The Shift in Entertainment

A recent Wall Street Journal Article on the "New Media Crisis of 1949" shows how other observers are also seeing the obvious. That people are changing in the ways they consume entertainment, and that the old models of niche entertainment and de-massification are failing. With people having radically different modes of consuming entertainment, driven both by technology and by the economy, the idea that entertainment can be walled off into separate playgrounds for different demographic groups is dying in the reality of winners and losers, with re-massification of the culture appearing on the horizon.

This change, like that of 1949, will create winners and losers that will not be obvious from the start, and create a world as different to today's as the world of 1955 was to say, 1948.


The Wall Street Journal article argues there were three central lessons to "New Media" that apply from the fairly rapid switch, from 1949 to 1950, in which audiences abandoned radio for television. First, that the radio networks had to heavily subsidize the New Media for some fairly heavy financial losses. Second, that the New Media had to be connected or networked (i.e. made available nationally), and third that winners in New Media were those who could adapt to the changing conditions, mainly visual, that the New Media demanded of performers and producers. Radio humorist Fred Allen, for example, could famously not adapt, while movie actors / radio personalities Bob Hope and Jack Benny could adapt.

Like everything else, the history of the transition from radio to television offers only a rough guide. It's clear that broadcast networks are in trouble. The demographics for ABC, NBC, and CBS are all showing median audience ages above 50, with Fox not far behind. This is an eight-year increase from 1999, when the media age was 43. Partly this is due to the aging of America, and the results of the Birth Dearth. But partly it is due to the Networks inability to produce all-ages programming, with shows that have no appeal to children and young adults. CBS had a median age for its audience of 55, the first time it had risen outside the 25-54 demographic. ABC was 51, NBC was 49, Fox was 46, and the CW was 34 (this from the network showing "Gossip Girl.") Meanwhile TBS has a median age of 35, down from 38 a few years ago, and TNT, and USA have median ages of 44 and 46 respectively. UPDATE: Roslyn Bibby, VP Media Relations at FX Networks advises that the figure of 46 for the median age I gave was incorrect, the age is 37.5 primetime and 35.7, making it significantly younger than it's cable competition. I thank FX Networks for their information and apologize for the error. DVR usage is intriguingly, between 8 and ten years younger on average for each network, and DVR/time-shifted viewing can account for as much as 30% for shows such as "Lost," "Heroes," and "the Office."

Younger consumers like viewing television shows on DVRs, or online, according to their schedule, not the networks. It is also clear that reality shows like "Dancing with the Stars" (median age 56) skew significantly older than scripted entertainment like "How I Met Your Mother" (median age 45). While reality shows are cheap, and do draw mass audiences, the audiences tend to be older, and the resale value of reality approaches zero. Networks and studios cannot re-run them, cannot syndicate them, and cannot sell them on DVDs or generate revenue from them online.

Meanwhile, mass-appealing shows on Basic Cable networks have done favorably this Summer when compared to Broadcast TV ratings. Shows such as "the Closer" and "Burn Notice" would rank at #10 to #13 or so at Broadcast TV ratings, with around 7.8 million to 7.6 million viewers. USA has done well with it's more mass-appealing "Characters Welcome" shows such as "Monk," "Burn Notice," "Royal Pains," and "In Plain Sight." Even SyFy, after a name change that alienated core male viewers, and lots of bad, low-budget movies "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octupus," plus an emphasis on female-friendly fantasy, has won back viewers with broadly appealing shows such as "Warehouse 13."

Cable has clearly been helped by the switch to digital broadcasting, which prompted some consumers to simply sign up for or keep cable. But the Broadcast networks diet of reality shows, repeats, and little else other than NFL pre-Season games has also provided mass cable networks with the ability to draw both male and female viewers alike, with ratings competitive to Broadcast networks, and significantly younger audiences. Broadcast networks used to show series such as "the A-Team" or "the Cosby Show" which would draw a wide variety of viewers, from kids to adults, each enjoying the show on it's own level. This was part of the mass-culture which helped create and maintain common values in a large and geographically diverse nation. The networks endless focus on the wealthy Yuppie/SWPL ("Stuff White People Like" — from the website and book of the same name by Christian Lander) has ironically made their audiences older because few if any children watch. TBS is "younger" because many tween girls hurry home from school to watch re-runs (with the explicit sex scenes and language taken out, but little else) of "Sex and the City." Yes, really.

