On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 5:49 PM, Eugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If I might jump in here with a comment. Advertising is an almost trivial > component of the problem. I really like the magazine AdBusters but ads > hardly concern me. (Except to the extent that they pay for the content (not > ads) on TV.
It may be a trivial component of consumption. (Though I'm not as confident as you are, it is not a point I'm prepared to argue.) But it is a very non-trivial portion of what shapes the media. Granted, media in a capitalist society will be dominated by capitalists. But there is still a huge distinction between media dependent on advertising, as opposed to media dependent on audiences, on readers, on views, on listeners. Because in advertising supported media, the advertiser is the customer. The reader or viewer or whatever is the product, eyeballs and ears, and clicks to sell. The actual show or article or web content? That is just bait. Take an example that is either early capitalism or precapitalist but with some foreshadowing of capitalism. The Globe Theater was entrepreneurial, supported by ticket sales and flourishing in spite of competition from the bear-baiting pits. Shakespeare's plays were popular entertainment. Vendors sold food. I'm not sure prostitution took place right in the stalls, but the groundling section was at least a pickup joint both for those seeking fun, and those seeking profit. But - at least the most of the profit came directly from the customers. Imagine a counterfactual. Suppose the economics of the time had been such that admission was free (at least to the groundlings, with charges for other customer classes) but the prostitutes and peddlers had to pay for the privilege of selling their wares. Under those circumstances could Shakespeare have survived competition with bear baiting for the groundlings? His plays would have had to survive on the the other classes. Plays written without a groundling audience in mind would have turned out differently, and he would probably have needed patronage for his plays as he did for his poetry. Advertiser supported media has fewer cracks where dissenting views and creativity can sneak through. The bars of the cage are a bit more solid, and a bit more tightly spaced because of advertising. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
