Category: Media

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Televisionization of the World Wide Web

The televisionization of the internet continues. Look at this.

What I think AOL is doing, essentially, is threatening to block business email unless they pay a fee. If they pay a fee, their mail bypasses spam filters. Now there’s a revenue stream I’ll bet you haven’t thought of. Set up a spam filter. Charge people to have their mailbox protected from thousands of annoying spam messages (part of the package of your membership in AOL). Then charge companies to put their mail through anyway.

This idea is even more brilliant than they imagine. In a few years, after you are once again deluged with unwanted e-mail, they can start offering a new service to the user: we will block the unwanted e-mail that we used to filter for an additional monthly fee. But you thought you were paying an additional monthly fee already? That’s like the cable fee you used to pay for commercial-free specialty channels, which are you still paying for, and which now have commercials.

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Oprahfied Culture

I watched the debate about James Frey’s book, “A Million Little Pieces”, unfold, with interest. If you’ve read through my previous stuff, you won’t be shocked to find that I think the book is a sham and should be relabeled as “Bullshit” (not as “fiction”, because that would require some art).

Frey says “the emotional truth is there”. Nobody said it wasn’t. It isn’t, but who said it wasn’t. The emotional truth is weighted to an enormous degree by our understanding of what is true and what is not. But who cares? But most people don’t like liars. We especially don’t like liars when they try to manipulate our emotions with their lies. Like James Frey.

But nor should it surprise anyone that Oprah defends the book. The “underlying message”, she said, “still resonates for me”. Oprah’s entire career has been built on catering to her audience, delivering something that “resonates” with millions of viewers. And what “resonates” with millions of viewers? Manipulation and pre-packaged pseudo-emotional experiences.

“A Million Little Pieces” is about, in part, the ordeal of pulling yourself out of deep shit by your bootstraps and remaking your life into something good. How can you not feel cheated if the author misrepresents the actual scale of the problem? If his own triumphant journey started halfway down the track? This book has implants.

Oprah is not a journalist. She is an entertainer. The Oprah show is always, first and foremost, about Oprah. Every interview is about Oprah. Every gift she gives does not announce to the world that this cause or this person or this service is so worthy and so honorable and so true that it deserves a gift. It announces that Oprah is so worthy and so honorable and so true because she has bestowed this gift on people she deems worthy. When she interviews Elie Wiesel, the show is about Oprah being somewhere up there with Eli Wiesel– the high priestess of compassion on those with low self-esteem– the holocaust is incidental.

Oprah says she chooses books of the month based on the quality of the book. But if the author won’t show up on her show to conduct a session of mutual admiration, that book no longer deserves a second of her time. If she had any class or journalistic integrity, she’d keep the book as her choice and promote it and say, “just because the author doesn’t like schmoozing with a tv celebrity doesn’t mean the book isn’t worthy of your attention.”

Now Oprah might rightly complain that this is a bum rap because most news “journalists” in America do what she does.

And that, sadly, tragically, is true.

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James Frey Gets Oprahed

I watched the debate about James Frey’s book, “A Million Little Pieces”, unfold, with interest. If you’ve read through my previous stuff, you won’t be shocked to find that I think the book is a sham and should be relabeled as “Bullshit” (not as “fiction”, because that would require some art).

Frey says “the emotional truth is there”. Nobody said it wasn’t. It isn’t, but who said it wasn’t. The emotional truth is weighted to an enormous degree by our understanding of what is true and what is not. But who cares? But most people don’t like liars. We especially don’t like liars when they try to manipulate our emotions with their lies. Like James Frey.

But nor should it surprise anyone that Oprah defends the book. The “underlying message”, she said, “still resonates for me”. Oprah’s entire career has been built on catering to her audience, delivering something that “resonates” with millions of viewers. And what “resonates” with millions of viewers? Manipulation and pre-packaged pseudo-emotional experiences.