Melissa Benjamin, a 16-year-old from Chappaqua, N.Y., says that her three best friends got advance tickets to see the movie Friday because they watched the show for hours in middle school. "We'd come home at 3:30 p.m. and watch until 9 o'clock on HBO on Demand," she says. "We'd like to say which character we all thought we were most like. Secretly," she confides, "I really relate to Carrie, but my other friend wanted to be Carrie."

While tween and teen girls can be entranced by visions of adult female sexuality (and sexual power), and cable networks like TBS take advantage of this craving for female power fantasies among younger viewers, until recently there was very little in the way of fantasies for male teens and pre-teen boys. Clearly USA with male-skewing shows such as "Burn Notice" and SyFy with "Warehouse 13" offer for the first time fantasies about male power: being able to fight, lead others, and demonstrate attraction (sexual and romantic) to beautiful and desirable women. This is not rocket science, and something Hollywood used to churn out from Republic Western serials, to radio shows, to TV Westerns and science fiction ("Gunsmoke" and "Star Trek") to well, "the A-Team."

And then, in the go-go 1990's, television broadcast networks simply forgot how to appeal to men and boys, flush in the enormous amounts of money advertisers would pay to reach members of what Kay Hymnowitz in City-Journal.org dubbed "the New Girl Order." Now that times are hard, and advertisers can no longer depend on the vast amounts of money single young women with disposable incomes spent on fashion and cosmetics, male audiences matter. A lot.

It is true that shows such as "Mad Men" or Tru Blood create a lot of media attention. But the ratings are still, relatively anemic (4.3 million vs. say, 7.6 million season average for "Burn Notice"), and when comparing shows like "Weeds" (1.6 million) and "Nurse Jackie" (1.4 million) the "edgy/hip" shows that appeal mostly to women are not making the grade compared to the Basic Cable shows like "Burn Notice" or "Royal Pains." These shows clearly are marketing devices to create "buzz" and media notice, not actual revenue from advertisers to reach actual consumers. Instead, Premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime gain most of their revenues from subscriber fees, regardless if anyone watches. While this still characterizes basic cable network revenues, the trend is important. Nearly as many people are watching Basic Cable new dramatic series as they are Broadcast network re-runs, reality shows, and sports. Critically, younger audiences like to watch scripted series on their own schedule, through DVRs or the internet. While creators such as Tru Blood's Alan Ball, the openly gay writer/producer behind "American Beauty" and "Six Feet Under" have shown the ability to attract critical attention and some female audiences, they have not been able to generate much in the way of male audiences. Which is understandable, gay men have little understanding of the nature of straight life, from family ties and responsibility, to the competition among men for the limited pool of available and desirable women. "Tru Blood" for all the ink spilled on its behalf, has never been able to generate the type of audience that either "Royal Pains" or "Burn Notice" has, let alone a broadcast show like "the Mentalist" which received 22 million viewers at its height during the first-run season. Indeed the concentration of gays in television and movie producing is problematic, as folks like Ball or "Superman Returns" producer/director Bryan Singer (also openly gay) simply lack the ability to connect with men, their concerns, or values.

From all of this, we can find several lessons.

First, no one section of the audience can be ignored. Seniors and kids both matter, because it's not the 1980's anymore and there is no giant wave of twenty-somethings coming into their own. The 1980's were in fact the last crash of the baby-boom wave, with twenty somethings born in the 1970's, and those born in the 1980's noticeably fewer in number than those born in the late 1940's to the mid 1960's. While there is room for say both an updated version of "the Golden Girls" and the cable network "Noggin" (appealing to young children) most successful media will draw in young and old viewers alike. Along these lines, shows must appeal to both men and women, boys and girls as well. For men and boys, the lead characters must be people they'd like to become, if only for 42 minutes or so (screen time minus commercials). This means the characters must be able to fight (but not enjoy fighting), lead others (but not abuse them or take advantage) and be seen as a good and natural leader, and attract female attention by desirable characters. For women and girls, the female leads must be strong and independent, positive, possessed of a powerful intelligence, and able to handle herself in almost any situation.

This is essentially Western culture from the Odyssey to "the Avengers." One in which men and women participate in rough equality, neither dominating the other, each having unique strengths. It represents neither the Playboy-esque "bimbo" caricature of women nor the "Twilight/Buffy" ugly parody of masculinity. As disconnected and alienated as the sexes are in the younger cohorts (ages 16-36 or so) of the population, the demonstrated response to anything that remotely meets this criteria, particularly with "Burn Notice" is encouraging.

