Popular Entertainment Requires Mass Media

Let me start with an odd question, whose answer will become relevant to the topic of this post after a few paragraphs. Do you remember where and when you first heard about the events of September 11, 2001 aka 9/11? Almost everyone living in the West above a certain age will have a very distinct recollection of when and where they first heard about or saw what happened on that day. But there is a twist to what I just said- unless you were physically in NYC, parts of NJ next to NYC or in a very specific part of Washington DC, you did not see or experience what happened on that day in those two cities, first hand. All of what you remember about that day was bought to you by mass media- almost all of it via live television feeds. Sure.. there were multiple independent TV feeds and hundreds of amateurs who used camcorders to record what happened in NYC on that day. But my point still stands- the vast majority of those who remember the events of that day did not see or experience them in real life. Yet, almost everyone above a certain age in the West remembers where and when they first saw or heard about it. Isn’t that interesting for an event which occurred for most on a TV screen?

I had a slightly different experience because of being very online- even in 2001. Let me explain. Two decades ago, the majority of people watching TV believed everything they saw on it. But very online people, much less common in those days, came across multiple instances of internal contradictions in the official narrative within just a few hours. For example, the prompt recovery of passports for one or more of the alleged hijackers from WTC debris within a few hours of their collapse as well as the most peculiar collapse of WTC7 a few hours after the twin towers went down seemed odd to online people even on the day of that event. The point I am trying to make is that your viewpoint about the events of 9/11, or any other famous event, is dependent on the channel of communication through which you received that information. Here is a thought experiment- imagine if an event of this scale occurred in 2024, instead of 2001 when most people have high speed internet, laptops, smartphones, video streaming, social media etc. Would most still have a uniform view about such an event?

Now let us move to a topic, which at first sight, seems disconnected from the public memory of 9/11- the fate of Hollywood movies, TV shows, popular music and popular culture in general. As some of you might have heard, popular forms of entertainment and “culture” in the West (especially North America) are in state of progressive and accelerating decline without any ray of hope at the end of the tunnel. To be fair, this trend has been obvious for well over a decade, but the speed has really picked up since 2019-2020. As usual, there are many potential and interacting factors behind it- from movie studios run by unimaginative bean-counters, streaming platform such as Neflix and Spotify, rise of YouTube and TikTok, the focus on creating lots of “content” over entertainment, massive inflation in cost of making movies and TV shows, thoughtless social activism in the entertainment business, meddling by investment firms trying to push certain social agendas and much more. While there are different views about the precise mix of factors driving this ongoing decline - it is hard to deny that this whole sector of the economy (esp the traditional part) is deep crisis.

With that in mind, let us talk about the last ‘golden age’ of mass media- especially TV, movies and music in the West. This era, which spanned the period from about 1993 to mid 2000s, which some residual momentum until 2010, was the last era where wholly or almost completely original material was very popular and profitable. I have written a bit about this era in the past, but the relevant part is that almost all commercially successful movies made after 2010 are either CGI-heavy comic-book superhero movies or attempts to reboot much older movie franchises. While this “surefire” formula seemed to work for the first 5-6 years of the 2010s, it started losing steam in the later half of 2010s and visibly implode after 2020. People have blamed this trend on everything from the rise of streaming services (esp Netflix), very high levels of financialism in that sector within past decade, social media taking time and attention away from mainstream media, cultural atomization exacerbated by everyone being on their smartphones etc. To be clear, I am not denying that these factors have each contributed to the overall negative trend- but something else going on.

A few weeks ago, I came across yet another series of news articles about how TV shows made before 2010 were still the most watched shows on Netflix- by very wide margins. It is as if the billions of dollars spent by Netflix on new shows every year for the past decade (investor money) has produced only a handful of somewhat successful and memorable shows. To put it another way, spending many times the amount which major networks used to spend (inflation adjusted) during the golden era of TV shows has yielded a small faction of their success. The same is true for every other streaming platform- from Hulu and Amazon to Disney. But why are these newer TV shows not successful or culturally significant unlike the older counterparts? Are actors, writers, producers etc nowless competent? Is the average production quality lower that it used to be? Once again, there are many explanations and theories. Here is my explanation.

It comes down to the two main reasons why TV shows, movies and music from before 2010 was just plain better. The first is due to something which most contemporary entertainment either cannot achieve or actively avoids- appeal to most people. One of the most obvious, but ignored difference between pre-2010 entertainment scene and what followed afterwards is that the older one was made and reshaped as necessary to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Some might pejoratively describe this as appealing to the lowest common denominator, but whatever one might call it, it was a very sound strategy. There is a reason why people want to watch sitcoms from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s on Netflix rather than any of their self-produced shows. The newer shows are almost always too niche, too polarizing (both style and material) in addition to not having the audience feedback loops used by networks and producers to tune the product. The same is true for popular music, which is now mostly inferior reworking of older hits or niche stuff with limited appeal. And this brings us to the role of mass media in achieving this specific result in the pre-2010 era.

In the era before online streaming (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ etc) or video social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok etc) became popular, the only way to reach a mass audience was via TV (network or cable) and radio. Given that there were far fewer channels and stations, there was fierce competition for access to their time slots and bandwidths. Furthermore, these outlets were also interested in ensuring that their products had the widest audience. Consequently, a dozen or two dozen shows usually competed for each spot. There were tons of failed pilots and shows with only a few episodes which were taken off the air if they generated an underwhelming audience response. Nor was making failed pilot episodes considered shameful or bad for your career because every successful actor, writer, director producer had dozens of flops before they hit the big time. The most important effect of this savage competition was that the top shows has very good casting, writing, directing etc and they appealed to the broadest segment of the audience. The rise of streaming and social media short-circuited this process of selection as it became possible to appeal to niche markets in a somewhat profitable manner. Also, the huge amount of venture capital money which were pumped in platforms such as Netflix and Hulu allowed them to exist without making a real profit for many years. We cannot forget how YouTube and Amazon streaming are effectively subsidized by the profitable divisions of their parent corporations. The same general process has occurred for popular music.

In summary, the ongoing slow-motion implosion of popular entertainment (especially TV shows and music) has a lot to do with the vastly diminished role of mass media as a filter to select out the awful, niche and mediocre stuff. While the situation for movies is a bit more complex, the gradual (and largely self-imposed) decline in role of movie theaters as the places which defined popular long-form video entertainment has a lot to do with why most contemporary movies are now CGI-heavy superhero flicks or reboots/ prequels/ sequels of much older movie franchises.

What do you think? Comments?