“A Million Little Pieces” is about, in part, the ordeal of pulling yourself out of deep shit by your bootstraps and remaking your life into something good. How can you not feel cheated if the author misrepresents the actual scale of the problem? If his own triumphant journey started halfway down the track? This book has implants.

Oprah is not a journalist. She is an entertainer. The Oprah show is always, first and foremost, about Oprah. Every interview is about Oprah. Every gift she gives does not announce to the world that this cause or this person or this service is so worthy and so honorable and so true that it deserves a gift. It announces that Oprah is so worthy and so honorable and so true because she has bestowed this gift on people she deems worthy. When she interviews Elie Wiesel, the show is about Oprah being somewhere up there with Eli Wiesel– the high priestess of compassion on those with low self-esteem– the holocaust is incidental.

Oprah says she chooses books of the month based on the quality of the book. But if the author won’t show up on her show to conduct a session of mutual admiration, that book no longer deserves a second of her time. If she had any class or journalistic integrity, she’d keep the book as her choice and promote it and say, “just because the author doesn’t like schmoozing with a tv celebrity doesn’t mean the book isn’t worthy of your attention.”

Now Oprah might rightly complain that this is a bum rap because most news “journalists” in America do what she does.

And that, sadly, tragically, is true.

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Flight 93: The Movie

Am I supposed to feel good about the fact that the makers of the upcoming film, “Flight 93”, have received “cooperation” from all of the families of the passengers?

Some of these families were concerned that earlier accounts of the flight only paid attention to the “heroes”. They want to ensure that their family member gets some exposure as well. This smells of political correctness. Maybe some of the people on this plane were assholes? We’ll never know, because that is not the kind of “exposure” the families want.

I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the terrible sufferings of the families and victims of 9/11. It was a traumatic event, unprecedented in scope, certainly deserving of respectful acknowledgement and a certain degree of sensitivity from the media and film-makers.

But they are not the only ones who have died in the world in the last five years, and not the only ones who have died tragically. And I am sure the the families of all victims, whether of violence, inflicted by misguided governments or fanatic organizations, or the random violence of criminals and psychotics, or the horror of illnesses that strike without reason or logic, all feel that their sufferings are unique and unparalleled and deserving of deferential respect.

But nobody seems willing to publicly challenge the families of the 9/11 victims, whether on the issue of the preposterously excessive compensation they receive (why on earth are they and they alone entitled to millions of dollars in pay-outs when even the families of soldiers are not?) or, in this case, on how history looks at the event.

“Flight 93” is being directed by Paul Greengrass, who directed “Bloody Sunday”, about the 1972 riots in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of 13 unarmed demonstrators. He is a good director, and the film seems promising.

But, is Mr. Greengrass making a home movie? Is Mr. Greengrass making a movie that these family members will be proud to show at family gatherings in the future? Or is he making a movie that strives for accuracy and truth?

It all fits with a trend. We are now inundated with biographical films that are approved by the families or friends of the subject. Not one of these films would admit that they are dishonest in any way– the people who approve of them (and sell the rights to the stories) love to tell Oprah or David or Conan that the movie will show “warts and all”. But they usually only show the warts you don’t mind people seeing, or the warts everyone already knows about. Ray Charles didn’t mind that you knew how many women wanted to sleep with him or that he did drugs and Johnny Cash doesn’t mind if you know that he did pills and alcohol and chased June Carter. But if either of these guys, or Mohammed Ali or Patsy Cline or Buddy Holly or Loretta Lynn or even Jerry Lee Lewis did anything really reprehensible (that you don’t already know about), it aint going to come out in the film.

It is partly due to the onerous provisions of current copyright laws. It has become nearly impossible to make a biographical movie without getting permission from the various stakeholders, whether it is the copyright owners (of the music or images), or families. When the “Buddy Holly Story” was filmed, they actually had to use fictitious names for the Crickets because they had sold the rights separately from the Holly family. That is bizarre. If that is really the result of current legislation on copyright, the legislation needs to be changed. As his highness said in “Amadeus” (a movie without the problem because all of it’s principals were long deceased), “this is stupid”.