It is highly probable that winners and losers will be determined who provides this content, critically in ways that everyone can consume the entertainment. On cable or broadcast networks. Available for viewing free on the internet. Downloaded to computers, laptops, or cell phones for free (with product placement ads such as in "Eureka" or "Chuck"). Available on DVD for rent or purchase, with "extras" such as cast/creator interviews, deleted scenes, etc. The "means" of convenience (and cost, it's clear most people won't pay for premium cable) matter. But matching the convenience is the content. Only mass-culture players will be winners. There just isn't enough young people or money any more for it to be any other way.
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Mad Men, John Edwards, and the Hotel California

More people are writing about "Mad Men." Obviously, part of a roll-out of the publicity campaign, which might even push viewers north of last season's 1.5 million. However, no matter how mundane the reasons why the new spate of articles about "Mad Men" are popping up all over, the attitudes towards men, women, and the disconnected state of both in the modern world are revealing. America might still be saved, or entering a terminal decline, checking into the Hotel California. Ironically, the fate of John Edwards and his political career, or not, will likely signal the outcome.


First, let's look at Newsweek's Sarah Ball. Among her points is the following:

Why are we so wild for Draper? By any measure, the character's a cad. He constantly cheats on his wife. He skips town for weeks and won't write or call. He doesn't talk much, and anesthetizes any feelings with copious amounts of booze. He's an enigma, a locked box of a man who resists, maddeningly, easy explanation. And yet he excites an attraction among women—particularly ones my age, women in their late '20s and '30s who were born after the era that Mad Men portrays—that seems unmatched by any leading man on television today, with the possible exception of Lost's con artist, Saywer (another strapping scoundrel with a deeply troubled soul). We describe our obsession in words that, like the show itself, are somewhat retro. "He is a straight-up man. He makes me feel like a woman via the TV." "He's a throwback to a time when men were men. "It's the thickness of his body." "Shoulders to cry on and a jaw that causes women to swoon."

A man's man. A virile man. A masculine man. Strong terms. And ones that would make our postmodern gender-studies professors blush. After all, we're the generation of women who grew up beating the boys in math class, reading Judith Butler (by choice or by force), celebrating "Grrl" power. Traditional male-female roles were going out the window while we were still toddlers. And maybe that's why we feel a little guilty when we stop to admit to ourselves why Draper excites us. Because we're not supposed to be using those terms anymore to describe our desires. Those words threaten a backsliding—they hint at some deep, unspoken turbulence; that, as if by saying we want a "real man," we threaten to erase all the gains our mothers made in terms of equality in the workplace and the home. After all, we don't believe in that evolutionary "me Tarzan, you Jane" nonsense anymore. We're supposed to want men who are sensitive and respectful; men who emote and help around the house, and talk openly about their feelings. And we do want these things. Don't we? So then why are we fantasizing about Draper rather than Jim from The Office?

...
So we've been raised to marry different men. Men like our president, Barack Obama: supportive, mature, levelheaded, equal partners. A bit sexless, OK, but who these days still thinks that a gal can have it all? Better a sexless Obama than a philandering Bill Clinton (speaking of men who make powerful women simultaneously swoony and ashamed of said swoon). And anyway, there are so few men like Draper around that we're not in any real danger of meeting one—at least not in the affluent, cosmopolitan jungles where Mad Men's viewers are concentrated, and where smart young women flock to make their careers take flight. They're a dying, if not dead, breed: these men who came back from the battlefields and settled down in whitewashed houses and were somehow expected to find the same visceral rush in office jobs and country clubs and nice, sweet wives that they gained from far-off adventures and wars. Men who couldn't be satiated by these staid substitutions; men who were made caged animals by domesticity; men who unleashed their restlessness in ways both erotic and destructive. These types of men are not the men we marry anymore. But, apparently, they're still the ones we love. [Ed: Emphasis added.]

What this says, about the writer, is that women of her class, generation, and background have no clue about masculinity, strength, or what indeed makes a man. It's telling that while "Mad Men's" bad-boy in adult clothing, Don Draper, creates a huge fuss among the show's mostly female fans, and the female-dominated media, the example of male strength and compassion in last season's "Life" (with "Band of Brothers" star Damien Lewis) had almost no reaction in either the press or female fans of a similar age and background (late twenties, to mid thirties female professionals). This despite the character being written and acted as a "Man's Man" i.e. one with restraint, power, protectiveness, capable of being gentle and shockingly tough as the situation required, and with an air of mystery and semi-controlled anger underneath his seemingly good-willed charm. Moreover, a character that liked and respected his tough, independent female partner, found few takers among female fans and fewer champions in the feminized media. A failure that is both telling and depressing.

