On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't dispute this. One of the things that has evolved in our > capitalistic society is that we no longer have any comprehension of > having made "enough" money. (SNIP) > We are on the same page. But I don't think the idea of not making "enough" money is something that has evolved - that is built into the DNA of capitalism. The idea is not to make a profit, but to make ever increasing margins of profit. Broadcasting is an immature enough medium that it took a while for corporations to exploit the low hanging fruit for profit; but they are always looking to continually expand sources of profit. There was a time when news and civic affairs programming was part of community service, fulfilling their FCC obligations. Now news is expected to be a profit center, and market values, not journalistic values, drive what we get. Affluent people who can afford to pay the premiums can access more diverse and targeted programing, but those dependent on broad-based programming will get more homogeneous, and profitable fare. I guess one counter to this is the truism that information wants to be free, and as entertainment is now digitized in the form of information, it gets harder and harder to confine it to the boundaries where it can be reliably commodified. My ipod is full of music either ripped from my old CD collection, or purchased from itunes. My college aged daughters roll their eyes at me for buying music from itunes (and laugh hysterically when I give them itunes gift cards for presents), and also make fun of me for only having 800 songs (they have several thousand, almost none of which they have paid for, from what I can tell, though I tried to teach them not to steal). I ask my daughter if she wants me to record one of her shows on our TiVo to watch when she gets home for vacation, and she smiles indulgently like I have offered to get her a new electric typewriter ribbon. No, she reminds me, she does not need a television to watch her shows; though processes still mostly mysterious to me, she can find almost any show she wants to watch online, and for free. She does dig our Netflix subscription (a lot), but when I canceled all of the premium satellite tv channels (except for HBO) a few months ago I expected her to put up a fight, and the truth is she never even noticed they were gone, not because she doesn't watch those programs, but because she does not watch them through the controlled means of transmission. When I point out to her that if everyone accessed these programs for free the people who make them would not make any profit, and so would probably stop making them, she gets it intellectually, but not intuitively. She (and most of her friends and peers, from what I can tell) genuinely expect that entertainment should be available 24 hours on demand, and for free. And she does not want just broad based entertainment - she wants to see Hungarian cooking shows and East Indian musicals and Japanese game shows and avante garde independent films and plays and 1960s sit coms and 1980s camp dramas and who knows what else. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
