show on NBC, "Medium" does about 2 million viewers less, than the same show on CBS "Ghost Whisperer" in the much less desirable Friday time slot, suggesting that "Chuck" if shown on CBS would pull in about 2 million more viewers, but still rate only about 9 million viewers or so, about half of the traditional male roles of the "Mentalist" and "NCIS".]

The two shows that skew male (and older) for the CW, "Smallville" and "Supernatural" significantly outperform the teen girl oriented "Gossip Girl" which if one judged only by the amount of hype and publicity, would be the top rated show instead of 2.4 million viewers. Others such as "Privileged" gather only 1.4 million viewers, which is infomercial time. There just are not that many teen girls, given the birth dearth. Too bad the people running the CW don't look at demographics.

Dollhouse of course runs closer to uber-PC (and thus low-rated) "Life on Mars" and "Knight Rider" than it does say, "Fringe," or "Lie to Me" with traditional male leads on the same network. A commenter on Television Without Pity summed up Dollhouse's approach as being feminist, with lots of cheesecake or half-naked shots of Eliza Dushku, and with nearly all the men being nasty, unlikeable pieces of work. Clearly the intent is to "square the circle," but within PC constraints, having action and "hot chicks" that appeal to men and a heavy dose of feminism, along with status-mongering and disagreeable to repulsive male characters filled with Yuppie status angst and self-loathing.This brings to mind what the REAL Lieutenant Starbuck, Dirk Benedict, had to say about the remake of Battle Star Galactica, and specifically the inability to portray non-Angsty, fun, male characters in Sci-Fi or genre TV. A profile of Benedict at National Review has much of the same sentiments.

Benedict's larger point, that TV and film refuse to allow male characters, who are not angst-ridden and self-loathing, to kick ass and take a strong moral stand, instead demanding that this be done by stick-figure women, who haven't eaten since the Clinton Administration, is well taken. Hollywood keeps pushing that "solution" to it's reluctance to allow traditional men a role in TV and movies, be it Ron Moore's "Battle Star Galactica" or the Terminator series on Fox (not listed in the table above) which is near cancellation, averaging only 3.8 million viewers, or thereabouts. Viewers are not interested in seeing women in these types of shows, particularly not the waify kinds seen on "Dollhouse" or various model types on "Battle Star Galactica." Indeed traditional female soap operas far out-draw these types of shows ("Terminator," "Dollhouse," etc.) along with the terminally PC male-oriented shows ("Life on Mars," "Knight Rider") that also refuse to take strong moral stands and provide viewers with relatively un-conflicted, upbeat and optimistic male heroes.

Clearly, Hollywood's attempt to "square the PC circle" with women kicking ass, and men angst-ridden and disagreeable, has passed. These shows found some success and advertiser dollars in the go-go status-obsessed 1990's, where the only problem was where to put all the money people were making, but far less in the recessionary and terrorist-threat (of the nuclear kind) decade of the 2000's, ten years later. Niche cultures just are not making money.

What sells, clearly, besides a remake of "Major Bowes Amateur Hour" or "the Ed Sullivan Show" ("American Idol") is the traditional White Male, leading a team, with a White female as the second lead. Sometimes the female lead is the gun-play expert to the "smart" male lead (CSI's Marg Helgenberger, Chuck's Yvonne Strahowski, the Mentalist's Robin Tunney, and Eleventh Hour's Marley Shelton), keeping expensive and difficult to portray fight scenes to a minimum and making violence on-screen short and to the point, also more realistic. Since tiny, waifish models do not throw hulking men around. But the shows are just as importantly, generally free from excessive PC lecturing, at least, and generally take a positive attitude (professionalism, duty, loyalty, family) that is the antithesis of the dark, angsty world-view of the 1990's shows such as "the X Files."

Broadly appealing shows are what advertisers are paying for, as well, and it's unlikely to change even if/when the economy recovers, because it's unlikely we will see consumer spending at the levels of the 1990's as uncertainty about employment and wages remain, perhaps for years to come. This means a lot more shows like the "Mentalist" and a lot fewer ones like "Dollhouse."

This is mostly a good thing. Popular culture, as Andrew Breitbart noted, shapes politics. A culture which believes and responds to the values of team work, professionalism, loyalty, optimism, problem solving, family, and moral conservatism is one that is vastly different from the status-driven angst fests of the current "Battle Star Galactica" or "Dollhouse." In many ways, the start of the Obama Presidency coincides with an upsurge of conservative feeling in popular culture. Not because millions of people read Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" but because people under stress respond to entertainment that is both fun and stresses positive social and cultural messages to provide a sense of self-control in rapidly changing, and unfriendly economic and political-social climates.

Angst-A-Rama, it seems, is out.
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