Don Draper is of course a woman's idea of a masculine man, and bears about as much resemblance to reality as does the geek ideal of the waify, butt-kicking gal with superpowers, who has no annoying "girly" desires for shopping, friends, fashion, and family (her parents and siblings, or a desire for her own children). The waif-butt-kickers of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Dollhouse" or "Firefly" are about as realistic a portrait of women as Don Draper is of men, and what makes masculine strength. Women of the particular age and class that Sarah Ball refers to, confuse aggressiveness, betrayal, high and unleashed sex drive, constant philandering, and drama, with masculine strength. Posing a false dichotomy between weak and feminized office drones like "Jim" from "the Office" to dangerous and loutish philanderers such as Don Draper or Bill Clinton. Or John Edwards for that matter. Only a comfortable, loft-dwelling hipster writer could refer to WWII or Korea as "adventures" instead of the miserable, terrifying hell it was. War is never adventure, merely survival. Update: That the foolish writer of would view WWII or Korea as "an adventure" and generating "sexy" men speaks to her own biases: one in favor of aristocratic, violent, and dangerous places, in place of "boring" men (and women) in safe, wealthy, Manhattan. I suspect she would not like adventure, or real-life "adventurous" men. At any rate, the men who survived WWII or Korea were not "sexy." Decorated WWII and Korea Navy fighter Pilot Ed McMahon, or GUADALCANAL! veteran Don Adams, or D-Day and Malmedy survivor Charles Durning, or Navy Cross recepient (for his heroism at TARAWA!) Eddie Albert, along with 8th Airforce Veteran Jimmy Stewart, were typical of the survivors. Indeed most of them, tried their best to avoid war and conflict and like the real life "Band of Brothers" Maj. Ed Winters, settled down happily to quiet lives after experiencing real life horror. Only a profoundly immature writer would characterize war as "adventure"

Just as Hollywood creators such as Josh Whedon pander to fantasies of a butt-kicking waif who likes big explosions too! so do the nearly all female writing staff of "Mad Men" create a woman's idea of a masculine man. With constant validation of his attractiveness by other women having sex with him. A Bill Clinton (or John Edwards) for our time.

Others have noticed this failure as well, that men in particular commenting on "Mad Men" fail to notice that the younger urban and professional crowd find Don Draper irresistible because as blogger Josh Xiong put it your average sexist, cheating, borderline alcoholic is very attractive to women in the SWPL class. Even the Wall Street Journal got into the act. Note the obligatory applause for the obligatory SWPL gay kiss between two men.

SWPL young women, of the urban professional class, have no clue and no mentors (among older women who used to fulfill this role) about what makes good or bad boyfriends, husbands, and so on. Without guidance and control, younger women simply confuse men being a jerk, self-destructive with substance abuse (either alcohol or drugs or both), philandering, with little self-control that marks the necessary but not sufficient qualities of a successful and strong man, as being "masculine." In particular, these younger women deride the notion of control, confusing that with the overly feminized cubical dwellers who are "nice" and polite to them. Being so because this is what social messages have told the cubical dwellers to be: cooperative, team players, pleasant, and the sort of "supportive" men that feminists and women have declared they wanted, but really loathed. [Which explains much of the younger male anger, overt messages, ala PC and Multiculturalism, which must be ignored because they are completely false. Young women don't want supportive men, and despise those who offer it, even as they demand it. Phony overt messages that must be decoded into what the speaker really wants, but won't say, always generates anger, particularly when those receiving it take the overt message for face value for too long.]

Of these two fantasies, the Don Draper is by far the most destructive. There simply are no waify-butt kickers in real life, and while your average geek might yearn for a woman who likes "Mythbusters" and discussing the Linux kernel, he knows it's a fantasy. There are however, many real-life Don Drapers, and the result is usually disastrous for both men and women.