Can it be done otherwise? Check out “Backbeat” about the Beatles’ early career. It’s a great film.

On the other hand, I just realized that I hadn’t applied my own theory: who is shown most flatteringly in the movie? Without a doubt, Astrid Kirchherr, depicted as a fascinating, sophisticated, clever, sexy fan-savant.

I just checked a few web-sites. According to this one, Astrid was indeed involved in the production. How about that.

I do not look forward to the inevitable biopic of Bob Dylan, even though the story of one of the most compelling artists of our age should be an important and significant film. Bob Dylan controls the rights to his music. Nobody will be able to make a film without the music, thus, without the approval of Bob Dylan or his estate. I have no doubt that when it comes, the owners of the rights will proclaim, loudly and insistently, that the biography will be “warts and all”. And I have no doubt that it will really be a highly selective and probably distorted picture. [2008-05: I was wrong. The Dylan film, “I’m Not There”, was brilliant. Dylan, after seeing “I Walk the Line”, let it be known to director Todd Haynes that he could have all the rights he wanted and make the film he wanted because Dylan was not going to demand approval of the script or the film. He didn’t want a typical “biopic”. He wanted to leave the judgement of how the film was made to the director. Hallelujah!]

A fair question is– is that any better or worse than the type of biography we get from Albert Goldman,

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Same as the Old Boss

“They have worked together for 17 of the last 25 years, starting at The Wall Street Journal, and Mr. Pearlstine has been grooming Mr. Huey as his successor since appointing him four years ago as editorial director.”

Yes, that’s the new editor of Time Magazine they are talking about there– fresh from the Wall Street Journal, that paragon of biased muck-raking populist left-wing journalism!

There is a substantial segment of the U. S. population that believes that Time Magazine, CNN, and CBS are staffed by radical liberals. That same population believes the earth might very well be flat and that guns don’t kill people– people kill people. Maybe they also believe that condoms don’t have sex– people have sex. So why shouldn’t they distribute them in high school bathrooms? And Senator Joseph McCarthy really did save us from communist infiltration and subversion of our democratic institutions….

Anyway, here we have the new Editor-in-Chief of the Time Magazine empire and he comes from the Wall Street Journal, the very oracle of American capitalism. I suppose he might still be “left-wing” in the sense that he isn’t quite as conservative as Rush Limbaugh or Fox News or James Dobson.

The next time some conservative tries to tell you that some story or another (like how disaster relief in New Orleans failed, or how Afghanistan has now become the world’s top source of heroin, or whatever), is simply the “liberal” media slandering President Bush as usual, ask him or her if she classifies the Wall Street Journal as “liberal”, and ask her if she could identify a particular liberal magazine or journal out there, other than Mother Jones or the Nation, because I’d like to subscribe to it.

The allegedly favoured next editor of Time Magazine comes from that hothouse of cultural debauchery: Martha Nelson, of People, Inc. More Jennifer Aniston covers? Exactly what the left wing biased media want.

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Maximum PC Sells Out

Maximum PC used to be highly regarded in these quarters. It was the only major computer magazine that didn’t carry reams of Microsoft advertising. Shockingly, it also sometimes commented honestly on the many shortcomings in the Microsoft product line.

I nearly vomited when I read the “Ed Word” in the most recent Maximum PC. Slyly formulated, with a few token swipes at obvious defects, it is an otherwise laudatory puff-piece on Windows.

So much for the last glossy computer magazine that didn’t prostrate itself before Bill Gates.

And wait– what’s this I see– oh my god!! It’s an ad for “Age of Empires”, a Microsoft game!! Sheer coincidence? Sure. Just like George Bush looked into his mirror shaving one day and just happened to see the most qualified supreme court justice in the country standing right behind him, right next to Laura, his own personal lawyer, Harriet E. Miers.

