Sorry I couldn't quote, something weird with the formatting.... Frank,
I think you are mixing up different segments of the corporate media a bit here. There are the loyal viewers of the repetitive television market with the one shot nature of the movies. They are entirely different markets with entirely different sales models and entirely different customers. For the most part, the movies are owned by corporations and TV is sponsored by corporations. Of course this is starting to change a bit with product placement and such, but it's still quite true. In television the viewer is the product being sold. The idea that the viewer gets what they want on TV is laughable. The corporate advertisers are the customers and they get what they want. That's why we have more and more commercials and less and less content. In the movies, the movie is the product being sold, and the viewers are, to a large degree the customers. The movies are not based on the repetitive 'subscriber' based model, which means a movie can be totally shitty viewing experience but still be profitable due to a great marketing campaign from it's corporate media parent companies. "It's the greatest movie EVER!" can be heard on all the News Corps media properties, and if it's sold right, a big fat stinking turd of a flick can recoup it's money. I believe that there is far less advertiser control over the movie business than the TV business because of the divergent business models. TV on the other hand is all but entirely controlled by the advertisers. With TV there is a relationship. Customers, corporate sponsors, pay to interact with the corporate media's product, the audience. They pay for a captive audience. It's not the viewers that force the shutting down of a program, it's the corporate advertisers getting cold feet and abandoning it. Remember, viewers are the product being sold when it comes to a heavy advertising based market like TV. Listening to your audience is important, and new media allows for that dialogue to take place, but as the show scales up, there is a high degree of probability that your customers, those paying your bills, are going to take issue with your product, the viewers, and that dialogue becomes a nasty triangle of interests. So, I guess I kind of agree with your point, but I think that your point falls short of being totally valid when you look at the different segments of the corporate media. Corporations sponsor TV and own the Movies. I am one who thinks that the corporate media creates reality, and we're just along for the ride. Sure there are some of us who buck the system and don't buy into it, but we're few. Corporations dominate our society: they sponsor our information, they sponsor our schools, they sponsor our politicians, they sponsor our legislation, they sponsor our sports teams, they sponsor our community functions, and if they're not sponsoring it, they own or control it: the internet, our personal information, our communications systems, mass transit, etc. I don't think that audiences, media consumers, actually control anything that happens within that power structure. Audiences are manipulated through saturation, cutting edge psychological science, limited competition and sheer volume. Cheers, Ron Ron Watson http://k9disc.blip.tv http://k9disc.com http://pawsitivevybe.com/vlog http://pawsitivevybe.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