The National Enquirer reports that John Edwards plans to move his mistress and love child to a mansion near his own, to keep an eye on them and be more involved. His wife, Elizabeth, dying of cancer, is said to be furious. As Caitlan Flanagan wrote in The Atlantic:

John Edwards—whose intelligence we are supposed to accept as an article of faith—has managed not only to wedge himself between two exceedingly powerful and angry women, but also to have scorned both of them. Nice one, John! On the one hand is his wife, whose suffering might have seemed impossible to multiply, but he found the perfect way; and on the other hand is his (former) mistress, a known hellcat who has been flummoxing boy-men since the ’80s and whose rage over Elizabeth’s book is held in check only (and here I’m admittedly basing my speculation largely on what I’ve come to learn about women’s dreams and desires) by her hankering to live in Tara. Hers is not an intelligence or an ambition difficult to plumb, and her dream is almost certainly to have Elizabeth shuffle off the mortal coil so that she can instate herself in the North Carolina pleasure dome and become the fun, hip, “Being Is Free,” bleached-blond, super open-minded, videographing, Power of Now stepmom, a prospect so hideous that it makes Elizabeth Edwards’s last-chance book tour look like what it is: a desperate attempt to protect her sweet, sad children from the influence of this erstwhile cokehead and present-day weasel after she has died.

These are the stakes, ultimately, for any woman betting it all and betting it wrong on a Don Draper: ending up like Elizabeth Edwards. Who in any case will have her own children supplanted by John's love child with his mistress, alone and essentially parentless as their father betrays them as well with his new young baby. Because for those women who choose the Don Drapers, there is always a woman younger and with no regard for marital bonds, propriety, and much of anything else.

Today's young, urban, hip, professional women have so much security, at ease-safety, and sense of belonging, that they yearn for any stimulation, excitement, or danger. Not knowing just how low the men who give them that sense of danger and excitement can take them. And their children. John Edwards says he is "tired of all the lies" and wants to acknowledge publicly his love child daughter. Mickey Kaus has blogged that Edwards still harbors ambitions and believes Bill Clinton's example will allow him to continue his political career, perhaps with a stint as an appointed official in the Obama Administration. Kaus might be right. I don't think even Elizabeth Edwards sad, tragic example, will deter excitement seeking young professional women from confusing men being an asshole with men being strong.

The good news is that while this SWPL female professional class is very strong in its presence and control of the media and entertainment, most women are vastly different. Most women, as a result of the birth dearth, are older. Most women love their "beta" husbands and sons, and find the idea of Don Draper repellent. Which accounts for it's miserable ratings, and likely, Bill Clinton's protege, Al Gore's defeat to flub-tastic newcomer George W. Bush in 2000.

The danger is that, however, the SWPL girl-women who love Mad Men and swoon over Don Draper and Bill Clinton (and likely, John Edwards) are the wave of the future, even though there are a lot less of them than their mothers, they dominate the younger classes of women and are indeed the future. The younger women of this class are disconnected from older women who could give them solid advice on how to avoid the tragedy of Elizabeth Edwards, who's particular form of betrayal was up to chance, but the general shape of it was sealed the moment she said "I Do."

In this sense, the tremendous amount of publicity and attitudes expressed by women like Ball, or Sandra Tsing Loh in her article about passion versus the boring realities of married life or Cristina Nehring's Vindication of Love (which advocates serial passionate affairs instead of boring marriage, and of course bad-boy lovers) are swords with two edges. On the one hand, they propel young women into more bad-boy chasing, which they are inclined to do anyway. The media taking over the position of older female counselor, but giving younger women horrible advice. The other edge of the sword being the male reaction, which has ranged from PUA (Pick Up Artist) of various stripes, to withdrawal to bromance and X-Boxes. Which gives women the choice of Don Draper, or no one at all. If 72% of married women considered leaving their husbands in the Woman's Day survey, the next generation of women might not get any at all, not "Jim from the Office" or the "Kitchen Bitch" variety that Sandra Tsing Loh derides. Instead a nation of young men would make themselves into a Don Draper. Or as much as they can manage.

The saddest thing of all? John Edwards might indeed have a political career left. When a feminist like Cristina Nehring can defend Republican Mark Sanford in the pages of The New Republic, on the basis of "love" and "passion," America's young professional women might have a case of the terminal desire for Bad Boys. [It's clear that older women, who love Sarah Palin, and detest the betrayal of Elizabeth Edwards, are very different socially and politically from younger women who seem to be the exact opposite: detesting Sarah Palin and at least, not despising John Edwards.]

If Edwards stays staked, like a destroyed vampire, never to rise again, America is saved for another day. If enough women of Nehring's persuasion (most men loathe Edwards, for a variety of reasons but most especially for his betrayal of his wife which is unmanly in the traditional way of self-sacrifice for family) excuse his disgusting behavior to the point where he is "rehabilitated" then truly, we are welcomed to the Hotel California. Where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. The only question then remaining is when America fully checks in.
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