So what’s happening? Is Maximum PC cashing out?

Byte Magazine bit the dust years ago, probably because there never was a market for intelligent dissenting opinions on computer technology.  That is a shame.

 

 

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Blu-Ray, DRM, and HD-DVD

There is a story in the current issue of Maximum PC that is disturbing to say the least. It’s about the next generation of optical disks. (The first nightmare is that two incompatible standards, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, have emerged with no sign of convergence– it’s VHS vs. Beta all over again!)

Apparently, these new disks will implement a set of tools that will make it more difficult to copy DVDs. Some of these tools may even require internet access so that content providers can look at your computer and examine your hard drive and mother board before allowing you to look at a video. There will be an encrypted key on the disk, and an encrypted key on the hardware. That can’t work unless you have an internet connection, so it just may be possible that people who choose not to go on the internet will not be able to play Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on their computers. And even if you do have an internet connection, I’ll bet you look forward to waiting, once again, for some content provider to load up your screen with advertising and distractions that you didn’t ask for, while ostensibly registering your transient possession of the goods.

This would not be a problem for anybody if the market place were just and fair and the government genuinely believed in free enterprise. Some vendors and manufacturers would quickly realize something that is readily apparent to anybody: that consumers don’t want digital copy protection schemes because they make it more difficult to enjoy your media, and because advertising and copy protection is annoying, and because it is often done so badly and inefficiently that most consumers are ready to throttle someone, anyone after waiting and waiting and waiting for their devices to finish loading and registering themselves and downloading advertising onto your hard drive.

But “free enterprise” is a myth intended to pin you to the ground while corporations, lawyers, and congressmen pilfer your pockets. The last thing in the world Hollywood wants is competition.

In this case, the myth becomes transparent when you realize that content providers like Warner Brothers and Disney and Viacom are forcing hardware companies to incorporate copy protection schemes into their products even though you don’t want it, the hardware companies don’t want it, and there is no legal justification for it. They are forcing them to do this by threatening them with legal action, and by recruiting their cronies in congress (mostly Republicans) to threaten to pass legislation requiring them to do it.

What if you were a young, independent movie-maker and you decided that, at least early in your career, you would happily trade fame and recognition for royalties on every copy of your movie distributed. What if your movie was too controversial, or idiosyncratic for the Hollywood studios, and you decided to distribute it yourself on Blu-Ray disks? Do you think you are going to be allowed to?

Consumers want large capacity optical drives so they can back up their photos, videos, and data. Undoubtedly, some consumers want large capacity optical drives so they can steal high definition movies. So what? Some people buy guns so they can rob banks, but these same Republicans who prostrate themselves gleefully before the NRA have decided that not only should you be able to buy a gun any time and any place you feel like it– you should even be able to shoot people in public places if they look even mildly threatening to you, at least in Florida.

But you can’t buy Blu-Ray recorders because you might steal a copy of Lord of the Rings.

Or even worse– you might watch a version of a film that has been rated as safe for Europeans to watch, but not for North Americans! Will the perniciousness of video pirates known no bounds!

Or worse yet– you might want to prevent Hollywood from forcing you to watch advertisements or previews when you already paid to watch the movie!

Now– I do not object to Hollywood protecting their investments. Not at all. All they have to do is issue their movies on a proprietary format which can only be played on their own proprietary devices. That’s all. Go for it Sony. Embrace your greed, Warner Brothers!

Ah…. but they don’t want to do that. Because they know that you won’t buy it. They know that their sales will suffer. They know that the consumer doesn’t like nasty, wasteful, inefficient proprietary devices. They know that you will prefer to buy or rent movies on the non-proprietary format, so that you have some control over what and when you watch.

No no no– it’s much more elegant to simply hijack the medium, and then, in cooperation with your fellow-travelers, the hardware vendors, try to ensure that other media formats are not permitted to flourish. They must be stamped out and destroyed. Because consumers have shown over and over again that they don’t want big corporations controlling their media players.

Important Links

Downhill Battle

The Register

 

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Packaging the Next Big Thing

He soon looked at which band under contract he could develop into a hit-maker the fastest. Judging Coldplay the best bet, he pushed its 2001 debut, “Parachutes,” which eventually sold two million copies. NY Times, March 22, 2004

It’s been a long time since I believed that artists become known because they are talented and interesting. As a child, I thought the process was something like osmosis. The musician writes songs and performs and the talent scout hears the musician play and decides that he or she is singularly remarkable and signs him or her to a contract and then he or she records an album and it is sent to the critics and the radio stations and the best stuff gets promoted and heard on the radio.

No, no, no. It’s Mr. Slater, and people like him. They decide which artist is worthy of development. The artist is “developed” and packaged, and marketed. You hear this artist eventually because Mr. Slater decided you would. Maybe you read about the artist in Rolling Stone or Spin and saw him or her perform on Letterman or Leno or Conan O’Brien.

And then you understand why an artist might become bitter when an album they produced fails. You think, it must have been a bad album. They say, no, it’s because the record company didn’t promote it. You think, surely the record company would have promoted it if it had been any good. Not so. Sometimes they simply decide that even with heavy promotion, a particular album will only sell 500,000 copies. Hardly worth their while, when they might be putting their efforts towards an album that could sell 1 or 2 million copies.

So even artists that produce albums carefully and under budget and consistently make a profit might nevertheless be dropped by their label. That’s tough. That is my understanding of what happened to T-Bone Burnett before he got heavily into the production side of the business.

On the other hand, the label might invest heavily in an artist like Liz Phair, remake her image and promote her all over the place, and still run into a wall of resistance. It’s power is not absolute.

It’s hard to judge at times when the public acclaims somebody and when they are simply manipulated into buying a sham. It’s not nice to think that you bought that Sarah McLachlan album because a pimp like Andrew Slater decided exactly how to manipulate you, but it possible that that is exactly what happened, except that the pimp’s name was actually Terry McBride.

It’s not that her material is not any good.  It is.  But there are many talented artists who you will never hear because they aren’t as physically attractive as McLachlan, or they don’t play ball with the music industry.

This is a stunning fact that you should pay attention to:  there are 4 million tracks on Spotify [updated 2022-05] that nobody has ever streamed.

Spotify claims that 80% of the tracks have been streamed at least once.  Think about that claim:

  • Does Spotify need you to believe that a high percentage of the tracks have been streamed at least once?  Yes, they do.
  • How many of these are streamed to completion?
  • What percentage of tracks by “unknown” artists are streamed?

So, while no album, no matter how good, can be a “huge success” (as defined by numbers of units sold) without massive, coordinated promotion, nor can an album become a “huge success” unless it has some kind appeal to begin with– like Sarah McLachlan’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”. Was it really all that great? Maybe not. But it was good, and appealing, and McLachlan could be photographed to look sexy, so there it was: a hit.

It is not all that unusual nowadays for an artist to be packaged as “alternative”– someone who can’t be packaged and manipulated. Isn’t that exactly how Avril Levigne is packaged?

Added November 2009:

Nellie McKay pissed off her record label and they dropped her (or she dropped them). She immediately sort of vanished off the radar screens. What is she doing now? I don’t know. I thought she was very promising, but maybe it just didn’t pan out. A lot of young artists have one promising album in them… and then they run out of compelling material.

Another possibility: they just didn’t want to conform to the process of packaging and slicing and dicing their own material to suit the suits.

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The V-Chip Fraud

The fraud of the v-chip is that it only blocks violence or sex. It doesn’t block the most insidious type of television programming of all: advertising.

Joseph Lieberman voted in favor of the V-chip, because he likes to think of himself as a “family values” type of guy. But this is the essence of “family values” politicians. They can claim to be standing up to those insidious mythical enemies of the family out there because they don’t really threaten the status quo. They can be pro-life and pro-family and pro-prayer and pro-morality, because these all cost them nothing. They can criticize rap music and violent Hollywood movies because rap musicians and movie directors don’t give them big fat checks for their re-election campaigns.

…Think about it. Is there anybody out there– other than the weirdos way, way out on the fringe– who are not in favor of something like “family values”?

Now let’s consider a position that might reduce corporate profits somewhere. How do you feel about prescription drug prices, Mr. Lieberman? How about closing some of those unnecessary military bases the channel so much cash into congressmen’s home districts?

And, Mr. Lieberman really had any guts, he’d also be in favor of what I call the “c” chip, which would give parents an option of filtering out all the ads that are designed to turn their children into credit-crunching, heartless, mindless consumer zombies.

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Lies and Damn Lies

I had always thought that the reason advertisers target mostly young adult viewers is because they have the most disposable income. I don’t think that’s really true. I think people in their 40’s actually have more money to spend. The real reason is because young adults still have a sliver of a smidgeon of a tiny little particle of belief that what advertisers are telling them is true. I know the feeling, just as sometimes I can remember what it was like to be an adolescent boy and to have fantasies of power or great suffering or genius. After a while you grow up, but not everybody grows up, and not everybody thinks the same thing makes you grown up.

You know that most ads lie or exaggerate but it just might be possible, you think, that this one product or service or whatever will gratify some desire or another. Sometimes you even ignore advice that you know is good. You just need it. You just need to try it. You buy it and, inevitably, it disappoints. You store up that information. By the time you are about 40, you are inured. You are immune to the scam. And advertising no longer works.

We’re the only culture in the world that has grown up bombarded incessantly by millions and millions of lies. We allow it. We are shameless. And I am pretty sure that most people, as with most things, tend to think it could never be otherwise. This is our system, our culture, our economy. There are a lot of things we like about our lifestyles– we wouldn’t want to throw it all away by trying something radical. So we abide the lies.

So I sat there one day and tried to imagine a world in which most advertisers had some kind of moral feeling about truth and decided that they would try to make their ads as reasonably accurate as possible. In a world like this, really lousy products would not survive because no one would agree to advertise them. But most of the products we see around us would probably still be around us. We just wouldn’t be under great illusions about what they can do for us.

So, again, imagine a world in which most of what you hear and see is generally true.

It will blow you mind. It’s a freaking wild concept. The biggest difference is that it would matter. You would care about stuff you hear. You might react. You might take it to heart. You might be moved occasionally.

When something really important came along, it would sound really important, and you would believe it was really important.

We might find out that there are a lot of things we’d like to change about our lives, because we know the truth about our chances of eventually winning the lottery or looking like Katie Holmes or Brad Pitt. We would know that this is what we are and we have to live with.

Truth

A TV production company approaches your airline company. Imagine you are the president of this company. The TV Production company wants to tape your staff in action, your pilots, your stewardesses, your customer service representatives. Nothing is out of bounds. They want to record what it is like to travel on your airplanes.

Your first question is, can we control what you show on TV? We can cut whatever we don’t like, right?

The answer is no.

You say no way, right?

That’s what most U.S. airlines did. They probably thought to themselves, are you crazy? They could show anything! They should customers complaining and saying that they will never fly your airline again!

But Southwest Airlines in the U.S. said yes. And they really had no control over the content. They were not pleased, for example, when the program showed that they charge fat passengers for two seats. They would have preferred that that little episode stayed on the cutting room floor.

But some smart people in the pr department of Southwest Airlines prevailed and the program was made. They gambled on the idea that people are not children, that they can understand reality, and that they will have more respect for an airline that is “transparent” than for one that tries to hide all of their faults.

I think they’re right. I hope they’re right. The jury is still out, but I’m betting that their sales increase and pretty soon all the big airlines will want a piece of the action.

Note: the program was based on a similar program that has been airing in Britain for 6 years.